I love Batman and I love pizza. These two facts alone should ensure my complete and absolute adoration of the new Domino’s/Dark Knight advertising tie-in. I could go on at length about my dedication to all things Batman but I fear it would reveal far too much about my twisted (and slightly sad) internal life. All you really need to know is that for me Batman makes that red-caped boob Superman look like an alien-enhanced choirboy who never met a social convention he couldn’t observe. Batman deals in a tortured world where he constantly fights his almost innate urge to do evil in the service of good. He ain’t called the Dark Knight for nothing.

Anyway as Batman’s latest gets set to unspool at a theatre near you the various advertising tie-ins have reached full-bloom. They are running at a fever pitch in their specific attempts to wring some serious bucks out of their collective sponsorship of the film. It boggles the mind when you consider just how many companies actually have a stake in the success of this movie: General Mills, Nokia, Hershey, Comcast, Microsoft's Xbox, the California Milk Processor Board, Giorgio Armani and Domino’s Pizza. And if I had to guess which brand would screw up its sponsorship the worst I never would have picked the pizza dudes.

Please know that I am sympathetic to the horrific curve ball thrown the marketers with the death of Heath Ledger. Most firms in general are famously skittish so to keep on course when one of the main stars is no more was no small thing, though I do tend to think it was more a case of the massive ship of promotion having already launched. There really was no going back.

Anyway, Domino’s has offered up a massive contest/campaign where they give away money, sell black-boxed, Gotham branded pizzas and offer various online codes to unlock secret trailers and Dark Knight tie-in kind of stuff. The TV part of this campaign is what got me. In the ad a female Domino’s delivery driver is navigating the dark streets of Gotham in her humble little car as a gang of crazies attempts to attack, run her of the road and disable her car in an incredibly dedicated attempt at stealing the pizza she has been entrusted to deliver. Through the dimly lit, and gothically frightening, attack the young lady seems remarkably poised as she appears to deal with it in stride. Even as the door of her car is ripped off by a steel harpoon she simply makes sure the pizza beside her is safe as she continues on her way.

Finally arriving at her destination she rings the bell only to have two of the Joker’s henchman answer the door wearing the freakiest masks you ever seen. My butt cheeks tensed when they opened the door but she seemed as calm as ever. She delivers the pie and then says with a slight edge “Tell the Joker he owes me a car.” Holy pizza pie Batman, where do I even start?

Okay first of all, Batman is not real, nor is Gotham and certainly not the Joker. This is fairly integral information because Domino’s is a real business. So here we are bringing a real business selling real food into a fake world where a collection of lunatics are blowing up and terrorizing a city and our happy pizza delivery girl seems inured to it. If she was really living in Gotham City there’s no way in hell she’d be driving over to the Joker’s place. I mean come on would the Joker’s henchmen pay for anything, especially pizza when they could just shoot her in the face and take the grub instead? They’re nuts! You can’t trust them. And what kind of relationship does she have with Joker anyway that he would replace her car –or that she would even dare ask? Way too fishy even without the anchovies.

On the other hand I can’t argue for the tie-in to be more reality based because then I have to face the hard truth of Ledger’s death as she drops off a pie at his place. Heath won’t be buying you anything honey – he’s dead. And reminding me of this real-world tragedy just drained the appetite from my body. No small thing when pizza is at issue.

Also, am I to assume Domino’s has suspended all hiring during this campaign? They must have because they appear to be sending the message that send innocent drivers to deliver pizzas in dark alleys to psychotic killers. Should this idea really be anywhere near their brand identity? The whole image of that poor woman driving in an area like that scared the tar out of me. What are they doing?

“The Dark Knight” is not fun in a “Wayne’s World” kind of way. The movie is heavy and dark and real-seeming. Yes it’s escapist entertainment but there are bad people all over the place. Even the good people find themselves having to act bad (or at least consider it) just to survive. There is nothing light or sunny about it so why did Domino’s make an ad that tries to be so zippity-doo-da in the face of it?

Maybe some of the other advertisers can do a better job on their tie-ins but I gotta say so far it doesn’t look good. A Comcast ad for communication services tries to strike the same balance of dark and funny and just comes off as irretrievably stupid.

