The audience, thinking it was all part of the McDowell County Line's act, cheered when Teasley — known professionally as John T — jumped from the stage and began writhing on the floor at the Blarney Stone bar in Huntington Beach. The crowd didn't know that a spilled beer had short-circuited an amplifier, sending hundreds of volts of electricity through his body.

Vostell, an artist of international repute, has a history of casting expensive devices in concrete to "cancel their presence." Television sets are a favorite target, but he once sealed an entire Cadillac in cement in Chicago. At LAICA, some of the sets are dead or completely covered in concrete, but most have at least part of their screen exposed. They drone on and on with soap operas, talk shows and afternoon Westerns...

Vostell means to contrast the sophistication of TVs and turkeys. The birds win handily. He also feels we can learn more from reputedly stupid turkeys than from television, but the comparison may not be a fiar one. The TV drone is so familiar and the programming so low-level, we quickly accept it as easily tuned-out background noise. Turkeys, on the other hand, look downright exotic to city folks who have never encountered one off a serving dish and wearing its feathers.

A Japanese steel firm, Sumitomo, recently introduced its specialty steel pipe into the U.S. market. Sumitomo used a Tokyo-based, Japanese agency to help develop its advertisements. The steel was named "Sumitomo High Toughness," and the name was promoted by the acronym SHT in bold letters. So bold, in fact, that the full-page ads run in trade journals were three fourths filled with SHT. Located at the bottom of the page was a short message which ended with the claim that the product was "made to match its name." It simply cannot be overemphasized that local input is vital.