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I am not naive. I live smack dab in the middle of our mass consumer culture and know that every object, institution, idea and tradition carries at minimum a small stain of commercialism. This modern fact of life causes minor tremors of nausea when I ponder the specifics in detail, so mostly I avert my eyes and hum to myself. However, every once in a while there is a cataclysmic lowering of the bar that manages to catch my attention and drain the few remaining drops of optimism I have left.

Case in point, these two recent stories from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times:

Chew on This: Hit Song Is a Gum Jingle
Sharp-eared pop-music fans may have noticed a brief reference to an old chewing-gum jingle buried in "Forever," Chris Brown's top-10 hit. "Double your pleasure/double your fun," the R&B singer croons in the chorus.

What listeners don't know -- and what Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. planned to reveal Tuesday -- is that the song is a commercial.

A Product’s Place Is on the Set
In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during the news-and-lifestyle portion of their morning show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.

Executives at the station, one of 12 owned by Meredith Corporation, say the six-month promotion is meant to shore up advertising revenue and, as they told the news staff, will not influence content.

Again, I am no Pollyanna when it comes to the pervasiveness of product placement and both of these events seem kind of inevitable, but I've always been slightly buoyed by the pretense that the content of music and news are sacred ground. Now it looks like all pretense has sunk and the race to the bottom has begun.

This got me wondering whether fine art might be the next sacred cow to tip and, more importantly, how I can ride that product placement vanguard all the way to the bank? I had it all wrong when I dreamed of mass merchandising my work. Clearly, the surer path to riches can be found by charging others to place their products in my work. Bridgestone Tires, please call me now.

Here now a musical editorial from our correspondent, Neil Young:

The Most Disturbing Thing I Have Ever Seen

Sleeping Rat Baby © Anne Geddes

I am back in New York after seven sun-soaked days lazing around the beaches of Orange County. I am mildly resentful, but ultimately happy to be back home. The OC is all about excess. Shiny expensive cars, big hillside mansions, Botoxed and pulled faces and everyone wearing Ugg boots for one more season. Over the course of a week the gross parts become part of the perverted whole and it's hard to be moved to comment by any single excessive fragment. But, amid this ocean of excess one thing managed to rise above and hover like a grotesque surfeit island of beautifully useless swill. I speak of the Anne Geddes flagship store.

After a day spent at Disneyland (don't ask) waiting in mind-numbingly long lines to ride their latest cross-promotional brand experience, I was not to be easily aroused by marketing clutter. But, as we walked through the chilly streets of Downtown Disney I saw the Geddes store in the distance and I became transfixed by the sheer totality and audacity of her vision. Inside the store were the typical cringe-inducing photos of her Doctor Moreau-like flower and animal babies, but that was just the beginning of the Geddes merchandise empire. There were baby clothes, hats, t-shirts, maternity kits, books, and most disturbing of all, a series of plushy dolls that resembled the hybrid monsters in her photos. These dolls were all around you, eyes closed and sleeping. Or were they dead? After a few moments I began to imagine that the local Union Carbide plant had sprung a leak and these babies lay peacefully departed, the casualties of a terrible industrial accident.

Then it hit me like a store full of dead plushies; Anne Geddes is a genius and my new inspiration for pimping dry every last bit of my art to maximize exposure and profits. Now, when I close my eyes I don't just see my work hanging on gallery and museum walls, I see my own flagship store hawking the Amy Stein logoed line of hats, t-shirts, golf tees and mouse pads. I see a line of plushy deers and coyotes playfully chewing away at plushy garbage. And, I see a touring ice-show featuring a bear and a little girl tensely skating to "The Final Countdown" around a chain-linked enclosed swimming pool. The sky and my own sense of decency are my only limits.

Thanks, Anne!

Best Schwag Ever

A couple of days ago I received an email from a public relations firm inviting me to a product preview party for Nikon at Buddha Bar in the Meatpacking District. Clearly, these folks recognized me as the influential connector and cultural king-maker that I am and wanted some of that magic to grace their flashy, super cool PR spectacular. As I've stated before, I am the opposite of cool. And, I don't mean that in an ironic way that might suggest I am cool. I am literally not cool. So, it was with great trepidation and a supreme curiosity that I decided to RSVP and attend the event Wednesday night.

We felt it critical to begin the evening with a relaxing dinner and a few glasses of wine to settle the nerves before we headed to the Meatpacking District to rub shoulders with the models and i-bankers. Every time I go to that part of town I feel so out of place that I am overcome by an irrational fear that style snipers will spot me and fire a couple of warning rounds at my feet to drive me back into the West Village. Properly juiced, the stroll through the Meatpacking District proved carefree.

Once at Buddha Bar we were greeted by a yellow carpet, super bright something-fabulous-is-going-on-here exterior lighting and an endless succession of people with clipboards and walkie-talkies asking for our names to check against their master list. There were so many clipboard checkpoints it felt like we were trying to get into the Green Zone. In the end the wait was worth it. We made it through the final velvet rope and were lead to a fantastical land where the bar was top shelf and open and the sushi flowed freely. The evening was all about the product, so friendly Nikon reps were there to showcase their line of new digital cameras. Oh, and I was given a free CoolPix camera on a silver plater. Not bad. I quickly warmed to the idea that I really did belong in a place like this.

So, let it be known to all PR people, Amy Stein has embraced her inner shill and is now ready to bring her brand of cool to your corporate event. Of course, I will be preparing a proper rider to make the process of satisfying my needs a little easier. (Kabbalah water, purple Skittles and a carton of Lucky Strikes--you know, standard issue stuff.) If you are interested just have your people contact my people.