I met him in Japan in the early 80s after Ken haved moved to Tokyo and Kalle was making yet another film there. After moving back to Vancouver in 1988, I met Kalle again. His latest film project, a TV anti-ad attacking the BC Forest industry's "Forests are Forever" ad campaign, was refused for broadcast. Instead of the TV screen, Kalle and his partner Bill Schmalz decided to try and get their message out with a magazine, which finally came out in May, 1989. Kalle asked me if I'd write an article for it. I did a lot more than that.
Vol. 1, No. 1
My idea for the cover came out quite well. The magazine was filled with articles about forestry (thanks to Vancouver's Western Canada Wilderness Committee (http://www.wildnernesscommittee.org), a photo essay about Tokyo by Ken called The Beginning of Sorrow, and a bunch of articles by me, including...
THE 100 BILLION DOLLAR AD GAME
CHILDREN OF THE TUBE
Media literacy was something I'd long been interested in after many years as a teacher, a student and a parent. The effects of advertising on children and ways to combat it would be a major issue for Adbusters as it evolved over the years.
THE MEDIA STRATEGIST: DO-IT-YOURSELF MANUAL
This was the most revolutionary idea in Adbusters: that you could make your own TV commercial and get it broadcast. This is in the days before digital video and cheap editing software. Of course, just saying you could do it and actually getting your ad on TV were different propositions, as Adbusters came to know all too well...
STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES: BREAKING THE COVENANT
It was fun to quote Montaigne, the man who invented the essay, in a magazine largely about forestry. The magazine's critics pointed out that Adbusters was a magazine protesting too many trees being cut down, but printed on paper from those very trees. As future Adbusters interviewee Paul Krassner pointed out on one of his comedy albums, Irony Lives.
Vol. 1, No. 2
The first issue of Adbusters received the George Orwell Plain English Award from the Canadian Council of Teachers of English (my old profession) but didn't sell a lot of copies. I would sneak it into libraries when the librarians' backs were turned, hustled bookstores and deposited copies in public places around Vancouver and Victoria. One review of the first issue of Adbusters (Summer, 1989) said it was a fine magazine that probably wouldn't see a 2nd issue. We called the mag Adbusters Quarterly with more wishful thinking than planned production. The 2nd issue (Winter 1989-90) finally came out at the beginning of 1990. This time Edward Munch took over my job as cover-designer.
THE MAKING OF TUBEHEAD
Kalle had a great idea. Make TV commercials telling people not to watch TV. With a crew from his film making days (paid with pizza) Kalle and Bill filmed several "Tubehead" ads attacking TV addiction and then tried to get them on TV, along with the Talking Rainforest commercial that started the whole crusade. I described the shoot for AQ2.
TUBEHEAD: AQ2 PRESS TUBEHEAD: TV GUIDE ARTICLE
The press really took notice, including Canada's largest circulation daily, The Toronto Star, and the ubiquitous TV Guide.
OIL SPILL AS ADVERTISING
The Exxon Valdez catastrophe had occured during the 8 monthes it took for AQ2 to come out. Although most of the environmental articles in the magazine were still about BC forestry, it was important to expand the focus.
A PLAGUE OF ADVERTISING
I continued the history of advertising series began by another writer in AQ 1. Advertising's early days peddaling patent medicines were the subject of this article I concocted the pen-name Nicolo Eco for.N. Eco = Neko, the Japanese word for "Cat." We had travelled around Europe with our Swiss friends The Nicolets in 1980 and I had recently read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, so I combined their two names to make this Japanese pun.
THE END OF NATURE
Inspired by Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" and Dr. David Suzuki's CBC radio series, "It's A Matter Of Survivial," I wrote this article.
SHOPPING FOR A BETTER WORLD
Ogawa was another invented pen-name, this time acquired from my father-in-law. I don't know where Fran came from, except that I was tired of just male pen-names. There was a fine little guide called "Shopping For a Better World" in those days, before you could get all that kind of information online (www.alonovo.com).
I'M A LUMBERJACK...
I was co-editor with Kalle as well as the main writer but the most fun I had was coming up with captions. This one provoked an angry letter from a reader protesting the fact that Adbusters was promoting tranvestites, in this reference to the Monty Python song (which after all, takes place in "the forests of British Columbia.").
THE TIME OF THE HANGMAN
We hired the artist Roxanna Bikadoroff to illustrate this excerpt from Joyce Nelson's 1989 book The Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media. Roxanna wasn't at all happy when I put the smiley face on her image for the 2nd page of the article, although that was what I wanted when I commissioned her to do the illustrations. Meeting Joyce a year later, I was surprised at how happy she was with the editing job I'd done on her piece. At best, you can only please some of the people, some of the time.
It didn't take quite as long to get AQ 3 out. Wisely, we no longer assigned the magazine to a season, just Vol 1, Number 3. Roxanaa recovered from her annoyance at my alteration to her image in AQ2 to do the cover, inspired by Bill Maylone's claymation /High on the Hog/ Adbusters TV spot. Kalle kept at her to make the hog angrier.
