gum-ad follow-up (heavy on the footnotes)

Got a longer, closer look at that detestable Dentyne ad campaign (see above and click to enlarge): "make face time," it says.

As I said earlier, the campaign poses as a kind of sweet, friendly, soft-Luddite, neo-retro-quasi-humanist reminder* that people should spend time with each other instead of shooting the shit with Skynet all day—when in fact the real motivation for these ads (I guess not transparently but let's say translucently) is to remind customers to worry about their breath.  Because think about it: what does Dentyne care whether you're texting instead of talking or leaving voicemail instead of kissing or fucking around on Fæcebook instead of, you know, fucking?  What unstated reason might they have for emphasizing close physical contact—a company that has bought all this ad space because they want you to give them money in exchange for chewing gum?

Anyway, as the label says over at Fashion Futurist, I was right**: the key slogan is "make face time," like face-to-face time, like in-your-face time, like smell-your-breath time, like "Yuck, I was totally going to make out with you, but that was before I found out that your mouth is a revolting science experiment" time.  I've already said fuck you to Dentyne, but, you know...fuck you, Dentyne.

* Emphasis on the sweet: "I love these ads: they're so cute," said some college girl¹ the other day on the subway.²

** Although of course I believe F.F. is usually referring to predictions that came true, not careless observations that, upon closer examination, turned out to have already been true.  Whatever.

¹ Can we bring back the noun coed?  I guess we'd better not...

² She then went on to talk loudly (in a N.Y. subway car, remember, and a crowded one) about how much of a "New York accent" her roommate had.^a

^a Interesting side-note: in my experience, what most people mean when they talk about a N.Y. accent is these days more Long Island–Staten Island than Manhattan Island.  As far as I know or have ever been told, there are only three things in my own speech that qualify as New Yorkese: (1) I pronounce the O in orange like the O in sorry or the A in car (ä) rather than the o in orbit or ore (ô), which latter, non-N.Y. pronunciation I admit makes more sense and seems to be more standard, to boot; (2) flipping this around, until my college friends shamed me out of it, I used to pronounce the A in water like the O in orbit rather than the...  Hold the phone: the dictionary puts that pronunciation (ô) first, ahead of the one I self-consciously switched to (ä)!†  SCORE!  (To thine own self be true, man.  For real.)  Anyway, no. 3 isn't an accent issue so much as an idiom: in N.Y. people say "wait on line"; elsewhere they say "wait in line."  I was converted to "in" soon after college, but maybe now that I've seen the error of my pretentious way-changing ways I should change back...?  Or is that just more of the same, in a convoluted way?

† Again, it makes me real mad that water is the 45th word to come up when you search for "water" on Bartleby's American Heritage Dictionary.  Also infuriating is that now Bartleby hits you with a spoken, "Congratulations!  You've been selected to receive a free iPod Touch."  Fuck you.  (Footnote to a footnote to a footnote to a footnote—great job!)