Let’s see, you could have an acerbic, irascible, quick-with-quip wounded war veteran who is much older than his opponent as the Republican nominee for president, who could be going against a fresh, young face who has come out of nowhere in recent years to infuse and enthuse an electorate that seems eager for change.
How did that turn out for Bob Dole?
Well that was an exciting Super Bowl yesterday though some might say it didn’t measure up to other years. Similarly, I thought the Super Bowl commercials were pretty good overall, though some might say this was a down year. As for me, my standards may have been irreversibly lowered after last year; from now on any year that doesn’t feature two guys kissing while eating a Snickers bar is at least in for an honorable mention. In fact, I thought this year had a number of solid entries that made it difficult to pick a single best commercial, so I broke them down by category: Those With Animals; Those With Celebrities; Those With Breasts; The Surreal; The Worst and an “Open” category for commercials that didn’t easily fall into one of the other categories but made me smile.
Those With Animals
Cute animals are always a good start and are deserving of their own category even though these could easily fall into the “Surreal” niche. For example, the Fedex commercial with the big pigeons for the “heavy stuff”. Ok, pigeons bigger than a bus get attention and the creators went just far enough with the gag with the scenes of chaos in the streets. Of course, Fedex isn’t in competition with gargantuan carrier pigeons so the strong product benefit message gets kind of lost. I also liked the Sobe “Thrillicious” commercial with the lizards mimicking Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Great animation, loaded with little extra bits of business like a mini-fart cloud, but the commercial seemed to suggest that drinking Sobe turns you into a zombie, albeit one with rhythm. Better was the Budweiser Rocky commercial where an aspiring Clydesdale misses the cut to be on the Bud team but is taken under the paw of a Dalmatian coach (personal trainer?) who puts him through grueling exercises and training, turning him into a ripped “Italian Stallion” (they did use the Rocky theme). Somehow, though, I couldn’t help wondering if the horse was really on steroids, and if the Dalmatian gave him “the cream” or “the clear” since the Clydesdale’s head was nearly as big as Barry Bonds’. That was enough to tip the balance in favor of my favorite animal commercial, the Bridgestone tires “scream” commercial where a squirrel chasing an acorn into the road appears about to meet his maker (or KingDavid), but for the superior handling of the tires. Instead of squealing rubber we heard and saw the animatronic screams of the squirrel, owls, deer, the woman passenger…I don’t know, it just moved me.
Those With Celebrities
The only two celebrities I could remember off hand were Justin Timberlake for Pepsi and Will Ferrell for Bud Light. I don’t remember too much about either commercial since my mind always tries to block these two guys out when I see them, but I do remember they both seemed to be about “sucking one.”
Those With Breasts
I know, I know — it seems as if just about every commercial featured breasts in some way. The ones I selected, however, simply, um, stuck out. The first I’ll mention in this category was the CareerBuilder one where the poor working woman drone is so demoralized by her evil boss that her heart leaps out of her chest and through her shirt like a scene from Alien. Ok, it’s not really about breasts, but it struck me as a kind of “anti-breast” commentary on all the other commercials that fixate on womens’ chests. Or maybe the copywriter just needs a new job. The Victoria’s Secret commercial featured legs, breasts and music that I could actually hear because it also induced nearly absolute quiet in my living room filled with 20 people. A very awkward quiet. The best, or most over-the-top, breast commercial was the one with the chubby mechanic on a road call to jump start a woman’s car. He puts one end of the cables on her battery, then opens his coverall and attaches the other ends of the cables to his nipples, cues the ginormous sound machine in his truck and with a swig of AMP accomplishes the mission. The best part, however, was the “Do Not Attempt” message that stayed at the bottom of the screen throughout. Ya think?
