An email exchange…
Dan,
I called The Stranger office trying to reach you with no success. We need to talk about your post regarding Seattle City Light’s video contest. Please call me at the number below.
Scott Thomsen
Sr. Strategic Advisor, Communications & Public Affairs
Seattle City Light
Hey, Scott….
I’m not available by phone at the moment. I have email, however, but I can’t call. What’s up?
Dan
I saw your posting about the video contest and we should talk about it.
Scott Thomsen
Sr. Strategic Advisor, Communications & Public Affairs
Seattle City Light
Okay—what’s up?
You’re calling to thank me for helping to get the word out about your contest?
Dan
This contest is designed to increase awareness of energy vampires and encourage people to conserve energy. Those are goals The Stranger has said it supports.
Linking it to a porn video contest damages that effort.
Additionally, videos submitted for the contest will be reviewed for appropriate content before they are posted for public viewing and voting.
Scott Thomsen
Sr. Strategic Advisor, Communications & Public Affairs
Seattle City Light
Porn consumption and energy conservation are mutually exclusive?
And how does linking your contest to HUMP damage the goal of energy conservation? Are people going to see my post and decide to pull the insulation out of their attics?
We got the word out in a humorous way, a way that will appeal to Stranger readers (who are overwhelming pro-energy conservation and pro-porn). I don’t understand what the downside is for you exactly. And if someone makes a creative, non-explicit, 90-second video that’s vaguely sexy and meets your criteria and HUMP’s, why not allow it to a part of your contest? It might actually generate some interest and enthusiasm—and that would assist your effort, not damage it.
Dan
The porn connection might generate enthusiasm among your readers, but it would undoubtedly create a backlash among a broader audience that would decrease participation in the contest thus limiting its ability to encourage people to conserve energy by eliminating energy vampires.
Your column didn’t suggest anything vague. It was explicit in the kind of content that would do this.
I do hope that lots of people from all over our service territory participate in this contest in a creative manner that will encourage others to think about what they can do to reduce their electricity consumption. That includes readers of The Stranger who are able to channel their creative energies in just the one direction (energy conservation) for this contest.
Scott Thomsen
Sr. Strategic Advisor, Communications & Public Affairs
Seattle City Light
Well, in my original post I did say that videos didn’t have to be hardcore, the implication being that hardcore videos wouldn’t pass muster with Seattle City Light. Let me know if you experience any backlash. I can’t imagine that you would and I’d be curious to know what form it took if it occurred.
Dan
Maybe they’re trying to file a patent about porn energy vampires?
I love how he throws the phrase “energy vampires” in there as if it’s a standard and commonly used phrase.
PR people amuse me.
Dan, I can’t believe that you’re that unaware of your dickishness.
this whole energy vampire debacle is starting to become a real time vampire.
Oh, dear. Word to flacks everywhere: email back and forth with Dan at your PERIL.
Hmm. I didn’t see this coming. Who knew.
Nevertheless, the Hays Code forced Hollywood to great heights of creativity. Surely Seattle City Light will do the same for HUMP.
This also reminds me of one of my all-time favorite quotes:
“This is a family nuclear power plant, Simpson.”
I was going to do a film that I thought Seattle City Light would enjoy and would be mildly erotic. Now it’s going to include lots of fisting and snowballing. All done in front of a coal powered electric plant! HA!
Dan you’re being willfully obtuse, and as such, kind of an asshole.
Them reacting negatively is hardly surprising and unexpected.
What would be curious is if they were required to disclose the NUMBER of complaints they get. Political types love to wave a stack of papers and say, “COMPLAINTS FROM THE PUBLIC!”, and all. But how many is many? For example, FCC complaints–it may only be a dozen for a show with a million viewers. Why give that dozen unearned and undeserved power over the other 999,988 viewers?
Short: he’s just doing his job and filling his role (with valid points); Dan’s just doing his job and filling his role (with valid points).
Hmm, I’m sensing some repressed sexuality, here. Everyone knows that the vampire archetype represents the expression of feelings we have but generally repress, so what of the Energy Vampire? Why is the PR guy obsessed with this idea, is this an energy fantasy he is trying to enact through role-play with Dan? How does the Energy Vampire compare sexually to the standard blood-sucking version–the “hemo-sexual”, if you will? PR guy needs to get into analysis STAT!
