Commercial
Just the night before I was thinking how it had been a while since we had rain, and so (and so?) it came yesterday. Mild in the day, completely ignorable, then last night, I had to turn off the tv to hear its noise and the pounding on my windows while I was working/playing on my laptop (joy!). I almost turned off the lights for the lightning, but I would have fallen asleep.
Oh - Check out the Napster Bits link over on the right under fun. They made little flash videos for different music genres and they’re done so very well. I can’t decide which is my favorite, but the metal and the hip hop are in a close run.
Before I turned off the tv, I think it’s important to note that I haven’t watched tv in a good while. Maybe as long as since the last rain. There was nothing good on, but I actually laughed out loud at a couple commercials particularly the Dunkin Donuts commercial with Ricardo Montalban from Fantasy Island. Opening scene is a woman sitting in a park with her coffee, and Ricardo Montalban’s voice - like a voice over - passionately expounding on the virtues of the coffee. Then he’s right there, sitting closer and closer to the lady, talking fervently about the coffee, his hand on the bench near her thigh. She’s dumbfounded and doesn’t move. The closing shot captures their forms and the tension..... the weirdness, perfectly. Goodness this tickled me. heehee.
The second good one was done by Mass Mutual - but you only find out at the end (it’s one of those). The music is Joan Jett’s “I hate myself for loving you” and it’s got a big closeup of a lumpy toad with a series of phrases above it. I suppose I’m the target market and it worked, but oh well.
I freaking hate the Range Rover “respect” commercial. I want to come charging out of the jungle and slaughter everyone in that car with a dull machete, I hate it so much for the attitude it reveals and propagates. Those ethnocentric piles of chicken crap.
One of my favoritist commercials of all time is a relatively recent commercial for the Game Show Network. It feature various people in different situations watching a TV screen shouting “the answer.” The woman on the game show answers the question with the wrong answer. The last screen shot for the commercial is, “You know, you know.” And it’s true you do really know!
yeah,i’ve seen that! def a good one :P it speaks da trufe
Game shows rock because it’s the only time it’s not a weird to yell at the tv (aside from watching sports for which i have a cat’s attention span).
i like commercials that don’t use babies, puppies, kittens, or my “need” for security to sell me things. entertain us since you’re interupting the show!
I had not hated the Range Rover commercial until I read your blog entry. I will now, most certainly, be annoyed the next time I see it. It is so easy to lose your center, getting all caught up in the “wow, I wish I could live there” or “It would be really cool to have that.” In reality, the really cool thing would be to be in with the crowd waiting for the dignitary (in the hand carriage, not the Land Rover) to pass and then hangin out with the native people. I spent two weeks in China on business about a year and half ago and everytime we were on the street (in a car of course) I found myself lookin in the “average” (poor) person’s shops thinking how cool it would be to hang out there for a while. The language barrier and a cool/like minded interpreter where the major impediments (might be a good basis for a screen play, if I ever get some ambition).
Ff you don’t write anything about it, at least keep the memories as vivid as possible. I went to Haiti when I was 10 and it made a huge impression on me. They are the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. If anyone who really knew what things were like in Haiti they would never have turned those boat people away. The US was afraid of AIDS. But how can a Catholic country, where a prostitute blushes if you say “condom”, ever solve its problems by ignoring reality?
What looked like middle class lived in tin and cardboard homes the size of my cubicle. In some places a trench about two feet deep carried milky, dirty water that was used for washing babies and clothes. I saw this.
The women in the airport came up and gently touched my hair. My mother said they weren’t used to white blond hair. They were kind, silent women.
I watched American children trading boxes of individual serving cereal for beautiful hand carved statues. When on a picnic, a man came down from a rocky slope and asked for our trashbag of scraps, when we were done.
At night, the island was very dark. We could hear drums and singing and see large fires of people celebrating, imploring, praying, whatever one might say when channeling energy towards a spiritual caretaker.
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