The New Microsoft PC Ads: As fake as Lauren’s red hair

“Microsoft needs to reset itself to compete in the 21st Century, which promises to be the most painful thing it has done in its decades-long existence.” Matt Asay, CNET

What boggles the collective mind more than anything else is why Microsoft never gets it right  when its corporate rump is on the line as in the internecine ad wars between it and Apple.  The more mystical among the Apple faithful might put it down to some kind of Cosmic Karma; an idea which has  as  good a chance as any  of taking root absent some plausible explanation as to why Microsoft shoots itself in the foot each and every time it squares off against the Cupertino-based challenger.

Let’s take the most recent example as a case in point: Microsoft’s “I’m a PC ad”  starring an actress named Lauren De Long,  masquerading as a hapless customer.

Hot Chickadee: Lauren De Long heating up the rails in body-hugging top & blue jeans. This is clearly a portfolio shot taken some time before the whimsical redhead morphed into Microsoft Lauren. In the PC ad she looks more like the frizzly girl next door.

The question of whether Lauren De Long has become the “Joe the plumber” of the ad wars between Microsoft and Apple is rhetorical at this point.  More than an unwitting dupe, Lauren is a giggly accomplice  in a ruse by a giant whose marketing ineptitude  is only matched by its tech foibles. Lauren wins free publicity.  Microsoft loses more credibility …. again.  Tell me something new. Yawn.

Ad Story Line: Lauren is a hapless customer  in search of  a 17 inch laptop below $1000 (an apparent dig at the 17 inch Macbook unibody which sells in excess of $2,500.) Lauren suggests that she is going into an Apple Store, and appears to come out with nothing before finding a $699 HP laptop in a Best Buys-like Store. (Critics point out that there is no evidence that she actually went into that store which she wrongly identifies as a Mac store.)

When the  Lauren ads first hit the airwaves there was a collective gasp and stir,  similar to when Sarah Palin  first hit the national stage in the 2008 presidential election. Perhaps Microsoft had gotten it right this time people thought! But the problem of the new ad soon became apparent: The sales pitch was not as finely calibrated as to compare  apples with Apples and the customer  in the ad was as fake as a vaudevillian in black face.  Lauren won’t even tell the world how well she fared with  her $699 laptop,  thanks to a non-disclosure agreement she signed with the advertiser.  Oi Vei!

The new campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Interesting name, that Mr. Bogusky) is a curious echo of the Chunky Charlie MS Butterfly campaign by McCann Erickson Worldwide. After making crappy, buggy software, does Microsoft  look for the worst ad agencies to plug its crappy softwares?

The problems with the Microsoft Lauren campaign are so myriad I will not count all the ways:

1. Do not lie to people. If you are gonna use randomly chosen customers off of Craigslist, make  sure you do just that. There is nothing complicated here. That would have eliminated  Lauren, at least by dint of  the integrity Microsoft may have wanted to project.

2. If you want to project  genuineness, pick a natural redhead with a decent coif and not a coed who looks like she has been attacked by the a feral cat before a recent dye job had been trimmed and toned down.

3. Competing on price and price alone is the equivalent of (Microsoft and its PC cohorts) throwing in the towel and conceding defeat to Apple on the issue of quality, style, value and ease of use.  What Microsoft and its hardware sidekicks are refusing to confront is the computer equivalent of the domestic vs foreign autos debate. Just as in the latter, there is a reason why Macs sell and hold their value better than PCs.

4. Microsoft cannot expect people to buy Lauren’s argument without insulting their intelligence at some level. There are more factors (that go into buying a laptop than mere price. These include Microsoft’s product history and its  most recent  egg, the Vista operating system. Microsoft should be dealing with that instead of churning out lame ads.

3. The Lauren ad  is all over the place with no  zinger of the order of “Where is the beef?”. By the time we get to the PC store scene, the ad is beginning to feel like a mini infomercial.

5. Lauren’s line, “I guess I am not cool enough for a Mac” is a contrived piece of  crap calculated to  wring the last dollop of mawkishness out of the gonzo script she must have been working with.

