Bottles

There are a lot of cool glass bottles out there. Just looking around my room I have a pair of Starbucks liquor bottles, a pair of Bawls bottles, a Boylan Diet Crème bottle and an old brown bottle that says “Sioux City Cactus Orange” which I can only imagine is some extinct flavour of sarsaparilla.

There’s just something about glass bottles. For instance, the instant recognition of a brand based solely on the silhouette of its bottle is phenomenal. I’m sure other companies do this too, but the classic Coca-Cola bottle is trademarked, like the shape of it, not only the bottle itself, because they use it so much basically as a second logo.

Of course I can’t get away with saying any other kind of packaging doesn’t strive to be unique, of course uniqueness in a product is generally key to helping it stand out, but just the sheer number of different kinds of bottles that are out there, from beer and wine to liquor and soda, a unique bottle can make or break a product. A clumsy bottle can make pouring or holding unpleasant; a too-similar bottle can associate one brand inadvertently with another, and maybe confuse customers.

I’ve decided that whenever I buy something in a cool bottle, not only will I keep the bottle once it’s empty, but I will stick a candle in the top. I’ve decided this because not only is carrying around a candle in a blackout easier when it’s stuck into something, but if I got a few dozen bottle-candles going in the same room, the combination of the warm light and the multi-coloured glass reflections on the wall would be hella mood-setting, and I am all about the mood.

DFTBA

Imposters

In the past, celebrities have appeared on HBO’s Entourage in two types of roles: either they’re playing themselves (or, you know, versions of themselves); or they’re brought in to play Hollywood professionals (or, you know, versions thereof). I’m not going to get into the first category, because those cameos/roles are fairly straightforward. What interests me, in this rant, is the people who play real people.

I’ve never seen Harvey Weinstein in real life, because the guy’s never in front of the camera. I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up of two. So when they get Maury Chaykin to play Harvey Weingard, an Entourage facsimile, I don’t know the difference. Similarly, Stephen Tobolowsky playing the mayor of Beverley Hills is fine because I don’t know the mayor, or what he looks like.

But when they bring in Stellan Skarsgård to play Werner Herzog (simply named Verner in the show), I’m outraged. Herzog has been in a number of his own documentaries, not to mention the Zak Penn mockumentaries Incident at Loch Ness and The Grand (in which he played himself and The German, respectively). He’s appeared on camera. He’s a funny guy, and it’s clear from his experience playing himself he has a sense of humour about himself. So why couldn’t they get him to play himself? Maybe there were scheduling conflicts, I don’t know, but knowing the real Werner makes it that much more painful to watch this false Verner storm about on the show, because he’s such a hack compared to the real thing.

DFTBA