Ain’t No Cure For Love

Nothing says love like having five would-be fathers for your baby. The potential sperm donors are lining up to claim parentage of Anna Nicole Smith’s bundle of money baby and each is stranger than the next. There’s photographer Larry Birkhead, her lawyer Howard K. Stern, her bodyguard Alexander Denk, and the two truly bizarre: Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt and Anna Nicole’s long-dead husband J. Howard Marshall via an artificial insemination. What a romantic tale – she inspires us even in death!

Speaking of odd couples, Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise are teaming up for a big screen version of The Hardy Boys – The Mystery of Studio Greenlighting, I assume.

But enough of the mushy stuff, time to hit something. Now you too can make like an over-reacting Boston bomb squad and as you try and take out as many Lite Brite versions of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Moonites as possible. It’s like Whack-a-Mole, so of course I couldn’t resist. When I was done my haircut rating was hipster. I’m assuming that’s a good thing. Despite all the hype, rating for ATHF aren’t improving, leading the head of the Cartoon Network to resign last week over the controversy. This proves the lesson learnt by Snakes on a Plane – just because something is a web phenomenon doesn’t mean people will watch it.

Which, inevitably, leads me to Vanilla Ice. The infamous white rapper, who wishes he was a C-list celeb, has been hired by TurboTax to promote their Tax Rap contest. Rob Van Winkle busts out the finance rhymes and lays down the gauntlet for Kevin Ferderline as the two battle for the King of Self parody crown.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is The Bomb

When the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie was announced last month, some (me) wondered how they would turn a 11-minute cartoon into a feature length film. Most, if they noticed at all, wondered what the hell a Meatwad was. But when the bomb squad was called this week to detonate a Lite-Brite version of one of the characters, the show hit the big time.

On Wednesday a number of blinking, electronic signs were discovered in Boston on bridges and other locations leading to the closing of a highway and the dispatching of the afore-mentioned bomb squad. Turns out the potential bombs were just battery-powered led lights attached to circuit board versions of the Aqua Teen characters Ignignokt and Err giving passerbys the finger.

Two men were arrested and the Cartoon Network owned up to the guerrilla marketing campaign. "We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," read a company statement, which added they understood "the gravity of the situation" and "deeply regret the hardships experienced as a result of the incident."

Do they really? Similar devices had been up for a couple of weeks in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia before a paranoid Bostonian said the word “bomb,” blowing up a small awareness campaign into an international story. Thousands of stories and newscasts followed, all talking about a previously obscure cartoon about a group of life-sized fast-food mascots, Frylock, Master Shake and Meatwad and their upcoming movie. Marketing failure? This is pop culture gold!

Below, the guerrilla marketers in action: