How The Meaty Have Fallen

Years ago, I wrote a post about how many ads use “It’s Your Thing” by the Isley Brothers. The point was that it’s really over-used, and worse, lazily used — by advertisers looking for a cheap expression of … I don’t know, individuality, or something? I was pointing out that it just keeps getting warmed-over by the ad industry, despite it already being associated with the last second-rate brand that used it, and also, in complete obliviousness to how cliched it is. 

(After the recent passing of Rudolph Isley, I should point out that I have nothing against the song itself, but it’s become generic ad music, about as fresh as 70s Muzak.)

So I was absolutely shocked when I saw McDonald’s latest ad campaign built around that most over-used song. It might not be a surprise for younger people: Today, McDonald’s is just another established brand casting about for something that will appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. (Seriously, that’s what they’re calling it.) 

But when I was younger, Mickey-D’s were legendary for their marketing prowess. Among anyone with the self-awareness to realize that marketing was happening, they were the epitome of corporate Svengalis making the public dance to their choice of tune. Children loved them. Teens loved them even though children loved them. Parents hated them but let their children drag them there anyway.

To be honest, I always thought the legend of their gastronomic propaganda was a little exaggerated. After all, if they could control the general public’s tastes, wouldn’t they choose something easier to make than burgers? I mean, they are a fairly complex food; they do have all the food groups one way or another. Wouldn’t it be more profitable to command everyone to desire raw soy beans or something?

But even if they were never a burger collective controlling the American palate, they were the pinnacle of twentieth-century marketing. Yes, they had missteps like the Arch Deluxe or their foray into Pizza. But on the other hand, they built an empire with a clown and a big purple lump, convinced kids to have their birthdays there, got us to drink some kind of orange syrup at public events, made the McRib into a major event, and made a legend out of a burger that’s half-bread and has an unclassifiable-sauce.

So it was a shock to see them build an ad campaign around this cliched song that a regional chain of muffler shops would be embarrassed to use. On the one hand, it’s kind of refreshing; instead of marketing going after the youths, here they’re going after, I don’t know, the Boomers, I guess? But it’s also a bit sad. It’s like a TV show that came back for one season too many, an aging rock star dabbling in smooth jazz, or an athlete that doesn’t know when to quit. Wow, I saw communism fall, and somehow the fall of McDonald’s marketing is more shocking.

Swilce? Tayvis? Traylor?

I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. You probably have heard this, because it’s created a perfect storm of American popular culture, combining the hype of football and the ubiquity of pop music. The Yin and Yang of American culture have been suddenly pushed together, and both sides are acting kind of awkward. 

As someone who watches football, but shies away from popular music, I’m only seeing part of it. But the football half is pretty embarrassing. On the one hand, a lot of people want to talk about it, but aren’t really sure how, so they just make a lot of bad puns on Swift’s songs. And that got old really fast. I don’t know if something similar is going on in the pop world. Oh God, I just realized, they must be making endless “tight end” jokes. My condolences.

It’s also embarrassing the way the football world is acting like a nerdy kid who gets a chance to sit at the cool kids’ table. That’s a bit surprising, given the grip that football seems to have on American culture. But even football has room to grow, and suddenly getting exposure with a young and female demographic has them seeing dollar signs. So now the NFL is passing notes in class asking if the cool kids have said anything about it.

But more than anything, this incident shows how we, as a society, still haven’t figured out how to handle the current culture. The celebrity industry wants to make this the story of the century, but many of us have got the message that obsessing over people we don't know is a bad idea, even when we are fans of them. The fact is, there isn’t much for any of us to say about two people dating, when we personally don’t know either one. Whether you’re a fan of one or both or neither, there’s not much of a reaction you can have, other than wishing them luck. Again, the football world is demonstrating this well, with football analysts suddenly being asked to say something about the couple, but not really having anything to add, and instead just making the umpteenth "Blank Space" joke.

Part of the problem is that we just don't have universal touchstones in society anymore. There are few things that everyone cares about, but the media keeps excitedly hoping it will find one. Even Swift on her own is a good example of it. Her fame has reached a level where the media is assuming she is a universal obsession. But we don't really have universal obsessions in a world where we're so free to choose our personal culture. The most anyone can hope for is fandom from a dedicated and large minority, like Swift has. (Or, for that matter, football has.) But that still means that most people don't have a strong connection. So although you’ll see some examples of fans crossing over into both cultural worlds — like those who famously flooded retailers with orders for Kelce’s jersey — more people are just aggravated with the expectations to suddenly care about the other side of American culture. 

The Future Names Of London

Here in Canada, there are a lot of places named after other places. London, Ontario, is probably the most famous, but also within a short drive of my home, you can visit Paris, Stratford, New Hamburg, Vienna, Cambridge, and Delhi. I’ve always found these weird. First, from a standpoint of culture: a borrowed name means that the identity of your place is tangled up in some other place. And secondly, from a standpoint of convenience: you’re forever saying, “I’m from London…no, not that London.”