Domino’s claims the main reason they wanted in to “The Dark Knight” was that they share the movie’s 18-34 year old male demographic. Maybe so but I’d rather see pizza delivered to a lavish Wayne Manor party than some stinking hell hole full of fright-masked lunatics. I’d think the optics of that would be slightly more desirable, wouldn’t you?

As the blimp flew overhead proclaiming “The World Is Yours” Tony Montana already knew he had it all. He had the money, he had the power and he even had the women. That it took running a ruthless cocaine cartel and brutally murdering anyone who crossed him to acquire it just made things more interesting. All David Beckham had to do to eclipse the diminutive (and fictional) Cuban was kick a soccer ball better than everyone else. For him this singular skill has led to all the money, all the power and even all the women – though he did settle on uber-babe Posh Spice – in the world. That’s pretty impressive for a guy who didn’t have to bother with running around shooting off an M16 rifle with a grenade launcher to get it (though he did don a distinctly Montana-like white suit on more than one occasion).

The media (and those of us sucking daily at its engorged teat) went more or less insane as Team Beckham made the move to the USA. Breathless accounts of his superior fashion sense, his style, his metrosexual-ness and yes, even his soccer skills filled the papers as the transformative nature of his very presence on US soil was heralded like a second coming. Movie stars genuflected reverently while Psycho Tom and Stepford Katie became his official BFFs, throwing a Hollywood party that featured more derriere kissing than an Amsterdam bathhouse. Millions upon millions of dollars were earmarked for the man who could apparently bend it like no other and the entire world, including each and every single thing in it, was now truly his.

So could someone explain to me why the hell David Beckham can’t afford a friggen Sharpie of his own?

Sharpie markers is running an all-new ad campaign featuring the famous footballer signing autographs all over the place. He signs coffee cups, he signs magazines, shirts and whatever else is offered. Each time he signs with the Sharpie handed to him Beckham longingly lusts for the colorful ink delivery system resting in his hand. And each time he tries, unsuccessfully, to snitch whatever Sharpie is offered to him for signing. In each case the grateful autograph hounds turn annoyed or frustrated at the royal one’s attempts to steal their respective pens. Finally, Beckham signs a shirt for a woman and hides the orange sharpie she offered him behind his back. He raises his arms as if to say “What, I don’t have it.” Make no mistake though - the limey lifted it - and the poor woman can do nothing. The final scene shows our man David driving away in his hyper-expensive car (worth much more than my house I am sure) with his ill-gotten Sharpie now dangling from the mirror. David smiles happily as he now, finally, has everything he could ever wish for.

I get it okay. I get the whole “Mr. I have every single thing a human man could ever dream of” Beckham is so entranced by Sharpie and their super fantastic awesome pens that he will do anything get one. Now, while this is supposed to make me realize how awesome Sharpies are, thus making me want one for myself, all I can think about is why big shot Becks doesn’t spend some of his King Solomon-like hoard on a pack for himself. I mean c’mon, we’ve been treated non-stop to stories about how much money this man earns or is worth. $250 million bucks to play soccer, endorsement deals with seemingly every product known to man. Beckham literally has money dripping from every orifice in his body and I have to endure an ad where the rich sod kleptos a Sharpie for himself? It’s like they think we haven’t been paying attention or something.

Is it really a good sales technique to make your world famous pitchman come off looking like a cheap yutz? Armani has Zeppelin-sized billboards of Becks wearing nothing more than their exclusive ginch and sporting a package the size of the Capital Records building to boot. Now that’s something I can see myself wanting to identify with (far too much I’m sad to say) yet Sharpie thinks I’m going to buy a whack of markers ‘cause Beckham thinks they’re worth ripping off? At least if Tony Montana wanted to steal my Sharpie he’d have the courtesy to blow me away first. It would save me the trouble of wondering why the man who has everything needed my Sharpie too.

