March 2003 Archives

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Sunday, March 30, 2003

Britain

It's been a while (over six years, to be precise), but I think I've been living in New York for long enough now that I can finally weigh in on the subject of Britain in general, and London in particular, with the objectivity and omniscience that only an occasional visitor to the country can ever have. Live somewhere, and the particular will always overwhelm the general: I can parse the difference between the Lower East Side and Nolita till the cows come home, but don't bother asking me what New York is like in general. A bit like my sister, really, who is far too polite to people whose first question, upon learning that she's just returned from Antarctica, is "what's it like?".

Anyway, Britain. First things first, the national airline. After my experience with American Airlines a few weeks ago, British Airways was a joy to fly. It's not that things don't go wrong; it's that there are human beings working for the company who care when they do.

My flight to London, for instance, took off more or less on time, but was held up dreadfully upon arrival at Heathrow. First of all we were forced to be towed to the gate (don't ask me why); then the little "finger" thing which connects the gate to the plane wasn't working; and to make matters worse, some useless chap in New York had put me in the very last row of seats, telling me I'd have more legroom there. (Nope.) Off the plane, there were huge queues of people waiting to get in to Terminal 1 – just when you thought you'd finally made it, you turned a corner and another queue revealed itself. And all the way through, the Heathrow staff displayed an Olympian detachment with regard to anybody with a connection to make. Upshot: I completely missed my flight to Milan.

Now this is where things start getting interesting. Just as with my flight to Buenos Aires, this trip, to Italy, suffered from problems both within and – as the Scots would say – outwith the airline's control. (BA could have realised I had a tight connection and given me a seat nearer the front; they also could have hastened my transfer from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4. But there's still a good chance I would have missed my flight anyway, due to BAA – the operator of Heathrow – and their faulty finger.) The huge difference between BA and AA became apparent not in terms of their ability to make mistakes, but rather in their desire to make amends.

AA is ever and always loathe to admit that anything is ever their fault, and is very quick to say that if something isn't their fault, then there's nothing they can do about it. Even when something is clearly their fault, AA will generally be as cheap and unhelpful as possible: they make mistakes, and the travelling public suffers.

BA, on the other hand, seems to (imagine this!) feel some responsibility for the travelling experience of its passengers, and tries to make things up to them if (as will inevitably happen, on occasion) their journey goes awry. The friendly woman at the connections desk was faced with something of a perfect storm when I arrived: they'd just installed a new computer system she hadn't come close to mastering; the next flight to Milan was not only on a different airline but also went to a different airport; I was on an e-ticket which needed to be converted to paper before anything else could be done, in a highly laborious process which no one really understood; and the flight she was trying to get me onto was, officially, full, despite the protestations of the Al Italia girl on the other side of the hall, who was adamant that there were 19 free seats and that I was more than welcome to any one of them.

An AA employee wouldn't even have found the Al Italia flight in the first place (since it was going to a different airport). If they had, they would have seen that it was full and left it at that: they wouldn't have walked over to the Al Italia desk to double-check. And then, when things started going rather pear-shaped with the computer system, they would simply have told me that there wasn't enough time to get me onto the earlier flight, and that I was going to have to wait another six hours for the next one.

None of that happened with BA. I wouldn't say that the connections staff were highly expert and competent, but they had something more important than technical expertise: they had friendliness and a desire and willingness to help. It wasn't their fault I'd missed my flight, but they were going to try their hardest to get me to Milan as expeditiously as they could anyhow.

I made that Al Italia flight, in the end (although my luggage didn't). But that wasn't the end of the story. A week or so later, I was flying back to New York, and checked in at Paddington. (That's one significant advantage that BA has over Virgin. It's not just that the queues at Paddington are nonexistent, especially compared to the endless lines at Heathrow. It's also the simple convenience of not having to schlep your luggage all the way out to the airport, and thence to the check-in lines. Why can't Virgin get a slot at Paddington?) The woman at check-in was very friendly, and gave me the perfect seat: at the front of the plane, in an exit aisle, loads of leg room, no one sitting next to me – and an upgrade to World Traveller Plus, BA's answer to Premium Economy.

Now, I still like Virgin. Their entertainment system is better: when my iPod ran out of juice, none of BA's radio stations were bearable; BA's choice of movies is not nearly as imaginative is Virgin's, the screens on BA are worse, and the few systems which do offer games don't offer games: they're always "currently unavailable". Virgin's general attitude is Soho to BA's Upper East Side, and I can't imagine keeping a BA souvenir in the same way that I keep Virgin's air socks with eyes sewn on or their incredibly useful drawstring plastic bags, which I use to keep my laptop in when I'm travelling.

But if Virgin beats out BA by a nose, BA beats out American by much more. American has the legroom, of course, which is wonderful, but they niggle all that goodwill out of you and more: whoever heard of charging for wine with the meal on an 11-hour flight to South America? On AA, the passenger's relationship with the airline is largely antagonistic, whereas with the British airlines you're much more in it together.

One could say the same thing about the two countries' attitude to soldiering, judging by the progress of the war thus far. The Americans seem to be good at blowing things up, but very bad at getting any kind of dialogue going with the Iraqis, let alone any goodwill. The Brits, on the other hand, seem to understand that Iraqis aren't simply going to welcome them with flowers and open arms: that they have to do something to earn the locals' trust, and that hiding behind a tank turret is a bad way of going about that. The Brits are just as good at killing the enemy as the Americans are, but they're much better at relating with the vast majority of the population that isn't the enemy.