The Surreal
This is the largest category as it appears advertisers are going farther and farther out there to make their ads to stand out. Sometimes this can be rather dark and even vaguely disturbing, such as the CareerBuilder ad with the Jiminy Cricket-type character being eaten by a spider, the Cars.com ads for extreme “Plan B” car negotiating that suggest having a head-shrinking witch doctor or a hulking wrestler in a circle of fire are acceptable ways of doing business, or the Doritos ad that suggests you shouldn’t tease or tempt a six-foot mouse. Bridgestone also appeared in this category when the driver of the car, on a dark, winding road, must suddenly steer around hazards such as a deer, Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons. You could feel the drama as the driver’s hands tightened on the wheel as he fought with himself over the urge to run Simmons down. Similarly the E-trade ads with the talking baby/day-trader had a way of arresting your attention in a kind of creepy way. The first ad featured the baby spitting up at the end, which isn’t a good idea when your audience is probably stuffing their faces. I was just about ready to write off the second one, where the baby talked about renting a clown with all the extra money he’d made with E-trade, when the kid looked at the clown then back to the audience and nearly took the words out of my mouth when he said, “I really underestimated the creepiness factor.”
Then there’s the silly-absurd ads like the ones from Bud Light that suggest their beer can give you powers like being able to breathe fire or fly. The one that nearly won this category in my household, however, was the Planter’s cashews ad where the ugly woman with the unibrow nevertheless had all the men around her completely smitten — all because she used cashews as perfume. The winner, however, was the commercial for Tide with the poor guy at a job interview (perhaps he got it through CareerBuilder) who is undone and shouted down by a large talking stain on his shirt. This one seemed to get the most and loudest laughs from our group.
“The Worst”
Where to begin? When you think of the amount of money that someone has to spend for a Super Bowl time slot, and then see the misbegotten effort the company puts forth, it strikes me as a bigger abuse of stockholder’s/investors money than Enron. It’s kind of like sending Travaris Jackson out as your Super Bowl quarterback. Among the worst this year was the Coke commercial featuring James McCarville and Bill Frist. McCarville’s face outdoes any clown’s in terms of creepiness factor, especially in High Def. Supposedly Coke won a bidding war for his services, topping the folks at Sobe who wanted to use him as one of their dancing lizards. Another flopper that went over with our crowd about as poorly as the announcement that we were out of chicken legs was the Parental Advisory ad with the drug dealer outside the quickie-mart complaining that he couldn’t make a living any more because kids were getting all the high they needed from their parents’ prescription drugs. Whatever. I kept expecting to see Jay and Silent Bob show up (once Bob got through over on the AMP commercial) to run the guy off their turf. Actually, what it made me want to do was run upstairs and hide the Lipitor — until I realized we don’t have any Lipitor. Speaking of drugs, the ad using a magical hand to wave a Zantac over a bloated woman to make her look better was just plain weird and wrong. Besides, I thought making women look better was beer’s job.
Another stunningly bad groaner was the Sisyphus ad for the Yukon Hybrid. Please, as if trying to sell people on the utility of a battery-powered half-ton SUV isn’t akin to pushing a boulder up a mountain anyway. Another car commercial made it into this category was for Audi, which was too bad because I kind of had high hopes for it at the beginning as they set up the scene like the infamous horse-head in the bed scene from The Godfather. Ultimately, what a waste of a premise as the “execution” left the commercial completely flat, almost as if the creative team’s heads had been cut off before the commercial was finished. Then there was the numbingly bad, even paralyzing, Gatorade commercial where a large dog drank loudly and messily from a water dish. That had a very high flinch factor as you kept wondering what it was about, and if you really even wanted to know. I remember feeling the same way watching Eraserhead 30 years ago, waiting for some pay-off or explanation. Then, and now, there wasn’t any.
But to get to the worst, however, you’ve got to have Go Daddy and Sales Genie slugging it out for a nice, dark wet spot at the bottom of the barrel. It truly galls me that I’m stuck with Go Daddy for my domain name following last year’s RegisterFly melt-down. There’s no effort to promote the benefits of their product (whatever it is), no offer to meet a need (except perhaps the most puerile), no product comparison. The ads aren’t even really saying “Look at me!” as they seem to be much more about looking at something else. At least the commercials inspire some emotion, even if it’s negative. The Sales Genie ads, however, are truly a waste of time and brain cells as I believe the animation, colors and dialog actually kill brains cells. With genius like this behind the company you really have to wonder how it ever became successful enough to make enough money to buy a Super Bowl ad, let alone two. Any future year without a Go Daddy or Sales Genie ad will automatically qualify as a “good” year for Super Bowl advertising.