Everybody knows at least one of them. Silently, they walk among us, unidentified and invisible yet capable of being all-encompassing and smothering when they ply their trade. They are family, they are friends, they are the gal down the street with the lazy eye. They may even be you. Of course I am referring to the chronic forwarder, that odd, internet-obsessed creature who without detailed thought or even a subjectively valid reason feels obligated to forward every internet posted joke, picture, video, inspirational message or weird fact they find to their entire on-line address book. Baby with a leopard print fedora smoking a cigarette? – send it on, “Footprints” story about Jesus on the beach? - click and send, video of an African elephant sneezing and defecating on a tourist? – internet gold.

Sure they seem harmless. Like your buddy who talks incessantly, you effectively tune them out. You might scan their missives, smile or cringe and then delete the lot saying nothing. At least they care enough to forward, you reason. Well don’t look now but the advertising community is hip to their action (and has been for a long while). They know the chronic forwarder cannot help himself so they figured out a way to harness that unfocused energy and turn it into sales.

Bikini Zone has an online ad that has shown up in a ton of email boxes recently. It is the perfect forward: an ad that was done for the Japanese market that has inexplicably hit the net and now zooms around between folks lucky enough to see it. It is an obviously U.S. shot ad using a blond California girl but dubbed over with a Japanese voice for use in a faraway land. The joke is the translation of it and that is what really kills.
Everyone knows that ads shown in other countries are meant for them, not us so it is always fun to see an ad we weren’t supposed to see. In this seemingly bootlegged spot from Bikini Zone a radio is switched on, then a shower, just as a female hand grabs a hangered blue bikini. The voice over (in Japanese) begins while on-screen text translates it literally “The summer is starts so everyone to a beach. All girls must take a bikini and move there.” The pretty blond woman, now dressed in her blue bikini begins admiring herself in the mirror. “I will not listen to excuses!” the voice over continues before it audibly scratches to a stop while the camera pans down to her “bikini zone” showing what can only be described as one hairy mamajamma of a muskrat stuffed inside the triangle of her bikini bottom. It really looks disgusting. Shocked, bikini girl pulls her robe closed.

The voice over continues “Now she will do the useful things.” Bikini girl first wields a razor before painfully ripping some wax sheets off her just-below-camera nether regions. Then it gets cool. Bikini girl holds up a reciprocating saw before plunging it downward in her attempts to “trim the hedge” further. Then, more voice over, “With great courage (bikini girl now uses gardening shears, trimming like mad) and her vigilance will pay off.” By this point bikini girl is now wearing a welder’s mask and is using a blow torch to fight “the forest” as smoke floats up from the work area. Finally, she stands refreshed and the voice over declares success: “She is ready for victorious.” The poor girl then opens her robe only to see her entire upper leg and general bikini area looking like a junkie was using it for target practice with old needles. It looks awful, truly horrible. “No to that!” The she smiles for she sees the answer. “Ahh, Bikini Zone.” Now, bikini girl strides onto the beach and confidently drops her robe as the announcer calls out admiringly “WOW! That is one crotch for looking at!” The tag line closes the piece “Turn your war zone into a bikini zone.”

The ad plays just like it’s been cribbed from Japanese TV for all us sophisticates to watch and laugh at. “Oh those Japanese ads are so crazy, ha ha ha. We would never have an ad like that.” Except it’s not for them. It’s for us – exclusively. The ad is a manufactured piece designed to be traded around from one email box to another. There never was a Japanese ad, just this one masquerading as some great needle in the internet haystack begging to be found. It’s brilliant. I spent three days convinced I had come across something I wasn’t supposed to see. It was only after some digging that the true nature of the spot was revealed.

I have no problem with fake ads, or even ones that are designed to be distributed by the chronic forwarders among us but it is always slightly disappointing to know one cannot trust anything as being what it appears. I know ads have little to do with reality but is truth really so malleable these days as to be functionally non-existent?

I hope not. Though I guess if I want truth I could choose to focus on the point of the product featured in the spot. Bikini Zone is for taming the out-of-control rat’s nest located just below the equator and when you think about it that’s more than enough truth for me.

I never really acquired a taste for booze.

