December 14, 2003
Affleck is the Mother of Invention

edisonhomeraffleck.gif
Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer decides to become an inventor?

Inspired by the super-prolific Thomas Edison, Homer decides to beat the inventor at his own game, hanging up a poster that shows all of Edison's inventions and vowing to discover even more useful stuff like...the make-up gun and an electric hammer.

Anyway, Homer—and Thomas Edison—may have some competition in the inventions department from a very unlikely source: Ben Affleck. If you take The New York Times Magazine's word for it, the fluke Oscar winner and J-Lo multimedia side project is also an amazing innovator, responsible—or at least the inspiration—for two new 'ideas' chronicled in the magazine's annual "Year in Ideas" issues. Does the co-creator of Project Greenlight belong up there in the inventors pantheon with the creator of the light-bulb? Let's see.

Last year, writer Adam Sternbergh credited Affleck with inventing Flirting by Full-Page Ad: basically, hitting on his then-married co-star Jennifer Lopez in a Hollywood Reporter ad. "You have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty, in courage, great empathy, astonishing talent, real poise and true grace... It has been nothing but an honor and a pleasure to work with you," Affleck wrote in the March 2002 ad.

We all know what followed.

This year, Affleck pops up again in another Sternbergh entry entitled Body Language Reveals All. Writes Sternbergh:

In a typical issue of US this summer, Greg Cynaumon, a psychologist, analyzed a photo of Jennifer Lopez and her on-agan-off-again fianc�, Ben Affleck, and dissects the meaning of Lopez's miniskirt. ('She's saying: "Look at what you were thinking of giving up!"')

Who knew Ben was such an innovator? I guess that's how he'll so convincingly play an engineer in Paycheck later this month.

Posted in a Shallow fashion.

Other Recent Items of Interest:

Make our "team" part of your "team"
jean-paul tremblayJean-Paul Tremblay written-ed, directed and co-produced a bunch of so-called "comedy" and "video" content, is notoriously competitive, and nonetheless settles for bottom-tier tokenism. Repped by John Herndon at Grape Dope Entertainment. Thrill jockey!
matt haberMatt Haber has written for The New York Times, Esquire, and The New York Observer. He is not allergic to pet dander and can do "ethnic" accents if the part calls for it. He is repped by Candy Addams at Entertainment 4-Every-1. Feeling special?
Guy Cimbalo is so cute! Yes, he is. Who's a cute little Guy? You are, you are! Guy's our very own star of stage and screen and is repped by Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm. Rowr!
What "They" Say About "Us"

"Humor so black you're afraid to laugh." - Playboy

"Low Culture gets more mileage out of headlines and photo captions than most blogs get out of endless pages of text." - The Week

"No irony slips past Low Culture." - Daniel Radosh

"what's happened to this site? it used to be one of my favorites. now there are never new posts and when there are it's bloodied and dismembered dead bodies... grave, indeed." - Some Guy Named Tim

"I don't get it." - Some Person Calling Him-/Herself "Cubeoid"

Text Ads, our nod to the Plebes
or, "Fun with Adblockers"

Recent Artifacts

The Archive Office (Front Desk)

Additional Information
Looking for an RSS Feed, or want to syndicate this site? Click here for that purpose.

Some of our older readers may be asking, "Whatever happened to that 'famous' two-column, Shallow and Grave-formatted version of Low Culture?" Rest assured, we've archived that motherfucker here.

This here site, though, was built and crafted by none other than Low Culture Design & Media Mega-Powerhouse HQ.