Yes We Can, Now In Fruity Flavors!

One of my co-workers just returned from a trip to Africa and brought us this souvenir from Kenya, a box of Obama chewing gum. Yes, Obama chewing gum. It appears some entrepreneur in Barack Obama's ancestral land has decided to honor the 44th President of the United States by naming chewing gum after him. What is interesting here is that not only does the box feature the now standard photo of Obama in his presidential pose, it also features Michelle Obama and the two kids Sasha and Malia too. In fact the girls get more screen time than their dad. Like the old adage about ads goes, you can't go wrong with kids or dogs.

The co-worker who brought this into the office left a note tagged to the box: "Don't expect the flavor to last more than 5 minutes." I wasn't sure if that was a criticism of the gum or a political statement. Or both.

Funny, I don't recall anyone making a Bush chewing gum, though I can understand why there was no Cheney chewing gum. I would have been really hard to make those bugging devices chewable.

Oh The Humanity

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon, David Carradine, Robert McNamera, Frank McCourt, Billy Mays, Steve McNair, Karl Malden, all in the last month, and now this:

Taco Bell Chihuahua Dies
By Rennie Dyball
Originally posted Wednesday July 22, 2009 11:40 AM EDT

She charmed millions without ever saying a word, and managed to make fast food tacos adorable. Gidget, the Chihuahua best known for her Taco Bell ad campaign, died from a stroke on Tuesday night at age 15.

"She made so many people happy," says Gidget's trainer, Sue Chipperton. PEOPLE met both Gidget and Sue at a Hollywood animals photo shoot in February, where the pup was a consummate pro and delighted the crew with her playful nature. The mostly retired actor lived out her days laying in the sun – "I like to joke that it's like looking after a plant," says Chipperton – and entertaining at shoots when her trainer brought her along. "Gidget," says Chipperton, "always knew where the camera was."

Forget about celebrities always dying in threes, we have an epidemic of celebrity deaths on our hands! Me, I blame global warming. Or maybe it's the Rapture. If it is then somebody better call Pat Robertson and break the news to him that he's been left behind.

Musical Intelligence

Picking up on the theme of my last post, all this attention paid to Michael Jackson led me to do something I never thought I would do, download songs from Thriller. After listening to "Billie Jean", "Beat It", and "Thriller" again for the first time in many years it occurred to me that there were a few things that I had forgotten:

1. Quincy Jones is a genius.
2. Michael Jackson was one hell of a performer.
3. Both of them should have quit while they were ahead.

Quincy Jones is a genius because he was the one who wrote the songs and created the cross-over buzz that made Thriller the biggest selling album of all time. He was the one that got Paul McCartney to sing the duet on "The Girl Is Mine", Eddie Van Halen to play the guitar solo on "Beat It", and got Vincent Price to do the voice over on the title track. Also, each of these songs plus "Billie Jean" all sounded different, and that too was mostly Jones' doing. Of course, it took someone with Jackson's talent to sell all this, but without Jones by his side Michael Jackson would not have become The King of Pop.

I suppose you could argue, though, that without Thriller Jackson would not have become Wacko Jacko. But hey, JFK could have listened to his secretary and not gone to Dallas, the FBI could have been paying more attention to all the Saudis that were taking flying lessons in 2001, and Robb Nen could have pitched around Troy Glaus. Such is the fickle finger of fate.

While I was downloading Thriller I noticed that Chris Daughtry's new album was available, so I went ahead and purchased that too. Now some of you music snobs out there might poo-poo that, as well as the purchase of Thriller, but I happen to enjoy listening to his music (and it was on sale too). He remains the only former American Idol contestant whose albums I have bought. Daughtry's music often gets dismissed as lightweight but those who claim to be in the know, but the artists that those people like don't sell records while Daughtry's flies off the shelf. I wonder if one of the reasons why these music snobs only like artists that don't sell is because it allows them to feel smarter than everyone else because they know something that the rest of us don't. Well, maybe they do, but I for one will continue to enjoy my ignorance. For one thing it makes watching American Idol much more enjoyable.