…and no. That title is not a metaphor. Call it an interesting anecdote. Or, maybe after reading this, a useless fact. In my line of work, I often cross paths with other entertainers. Where I work is the Starbuck’s drive-thru experience. Robert Van Winkle, formerly known as Vanilla Ice, lives nearby and commonly frequents my Starbuck’s. At the drive-thru window I’ll sometimes see a classic grey Rolls Royce saunter up with him sitting behind a pair of sunglasses and a green baseball cap. Once he was in a white SUV with some friends in the car. He rode shotgun. He’s even parked his mini semi-truck next to the drive-thru lane and approached the window on foot. Normally, we don’t allow people to order at the drive-thru on foot, but hey. The semi wouldn’t have fit.

And, no. He does not order Vanilla Iced… anything. If I recall correctly, it’s usually a grande coffee with 2 Sweet & Low. I do want to say it, though. I want to say it bad. The temptation echoes in my mind while a faint chorus of “go ninja, go ninja, GO!” shuffles on to my inner jukebox and I reach from the boundaries of my corporate owned and operated corner into the outside world where, for an instant, my hand is holding onto the same cup of coffee as a former rap superstar.

If any of this sounds creepy like my remembering of which cars he drives, what he wears, or how he likes his coffee it really isn’t. My partners (Starbuck’s speak for co-workers) will probably have similar recollections of his apperances. When your job requires that you spend most of your day in a green apron stained with milk and whipped cream while taking orders through a garbled headset and fulfilling people’s painfully specific, caffeinated drinking habits the highlight of your day sometimes comes in the form of a washed-up musical celebrity. It’s sad, I know. But wouldn’t you vividly recall the time M.C. Hammer bummed a cigarette off of you? Or when a bum gave you an M.C. Hammer CD for a cigarette?

How about the time Vanilla Ice asked you for your autograph?

Paperwork. This all came about due to paperwork. I’ve seen business meetings, job interviews, conference calls and even awkward first dates take place at Starbuck’s. Welcome to the versatility of my workplace. The combination of brewing coffee and steaming milk and frappuccino blenders whirring at 25 calories per ounce while an army clad in green aprons skitters about the floor pouring drinks and handing off varying clumps of sugar mixed with flour and molded into the the shapes of muffins and pound cakes creates the prime backdrop for American productivity. After all, Vanilla Ice is in the house. He’s been in the cafe for a while now, sitting opposite a middle-aged woman at the table closest to the cash registers. She dons a baby blue pant suit and Van Winkle is in more casual attire; t-shirt and shorts. He usually doesn’t come inside, so his prolonged stay in the cafe is causing a slight buzz as my partners and I wonder if anyone else packed into cafe recognizes him. We’re too busy to stand around wondering for long.

A busy cafe means a messy floor and with a broom and dustpan I sweep away the empty remains of fallen trees and fossilized plants and animals (which is a pretty fucked up image if you don’t get the metaphor). On my return back to safety behind the counter I get stopped by Van Winkle and the middle-aged woman. With papers in hand she asks me if I could please sign some documents. These are the same documents they’ve been poring over for the past hour. I ask them, what am I signing?
We need a witness for our housing deal. Actually we need two.
I scan the paper she’s holding and I see two signatures already scribbled on it. One, I assumed was the woman’s and the other, Robert Van Winkle.
I say, hold on.
I say, you need two signatures?

Ashley. Her moods vary with the consistency of a funny SNL skit, but she’s one of the few who can always get me to smile. I ask Ashley if she wants to do it. It’s not as if they’ve never flirted through the drive-thru window before. Her and Robert, not the middle-aged lady. Plus, how often does one get to put one’s name on the same legal document as Vanilla Ice?
With her own smile set on medium/high she says, what’s it for?
I say, some housing thing. They need witnesses for the deal.
Still, she looks uncertain. This got me smiling again.

Did she sign it?
Well, ask yourself what would you do if Vanilla Ice asked you for your autograph?

Vanilla Ice at the end of his fifteen minutes/there’s a bad movie sequel, and he’s in it/that’s the type of thing for which he’d have to settle/a few years before going rap metal.

