spatch

They've changed the billboards and wall hangings in South Station this week so that instead of being inundated with ads for Apple's latest shiny frantabulous fintoozical electromechmusical inventicle, we're now inundated with ads for Sony's latest shiny frinktastic springtronic bookreadatron, which brags about how many books it can fit in its tiny, soulless, inorganic plastic body with no pages to turn.

There's several things silly and wrong with this ad campaign, not the least of which is the fact that the ads show this mystacular bookreadatron sitting next to a stack of now-obviously-obsolete paper versions of the classics: there's Melville, there's Dickens, there's Crichton (one of these things is not like the other!) and on the bookreadatron? The first page to the second chapter of The DaVinci Code.

I'm not trying to snark on Mr. Brown's work, as I have already done that to great effect two years ago, but the bottom of the page, which you can see quite prominently on the ads positioned higher up and the one on the stairstep display, features the thoughts of everybody's self-flagellating albino in big italicized text. These thoughts run along the lines of something like "Truly the Lord has given me shelter and a purpose in life."

Sure, it's an appropriate quote given the context of the book, but I wonder if Sony realizes the heapin' helping of billboardy preachin' they've just given South Station. I mean, if you were to just glance at that part without taking in the whole, you may think that someone's tryin' to proselytize ya there.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Sony knows full well the message it sends with one of the ad's taglines:

"Sexier than a librarian."

Oh, Sony, Sony, Sony. How wrong you are on so many counts, and you have no idea how many (deservedly!) indignant blog posts you've just provoked or shall soon provoke.

And I sure hope mine's one of the first! Whoopee!