Category Archives: Life In These United States

Life In These United States

Unfocused Hatred Theatre, NY Times Edition

I want everyone involved with this article to be pitchforked to death. I’m not gonna recount it, just click on that link. If you can read three sentences and not be filled with hate, you’re either Gandhi or dead.

Only the New York Times can not only think it’s a good idea to greenlight an article about the trials and tribulations of millionaire bankers–you know, the greedy assholes who plunged our economy into the pooper to begin with–but also not have the slightest clue about how tone deaf and out-of-touch they look. That is some serious “let them eat cake”-level of cluelessness.

Ugh. Die, all of you. And make sure you do it slowly.

Adtacular, Life In These United States

Half-Hearted Marketing Schemes Theatre Presents…

My place of employ provides free soda. I appreciate this, because I wasn’t doing enough on my own to destroy my body.

Since I’m trying to shed a few lbs, I opt for a diet sodee pop with my lunch. But Diet Coke is a hot item in these parts, so I’m usually left with Diet Dr. Pepper as my only option. Which is fine, because the commercials are true–it really does taste like Dr. Pepper!*

* Which, by the way, has to be the most idiotic ad campaign ever. Wow, it tastes like the thing it says it tastes like! Praise Jesus! Next up, we’re working on steak-flavored steak!

When I first began this job, the Dr. Pepper cans were all emblazoned with the characters from the last Indiana Jone movie. Actually, they must have only had a partial marketing deal, because every can I ever got had Mutt on it. Try to eat lunch with Shia LeBoeuf staring at you. Go ahead, I dare you.

But the Indiana Jones cans ran out, and were eventually replaced with a seemingly generic version. The only difference between this version and a totally unadorned can is a row of laces between the Dr. Pepper logo and the nutritional info.

I literally drank this soda for months before it occurred to me, “Wait, what the hell is this supposed to be?” I can only assume they’re supposed to be football laces, except for two things:

1) They are the fattest, ugliest football laces you’ve ever seen, and
2) There is not a single mention of football anywhere else on the can.

No famous football player. Not even a silhouette of someone doing the Heisman. There’s no football related contest or giveaway or anything. The only things football related at all are the ugly, ugly laces that look more like they belong on some morbidly obese dowager’s corset.

My guess is, the Dr. Pepper people wanted to attach themselves in some way to The Exciting NFL Season. However, not only did they fail to land an NFL endorsement deal, but their creative department was filled with people who had never actually seen a football.

So they went to Modell’s and bought one and brought it back to the office. By that point, a whole half hour had passed and no one was really hot for this idea anymore. Still, they spent like 15 bucks on that football, so they might as well put it to good use.

If you look closely, you can actually see everyone involved in this project losing interest in it.

drpepperlite.jpg

Life In These United States

The Night of Statistical Impossibility

Last month, The Wife and I had a nice dinner out at a Latin restaurant. The Wife got there before I did, and I met her at the bar while we waited for a table. Within 3 seconds of my arrival, the PA system played a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung English and Spanish.

Back story: I’m weird about foreign languages. I treat them like a strange amalgam of a puzzle to be solved and a joke in search of a punchline. Why do I react this way? No idea. I know it’s dumb–just throwin’ it out there.

So this song comes on, and I think it’s hilarious. At any second, it sounds like it’s gonna break out and go on an extended 9 minute Cuban jazz jam. The boys are just gonna lay out. Five minute trombone solo, timbale cadenzas, the works. (Wanna hear it? Click here.)

The Wife sighs. “I’ve heard this song four times already.” Four times? Really. How long has she been here? “About fifteen minutes.”

That didn’t sound possible to me. Then the evening progressed, and I became a believer. Because we heard this song five more times before our table was ready, which only took 20-25 minutes or so.

And over the course of our meal–which could not have lasted more than an hour–I heard this song at least 20 times. Over that time, the song went from being hilarious to grating to annoying to hilarious again–five or six times.

The dining room was big, but it wasn’t that big. It held a hundred people, more or less. Let’s be generous and say they packed 150 people in this room. And let’s also assume that not everybody had their birthday that exact evening. Let’s give a window of a week.

Even with all of these caveats added onto my experience, there is simply no way that I was in the presence of that many people celebrating their birthday. Statistically, it’s impossible.

And no, I don’t know what the statistical probability of such an event is. But even in a room full of people, what are the odds that 10 to 20 percent of them were born within the week?

The first person to figure this out wins absolutely nothing.