How To Block Ads Online and Off

by Tracksuit CEO

Recently my daughter and I have discovered all the classic cartoons on YouTube and because they’re short we get to watch the whole thing. We watch them when she’s requesting “a show”, which could mean a cartoon, movie or tv show. The good thing about the cartoons is that they are short and every parent feels some amount of guilt for letting their child watch any amount of television, right? It’s also something both of us enjoy watching, it’s new and crazy for her and nostalgic and comforting for TrackSuit Dad.

There is one particular Daffy Duck cartoon in which Eastern City is being terrorized by a Moustache Bandit (Daffy obviously) — his saying:

“Science is some folks’ calling; others pilot a ship. My mission in life, stated simply, is: a moustache on every lip!”

Daffy paints handlebar moustaches on ads billboards and eventually Porky Pig the policeman. (Is this Warner Bros. tribute to Duchamp?) The idea of adorning everything in sight with a handlebar mustache captured my imagination then, as it does now. And just yesterday I read an article in Good magazine (TrackSuit’s new favorite) about a real life Moustache Bandit named Jason Eppink who does what he calls:

“an unauthorized, ongoing video-art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.”

And what he basically does is cover those above-ground subway television displays with a sheet of foam board cubes. This transforms those intrusive television ads into beautiful light/video installations. He calls his invention the pixelator; he’s basically a human ad-blocker (which is a very cool firefox extension btw). Check the Pixelator out in action:

If he were a NY artist I wonder what the Moustache Bandit would call his work, “a value-added public works initiative”?

Okay, where’s my Sharpie? Sorry corporate America, one of your ads is getting a fu-man today!

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Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

by Tracksuit Dad

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

I just read Scott Horton’s piece on Guy Fawkes Day in Harpers and I really love the way that he paralleled the Gunpowder Treason to the attacks on September 11th. Guy Fawkes who was planning to To blow up the King and Parliament was a Roman Catholic and Horton reminds us that the Catholics were to 1600s England what Islamic fundamentalists are to the modern world. They were demonized and persecuted for the acts of a few zealous followers.

Horton lays out 3 lessons that we should remember on Guy Fawkes Day:

1. Torture Never Works and is Always Wrong
2. Beware the Government that Rules By Fear
3. A Government That Stereotypes Is Unjust

So keep these in mind when you celebrate Guy Fawkes Day and if you’re like me you celebrate it by donning a stylish hat and mustachioed mask while fighting injustice. And if we do not keep these lessons in mind this November we run the risk of, 200 years from now, the 9/11 hijackers being immortilized in an heroic graphic novel (a la V is for Vendetta).

Remember, remember.

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