Today. Friday, March 10, 2006. Los Angeles Times. Page A8. Along the thinnest of news holes, with just enough room all six columns to tuck in an inch of type per column and this headline in, eyeballing it, what appears to be 30-point type across four of those columns: “United Nations Report Says 1.1 Billion People Lack Safe Water.”
Cool, huh?
Oh, but that ain't the best of it. For the casual reader is not drawn to that little strip of type. No, they are drawn to the color photo of a sculpture of a woman of leisure in the ad for Macy's “Way to Shop” in the upper right side of the page. In fact, seven-eighths of the page is Macy's advertising. But the sculpture ad is priceless, given the UN report item.
Lladro 2006 Privilege Sculpture.
Yes, for $345 (American), you, too, can own this “Flowers of the Goddess” figurine, the last in the “Mediterranean Beauty Collection.” It's 10.5 inches high–or about the size of a tumbler that could be holding a glass of potable water for 1.1 billion parched Earthlings. But don't fret that this sculpture is frivilous: you also get for FREE a porcelin starfish worth $25 (American, only American please).
That ad's next to one for Bvlgari Aqva Pour Homme Edition de Voyage–a fancy schmancy $59 Eau de Toilette Spray, which brings to mind the classic line, “Let them drink Eau de Toilette Spray.” Most of the page, meanwhile, is taken over by Macy's ad titled “Come Home to Luxury.” It's a bunch of designer lenins (Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger) priced from $49.99 to $599.99.
That sounds pricey until you consider they'll sop up your bottled water like nobody's business.
And we wonder why they hate us…
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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