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Jerry & Bill’s shoe business

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Times Staff Writers

The new Microsoft commercial, featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates out discount shoe shopping, was unveiled Thursday night on TV. By Friday morning, it had zoomed to the top reaches of YouTube’s most-viewed list.

The nation momentarily put aside its Sarah Palin obsession to ponder, and mostly condemn, the cryptic 90-second spot from controversial ad firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which made the commercial as part of a reported $300-million campaign for Microsoft. In blogs and comments sections all over the Web, rancorous opinions were unleashed.

Seemingly anticipating the lack of enthusiasm, Microsoft offered an explanation on its own site: “Some may wonder what Jerry Seinfeld helping Bill Gates pick out a new pair of shoes has to do with software,” it said in part. “The answer, in the classic Seinfeld sense of the word, is nothing.” The post forged ahead with, “Nevertheless, the spot is the first and most visible sign of an ambitious effort by Microsoft’s Windows business to reconnect with consumers around the globe.”

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The spot’s first problem is that it is not actually tapping into the “nothing” that Seinfeld was famously about. That was the “nothing” of “What’d you do today?” “Nothing.” The show’s innovation was showing everything the four neurotic friends did together. But the Microsoft spot’s shoe-store vignette relies on unfunny, far-fetched details: Seinfeld asking Gates if he ever takes a shower with his clothes on, for example. Thunk.

The whole thing is chilly. It begins with Seinfeld walking past a discount shoe store called Shoe Circus, eating a churro. He is struck by the store’s name and promise of quality shoes at great prices. Then he sees Bill Gates trying on shoes through the window and says, “Bill Gates!” as he walks inside to join the fun.

Let’s start with the premise of these two famous rich people out discount shoe shopping. With economic news so grim right now, it’s hard to find it amusing, even given the lore of Gates’ coupon-clipping habit. (Ha, ha! These guys don’t really have to shop for bargains like the half-million people who got laid off this year.)

Gates and Seinfeld may both be schlumpy dressers, but their regular-guy qualities stop there. Neither has a public image as the Warren Buffett kind of rich, the frugal sort who knows the value of a dollar and doesn’t put himself or his whims ahead of the common person (or so we believe about Buffett). Instead, the ad seems to be making light of bargain shopping, as if it’s a lark for these guys or some kind of private joke we’re not quite in on.

A bit into the ad, Seinfeld suddenly takes over for the salesman and is helping fit Gates’ shoes. As Seinfeld feels around Gates’ foot he says, “Is that your toe?” Gates says no. Seinfeld asks what it is and Gates replies “leather,” with what appears to be an attempt at a long, meaningful look. Are we supposed to be interpreting something naughty in that exchange? It’s not unreasonable, given that we’re witnessing the fondling of Gates’ feet by a kneeling Seinfeld.

That’s, frankly, disturbing enough, but then comes the part where a Latino family is standing outside the store, also eating churros as they look intently into the window. “Es el Conquistador?” The woman asks, and the man replies in Spanish, “They run tight.” There are English subtitles. These brown-skinned people have befuddled expressions on their faces; they seem to take Shoe Circus very seriously.

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Perhaps they’re supposed to represent the consumers “around the globe” that Microsoft is trying to “reconnect” with, but the depiction seems condescending and borderline offensive. They do not recognize Seinfeld and Gates. Does their discount shoe expertise -- and since they’re not celebrities, we take it they shop at Shoe Circus because it’s in their price range -- mean they are too poor to own a TV? Are they supposed to represent the yearning Latino hordes trying to get in on the American consumerist dream? They make all too strange a contrast with the eternally boyish, carefree zillionaires.

As Seinfeld and Gates cross the parking lot after the purchase, the talk (finally) turns to Microsoft. Seinfeld asks Gates if they’ll ever make computers “moist and chewy like cake, so we can just eat while we’re working.” If it’s yes, he says, “Give me a sign. Adjust your shorts.”

Then Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, co-chairman of the Gates Foundation, one of the great technology minds of our time, shakes his booty. It seems meant to be humanizing -- the playful side of Bill Gates -- but it comes off as one more awkward touch. This commercial pulls none of the emotional strings that might have helped Microsoft “reconnect” with its audience (not that I remember ever being connected to it). And a decade after “Seinfeld,” “nothing” feels empty.

-- Maria Russo

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All Palin . . . all the time

Why do I now know more about Sarah Palin’s life than I do about Abraham Lincoln’s? It just doesn’t seem right.

In addition to the hours of Palin-oriented TV and radio coverage I consumed this week, and the dozens of Palin-focused online videos I watched, I must have read at least 50 stories about John McCain’s VP pick in the last few days (not to mention the ones I wrote and edited).

It’s worth pointing out, too, that except for one or two of those stories, everything I read was on a computer screen. With respect to my colleagues down at the printing press, this is a saga not designed for the morning paper. Who’d want to wait that long?

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Palin, it seems, has a magical quality that makes you want more Palin. It’s sort of like No. 5, the robot from the “Short Circuit” movies who zoomed through an entire shelf of books in mere seconds, braying “More input!” as he went. We may not be robots yet, but the Web, unlike any of the 20th century media, allows us to engage in a level of info-gorging that No. 5 would be proud of.

Adding to the mass appetite was Palin’s media silence early in the week -- without a single interview, televised biography or press conference to tide us over. Give the Web a vacuum and it will instantly be filled with rumor, fact and wild speculation. Palin was a Russian doll of mysteries, the bigger ones hiding more and smaller ones, ad infinitum. By my own incomplete count, there were 17 different scandals and sub-scandals swirling this week -- including the political (earmarking, book-banning, funding for pregnant teen mothers) and the personal (pregnant teenager, trooper brother-in-law, broken-water drama) and back again.

Palin has lighted up the Web in a way few stories ever have, dominating the home pages and popularity lists of just about every news and culture website you could think of.

On the left, DailyKos users have made an opera of the Palin family drama. Slate.com has been churning out Palin stories, blogs, videos and Cliffs Notes nonstop -- at one point Wednesday, the site was featuring a cluster of seven different stories devoted to her.

And on the right, the National Review’s commentators were chiming in five at a time.

The lists of most-e-mailed and most-viewed articles on the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites were dominated by Palin stories, as were community news sites such as Digg and Reddit. Mommy blogs were buzzing, Twitter was squawking, and even gossip artist Perez Hilton caught the bug. The Web’s thousand and one media islets were all pointing toward Palin like iron filings toward a magnet.

So it seemed odd when McCain and company used an old trick from the Republican playbook and tried to blame the “elite media” for the nation’s Palin obsession and rumor-mongering. With hundreds of bloggers and untold thousands of commenters trading opinions and searching out facts, Palinmania looks less top down than it does side to side to side.

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A more realistic concern -- and one likely not high on either candidate’s priority list -- is how we’re all supposed to make sense of the flood of undigested factoids and bloviations coming in from every direction. As the noise level rises, it gets more difficult to divine a nugget of real truth from a fourth-hand bit of twisted speculation.

Worse yet, even if you can figure out what’s correct and what isn’t, there’s no guarantee that what you’ve got is worth knowing. If you catch my drift.

-- David Sarno

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maria.russo@latimes.com

david.sarno@latimes.com

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