Gotta love e-mail forwards…
UL or not UL? That is the question…
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, five days, 19 hours, 33 minutes and 55 seconds.
5112 cigarettes not smoked, saving $639.07.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 3 days, 18 hours, 0 minutes.[/sub]
If this isn’t a UL, it’s an ‘oh shit’ moment for the ad crew. How many people know Latin? How many people who make ads know Latin? I’m willing to believe that the song with those lyrics was used. I’m not willing to believe that anyone who knew what the words meant was involved with the ad’s production or distribution.
Yes, MS did use this music in an ad for IE. It was a good three or four years ago, though (1997 I think?), certainly not what I’d consider a “new TV ad.”
Actually, it seems rare that they contain this much factual information. The forward is, essentially all true. However, don’t go turning on your TV expecting to see this ad anytime soon. The ad that included the excerpt from Mozart’s Requiem aired about 2 years ago, if not earlier.
These e-mail forwards live for years, it seems. That’s how a column written over five years ago, passed around as “kurt vonnegut’s graduation speech” for several years becomes “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” addressed to the ‘class of 1999’.
anyone seen the latest Texas A&M Aggie Virus? Very funny – of course that’s probably years old, too.
panama jack
ask me how to make money fast by stealing in your spare time!
(sorry, hijacking thread)
Wait, do you mean that some person wrote an email CALLING it Kurt Vonnegut’s speech and passed it around, or it was written by Kurt Vonnegut? And how did the personl who later made the song have the right to do that?
(hijack)
Okay, I have to confess I screwed up on the attribution of this; I checked snopes to help answer your question and got the facts straight.
In 1994, Ted Turner’s graduation speech to Georgia included the line “I’d advise you to wear sunscreen and a hat” or something like that; Turner was being treated for skin cancer at the time.
In 1997, a Chicago columnist wrote the column, addressed to graduating classes.
By the wonders of modern science, this very column was circulated around the Internet with a prelude stating that it was Kurt Vonnegut’s speech to the '97 graduating class (usually MIT).
Aside from the fact that Kofi Annan made the speech to MIT that year, it was clear from the column that it was not Kurt Vonnegut. Certain lines make it obvious that if written in America, it was almost certainly written at least by a woman.
In 1998, the column was ‘set to music’ and released as “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” in Australia. It hit the US a year later.
So the only one who ought to receive royalties is, of course Kofi Annan. I mean the columnist. I don’t know if she did, but I would guess so. Maybe she has to deal with Australian law.
panamajack
this .sig may not be reproduced without express written consent of the owner.
The columnist was Mary Schmich with the Chicago Tribune. Yes, she sold the rights to Baz Luhrmann, a film-maker, who had it set to music. I believe that Mary Schmich has also expanded the column into some kind of snuggly book.