Ad Nausea: Berries and Cream

I'd like to make the serious announcement that I LOVE this commercial. When I was doing really poorly, I started watching TV again to distract myself, and most advertisements still make me want to blow my brains out (television, radio, billboards, magazines, banana sticker cross-promotions), but this one makes me laugh until I cry.




This really is a notable development, because the best I do otherwise is snickering at the Geico caveman commercials. I loathe advertising with a passion and it makes me all queasy inside. But this one I drop everything to pay attention to. If you know me, you know how odd that is.

Some people don't seem to get it at all (particularly certain men who are just irked that he's so damned gay), while others will do the dance with me, repeatedly. And I can discuss its fucking brilliant nuances the way other people sit around and talk about Dostoyevsky... If I've lost you, I understand, but I want to thank this commercial for being able to make me glad that I turned on the TV. For a second.

Also, check out the very interesting phenomenon that has developed on YouTube: people posting videos of themselves re-enacting the commercial. Who knew?

I wrote the Starburst people to suggest that they make a second installment of the commercial consisting of ordinary people re-enacting the thing on YouTube and was summarily told to fuck off because they'd owe me money if they used my idea.

the mortgage and the penis.

Some time ago, I came up with a joke about all spammers either offering to "shrink my mortgage, or enlarge my penis" when I set up a guestbook on my site and had to take it down because it was being spammed constantly.

I'm watching TV now (and this just proves to me that I have no clue what I'm missing when I'm not watching tv, which is always) and standup comedy is on...

and the man says....

"It seems like I'm only getting two kinds of spam these days; people promising to shrink my mortgage, and people trying to enlarge my you-know-what."

I was halfway tuned out until then and when I heard him say "people promising to shrink my mortgage...... " in the background, in that split moment of a pause, I felt my eyes get big and my jaw go slack. Then, in slow motion: "...or.. en...large... MY YOU-KNOW-WHAT! [hahahahahahaaa]".

It was that moment of frozen horror when you're stopped at a stoplight, watching in the rearview mirror, helplessly, as the car behind you barrels up behind you, tires screeching, waiting to see if they will be able to stop in time.

Baudrillard has a quote about how the notion of "stealing" other people's good ideas is bullshit because, if someone spontaneously comes up with the exact same idea as you, it means it was pedestrian idea to begin with.

So does this mean that my joke, which always made me giggle, (and is much funnier for me because I have neither a mortgage nor a penis, whereas Mr. Standup probably has both), was not as clever as I once thought, because clearly this man and likely a million un-famous others have had the very same idea and thought the joke to be their own?

Or does it mean I'm good enough to have my own standup special on Comedy Central?