Finally, there were some ads I liked that didn’t fit in any category other than they made me smile. The first ad, for Diet Pepsi Max almost fell into the “worst” category, however. First off, I can’t stand Joe Buck, so seeing him almost ruined it right off the bat except that he happened to be nodding off, which is what I do when I see/hear him so that was kind of funny. There were some other great clips in the ad of people nodding off before being revived with the product and going into a take-off of the old Saturday Night Live Night At the Roxbury skit. The commercial flirted with danger again as this skit is one of the most annoying skits in SNL history. Just as it was really starting to get on my nerves, however, the commercial ended with a guy snapping “Stop it!” to a couple of bobbing bimbos.
I also really liked the Bud Light ad with the guys being roped into a wine and cheese party with their girlfriends. What I like about these types of ads, while they focus on the guys’ obsession with beer, is that they at least portray the lads as being clever in the way they go about smuggling the beer into the party disguised as a block of cheese or a long baguette, or the way a TV is hidden in a box of Chablis. The clincher, though, was the pay-off line at the end where one the guys leaves the party “On a cheese run,” ranking right up there in my mind with “And a chain saw!” from last year’s Bud Light Super Bowl ad.
The warmest ad of the evening, however, was from Coke as it featured large cartoon character parade balloons of Underdog and Stewie from Family Guy breaking loose and competing with each other in slow balloon motion over an inflated bottle of Coke. It was funny, but especially satisfying when at the last moment a Charlie Brown balloon rose up out of nowhere to snag the prize. Yay! Charlie Brown finally wins!
By the way, if you missed any of these commercials, or want to see them again (even the bad ones) you can find a collection of all the ads from yesterday’s game in one place here.
by the Night Writer
I’m going to Scottsdale, AZ the first week in March for a business conference that I’ve been organizing for my Division. I’ve lined up some big name speakers, including an economist who also happens to be the National Policy Director for the McCain campaign. At the time we booked him last fall that was merely an interesting curiosity on his résumé; now it appears the interest factor has appreciated. Of course, what’s a business conference without golf, and what’s also ratcheting up for me is the anticipation and anxiety of playing at Grayhawk and the two TPC courses out there as part of the event. Even when I’m playing regularly my game is better suited for some of the gentler courses (slope under 130) around here. Contending with the sand and saguaros of the Sonoran desert, not to mention scads of senior executives, stretches my stress capacity. Especially because I haven’t played since the MOB Millard Fillmore Classic (a tradition unlike any other) last August 24.
It’s not that I haven’t tried to play, it’s just that after that time things seemed to keep coming up, like an overdue (but non-golfing) family vacation, more work in making up for the days off from said vacation, and distractions, like, oh, my father dying. In fact, the last time I came close to playing was in September when I was down in Missouri to visit him. On one of those days things seemed to be pretty stable and the home nurse was on her way for a regular visit so my brother, my nephew and I decided to head up to nearby town of Sullivan to play 18. We were just finishing our brats in the clubhouse before starting out when my brother’s cellphone rang and my mom said she had called for an ambulance and they were on their way to Sullivan as well, but to the hospital. Back in the car went the clubs, and us, and we met the ambulance at the emergency room entrance and spent the rest of the afternoon there. That really upset the old man because there was hardly anything he hated to see more than a lost opportunity to golf.
With March and humiliation approaching, I set out this morning for Lake Elmo and the Country Aire golf park which features an outdoor driving range with covered, heated tee-boxes. I took my clubs, picked up a large basket of balls and secured a toasty stall directly under a heater right in front of the line of large orange yardage signs. Big flakes of snow were falling slowly as I stood on the green mat and stretched, swinging a couple of clubs together to loosen up. As I did I thought back to the Sullivan clubhouse and golf course. For the last ten years or so it had been the home of the annual fund-raiser my father ran for the Shriner’s hospital, and I had been down there several times to partner with my brother and hobnob with my dad’s friends; some who, like me, had come from distant states for the fellowship and as a show of support. Golf had long been a big part of my father’s life, and one of the things he passed on to me. He wasn’t a very big hitter, but knew how to aim his steady slice (excuse me, “fade”) effectively, especially on his home course. He was a master on and around the greens though, and a preferred partner in a two-man or scramble.