BACK COVER
The image is ubiquitous in the environmental movement. The caption is mine. This appeared on a sweatshirt Adbusters sold for awhile. I never got one.
THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN
More soundbite than argument. Some sentences I remember writing, others I can hear in Kalle's voice. Barbara Green's sentences I don't remember, but she has the right name.
PANAMANIA
Does anyone even remember Manueal Noriega? I had to delve deep into childhood to come up with the name Dalton Thomas, a childhood friend's first name combined with a favourite baseball player (Tommy Davis). Fun with names. The Media Foundation sounds so much more noble than Adbusters, which sounds like Repoman without the UFOs.
DRIVING US CRAZY
N. Eco pounces again. Have mouse, will babble. The history of auto ads was interesting for me to write as the first ad I ever wrote was for my father's car dealership, Wray Brothers Ford, in 1960. Later both Kalle and I worked in the ad biz in Japan. What we know of history is a product of our own histories.
THE END
Adbusters was a perfect platform to pontificate from as the Berlin Wall came down. Those were very optimistic days. After all that fear, we deserved them.
ECONOMISTS WAKE UP!
Kalle envisioned a jihad against economists. This is my token co-dependency.
Our worst cover yet. I think the idea was to show how ugly TV is by being just as ugly. With hard-to-decipher article titles to do even more damage to your eyes.
FROM PEARL HARBOR TO INFINITI
A History of Automobile Ads, Part 2
My cousin Geri turned me on to the Peanuts comic stirp about the same time as Ford hired Charles Shultz to advertise its new car, the Falcon. It's hard to imagine Charlie Brown or even Snoopy as a predator. The car more closely resembled Snoopy's baby-chick pal Woodstock. From another musical era, I wrote a ditty for a Peanuts Ford commercial that led me to meet Shultz's animation team (to become famous years later with Charlie Brown's Christmas) and after years of correspondence with Charles Shultz, to write a book about the Peanuts commercial empire. But that is another tale for another time.
THE DECLINE OF NATURE / THE RECLINE OF NORTH AMERICA
Look! Here's an article by C.S. Ishikawa. And another by Cat Simril. And more from C.S. Adbusters really has to get more writers. Thankfully there was Kalle's niece Ingrid Richardson. I really should have come up with more pen-names, but Ingrid is Really Not Me.
Vol. 2, No. 1
Special Anniversary Issue (yeah, we're still around!). A magazine of media and environmental strategies. Hey, you want hubris? We got it! Back to the seasoning, we're Fall/Winter 1991. See our confidence! We cover two whole seasons!
The fifth issue was my last as co-editor. Back pain made going into the office on a regular basis impossible. Finally enough writers and artists were submitting their work so I didn't have to write so many articles under assorted pen names.
AMONG ANIMALS
I imagined a series of articles about animals to go with this. Still hasn't happened. This article later appeared in a High School Social Studies text book. That's good enough.
WOMEN'S MAGAZINES
Whose Side Are They On?
My daughter Monique was invited to appear in this "fashion shoot." Photo by AQ publisher Bill Schmaltz. Scary person in the background: me.
Vol. 2, No. 3
NEWS FROM YOUR MENTAL ENVIRONMENT
A followup on my animal piece for AQ5, this time specifically looking at the Exxon tiger. A follow-up to this appeared in a later AQ.
Vol. 3, No. 2
CAT'S CORNER: SMELLS SUSPICIOUS
It was going to be a regular column. That didn't happen. I look like a vampire in the picture. Adbusters had gone glossy since I left the editorship. A glossy vampire.
Vol. 3, No. 3
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL KRASSNER
I read Paul Krassner's autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut and began corresponding with him. The interview was conducted by fax, and then I met him and his wife when I was in LA. I've never met anyone who had as much reason to be egotistical but wasn't. Listen to his comedy CDs. Read his books.
Vol. 3, No. 4
BOOK REVIEW: ROGUE PRIMATE
THE APE AND THE ANTI-APE
Two articles in one magazine? How did that happen. The Great Ape Project (www.greatapeproject.org) became a great interest of mine in the mid-90s, as I got involved with various environmental movements.
BOOK REVIEW: THE OTHERS
After two articles in my previous issue, I'm down to a fraction of an article in this one.
A WEALTH OF HAIKU, A POVERTY OF GUNS
With both Kalle and I having lived in Japan in the past and still living with our Japanese wives, it's not surprising to find a lot of references to Japan in Adbusters. Most people don't know that Japan stopped producing and using guns for 300 years. They should read this book.
TIGER BALM
My last article for Adbusters is an update of my earlier advertising tiger piece. Whether they were listening to me or not, at least Exxon is putting a few dollars into saving tigers, not just exploiting them. One criticism of the magazine is that it doens't want to bust ads so much as just advertise other things. "Adfixers" doesn't sound like a money-making magazine title.The magazine has changed a lot since the black and white, grainy paper of its origin. Has advertising changed? Has the mental environmental movement gained criticial mass? Is media literacy more common? Does British Columbia have better forestry now? Uh...wanna buy a pair of shoes?