Captain Morgan 
For the last four months Captain Morgan's absurd nuevo-blacksploitation approach to passing off their overly sweet spiced grog to a more "urban" market as the new malt liqouresque beverage of choice has shamed our subway system.  Posters featuring young black and Latino men with bad 80's hair cuts (think Arsenio Hall) and clothes (think first season of "In Living Color") have covered whole subway cars with messages like "Don't Fake the Flava" and "Comin Alive After Five".  No matter which way you turn you are confronted by a guy in a multicolored vest and turtleneck sweater winking at you and saying, "You know it's the one!" 

It's nice to see that Captain Morgan is attempting to expand beyond the middle and high school drinking market that has traditionally dominated their sales, but where did they come up with this schlock? 

New York City Needle Exchange Program 
This is another NYC subway poster ad campaign.  I shouldn't rag on this one too much because the NYC Needle Exchange is a non-profit that probably couldn't afford any better.  The poster features one of the most over used images of all time; Michael Angelo's painting of God touching fingers with Adam (taken from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome).  The original scene represents the moment God creates man by delivering the spark of life to a reclining lifeless Adam.  The NYC Needle Exchange's poster shows Michael Angelo's scene exactly as painted with the following addition: God is passing several syringes to Adam.  So now Adam is looking like a junky and God is in the social services. 

I believe that no matter which side of the issue you are on in the debate for or against distributing clean needles to people suffering from drug addiction, this poster is offensive. 
 
New York Times 
Not much to say here.  The N.Y. Times launched a nice campaign last year where a word would fade in on top of an image and then rearrange to form a new word as the image dissolved to another.  It was pretty cool to watch this clever word jumble form diametrically opposed words or even pairs of words that had some relevant connection (kinda like the first time that you realized "God" spelled backwards was "Dog").   But let's face it.  They ran out of clever about six months ago.  They're putting up words with no connection and just about any image that they can make fit. 

Last week I saw their new t.v. Commercial where they show an old Greek farmer herding goats in a field and the word "Feta" fades onto the screen.  As "Feta" rearranges to form the word  "Fate" this grim reaper comes out from nowhere and starts chasing the farmer around with his sickle. The worst one is the spot where this nun is sitting there and the word "Nun" fades in and then rearranges to form "Nun" again, and she just sits there. 

Volks Wagon Bug 

For the most part, I get a kick out of the t.v. And print advertising for the new V.W. Bug.  It is very hip and "now".  I can see where they're coming from with that retro 60's meets gen-x kind of schlock that the kids love (or at least some fat cat executive at the ad agency believes so).  There is just one V.W. television ad in that rubs me the wrong way.  It starts out with the typical shots of the shiny new Bug along with some new age trance music playing in the background and then the voice over comes in and announces "If you sold your soul in the 80s... Here's your chance to buy it back". 

That statement or slogan summarizes everything that is wrong with conspicuous consumption, consumerist society, capitalism, mass media, your parents and the bulk of the U.S. of A.  If this commercial had come out 20 years earlier there would have been no need for the Dead Kennedys or Jello Biafra, because they could never have written anything so simultaneously crass, sarcastic, absurd and condescending as "If you sold your soul in the 80s... Here's your chance to buy it back".  The oxymoronic cadence may yet form a mantra for a new generation Homo Decapitus.