6. As the Geek Whisperer astutely points out, the ad inadvertently degrades the value of a PC by insinuating that “PCs are the computer you buy when times are rough… like now. But in the future the economy won’t be in the dumps (hopefully sooner than later).” Point made. Case closed.

The Apple Insider’s take on this is interesting, if not instructive. Read this and be your own judge as to who is feeding you cant and sophistry. You can read the entire article with vids, pics and graphs on the Apple Insider here:

“Shopping for hardware: The new ads don’t go into details on hardware purchases; they simply make the case that PC laptops can be found for cheaper, playing up tight funds in the tough economy. Best Buy actually does sell the DV7-1245DX, an HP notebook with 17″ screen, but it lacks fast wireless 902.11n, fast Gigabit Ethernet, digital audio inputs and outputs, weighs 7.75 pounds, and only features the screen resolution of Apple’s 15″ notebooks: 1440 by 900. Technically, it is a 17″ notebook in terms of size, but it doesn’t have the 17″ resolution of Apple’s MacBook Pro, which is 1920 by 1200.

One HP buyer pointed out that this model series “has the worst screen I have ever seen in my life. It’s the 1440×900 screen and the viewing angles are so poor that even when sitting directly eye level with the screen it is totally washed out. If I go a little bit off-axis the screen results in a negative image. I was using the default settings. Unfortunately I didn’t read reviews before i purchased.”

Shopping for software: More importantly however, the HP notebook runs Windows Vista, rated by ChangeWave as having the lowest operating system satisfaction rating in rankings that were led by Mac OS X Leopard and also included Linux and Windows XP. Many PC makers continue to add a “Windows XP downgrade” as a feature on their new PCs.

This makes it particularly interesting that Microsoft would advertise its product by citing the price of the hardware it runs on, rather than calling attention to any of the features in its own product. It’s not that Microsoft hasn’t tried. Vista’s first “Wow” campaign portrayed customers in a state of pleasant shock when using it.

Shopping for an ad campaign: After those ads collapsed in an avalanche of bad press complaining about arbitrary changes that did not improve anything and software and hardware compatibility problems, Microsoft rolled out the Mojave Experiment, which showed users a “new OS” that was really just a repackaged version of Vista. Those ads attempted to claim that Vista’s bad reputation was all due to customers not giving the system a fair shake, but the ads sidestepped the real problems users were experiencing by not allowing participants to run Vista on their own PC or with their existing software and peripherals.

Microsoft then announced a $300 million campaign to revive the Windows brand by associating it with skits featuring Gates and Seinfeld which promised to “tell the story of Windows.” Instead, the ads were canceled mid-production after being poorly received.

Following that, the company released a “Windows vs Walls” campaign reminiscent of Apple’s Think Different commercials, and then a series of “I’m a PC” ads that tried to defuse Apple’s Get a Mac spots by claiming that generic PCs were empowered to do anything, except of course, producing the ads themselves, as it was embarrassingly revealed that those ads were actually created using Macs.

Promoting cheap: Talking about price during a recession where the global PC market is actually shrinking for the first time ever is probably Microsoft’s best bet in trying to stem the tide of switchers buying Macs. However, the company has to be careful because it’s also competing against free software such as Ubuntu Linux, which also runs on generic PCs. In fact, those PCs get cheaper if they’re sold without Microsoft’s Windows, something the company has worked hard to prevent from happening. “

(Please Note: You can read the entire article with vids, pics and graphs on the Apple Insider here.)

Right next to reinventing itself from the guts, the Microsoft needs to sever its marketing and advertising arm along with crappy ad agencies  like McCann Erickson Worldwide,  and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. (For insightful analyses of Microsoft’s  foibles, articles by Gerry Patterson and Matt Asay under the “Appendices” heading below)

With a $300 million, budget, Microsoft  could have done way better. The CNN Money/ Fortune assumption that this lame campaign has put Apple on the defensive is terminally silly.

