Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Commercials can get weird, pt 1

Take, for instance, the Dux Bed radio spots. I remember the first one I heard, lo so many years ago. They apparently accidentally sent their first rough run-through to 880 AM -- the announcer sounded sleepy and badly out of breath, and didn't even mention his name (though the voice was easily recognizable to me as that of Pat Summerall, the sportscaster). It was unedited, and poorly written. But since then, there have been a dozen or more ads over the years, each one sharply done.

The latest one, though, stands out. In it, Summerall talks about -- get this -- how much he loves getting to bed with his wife. And he does it with such breathless, joyous longing that he's getting high on it even as he's doing the commercial. Wow. 77 years old, and the old kicker's still got kick!

On the other hand, the considerably younger onetime darling of commercials, Britney Spears, hasn't been doing so many of them lately. Now that she looks so, well, ordinary. I'm hoping her young sister Jamie-Lynn (the Zoe Girl who has a great face, and whose body should fill out in the next few years) is taking note as to what not to do and how not to handle fame. Or more precisely, I hope she learns not to sell herself out to the drive for fame.

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