I feel the wishes of the power company should be respected on this. Can’t we all imagine Faux News running the story “Pornographic Energy Efficiency” or some other suggestive headline in order to smear anything resembling environmentalism?
So, where, exactly, would this backlash come from? Not from Stranger readers, certainly; and somehow I doubt that anyone that would have a problem with the suggestion even reads the Stranger or Slog. Is there some telepathic link between potential entrants that allows them to know what other entrants are submitting?
@ 10 – re “hemo-sexual”
I tip my hat to you, sir!
Dan, you’re so fucking obnoxious. I know you write for a FREE weekly, but you could feign some professionalism… I don’t want to be mean, since it is kinda pathetic you’re using a contest designed to raise awareness about unsustainable energy consumption (which is a bit of a global crisis) to garner entries for your (very local) porn contest… Or maybe I should decorate the cupcakes for my kids bake sale with jizzy cocks, cause, you know, moms love cupcakes and cocks, and those two things totally aren’t mutually exculsive. As the kids would say, you’re a toolbox.
@11 Congrats on exemplifying the problem with the left. Who gives a fuck what fox news does or does not do? If you let fear of the opposition guide you so have already lost.
Poor Scott!
I’d be pissed off to get a business email with such an informal salutation. It should have started “Dear Mr. Savage.”
Addendum to 17: Or it could have started “Hey Faggot:”
Right on #14. That was dickish of you to force the conversation onto email for your own amusement. Why cause further grief for the contest and their organizers? Better to conserve your energy 😉
Here’s the deal: watching porn on the intertubes uses energy. Watching porn is unnecessary (allegedly), and thereby the energy used while indulging in it is wasteful.
PLUS because vampires are a literary representation of sexuality, and porn is a literal representation of sexuality that wastes energy, it’s very clearly appropriate to draw the conclusion that porn participants=energy vampires.
Even though an energy vampire is someone who does something really obnoxious (like the dingleberry from SCL) in order to be fed in some ethereal way by the energy wasted by others in responding to their obnoxiousness. So, I just gave that guy a nice big fat meal. I hope he’s happy and can proceed to lighten the fuck up.
Besides, it’s not like The Stranger could hurt business. Seattle City Light doesn’t exactly have any competition.
hahahaha
hahah
fucking funny. keep the correspondence going, you guys can be the next fnarf and will
I thought vampires were sexy. . . .
I agree with #8.
This is a classic issue Dan Savage move. He used to do this thing — and probably still does — where he’d post people’s letters to the editor, unedited, then make fun of their spelling and grammar mistakes. He posts emails that were clearly not intended for publication. Basically, he’s one of those semi-public figures who believes his minor notoriety is based on how cool he is so, by definition, everything his inherent coolness leads him to want to do is validated by the fact that his coolness is what makes him a semi-public figure. The fact that people watch/read/listen to him is all the validation he needs for whatever he does. So he’s a total dick, and it never even occurs to him to worry about it.
I am a bad, bad man.
Yes, you are, and you need to be punished. Let me pull on my latex gloves and get my speculum. . . .
@25
You’re an arrogant douche. But we have a lot of friends in common and they all say you’re pretty cool, so I assume you have other redeeming qualities.
Dan, you should lay off Scott. He’s a good guy, who is only doing his job. Utilities are notoriously non-humorous, and City Light has to be particularly constipated about its public image*, because Seattle is so very full of Big Thinkers – many of whom are reactionary about porn.
I do think your original idea was clever, and anyone who can make anything about utilities even remotely sexy deserves some sort of award, but don’t expect official City Light to be infatuated with your cleverness. This is Seattle, after all. The Good Taste Police still weld a big club.
* Which is a shame, because back in the go-go days, City Light had some great advertising. Very fun and playful. They also had a Mad Men-esque headquarters building, with one of the best pieces of public art in the Northwest right out on the street by the entrance (“That Man May Use It Freely…” Cory Jean Beal – it’s now in the lobby of the auditorium at MOHAI), but Norm Rice (or was it Paul Schell?) needed to sell the building to his friends at bargain basement prices, claiming that it was in eminent danger of collapse. Those friends promptly changed the cladding and added two floors
No one. That is, NO ONE, cares about the energy vampire campain. They could show santa fisting a vampire with a lump of burning coal and people would yawn as long as it said seattle city light at the bottom.
