Levi's commercial features Mark Lanegan

I was a little startled to see this new(ish) Levi's commercial features the inimitable vocal stylings of Mark Lanegan (a track from his album with Isobel Campbell, Ballad of the Broken Seas). Lanegan is an icon of the indie music scene, and Levi's is known for pushing the envelope of television ads but it was still a bit jarring to see/hear the combination.

As a parent, I'm of two minds about edgy commercials. It's easy to appreciate them when they're shown at an appropriate hour but a bit difficult to explain them to your sub-adolescent children when they air in prime-time. Particularly funny about this commercial is the fact that, while the song lyrics mesh well with the video content (two strangers tearing each other's clothes off while admitting they've lied to each other is accompanied by Lanegan's guttural "I won't say that I love you, I won't say I'll be true...") the evocative line that ends the stanza is left out: "there's a crimson bird flying when I go down on you". When a commercial is so explicitly about sex, why not just leave that line in? Perhaps a few people will hear and understand the line but they'll probably be laughing too hard to be offended.

bitch, bitch, bitch....

Hey! More than a week has passed with no entry: imagine the disappointment of the masses. This general interest blogging is harder than it looks, which I guess is why there are so many themed blogs. I mean, all I've done in the last week or so is read, watch television, drink Fat Tire Ale and Yellow Tail Shiraz, stretch my useless lower back, feed my neighbors' pets while they vacationed, looked around for a job, watched my kids, made dinner (the pan-roasted chicken with tarragon and white wine sauce last night won raves), did about 15 loads of laundry and surfed the blogs, eBay and Amazon. I pondered the purchase of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary. I read Slaughterhouse 5 for the first time, but now am stuck with a table full of current reading that it will be hard to muddle through with any sort of retention. Check it out:

TITLES ON MY TABLE:

Pattern Recognition
Will in the World
Writing After Dark
Leaves of Grass
Infinite Jest
The Music of Chance
Rising Up and Rising Down
The Conquest of Cool

I don't know about you, but to me that spells "listlessness". After being employed continuously since early adolescence, my recent unemployment has dealt me a psychic blow of sorts. But I am even now embarking on a project which, though it won't bring fame or (insert snigger) fortune, will at least give me something positive to do. The project is classified, however, so you will have to read about it elsewhere.