En este comercial de Virgin Mobile para su página rightmusicwrongs.org, Robert Van Winkle (mejor conocido como Vanilla Ice) pide perdón por sus peinados, sus pantalones anchos, y en especial, por su música.

Aún queda mucha gente por pedir perdón. Michael Jackson se tiene que disculpar por ser blanco, Elvis Crespo por cantar, y los tipos del Zancudo loco por existir.

Esta idea viene de Droga5, Sydney.

Robert van Winkle says sorry to the world for being alive. That’s nice!

(this post makes up for my lack of post last week!)

I was bored while I was at uni yesterday during a break, and I had checked all my things that I wanted to check. I decided I’d do what I used to do several years ago, and check out the Featured Videos over on YouTube.

Featured videos are the videos that the YouTube staff decide are worth watching. It is through the Featured Video feature that I found Liam Kyle Sullivan’s infamous video Shoes:

Nothing controversial or opinionated gets featured; music videos, cute animals, comedians and so forth. It is a way that people with good content can get their video widely circulated, upping subscription numbers and fame. You are virtually guaranteed to get at least a thousand new viewers of your content. Thus, getting featured is usually a pretty big deal – Well, that’s what I thought, until I found this video:

This is Vanilla Ice, also known as Robert Van Winkle, apologising for pretty much everything. Seems like an interesting thing, no wonder it was featured! A pop star is apologising for his horrendous style and music choices, and the way he has lived his life in the public eye! Unprecedented!(?)

Right at the end of the video, there’s a link to a site called rightmusicwrongs.org. I thought to myself – is there a group of people dedicated to eliciting such apologies from pop stars? A community devoted to enhancing the quality of music by attacking the corporate machine?

The answer is, of course, no. If there is such a group, then I certainly haven’t heard of it (blogs ranting about the subject exempted, of course). Instead, I found that rightmusicwrongs.org is an ad for Virgin Mobile. The Virgin mobile tag is displayed prominently upon entering the site, and on every page thereafter.

They have gone to extraordinary lengths to make it seem like a community. There is a ‘manifesto’, which reads:

“In a world awash with the insincerity of reality pop stars and pre-fabricated, formulaic, celebrity seeking, silicone enhanced lip sync-ers, something has gone desperately and dangerously wrong with music.

It’s time to make a stand. It’s time to remember that great music isn’t how it’s packaged; it’s how it sounds, how it feels and what it means to you as an individual.”

This kind of statement seems targeted at teenagers, those who want to talk about ‘real’ music and feel good that they don’t like the stuff that everyone tells them to like. They’re rebels, they judge music by what it means to them, they’re individuals with taste that is worth respecting! Music is such an important, wonderful experience (as it should be), and something is wrong with all these kids listening to their, their POP MUSIC!

There’s the story of Vanilla Ice, complete with YouTube-like presentation including the ability to make comments (though they are probably screened). There’s a chart where you can vote certain bands and performers as perpetrating ‘wrongs’, and a form to tell those in charge about other music you feel should be righted. Finally, there is a link to the Virgin Mobile ‘VFestival 09′, a music festival featuring acts such as The Killers, Snow Patrol and Kaiser Chiefs.

Virgin mobile is cleverly exploiting many things here – the fame and public perception of Vanilla Ice, the ease of sharing a viral video, and the ‘hidden’ advertising that is only revealed to those who are interested enough to check it out for themselves. The website itself uses many of the familiar tools used to construct internet communities, though at its heart it is an empty sham. Whilst Mr. Van Winkle’s apology might be heartfelt, it’s certainly not altruistic, motivated by a desire to improve the quality of music – he is rolling in a pile of money as we speak.

It totally worked on me. I now have seen Virgin Mobile’s advertising, and now you have too (haha!). Of all the things that bother me about this, however, is that it was featured on YouTube. When YouTube was bought out by Google, I hoped that it would not affect the way things were run. This was naive in the extreme, and now it appears they are helping other companies advertise by slipping in such videos inamongst the kinds of videos featured before the buy-out. Cute kitten! Awesome grandma! Science experiment! Music video! And now, introducing: Advertising! YouTube is certainly risking its credibility by making such a move, which is something they must manage to ensure their ability to facilitate similar campaigns in the future.