On the other hand, Britain is becoming increasingly like America, and I have a feeling that distinctions between the two countries are going to become nicer and nicer over the coming years. I picked up the latest issue of The Face to read on the plane (the one with Justin Timberlake on the cover) and it was not only bland enough to be an American magazine, it even hyped gawker.com, finding a throwaway line about "Condé Nastiness" particularly amusing.

Even on the little things, London and New York are following each others' leads: after London switched from seven-digit dialling to eight-digit dialling, New York had to go and do it one better by switching from seven-digit to eleven-digit dialling.

Much more depressing, I discovered that Milk & Honey, the cooler-than-thou appointment-only cocktail bar on New York's Lower East Side which was well past its sell-by date two years ago, has opened up a London branch. London's Milk & Honey, of course, is a private member's club: it costs £300 just to get in the front door, before you've bought a single mojito. London's full of these places, largely because if you're not a member of one it's an absolute nightmare trying to find somewhere to have a drink after midnight. But Soho House, one of the most successful, is now moving to the meatpacking district of New York, giving out free memberships to the likes of Graydon Carter in an attempt to attract the wealthy and beautiful. Graydon Carter?!?! He'd be eligible for a bus pass in London.

Here's a quiz for you. It's 2:30am on a Wednesday night, and you're in a high-design bar somewhere south of 23rd Street. You look to your left and you realise that the expensively-coiffed gentleman holding court at the table next to you is Graydon Carter. Do you (a) think to yourself "I've made it!" while ordering an expensive cigar in self-congratulation; or do you (b) realise that you're not half as cool as you thought you were, and resolve forthwith never to return? Answers on the back of a cheque marking the amortization payment on $40 million of meatpacking-district construction activity, please.

Fact is, members' clubs won't work in New York because there's a free alternative. People might fight to get in to a swanky club, but they know they'll be fighting to get into somewhere else next week: if you join a member's club, you end up having to go there a great deal just to make your membership fee worthwhile. And I don't think that people will dress down in New York the way they do in London: part of the attraction of London clubs, I think, is that you can get in, if you're a member, no matter what you're wearing. New Yorkers don't think like that: if they're going somewhere fabulous, they'll dress up for it, whether they have to or not.

But London and New York are not (or not only) moving together by adopting each other's worst and snobbiest characteristics. There are brighter spots too. My friend Christabel, for instance, has opened up a truly fabulous art space in London's East End, called Hotel. Its inaugural exhibition shows a beautiful neon piece by Peter Saville, and the whole project is very New New York indeed: effortlessly superior to much more high-profile exhibitions, at a fraction of the expense.

And if Mayor Bloomberg carries through on his proposal to slap tolls on all bridges into Manhattan, maybe New York might become a bit more like London in the wake of the introduction of the congestion charge. I couldn't believe it when I was there this time: traffic is flowing smoothly, and central London is much, much more pleasant. What's more, the tube and the buses didn't seem to be noticeably more crowded, despite the fact that the Central Line was closed. Cars take up a huge amount of space for a very small amount of people: if those passengers transfer to public transportation, it would seem, the effect is a large improvement for all concerned.

Once Bloomberg has sorted congestion in Manhattan, all that remains will be JFK. Seated right at the front of the plane, I was sure that, for once, I would get through immigration before my luggage arrived. No chance: the INS computers went down just as two jumbos were arriving, one from Hong Kong and the other from London. Eight hundred people went nowhere for the best part of an hour. Now that's something you really can't blame the airlines for.

Posted by Felix at 10:38 EST | Comments (2)

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

MemeFirst responds to Puma

MemeFirst has responded to Puma's cease and desist letter. Trademark lawyer Martin Schwimmer was kind enough to draft a response both for us and for AdRants, and you can download a PDF file of it here.

If you don't want to plough through three dense pages of legalese, however, here's the basic gist of our response.

We didn't create those images. (To be fair, Puma never accused us of creating the images, but it's worth getting the ground rules straight.)
The images, whether real or fake, constitute an item of public interest. As such, we have a First Amendment right to comment and report on them.
We are not a commercial website, and we do not accept advertising. This means that (a) we didn't profit from the use of the images; and that (b) no one could have considered the images as being genuine Puma advertising.
Far from generating the impression that the images were genuine, we actually sought out Puma, got a statement from them saying the images were fake, printed that statement, and generally were prime source of the information that this was a hoax. In fact, to this day, Puma has nowhere on its website disavowed the ads.

This whole episode with Puma has been fun. I've enjoyed getting unprecedented numbers of visitors both to this website and to MemeFirst, and I've never received a cease-and-desist letter before. But this, I think, is an obvious point at which to bring the matter to a close. We're about to go to war, there are much more important things on everybody's mind, and we have an absolutely watertight legal case.

Peter Mastrostefano, Puma's lawyer, never returned the phone message I left for him the day I received his c&d, so I really have no idea what his take is. But I'll be very surprised if he chooses to pursue this any further.

Posted by Felix at 17:03 EST | Comments (12)

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Bush and Beckham

It is the eve of war, and the mood of the world is sombre. Some developments have been heartening. In the UK, the resignation of Robin Cook and today's debate on going to war have shown the world British parliamentary democracy at its very best: lucid, heartfelt speeches coming together to create a compelling and informative debate.

