Archived Observation

The advertising agency for the Gap sure knows what they're doing in the catchy jingle department. The latest Gap-proper ads are catchy, but those Old Navy commercials! Damn those Old Navy commercials! First it was the "Old Navy! Old Navy! Old Navy Performance Fleece!" song that got incessantly stuck in my head, now it's the Drawstring Shorts ditty: "Drawstring: I'm simply mad about them! Drawstring: hearts rat-a-tat for them!" Sure, people are dancing on top of a giant typewriter, and sure, the words often border on nonsensical, and no, drawstring shorts aren't flattering on anyone, but I'll be damned if that jingle wasn't stuck in my head for the entire afternoon on Saturday, only slightly edging out that annoyingly catchy Aretha Franklin song from the latest Pepsi commercial.

And speaking of television, I've been drawn into watching episodes of VH-1's "Behind the Music" series more than once, (usually making me stay up way past my bedtime because I just had to see how things turned out) and let me just say this: it's a damn shame about MC Hammer. I mean, you watch all these episodes about all the other rock bands and their drugs and drinking and overdosing and casual sex and almost dying and accidents and reckless rock bottom sob stories, and then along comes MC Hammer, whose only downfall was that he had poor money management skills. There was no drug addiction and no alcohol abuse. He's been married for 12 years. He hired countless numbers of his old down-and-out friends to be dancers on his tours and gave money to his old neighborhood, poor children, and charities. It all came crashing down when he built a $10 million house, made a couple of not-so-great self-promotion decisions, and found himself in the red. As soon as the money was gone, all of his so-called friends turned on him, and before he knew it he was the laughingstock of the music world. Like I said, it's a damn shame. The episode after that was the Vanilla Ice one. Not a damn shame about him; he seemed way too cocky, going from "you try being me and having a lot of money all of a sudden" to "you try being me and having to live with the fact that you were Vanilla Ice." All this from a guy with one hit single.