The hard stuff was too, well, hard and drinking beer just tasted like knocking back old style Listerine without any of the bacteria killing benefits. By this point if you have guessed that at this stage in my life I am likely the guy you see ordering girly drinks at the bar you would be correct. In my defense though girls’ drinks always taste way nicer than the “boy” drinks and they usually come in pretty colors set off with some friggen awesome libation-enhanced accessories (fruit! umbrellas! mini swords! glass-rim figurines!) I mean come on, how much more fun is drinking when theatrical presentation is part of the package? Anyway, as a necessary accommodation to my not yet totally submerged male sense of self I usually order soda water instead so I can at least look more like a recovering alcoholic than some nancy-boy who can’t man-up.

That said I have consumed way more than my share of alcohol over the years. Obviously, I never drank it for pleasure. In my case it was almost always a purpose driven event. When I drank it was to get drunk. I was shooting for maximum effect in minimum time. A quest for that special zone where every utterance is funny, every person is your friend and every girl might just take you home. I have since read that this method of imbibing is referred to as “binge drinking” or “heavy episodic drinking,” which to me sounds quite neatly clinical but way more pathetic than I imagined myself to be. I’m not stupid, I mean, everybody knows it’s not the healthiest, nor the safest way to go about living one’s life. The problem as I see it was that every now and again it worked.

You see over the years I hit the sweet spot more than a few times and in doing so had me some nights that I can now officially tick off as “legendary.” No small thing. Sure I had a disproportionate number of them end cradling the cool, white porcelain as I begged and pleaded whatever toilet god might pity one like me for an involuntary upchuck to end the horrific spinning. But these nights were never the goal – they were the failures. Eventually, I grew up and got with the program. Now, instead of drinking too much in search of fun I have resorted to eating too much in search of happiness. I’ll let you know how that one works out for me.

As far as binge drinking goes one region has emerged as something of a champ in the category. In the UK binge drinking has built into so much of a problem that it is actually something candidates for political office are required to have an opinion on (“Of course I am against binge drinking unless it is done in moderation.”) There are even TV ads created to send a message that enough is enough.

One such ad from the UK’s home office makes use of the fashion world to drive their point home. The ad starts off with the typical stark white runway as the pounding music begins. A slim, sexy model begins her prance down the runway only to stop halfway, hike up her way-too-tight skirt before squatting to dribble a pee in the middle of the runway. They even show the liquid hit the floor (ewww!) Then, she matter of fact-ly stands up, re-adjusts and struts right back out again.

The next girl glides in with her pouty face on only to show off her little black cocktail dress by spewing vomit across the stage. The crowd gasps even louder this time but her sulky stern expression remains and she then turns and stalks off the stage too.

Finally, a hipster dude does the walk and shows off his sneering mug before turning and running his shoulder into the next guy walking out after him. As the new model hits the floor sneering guy stops, turns and proceeds to deliver a couple of hard-ass boots to the poor bugger’s midsection before looking up and displaying an almost-smirk before he shuffles off again. It’s here the graphic hits: “You wouldn’t start a night like this...so why end it this way?” followed by the ad tag “Alcohol Know your limits.”

Now the ad makes its point pretty clear. There’s no mistaking the message. When you’re as pickled as a Vlasic you’re doing things you’d never want to do otherwise so smarten the hell up you big dummy and think about what you’re doing first. Okay, great. Fine. But the problem is that peeing, puking and fighting is not what the binge drinker is looking for. They (I), are (was) searching for the perfect night. For the optimum balance of alcohol and adrenaline to successfully banish all fear and self-doubt. Add in the silencing of whatever generally inconvenient inhibitions one might have and just maybe the stress of the day will disappear long enough to find that special someone you won’t be trying to gnaw your arm off to get away from the next morning.

Seriously, how do you even begin to start convincing someone to stop seeking happiness? When you consider the basic lack of self esteem floating around most folks these days it’s a wonder Crest doesn’t try manufacturing a line of toothpaste called “double vodka rocks” to help people face the mirror each day

In the end the ad might get some attention for the gross-out factor and the “omigoodness-ness” of the spectacle but make no mistake the target audience is laughing at it, not hiding their collective heads in shame. The ad is almost a parody of a night gone wrong not one gone right. Maybe they’d be better off showing us how cool we think we are versus how staggeringly lame we actually come off when demon alcohol is involved. For me, all this ad does is prove how important it is to binge correctly and that ain’t gonna help anybody smarten up now will it?