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria has published a 5,500-word cover story (surely some kind of record) which is required reading for all neoconservative hawks and any Americans who want to understand why the rest of the world hates them more than it hates Iraq. Zakaria supports the war, which makes this indictment of US unilateralism all the more stinging.

Other developments have been much less heartening. George W Bush's address to the nation on Monday night was one of the most infuriating, depressing and inarticulate speeches I can recall hearing. While Bush might personally have his moral clarity, he does a dreadful job in conveying it to the rest of us, veering wildly instead from an accusation that Saddam is bugging weapons inspectors (for this we're going to war?) to his increasingly-desperate attempt to connect Saddam to Al-Qaeda.

As for me, after sitting through that overlong speech and staring for far too long at Bush's weird left eyebrow, I felt like slitting my wrists. My mood was about as low as I can ever remember it being, so there was only one thing for it: escape into a fantasy world.

Thus it was that I found myself at the wonderful Landmark Sunshine Cinema at 9:55 on a Monday night, a bag of popcorn in hand, ready for a light, brainless feel-good comedy. And I have to say that Bend It Like Beckham did not disappoint.

There's certainly no fear that Bend It is going to deviate in any way from the rules of the multiethnic-comedy genre. The generation gaps, the mutual incomprehension, the way that everybody learns a valuable lesson at the end: watching this film is like wearing a really comfy old jumper. And since it's an English comedy, there's a certain unfinished quality to it as well: it could have done with a bit more work. Some of the expository dialogue hits the ground with a clunk and stops the film dead ("I hope I get the two As and a B I need to get into University"), the editing is sloppy in parts (Keira Knightley's reaction shot when a teammate admits to liking casual sex is way, way too late), and the whole film would benefit from having a good 20 minutes shaved off its 112-minute run time.

But this film is English, so it has its good points as well. Among them are some fantastic one-liners which weren't focus-grouped out in pre-production, as well as a completely shameless soundtrack which even goes so far as to use the Pavarotti Nessun Dorma recording from the 1990 World Cup at the (entirely predictable) climax of the film. Also completely shameless is Bend It's overindulgence in long sequences of fabulous-looking and decidedly underdressed girls (and a few boys) which serve no purpose whatsoever other than titillation. I loved them. The more bare skin that Keira Knightley displays in a movie, the better that movie becomes: this, surely, is an immutable law of cinema.

Knightley, in fact, is so magnetically good-looking that she easily eclipses Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (remember him, glammed up in Velvet Goldmine or hanging upside down and naked in Titus?) who has grown up alarmingly and is no longer quite the sex symbol he was. Both of them, unfortunately, are much better-looking than the film's lead, Parminder Nagra, a young actress making her feature-film debut. Nagra does, however, make it up with some extremely impressive fancy footwork on the soccer field.

There is a plot, of sorts. Jess (Nagra) is discovered playing football in the park by Jules (Knightley), who introduces her to the local girls' football team, coached by Joe (Rhys-Meyers). Both of the girls purportedly fancy the boy (who, being their coach, is forbidden to get involved with them), but judging by their behaviour when together, one imagines that Jules's mother is not far off the mark when she comes to the conclusion that their friendship is a little bit more than just friends. All three leads have problems with their parents. Jess's sister is getting married... but you're bored at this point. The plot is pretty much irrelevant, the stereotypes are broadly (if fondly) drawn, and the film is generally propelled forward by little more than its own good humour.

I have a feeling that this little film set in Hounslow could have arrived on these shores at just the right time. It did very well in its first weekend of release, and if Americans have any idea what these people are talking about, they will surely love it at least as much as I did. When I left the cinema, I was in an infinitely better mood, and while that won't make George Bush change his mind about invading Iraq, it will at least make my tiny little corner of the world a teensy bit happier.

Posted by Felix at 20:56 EST | Comments (8)

Friday, March 14, 2003

Puma's cease-and-desist letter

Memefirst received an official (and officious) letter from Puma today, telling us to "IMMEDIATELY cease and desist
from all further display, use and publication of the offensive PUMA image". Why are they shouting? Why is "immediately" in all caps? No one knows.

The letter helpfully came in the form of a PDF file, which you can download here, if you like. Otherwise, it's very similar to the letter which Gawker posted earlier today. Gawker's also written an open letter to Puma, wondering why they're getting so upset about something which is probably very good for them in their target market.

I asked Puma's Peter Kim a similar question when I spoke to him a couple of days ago, and he told me that Puma had received "dozens of emails" from people upset about the ad. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in taking a position on whether these images are good or bad for Puma. But this is obviously something which tens of thousands of people are interested in, and I feel that I have every right to discuss it on felixsalmon.com, memefirst.com, or anywhere else.

The web page which Puma is asking me to take down states very clearly that the ads are fake. It is part of a website devoted to the discussion of precisely this sort of internet meme. Martin Schwimmer, over at trademarkblog, who is a trademark lawyer and knows his onions, certainly doesn't think much of Puma's tactics:

As to the threats that are being bandied about to those folks reproducing the ad on their sites, let's go over some (U.S.) ground rules. If you're not using the trademark in commerce, you're not infringing and you're not diluting. If you re-publish a false statement with the indication that it is false (and in fact publish it because its falsity is news), then you are not commiting libel or trade disparagement.

