What kind of car you drive can be indicative of a lot in a person. Maybe I'm being stereotypical here but if you drive a mini van, you have kids. Some dads drive them, sure, but probably not out of choice. Jeeps are fun and free-spirited--if you drive one chances are you like the outdoors, bugs, camping, and four-wheeling. And smoking weed out of an apple. Two-seater convertibles are for high maintenance individuals who have neither the room nor the desire for fat people, children, or furniture from Ikea in their lives. And if it's a Miata then you might be a pickle smoker, too. But that's all good. I love me some gay men. But my ass is probably too wide for your Miata.
Today I saw two separate ads for the Honda Odyssey minivan. The way they tried to portray these cock-blockers on wheels was downright HIGH-LAR-EE-US. The female savvy version had a man and woman approaching the vehicle. The automatic door slid open slowly to a cascade of rose petals. The trunk pops up and there's a giant oyster shell which then itself pops open to reveal a multitude of smaller oyster shells which open to reveal pearls. The couple holds hands, revealing her big diamond ring to signify a blissful marriage. The blinding aura that surrounds the couple I can only compare to the Radio City Music Hall Rockette's Christmas Spectacular when the baby Jesus is revealed. The power of advertising, when exposed to the right individual, is an amazing force.
The male version of the commercial has a man exiting a grocery store with a single bag of groceries and a gallon of milk. He sees his minivan, resting all bad-ass on the slick, black streets (of the fucking suburbs..) with giant FLAMES shooting up from either side of the mom-mobile. He drops that milk and it pours out because this dude has a huge boner---for a mini van. There is a giant amplifier blasting hard rock music in the back, two high def screens playing a rock video with a long-haired guitarist motioning for him to come hither. I'd say the people at Honda are slightly ambitious in their interpretation of the desires of a man or woman to want to buy this car. Or high out of their fucking minds.
Let me tell you something about truth in advertising. It is a mini van. It screams "MOM CAR" no matter how you pimp it out with your Duran Duran bumper stickers or "26.2" decals. I am impressed you ran a marathon but your car sucks balls. I was a mini van driver for several years. The only, and I mean ONLY amenity I was fond of was the automatic door function which was conveniently operated from my car remote when the kids needed immediate entry. Other than that it was an olive green school bus that was like parking the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile.
Purchasing a min van was not my ultimate decision. In the initial throes of family planning, when we thought we'd definitely have three kids and then if they were all the same gender, we'd go for a fourth. And Lord knows with 3 or four kids, you HAVE to buy a mini van! Plans went down the shitter when The Princess turned 18 months. I had a triple-strength birth control pump surgically implanted into my uterus to ensure my ovaries would bitch slap any errant sperm who tried to "sneak into the party" harder than Lindsay Lohan's parole officer. So when I went away for a fun little girls' 30th birthday weekend, I was told there was "a big surprise" in the garage upon my return. A puppy is a surprise. A little blue box from Tiffany's is a surprise. Two tickets to Paris are a surprise. An olive green Ford Windstar sitting in the exact spot my Explorer once resided is not a surprise. The only thing that would have surprised me more would have been if he adopted a Guatemalan pygmy tribe and had them making jeans for the Gap in my new garage sweatshop.
"But honey, we DISCUSSED this! We wanted a mini van. Remember?"
I remember talking babies, I remember seeing mini vans on the road. I do not recall the "I want a mom mobile more than all the shoes at Nordstrom" conversation.
If I were to make a commercial to entice new car buyers, I would change a few things. Fuck the flames, fuck the rose petals and pearls. Fuck the mini van. I'd have a sleek, sexy ass car with plenty of trunk space for Ikea furniture or my amplifier or a dead body. It would sit higher than any other car on the road as if to thumb my nose at all the other lowly vehicles out there. It would come if fun fucking colors like electric lime, hot pink, and sparkly disco ball silver. There would be a holographic live concert playing of either Maroon 5, Pink, or the Black Eyed Peas. A tiny, pot-bellied pig with it's bladder removed would run around the car to pick up stray crumbs from the kids who would sit in the fourth row, behind the caged wall. There would be no country stations on the radio, seat warmers, seat coolers, a mini fridge stocked with Fresca, hummus, and Stacy's Multigrain pita chips. And maybe a bottle of Patron just for fun. There would also be a medicine cabinet with duct tape, Benadryl, and a gag ball for mouth kids who choose to scream, talk back, or ruin my live Pink concert by asking me asshole questions like, "How much further is it?!"
But that's just MY fantasy car commercial world. By the way, nice Miata...
No comments:
Post a Comment