@28, it was Norm Rice, 1996. I remember being taken down to visit City Light in that building (here’s a glimpse of a piece of that artwork).
(To be fair to the buyers, by the time they were done Expeditors had spent about $25 million fixing it up – it was more than just cladding, in the end.)
Well, cladding and those two additional stories. But I’m sure that 25 million was offset by the settlement they got for removing the Metro rectifier station in the basement that somehow got overlooked in the rush to unload that terribly unstable building.
Everyone remember to conserve energy so the car dealership down the street can afford to light up their parking lots all night.
@2 totally… he’s all like “you’re undermining my efforts! people have to know about the energy vampires!”
I truly don’t see the point of e-mailing Dan to complain about the blog post. Seattle City Light might find the idea of “porn” entries unfunny and in bad taste (although Dan did indicate they would have to be softcore), but it’s a publicly advertised video contest. People are free to blog about it however they choose, even if it’s facetious or sexually suggestive. By the same token, if people do submit “energy vampire” erotica, the contest judges are free to reject all such entries if *they* choose–they won’t be forced to publicize them. Trying to micromanage blog posts by bloggers unaffiliated with City Light = waste of time.
“Your column didn’t suggest anything vague.” LOL what does this mean?
@27, you just misunderstand him. and you sound like an arrogant douche.
@29 etc, true. noone cares, the pr guy is a plastic asshat, its a big joke and peeps fucking lighten up
Possibly condensed version of the above: People need to learn that if a journalist decides to “publicize” your event by writing about it, that doesn’t mean they work for you, or are obliged to reproduce the exact tone & content of your press release. That’s just what a lot of press coverage by lazy journalists *does* do, but still.
@35
Yes, I’m sure the guy whose job it is to manage public perceptions, who Dan just made a total asshole out of in front of god and everyone, finds Dan’s lack of ethics and professionalism very amusing. Please attend his next performance review and tell his boss to lighten up. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.
@37: He’s not very well versed in internet-based “crisis” management if he thought chastising a blogger was a good idea. That’s the mistake of someone who’s too old to understand PR in the modern age.
There was only one thing to do in this situation: nothing. The larger community that he’s worried about alienating almost certainly wouldn’t have heard about the Hump crossover suggestion. The only way this becomes citywide news is if there’s a conflict to report. It’s a textbook situation, if you didn’t learn PR in the 80s.
Oh wait, I just looked him up. He was a journalist until he got the Seattle City Light gig. Guess that fine U of Phoenix MBA education didn’t include internet crisis management coursework.
@38: This is hardly crisis management. He’s just doing his job, which in this case means having to waste his time with a dickwad sex columnist who won’t even have the guts to talk to him on the phone because it’s more fun to try to ridicule him with his sycophants.
He’s not “chastising” anyone. He just made the mistake of asking Dan to act like a grownup and a professional.
This guy sounds like a total scrotum. If they don’t appreciate the submissions that (probably won’t even) result from this, they can delete them and bury their sensitive widdle heads in the sand. Trying to get a sex columnist/blogger to censor himself (over some free publicity, no less!) just makes the company seem extremely out of touch–which is counterproductive because younger generations are generally more sex-positive, more tech-savvy (hello, video production skillz) and more concerned about energy conservation.
And trying to get Dan on the phone like that comes across as an ego trip/power play that failed miserably.
Dan still think’s electricity is generate by poofs rubbing their arses together at a disco…apparently the idea of being polite and decent to people who have ‘straight’ jobs, wear suits to work, and work long hours to make our lives better is alien to him.
No, let’s giggle our tickle tackle in their faces…”hey squares making electricity, you’re so fuuuccking square I’m gonna ridicule you on Slog!”.
Grow the fuck up..minor celebrity is right but I guess Dan’s dildo runs off of batteries not Ross Dam. Jesus you make it easy to dislike pissy, childish, drama queens.
thanks to Dan Savage and Scott Thomsen, the phrase ‘energy vampire’ will now become part of my daily vernacular.