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Post Scriptum. To the bloggers who carp that these ad/PR campaigns are skewered, remember what’s good for the goose is even be better for the gander.

The Microsoft/PC  “bashing” ads, if you wanna call them that, have more than a ring of truth to them.  They are light-heartedly  funny, on top of being sharp, terse and extremely well produced. Watch them here and compare them with the droll Lauren clip.  And if that is not enough, go back to the equally droll and mind-numbingly abstruse   MS Butterfly campaign.

copyright© 2009 cyberaxis.wordpress.com

Appendices:

The Future Looks Bright for Microsoft? (Gerry Patterson, PGTS Journal)

Economy’s “fundamental reset” hurts Microsoft’s earnings and future (Matt Asay, CNET)

O Brother Where Art Thou is a ringing musical …

… brimming with folk bravura and resonant wit. The  cinematic vision is as grand as Sydney Pollack’s  in “Out of Africa“, and the cliches in it work because the Coen Brothers embrace them with camp-devious abandon. There is a certain light-heartedness that redeems everything it touches.  Any “Dutch attempt and German sublimity” would have sunk this movie like a rock because it is not cut from that kind of mettle.

George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill is outstanding and John Turturo never fails to deliver. Clooney owes the Coen Brothers for the  role of a lifetime.  Two academy award nominations for best screenplay and cinematography gives more than a nod to that notion. It never hurts that the Coen brothers trot out the talents of comedic stalwarts like John Goodman. He delivers with  the ease of a seasoned hand. And like all  good movies “Brother Where Art Thou?” has an ace up its sleeve: The music.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the music and  musicality behind it trumps anything outside of the  Smithsonian Folkways.  The music from the ol’ time   spiritual “Going down to the river to pray” to the blue grass anthem “Man of Constant Sorrows”  is as gritty as  river sand full of gold nuggets.

George Clooney(left) as Ulysses Everett McGill: The role of a lifetime, perfectly offset by John Turturo(right) as Pete and Tim Blake Nelson as the dithering side-kick.

Apple and the culture of seduction

The Apple 20" Cinema Display: Brushed aluminum never looked so good.

The genius of Apple is that it makes great products. And the fact that they are more expensive just adds to their mystique and that inescapable catchet of value.  Yes, Apple gadgets are expensive, but may be because they are an uncommon amalgam of functionality, reliability and go-drop-dead esthetics. Galileo meets Van Gogh, or something like that. Take the 20″ Cinema Display that I am looking at right now. I bought this as a monitor to pair with my  bedroom PC computer and fell head over heels in love. I am  not alone in this. Right now I have the Apple flat screen next to a Gateway HD 1080 flat screen which I paid the same price brand new as the used Apple monitor. It’s not even a close  contest. I cannot stop staring at the Apple monitor and would work exclusively on it if I had the choice. I am a PC stiff by default, but can feel myself being pulled towards Apple as if towards the light, even with its intermittent PR problems and tarnish. This seduction is something hi-tech hacks are very aware of beyond specs, architecture and all. The attached review of the Apple 30″ Cinema HD Display is a very telling shibboleth of the Apple magic working beyond the liminal. It is there in the Macbook (Unibody) Pro at your nearest Apple store. And yes, it is there in the iconic iPhone, spec warts and all.

The nature of this seduction has,  of late, been thrown into  sharp relief by the Cupertino  giant’s  foibles and curious product cycles; the  iPhone being a good example of how Apple treated early adopters in the most shabby of ways.  And the lack of candor  surrounding Steve Job’s health took a lot of sheen off the Cupertino giant. Many people were left wondering if stock holders had been royally  shafted. (Check out this New York Times column.) The disclosure, after the fact, of  Steve Jobs’ liver transplant has Warren Buffet more than wondering.

iConic & iConoclastic: Apple's iPhone: An object of desire that also works. Yeah, kind of like a trophy wife that can also cook or a boy toy who can deliver as much in the bedroom as in the boardroom. The competition never quite gets it.

In retrospect nothing could have been more apropos for Apple's products as the half-bitten apple.