Peter Mastrostefano, Puma's lawyer, says that the memefirst posting "infringes upon the trademark rights of PUMA"; Schwimmer says it doesn't. I'm, obviously, with Schwimmer on this one. What's more, I don't like bullies. Of course, Puma can afford expensive lawyers, and I can't. But I'm not going to be cowed quite yet.

Gawker says that "somewhere in the deep recesses of Puma marketing, someone is snickering into their computer monitor and toasting Photoshop." The conspiracy theorists, who think this was all the work of Puma to begin with, are certainly going to think that this whole legal action shenanigans is an attempt to perpetuate the meme long past the point at which it would naturally die. But it's risky, since Puma will now be seen as a big corporate bully rather than as a cool and streetwise brand.

Peter Kim called me a second time today, to find out who he should send the cease-and-desist letter to. He was much less friendly this time; in fact, he was positively curt. I don't think he minded my previous posting about him; in fact, he sent me an email saying it was amusing, and thanking me for "the objective and unbiased reporting". I don't think he was being sarcastic; he signed off "best regards". But it's clear that pretty much everything is out of his hands at this point.

The pictures aren't going to go away just by threatening legal action. There are dozens of sites out there posting them, and if we are eventually forced to take them down from memefirst, we'll certainly link to any number of other places you can view them in their full, unadulterated glory. So I really don't understand what Puma thinks it's going to gain by this.

I've got a call in to Mastrostefano; if he gives me an answer, I'll let you know.

Oh, yeah, and one other thing. I'm never buying Puma shoes again. It's adidas all the way for me from now on.

Posted by Felix at 14:14 EST | Comments (5)

Rhian in Cambridge

I wake up in my bed. It's a beautiful spring day. The cat greets me. I have a shower. The phone rings. I eat something and drink something. There is a computer upstairs with internet access. I can leave the house if I desire and don't need to tell a soul where I am. I could go to London. Or Edinburgh. Or anywhere, really, within reason. I mean, these days you can go anywhere in the world at the click of a finger really, can't you? Or swipe of a card. What's happened to the days of adventure and exploration? Can you imagine what it must have been like to spend months getting somewhere? Bizarre. I like it like it is. It's easy. We can do what we want, when we want. And be back in time for work on Monday morning. It's Friday today but I'm taking the day off. I can't remember why but I'm just going to enjoy it. I guess this means I get three whole days off in a row. What'll I do with all that time? I'm sure it will fill. No complaints from this department.

I woke up on a plane. Dotted around me in various seats were familiar faces. I didn't know why I knew them. But I did. Their names at least. Try as I might, I couldn't recall anything about their lives though. Who were they? Were did they live? Do they have a family? Did we meet through a mutual friend? No, I know nothing about their friends. But I know their names. And more than that. Their essence. But no facts. Nothing to help me figure out where I am.

I'm in a cage. The air is warm, very warm, and the sky is dark. Black dark. There are stars. I'm wearing a vest top, cargo pants and hiking boots. Veritable tank girl. The air is warm against my bare arms. Really warm. 28 degrees warm. I am loving this sensation. We are drinking beer. Me and some friends. We're having a laugh while waiting. Waiting in a cage. A big cage. There are maybe a hundred people in here. And it's warm. Warm from the ambient temperature, we have plenty of space. We're having a laugh, my mates and I, drinking beer.

There's a small shop that sells postcards and sweets. I'm still trying to figure out where I am so I have a look. The cards show photos of beach and rock. It looks lovely; I'd like to go to this place. Apparently it's turtle season too. There's a tea-towel with a map on. We're in the middle of the Atlantic, right on the equator. Three islands are labelled: Tristan da Cuna, Ascencion and St. Helena. I ask the kiosk woman, Elizabeth, if she grew up here but that's apparrantly a strange question. Not many people live here permanently; it's mainly British military, Americans and St. Helenians. St. Helena is much more lush than this island but also small. Here it is barren, there is one mountain, and you can drive around the perimeter in an hour. How long to walk? She shrugs. Two or three hours? Not that it's an option for me, this midnight in a cage. I deduce that we are in the Ascencion Islands. I get a stamp in my passport. Wide Awake Airstrip or something like that. One of the longest in the world; they can land a space shuttle here. An odd place to land if you'd just been in outer space, I think.

I'm on a plane again. There's plenty of room and we can sit where we like. Air Luxor is flying us because all the RAF Tristars are in the Gulf. That's the only way this war (?has it started yet?) has touched my life at all. Air Luxor are Portugese, in case you haven't heard of them either. It's all a bit random but no more than anything else. The squaddie opposite me is reading "What Men Think About Sex". Does he need to be told what to think about that too?! The plane is full of squaddies, Bennies and FIDs. I don't know why I know these words. Another clue. I must have been somewhere. Immersed for long enough to have abbreviations and nicknames. I look again at those familar faces and realise that many of them aren't even full names: Jumbo, Munki, Cat, Dad, T.C.... that stands for temperamental chef, Shaggy, Student, Foxy, Mindy. I answer to La La. I smile to myself remembering radio conversation, "Monkey, Monkey, Cat." "Hi Cat, Monkey here. I'm with Jumbo.." Aah, so I have memories at least. That's good.

