What is heaven?

It certainly seems to mean different things to different people. The traditional view is that it’s where God lives but I would say it’s fairly safe to suggest that more than a few alternate visions have been constructed as the various millennia flew by.

For some, heaven is a casino with loose slots. For others it’s a $2.99 all-you-can-eat buffet. If you’re Hugh Hefner heaven would quite logically resemble the grotto you have out back, except with a superior filtration system. If you happen to be a suicidal terrorist heaven is said to provide at a minimum 72 virgins for anyone making it through the clouded door. While this vision of heaven does seem to bear a remarkable similarity to Hef’s version I’d rather not go there for obvious reasons. If beer advertising is to be believed (like they have a reason to lie) heaven is an endless kegger. And truly few companies are as adept at this as the barley barkers over at Miller Lite when it comes to pushing this particular notion of the sweet hereafter.

Miller Lite has a new ad called “Beer Heaven.” In it, a handsome young man sees a sign scrawled on a wall that says “Beer Heaven” with an arrow pointing at a door. He enters and comes face to face with a combination air hockey table/LCD television so one can play the perfect bar game while watching the perfect ball game. He turns to the crowd and everyone greats him with a Norm-like “Mark!” As our hero walks, the crowd effortlessly parts to allow him unfettered access to the bar. Mark is again greeted by name, this time by the barkeep who tends a bar consisting only of – tadahhh! - Miller Lite. I will suggest at this point that this “beer heaven” is also a bartender’s heaven because the dude running this libation station would have had to pass one of the most non-challenging bartending courses ever, but I digress.

Bartender tells “Mark” that they have been expecting him. Mark turns and sees his name printed on the comfy bar stool/chair he is being offered and asks where he is. “Beer Heaven,” the barkeep reports. Leaning back in his ultra-cozy barstool Mark bumps a stunning waitress and knocks the bottles of Miller Lite she’s carrying right from her tray – but they all land perfectly upright, unbroken and un-spilled. Mark leans back again, content that all is heavenly perfection.

While I can appreciate the basic sentiment that heaven is a well-lit bar where you can’t get into trouble for duncing the hot waitress I do have to ask if all beer drinkers are really this inherently shallow? Is a bar really the place you want to spend eternity, no matter how well equipped it is? Bars are usually a means to an end. You go to the bar to find the girl to take on the date to marry in Vegas and to honeymoon with in Hawaii (or whatever specific order you’re personally comfortable with). The point is, however you do it, the last position is rarely the bar. More often than not that’s where you end up once everything goes south because you made an ass of yourself at the main luau. (Note to self: Don Ho was a singer not a pimp). Is beer heaven what we’re really all waiting for?

Maybe I’m being a little too hard on Miller Lite. Heaven at its most literal is a pretty heady concept. The heaven most of us mean when we’re reflecting back on the perfect moment is more of an earthbound feeling of pure happiness that cannot be improved upon even one tiny bit - a small piece of wonderfulness that makes an all-too-often dreary life, bright. If for some that’s the perfect bar tucked down some secret alley then so be it.

Personally though, my own perfect moment was a warm weekend morning spent comfortably seated looking out across an expansive and pristine lake surrounded by tall trees. That my perch was a small outhouse with the door open was what escalated a merely pleasant experience into a spiritually transcendent one.

Heaven on earth? Okay, maybe not, but it will suffice a heck of a lot better than “beer heaven” would, at least until the real thing comes along.

Parachute pants, mesh shoes and big-ass banana clips for the hair.

Awesome. Totally tubular. Wicked...to the Max!

Yes, I can only be describing that so very wonderful of decades – the Eighties - which can only mean something special to those of us that went to school then. To everyone else it’s simply a punch-line they don’t really get.

And if you “lived” the Eighties you must remember Op. Ocean Pacific. That brand was the must-have for anybody wanting proof a beach t-shirt or short was cool enough to wear. As a clothing label Op was birthed by the surfer culture way back in 1972 but it took until the Eighties to explode.

Then suddenly, like Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas they all just went away. All of it – gelly shoes, leg warmers, George Michael (at least until that horrific men’s room debacle – sigh…) the whole eighties. And Op fell down the very same rabbit hole they did. Well gag me with a spoon.

Welcome 2008. The kids of the Eighties are parents now, pretending to be adults while secretly listening to Poison while trying on their acid wash jeans late at night when everyone’s asleep. Take note. The eighties are back and good old Wal-Mart is front of the line.

