by Street Dude

This is a wonderful commercial, I love this commercial, I love the music. This commercial is a part of me, truly. It’s one of those commercials that triggers visceral memories; the halcyon of my childhood; the halcyon of the year 1990. Todd Stewart (aka Steve Martin), the president of Art Instruction School, is quite affable; his suit is ageless, still looks en vogue to me 21 years later, but ey, I ain’t no fashion guru, but I do know that he has nice sales-pitch: “Do you like to draw? Or Paint? Or maybe just sketch and doodle?”

Do you want to make boring, vapid, and kitsch art? Do you want to make art that is hung on the wall of a dentist office? Hung inside a windowless room with fluorescent lighting? Well, if you answered yes, than this test is for you.

Technically, great direction, e.g. the opening zoom through the white french doors to the lady, and check out that dovetailing crossfade. Great camera movement: copious zooms. Zooms aren’t used that much nowadays. All I wanna do is a Zooma zooma zoom and a boom boom.

Where in the world is Todd Stewart? On this beach?

Rating: 30 SECONDS OF HEAVEN

Especially if you own a Mercedes Benz. Who cares if your wife is cheating on you? You’re cheating on her too. With the magic of all-wheel drive, you can fuck whoever, you know?

Anyway, this is clever in a kind of “Gift of the Magi” way, even if it does suggest that our society is just about as morally bankrupt as everyone already knows it is. Yep, just a couple of people cheating on their spouses, which TV viewer, is exactly what you should aspire to do, drive a big car and fuck someone who isn’t your wife.

Oh well, 30 Seconds of Heaven.

video by kim-jun il-lation

This video is absolutely fantastic, very thoughtful, a with beautiful asian delicate harmonies. So soft and delicate. A hot drinks really get you going. I really appreciate young adult man’s splendor and valor. Valor in the hot face of hot drink fire.

ILLATIONS:

1. The bass line very technical, a very difficult stringa to play. Most probably studio musician hired for his higher-ranking baseball skills.
2. h20 stands for water. thank you for water!
3. Young man stand with aplomb and a country patriotism.

Rating: 30 Seconds of Heaven

With this commercial, 30 Seconds of Hell kick-starts our continuing “Tall as a Damn Mountain” series, wherein we cull commercials with the tallest people in all the land.

Part one of our series features another clever commercial from ESPN’s Sportscenter. This commercial features former-NBA Allstar, Gheorghe Muresan, a 7′ 7” center who played for the Washington Bullets in the ’90s. He is really tall. Gheorghe is such an erudite — a damn tall erudite — that he starred in My Giant (1998) with co-star, Billy Crystal.

In a white-collar office setting, we observe colossal hulking Gheorghe Muresan as dances. This may sound like a TALL TALE; however, this did happen, this really happened, in real life, this is not a tall tale, it’s tall entertainment, a tall pleasure every dance-step of the way.

I like to think of the creative board meetings, the pre-productions phases of this project that prefaced. I imagine the creative team being like, “Hey, what we got, whose got a pitch, hurry up, I’m not listening.” Soon after, someone meek stands up and says, “I colored-penciled storyboards with Gheorghe Muresan dancing in the office.” The creative director, whilst smoking a cigar, turns and says, “Colored pencil? Oh brother, not more colored pencils. Kid, are you shitting me?” The meek man replies, “24 piece Crayola. Sharpened as a Native American arrow head.” The cigar-ed boss replies, “Kid, you’re promoted, I’m so sick of all these schmucks drawing with those garbage brands Rose Art and Color Busters.” Cigar boss turns to Belinda, the secretary, “Get Gheorghe Muresan’s agent on the phone, pronto, or YOU’RE FIRED.”

Before I wrote this digressing review, I thought of transcribing the entire commercial — then I realized that would be a waste of time, for I’m watching CNBC right now, and American Greed is on. My point is this: take your money out of banks and stuff it under your mattress, pay attention to the simple dialogue in this commercial, and enjoy yourself whilst Gheorghe Muresan dances.

After writing this, I now realize that most of Gheorghe’s fame and success in the public eye has focused only on his height, and despite the title of this post, this post is about the joy Gheorghe spreads. It’s not all about his height, it’s about what’s inside of his tall body, and inside of his tall body is a big, warm heart.

Rating: 30 Seconds of Heaven

Sky-tops Gheorghe Muresan greets us at the door with a sky-high welcome

“Credit card, you got it.” — Macaulay Culkin, as Kevin, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).

Credit card, you got it. Credit Cards: can’t live with ‘em and you can’t shoot ‘em. Card Credits: our nation is in debt. Dear credit cards, in the 1990s, you bought so many damn speed boats and jet-skis for people, and someday you will be burned at the stake like a witch, and hanged, like Bernie Madoff, in town square.

Discover Card, on the other hand, seems to be the ‘indie’ credit card (does urban outfitters have a credit card special savings signup? Umm, don’t know, don’t care) and this commercial with the faux hair band is pretty clever.

The commercial runs like a VH1 Behind the Music documentary, a show I have always admired, and it certainly packs a punch within its 30 seconds. This commercial is effective, and glory glory hallelujah, it’s watchable.

We hear the band’s story, starting from the glory-days — lil red corvette, cover of Rolling Stone, giant credit card, jacuzzi-limo — and travel in time, to the future, with our 30 Seconds of Hell helicopter landing on the inevitable 30 Seconds of Hell helicopter landing pad, where we exit the helicopter, and walk to an ending where one of the dudes from Danger Kitty works a hot dog stand.