I scooped a dozen or so balls along side the mat and started hitting 8-irons to see if my swing was still buried somewhere inside me. Somewhat to my amazement it was, though it looked to me as if I was barely carrying the 125-yard marker. I chalked it up to stiffness, being out of practice, the cold air and the light snow that was falling. My father hadn’t been able to teach me much about the golf-swing itself because our styles were too different. Our golf lessons, in fact, were a lot like those other driving lessons back when I was 15: testy and frustrating for both of us. In the end he sent me to other people, both to learn how to drive a stick, and how to swing one. Nevertheless, I always looked forward to playing with him. I don’t know that I’ve ever played, or will ever play, without thinking of him.
This morning after a couple of dozen shots I put the 8-iron away and started working up through the longer clubs, first a 5-iron and then my hybrid club. The first couple of shots with each club would be pretty ugly but then I’d start to get the feel back and was launching some good ones. Over the years my game has ebbed and flowed. No matter how good my game might be at any particular time, however, it was guaranteed to desert me if I played in a foursome with my dad. Maybe I just wanted too much to do well and to please or impress him. I had had some good shots while with him, but more often I was out of rhythm and veering between over-thinking paralysis and total brain-dead execution. I think the last time he may have actually seen me tee-off was at one of his tournaments a few years back. He didn’t play in these himself, but would cruise the course on a cart, teasing his friends and stirring things up. I saw his cart approaching as I prepared to hit my tee-shot and, true to form, I topped the ball and dribbled it into the creek a short way in front of me.
Two years ago, I think — after his valve replacement — he tried to turn the golf tournament over to a couple of other guys in the Shrine Club. The club responded by naming the tournament after him, even adding the word “Memorial” to the name. “I’m not dead yet,” he said, and proved it by continuing to help out with the event. Even last summer as he fought his way through the chemo treatments the guys would come by the house, wanting to know where to order the hats, or who to contact to have sponsor signs made, or for his help in straightening out the hash they had made of all the details he used to know by heart. And now this fall it will well and truly be “The Memorial.”
I was down to a few more minutes in my stall rental this morning when I finally took out the driver my brother had made for me last year. I had hardly had a chance to break it in. I took some practice swings, getting used to the longer shaft and the huge head that looks as if it should weigh a pound or more, though the club itself feels like a feather. “Well, here goes,” I thought as I teed up a ball on the tallest rubber tee on the mat. I took dead aim up the line of orange signs and brought the club back straight and high, swinging through and then watching as the ball rose straight over the signs and through the falling snow, still in the air as it passed the 250 marker. “Did you see that, Dad?” I whispered, wiping the snowflakes off of my cheek.
Mitch mentioned today that Captain Ed has been learning to speak Gaelic. I’d like to try that sometime as well. It would be handy if I ever do move to Scotland. Besides that, it would give me new and interesting ways to curse Nick Coleman, perhaps even in a way he’d understand.
Of course, if all you’re interested in is cursing, the Internet was invented just for you. Go to The Curse Engine (An tInneal Mallachtaí) to find a handy tool that lets you create your own colorful curses in Gaelic, complete with a Gaelic/English translation and a handy pronunciation guide. You choose an option from three different columns, click on the “Mallacht” button, and then “Lay on, MacDuff.”
For example:
Gaelic: Go dtachta na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach. (guh DAHKH-tuh nuh PAYSH-choh-guh duh HOH-ihn VYUG-wah-huh-suhkh.)
English: May the worms choke your worthless butt.Gaelic: Go stróice cúnna ifrinn do chuid fo-éadaigh. (guh STROH-kyuh KOO-nuh IHF-rin duh khwihj FO-AY-dee).
English: May the hounds of Hell tear your underwear.Gaelic: Go gcreime na gráinneoga cealgrúnacha do dhiosca crua.(guh GREH-muh nuh GRAWN-yoh-guh KYA-luhg-roo-nuh-khuh duh)
English: May the malevolent hedgehogs gnaw at your hard disk.Gaelic: Go salaí an Cat Mara do chuid calóga arbhair. (guh SAH-lee uhn KAHT MAH-ruh duh khwihj KAH-lo-guh AH-ruh-wir).
