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By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Aug 24, 2008
Bad Ad Idea? The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago that Jerry Seinfeld is being lined up as a commercial spokesman for Microsoft, offering the company a comedic counterpoint to the Apple ads featuring Justin Long. While the Journal had Seinfeld getting $10 million for the gig, readers of the Crave gadget blog at CNET.com quickly noted that ''there's a bit of irony to this, since many of us recall that Seinfeld was always using a Mac on his '90s sitcom.''
Asking ''should Microsoft hire someone not so clearly playing both sides of the fence?'' the blog offered some alternative reps for the company. Among them:
• A Borg drone from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But the site second-guessed itself, suggesting that ''while we often think of the Borg as joyless automatons of a conformist culture,'' some — like Seven of Nine — are too compelling to maintain a Microsoft-like ''business-first attitude.''
• Steve Carell and the rest of the cast of The Office. Crave says the ''vaguely unhappy office folk stuck in workplace purgatory'' represent the ''total Microsoft stereotype.''
• Homer Simpson, Charlie Brown, Rodney Dangerfield, Jason Alexander (who played George on Seinfeld) ''and other people doomed to never get it right.''
I'd write more about this, but my Windows XP is snarling.
•
Jail Time. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that rapper Da Brat was sentenced to three years in prison ''for hitting an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader in the head with a nearly full liquor bottle at an Atlanta-area nightclub.''
Da Brat, whose given name is Shawntae Harris, also got seven years' probation and 200 hours of community service, and has to get substance-abuse treatment and a mental evaluation, and attend anger-management classes, the newspaper said.
Her lawyer says she feels ''a great deal of remorse.''
For those of you tuning in late, the Journal-Constitution sums up Da Brat as ''the first female rapper to sell a million copies of an album, for 1994's Funkdafied. . . . Over her four-CD career she toured and recorded with longtime friend Mariah Carey; was nominated for a Grammy for Not Tonight, a collaboration with Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim, the late Lisa ''Left-Eye'' Lopes and Angie Martinez; and more recently appeared on reality TV shows The Surreal Life and The Celebrity Fit Club.
•
List Mania. With the Playboy-connected The House Bunny now in theaters, Entertainment Weekly's EW.com offered a list of other movies with a link to the mag.
Among them: A Bunny's Tale, with Kirstie Alley as writer Gloria Steinem, who worked as a Playboy club bunny for a magazine article; The Asphalt Jungle, with Marilyn Monroe before her appearance on the cover of Playboy's debut; Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! directed by former Playboy photographer Russ Meyer, and History of the World: Part 1, with a toga-clad Hugh Hefner.
Also, They All Laughed, starring Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten — who was murdered by her estranged husband before the film was released, and Star 80, the big-screen biography of Stratten, played by Mariel Hemingway. (Jamie Lee Curtis also played Stratten, in the TV movie Death of a Centerfold). You can find the complete movie list at EW.com.
•
A Sunday Kind of Birthday. Born this date in 1929, Willie Winfield went on to doo-wop immortality as lead singer with the Harptones. Their most memorable song: A Sunday Kind of Love. And, like that love, the song has lasted long past Saturday night.
•
Ben on the Beat? Zap2it.com says that Benjamin McKenzie, best known as Ryan Atwood on The O.C., is in talks to co-star on LAPD, a drama pilot from ER creator John Wells. It would be McKenzie's first TV work since The O.C. ended in 2007, the site says. ''He appeared in the Al Pacino movie 88 Minutes earlier this year and recently finished work on an indie-film production of Johnny Got His Gun.
•
Trivia Time is taking a break.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://www.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
Bad Ad Idea? The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago that Jerry Seinfeld is being lined up as a commercial spokesman for Microsoft, offering the company a comedic counterpoint to the Apple ads featuring Justin Long. While the Journal had Seinfeld getting $10 million for the gig, readers of the Crave gadget blog at CNET.com quickly noted that ''there's a bit of irony to this, since many of us recall that Seinfeld was always using a Mac on his '90s sitcom.''
Get the full article here.
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