So I open this week's New Yorker (Sept. 18) and - what?!? - there's George Plimpton comparing Atari and Intellivision! Am I in some kind of time warp? No, wait, that's not Plimpton, that's John Hodgman, the PC in the "I'm a Mac...And I'm a PC" TV commercials.
Hodgman is recreating the classic 1981 Intellivision ad to promote the paperback release of his book The Areas of My Expertise (in stores now!). Why? A few months ago, Hodgman told Time that as a kid he dreamed of growing up to be George Plimpton.
"To asthmatic children of the world, those Intellivison ads he did were a beacon. There was a tweediness out there that I could be a part of."
Well, his dream has come true - in full-page color facing "The Talk of the Town." Primo New Yorker real estate.
"It still astonishes me that my publisher went along with this scheme," remarks Hodgman in his blog.
I may be biased, but I think it's pure marketing genius. If the ad is this clever, the book must be hilarious. And people have been noticing. Besides Hodgman's own blog, there have been posts about the ad on popular sites BoingBoing ("I love this!"), Gawker ("homage to an ancient ad"), Crappe! ("Brilliant") and The Huffington Post ("We were quite amused"). Quite!
So come on, you Intellivision fans, give the asthmatic kid a break. Buy his book. George would have wanted it that way.
Intellivision's Tribute to George Plimpton >