Day: September 14, 2009

The McBournie Minute: History That Happened in the Past (1960-1969)

My apologies for not telling you last week what came after the 1950s. With Labor Day and all, we were off from work and observing the Holy Day of the Worker by refraining from blogging. Today I am pleased to tell you that the 1960s came after the 1950s, but they are more commonly referred to as The Sixties.

For America, it marked a time of great change, you may have heard about that once or twice. But is what happened forty years ago really over? Of course not, the Baby Boomers are still around arguing over whether or not we won the Vietnam War.

Hit the jump, do some ‘ludes and free your soul, man. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: History That Happened in the Past (1960-1969)

XxAmercnAirlynzXx has added you!

Brendan Fraser IS the American Way.There are certain companies that we expect to not be “with it.” In fact, if those companies tried to rebrand themselves as “hip” or “edgy,” we would be more concerned than relieved.

One of those are airlines, but they don’t know that yet. A couple are now using social media to “reach fans” and address complaints.

JetBlue uses Twitter to respond to people complaining to porn spambots about their delayed flights. Amazingly for an airline that’s only one step above riding with free-range chickens, JetBlue only has one communications employee running their “Here’s a coupon, dawg” service.

American Airlines has a fan page on Facebook. Yes, you can now add the Big AA to your friendlist, presumably so they’ll tell all their other fans to read your blog. Be sure to compliment them on their big exposé on suede leather jackets in American Way, their award-winning in-flight magazine.

Just a reminder to airlines, energy drink chemists and politicians: it’s not social networking if you’re advertising on it. Then it’s just another way to receive spam AND diminish your reputation.

Threat Level: Nonexistant

Hey Germany, isn’t it the other way around? First you say that a real event never happened. Now you’re convinced that a hoax actually happened? Just how do we apply the “Fool me once” formula to your country?

Act 1: The German media is informed by an alleged reporter of a local American TV station based in the city of Bluewater, California, about a suicide bombing in a local restaurant. The media, trying to verify the story, checked the city’s official website and the TV station’s website to find numbers of the local police and fire department, which promptly confirmed that two explosions had occurred in a restaurant. So German media proceeded to report a suicide bombing in the USA.

Act 2: The story was partly revoked. Now it was three German rappers, named the “Berlin Boys”, who had staged a fake suicide bombing with fake bomb props in an attempt to seek publicity. The TV station’s website featured a news report about the arrest of the Germans.

Act 3: Eventually it was revealed that the “Berlin Boys” don’t exist. Neither was anyone arrested. Nor did the TV station exist. And neither does a Californian city named “Bluewater” exists. Still, police officials in San Bernardino received a lot of phone calls from German media seeking to verify the story.

The Troofiness: It was all one giant publicity stunt by the director of an upcoming German movie named Short Cut to Hollywood, which is about three German rappers who stage a fake bombing in the USA to get publicity. The director reportedly wanted to find out if something like that could actually happen in real life. To do so, he set up fake websites for the (fake) city of Bluewater and the fake TV station, with fake phone numbers on the sites that would redirect callers to the Skype accounts of participants in the stunt. Even fake Wikipedia entries were set up that would verify the existence of the city and the TV station, with links to the “official” websites.

Germany has officially been served. Or punked. You know, whichever silly descriptor that the kids are using these days.

Reality can be a crime

I heard you missed us, we’re back, ladies and gentlemen.

We take you now to Turkey, where we may have just found the first victims of reality television show fraud, not counting all those hidden camera shows. Nine women were lured into a house after being tricked into believing they were on “Big Brother.”

They weren’t. And that became clear when police freed the women, whose every action was being filmed and streamed online. In our opinion, more reality shows need to be punished in this way.