What these foibles have done is to make PC-hacks-by-default  like me pause before jumping head first in into the Kingdom of the Bitten Apple. The road to Steve Job’s castle is  lined with caveat emptor signs  which do not necessarily diminish his, and Apple’s mercurial legacy.  It just makes  fence-sitters take pause and consider straddling the divide for much longer. I doubt that I am alone in wanting to  denounce the droll commercialism of Redmond, and come into the kingdom of the faithful with head bowed and eyes averted. But there is probably something fundamentally wrong with this consumerism-as-religion kind of thing.

copyright© 2009 cyberaxis.wordpress.com

Appendix:

Four things you need to know about Apple by Mike Elgan

And the best die young: The short life and death of Selena Quintanilla-Perez

Shooting Star ..... One to the Universe: The late Selena Quintanilla-Perez April 16, 1971 - March 31, 1995. The symbolism in this pic is stunning "Como La Flor".

March remains the cruelest of all months;  and the 31st,  the day time stood still  in a space so surreal it deserves its own  time-line.

Flashback reminiscent of November 22, 1963:  It’s  a little after 1.05pm and the news that would rock Corpus Christi and the world begins to fan out of  Memorial Medical Center:  Selena Quintanella-Perez, the celebrated  Queen of Tejano has just died after being shot by  the former president of her fan club.  Incongruity: Selena the most loving person in the world had just died following the most hate-filled encounter. The collective mind could not wrap itself around this. It still cannot.

And so it has been with this tragedy, that the majority of us  have been  condemned to start the story of Selena at the end with a casket,  instead of  the irrepressible little girl who would transfix the world with her song.

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“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.”
— Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)

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To be clear, Selena,  was a star, long before mainstream America and the world discovered her. By the time  Selena’s  cross-over opus,  “Dreaming of You”, was released posthumously on 7/18/95,  she already had about eight successful albums under her belt.  However it was this posthumous album, a cross-over masterpiece, that show-cased the seminal brilliance and precociousness of  the fallen chanteuse. But as Newsweek’s Joshua Alston astutely points out, the “cross-over” characterization was a bit provincial and misleading because Selena had already crossed-over into Mexico with her Tejano Music – a spruced up version of Conjunto music.

Listening to the album  “Dreaming of you” is absolutely heartbreaking. The lilting single “I Could Fall In Love With You“ belongs in the hall of fame of timeless pop classics. It’s beat, sinuous and insistent beneath the airy vocal and layered instrumentation, propels the song like the muscles of a python. Play it on a long Sunday drive and you will find it  is perfectly capable of imprinting itself on the mind like a subdurally engraved tattoo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTMESWDWMA&eurl

Selena’s cover of the old Mariachi torch song “Tu Solo Tu” on this album completes the circuit that made her spark as an artist.  If “Tu Solo Tu” represents the roots of Selena’s music, then “I could fall in love with you” represents the branches that came out of the trunk of Tejano Music;  a genre that numbers her as one of its pioneers.  I cannot listen to  “Tu Solo Tu“, which means “You Only You” without getting chills. It’s  vibe is as ancient as the rivers that course ‘neath the Texas landmass. And Selena’s voice absolutely electrifies this old classic.  If I was a dowser, this is where my rod would go absolutely nuts because here, ‘neath this very spot are the nether wells that gave Selena’s sound its power and magic.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters
Of Life’s longing for itself.”
(The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran)

The one genre we wish Selena could have tackled by way of further tribute to the past would have been the sweet music of the  trios as in “La Bella Epoca De Los Trios”. This is the old music in the tradition of Los Tres Reyes, Los Panchos, Trio Les Tres Ases and Trio Los Tres Diamantes. Her sultry voice in combination with low-fi acoustic instrumentation would have been amazing. But we digress.

