Posted on 11/06/2004 10:14:35 PM PST by martin_fierro
Read a Book, Get Oral Sex?
Fri Nov 5, 2:21 PM ET
By Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York officials were red-faced on Friday after they discovered that clothing ads on city buses that appeared to promote reading suggested a love of books could be rewarded with oral sex.
The advertisements that ran on about 200 buses across the city in recent months carried posters displaying a suggestively posed woman in hot pants kneeling among a pile of books beside the snappy slogan "Read Books, Get Brain."
What unhip, unsuspecting local transportation officials did not know was that "get brain" is street slang for oral sex.
The ads -- from hip-hop clothing maker Akademiks, which intended the double-entendre -- was stripped off New York buses on Friday after transportation officials discovered the street slang meaning.
Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Tom Kelly condemned the "vulgar street phrases" in the racy ads he said were "demeaning women."
"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 told Reuters.
"It's easy enough to understand how that would get by based upon someone not knowing the expression."
A spokesman for the New York-based clothing maker noted the ad campaign had run since September and "we hadn't had any complaints at all."
New York officials may not be the only ones caught out.
Akademiks also placed the ads on buses and bus shelters in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia, the company spokesman said.
Kelly, who said he was his 60s, said that after he was tipped to the hidden meaning of the phrase on Thursday he ran a test among 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.
"Apparently it's on all the music, in music that's how they refer to it," Kelly said. "I didn't know anything about it and I'm sure the people that approved the ad didn't."
Kelly said it was sad that "you can't take things at face value any longer," adding, "We'll have to learn from experience before we accept ads."
Off to the library.....
Brainy ping.
Works for me.
Interesting. I know it as "getting some sugar". Or "God bless America".
Wasn't the author of this article, Larry Fine, one of the Three Stooges?
I should start reading more often...
I'm afraid to answer "yes" or "no", because who knows what those could be street slang for. < |:/~
Better head for the library.
Sounds more intelligent than Getting Head!
Nice lobes.
Better head for the library.LOL!!!
Ya learn something new every day. Get brain --- never heard that one. Nor give brain.
Perhaps this is one public service message that will actually have an impact.
I have my doubts about the "we didn't know" explanation from the city officials.
I bet the person who came up the ad knew the meaning and was laughing themselves silly knowing that it got approved and was slapped up on busses around town.
It figures.
I missed the sexual revolution because I spent too much time reading.
Now my eyes are too bad to permit me to read as much as I want!
Proof positive that God has a sense of humor.
Well, the book does offer an alternative flat spot to place my beer...
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