Posted on 11/25/2013 6:22:26 AM PST by ToxicMich
This week, a toy company called Goldieblox ignited a chatterstorm with a video of three girls playing with a Rube Goldberg-type contraption and singing alternative lyrics to the Beastie Boys song "Girls." Since the video went up on Monday, it has been viewed more than seven million times and fueled discussion about how to get young girls interested in pursuing scientific careers.
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
The video is pretty lame. I wouldn’t be surprised if they paid Beastie Boys to sue in order to get some publicity.
As to their product - creating toys to get girls interested in science? Where is the business plan? Who funded such a concept? This has to be funded by the government, because investment banker would ever put his or his clients money into such a venture, hoping to turn a profit.
I was recently in a Jr High...and the thing that I notice over and over was how immature the boys were...long hair in the face - clueless about social politeness - and basic hygiene....where on the other hand, the same age girls took their studies seriously, were actual able to carry on a conversation, used manners, waited until the other person stop talking before responding, and more or less took pride in self-appearance...and I thought, WOW - here are the leaders of society at the early stages of what they are doing to build successful social skills to compete in the real world - while totally UN-phased - the boys poked each other with pencils - goofed off while playing video games that my kindergartener plays....
But that’s society - ever changing and no one expects any different...
When I was in junior high (mid-80’s, Massachusetts), I recall the girls paying attention in class while us boys had other priorities.
As I recall, the big thing of the day was perfecting the art of “rednecking”; wetting two fingers and slapping the unaware kid on the back of the neck. The redder the welt the better, hence the name.
Sounds like very little has changed, except the hair length. Short hair made for excellent neck targeting.
Girls have always matured faster than boys. Boys don’t start to get their act together until their hormones kick in and they get interest in girls, and then realize they need to impress them somehow.
Sorry bud, but your post doesn’t make any sense. Why is it lame and why can’t it turn a profit?
“Two at a time I want....GIRLS!”
How could they miss quoting those classic lyrics?
As if I am going to give up listening to the Beastie Boys because of a lawsuit like this! They should be suing for such a lame use of their song - and if producers of these toys want to portray girls that want to be treated like they have a brain - they shouldn’t dress up the girls in the ad in little frilly outfits and make everything pink. How stupid.
I know a great many adults who don't know how to do that.
my four year old shrieked with delight while watching it and made me play it fvie times for her. so i guess your guys votes cancel each other out:)
this is the commercial i saw. they ridicule the “pink frilly” culture you speak of. the girls are dressed normal. did you see something different or was it a different video?....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpe3Up9T_g
I didn’t say they were wearing “pink Frilly” but “frilly” - look at the frilly skirts 2/3 of the little girls are wearing at the end. I actually don’t know too many little girls that wear frilly skirts in elementary, maybe we are just lucky.
I think the commercial is a big fail.
OK that was stupid !
sorry i added “pink” to your descricption. thats how little girls dress where i live so it didnt strike me as odd. my four year old is hard to get out of the house if she doesnt have some kind of skirt/tutu on so it looks natural to me:) no problem.
my daughter loved it and im excited that shes interested in something other than tinkerbell and disney princesses for a change. take care
On Monday, the band released a letter saying while it was “impressed by the creativity and the message” of the Goldieblox video, “make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product, and long ago, we made a conscious decision not to permit our music and/or name to be used in product ads... When we tried to simply ask how and why our song ‘Girls’ had been used in your ad without our permission, YOU sued US."
The “lawsuit” was actually filed by the toy company, AGAINST the Beastie Boys. The Beastie Boys were not suing. They had sent a letter asking for an explanation as to why the company had taken their intellectual property, that the toy company responded by suing the Beastie Boys for the right to use their work without compensation to help them sell toys.
So they used the Beastie Boys song “Girls” or a remake of it and they are suing the BB’s?
WTF? You can sue anyone for anything these days.
Not a big fan of the BB’s politics (They hated Giuliani when he was elected Mayor of NYC) but I liked some of their earlier stuff.
“Paul’s Boutique” didn’t sell well, but that record was unique and ahead of its time IMO
Their obscure pop-culture references and how they would work them into their songs were genius.
Example: “There’s more to me than you’ll ever know/And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh”
How many people would get that reference?
Sadaharu Oh was a Japanese baseball player and a prolific hitter. He finished his career with nearly 900 Home Runs, although the playing fields in Japanese ball parks were much smaller than in the US, so hitting HR’s there was a lot easier than hitting them in MLB parks, although the newer parks have dimensions closer to those of MLB parks nowadays.
Many American ballplayers have easily come close to breaking Oh’s single-season HR record in Japan, but opposing teams will intentionally walk the American batter every time if he is close to the record so Oh’s single-season record is not broken by a foreigner.
Sorry, going a bit OT here...
Back in the 1980’s, rappers would often “sample” other artists’ work all the time without any compensation until the law was changed, but this new song is a complete rip-off of the original “Girls” song.
I hope the two remaining members of the BB’s counter-sue and win.
Had they asked permission, I’m sure “Mike D” (Michael Diamond) and “King Ad-Rock” (Adam Horowitz) would have given them permission to use the song without any demand for compensation.
Time flies. The two surviving members must be in their 50’s by now.
The 3rd member died several years ago of cancer. Adam “MCA” Yauch?
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