YOU ALL, EVERY BUTTIES: Life really does imitate art, because the "All You Need Is Luvs" advertising campaign is coming soon.

DON'T GO FOR SECOND BEST, BABY: One of the things that's just striking about watching LiveEarth is just seeing Madonna up there. It is now twenty-five years since her first single, "Everybody," and if there's an artist you would've assumed back in the mid-80s was all hype and fad, no staying power, it was her. Seriously, who would've thought from her cheeky 1985 Live Aid performance (okay, here's more), at a stadium long since imploded, that not only would she still have a thriving career in 2007, but she'd be regarded as classy? (And British.)

Somehow, I don't expect Britney Spears' career to follow this arc. And people who've been just as big as Madonna but started later -- Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson, to name three -- just haven't had Madge's staying power.

What explains this? It's not just "sex sells," because lots of people are selling it, and it's not just singing talent, because she doesn't have that much of it. Is it just a combination of a strong work ethic -- including the willingness to do all the promotional things necessary for her career, (blonde) ambition and an amazing ability to locate the right producers to advance her musically? Whatever it is, it's worth appreciating and recognizing.

REPLACING FORMER TITLEHOLDER "JOEY: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON:" While wandering through Virgin Megastore this evening, I found my new champion for "inessential TV on DVD." Yes, on 3 disks, it's Pink Lady and Jeff: The Complete Series, which Wikipedia knows a lot about the 6 episodes of. Also, so does Harry Shearer. Seriously, this is on DVD, while I'm still waiting for a single episode of L.A. Law on DVD?

HER NAME WAS ROSE: As usual, Alan Sepinwall and I are on the same page with respect to Doctor Who, which like Sci-Fi's other current flagship, Battlestar Galactica, takes something rather cheesy from long ago which had a cult following, and manages to reinvent it (though Who's political undertones are less present than BSG's). I missed the Series 2 finale due to TiVo issues, but moments from Series 1 still stick (in particular, Christopher Eccleston's joyous "Just this once, everybody lives!" at the end of The Doctor Dances and his final "You were spectacular, and you know what? So was I.") However, because Alan apparently watched on screener, he missed important commercial information--Sci-Fi's upcoming Flash Gordon series is at least being promoted with Queen's immortal theme song.

07.07.07: If you see anything cool during the various Live Earth concerts today, let us know. I just watched the Red Hot Chili Peppers from Wembley on the Sundance Channel, and they never, ever suck.

RAH, RAH, R.A.H.!: Saturday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Anson Heinlein. I could become downright maudlin over his influence on me. Okay, today, I am downright maudlin over his influence on me. But I'll not bother you with that. Instead, I'll quote just this rather unobjectionable bit of advice from his novel, Time Enough for Love:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!

Happy Birthday, Mr. Heinlein. And Thank You.

Ad Astra!

WHAT I WANT TO KNOW, MR. FOOTBALL MAN, IS WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT WILLIE MAYS: San Francisco is getting ready for baseball's All-Star Game next Tuesday, closing down streets and freeway ramps like they're Disney Stores. The city is festooned with banners and plastered with posters bearing the game's logo:



Usually, sporting event logos look like they're designed by the athletes themselves -- if you're going to call it an "all-star" event, then you actually have to cram in all the stars, the theory seems to go -- so this logo is surprisingly well-done. With all of the steroids, spousal threatening, and Yankee-stinking going on, MLB clearly and smartly wants to evoke a different, simpler, more innocent time. Everything about this serigraph by local graphic artist Michael Schwab serves a nostalgic idyll -- the uncomplicated blockiness that recalls the old WPA posters; the retro ballpark silhouette; the deep-blue late-afternoon summer sky; the stripped-down deco font. Even the last-minute edit -- the ball splashing into McCovey Cove, which, from Schwab's site, clearly came from MLB and not from Schwab himself -- helps place the event, both geographically and thematically. It's an aesthetically pleasing and commercially brilliant work.

I'm a little less enthusiastic about the secondary marketing, though. Hopefully these are readable (but you can click the picture to enlarge):

The geographic pieces are odd -- not clear what trolleys, the Golden Gate bridge, and, uh, the Mission bell tower (? -- I'm new around here) have to do with baseball. And I both like and am troubled by the two baseball players, especially the pitcher, whose shadowy image is hanging from every other lamppost downtown. I like them because they are even more directly influenced by the WPA posters and the WPA posters' own influence, Soviet propaganda (as an aside, one has to appreciate the kookiness of the war-time US government reinforcing American values and ideals through a socialist arts program appropriating the vocabulary of communist art). All three promote their message with the same iconography -- vigorous and clean-cut young adults (usually, but not always, muscular men) proudly engaged in wholesome or patriotic labor. So what's wrong? Well, it's the shadow. First, I don't exactly understand what MLB and Schwab are getting at with the shaded face. That baseball players are shadowy figures with terrible secrets? Well, yes, but I thought that was the stuff MLB wanted you to forget. That all-stars are anonymous everymen? Hmm, I thought they were supposed to be stars. Even worse than the mixed message, though, is that these guys are clearly impostors. MLB parks are oriented so that the line from home plate through the pitcher's mound runs east-northeast. Why? To figure this out, stare directly into the afternoon sun while somebody throws a hard object near your head at 100 miles an hour, and let us know how that works for you. Yet in the posters, the sun is directly at the pitcher's back and in the batter's eyes -- the pitcher seems to be standing at home plate, throwing toward the mound. As much fun as this might be for an inning or so (or would be, if Carl Everett or AJ Pierzynski were playing), again, I don't think it's what MLB had in mind.