English: May the Sea Cat soil your cornflakes.Gaelic: Go n-aora scata Fomhórach ólta do chuid gruaige. (guh NEE-ruh SKAH-tuh FO-wohr-ukh OLE-tuh duh khwihj GROO-ihg-yuh.)
English: May a pack of drunken Fomorians satirize your hair.
I know you’re just dying to try it yourself, so I won’t delay you further. I did find it interesting, however, that the Gaelic word you click on to process the curse is “mallacht“. It reminds me of the Shakespearean word “mallecho”, which means “mischief”. It seems rather appropriate, that.
Last week I learned that a guy in our Atlanta office that I’ve talked to on occasion about our advertising and corporate sponsorships had left the company. It’s a field where talented people move around a lot, but I was a little disappointed because I enjoyed our conversations and working with him. I figured he’d leapt for a Bigger Better Deal somewhere else.
Today I found out what the BBD was: he’d left to pursue a his singer-songwriter music dream, and has a self-titled album, Steve Baskin, out in circulation. Hit the link for more details and a sample of his music. One critic has described it as “southern-fried power pop” or something like that. It doesn’t sound all that southern to me (though he is a Georgia boy) but I like it. The album’s available on Amazon and iTunes and I’ve already downloaded my copy. It’s solid throughout and has a very original jazz-blues cover of the Beatles “Hard Day’s Night.”
Check it out. And in Steve’s words, “Buy lots.”
I saw this meme over at The Far Wright, by way of Steve at Careful Thought. The premise is simple and fun in a weird kind of way. You insert your name into the following sentence on a Google search (be sure to include the quotation marks): “[your name] is a”. Collect the sentences that come up in the search and put them in the meme, then do use the same sentence in a Google image search ) and list the results. Then do the same in Google Image Search and post the result.
This generated a lot of interesting hits for me since I share a name (if not the spelling) with a well-known talk show host, a popular (at one time, anyway) folk singer and a second-tier superhero. I’ll post the image (found here) later as I’m having trouble uploading it right now, but below are the sentences that I found.
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of any of them, or their application to my life:
John Stewart is a comedian, he just happens to have a flair for politics.
John Stewart is a legend in the music industry.
John Stewart is a builder. He became an architect because he wanted to build things.
John Stewart is a comparatively unsung performer whose number of albums and quality of music challenges the redoubtable Gordon Lightfoot.
John Stewart is a national treasure.
John Stewart is a muleskinner for hire and “Rogue Freighter”.
John Stewart is a great singer and songwriter and one of Nanci’s heroes.
John Stewart is a great advocate FOR democracy, not against it.
John Stewart is a fictional comic book superhero in the DC Universe, and a member of the intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps.
John Stewart is a veteran of the comedy community, of course I’m going with him.
Some say that John Stewart is a CIA experiment that went wrong and that John Stewart only eats cheese.
john stewart is a tiny god.
John Stewart is a great character, but he’s by no means my favorite.
John Stewart is a heavyweight.
John Stewart is a very smart man.
In fact, John Stewart is a fresh face.
John Stewart is a great example of character growth.
John Stewart, is a biophysical scientist, psycho-spiritual teacher and a defining voice in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality.
John Stewart is a member of an elite club.
I heard Randy Moss’s local lawyer on KFAN last night and this morning describing the incident that led to a woman hurting her finger and then asking for $500,000 from Moss or she’d go public. According to the lawyer, Moss was at the woman’s house last weekend to watch a playoff game and after the game there was some “consensual horseplay” that led to the injured finger. There was no description of the finger injury.
Let’s see…playoff game, minor injury, $500,000. Okay, I’m getting a little nervous.
If a finger is worth $500,000, what might Ben demand after jumping up and hitting his head on my basement ceiling during last week’s Packer game?
(Bonus points for anyone – other than my kids – who knows what song that headline came from.)
Today’s Writer’s Almanac notes that it is the anniversary of the day that Thomas Paine published Common Sense.