While “Dreaming of You” gave more than subtle hints of Selena’s musical precocity when it came to her astounding grasp of the Anglo-American pop genres, her discography proves how genuinely bilingual she was as an artist. The latter is no mean feat because not every artist pulls it off with critical and commercial success. “I Could Fall In Love With You” is as authentic as any of her Mariachi torch songs. The power of her Spanish songs came from the old part of her soul. The newer stuff was the musical equivalent of fusion cuisine. And it brimmed with everything she had ingested as a kid from Cumbia, Mariachi and Rancheras to pop, RB and reggae. Her father says she immersed herself in everything.

“Como La Flor”  and other reggae inflected tunes  (without the DJ chant) prefigured the Latin preoccupation with reggae dancehall that would spawn Reggaeton; a commercially vibrant genre that would take the Latin music scene by storm by the turn of the millenium.

Not a Sparrow Falls to the Ground: Noone grieves alone when it comes to the untimely death of this princess.  This Queen. But what is it that makes the death of Selena so deep and so wrenching even for people who knew her only tangentially through her music? Hold that question, because the answer is as rooted in the person of Selena as the roots of that proverbial tree are rooted in the earth.

“You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
(Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)

Como La Flor: Selena was an undeniable beauty in a sub-culture equally beholden to beauty. But her beauty was not of the skin-deep, porcelain variety. Au contraire it was firmly rooted in the earthy sensibility of the girl next door with the dazzling smile. Physically,  her beauty had the hint  of every-woman from the  Spanish Mami to the Afro-Asiatic ingenue. (Yes, there was more than a hint of the Thai vixen in her sumptuous  features.) She held a coveted spot in the emerging pantheon of beauty celebrated bybeauties as diverse as Aishwarya Rai and Angelina Jolie. She personified a convergence point on Professor Northrop’s  undifferentiated esthetic continuum;  all while being the uber curvaceous  bombshell with a heart of gold. Herein may be the eternal pinch: The story of the shooting star who remained as approachable as the girl next door.

“They are the sons and daughters
Of Life’s longing for itself.”
(Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)

“Talent, raw undeniable talent”
(Before the Music Dies)

Selena personified the talent celebrated in the the documentary “Talent, raw undeniable talent”. She was the real thing from day one. Says Latin music critic, Enrique Fernandez: “This was not some sexy babe groomed by a record company.” Fernandez was being interviewed by People Magazine’s Bill Hewitt for the article “Before Her Time,” – a title which spoke as much of her musical  precocity as of her untimely passing. Bill Hewitt, says when Selena first sang at age six, her father immediately knew what he had; a voice that was endowed with perfect pitch and timing. Although lacking the five octave range of say a Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston, it had something their  voices didn’t have; a malty texture with contralto stylings that have minted many a star.  Norah Jones has it. Sarah Vaughn had it by the silly buckets.   Listen to “Tu Solo Tu” for a  good measure of this.  Like Jones’ and Vaughn’s,  Selena’s voice was infused with an acousticity that gave it an irresistible allure.

Grief Most Unbearable
(The aftermath of Selena’s passing)

Yolanda Saldivar: The subject of Yolanda Saldivar will, in time, be dealt with not because of some prurient interest in tragedy or infamy. No, the subject of Saldivar will be dealth with because, as the makers of the movie Selena explained to her father Abraham Quintanilla, the story of Selena would never be complete without at least a cursory look at the woman who pulled the trigger at the Days Inn on Navigation Blvd.  Yolanda Saldivar, at the very least, deserves the forensic treatment of a criminal who got caught up in the events of March 31st.

The task is fraught with danger similar to the scientist who becomes overly obsessed with his subject or the exorcist who becomes tormented by the very demons he is trying to exorcise.  And hovering above this risky enterprise is the real danger of glorifying that which deserves neither glorification nor renown. The zone of forensic treatment exists with within narrow compass.  I feel up to the challenge. Refusing to write about Yolanda Saldivar would amount to affirmation by omission. And giving her more attention than she deserves would play into the disease that led Selena’s death, not to mention  attenuating the 30 year sentence of a woman who no longer has a life except what she tries to suck through the long proboscis of a  parasite. As strange synchronicity would have it Yolanda Saldivar will be eligible for parole on April  Fools Day in 2025. Fortunately by then the trauma and memory of Selena would have attenuated somewhat. Be that as it may, there will always be elements of the press and gawky public that will follow her and perhaps inadvertently shower her with attention she does not deserve. That fact of life is just as true on accident-prone freeways as in the hyper-mediated space we live in.