Just ask Kristen Cavalieri, Corbin Bleu or Wilmer Valderrama. Maybe Christina Milian and Josie Maran. Rumer Willis perhaps? Names don’t ring a bell? They didn’t mean diddley squat to me either but they are current teen stars with apparently enough street credibility to make a teenager look twice should they be shown draped in or fondling something easily purchasable. Op, we are told is their cloth of choice - at least according to the advertising contracts their agents most certainly had signed.
Just last summer Wal-Mart made a deal to license the Op brand for their stores. And when you think about it that may have been a pretty savvy move.
You’ve got the parents of the eighties, hopelessly uncool yet still believing they aren’t, wandering the Wal-Mart aisles hopelessly trying to find clothing their ungrateful offspring won’t toss aside with a dismissive sneer. Cutting around the mini-fridge display to avoid some guy carrying $199 plasma TV’s under each arm they happen upon a breezily familiar display – “Op? Ocean Pacific? Wow, like totally wicked. I remember those guys. This stuff was way cool. Okay, like Makayla will think this is so bitchin.”

So they’ll stress the credit card a bit and grab some shorts, a few t-shirts, a flip flop or two and maybe even a sunglasses string. Toss it all in the buggy with a bottle of bleach, some future yard sale patio glasswear and the seven or eight DVD’s that now constitute a crazy Saturday night before heading for home.

Then they’ll get the sweats. Oh sure, they know Op is cool but will it be acceptable now? It’s from Wal-Mart – that’s a pretty huge “this sucks” label right off the bat. Can the presence of Rumer Willis or Wilmar Valderamma (Seriously, who are these people?) really be enough to inoculate the inherent lameness of a big box department store purchase?

To be honest, I don’t really know. I’m not thirteen. It’s kind of up to Wal-Mart on this one. If they hired the right poster children for the re-birth of Op any parent will be a hero for picking some up. If not, they’ll be passing it on to their relatives that have no cable and live on farms.
Which really kind of sucks all over again. Op was cool for us. It just HAS to be cool for kids today. I don’t think I could take it if they cruelly reject yet another icon of my youth.

It would be, like, such a total bummer if they did.

What if firefighters ran the world?

At first glance this may seem like an odd notion. Most of us know very little about these guys beyond what we see every now and again. Oh sure, they’re the heroes when your house is burning down or when you’re trapped upside down and underwater in your car. They are willing (and able) to risk life and limb to save us from ourselves. (No, seriously Mr. Fire Chief. I smoked in bed for years and never had a single problem.) Look, any group that appears to be the sole inter-galactic, universal keeper of “the jaws of life” ought to have some claim to running the whole shebang. Maybe it’s not such a far out idea after all.

Unfortunately, once the light of day intrudes and most of us drop our lofty, heartfelt and heroic notions of firefighters for the slightly more pedestrian images we feel a bit let down. It’s easy to love the fire fighter when you imagine scenes from “Backdraft” playing out in your living room but a whole lot harder when you limit yourself to memories of them ripping up and down the highway in their big red trucks several times a day and the 4-6 reflective jacket and rubber boot wearing dudes that always seem to be milling around sad little fender-benders sprinkling MicroBlaze all over the place.

Is such a characterization unfair? Well of course. First because Heaven help me if I’m ever stuck deep in the soup one day I don’t want these guys saying “Oh yeah, he’s the little weasel who said we don’t do nothing – let ‘em burn for a while and see how he likes it.” But mainly because the truth almost always rests somewhere in the middle of what we think. At their most necessary fire fighters are the difference between life and death but day to day a lot of their jobs are as mundanely routine as the rest of ours are. Bottom line: Things need to be done and people need to do them – ‘nuff said.

Well, NextTel Communications is running a great TV commercial right now for its DirectConnect service and they are pushing the idea that it really is only the firefighter that can save us. In the spot we see what appears to be a United States house of representatives or a legislature that is entirely populated by fully geared up, and no-nonsense as ever, firefighters.

The script for the thing is fantastic and follows directly on the heels of the following question that flashes first on screen: What if firefighters ran the world?

Chief: Okay firefighters settle down, How ’bout the budget
Firefighters BALANCE IT!
Chief: And the taxes
Firefighters: ONE PAGE OR LESS
Chief: Anyone want better roads?
Firefighters: WE DO!
Chief: All in favor?
Firefighters: AYE
Chief: Opposed? (Silence) (Gavel) DONE!
Chief: (Rifles through a pile of paper) Lot of paper to tell us we need clean water. Need clean water guys?
Firefighters: Aye!
Chief: This is the easiest job I’ve ever had. We’re outta here! (Pounds gavel)

The announcer then comes back on and intones “Get more done now - communicate with groups in less than a second with Nextel DirectConnect. What a perfect ad.

How can you possibly go wrong when you start off by praising firefighters and their can-do attitude while almost imperceptibly making pure, cruel sport of the oh-so-obviously portrayed “inept politician” that such a group would be replacing. Nobody really believes things could get done that fast in the real world but we sure wish it could. And somewhere deep, deep down we all think that if folks would just put all their cards on the table and talk, that things really could work out better.

