ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997 TAG: 9702190121
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS
FACT No. 452 that Paul Lukas knows and you probably don't: One serving of pork brains, it seems, when canned in milk gravy, offers 1,170 percent of the U.S. recommended daily allowance of cholesterol.
Items Paul Lukas has in his basement apartment in Brooklyn that you probably don't: clam jerky; spray-on lawn; kraut juice (three kinds); corned mutton; reindeer pate; and, God help us, Thirsty Dog! pet drink in Crispy Beef flavor.
Lessons that Paul Lukas, enthusiastic cynic and sarcastic spelunker of the vast cavern of consumerism, can teach the average ad-manipulated American: enough to check out his new book, ``Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted.''
Lukas, 33, a free-lance writer with a knack for looking at the world from oblique angles, has built a cottage industry from casting a cold eye upon the world's products and services, both the weird and the everyday.
``We're bombarded with information in our culture, and it's easy to miss details. And they want us to miss them,'' he said.
He often plays for laughs, but along the way he tries to understand why we buy what we buy.
``Our sense of identity is so wrapped up in consumer products,'' Lukas says. ``Inconspicuous consumption involves paying attention to the details of consumer culture that are so weird we never see them or so familiar that we stop seeing them.''
You'll find Lukas is enraged at the overhaul of the Bazooka Joe comic into ``an assortment of predictably awful rhymin' and stylin' strips.'' You'll learn to discern between the ``Wool'' mark and the ``Woolblend'' mark. You'll get all you need to know about the ``Pig Improvement Co.,'' dedicated to breeding hardier hogs.
You'll even learn who makes that odd-shaped thing that's used to measure feet at the shoe store. It's called a Brannock Device, and he owns one.
And, in surely one of the nadirs of candy's annals, Lukas has dredged up - straight from the Australian market - Life Savers in ``Musk'' and ``Thirst'' flavors.
These, like many items, perplex our intrepid product maven.
``Whereas Musk turns reason on its head by making a flavor out of something more commonly known as a scent, Thirst takes things a step further by making a flavor out of an abstract condition,'' he groused.
The white ``Thirst'' lozenge, available for sampling at the Lukas abode, tastes like decaying citrus - or worse - with rotted violet overtones. It demands removal from the mouth after about 20 seconds, and it takes a Coke from Lukas' antique machine to wash out the aftertaste.
He began dispensing consumer wisdom three years ago in a self-published magazine, ``Beer Frame,'' which included alternative record reviews and other iconoclastic etceteras.
He just followed his curiosity, buying things and bedeviling corporate spokesmen and spokeswomen for answers to relevant - but obnoxious - questions. He became the opposite of an ad man, trumpeting the tactics that advertisers try to make invisible.
It's not surprising that Lukas reached this point; his mind works in unusual ways. This is a guy who writes book reviews based on the book's physical properties and does a travel column, ``There in Spirit,'' which is ``about where I didn't go this week.''
Word about Lukas has gotten around through his appearances on talk shows and his weekly product analyses on CNNfn. People from all over are sending him weird stuff in weird packaging based on really weird ideas.
``I didn't think anybody else would care about my little obsessing,'' Lukas said. ``But there's a lot of people who relate to the notions of object fetishism. People always say, `That's MY brand of yogurt' or `That's MY beer' or `MY TV show's on.'''
Then there are the discount stores - veritable gold mines of oddity.
``Let's go shopping,'' Lukas said, walking the three blocks from his New York apartment to a ``97-Cents Store,'' where productdom's detrita go for one last gasp before dying off completely.
He walks the aisles with a sharp eye, settling on two items: A plastic-bagged baby doll with the legs broken off and a bottle of ``Citroma: The Sparkling Laxative,'' for those irregular times when you're still feeling festive enough to break out the bubbly.
These are the corners of the world, he said, that make life as a consumer worth living.
``Everyone's a consumer. There is literally nobody whose foot hasn't been in a Brannock Device. These things are universal concepts. I'm just explaining the fringes,'' he said.
``I'm not pushing a particular school of thought - just thought. I've been accused in some circles of propping up capitalism too much. But my point isn't to have an agenda. It's to make people think. And once you see what's underneath the rock, you look at things differently.''
An eye for the unusual
Excerpts from ``Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, From the Everyday to the Obscure,'' by Paul Lukas:
The Brannock Device: ``Here we have the quintessential example of inconspicuous consumption. The Brannock Device, invented in 1926 by one Charles F. Brannock, is that gizmo they use to measure your shoe size. Given this rather workaday function, it is a product of remarkable design values: chrome and black metal, a splendidly balanced asymmetry (much like, surprise, the human foot itself), two parts that pleasingly slide back and forth, graduated calibration markings all over the place - really a near-perfect combination of the industrial and the aesthetic. Yes, I have one of my very own, and while I don't exactly put it under my pillow at night, I do like to pick it up periodically, hold it, play with it - it's a very tactile product.
``Why is the Brannock Device so prototypically inconspicuous? Consider: Everyone has come in contact with it, but nobody knows what it's called. I find that if you describe the Brannock Device to anyone - anyone - they'll most likely say, `Oh yeah, that thing's really cool - I never thought about it before.' Precisely. Moreover, most of us first encounter the Brannock Device during childhood, which means our Brannock memories tend to be simultaneously primal and nostalgic - a potent combination.''
Guycan Corned Mutton: ``Some products manage to combine packaging, contents and context in a manner that fairly demands consumer attention. Such is the case with this Uruguayan canned good, which recently made its debut at my local supermarket. It began casting its spell on me with an excellent retro-styled label design. Upon closer inspection I encountered the basic products name - `Corned Mutton' - and, zooming in closer still, discovered the fine print: `With juices added.' By this point I was pretty intrigued. Then I noticed the sheep.
``Believe me, Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna and Morris the Cat have nothing on the Guycan sheep. He stands there on the label, silhouetted on a plain white background, staring directly at you and, I swear, pouting. His posture and demeanor suggest one simple message: `Go on, buy the ... thing.' By now I didn't need much persuasion, but then Guycan delivered their knockout punch - the ingredients listing. First ingredient: `Cooked mutton.' Second ingredient: `Mutton.' Ah yes, I do like a product that has all the bases covered, muttonwise.'' A
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