It was on this day in 1776 that Thomas Paine published his political pamphlet Common Sense arguing for American independence from Great Britain. At the time of the publication, Paine had been living in America only two years. He’d grown up in England, where he’d struggled to earn a living as a tax collector. He saw firsthand the corruption of the British government, and had recently been fired from his job when he met Benjamin Franklin in London, and Franklin encouraged him to move to America.
He arrived just in time to see the colonies rebelling against problems in the British tax system, similar to what he had experienced back in England. He got a job as a journalist, and he immediately began to write about the political situation. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, he decided that the only solution to the conflict would be total independence for the American colonies. But when he expressed those ideas in his newspaper, he lost his job.
He spent the next several months traveling around Pennsylvania, going to various bars and taverns and talking to ordinary people about their opinions on American independence. He used these conversations to develop a writing style that an ordinary person could easily understand, and he used that style to write his pamphlet “Common Sense,” published on this day in 1776.
The pamphlet sold more than 500,000 copies, more copies than any other publication had ever sold at that time in America. It helped persuade many Americans to support revolution, and seven months later, the colonies officially declared independence.
Ah, the power of an idea, and the written word!
I’m kind of in a rambling mood tonight, thinking random thoughts. Such as…
I handed a friend of mine a bottle of water the other day. “Ah, bottled water,” he said with a smile. “The biggest scam next to carbon credits!”
“That’s got to be a pretty big scam, then,” I said, “compared to carbon credits.”
“Yeah,” he said, “we should go into business selling ‘food credits’ using the same principle. We’d make a killing.”
“Sure,” I replied, “especially at this time of the year with the holidays coming on. Here’s how we’d pitch it: ‘Feeling bad because you know you’re going to overeat this Christmas? No problem! We’ve got thousands of people lined up in the third world who have agreed to fast while you pig out! Buy your food credits now in plenty of time for the holidays! They also make great stocking stuffers!’
“In fact,” I said, “we could call the holiday version of food credits ‘Stocking Stuffers’ and package them in a festive box. Then we could get some guy who has a 2500 square foot walk-in freezer to be our spokesperson. We’d make a fortune and have a shot and picking up a prestigious award!”
We went on to talk about other things, but my thoughts later returned to bottled water, a product I use on nearly a daily basis. Most days I bring a bottle from home to drink with my lunch, mainly because the bottles of pop I used to drink have started to be too sweet-tasting to me. I got in the habit of buying a bottle of Aquafina from the company cafeteria instead of Coke or Pepsi, picking up a packet of lemon juice from the condiment stand on the way out, and mixing that into the bottle. Then one day — file this under Things That Make You Go “Hmmmm” — I noticed that a 20-ounce bottle of Aquafina retails for $1.35 in our cafeteria. While it’s cool and clear, there’s not a lot of value added there to the basic ingredients. Meanwhile, the bottle of pop right next to it featuring water, syrup, sugar, that satisfying fizz and millions of dollars worth of brand-building advertising, goes for just $1.25.
Since then we’ve bought more generic waters from Cub or Sam’s Club in bulk (about .40/bottle) and I pack one of those (and still snatch the pack of lemon juice).
I know, America is supposed to have the safest drinking water in the world, and buying bottled water is supposed to be bad for the environment, but I’m hooked. For one thing, the water from the taps or drinking fountain where I work has a hideous, metallic taste to it. Secondly, it’s so darn convenient. It’s easy to pack a bottle or three along on car trips or to outdoor activities. Besides, you never know when drought is going to break out.
I’m not snobbish about it. For example, I never cared for Perrier, and the carbonated or “sparkling” waters don’t quench my thirst as well. Funky store brand water is generally fine, though I appreciate the consistent quality of Aquafina and I like to mix things up with an Aquafina Flavorsplash from time to time (grape – yum!) One brand I cannot abide, however, is Dasani, which tastes as if it was harvested from a puddle on an asphalt driveway after an August storm. I don’t know what you can do to mess up the taste of water, but Dasani did it. I mean, it’s probably not as bad as the water my wife drank while on our honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, but it tastes like it could be (and I saw what happened to her).
