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I have no real feeing about Michelle Branch one way or the other. But the annoying way that AOL is promoting her really pisses me off. In new TV ads for AOL, all the cool teens are shown IM-ing each other with lines like "Did you hear the new Michelle Branch song" and "Yeah, that Michelle Branch song is totally cool". In another scene the monitor shows the browser loading a page featuring Branch. Anyone with half a brain (or less in some cases) an put two and two together and figure out that Branch is somehow tied in with the giant AOL Time Warner conglomerate. And sure enough, Branch is signed under Warner Music Group (WMG) a "branch" (ha ha, joke get it? Shut up) of AOL. In fact, before Branch's album was released, AOL users could download her song for free. Sales figures show that the best week for the album in traditional music stores coincided with the week she had maximum exposure on AOl. All before she got radio airplay. I'm all for capitalism - if you've got the money to buy everything is sight, go ahead. But at the same time I am irked by the power over the arts that is wielded by corporate America. The saddest thing is that the power is given to these companies, not by the fact that they own all the toys, but by the lazy consumer who just lies (lays? I never get it right) back and lets "the lastest thing" get forced down their throat. I mean, AOL itself is the lazy person's way onto the Internet.
Interesting note regarding Michelle Branch and her internet presence. There is www.michellebranch.com that mainly promotes her latest album. And there is also www.michellebranch.net which is more of an artist's site. Both of them seem to be run by Maverick Records. In an even odder twist michellebranch.us, michellebranch.tv and michellebranch.biz are all owned by a guy named Matt Wales. On these sites, he professes that when he heard Branch's voice, "it made [him] cry." And he wrote her a song called "I Love You". Continuing to click through the site(s) you get the chance to read the lyrics and listen to "I Love You". Way down at the bottom of the page is a link that reads "CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS CD NOW • BE THE FIRST
I STILL HAVE NOT SOLD A SINGLE COPY. HOW SAD." How sad indeed.
Speaking of AOL, I have both my sons trained to say "Boo AOL, Boo!" everytime an AOL commercial comes on TV. At first Jake was a little confused because he thought I liked the Internet and that AOL says they are the fastest way to the Internet. I told him that AOL was lying. That anything connected to AOL cannot be considered the Internet. Sure, maybe I'm brainwashing my kids, but c'mon. It's AOL.
Jake is going to start 1st grade next week. He's a little wary of what's going to happen to him. Think about it. Do you remember having to get on a bus full of kids you don't know? Then going to a school "on your own" for the first time? Jake is an interesting kid, I know he's strong enough to handle the situation. But whether he actually will handle it well is still up in the air. We're giving him all the support and positive reinforcement that we can, but it still will come down to him taking those first steps down the aisle of that bus on his own.
I am once again left behind in the frenzy of American TV watching. I didn't watch Survivor. I don't watch Friends. And now I am not watching American Idol. I'm just not cool enough to latch on with the rest of the American psyche. Everyone talks about it on the radio. Everyone writes about it on the Internet. But it just looks soooo stuuuuuupid to me. What can I say? I DID watch all of 24 if that makes any difference to you though.
Speaking of watching TV, now that we have two DVD players in the house (which isn't entirely accurate - my laptop AND my desktop computers can play DVDs. But I mean players hooked up to actual TVs) I am in the middle of two seperate movies at the same time. And they couldn't be more different. Downstairs, I'm about an hour into Wet Hot American Summer . And upstairs, I'm about an hour and a half into The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Sooooo yeah. Those are my tastes. At the same time.
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