The commercial is much like the teachings of an Aesop Fable, teaching us: be frugal with your money and stop buying jacuzzi-tubs, plush spa robes, summer homes in Maine, and a three-fleet of shreddin’ jet-skis, colored hot green, electric pink, and outrageous orange, respectively.

Their slogan is clever: “For the slightly smarter consumer.” Here we have a credit card company telling the consumer to, and I am paraphrasing, ‘cool your jets on the spending.’

Rating: 30 Seconds of Heaven

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this ad from 1982 was aired right around that time that AIDS (the disease) was becoming a global crisis.  I’m not sure how they didn’t see this as the “worst possible name for a diet pill,” at the time.  That’s like naming a tobacco product canzer.

Rating:  30 seconds of whoopsies

“I’m going to get my hands on your data.” Chck, plicka, keyboard-chck chk, blk chica chica. Whence that onomatopoeia? One word: yourkompacpresariokomputerkeyboard or wordprocessor unit from the early ’90s. “I’m going to get into your system.”

Once upon a time beofore the monumental cgi of the awe-inspiring film Titanic, a movie that made me cry in the 5th grade, Leonardo Decaprio gave an honest effort to inform ambivilant white-collared workers of the importance of computer safety. Soon after, James Cameron, mastermind director of Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2 : Judgement Day (1994), had a dangerous run-in with a flanneled computer hacker (marrymeleo!!!). Honestly, this problem stemmed from the fact that Cameron named his password ‘corvette,’ due to the fact that 99.99% of the time he was day-dreamin’ of riding in a candy-apple corvette. He would wake up in the morning: candy apple corvette. Before nighty-night: candy apple corvette.

29 seconds in, we hear an insightful testimony from an insightful asian man whom tells us, “someone got my password (much like Camron, the password was [little-red] corvette, a password derived from the subconscious of our world).” “Soon after, some flanneled dude [sic] has the audacity to walk in with a yellow toolbox and ask my smoking-hot red-blazered sexy-secretary [sic] something stupid, but smart.” The secrety confirms this occurrence: “He had a special toolbox.”

This public service announcement spurred an epiphany within meee-self: every night, I see strangers digging through my dumpster — now I know they are looking for my top secret 4″ floppy discs. Those are those plastic things capable of storin’ 7.11kb of data, and sometimes I even store my MS paint artwork on there — my illustrations of important things. No worries, though. I can turn back time. Yeah, baby, belly that.

“Usually when you think hackers, you think [super] computers, and the data stored in those computers.” adds an unknown but authoritative guy, “sometimes the hackers try to get the data in our heads.”

The truth is out there.

2:20 in, a wild sighting of Delaney Driscoll, a supporting actress that starred in Alexander Payne’s Election (1999). Wow, is this really true?

The following still-image sequence features impeccable use of the diagonal yellow-to-blue graphic gradient. This gradient was created in MS-Paint, version 2.0. This is teamed with impeccable use of beveled borders on the title captions.

So team, what have we learned? Many things, one being the importance of cause-and-effect. Be safe with your computer passwords and floppy discs; that, and take your time, everything is perfectly fine, and have fun whilst at work. Both men and women at work.

Rating: 30 seconds of heaven

Dear diary, hi again, this is your friend Bi-Bi, and after my daddy bought me baby rollerblade we went to Tahiti, and Bi-Bi and baby rollerblade went rollerblading with mommy. When did many super-fun things.

(1) Went rollerblading. check √
(2) Drank fruit punch. check √
(3) Bi-Bi played with rollerblade baby. check √
(4) Daddy bought Bi-Bi a new doggie. check √
(5) Bi-Bi eat ice cream. check √
(6) Bi-Bi spend money. check √
(7) Bi-Bi throw a hissy when mommy fight with daddy. check √
(8) Bi-Bi throw frisbee with rollerblade baby. check √
(9) Bi-Bi get hungry and go pee-pee. check √
(10) Doggie go pee-pee in hotel room a me hidey. check √
(11) Mommy and daddy take Bi-Bi and rollerblade baby to believe-it-or-not museum owned by Ripley’s. check √

Dear diary, vacation was fun.

Rating: 30 Seconds of Hell

This commercial is low fidelity — no excuses — this kid is speaking martian.

Some say, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, that Nerf was a government subsidiary with a mission to mint condition the minds of children for an oncoming intergalactic war with “unknown and unseen ‘invaders.’”

After many botched theories, the U.S. Government concluded that Nerf Corporation would move forward by, “just selling toys, packaged in radical and booger-ish boxes, with GPS tracking chips implanted”; notwithstanding, this video speaks martian, in plain broken english.

Rating: 30 Seconds of Hell

Here’s a fun one. This Willie Horton ad is a classic. Notice how the words “Kidnapping”, “Stabbing”, and “Raping” appear on the screen. Michael Dukakis personally let Willie out of his cell. Willie kept saying “Mike, I cannot wait to get out of this jail cell so that I can commence with the rapin’” and Dukakis was like, “Hold your horses, we’ll get you out on the streets in no time. God George HW Bush would totally kick my ass if he knew I was doing this, haw haw, gimme some more blow (COCAINE), haw, haw.”

The ad played a significant role in getting Bush elected. Dukakis is the president of his cell block in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

And that is why we won the first Gulf War so decisively. And then Ross Perot.

Rating: Thirty Seconds of Heaven