But of course, that’s looking at it from my perspective in a country where many people live in settlements named for other, much older and more famous settlements elsewhere. It occurred to me recently to wonder at the mentality of those people who gave these sites their names in the first place. For each of those places, somebody thought it was a good idea to give it an already-used, already-famous name. I can’t really imagine what would make a person think that’s a good idea.

First of all, what inspired the names? Some British settler came across a small encampment in the middle of a forest and said, “You know what this reminds me of? London!” I suppose you could say that the name is more of an inspiration: they’re not saying it’s like London, but that it aspires to be like London. But still, that’s kind of setting it up for disappointment. Surely they’d give it a more attainable goal. I don't know, Sheffield? 

It seems a little odd today to call a city of half-a-million by the name of one of Europe’s largest cities, but how did folks in the early years call this collection of houses, “London,” with a straight face? As an early English settler in southern Ontario, you know London as this huge city, and now you’re using the name to refer to a little hamlet. “I will journey to London on the morrow. By Jove, I would that there existed some manor of hand-gesture to indicate that one uses a name of such ridiculousness with a sense of reluctance, as if it were in quotes.”

Secondly, why do they reuse the name exactly, without any changes? I mean, I can understand calling it “New” something. You know, don't confuse us with York; this is New York. Then you’re paying tribute while giving it individuality, and you’re explicitly saying it’s a new version of that old place. The Americans have plenty of “New” places, but Canada doesn’t have many, we prefer just reusing names. So in addition to not understanding why that old explorer decided to associate the rudimentary settlement with the grandest city of his homeland, I also don’t understand why he felt no need to distinguish it from its namesake. 

I guess there's a parallel with people's names: we often name people with the same name as a parent. But then we invented the word, “junior” to avoid confusion. Reusing place names is like naming a kid after his father but insisting that you not call him junior. Who would do that? 

“I’m Frank, and this is my son, Frank.”

“Ah! Frank Junior.”

“No! Frank!”

Then, years later, the kid introduces himself, "I'm Frank, no, not that Frank."

But here's another way of looking at this: To better get inside the head of those early place-namers, let’s say we Canadians were exploring space. We’re colonizing a new planet, and we’ve just established a settlement. It’s only three habitation pods and a greenhouse, but we then say, “And we’ll call it, Toronto.” Okay, that’s a bad example, Canadians wouldn’t feel right naming things after ourselves — we’d probably just name that settlement, “London.” 

So let’s say it’s the Americans establishing a space colony, and they have to come up with a name. They wouldn’t use New York, since that’s already a borrowed name. But would they call their new settlement something like, “Los Angeles” or, “Chicago?” I can’t imagine that, since those names have — for both good and bad — a lot of emotional connotations. They wouldn't feel right calling a place “Chicago” when it doesn’t have L trains, disappointing baseball teams and ketchup-less hot dogs. They’d either fall back on generic American names (Columbia, Freedom, Liberty) or name it after a person. Which brings up the question: how could you journey across the Atlantic and half of North America — in the eighteenth century — without anyone in your party doing something that deserved getting a small town named after them?

"So I'm from London...No, not that London. How about you? "

"I'm from Pickles The Ship's Cat. It's a long story."

I’m Gonna Mess Your Mind

Congratulations to Spain on winning the women’s World Cup. They now join Germany as the only countries to win both World Cups. Meanwhile everyone’s world has been turned upside-down by the jump in parity in women’s soccer, leading to plenty of upsets and Cinderella teams.

Here in Canada, we’re in mourning; we won gold at the Olympics - in our greatest soccer achievement ever - but followed that up with not getting out of the opening round here. If you’re not familiar with it, in men’s soccer, the Olympics are limited to under 23, but for women, there’s no limit, so it’s like smaller a World Cup. So you’d think it would be harder to advance in the Olympics, where you’re playing higher quality teams sooner. And yet, Canada has gone to the Olympic semi-finals three times in a row, but only made the World Cup semis once, back in 2003.

But for much of the world, the big news is the early exit for the two-time defending champion Americans. If you watch the men’s World Cup, you know that favoured teams having an embarrassing run and going home early is a regular occurrence. But now supporters of the U.S. Women are in existential panic.

Years ago, I noted that it was weird but refreshing to watch the fans of American men’s soccer, because it was one of the few places where the United States was regarded as just another country. What was especially weird was that American fans seemed to be okay with that. To be fair, we’re only talking about a subset of Americans, since the majority don’t really follow soccer even when the U.S. is involved, but there is a subculture within the U.S. that cares about its team, even on the men’s side, and it’s remarkable what an internationally-reasonable attitude they have.