This clever manipulation of the internet generation is just the beginning of how advertising will work in the future as people use the internet more and more as their primary interface with the world.

Virgin Mobile has launched a manifesto of the most grand importance through a new website called rightmusicwrongs.com. Their goal is to compile a chart of all the pop tunes that wronged society.

They spinned it off with this intriguing and hilarious video of Robert Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice) apologizing for his music, and Ice Ice Baby.

Even though Ice Ice Baby sold over 40 millions copies world-wide, [...] I’m sorry for the hair-dos, baggy pants, the scandals, the lies, the gangs, and…I’m sorry about the music

Brilliant!

Browse through their ‘Top Music Wrongs’ chart to cast your votes. For every profile, you declare the artist innocent or guilty (love the approach). You can also go ahead and add your own band or singer to the list by entering some basic info and linking a particular song you hate (I currently requested Pink’s ‘So What’. Awaiting for confirmation:)

(heheheheh)

Robert Van Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice, was arrested and booked for a domestic dispute and then later released, according to the Palm Beach Post.

The wife initially claimed Mr. Van Winkle used her as a punching bag. But he blamed the dispute on his wife. She is bipolar, he told the arresting officers.

I don’t know the guy, but judging by his public persona — what a complete asshole Vanilla Ice seems to be. Ever since he first claimed that he never ripped off the riff from Under Pressure, the guy has been persona non grata with all who know better. Since then he’s been on the White Trash express, pimping around every reality tv show that will take his shit.

The fact that the guy is still in the public eye for one lousy song, Ice Ice Baby, that he recorded upteen years ago, is a sad testament to our pop culture.

Forget this dude.

O artista Vanilla Ice, cujo nome real é Robert Van Winkle, foi preso após a denúncia de maus tratos contra sua mulher, Laura Giarritta, informou hoje o jornal Palm Beach Post.

Após sua detenção, Vanilla Ice passou a noite da última quinta na prisão do condado de Palm Beach, no norte de Miami, e hoje comparecerá a um juiz para esclarecer o incidente.

Segundo o relatório policial a mulher do artista ligou para a Polícia e disse que seu marido a agrediu diante de seus dois filhos, Dusti Rain, de 10 anos, e Keelee Breeze, de 8.

A Polícia prendeu Vanilla Ice nas proximidades de sua casa na localidade de Wellington (condado de Palm Beach). O cantor afirmou que discutiu com sua mulher, mas negou que tenha acontecido qualquer ato de violência.

Há quatro anos Vanilla Ice também foi preso por maus tratos e por várias infrações de trânsito.
 

De Amerikaanse rapper Vanilla Ice is donderdagavond gearresteerd voor geweld in de huiselijke sfeer. Hij moet vrijdag voor de rechter verschijnen, zo melden verschillende Amerikaanse websites. Details van de arrestatie zijn niet naar buiten gebracht. Rapper Vanilla Ice, echte naam Robert Van Winkle, scoorde begin jaren negentig een grote hit met “Ice Ice Baby”.

Copyright(c) Belga 2007 – 2008

Vanilla Ice, real name Robert Van Winkle,

was arrested for domestic battery charges,

Yahoo News UK is reporting April 11th.

 Van Winkle and his wife Laura had been arguing

since Wednesday. It is believed Laura called police

to report her husband was hitting and kicking her at

their Palm Beach County, Florida home on

Thursday evening.

According to the arrest report,

Laura Van Winkle appeared uninjured,

but told cops she wanted a divorce from the star.

But she is reported to have reneged on her

earlier allegations, insisting her husband had not hit

or kicked her, but had pushed her.

She is alleged to have told a police officer,

“He started yelling at me for going out to buy

a bedroom set. In front of my daughter.

I’m sorry I can’t say any more

until I talk to an attorney.”

Robert, 40, told cops about the couple’s two-day fight,

‘admitting he called his wife “nuts”, and said his wife

is bipolar and takes medication but still has

‘irrational episodes’.

He denied the allegations he pushed his wife.

Van Winkle was arrested in 2004

over similar domestic battery charges.