Now I'm on a ship. It's rocking a lot. And I mean A Lot. There's a wierd sensation at night time when you're lying in bed but almost standing vertical. Force 12 it is. Big Seas. Waves splash over the bridge. Huge Seas. Energy. If you can stand up, it's amazing. Three days of this? Maybe two. We came to a virtual standstill one night and then turned left the following night. The Falklands were on the map but we were certainly not heading for them! It'd be good to have a few days there. Looking forward to that: four days on land, reintegrating, acclimatising. The Falklands are like a gradual immersion into Britain. People speak the same language, drink the same beer, watch the same football and it rains the whole time. Rugged Hebridean landscape, I was looking forward to a few good stomps in the hills.

At some point a notice went up and the rumour mill was wild. Our flights had been brought forward, they were delayed again, no they were tomorrow, now we're not going to make it there on time, back to Saturday, they're going via Santiago, they're not, they're RAF flights...aaah, chaos! Catapulted, I felt catapulted.

At the end of a catapult, the rock stops dead, on the ground. It is still. It is home. Nothing has changed.

I wake up in my bed (MY BED!!! I'm alone. I'm not sharing a bunk room with three others. I can touch the floor with my hand. Mandy isn't here. I am alone. In my bed MY BED!). It's a beautiful spring day. (BEAUTIFUL. SPRING. DAY.) The cat greets me (CAT!). I have a shower (SHOWER! LONG. HOT. HOT. LONG!) The phone rings. (THE PHONE. THERE IS A TELEPHONE NEXT TO MY BED. IT RINGS. it RINGS! A PHONE. IT DOESN'T COST �2.50/MINUTE) I eat something and drink something. (OF MY CHOICE AND MAKING) There is a computer upstairs with internet access ....

I can leave the house if I desire and don't need to tell a soul where I am.

Posted by Rhian at 13:28 EST | Comments (3)

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

The fake Puma ads

Yes, they're fake. They have no connection with Puma at all. They're not real ads tweaked in Photoshop, they didn't run in Brazilian Maxim, they're not viral marketing by a top-secret Puma subsidiary. They're fakes, and Puma doesn't like them one bit. Here's the official statement, as emailed to me by Peter Kim, the man in charge of interactive marketing at Puma in Boston:

It has been brought to our attention that several unauthorized, sexually suggestive advertisements portraying the PUMA brand have been released over the Internet. We are appalled that images like these would be created and distributed under the PUMA name. As a brand, we seek to take a unique perspective toward our advertising in an effort to challenge the boundaries of our industry; however we would never consider using these tactics. We are in the process of researching the circumstances and reserve any legal steps available.

What am I talking about? A pair of ads, purportedly for Puma, which hit the internet just over a week ago. They hit my radar screen via the incomparable Gawker, and I posted them on MemeFirst. I didn't know whether or not they were genuine, but there was a lot of interest in them: between Gawker and Salon (in a page no longer available), the MemeFirst page soon garnered more than 10,000 page views.

What's more, the site which originally posted the pictures went offline for some reason, prompting MemeFirst to host them itself (here and here). If you don't want to view them at MemeFirst, however, there's no shortage of other sites where they're available (the original seems to be this one, in Norway).

At this point, Puma started getting in on the act. Various people at the company seem to have known about the purported ads for well over a week, but it's only been in the past couple of days that they started emailing and phoning people. Soon one of the first venues for discussion of the ads changed them to something completely different, and the official statement above started appearing at sites like ad-rag.com and blogs.salon.com.

I got interested, and sought out Puma myself. (Evidently MemeFirst.com wasn't important enough to hit their radar screen and prompt them to contact me.) I had a long conversation with Peter Kim, who seems like a very nice chap who's well aware of how these kind of viral internet memes spread.

He started out explaining to me that the fake ads constituted trademark infringement, defamation, and possibly libel, and that "definitely legal action is in the works". He told me that "it's a clear-cut case that this is illegal content," and that if MemeFirst didn't take the images down, it would face legal action itself. He even tried to anticipate any argument I might have along freedom-of-the-press grounds; while saying quite explicitly that he was not a lawyer, he averred that blogs are "not a media outlet" and that they are therefore not protected on First Amendment grounds. When I said that didn't sound right to me, though, he didn't belabour the point. "I'm neither a journalist nor a lawyer," he said. "I'm a web department manager."

Kim seemed pretty straightforward and far from threatening when he told me that "you can take the stuff down before the machine gets rolling, or you can choose not to." He was clearly concerned by "dozens of emails" that he and Puma's PR people had received from people who thought the ads were genuine, and who even went as far as threatening lawsuits against Puma on sexual-discrimination grounds. Certainly, he said, with regard to the person who actually created these images, "when the truth comes out, it's not going to be a pretty picture, because people are pretty miffed about it."

He also seemed to understand that Puma's PR campaign was something of an uphill battle. "We are handling it on a case-by-case basis," he said, which seemed to mean having Peter Kim phone or email any website he came across with the images. "We've decided not to publish a statement on the Puma website."

That decision seemed a bit peculiar to me, and although he was too polite to say so, I think he thought it a bit odd to. After all, a statement on felixsalmon.com isn't quite as authoritative as one on puma.com.

But the fact is, there's really very little that Puma can do. If it does take legal action against the likes of MemeFirst, it's only likely to perpetuate the meme further. What's more, the extra publicity would only serve to increase the number of conspiracy theorists who think that this is all a convoluted scheme dreamed up by Puma itself. As Kim admits, "there's almost nothing I can say" to counter the idea that some bright spark walked in to the office one day and said "OK, let's create a blowjob ad and then deny it".