All that’s happening right now is that the U.S. Women’s team is going to have to take on that same attitude. While watching the hype surrounding the Americans going for a Women’s World Cup three-peat, I realized that the truly unusual thing about the Men’s team fandom is that it’s one of the only places where you’ll see Americans being patriotic, but not buying into American Exceptionalism. They’re proud of their country, they support their team, but they don’t think their country is inherently better or apart from the others. The women’s team will have to adopt that attitude. In their case, they’re a great team, but just a team. So it’s a subtle change, but they’ll have to go from thinking of themselves as the Harlem Globetrotters to merely the New York Yankees.

Watching Americans watch their Women’s team, it’s been more like business as usual for Americans in international sports, with even well-meaning Americans seeing their team as above everything else. Take advertising, for instance. Even here in Canada, we’re subjected to ads for American brands that glorify the American women, oblivious to the fact that they’re our chief rivals, and thus, not really who we want to see celebrated in every commercial break. It’s reminiscent of that one American you see on lists of the dumbest things said on the internet, asking a British person if they celebrate the Fourth of July. 

Partly, this is because their Women’s team has been a boon for those looking for female role models. And finding role models for our kids is a universal thing, so they’re just assuming the whole world will join in on glorifying the stars of their team. It hasn’t occurred to them that if my daughter’s role model was just knocked out of the tournament by your daughter’s role model, then I won’t want to join in on the adulation.

And that brings us to the goodish news: you can look at this as another example of women’s soccer hitting the mainstream. When a sport starts out and creeps along in the margins of the sports world, there tends to be a communal feeling, like it’s all of us against the world, looking for acceptance of our sport. But once you’re in the mainstream, we can all think of it in competitive terms. This sport has finally made the big time, now that I hate your daughter’s role model.

Merry Mac’s

Where I grew up, the nearest store was a Mac's convenience store. Back then, they went by the name, "Mac's Milk," I suppose because in those days milk was the big draw for convenience stores. My dad would always call it, "Mac's the Milk," in reference to the song, Mack the Knife, famously recorded by Bobby Darrin in the 50's, but — and I didn't know this — written in 1928. Not the greatest pun, but, well, it's a dad joke. I wonder if I inherited that need to make misunderstood pop-cultural puns. (looks at blog post titles) Sigh.

Anyway, I — being a youngster — didn't understand the reference, and thus also referred to the store as "Mac's the Milk," thinking that was the actual name. My friends thought there was something wrong with me, since they also didn't get the joke, and of course, when you hear a young person saying something so nonsensical, you assume he's a little slow, not that he's the victim of a corny joke about music from a couple of decades back. And I should clarify that, in my childhood's memory, my dad 'always' said that. He probably did the joke like, twice, but in my early perception of time, it seemed like a lot.

My reason for going through this awkward, possibly deformed memory, is that the Mac's convenience store chain is mostly gone now, having been bought, and then rebranded out of existence. As the picture illustrates, they’ve all become Circle K. A brand that, fittingly, sounds like an old west cattle brand.

Of course, bygone brands are hardly news: I've already written about disappearing brands. But what's interesting is that brands disappear for different reasons. They might simply go out of business, or they might be bought out by a rival. But it gets a little more complicated when you find that the same company might operate in different places under different names. Perhaps they bought a local company and decided to operate with the name that locals already knew. For instance, the European food delivery firm Just Eat has bought some local services and used their names in those markets. So it goes by "Just Eat" in Europe, but it's known as "Skip The Dishes" in Canada, and "Menulog" in Australia & New Zealand. Yes, local branding is so important to them that they seriously made Katy Perry sing that jingle three times for the European, Canadian, and Australian & New Zealander markets.

(How much do I care about this blog? Enough to watch that commercial three times. Well, two-and-a-half.)

But in our globalized world, it often doesn't make sense to have different brands in different places anymore. After all, it's expensive to make specialized advertising, and people see advertising from different countries through the Internet, or international sports events, or movie product placements. And here in Canada, we're used to seeing our brands replaced by American ones, like Circle K. What's frustrating is that in this case, it's a Canadian company doing it. Quebec's Couche-Tard (or, "night owl") is a convenience store behemoth, owning lots of brands around the world, including Mac's. But Circle K is the most numerous, so when they decided to use one brand for all their English-language stores, they went with Circle K. I can understand the logic behind it, but it still feels like in Canada, even when we win, we lose.

Small Town Slow Down

Apparently, small villages are really concerned about people speeding through town. I'm seeing more and more of those speed readouts that tell you your speed, using colours and flashing appropriate to how much you've exceeded the limit. Those things are an interesting piece of psychology: they don't tell you anything you don't already know from your own speedometer, but telling it to you in public, you'll react differently, even though there's probably no one around to see how fast you're going; after all, this is a village with fifty people and no sidewalks.

