S U C K

"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 25 April 1996. Updated every WEEKDAY.
Hit & Run XXXI

[Oh Yes!]

Yahoo dropped the soap. In the

prison shower-room world of Web

ad sales, all it takes is a

single tattoo-laden heavy to

disrupt the harmony of hygiene,

and Procter & Gamble last week

proved more than willing to hang

up its robe. Slathered in Olean,

Wired coverboys Yang and Filo

were found cowering in the

corner, having capitulated to

P&G's rough trade demands of ad

purchase based on click-through

visitors, paying only for the

click-throughs at the same rate

as they would have paid for the

total number of views.

(According to Ad Age,

click-throughs whimper along at

as little as 2% of total views.)

So far, the other inmates have

distinguished themselves by

fighting such transgressions -

disgusted past the breaking

point by the prospect of

diarrhea.com, no doubt. As P&G's

new personal Cover Girl, Yahoo

may not have lost all

self-respect, just 98 percent

of it.

[cupcake.com]

We haven't had a cupcake since

our 12th birthday party, but

still have not-so-fond memories

of licking off the icing, only

to instantly become nauseated

enough to abandon the, well,

cake in a paper cup. Likewise

with cupcake.com, "the online

magazine for bad girls." Once

the initial sugar-rush wears

off, you begin to notice that

the baked goods are just so many

empty calories. But the

thumbnail-sized fashion shots of

girls frolicking at Stinson

Beach really take the (cup)cake.

Try to resize the caked-on

frames all you want, you'll

never figure out what fashions

these nymphs are wearing on

their little cakewalk. But

that's okay, because when you

consider the competition, it's

clear these "bad" girls just

aren't Foxy enough.

[Rodman Hair Page]

The Rodman Hair Page is simply an

appropriately colorful tribute to

basketball's most chromatic

(some might even say Cro-Magnon)

player. Jason Kottke, the site's

creator, provides his own

color commentary as well,

opining, for example, that

Rodman's brilliant green hue

must have given him the

advantage of "Extra energy due

to photosynthesis." [Insert

off-color joke here about either

his nickname - "the worm" - or

his "rim shot" with Madonna.] If

it (either the site or his hair)

changed daily, we'd feel

threatened - of course, at the

rate Rodman and Da Bulls are going,

we probably should anyway.

[Unabomber PAC]

PAC Spam is the Health of the

State: 


"The producers of the Time Warner  
 show 'Extra' have decided not to  
 air their extensive completed     
 interviews with Lydia Eccles of   
 the Unabomber Presidential        
 Write-In Campaign and Rev. Chris  
 Korda of the Church of            
 Euthanasia, ostensibly because    
 they feel Rev. Korda's striking   
 appearance would undermine the    
 program's credibility.            
 Christopher Liss, who             
 coordinated the interviews,       
 denies that the extremely         
 subversive nature of the          
 responses had anything to do with 
 the cancellation. 'Extra' can be  
 reached at <mlehan@pacificnet.net>
 or (818) 972-0500."

[Readymade]

The problem with modern art is

that if you keep doing exhibits

of urinals, eventually someone's

going to try to take a piss.

The problem with the Web is the

situation reversed. Nowhere is

this more evident than Urban

Desire's Mondrian Machine, which

attempts to take the frames

flood and turn it into a golden

shower. One man's memory eater

may be another man's art, but we

wonder if the supposedly

addictive nature of site has

less to do with its

abstractionist tenor than the

fact that technicolor yawns are

seldom boring.
courtesy of the Sucksters