{"id":16931,"date":"2015-07-14T12:04:02","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T19:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16931"},"modified":"2015-07-21T07:08:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T14:08:27","slug":"tuesday-bag-o-greeking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16931","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Bag o&#8217; Greeking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/276\/19668143276_5326f94d9b_m.jpg\" alt=\"greek plate\" width=\"187\" height=\"97\" \/><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>No, I don&#8217;t have anything to say about Greece. I don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s going on in the Eurozone, but I&#8217;m not the person to turn to for answers. Actually, &#8220;greeking&#8221; is a term associated with those\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=painted+car+commercial+license+plate&amp;biw=1063&amp;bih=641&amp;source=lnms&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CAUQ_AUoAGoVChMInuSvwYfbxgIVVn2ICh2XOQSy&amp;dpr=1#q=fake+license+plates+in+car+commercials\" target=\"_blank\">fake license plates<\/a> you see in car commercials.<\/p>\n<p>Fake plates in car ads have always bugged me. Why make them\u00a0generic and anonymous? Why\u00a0paint them to match the\u00a0color of\u00a0the car in the ad?\u00a0Why not use\u00a0real\u00a0plates, or none at all?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Greeking\" target=\"_blank\">Greeking<\/a>, in this context, is the process of making car\u00a0commercial license plates anonymous, inoffensive, and litigation-proof.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisers don&#8217;t want state-issued\u00a0plates in their commercials. If a\u00a0potential customer\u00a0has a hard-on against\u00a0California, for instance, you&#8217;ll lose him\u00a0if you show your car wearing California plates. This also explains\u00a0painting plates the same color as the car in the ad. No state&#8217;s plates look like that, so it&#8217;s another layer of greeking out information that might piss someone off.<\/p>\n<p>Nor will they\u00a0use combinations of letters and numbers on fake plates that might match those used on real plates, because some asshole will get a lawyer and try to sue the car companies for using &#8220;his&#8221; plate without permission. And you know someone would.<\/p>\n<p>So why use plates at all? According to insiders, it&#8217;s because the cars in the ads wouldn&#8217;t look right without them.<\/p>\n<p>Well, now I know. Maybe fake plates won&#8217;t bug me as much from now on.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Last night a\u00a0local TV News at Five reporter did a breathless piece about\u00a0a &#8220;premium outlet mall&#8221; set to open alongside the freeway on the outskirts of town. The station\u00a0ran it as a news story, but it really was an informercial. The best part was when the reporter excitedly read the list of tenants: Gucci! Adidas! Oakley!<\/p>\n<p>Gee,\u00a0that sounds like any outlet mall anywhere. Don&#8217;t know about you, but\u00a0I&#8217;ve always seen outlet malls as bottom-of-the-barrel operations. Using the word &#8220;premium&#8221; to describe\u00a0an outlet mall is like using &#8220;classy&#8221; to describe a Trump casino full of cigarette-smoking rubes\u00a0in stained t-shirts and pajama jeans bottoms.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of infomercials, NBC Nightly News did a report on Harper Lee&#8217;s 60-year-old but just-published novel <em>Go Tell a Watchman<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><center>[iframe src=&#8221;http:\/\/player.theplatform.com\/p\/2E2eJC\/nbcNewsOffsite?guid=nn_hsm_watchman_150713&#8243; width=&#8221;635&#8243; height=&#8221;500&#8243; frameborder=&#8221;0&#8243; scrolling=&#8221;no&#8221;]<\/center>When I watched this last night all I heard was &#8220;Harper Lee&#8217;s new novel,&#8221; not once but several times, which I thought intentionally\u00a0misleading. On a second viewing, I have to admit I missed the part where the correspondent mentions that Harper Lee actually wrote the novel before she wrote <em>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>. Still, other than that one mention, the correspondent persisted in describing Harper Lee&#8217;s old, rejected manuscript as &#8220;new,&#8221; and I suspect a lot of people think it really is new, that the elderly, stroke-afflicted Harper Lee is writing again after 60 years of silence.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/style\/to-shill-a-mockingbird-how-the-discovery-of-a-manuscript-became-harper-lees-new-novel\/2015\/02\/16\/48656f76-b3b9-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">real low down<\/a> on how <em>Go Tell a Watchman,\u00a0<\/em>Harper Lee&#8217;s rough draft of what became, after a top to bottom revision, <em>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, came to be published. It&#8217;s not a pretty story, and I for one\u00a0will not help enrich Harper Lee&#8217;s sleazy lawyer by buying the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, I don&#8217;t have anything to say about Greece. I don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s going on in the Eurozone, but I&#8217;m not the person to turn to for answers. Actually, &#8220;greeking&#8221; is a term associated with those\u00a0fake license plates you see in car commercials. Fake plates in car ads have always bugged me. Why make them\u00a0generic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,18,16],"tags":[1915,1916,1918,1917],"class_list":["post-16931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reviews","category-consumerism","category-media","tag-car-commercials","tag-fake-license-plates","tag-harper-lee","tag-outlet-malls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16931"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16975,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16931\/revisions\/16975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}