Using their Bean

It's probably never going to happen, but I have it all planned: if I'm ever at one of those awards shows where I have to walk in on a red carpet, and one or more members of the Ozzy Osbourne family stop me to ask "Who are you wearing?" I will first say, "OK. You mean 'whom am I wearing?'..." and then report that my attire comes to me courtesy of Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean and Fruit Of The Loom.

Those three firms suit me just fine, and one of the reasons is that they always come up with new ways to present something old. I mean, cargo pants, cotton sweaters, duck shoes and wool sox have all been invented, so who needs new designs? 

But - the L.L. Bean folks have come up with a new way to advertise in the newspaper.

Readers of the New York Times were recently surprised to find a large nearly blank insert sheet in one of the sections of the daily paper. It was white paper, with a green border.  Only these words were legible to the reader: "Just bring this outside...No, seriously. Take this outside.''

So, you take the paper outside, and the words become visible by sunlight.  "Welcome to the outside,''it says,"where there are no strangers, only friends we haven't met yet.''

I won't reprint the rest of it; you didn't come here to read someone's advertisements, but this represented some deep thought on the part of the Beanies.

"We wanted to do something unique, creative and a call to action,'' says L.L. Bean spokeswoman Carolyn Beem. "It's an absolute celebration of the outdoors.''

It reminds me of the old Boy Scout trick of filling the chamber of a fountain pen with lemon juice and writing "secret" "spy" messages with that as ink, and passing the paper along to other members of your spy cabal, who only had to hold up the paper to a warm lamp to see the words magically appear.  

But today, who has a fountain pen, for crying out loud? And the lamps are full of LED bulbs which put out no heat. Today's Scouts will just have to settle for sending secret messages via text.

And that's just not the same.