Entry 1:

Hi Doug,

I think we're going to enjoy this gig. It has everything I like: superficial medium (e-mail), superficial subject (advertising), and superficial commentary (a personal favorite).

In the spirit of the piece I want to thank you for putting me onto this book The Empire of Fashion by Gilles Lipovetsky. Usually I can't stand those French sociologists, but this guy is a hoot. OK, the translation seems as if it were done by a computer program or the guy is an occasional gasbag. Plus the title is wrong. It should be The Empire of the Ephemeral, which is what it was in French. But the second part of the book is startling and has me--whoops!--thinking.

(BTW: Doug and I don't know each other. We met at a convention of enviros in February--"Beyond American Consumerism" presented by the Boston Research Center--where I represented the forces of chaos and the devil. That's when Doug told me about this book; it was published about 20 years ago and pretty much ignored.)

All this has me thinking about the importance of the ephemeral. Like why it is that the first 100 pages of Vanity Fair (the magazine not the book) are so much more interesting than the articles. All those ads for needless stuff. Ditto infomercials. I love 'em. So let's start there, with clusters of ephemeral ads. I'd like your hit and run on one of the more interesting clusters, the display ads on Pages 2 and 3 (and sometimes 4-6) of the daily New YorkTimes. On Sunday they expand to two columns, but the format stays the same. All my life they have been there, and all my life they have been essentially the same. Tiffany in upper right, Cartier upper left, Saks middle right. What the hell are they all about? Never changing. Always there. Metronomes.

It's like the Times is saying before the news, before our opinions, have a gander at this. THIS is what it's all about. Or is that just an English professor who is paid to talk nonsense?

Anyway I'd like to know how a sociologist sees them. Or, if you'd rather not, we can look at something else.

I gotta go teach. I'm teaching summer school. The romantic poets. I know you're not working this summer. Maybe you can find time between Jerry and Oprah. Hey, it could be worse. You could be having to listen to me drone on about Shelley.

Best,

Jim