Yolandar Saldivar, who is currently imprisoned in Mountain View unit at Gatesville, has filed several appeals against her conviction alleging errors in her trial process. She now represents in such legal proceedings.

Please Note: I will post more on the life and death of Selena as time allows. Meanwhile, please read  the “verisimilitudinal” account by Nick Joe Patoski; a most appropos read, with each anniversary of  Selena’s death. And while you are at it, check out  “Selena – Como La Flor” by the same author.

A school room video tutorial on Tejano Music by yours truly: Here is video primer on Tejano Music priced more for its documentary value and the way it “unvarnishedly” (coinage ours) projected the unpretentious star than historical exhaustiveness. THIS, my friends is the Selena Corpus Christi and the whole world came to love.

She was a flower. She was a song.

Here: A gritty,  kitchen table tribute: As I was researching material for this post, I came across Michelle Rukny’s  acapella rendition of “Tu Solo Tu“ by Selena on Youtube.  A-mazing. Electrifying is all I can say. Unfortunately the clip doesn’t play all the way through:

P. S. – The Selena Quintanilla Perplex: There is a rip-tide of emotion surrounding the death of Selena that is quite quite stunning in its breadth and depth. Fourteen years after her passing, the  grief keeps flowing as if from a bottomless well. The memorials keep growing.  The the blogs and forum postings have been very instructive.

Interesting note: Some of the teens who grieve Selena’s death today were not even born when she was shot and killed. The remainder were toddlers. It’s as if the grief has been passed on via an imprinting process across generations;  the imprinting of the tragedy that occured on March 31st 1995. On this massive  scale the phenomenon can only described and grasped in terms of what happens when someone in the family dies.  Yes, Selena was family; family as much to her flesh and blood as to the people  she did not even know. For me personally, the Corpus Christi newscast and video of her funeral linked to this post is just too difficult to watch. So I skip it most of the time.

A non-descript ad photo, now associated with an unspeakable tragedy. The Day's Inn at 901 Navigation Blvd., Corpus Christi, TX. This gauche image now has something in common with the most haunting place in down-town Dallas. (See semi-panoramic of Dealey Plaza below)

The reaction to this blog posting has been equally instructive. I will not go into the  statistical details, suffice it to say that they have consistently trounced those of posts I thought would garner more interest by virtue of the their more current newsworthiness. (You can see evidence of the post’s ascendancy in the order of interest under “Top Posts” on the cyberaxis.wordpress.com home page here).  While other posts experience occasional weekly surges, the Selena post remains a perennial favorite with the most page-views overall. It remains on the top of the list during most weeks, with astronomic surges in March and April. What a turn for a post which came together off the cuff in a Starbucks coffee shop late one Sunday afternoon.

I am thinking of visiting Corpus Christi sometime in the near future to vibe out the place Selena called home and the  Days Inn at 901 N. Navigation Blvd (Room 158) where she took her last steps.  I have been to Dealey Plaza folks and  know what tragedies of this magnitude can do to the energy of a place.) I will post reports  here, if and when that happens.

The most haunted place in all of Dallas: Dealey Plaza on a deceptively sunny day. Anyone who thinks that tragedy, historical or otherwise does not warp the energy of a place ought to visit Dealey Plaza ... or to talk to an empath.

Appendices:

An Unsung Ode to Selena Quintanilla-Perez (1971 – 1995)

My Story (A heartfelt story by a latter-day fan)

copyright© 2009 cyberaxis.wordpress.com

Caveat: This article is a work-in-progress.  So changes and additions are gonna be made on the fly. So keep checking back, and don’t be dismayed if what you read before has been replaced by something else. It’s the nature of the process.

