zeekie: take two.

I was in a Duane Reade today, standing in line to pay for my mineral water, when I saw a poster for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. As the title suggests, it's about a group of kids who take part in a spelling bee.

The poster was all right, featuring a nerdy looking kid on a stage. But when I read the tagline for the play, I couldn't help feeling a little slapped-in-the-face.

Said tagline was something along the lines of: 'This play is second to noun'.

Now, I'm not saying I don't understand it, because on some level I do understand it: it's a play on the word 'none', and nouns are involved in spelling bees.

But what on earth does the phrase actually mean? It doesn't mean anything. It's just a stupid, nonsensical play on words.

I remember reading a headline when I was writing for Digital Life: the story was about a teenager who works at a hawker center when he's not at school, and the headline was "Juggling pots and pens". Now, that's a good headline, because it's a play on words that actually makes sense even if you don't know what the wordplay is. But "second to noun"? What the heck?

And I've actually seen similarly asinine taglines and headlines elsewhere, both in New York and in Singapore. To which I can only say: some marketing people really should be working behind the counters in MacDonaldses instead.