The rival theory, of course, is that the whole thing is a creation of Puma's arch-rival, Adidas. Kim's not convinced, though. "I would not want to give them that much credit," he says. "My first reaction was that it had to be a Brit."

Posted by Felix at 23:07 EST | Comments (52)

Sunday, March 09, 2003

personal: Back on the Shack

It's the rockiest day on the ship so far. Between this and last night's revelries, I don't suppose there will be many faces appearing before lunch. Or for most of the day for that matter. Best to lie low, stay horizontal, pop a couple of Stugeron and allow them to carry you on colourful dreams. Or get thoroughly windswept outside. Murdo, a gruff Hebridean AB (Able-Bodied Seaman) tells me to look at the horizon but sometimes I can't find even that.

It's been a good trip, quieter than the inward journey, but good. A lot of the passengers now just want to go home. Icebergs, penguins,albatrosses, even whales, don't attract crowds anymore. The decks outside are empty. People would pay thousands for trip like this and we're inside playing cards or watching videos. But each to their own. I've been loving it.

Departure from Halley was dramatic and quick. A break in the storm and we were bundled aboard and sailing away before we could say goodbye. The ship was waiting for us, nestled sideways in a Shack-sized gap against the ice. (Have a look at the photos on the Shackleton website.) Bags were thrown in a net and pulled up by crane. Our journey aboard was not much diffferent. Before we knew it, we were waving goodbye to the fourteen remaining winnterers standing on the ice shelf. Actually, only to twelve as two had to stay behind to guard the base. They looked like a very little group. But very able. And away we sailed.

The memorable days at sea this time 'round are notable by sitings of land. The ocean-only days blur together. It was a shock to suddenly have nothing to do again. Everyone slept for the first week. Calm seas. Nights. NIGHTS. Did you hear me?! NIGHTS! STARS! PHOSPHORESCENCE! I had forgotten how dark the nights could be. I tripped over my feet. I had forgotten how numerous the stars are. And how huge is Orion, how bright Venus. I had forgetten the comforting blanket of darkness, the joy of night invisibility as welcome as city anonymity after living in a small community. As vast as Halley is, it is flat and the the light was continual. There is a sign-out board that follows everyone's movements. The radio will always find you. There is nowhere to hide.

We found ourselves sailing past the South Sandwich islands at some point. A rare spot to visit, a treat. They were covered in fog for most of the day but the occasional break revealed mountains soaring out of the ocean and many clouds above. Clouds forming as condensate on steam coming out of the mountain. These are live volcanoes. Behind us we saw a brief glimpse of smoke billowing out of a different island peak, and then it was gone. I saw whales breaching and playing. Killer Whales, Minkes, Right Whales. Right Whales look like logs floating on the surface hence their name: they were the Right whale to kill. Beautiful and large, a glimpse of a whale is exciting beyond the superficial; it is comforting. There is, for me, something very restful about knowing that whales still inhabit the ocean. It doesn't take much to restore my faith in the Earth.

We also returned to South Georgia, that paradise I raved about on my way in. Within minutes of arrival, the ship had emptied and island absorbed its visitors in all possible hiding spots. Winterers who hadn't left Halley for 33 months were greeted by an onslaught upon every sense. The smell of seals and penguins and greenery and life! The feel of bouncy ground, touch of grass, the taste of fresh spring water, the sight of mountains and the sounds, o! the sounds of wildlife calling from every cranny! An onslaught indeed. This time I went for a walk from Grytviken to Myviken. Try as I might, I couldn't imagine where else this scenery could be found. New Zealand perhaps? Scotland? The Mediterranean? Green, moss covered ground, bouncy. Scree. Mountains. Ocean. Blue, island blue, ocean. Crazy huge clouds. Lakes. High tuffets of grass. Pebble beaches. Caves. Children's paradise were it not for the FUR SEALS! Under every nook, ready to hiss from behind any tuffet, watching you always, chasing you, 'get off my territory' fur seals. That's what you first notice, because you have to. Once accustomed however, the wider variety of life becomes apparrant. Penguins: Adelies, Kings, Chinstraps and Gentoos. Elephant seals, huge and docile. The blue-eyed shag (it's a bird, I assure you!) and South Georgia pippins. I think this is where life began.

Four o'clock ship's call and we were all on deck again. This time waving goodbye to a different set of winterers. It's so nice to know I'll be back. "See you next year" we shouted as the ship pulled away, big grins on every face. The mountains, the glaciers, the islands and colours.... if you ever take a tour ship around the South Atlantic, try to ensure South Georgia appears on the itinerary somewhere. From the places where life began to the ones where life can't survive, this continent has it all.

Posted by Rhian at 10:27 EST | Comments (4)

Thursday, March 06, 2003

Bush's press conference

The leader of the free world gave his second prime-time press conference today, and the world, or at least the US, was watching. For the best part of an hour, George W Bush basically ignored whatever questions were asked of him, and single-mindedly hammered away at his talking points, prime among them the idea that regime change in Iraq is a central and necessary part of the war on terror.

It was clear to me that the purpose of the press conference was not to lay out the case for war: Bush did that (much better than anybody expected) in his State of the Union speech, but there was little in the way of such argument today. There was no marshalling of intelligence here, none of the kind of rhetoric we've been seeing from Tony Blair for months. While Blair likes to concentrate on the high and real cost to Iraqis of the present sanctions regime, Bush reiterated over and over again the unknown and unknowable cost to Americans of a second terrorist attack on the US homeland.

