Angelina Jolie is making me rethink my tattoo

The Super Bowl is all about the advertising, with a football game going on in the background. The Oscars are all about the dresses, and something about movies. This year, when I watched the Super Bowl I found myself learning some of the rules of football. Tonight, I learned some of the rules of Oscar. Allow me to share.

If you are the unknown escort of a Hollywood hunk, wear the ugliest dress you can find. Work hard at it, because everyone hates you anyway.


If you're a foreigner, go for the respect me or I might kill you look.


When no one knows your name, try to make the worst dressed list, because there's no such thing as bad publicity.


When you've reached the A list, you can get away with wearing anything.


If you're just coming off a stint in anorexia rehab, flaunt it.


Play to your strengths, even if you left them in the 80s.


Models have a different set of rules. Something to do with wearing a dress that looked better on the hanger, and should have been left there.


If you wait long enough, you get a pass.


Don't wear a dress that might poke you in the eye during the ride to the show. It'll make your face look like this.


Let the professionals clean the fish.


Unwrap the box the dress came in.


And finally, no matter how weirdly creepily beautiful you are, remember to wash off the stamps from last night's clubbing before dressing up.

All the World's A Stage, and Joaquin Phoenix is a Player

I assume by now you've all seen the Joaquin Phoenix interview on Letterman. I won't bother to link to it on YouTube, because CBS keeps pulling it down (as rightly they should). Besides, if you're reading this, you're savvy enough to find it for yourself.

The chatter in the blogosphere is waxing that Phoenix must have been on drugs, or otherwise lamed out. It was, as you saw, a ridiculously lame performance. He mumbled. He gave one word answers. He seemed baffled by Letterman's questions.

Until Letterman started mocking him, that is. Until, like Harvey Korman on the Carol Burnett show, who occasionally succumbed to a smirk, if not outright losing it, in response to Tim Conway — Phoenix lost his composure. Just for a nanosecond; if you weren't paying close attention, you probably missed it.

So go watch the video again, and look for it. There, see?

I have a confession to make: I'm extremely gullible. My good friends know this. I will believe just about anything, if someone I trust tells it to me. And when they're pulling my leg, it takes me longer than the average bear to get it.

But I got Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman. I got that it was a performance. To what end, I don't know, but I'm sure we'll eventually find out. There's no way that was an accident, or a PR misstep. There's just no way.

No Hollywood celebrity goes on a talk show unprepared, uncoached, un-made up, or un-styled. They all have people — publicists, stylists, hair dressers and makeup people. Advisors.

(Well, maybe all but Michael Jackson. But I digress.)

I think Rolling Stone got it right: it was an act. It was like Borat. If you saw that movie, didn't you wonder how the people he was with could have been fooled into believing he was playing it straight?

Same thing. Joaquin Phoenix is up to something. I hope, when we find out what it is, it's one quarter as good as Borat was.

I love David Letterman, though. (My good friends also know that about me.) And at the end of the interview with Joaquin Phoenix, Letterman had the greatest last words: "We owe Farrah Fawcett an apology!"

(I don't think that one was an act.)

My Covert Mission to Undermine Unethical Facebook Ads and Save the World From Communism

Here's the objection I have to ads on Facebook like the ones you see here: They're unethical.

Because they're unethical, it is my opinion that Facebook should not allow them. Someone at Facebook screens all ads before giving the go-ahead to allow them to be posted, but they don't seem to consider these ads impermissible. I do, and so should you.

Why are they unethical? Because the advertiser has not licensed — that is, paid for the right to use — Julia Roberts's image. Or Jennifer Aniston's. Or Sandra Bullock's. Or Kelly Ripa's. You might be thinking, oh, who cares, they're big celebrities, they have lots of money, so it's OK for a small business to steal their image and use it for their own purposes.

You are wrong. Here's why.

To any professional who knows anything about business, marketing, or advertising, these ads positively scream amateur! Because professionals know that you can't just appropriate the image of Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson for use in your promotional materials. You have to negotiate, and pay for it. Jennifer Aniston's people may not be patrolling the Internet for the unauthorized use of her image, but I dare you to try using a Disney character without permission. (Go ahead, try it. You'll be shocked at how quickly the Disney people will come down on you.)

The advertisers that post these unethical, amateur-style Facebook ads are using a technique called manufactured credibility, which is something professional marketers do when they don't have any real credibility. If you can't get a doctor to be an official spokesperson for your vitamin supplement, hire an actor and dress him in a white coat. Manufacture credibility. There's nothing unethical about this technique, so long as the actor doesn't actually say, "I am a doctor." You can't outright lie in advertising, but you can mislead like hell.

The snake-oil salesmen behind these Facebook ads are attempting to mislead you into believing that these celebrities use their products. If you believe that, even a little bit, then you are a moron.

Finally, consider this: Philosophically speaking, the idea that any artist's images, or words, or art, should be free for all to use for any commercial purpose is, essentially, communistic. This is America. Is that really how you want to roll?

So, what is my covert mission? Every time I see one of these ads on my Facebook page, I click on it ten times. The advertiser pays per click, which means every time I click on it, it's costing them money, and they're getting nothing for it because I'm not following through to purchase their miracle diet products or wrinkle cream.

I encourage you to join me in my mission.

Advertising & the End of the World

"Advertising does not stress the value of a long range collective future...the prevailing values of the commercial system provide no incentive to develop bonds with future generations...

"We don't care about the future.

"To the extent that it does all these things, advertising becomes one of the major obstacles to our survival as a species."

So narrates Sut Jhally, author of several books on the intersection of advertising and culture, catastrophe, and fetishism, in a documentary film titled "Advertising & The End Of The World."

Judging by the five minute preview available on the publisher's website, this film looks almost as scary as An Inconvenient Truth.

I'm working on getting it for my classes.