0 0 0_ sp Wen sday," - 208 :aly S I 6 Te icign .aiy W dn sday .Otobr S, 00 ; . eF. e .. ' ' ' l ABOUT CAMPUS WI ' I1 QUOTES OF THE WEEK " They're not going to shoot us. It's not Iraq." - TED STEVENS, a senator from Alaska, in a secretly recorded phone call with millionaire Alaska oil magnate Bill Allen, in which Stevens tried to downplay the consequences of being found guilty in a corruption investigation. Ste- vens is on trial involving felony charges claim- ing that he intentionally failed to disclose gifts and services from Allen worth $250,000 "If men are horny, they're going to come in here." - DYLAN, a 24-year-old prostitute based in Manhattan, explaining that she hasn't experi- enced a significant decline in business, despite the fact that many of her Wall Street patrons have been hit hard by the plummeting economy. Dylan works for Madam Sadie's, which has two prostitution dens north of Wall Street and charges $260 for a 60 minute service I I x - , MEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN OQUIST Adult Swim's convuluted ad ploy Why inside jokes and marketing don't always mix Among the many multicolored fliers passed out to students last week, one would have definitely sparked the curiosity of a recipient who bothered to read it. "Adult Swim presents the Wil- liams Street County Fair and Expo featuring the Experienced Clairvoy- ant Cat, some balloons, free t-shirts. Plus go fishing!" read the advertise- ment in Old-West style type. A few questions might come to mind: What local organization got William Street wrong? What's the deal with this psychic cat? And if they want me to go see this cat, why wouldn't they put a time and place on the event flier? "A little confusing, I would say," said LSA senior Young-Jin Cho when shown the advertisement. "The minute I looked at it I was like, 'What's going on here?!' " While left unexplained by the flier, Adult Swim is the late-night, adult-oriented programming on Cartoon Network. The channel is evidently on a marketing tour to promote its shows, following the direction on the flier to visit www. adultswimpresents.com reveals that the network is holding "Wil- liams Street" fairs on 15 college campuses. It kicked offthe tour Oct.10 with a visit to the Diag, but you would only know to go by visiting the web site and fighting through larger, bright- er, cat-sound-making version of the flier to find the tour dates schedule. And even then, you wouldn't have found a time. Sowhat'sthe pointofanextensive marketing campaign that obscures the thing it's advertising? Mitch Thompson, a manager at the London-based Iris Marketing firm that organized the fair, said that the absurdity of its advertising campaigns goes hand-in-hand with Adult Swim's implicit mission state- ment: to make no sense. "That's kind of what they're going with,"said Thompson, whose favor- ite Adult Swim cartoon is "Robot Chicken." "Not really to confuse people, but to give them curiosity." The nebulous fair is scheduled to hit Boston today - despite the chaos Adult Swim created last February with another advertising ploy for the movie version of the network's show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Boston transportation authori- ties shut down major roadways and subway lines when citizens feared that terrorists were responsible for 38 small TV screens that brightly flashed from storefronts, beneath bridges and outside parks all over the city. Adult Swim had planted the screens the night before as part of their guerrilla marketing campaign. The BostonPolice investigationonly caught on when one of the screens was moved into a darker area, mak- ing its image discernable. "Sometime between 2 and 3 p.m., according to a public safety official, a Boston police analyst recognized the image as a cartoon character," the Boston Globe reported. Cartoon Network's parent com- pany, Turner Broadcasting System, publicly apologized about two hours later. TBS said that the devices were "horribly misinterpreted" and that their unintended aftermath was "not the kind of publicity we would ever seek." They paid $2 million in damages to city and state agencies in Massa- chusetts, and the incognito flashing screens were seen no more. Despite past gaffes, it seems Adult Swim is sticking to its ambig- uous . random-acts-of-advertising approach. But while devoted fans love the stunts and inside jokes, a marketing ploy that alienates people who don't watch the show might be counter-productive. ** * * * AND i _ r FE AT URING SAME BALLOONS FLEIUS GO FIST IN G! 0o ONwww.an.TowwaPaff T Yco1 ro*eons*fo reach. Joe Pak, an LSA senior and Adult Swim fan, said he hadbeen looking forward to the event after hearing about it online. "I planned it out and everything," Pak said, juggling a Jimmy John's sandwich and an inflatable likeness of Stewey, the cynical talking baby from "The Family Guy." Iris Marketing Production Man- ager Valerie Peron said that Adult Swim hoped to entertain everyone, whether or not they understood the inside jokes. "Maybe you would look at Tim and Eric's photo booth and not understand why Tim and Eric have their own show," she said, pointing to a photo booth adorned with the faces of two boring-looking, middle- class white men. "But we try to get students to tune into Adult Swim and have a good time here." There's at least one thing the campaign took from traditional marketing strategy: give away free stuffand they will come, at least for a second on their way through the Diag. Peron said that more than 4,000 prizes and 1,000 custom-printed T-shirts were given away at the fair on Friday. And they went over well, from the white ribbons reading "I Milked it at the Williams Street County Fair" to the pens, post