I also find it amusing when a village has that sign as you enter, asking you to keep to the speed limit. Around here, that sign is usually in quotes. I’m not sure why they do that, but it makes it sound like it's the village motto or something. So it's like:

Paris: "The City of Lights" 
Las Vegas: “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”
Wheatville: "Please Drive at 50 km/h Speed Limit."

It's better if they go another step, and post a sign saying, "The Children of Wheatville Ask You To Drive at the 50km/h Speed Limit." Nice guilt trip, but I have to say:

1. There's like ten houses here and I've never seen anyone but seniors in this village.
2. Am I really supposed to believe that kids living by a highway want the cars to slow down?

If anything, it should be, "The Children of Wheatville ask you to really floor it past their place." or, "The Children of Wheatville Ask Semis to Blow the Horn on the Way By."

And now a few towns are even putting up signs with life-size cut-outs of kids asking you to slow down. Again, interesting psychology, since it's not telling you anything you didn't already know; it’s just making you confront the reality of your actions. But it makes me wonder how far this is going. An electronic signboard showing kids about to dart into traffic maybe? Holographic kids popping up in the street? Maybe on your way out of town a sign tells you how many virtual kids you hit?

It’s one thing when it's a village on a long, straight, smooth road. But I don't understand Haysville, near KW, which has one of those our-children-ask-you-to-slow-down signs, but the road through it is not only hilly and twisty, but it doesn't appear to have been repaved in my lifetime. Why do you need the sign? I'd need a Group B Rally Car just to get to the speed limit.

I have to point out that I don't blame anyone for their speeding concerns; lots of people barely slow down passing through a little hamlet, particularly if there's no stop sign or traffic light. It’s just unfortunate that you go through these little communities so fast that they only have time to show you one thing that distinguishes them from other villages. It’s a shame if that one thing they communicate to you is, “we hate you for speeding.” And since so many of them just give you that same message, it makes you feel like that’s the only thing rural people care about. That one village where one guy carved a statue of Iron Man out of the dead tree on his lawn seems full of personality by comparison, even if they do have weird priorities.

Fairweather Cynicism

Social media algorithms are a big part of our lives, and determine a lot of what we see. Often, they do a good job — my Facebook feed has long been dominated by Star Wars memes and baby animals. Though it occasionally makes inexplicable choices. Facebook has gone through phases of trying to get me interested in Polish history, the Miami Dolphins, and radical pan-Africanism. (Not jokes, actual examples.) In times like that, I wish I could just tell it that it’s got the wrong idea, and it would be best for it, me, and the company’s bottom line, if it just realized that I’m not interested in, say, Tennessee Williams quotes, so stop showing them to me. (Again, actual example.)

Lately, the thing I’d like to tell the algorithm is that yes, I’m a left-leaning person, but I don’t lean far enough to rejoice in the deaths of billionaires, however extravagant and symbolic their deaths may be. So no, I’d rather not see memes of gleeful schadenfreude at imminent and unpleasant death of wealthy people.

Here’s the thing I don’t get about this situation: If you’re the sort of person who won’t buy coffee without personally negotiating the fair-trade contract, then fine, I’m not surprised that your hatred of the economic order is so great that you would celebrate the death of the rich. But if your idea of supporting worker rights is hitting the 18% tip button on the debit machine at Subway, then I have a hard time reconciling that with your sudden bloodlust for the elites. 

I had a similar reaction last year when the Queen died. Again, I’m not a fan of the idea of royalty, but I wasn’t about to celebrate the death of someone because they occupy a position I don’t think should exist. But I was surprised at how many people suddenly developed deep passions about the crimes of the British Empire. I mean, the United Kingdom still plays a big part in the world’s culture, so you’d think that such a deep hatred would have come out by now. I’m not demanding a boycott of all things British, I’m just saying I would think you would occasionally mention such anger. Go ahead and love The Beatles, but sometimes mention that it’s too bad their success was enabled by national wealth built on the ashes of a world-spanning empire.

In both cases, pretending to have a radical stance on the issue is just a convenient excuse for behaviour. It’s easier to temporarily adopt a radical opinion than it is to show compassion. And it’s definitely easier than wrestling with the philosophical dilemmas brought on by the death of someone you have negative feelings towards. And there’s the bonus that your radical position will win you credibility with some people, as long as they don’t notice that your commitment to the cause just intermittent.

I covered something like this a few years ago, when I noticed the weirdness of people who thought McDonald’s steals from their Ronald McDonald House charity. These people still felt safe eating at McDonald’s, seemingly proving that they had far more confidence in the Golden Arches’ morality than they claimed. To be clear, I’m not saying that you aren’t allowed to criticize a system you participate in — a point of view ridiculed in a popular meme — just don’t pretend to be the nihilistic rebel that you clearly aren’t.