J is Lazy: Best Of J

The Sanctity of it All - Late-September, 2004

Well, if you’ve ever read anything I’ve written, spoken to me, or heard me speaking with someone else in any four minute window in my life, you wouldn’t be at all surprised if I said I was something of a sports fan. Baseball – fuck you, go away. Hockey – despite Bettman and Wirtz, I still love you. Basketball - #1 Illini? Football – Damn you! Damn you all to hell! I’d say that I feel sorry for Rex Grossman, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who wants people feeling sorry for him, so I’ll say (in Chicago-speak, of course): “Godspeed, my friend – we’ll be here next year for you’se.” Since Rex and almost every other reason for optimism surrounding the great Chicago Bears Professional Football Organization is now sidelined, I thought I’d shift my attention away from the action, and right to this commercial break – a commercial break filled with misery, deceit, infidelity, subdued rage, and sexual promiscuity. I mean, of course, beer commercials.

I was first seduced by the sordid world of the purveyors of brewed lager and ale beverages at the ripe young age of 13. A dog wearing a Hawaiian shirt – pure genius, I thought. Of course, at that time I was also making my dog wear Ozzy Osbourne concert t-shirts (RIP, Baby, wherever you are), so it definitely was right up my alley. This canine-themed ad campaign must explain that momentous evening at the park on Larch Street when myself and two other fellows with mind-expansion curiosity saw fit to put down a 12-pack of Budweiser (I only had 2 ½ or 3, I swear). For you see, had I not witnessed that loveable pooch, decked out in islander garb and surrounded by girls who I could have sworn I had just seen in Hardbodies (or was it H.O.T.S.?) wearing the least I had ever seen a girl actually wear at that tender time of my life, I may never have been corrupted by drink. What’s my point? I haven’t a clue. But what I will tell you is this: while witnessing the NFL’s version of Flair-Hogan this evening, I came across two of the recent beer commercials that make me believe that certain people aren’t born with souls – rather, they are filled with the dusts of despair and the broken shards of unfulfilled dreams.

OK, hold the damn phone. I just went back to enjoy my supper, and when I realized that Dallas-Washington just wasn’t doing it for me, I flipped on reliable old Fox, and found that another wonderful installment of Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy was airing. (Sidenote: ABC is up in arms because they maintain that Fox stole their idea for that show’s formula, as further evidenced by the title of their upcoming fall sure-to-be-a-hit Wife Swap: The Original. Apparently, ABC feels the need to tell us that Fox ripped off their sleazy idea before they had a chance to air it. Sounds like the antics of a #4 network to me. I digress.) Well, in this particular episode of spouse and family whoring there was a black woman, possibly from the rural part of the South (who’d’ve thunk it?), who was paired with a family of New Englanders, and she was smack dab of a middle of a deep sea fishing expedition in the chilly, wet and rough North Atlantic. And she didn’t like it. WHAT?!?!? The New England family could not believe their eyes and/or ears. What do you mean this black woman from the rural South doesn’t like taking a small fishing boat out in the middle of the rain-drenched North Atlantic in early spring? Is she from MARS????? No, the rural South, you ignoramus. I’m from the Midwest and I couldn’t see myself enjoying this for 10 minutes – especially with someone else’s spouse and children. Christ.

Now, flash to the rural South. Mom of New England Family sits with Black Rural South Dad and two Black Rural South Children, and she’s so bored with the game of cards they’re playing that she decides to challenge them to a spirited Super Soaker war – good, wholesome fun. Soon, I slowly realize that I am witnessing a major event in reality TV – every single person I have seen, from New England dad and his four chowder-eating chilluns, to Moms Black and New England and the rest of the Rural South clan, is…obese. This is unprecedented, unbelievable, unbridled reality TV history! Scholars of the future will no doubt point to this very moment in human civilization, where an obese family of New Englanders and an obese African-American family fro the rural South swap mothers/wives and invite millions of others watch this well thought-out scheme play out. And they will weep. Oh, just as unprecedented was the scene where the portly New England children are roasting marshmallows, and Black Mom looks on as they start taking charcoal from their roasting sticks and rubbing it on each other’s faces ala Minstrel Show. In a word, sublime.

Where was I? Ah yes – the “marriage” of beer salesmanship and social depravity. Allow me to explain. While watching the epic ‘Skins-‘Boys tilt, I was fortunate enough to witness two separate commercial offerings from the good folks at Anheuser Busch. The first, involving their beloved King of Beers Budweiser, features a deliciously stereotypical wiener football referee. There’s this hapless geek, standing on the sidelines as one of the coaches chews him out, probably for making as blatantly poor of a no-call as the Vikings’ offside penalty on the Bears two-point conversion try, and the ref is showing absolutely no emotion. Well, the announcers wonder aloud how this poor, emasculated bastard ever learned to take such abuse. Flash to his living room where he sits in his easy chair as his vicious nagging wife screams various indignities in his ear such as, “Why don’t you clean the litter box, it’s been three weeks!” and, “that porch needs painting” and my favorite, “would it kill you to tell me you love me once and a while?” Ha, pure hilarity! The miserable nag of a wife is pushing this poor, weak fellow to the brink of insanity and possibly suicide! His life is so much like everyman’s – that Budweiser ad is dead on! How very sad. The first time Michelle and I saw this, we turned to each other and said, simultaneously, “That’s not funny.” No, friends, that is not funny. But damn it, if it don’t push the brew out the door…

My other favorite spot comes from the beer aimed at the 16, er, 18, I mean, 21-35 year-old male set – Bud Light, Home of the aforementioned Mr. Spuds McKenzie. This fine attempt to sell alcoholic beverages gives us some boob and his boob friends sitting at the “game” enjoying a few frosty-cold Bud Lights. Token Black Boob says, “Hey, Dorky Red-haired Boob, how did you get Hot Leggy Brunette Girlfriend Who In Real Life Wouldn’t Touch You With a Ten-foot Pole to let you go to the game?” “Well, Token Black Boob, it’s really ingenious, don’t you see? I hired a body double to serve in my place.” Flash to Beefcake Male with dork red-hair wig, all greased up and panting, saying something wonderfully ribald to said Leggy Brunette, who returns the frenzied sexual energy with orgasmic gusto. “For the great taste that won’t get you up and always keeps you down (or whatever), make it a Bud Light!” Close with Leggy Brunette telling Dorky Boob “You were an animal last night” or something just as clever to imply that she enjoyed the intense lovemaking session “they” had together, only to see Dorky Boob realize, “Oh no! That wasn’t me who had sex with my own partner!” Kill me now.

Am I the only one who thinks that there’s something that’s not right about this latest advertising “campaign”? Where are all of those politicians who have babbled incessantly about the sanctity of marriage, “that of which by o’er and between that of a woman and that of which man is” (Romans 9:21 – or “Bobby Hull, Stan Makita” as I call it)? I’ll tell you where those crusty old fucks are – in the back pocket of the booze merchants, who know just as well as the tobacco industry who their customer is, and will let nothing stand in their way of precious market share! I must take up my hatchet and stop the liquor merchants, before they send us into a downward spiral of dependence upon the demon rum! I quote the great Rev. J. D. Peterson from his stirring document “A Temperance Talk” from January of 1890: “This I say because drunkenness, I believe, we shall ever have, while sin, strong drink and sinners are found on earth.” Damn skippy, Rev: A Temperance Talk.

You know, if doob were legal, none of this would be necessary…