Overall, staying hydrated is a good thing. I remember football practices when I was a kid where the coaches wouldn’t let us drink because we had to “toughen up”. Things have changed a lot. I also used to be a cola-fiend, probably as a result of my deprived childhood. There were three of us kids, and soda pop was an uncommon treat (even though my Dad’s business had vending machines and he could get the pop wholesale). My parents used to make the three of us share a 12 oz. can. I felt so grown-up when I started working and could drop my quarter in the machine and get a whole, blessed can all to myself! Later, the cans changed to 16 oz, and then 20 oz. bottles — bring it on! And then —Sweet Juices on the Half-Shell — 2-liter bottles! Oh, my, those single days when I could keep a 2-liter bottle in the refrigerator, reach in, twist the cap off and drink right out of the bottle before putting it back! Hah!
Sometimes, even now, when we have a 2-liter bottle in the fridge, I reach in, pull it out, twist annnnd … look wistfully at the bottle before reaching for a glass (that sound you might have just heard was Tiger Lilly throwing up a little in her mouth at the picture that came into her head). For some reason, the Mall Diva never cared for pop, even though she’s part of a generation that practically grew up with a Nuk stretched over a bottle of Mountain Dew. Myself, I used to get some real cola-cravings, but even those have diminished as the taste generally seems too hard and bubbly to me now.
Oh well, I’ve rambled enough, but I think it’s only fitting to cement the ear-worm into your head that’s probably been running through the back of your mind since you read the headline.
Columnist and commentator (or “columntator” as he refers to himself) Simon Webster in the Sydney Morning Herald has some useful observations for those preparing to usher out the old year (and several thousand brain cells) in alcoholic revelry:
DOCTORS have warned people to monitor their drinking this New Year’s Eve. Failing to imbibe sufficiently may lead to long-term psychological trauma from spending long periods attempting to communicate with drunken dribblers.
Sober partygoers also face the risk of serious rib and lung damage. Research shows that just as drunks are more likely to survive falls from great heights because they are so relaxed, they are also more likely to escape unscathed after being hugged by sobbing overweight buffoons wearing paper hats.
Drunks, however, are more likely to fall from great heights in the first place, which may have skewed test results. Scientists have called for double-blind studies to be undertaken, as opposed to just blind-drunk ones.
Webster goes on to describe some of the Scottish heritage behind the annual celebration:
Auld Lang Syne is, of course, a Scottish song, written by 18th-century poet Robert Burns. Roughly translated it means “Old Long Sign” and is about a raucous New Year’s Eve that Burns spent in the Welsh village of Llanfair pwllgwyngy llgogerych- wyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
So seriously do the Scots take New Year’s Eve that they have January 2 as a public holiday. They give their marathon celebrations a special Scottish name, Hogmanay, which is Glaswegian for hiccup.
But the Scottish capital Edinburgh is reeling from a lack of bookings this year, London’s Guardian newspaper reports. For once the city’s hotels are not booked out.
Hogmanay organisers say the lack of interest is due to gales that forced the last-minute cancellation of the city’s street party twice in the past four years. When you’ve got a street full of men in kilts, the last thing you want is strong winds.
Mr. Webster also happens to share my affinity for commenting on television commercials, and later in the same article brings us this report:
A CHICKEN fast-food outlet’s ad featuring a pole-dancing mum has become the most complained-about ad in Australian TV history.
It broke the previous record-holder, an ad for mints in which a bare-chested man had long, erect nipples. The record-holder before that had been a beer ad depicting a tongue that left its owner’s body in search of a stubbie. The combined effect of consuming chicken burgers, mints and beer can be seen on certain special interest pay-per-view channels.
The pole-dancing commercial attracted 300 complaints about the level of nudity and the depiction of mums as erotic dancers, The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week.
The Advertising Standards Bureau dismissed the complaints, saying pole dancing had become a mainstream activity.
The board was split on the issue of nudity and had to watch the ad over and over again to make up its mind.
Perhaps we’re missing the main injustice here. Three hundred complaints is a lot but there would have been plenty more if chickens could write.
With news like that, this year can’t end soon enough.
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