And now, punk rock, brought to you by the Army

[substitute]

For work-related reasons I saw a few hours of the channel Fuse ( http://www.fuse.tv/ ) today.

It reminds me of the other XXXxXXXXtreme Sports & PUNK!!! TV programming i’ve seen on various MTV-like and sports-related networks. There’s a lot of late-nineties “edgy” graphics, a fair amount of skateboarding and snowboarding footage, and music videos. The boys all have spiky hair and the girls are all slutty in a rockabilly girl/Bettie Page sort of way. The music is usually labeled as “punk”.

The main sponsors of this kind of entertainment are beverage companies, other entertainment like video games, and the military.

Watching someone like Sum 41 gyrate and skate and rock out in pure, stylized imitative fashion I drifted off into one of my daydreams and imagined the meetings at which 30something Extreme Entrepreneurs, their hair spiked artfully to hide the bald spots, sold the military recruitment ad agencies on the concept.

WE FEEL THAT THE POWER AND IMMEDIACY OF THE ACTION SPORTS AND NEW PUNK MILIEU TRANSLATES VERY WELL TO YOUR OUTREACH, GENERAL. KIDS LIKE A LOT OF ENERGY, A LOT OF ADVENTURE, AND ENERGIZING SITUATIONS. THE MARINES ARE REALLY THE MOUNTAIN DEW CODE RED OF THE SERVICES AND...

Comments

[scromp.livejournal.com]

You really seem to have a thing for imagining meetings. That makes me uncomfortable.

ug, fuse...

[nogoodusernames.livejournal.com]

i watched the slow painful evolution process. first it was MuchMusic, the canadian music channel, which was good. then it was MuchUSA, which sucked really bad, and now it's Fuse, which also sucks really bad. The whole deal with MuchUSA was that it was going to be run by the viewers, that was the concept, which was their excuse for not hiring any dj's and not needing to rent a soundstage or anything. Then they sort of gave up on that idea and changed the name to Fuse, and their biggest show is where music videos are stocks and they scroll across the bottom of the screen like you were watching msnbc..

sports and military

[cawaker.livejournal.com]

Very humorous meeting idea, but the military recruiters sponsoring various young adult related events is quite old. I've seen the various arms have booths and many many of the "extreme" sports events I've been in over the years. From wakeboarding to skate, surf, snow, hell even plain old water skiing, The Bud Water Ski Tours, mmm beer gardens. But it does make sense, gotta hook the kids when they are young, like cigarettes, hell the army even has a pretty decent video game called America's Army. and if i ever had a point in this reply i lost it.

cheers!

Re: sports and military

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the military does love anything that suggests young people in good shape who don't mind getting injured.

Nice to "see" you, by the way - been a while!