This is the kind of talk which goes down well in the heartland: all of America was shaken by the events of September 11, and the president is doing his utmost to persuade them – not through argument so much as by simply using the words "Iraq" and "terror" in close conjunction over and over again – that fighting back against Iraq makes perfect sense from a war-on-terror point of view.

The global statesman we caught a brief glimpse of in January has gone. I'm not surprised: Bush has always been bad in unscripted situations, and today his old habits, the bizarre speech patterns, the flubs, were back. At one point, Bush referred to "the events of September the eleventh" ... pause ... then, with emphasis, "2001". As though he was comparing them to the events of September the eleventh in, oh, 1973, or 1996. Later on, he called the IAEA the IEAE. These mistakes are forgivable, but, combined with very slow speech in general, they do sound like someone who isn't used to having to win arguments. Nearly all of the questions were more coherent than just about any of the answers, which put Bush in a bad light for those people (a tiny minority of the US population) who like to judge politicians in terms of their rhetorical abilities.

Bush's refusal to engage with the press corps kept the event on a very shallow basis. Given the same amount of time, a Clinton or a Blair could and would have presented their audience with a detailed and compelling world view. Bush just droned his way through a frankly boring opening statement, and from then on gave us nothing more than variations on the initial theme. He said that September 11 was Saddam Hussein's "brand of terror", that Saddam was a direct threat to the US, and that if he thought the US was safe from attack, that he would be thinking differently. He was asked many times, in many different ways, whether he wasn't worried that, contrariwise, an invasion of Iraq would only make such terrorist attacks more likely, but he never tried to answer the question. There was no talk of Iraq becoming a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, of Saddam's ouster leading to more freedom and prosperity in the region as a whole. There was just a very somber tone, garnished with the barest hint of petulance when the subject of those who disagreed with the president was raised.

The most ridiculous part came when Bush was asked, directly, twice, whether any war on Iraq would be considered a failure if Saddam Hussein were not personally captured. He ducked the question, twice, and then, later on, in response to a completely different question, said very clearly that if Saddam were to leave the country, he'd be very happy with that. Since it's pretty hard to see why such an eventuality would become unacceptable once a war had been started, there's no reason for him not answering the question which was put to him – unless he made a determination before he even started speaking that he would not even attempt to answer direct questions.

Kudos, then, to Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times, who got a straight answer to the straight question of whether the US was going to seek a UN Security Council vote even if it didn't think it would win. Answer: yes. The only question now is what the vote is going to be on: at one point Bush seemed to imply that the US might request a vote on little more than whether or not Iraq had complied with Resolution 1441. He could probably get unanimity on that, thereby getting something passed at the UN, even if it fell well short of authorising the use of force.

But it was clear that Bush was in no mood for compromise where Iraq was concerned, even if he might be flexible on the wording of UN resolutions. "When it comes to our security, I really don't need anyone's permission," he said, setting up the inevitable invasion as some kind of war of self-defence. He felt no need to answer the question on what he might need to see before making the final determination that war was necessary: obviously, to him, the need for a war has already become apparent, and the only way to prevent one would be for Saddam to either disarm forthwith or leave the country entirely.

In sum, then, this was not a performance to rally world opinion behind a US invasion. Rather, it seemed to build on the recent paranoia-inducing activities of the Department of Homeland Security, and try to build domestic support for war on a foundation of fear that otherwise we would be risking a second 9/11, or worse. This is an unusual, if not unprecedented, stance for America: the idea that we should go to war now because otherwise who knows what these people could do to us. Is it too much to ask that the president of the USA be fighting for something, rather than simply against what he calls "weapons of mass murder and terror"? After all, it's not as if Bush doesn't have more of those than anybody else.

Yesterday, I attended a small campaign rally for Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate who's generally considered to be the most liberal of the bunch. (What that means is that he instituted civil unions as governor of Vermont, but thinks that the other 49 states should make their own decisions on such matters.) It was held in a trendy bar down the street from me, and was packed with good-looking 20-somethings toting cellphones and BlackBerrys, who cheered any kind of anti-war sentiment with gusto. Dean is a pretty slippery politician: he's highly Federalist, and so on most controversial issues (gun control, education, gay rights) he generally seems to say that each state should decide for itself what it's going to do. But I did like him enough to look up his website, where I found an incredibly well-argued speech on foreign policy.

As it happens, Dean is opposed to many, if not most, of the positions of the present administration. But what made me really angry as I was reading the speech was not primarily the fact that Dean was right and Bush is wrong. It was the fact that Dean could give such a speech at all, while Bush simply couldn't.

Bush's job is not to worry about the balance of power in the world: he can leave that to Condi Rice. Bush's job is to lead, and to lay out Rice's vision in a compelling enough way that the world feels that here is a man who knows what he is doing. That's what he had to do today, in front of the media. And he failed. By not answering their questions, by speaking so slowly and so repetitively that you could almost hear their eyes rolling up into the back of their heads, Bush achieved precisely nothing.

The past month or so has seen the Bush administration lose momentum on Iraq. The hawks were at their most feverish following the State of the Union; since then, global demonstrations and shows of solidarity by Russia, France and Germany have sent the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction. Colin Powell's multimedia presentation at the UN was nothing compared to the sight of millions of people, around the world, unanimous in their desire for the US to back away from what could be the beginning of World War III. Bush was given many opportunities to speak to those people today, and flubbed every one.

