• by John Gaffney , July 3, 2003

Other People's Riffs For July 3

Target Marketing Has Not Reached South Africa: According to Asian Age one of South Africa's leading banks has apologized to the country's Hindu community for sending beef cubes in an advertisement package to Hindu clients. Hindus believe in vegetarianism. In a letter to the South African Hindu maha sabha, the standard bank said it should have anticipated that sending beef cubes would probably cause offence."

Maybe Eminem's In The House: From a MarketingProfs.com story on finding quotable language for marketing programs: "Quotes used in marketing collateral need to be truthful and snappy. The challenge is that unless you happen to be sitting across the tape recorder from someone like Winston Churchill, the interview will typically lack snappy."

Everybody In The Pool: According to The New York Post, New York Sun '"Broadway After Dark" Columnist Ward Morehouse III confused playwright Marc Spitz, 33, with Olympic swimming legend Mark Spitz, 53, in a column this week. The Sun even ran a photo of swimmer Spitz, who won seven gold medals at the 1972 games, next to his interview of playwright Spitz, a perennially black-clad Spin magazine scribe who titled his play "Gravity Always Wins" after a lyric in a Radiohead song. Morehouse even changed an e-mailed response by playwright Spitz to suit his bizarre scenario: Spitz's quote, "I'm 33 now and I'm not as interested in proving I'm some kind of punk playwright," was changed to "I'm 53 now and I'm not as interested in proving I'm some kind of punk playwright." So what happened? "I made a mistake," Morehouse said. "It happens occasionally. I wrongly assumed it was Mark Spitz the swimmer. I was wrong." Playwright Spitz, whose show bows July 11 at the HERE theater at 145 Sixth Ave., chuckled: "I don't care if I win an Obie now because I've got my gold medals. They can never take that away from me."

Movie Review Of The Week: Hey, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle took its lumps from critics this week. But when the normally enthusiastic teen audience on Bolt.com starts to trash you, it's trouble. This week a Bolt reviewer posted: "This second Charlie's Angels movie was a pure disgrace. With a weak plot and every scene looking like a mountain dew commercial, it's a wonder that this movie even pulled in what it did first night at the box office. The girls even had a different look. Someone in Hollywood decided to go with the no makeup look, which left every guy I've heard talk about it sorely disappointed. Even though the girls looked pretty blah, and every scene was a fight scene, the movie wasn't all bad. There were some neat fighting scenes. Meanwhile, in a car crash scene a guy holding onto a car flips twice on the road, spins and crashes into a wall and the car drives away barely marred. Come on guys."