Dear readers,
After much prep work, research and back-breaking sweat, I am announcing two exciting new products for you, the newspaper consumer.
After noticing that two of my favorite rock bands, U2 and Pearl Jam, are about to release multiple versions of their upcoming albums, I've decided to do the same with my weekly Vox Pop column.
U2 announced recently that their new album, "No Line on the Horizon," will be available in five different packages, including a "deluxe limited-edition collectors item" set with CD, two posters, a hard cover book and a DVD -- at the bargain list price of $95.98.
Meanwhile, Pearl Jam has announced their 1991 debut album, "Ten," will be reissued in four new and expanded editions, including a "super deluxe edition" with two CDs, one DVD, four vinyl LPs and one cassette -- all for the bargain price of $140!
I'm grateful U2 and P-Jam are giving us fans the chance to dump the cost of a month's worth of groceries into their bank accounts. Who wants a plain ol' crappy single CD when we can have "deluxe"?
And so, dear readers, I ask the same of you: Why would you want this plain ol' crappy weekly column, why would you be satisfied with just this column, with my thoughts on pop music and pop culture, served up on a measly 16 inches of newsprint or Web site, with 25-cent-words and only a few insights, when you can have a deluxe or even a "super-mondo" version?
In the deluxe version, you will get the regular-edition Vox Pop column plus three $2 words such as "Weltanschauung" or "bien pensant" or "yabba-dabba-doo." Also, you are guaranteed one additional insight on the subject at hand, such as: "Well, as George Carlin would say, the thing either flams or it doesn't."
Of course, lifting such heavy words and insights requires extra time, effort, overhead and research, so I am forced to charge a mere $14.95 per week for the deluxe Vox Pop (beyond the cost of your News-Journal subscription ... make checks payable to me).
For the super-mondo version, you get all the features of the deluxe Vox Pop, plus one additional obtuse insight per week, and a hand-lettered, collectible paper plaque explaining how the hell I came up with the title "Vox Pop" in the first place. All for a mere $25.99 per week.
Yes, Bono, I'll look for your check in the mail.
In other news ...
Open Court Publishing is a philosophy press that produces such serious tomes as "Normativity" and "Commonsense Darwinism." Editor David Ramsay Steele told Carlin Romano, book critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, that Open Court's "all-time best-seller is 'The Simpsons and Philosophy' -- more than 500,000 copies sold."
My research reveals that "The Simpsons and Philosophy" ranks 19,799 on Amazon's sales list. Meanwhile, Friedrich Nietzsche -- surely a superstar of the philosophy biz -- managed to pull only a 308,995 Amazon rank with his "Beyond Good and Evil" (the translation by Walter Kaufmann).
So, Friedrich, when you proclaimed in the 1880s that humanity would produce an "overman," I guess you had a rotund, doughnut-slugging, yellow cartoon character named Homer in mind.
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