The creepy Ivy League nazi eugenecists from our yoga action movie ride again
Bostonist points out that goodgenes.com is advertising* on WBUR (Boston’s news-oriented NPR station) again. I still can’t quite believe that this organization exists, or that the NiPpeR takes their money.
The thing is, I thought they were a dotcom flash in the pan. They were advertising on WBUR back when Matt Shaw lived in town in 2000 or so. They ended up appearing in our never-quite-committed-to-paper screenplay for the world’s first yoga martial arts movie, in which the hangers-on and henchmen of Baron Baptiste were at perpetual war with the rival Power Yoga school of Beryl Bender Birch. The characterization of the Baron was going to be a subtle way to lampoon the things that are laughable about certain elements of Cambridge, and Beryl Bender Birch (whose name we would say differently every time, adding new “B” names to the list) represented the more ridiculous elements of Brookline. However, the turning point was to be when the two rivals realized they had to join forces to defeat the army of the evil Nazi eugenecists who were using goodgenes.com as a front. I also kept trying to find a way to work in something about celebrity chefs, but that might have made it unfilmable. We ended up just taking it out on the Baron by posting fake comments on his website’s guestbook, which are still there.
*I refuse to go along with the whole “underwriting” euphemism. The euphemism is increasingly irksome on WBUR, who now take ads from Dunkin’ Donuts, reminding listeners of how tasty their breakfast sandwiches are. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with taking money for airtime, but I do find it fairly irksome to pretend that it’s somehow not advertising.
March 14th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
(I started commenting on this during the weekend but got sucked into a .php vortex that prevented me from putting on shoes or completing a thought.)
Anyway: Thank you for this post. When I heard the ‘BUR underwriter-blather (read: commercials) Friday morning, I yelled, “Is that the most appalling thing you’ve ever heard, or what?” OK, maybe I exaggerated a little bit in an end-of-week precaffeinated moment of indignance, but the whole goodgenes.com thing is disturbing on more than one level. Just, ew.
And I hope your screenplay sees the light of day, if not as film then perhaps as yoga-revenge manga.
March 14th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
The thing about it that drives me berserk isn’t the shameless snobbery. I mean, if someone is shopping for a mate based primarily on some demographic or class criteria, I am totally fine with that. It means they probably have no soul, but who cares? There’s probably someone else with no soul who’s their perfect match.
(And I also not-so-secretly think that NPR is its own kind of snob’s club.)
The thing that is just appalling is the idea that privilege (or (I can’t make this up) “credentials” as the site puts it) is totally genetically determined, and that those so endowed have a *responsibility* to not sow their seed with lesser stock.
March 14th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
By the way, A, you might find this amusing. You know our mutual acquaintence who teaches yoga? I tossed the idea of the yoga martial arts movie at her a few years back. Besides getting a blank stare (it was really a great “what the hell are you talking about?” look), I got an earful about how much the Baron sucks. That in itself isn’t that interesting: he seems pretty obnoxious. The thing that was interesting was that her yoga studio is sort of philosophically allied with Beryl Bixby Bender Bellini Birch. I don’t know if gangs of them meet in alleys and kick each others asses very flexibly, as my friend and I imagined, but the rivalry turns out to actually exist!