Why is he smoking a cigar? Or maybe its medicinal marijuana: "When 900 years old you reach, your eyesight not be so good it will."What's the deal? My first-ever campaign commercial. So far I've notched up 23 hours dedicated to getting this one minute of footage assembled together. Some of that is time that could have probably been saved 'cuz I've been doing some "tweaking" in Premiere Pro and After Effects. What benefits come from that may not show up that well on TV anyway... but I'm a compulsive perfectionist. If it can possibly be made better, I'll take the extra effort to do it. In the end it's all the little things that make the difference.
It's coming. Soon. Brace yourself: I was told tonight that one thing that happens in this commercial makes Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy Girl" ad seem mild in comparison :-P
Which proves all the more that the major parties - Republican and Democrat alike - have too great a stranglehold on this country.
Negron didn't have to submit himself to any of the scrutiny that is supposed to come with being a Congressional candidate. He's not going to be running because he gathered enough signatures on a petition to warrant his name being on the ballot. No, the only reason he's running is because the party bosses hand-picked him to be "their man". Because all that matters to them is "keeping control" of Congress... to hell what is in the best interest of the people of that district.
I've written in the past few days how the process of my being an electoral candidate for the first time has led to some personal change and growth. Well, I'm going to write more about this in the weeks and months following the election, but I'm compelled to say this much now at least: for all the talk about "voter apathy" in this country, why should the average American feel morally obliged to go to the polls in an election, if the American people aren't in charge of their own country anymore?
In a sane world, nobody would be filling in for Foley on the ballot. The contest would belong to whoever it was who's left in the race (which I guess would default to the Democrats, since no one else is really allowed to run in an election in this country)... and tough cookies for the Republicans.
But I guess I shouldn't be expecting anyone - from either of the two major parties - to do the decent thing by not circumventing the American people, should I?
Ali versus Frazier it wasn't. Things took a serious turn when Atlantic Records didn’t see the funny side of "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of James Blunt's hit, You’re Beautiful.Thta's the DUMBEST thing I've ever heard in my life!! No wonder Al is editing the Atlantic Records entry on Wikipedia to say "YOU SUCK" in the "White and Nerdy" video.Yankovic recorded You're Pitiful as the lead single to his new album, Straight Outta Lynwood, but pulled the track when Atlantic refused to give permission. Blunt had apparently told the Los Angeles based comedian he was fine with it but Yankovic's label, Volcano, didn't want to mess with the major.
Either way, Yankovic usually seeks the artist's blessing as a courtesy before commercially releasing his skewed remakes of hit songs.
Prince, Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page have apparently knocked back Weird Al makeovers but most artists relish Yankovic's humorous and harmless homages.
Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler played guitar on the Beverly Hillbillies parody of Money For Nothing while executives at Nirvana's label once told the comedian that his Smells Like Teen Spirit remake sold an extra million copies of Nevermind.
However, the wise men guiding Blunt's career don't share Yankovic's zany sense of humour.
"The reason I heard was that they felt like You're Beautiful was getting too much attention," Yankovic, 46, explains from his home in LA. "They don't want him perceived as a one-hit wonder. They thought You're Beautiful was getting bigger than he was... and that my parody would put more focus on that song."
Atlantic didn't immediately put the kybosh on the parody, rather the suits asked Yankovic to wait until the soppy UK singer-songwriter had established himself as an artist. He obliged, for a while, but the album full of timely parodies couldn't hold for more than a few months.
A frustrated Yankovic pushed the label for a final answer and was eventually told that they didn't want the song to ever see the light of day.
"At that point I just lost my mind because they had basically pushed back my album and I had no idea what I was going to be doing," he says. "They basically jerked me around."
While the song won't be commercially released, Yankovic made You're Pitiful available for free download via www.weirdal.com — and the MP3 became a worldwide viral hit. Despite his run-in with Atlantic, Yankovic will stick to his policy of seeking approval before unleashing his comic gems. "I've always done that historically and I'd like to keep doing it, but I'd have to say that experiences like this make me wish that I wasn't so dependent on the kindness of strangers."
I actually used to have almost every Star Wars toy on this page! The only exception was the 13-inch Boba Fett figure. That's worth mentioning because this is the 1979 Sears catalog and Boba Fett didn't actually make his big-screen debut until the following year in The Empire Strikes Back. As far back as the Holiday Special in 1978 (which George Lucas will probably thank you for not thinking about) they were hard at work cultivating Boba Fett into a future bad-a$$ and he was already getting action figures made of him. As for who this "Zargon" guy is in the lower right-hand corner, I've a very vague recollection of the toy line he was from but it wasn't Star Wars: guess they needed someone as big as 13-inch Fett to balance out the rest of the page.Anyways, if you have some time to kill, you might enjoy looking through the rest of Wishbook's photo sets. Which you'll probably wind up laughing at when you check out how people used to dress back in the early 70s and 80s.
In the meantime, two other candidates for Rockingham County Board of Education have television commercials already up and running. Being that I'm into filmmaking/video production and have ummmm... more than a little interest in this election, I thought it would be neat to post links to their commercials. If any other candidates produce commercials and put them online, I'll post links to theirs too.
So here they are: the first two candidates in the Rockingham County Board of Education race to have TV commercials. They are in Windows Media format so make sure you have the right player installed on your computer...
