Ch 15, pages 367/368

[Joseph Tracy]

So did Henry take up smoking Salems? Did Robin become a drinker of,  
god forbid, Hamms? Do they still make that stuff, why didn't the  
swell jingle and all those nifty bar lights get it more market share?
Did music give these messages an "advantage" over experience,  
comparative shopping, word of mouth etc.?
Anyway what allows a person to break from commercial and culture and  
its sloganized political equivalent and  develop critical filters and  
skepticism?

One thing I noticed this time through VL was a more negative feeling  
as a reader about Sasha. I really don't like her  much. The fact that  
she thought it cute that her grand-daughter was being seduced by the  
TV equivalent of baby talk and that it is an important memory for her  
that still defines Prairie does not endear me. It's like she's  
saying, Isn't it adorable how the TV gave us this little island of  
vacuous wet dreams and replaced our real history so we could gurgle  
and smile while we got screwed. But maybe this is getting at  
something more primal. Maybe it is about the desire to infantilize  
the people we love and even love itself. Ooh, ooh, ooh, baby ,baby.  
There are a lot of arguments in life and in TRP's fictions that  
mature, equal and heartfelt love is rare and elusive, what with  
humans being in constant motion and all. Maybe our political  
immaturity as a nation is tied also to this syndrome. After 200 years  
of pillage, rape, and war Reagan announces that,"  It's morning in  
America " ( no malls in this commercial, no atomic blast, no neon bar  
signs or Semi Trucks.... just virgin grass and skies, a sweet young  
prairie ready  for a walk)


On Apr 16, 2009, at 9:29 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:


> It's a jump ahead, but wotthehell wotthehell:
>
> 	"Hnof ikh, Angh-ah!"
>
> 	"My own adorable grandchild," slinging the girl's head gently away
> 	at last. "I want you to sing the 'Gilligan's Island' theme for your
> 	mother," she commanded.
> 	
> 	"Grandma!"
>
> 	"First time she ever noticed the Tube, remember, Frenesi? A tiny
> 	thing, less than four months old—Gilligan's Island' was on,
> 	Prairie, and your eyes may've been a little unfocused yet, but you
> 	sat there, so serious, and watched the whole thing—"
>
> 	"Stop, I-don't-want-to-hear-this—"
>
> 	"—after that, whenever the show came on, you'd smile and gurgle
> 	and rock back and forth, so cute, like you wanted to climb inside
> 	the television set, and right onto that Island—"
>
> 	"Please—" She looked to Frenesi for help, but her mother looked
> 	as bewildered as she felt.
>
> My first words were "Hamms" followed by "Beer,"—that "from the land  
> of sky-blue waters" jingle burning its way into my consciousness  
> right from the start:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o83xxWCel8g
>
> On Apr 16, 2009, at 6:06 AM, Henry Musikar wrote:
>
>
>> A cousin of mine and I both remember pretty much every jingle that  
>> we heard
>> as children, which is not altogether pleasant.  Neither one of us  
>> made any
>> attempt to memorize them.
>>
>> In retrospect, my favorite jingle campaign was "You can take Salem  
>> out of
>> the country, but... you can't take the country out of Salem."  After
>> everyone had heard it enough times that they knew it well, they  
>> sang "You
>> can take Salem out of the country, but..." paused, and then rang a  
>> bell,
>> ding!  That made the internal singing of the jingle even stronger!
>> Brilliant!
>>
>> When you say "Bud..."
>>
>> Henry Musikar