We had a whole thing already typed up for this month. It was going to be the usual, with the name of the Fake Ad (Uomonuovo), the page number it appeared on in the July issue (61), and the number of entries we received (156).
We were going to include clever comments from Monet Tiedemann (“There probably could be a market for Uomonuovo if it weren’t the Fake Ad”) and Bryan Magnuson (“Interesting parody of a disturbing slice of the zeitgeist”), not to mention the several Fake Adders who connected “Uomonuovo” to Mussolini and the ever-erudite Donna Wessel Walker who writes, “The fascist connections with that word & idea are a little unnerving, I gotta say.”
But then we received this email after the deadline and just had to include it: “Hello! This is Niko again. (I got a shout out before when I was 8, and now I’m 9.) Last summer I moved to Utah, but me and my family came back on a vacation because we love it here. I still like the Fake Ad so I decided to try. I decided it was probably the uomonuovo on page 61 because it is really sussy and also I learned that nouovo means new in Portuguese, so the name Newman would fit very well.”
I mean, we had to include that, right? Especially since we now know the word “sussy.”
Our winner, Christian Katic, is taking a gift certificate to Zingerman’s.
Want to play too? Find the Fake Ad hidden in the August issue (hint: the ad always contains the last name of the previous month’s winner in some form). Send your entries to [email protected] or PO Box 1187, AA 48106. All correct entries received by noon, August 10, will be eligible for our random drawings. Winners receive $25 gift certificates to any business advertising in this issue. Want more Fake Ad and I Spy goodness? Order The Fake Ad Book and I Spy: Ann Arbor Architecture at annarborobserver.com/books.