Putin, Chirac and Schröder have public opinion on their side, and are setting the agenda. Bush is flailing in his response, and Blair, exhausted by Northern Ireland, isn't providing the necessary backup. Bush is the commander-in-chief of the US forces, and as such can override the objections of as many allies as he likes. They can't stop him from invading. But with their support, an invasion would be an act of strength and international resolve. Without it, Bush loses a lot of credibility. And he certainly didn't increase that today.

Posted by Felix at 22:51 EST | Comments (2)

Monday, March 03, 2003

Frank Zappa

Music has been becoming increasingly Balkanised for many years now. From the days of Gregorian chant to the present, there's been an almost teleological progression: the number of different types of music has increased, while the audience for any given piece of music (expressed as a percentage of the music-loving population) has steadily shrunk. It's almost reached the point where music can't bring different types of people together any more: different people like different music. None of the chart-topping acts have truly broad appeal: most of them are, in fact, seriously disliked by most people.

But today I went to a concert with ten-year-old girls, eighty-year-old grannies, Williamsburg hipsters and cardigan-wearing recluses. It was in Carnegie Hall, but had probably the youngest audience that venerable venue has had in years; certainly it was the most diverse. There was no snobbery, no sense that you were part of some exclusive crowd. The home CDs of the concert-goers ranged from avant-garde jazz to bubblegum pop to Tony Bennett to Andean nose-flautists. Probably some of us had little in the way of music at home at all; certainly many of us had nothing by the main composer of the evening.

It didn't matter. Everybody in the hall had a whale of a time, and I'm pretty sure we all left grinning from ear to ear. On the way out, there was a camraderie amongst us. It was nothing like the grim-faced Music Lovers who loiter outside the Knitting Factory eyeing each other suspiciously and obsessing over obscure rarities: rather, we all had experienced a really fun concert, and were simply in a great mood. As the gym slogan has it, No Judgements.

The concert, of course, or at least its second half, was orchestral arrangements of pieces by Frank Zappa. Zappa started off as a wacked-out rock star, but didn't take long to get himself a certain amount of credibility in the serious (classical) music world. Even so, his stuff isn't often performed at Carnegie Hall, or other venues of that ilk, and today's performance certainly felt like a special occasion.

More interestingly, it felt like Zappa's acceptance into the mainstream. That almost never happens with dead musicians: if they weren't broadly popular when alive, the chances are that they're not going to find new audiences once they're dead. But I think that what has happened is that (a) the very fragmentation of music in recent years has forced people to become at least glancingly familiar with a Zappaesque range of musical styles and vocabularies; and (b) what once was daring and transgressive is now harmless and tinged with nostalgia.

That said, Zappa's music still makes you sit up and take notice: it's edgy, exciting, exhilarating. We started off with a short piece called G-Spot Tornado, a bit like John Adams' A Short Ride in a Fast Machine but crazier. Zappa has none of the self-conscious artiness of Adams: while the latter uses venerable poets to come up with the rhyming couplets in his operas, Zappa gives us wonderful poetry like this, from the centerpiece of the evening, The Adventures of Greggery Peccary:

Is this the old loft with the paint peeling off it, by the Chinese police, where the dogs roll by? Is this where they keep the philostophers now with the rugs and the dust, where the books go to die? How many yez got? Say yez got quite a few just sitting around there with nothing to do? Well I just called yez up cause I wanted to see a philostopher be some assistance to me!

Rhyming couplets, yes, but with a Seussian flavour, as well as an anarchic iconoclasm. The music is just as wild, if not more so: clashing dischords, wailing guitars, and even, at one point, a section scored for three electric typewriters. But somehow, today, such things are appealing, rather than offputting. Zappa has become a bit like Kurt Weill, whose music obviously was a major influence: a revolutionary artist whose art will live much longer than his revolutionary fervour. (The music's still biting, though. Anyone could love this music, but no one will emerge from this concert completely unscathed. That's part of why it's so loved.)

The American Composers Orchestra has certainly coped with much weirder things than typewriters in its time, and in fact breezed through a score which, technically, didn't seem particularly demanding by contemporary-music standards. Our narrator, David Moss, threw himself heart and soul into his role, his voice by far the most versatile instrument in the orchestra despite the fact that almost never could you say that what he was doing could really be described as singing. And the conductor, Steven Sloane, was obviously having a whale of a time, and responded marvelously to the audience's very evident enthusiasm.

Elsewhere in the program, before the interval, we had to sit through three commissions, all of which were pretty benign stuff. Nothing to set the heart racing, nothing to object to. The harshness of most contemporary music in the 70s and 80s is now being replaced, I fear, with blandness. One of our new composers, Dan Coleman, is arranging music for Lisa Loeb. Another, Hsueh-Yung Shen, wrote a piece called Autumn Fall about which he writes that "the work follows a large unbroken arch". (It's something of an in-joke among readers of contemporary-music program notes that at least 50% of all new music is "in the form of an arch".) Zappa would skewer them all without a second thought. There was more life and imagination in any 30 seconds of his music than in the entire first half of the concert. Here's hoping we get more of him at Carnegie Hall, and that he continues to mix it up with young and old.

Posted by Felix at 2:14 EST | Comments (1)

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