Snake America Twenty-Four
Snake, a bi-weekly email covering joints on eBay, Craigslist, YouTube, etc. In today's: The Freddie Freaker Video, and original Nike Air Force Ones. Subscribe here.
Video: Freddie Freaker 1-900 number promotion: If you don't want to--or can't--watch the ad here, it's for a 1-900 line featuring this weird monster doll, who is suspended in space and moving only on his X-axis, set to music. It's undetermined if Freddie answers the phone when you call. He's a nice shade of yellow and the drums in the song are playing backwards(1). It's mildly-regarded for being really weird and I guess it is, but I'd say it's really good. More good than weird. Lots of obscure stuff is weird but not all of it is good. Like jug rock. Liking something because it's weird is fine--this is America--but liking bad things at a funny remove cheats the listener/furniture-purchaser/haberdasher from one of the great joys of life: good stuff. Anyways, this video is both. It's like the English As She Is Spoke of advertising. Here's what I know about it. Mr. Freaker was designed by a character sculptor for Disney right out of college before he worked at Disney. He said he ripped off the Gremlins and that he didn't meet the directors and that he has the mold somewhere. It looks like it was shot in an afternoon. The doll's face registers a zen blankness, like a dumped frat boy. Or maybe he is being heavy. Is he evil? Freddie is, per Romandy-Simmons 1-of-1, like this mold of a bear for sale at 1stDibs. Questions arise: Why did people call--or not call--after watching, and who of LA Toys or Starwest Entertainment, both credited at the end of the video on the final still, is a billionaire now, and where is the original Freddie doll, and what happened to the number, and who was the first person and last person who called, and how did it stack up compared to Hulk "Woodfoot" Hogan's 1-900 number, the most-called number. I bet Robert Caro and Hal Foster working in tandem can get to the bottom of some of these questions. Few phenomena are as worthy of a tick tock as the proliferation of 1-900 numbers during the (first) Bush administration, but they have to be treated with respect. They were like video rental stores then or frozen yoghurt huts now for profit margins. It's not because the videos are bad that they're interesting. It's that they were so profitable the incentive to be so bad was there. At least they didn't cut corners for intention.
eBay: Original Nike Air Force 1s: More correctly, Air Force Zeros, I'd wear these things on my wedding or arraignment day, and I don't wear Air Forces or believe in getting married in Nikes(2). Casual footwear and formal clothing is a bad idea unless taken to its logical extreme, e.g. prison slip-ons with a tweed suit, Nike Kobes with a white linen, double monks and a lycra onesie. This is a piece of design art. I am humbled looking at it. It is so crazy that there aren't holes on the toebox. It's an expanse of white. And it doesn't matter that it doesn't have the strap. The strap was probably forgotton or left somewhere really interesting, like the Berlin Wall before it fell. I bet if you dig up the wall it's still there. forget whether the old Air Forces crumble, but I recall they do. It's worth it I think. I bet Bruce Willis wins these. Nikes don't lack for placement in editorial spreads, but it's only all-white Air Force Ones that are legit fashionable(3). Any other Nike in a Vogue editorial is a statement but these are just shoes.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
(1) I want to say that Robert Christgau (who sucks -- quote me) wrote in his review of Cro Mags' "The Age of Quarrel" that Mackie, their drummer, was playing along to the wrong record on the recording. Is that an insult? It shouldn't be. God, what a turd.Look at the list of albums he gave an A- - three late-era Aerosmith albums, MC Paul Barman, six (!) UB40 albums, etc.
(2) you should wear triple monks or high-top Gucci slipons with ripple soles and white dress socks
(3) I can't find a source. But this isn't a controversial statement