This Plug Has No Shame, Because It Is Not Sentient

You there, reading this! You obviously like the internet because you're on it right now. You also probably like music. And you might like radio. Then  I got good news for you! My friend Weston's radio show, Resistance Radio, is on tonight, and every Sunday night, broadcasting on KUPS Tacoma, THE SOUND! which can be streamed live on the internet. So if you want to do some loud rambunctious rawkin tonight, at 10:00 PM pacific time check it out here:

http://tunein.com/radio/Yuri-OYABB-Kahan-p381928/

We tune in to this every week, gathered around the computer-radio like old-timey assholes, darning our old-timey socks and burning down the small businesses of old-timey immigrants because IT WAS A SIMPLER TIME DAMMIT!

Of course you should listen for the music, which runs the spectrum from loud to really loud, from snorting coke off a toilet seat on the Sunset Strip to wakeboarding on a archetypal Dante-esque lake of fire as Satan himself drives the boat at speeds upwards of Mach 7. And there's the ethical argument to be made for listening to a real human DJ. But most compelling reason to listen is that you might hear an ad for Taco Night at the New Frontier, which usually plays during his show.

When adjusted for production quality, this might be the most effective advertisement ever. The ad is for some kind of bar/restaurant somewhere in Tacoma, which apparently has taco night, as well as pizza and beer. Let me break down the add for you:

It opens with some clicking sounds that are probably supposed to be a horse's hooves, but it might just be the a corruption in the audio file. Then there is a dialogue between a voice that is a few octaves too low to be human, and someone whose speech is being manipulated by an auto-tuner into a kind of Tom Haverford does R-Kelly sing-song. I suppose this technically means that he's singing, because all of this takes place over a few twangy acoustic guitar chords. The auto-tuned voice asks the deep voice how his herd is doing. And then, "speaking of herd," asks if he has heard that The New Frontier has taco night.

"On Tuesday?"
"No."
"On Thursday?"
"No. On We-e-e-e-e-dnesday!" It takes him a long time to sing Wednesday. Because when you have auto-tuner, you might as well run with it and drag out those melismas.

Then, they singe a jingle! A real live fucking jingle! It goes "They've got pizza they've got beer, down at the New Frontier, oh man, oh man." Let's recap the elements here. We have: 1) a country/bluegrass style acoustic guitar 2) a high pitched, auto-tuned voice, and 3) Fat Albert. This is the instrumentation for a jingle, something they haven't made in decades.

And you know what, I really want to go to taco night at the New Frontier, if I ever am in Tacoma again. All because this ad was so bad, it's memorable. My parents' generation always talks about how everything used to have a jingle, and how they're still trying to get "You'll wonder where the yellow went / when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!" out of their skulls. And they just know that when they have Alzheimer's or dementia  those neurons are going to be the very last ones to go. It makes me wonder why advertisers ever stopped making jingles. I know that other forms of advertising used back then stopped working. They were so mesmerized by the concept of television that if anyone came on the story box and said that something was the best, they would believe it. If they told you it would make you happy, then it would make you happy. If they told you it would get you a date, then it would get you a date.

Then people started to realize that you could lie on TV just like you could in the real world, and advertisers had to pinpoint and attack our insecurities, most of which are that we are afraid of being undersexed and appearing foolish. If you don't buy Old Spice, you will be undersexed, they say. If you pay too much for your car insurance, you will look foolish, they say. And all of your friends are out somewhere having fun drinking Bud Lite while you sit at home and watch your lackluster team, which represents your decaying city, lose yet another game to that team whose fan base really irritates you. We live empty lives when sitting in front of the TV, and advertisers know this. They strike when we are most vulnerable.

But the jingle just makes us all feel good. And if you tune into Resistance Radio tonight, you just might hear one of the best!

And Weston, if you read this in time, I'm in the mood to hear some Suicide Machines tonight.