Maybe. It’s a nice thought on the surface of things. Firefighters are modern day men and women of action. We have to believe they can make things happen when nothing else can save us. The fly in the ointment of course is that government can work pretty fast too when it comes to genuine emergencies – as long as everyone manages to get out of everybody else’s way (a miracle, I know.) It’s not always easy to do that when you have so very many people to represent. The firefighter is there to save whoever is hurting the most – the politician is stuck saving everyone no matter how much each life saved contradicts or intersects with another. Complicated trade offs and interminable delays are a direct result of too many varied, but all too necessary interests being present at the table. Politicians have their own problems.

Still, imagining a world where the ridiculously competent run things is a dream we can all hold on to – ‘cause if we don’t I’m afraid that closing ourselves up into the fetal position under our collective desks is about the only genuine alternative for any of us.

I hope they use the “jaws of life” to get me out.

Authenticity is king. It’s easy to know this is true by looking at the way everything from juice to cat food is advertised. Juice must come from “real” fruit, pet food is made with “actual” meat. Heck, even Miller beer knows this. They went so far as to brand their draft beer as “genuine.” It’s in the freakin’ title on every can.

And why not? I mean, the reason you pay $150 bucks a crack to see the Rolling Stones is that you want to witness the genuine remaining animated cadavers themselves lurching about the stage with your own eyes. If it was just about the music you’d see a tribute band for free at a Native Casino, but it’s the authenticity of the genuine article that allows those geriatric reprobates to continue touring.

Knowing this, any product or brand is obligated to make its personal case of authenticity because the more real or genuine something is the better it has to be. In a way this tends to mean ever more these days as we are subjected to so much unreality on a daily basis.

Our television and movies regularly feature things so impossible that we simply cannot trust our eyes any more. Magazines splash ads that have been so photo-shopped that nothing as pedestrian as a “picture” even exists anymore. Every ad we see is so scripted, so prepared, so flawlessly perfect that we have almost come full circle in now craving things raw or unpolished, if only to believe for an instant that we have finally found some kernel of truth in the world.

The current version of “truth” in advertising seems to come from the viral video. The “viral video” is created solely to be passed around from friend to friend or person to person in a manner that matches a disease but that in a way adds to the credibility of the video in question (Dude, you have got to see this!). It’s an ad pitch that is irresistible because it most closely approximates the power behind a recommendation that comes from a friend. And you’re way more likely to buy something if your buddy raves about it than some stranger.

As can be expected, Nike is right up front in this category too.

Kobe Bryant, who it seems has sufficiently dusted aside his personal scandals of late, is back with a brand new viral video that started moving just a few days ago. It’s raw, it’s fun as all get out and it’s so shamefully commercial that you just have to appreciate the boldness.

The video opens with Kobe looking into a video camera. We see his face full-screen as he shows us his hip new Nike shoe. It becomes apparent really quick that we are watching a single shot camera – set up on a tripod, unblinking – in a parking lot with Kobe and his buddies. His on-camera friend is ragging at Kobe. “Don’t do it, man” and “It’s crazy dude.” We still don’t know what’s going on. Kobe tells him to relax, to chill, that everything will be fine. Still on camera Kobe walks to the middle of the parking lot and yells for someone far away to come. He gets into a ready position and then suddenly jumps high into the air so an Aston Martin convertible can speed by underneath him. Kobe lands and everybody starts yelling and jumping around celebrating. It’s shocking, crazy and totally faked – but you’d never know it from the video. The video looks as real as anything you’ve ever seen those “Jackass” rejects attempt.

It’s made even more believable in that it’s an image most folks are bound to have of Kobe already. He’s a young guy worth a few hundred million beans – who would doubt for a second that he and his friends spend time hanging out and fooling around doing goofy stuff with expensive cars to impress each other? Plus we know Kobe sports a recorded 40 inch vertical leap so it’s not beyond the pale to think he could actually pull it off. This video could not appear more authentic if it tried.

But it’s not. It’s a fake.

You see, Nike will be releasing its all new Hyperdunk basketball shoe - endorsed by Kobe – slated to go on sale this July. To get the kids talking, Nike filmed this viral to show off their new summer must-have. You can see the video here at:

youtube

and judge for yourself. I won’t tell you how they did it other than to remind you that cameras have real issues with depth perception.

So does it matter that it isn’t real? I guess not. Even Kobe freely admits that “Hollywood” was responsible for his super trick. The viral is way cool and still worth showing to everyone you know, whether it’s horse-hockey or not. Still, I can’t help wonder if we will ever find a way back to real, genuine, true-blue authenticity someday.

Where’s a legend like Evel Knievel when you need him.