card and books stuffed into a giant fake log deemed "Xavier's Tree of Infi- nite Possibilities". Reaching insifde one of the log's small knots, students were prod- ded by workers hiding behind the log who guided their hands to priz- es, like the yellow sticker with an alien brandishing a laser gun, read- ing "ELIMINATE BIG THINGS FAST!" Amid the confusion, though, LSA freshman Mary Emma Young could sumup the event and the channel its advertising easily. "Borderline vulgar," she said. "And that's a good thing." - SARA LYNNE THELEN TALKING POINTS Three things you can talk about this w 1. Andy Martin 2. Gay marriage in Connecticut 3. Google's Mail Goggles And three things you can't: 1. ACORN 2. The Dow 3. The University of Toledo week: "I'm convinced that Magic faked AIDS." - LANGDON PERRY, host of a conservative radio show on KTLK in Minneapolis, Minn., explain- ing his belief that former NBA star Magic Johnson faked having AIDS to arouse public sympathy for himself. In response, Johnson assailed Perry and his co-host, Chris Baker, for undermining the gravity of the disease, but said they shouldn't be fired for their remarks YOU T U B E _. . ... VIDEO OF THE WEEK The "rogue helicopter pilot" threat Art and Design senior Eileen Tjan was immediately in on the joke when a friend called her to say there was a giant meatball on the Diag. "I got a phone call and she was like, 'there's agiant Meat Wad on the Diag,' " Tjan said. "And I was like, 'I love "Aqua Teen Hunger Force!"' " The inflatable Meat Wad, a char- acter from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," was circular and about the size of a 3-car garage. It was filled with claw machines and arcade games. There was also a dart stand with bags of goldfish pinned to the bullseyes, a "heavy petting zoo" ADULT SWIM EVENT FLIER featuring a man in a dingy, easter- esque white bunny suit, and 1,500 miscellaneous prizes in a wooden carriage enclosed by chicken wire, 'manned' by a child-sized teddy bear and 'pulled' by three stuffed cats who were tied to the carriage with nylon rope. The much-hyped clairvoyant cat was just a guy in a suit, and turned out to be another inside joke from the programming. All oftthe attendants interviewed for this article were already Adult Swim devotees, which again begs the question of how many new viewers the campaign was going to BY THE NUMBERS David Thompson knows there's a threat facing his North Carolina town. And this threat is apparently a "rogue helicopter pilot"... and about 30 other unjustified problems.d Standingin front ofthe city council in Charlotte, N.C., Thompson rattles off a disconnected tale claiming that not only is there a dangerous helicop- ter pilot who flies way too low over his house and between the trees, but also some sort of problem involving some- S thing called "bundling," that loosely connects to someone not allowing ice to be placed into a local arena.And Thompson isn't going to take it any- more, claiming he's "been ready to explode like Mount St. Helens." Boy is he ever, as he shakes the podium and jostles the microphone so much that a councilman even warns Mr. Thompson about a group of Boy Scouts in the audience who might be getting scared. from Texas, But tuck it, Thompson knows astronauts that problems like rogue helicopter pilots and national security are more important than anything else in this world. Thompson ends his testimony by screaming at the pilot, wherever he might be, "You're nothing but a cha- meleon, lemonheaded, coward, ter- rorist pussy." arth on And that's a problem no one should have to deal with. -MATT EMERY See this and other YouTube videos ofthe week at youtube.com/user/michigandaily ing mark, made Source: Reuters r Amount that Richard Garriott, a video game developer paid to fly into space on a Russian rocket with two other; Days Garriott will spend in space. He will return to E an aircraft called a Soyuz re-entering vehicle Miles by which the last Soyuz vehicle missed its land after explosive bolts didn't detonate and the craftr a "ballistic" landing THEME PARTY SUGGESTION Fall break escape - Get in a car and go. Flee the Ann Arbor bubble and expand your cultural and geographical horizons. Visit a jazz nightclub in Detroit. Go fishing off the coast of a Great Lake. Drive to Chicago and eat varenyky in Ukrainian Vil- lage. You could even travel to New York City and commiserate with the downtrodden businessmen on Wall Street. Unless, of course, you have an exam right after break. You do? Bummer. Throwing this party? Let us know. TheStatement@umich.edu STUDY OF THE WEEK Gay marriage flourishes in California before vote Since the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, 3,800 gay couples are marrying each month in the state, according to a study released last week by the Williams Institute at UCLA. On Nov. 4, Californiavoterswill decide the tate ofgay marriage when they vote on Proposition 8. If passed, the measure would overturn the court's decision and reinstate the ban on same-sex marriage. For the study, researchers examined the three-month period from when same-sex marriages began, in the middle of June, to Sept. 17. In those months, 11,440 gay couples got married in California, research- ers said. They also said that, during the period, California had more gay marriages than Massachusetts did in four years. Since gay marriage was legalized there in 2004,10,300 couples have married in Massachusetts. In explaining the boom in marriages, researchers cited not only the looming Prop. 8 vote, but also California's substantial gay population and its sizeable tourism industry. - BRIAN TENGEL WHAT'S YOUR PERSONAL STATEMENT? E-mail submissions to TheStatement@michigandaily.com.