Mind Games
‘LOOK out for the newest imported American street slang coming to a Midlands market town near you get brain. So hip is this phrase that not even everyone in New York is up with it.
Take the case of the city officials who approved an advert carrying the slogan to be plastered all over 200 of the Big Apples buses.
The advert from hip-hop clothing label Akademiks depicts a woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan: ‘Read Books, Get Brain.’ The message is that reading is good for you, it exercises the mind it also exercises the head. In short, reading gets you oral sex.
Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the ‘vulgar street phrases’ in the racy ads, which he said were ‘demeaning women.’ He went on: To me and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy.
Kelly said that after he was alerted to the alternative meaning of the phrase when he consulted some young MTA workers. ‘I went downstairs to the mailroom and showed some of the young guys a copy of the ad,’ he said. ‘I was watching their faces and they all start smirking.’
Posted: 8th, November 2004 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
