February was created solely so that weird things could happen during it. The 28 or 29 days — who can ever remember? — are an omen. Consider this: Putin threatened to aim missiles at the Ukraine this week. Would that happen in a real month? No. A song that only dogs could hear made it to No.1 on human music charts in New Zealand. This month is cursed, so wind down at a vegan strip club while licking an ad and listening to some soothing German music about butts.
Strip club owner objects to exploitation
“What is Casa Diablo Gentlemen’s Club all about? It’s about dispelling the myths and lies that permeates human existence. It’s about grabbing God by the balls and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not taking anymore of your shit, asshole!’” wrote Johnny Diablo, the owner of the strip club, on his MySpace blog. Apparently, emotion so filled him that it displaced all of the grammar and spelling he’s ever been taught.
The recently opened Casa Diablo Gentlemen’s Club is also the world’s first and only vegan strip club. All food served is cruelty-free without advertising the fact, and the dancers aren’t allowed to wear leather, fur, silk or wool. While Diablo does try to convert his dancers by offering them free vegan food, carnivores are welcome both to dance and to spend their cash at the club.
The menu is purposely deceptive, with items listed like “Fajita Platter” and underneath, “choose steak or chicken.” But it’s just a friendly joke on meat eaters who are then served gluten-free, wheat-based soy (and you know that when a food takes two hyphens, it’s got to be doubly delicious).
The vegan atmosphere works well for one vegetarian dancer who said, “I would eat a steak and then have nightmares about being sliced up and burned.” I’m imagining knife-wielding cows taking their revenge on meat eaters.
Diablo tried opening a vegan restaurant but it went out of business in December because, according to him, most vegans live at the poverty level or below. This may be the one establishment where Germans singing about butts wouldn’t be ironic.
Fingers and butts cause diplomacy row
“Go Home, You Old Shit” and “10 Naked Hairdressers” were the hits that gave the German entertainer Mickie Krause his shot at fame and fortune. But his newest song has gone beyond stirring up confusion and disgust and has in fact launched a cross-Atlantic diplomacy row. The Mexican ambassador to Germany has objected to Krause’s newest, called “Finger in the butt, Mexico” (in German, it rhymes!).
Ambassador Jorge Castro-Valle Kuehne has been using his diplomatic legitimacy to clear up for the world that Mexicans living in Germany don’t like anyone to stick anything up their butt.
“As I’m sure you can understand, the lyric has aroused great outrage among the members of the Mexican community living in Germany, who have a right to be angry that Mexico’s name is being used in this kind of disrespectful and disgusting way,” he wrote in a letter to the record company that put out the song.
I thought techno was already all of the incontrovertible proof we need that all Germans have no taste in music. But the good, upright citizens of Germany have taken pity upon “Finger in the butt, Mexico” and given it shelter by sitting it on the top of charts for 10 weeks now.
But Krause isn’t repentant. He told Bild, a German daily, that “On stage, I also sing the lyric ‘Finger in the vagina, Bosnia-Herzegovina.’ And nobody has gotten worked up about that.” The people of Bosnia-Herzegovina could not be reached for comment on their views about fingers and where they belong.
Advertising goes to the tongues
Get to your doctor’s appointment too late next time and you might not get to lick your favorite magazine. Delivering advertisements through all of the other senses is apparently not a risky enough move, with the current state of the global economy and all. Companies now want consumers to put tongue to paper in living rooms, airplanes, and waiting rooms around the country.
Welch’s is advertising its grape juice using technology developed by First Flavor in an ad campaign running in People magazine next month. There will be little strips for readers to peel off, and licking them will give a taste of grape juice and potentially an infinite number of germs or diseases. The scientists at First Flavor explain that sometimes “the essence” of the product is used, but other times it’s just a mix of “unrelated flavors, both natural and artificial.”
Fortunately, Welch’s marketing department isn’t in deep denial about the efficacy of its strategy that one would expect from people advocating lickable ads. “A lot of people won’t lick a magazine no matter how good it tastes,” said Chris Heye, Welch’s marketing chief, in The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s difficult for the consumer to get the feeling that they are tasting the product,” the chief executive of First Flavor said in The Wall Street Journal, inexplicably being honest about his own company’s product. No word yet on whether the ads are vegan though, which is a shame because they seem like the type of people who’d be into tasting weird crap like this.