The problem with Chris Brown is that he ain’t Gangsta …

…(Or Gangsta enuf) coz if he wuz,  he would  go to jail without a whisp or whimper, and come out mo’ Gangsta than 50. (Whateva that means.)  Which goes to show you that  in sho’ biz as in Revenge of the Looney Tunes,  milk and bubble-gum fairies can come back an’ bite a brother  in the AZZ.

No Longer Clean-cut Chris Brown: The price of milk and a stick of (double-mint) gum ...... Real "spensive". Real "spensive".

Chris Brown & Rehanna Fight: The cat’s out the bag, and it sho ain’t pretty

Chris Brown in court today with Mark Geragos, whom I wouldn't hire to defend a parking ticket.

The new news out of Los Angeles today:  Yes, yo boi Chris Brown did it. And he did it  to a woman curiously named Robyn F. (Rihanna’s full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty.) According to an affidavit by a detective, the Michael Jacksonesque star pummeled this poor woman until  her mouth filled with blood. Yikes!

The lowdown from a Yahoo News/Associated Press article:

“According to a detective’s affidavit, Brown and Rihanna got into a fight early Feb. 8 after she checked her boyfriend’s cell phone and found a text message from another woman.

Brown pulled his car over and tried to push Rihanna out, but she was still wearing her seatbelt, Los Angeles police Detective De Shon Andrews wrote. Brown pushed Rihanna’s head against the window, punched her with his right hand, and then continued driving while hitting her, the affidavit states. He also bit his girlfriend on the ear, the affidavit states.

The affidavit was filed as part of a search warrant request for the phone records of Brown, Rihanna and her assistant.

Brown allegedly threatened to kill Rihanna after she pretended to leave a phone message with her assistant, telling her to have the police waiting at her house.

Andrews described Brown’s blows as causing Rihanna’s mouth to fill with blood. He also writes that Brown tried to choke Rihanna after she took the keys to his car away. Andrews wrote that Rihanna nearly lost consciousness but also tried to fight back while in the car, at one point trying to gouge at Brown’s eyes.

Brown was arrested hours later and booked him on suspicion of making criminal threats. Her identity has been an open secret since the alleged attack; police have never publicly released her name, but numerous news outlets have reported her identity based on anonymous sources.” (Derrik J. Lang, “Chris Brown Appears In Court On Felony Charges“ with reports from Linda Deutsch, Associated Press Special Correspondent)

The E-Online version of this story doesn’t mince words. So from  every angle,  it would appear that Chris Brown is in deeper doo-doo than a New England dairy farmer. That chokin’ and bitin’ stuff ain’t gonna help him, but I am sure, Mark Geragos will “splain” it away the way lawyers usually  do. However I doubt that he will pull a Johnny Corcoran anytime too soon. (“If the fist doesn’t fit …..”)  The said Robyn F. didn’t help things by appearing to call for the boys in blue;  a guaranteed way to make a wee  gangsta (doo-rag or no doo-rag) see red.  But, given what he had to lose, Chris should have ground his teeth and sucked it in till he dropped off her azz off instead of trying to go mano-a-mano with a 5′ 7″ pixie.  I guess the mixture of youth, ego, alcohol, adrenaline and god knows what else, just proved too much for the kids in the rented Lambo.

The charge of two felonies — assault likely to cause bodily injury and making criminal threats  (which carry  a possible four year sentence in the  state pen)  is the last thing the Second Coming of Michael Jackson wants right now. Getting back the girl ain’t gonna be enough to get ‘im back where he was. A boi’s gotta have his marbles, but those, like John Silver,  look like they are LONG  gone.

(Vignette: The Problem of Chris Brown …. )

Joy Behar for President: She has balls bigger and hairier than Bill O’Reilly’s.

Case in point: This Youtube clip of  “The View” featuring the self-consciously obstreperous Bill O’Reilly.  Watch how Joy Behar never loses her cool and  zings him well from a bad position;  i.e. sideways and inches from a writhing mess of a man trying take  physical and mental control of the space.

For the record, Bill O’Reilly  is a light-weight talking head who has “tabloidized”  socio-political commentary in the post Fair Doctrine age of Limbaugh.