Pants! discovers snakes in strange places

Pardon us if we squeal like one of those fainting freaks who show up at Michael Jackson appearances, but we opened the mailbag last week to find the much-anticipated (by us at any rate) album, "Twice the Snake You Need," from Pants! Pants!, as you probably know, is the band of Durham, N.C.-based McKinney. It's the two-time champion of the Battle of the Ad Bands and the most recent winner of the Fortune Battle of the Corporate Bands. Band members (and McKinney staffers) David Baldwin, Jerry Bodrie, Wes Whitener, Andrew Delbridge, Mitch Bennett and Philip Marchington have released a legit album. How legit is it? It's even available on iTunes. Baldwin suggests searching iTunes for "Twice the Snake You Need" rather than Pants!, partly because "Twice the Snake You Need" sounds cooler, but mostly so you don't end up with every single song with the word "pants" in the lyrics. Baldwin describes the album thusly: "'Twice the Snake You Need' is 10 original hard-rocking songs including our rock opera, which has been satanically remastered to sound 10% more evil." It was actually 15% more evil with the original cover art, but as this is a family publication, we can't show it to you or even describe it. In terms of song selection, we'll predict "Antiquing" is going to be a favorite. Adages digs that tune, but we're partial to "Doublesnake" and still think the rock opera about pants is one of the rockingest operas we've ever seen. Adages skips Kool-Aid, goes for juice Fallon Worldwide Chairman Pat Fallon and founding partner Fred Senn were in New York last week to talk up their book, "Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity Into a Powerful Business Advantage." (Adages has actually read this book, and we highly recommend it.) Fallon and Senn, both sporting orange ties, discussed the issue of creativity at a New York American Marketing Association panel discussion. Along for the ride were clients Brad Jakeman, managing director-global advertising for Citigroup, and Mark Snyder, senior VP-brand management, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts. Jakeman told the assembled marketers something they might have already suspected: "Most advertising doesn't work, and most advertising in the world today is pretty bad." But what really got the crowd's attention was Snyder's jacket, a red-check Burberry that looked like it came right out of the 1972 Holiday Inn spot that he showed as part of his presentation. "Do you like the jacket?" he asked, before answering for the crowd: "No, you don't." Interpublic down the toilet Adages had a moment of confusion last week when we received an e-mail with the subject line "Interpublic is in the toilet." We opened it fully expecting some diatribe about Interpublic Group of Cos.' stock price or business performance, but instead found a web link for Interpublic Urban Systems (interpublicurbansystems.co.uk), a U.K. company that has nothing to do with IPG and everything to do with toilets. Literally. From the "About Us" page: "Interpublic Urban Systems (U.K.) Ltd. is solely involved in the design, build and maintenance of public toilets." When we turned to our resident IPG expert to make sure there was no connection between the two, we received a reply so stinky that we just had to share it: "No. No relation. But Interpublic Urban Systems is a winner of the U.K.'s loo of the year award, which I guess makes it a winner at can." We volunteer our services We want Thomas O. Ryder's job. No, not his position as chairman of Reader's Digest Association, but the one as reporter-at-large for Reader's Digest's "Great Texas Barbecue Tour." Tom, brother Rob and their wives did the grueling work of traveling the Central Texas BBQ so you don't have to. And now Reader's Digest has created an interactive web exclusive that practically smells of smoked meat. Check it out at rd.com/bbq. And, Tom, give us a call next time. We could chat about growing up in Louisiana while eating heart-stopping amounts of meat. We've also done the Lockhart portion of the trail and, having read the entries, we might suggest that the subpar service there may be a result of asking for sauce. Lockhart barbecue may come with flavor and attitude, but it comes with neither sauce nor utensils. And while Black's does offer sauce, our own better half got the stink-eye for using it. Juice the orange with kwheaton@crain.com

Pants! discovers snakes in strange places

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