Can I Get a Witness?

One more energy drink. Zzzzzzzz....

Always ready and able to help a company is Lance Armstrong, here to testify about the benefits of FRS Healthy Energy. FRS stands for Free Radical Scavenger, which sounds like a great name for a band—or a political revolution.

With all the professional shots of Armstrong all over the FRS site, I wonder why they went with this poorly cut out screen grab from a Congressional testimony.

That's What I've Spread on My Toast

While President Bush is over in China slapping backsides of bikini-clad athletes and basically making a chimp of himself, let's flash back some 49 years, lest we start to think that politics mixed with shameless commercialism and celebrity are something new.

Here's an interesting old commercial from Good Luck Margarine, in which former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt pitches the stuff in that now-extinct American accent known as "Hyde Park Glenda The Good Witch." Sounds and looks a lot like Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show.



YouTube uploader says she was paid 35K for this :30. Pretty good money, I'd guess, by 1959 standards. As for Good Luck Margarine, I've never heard of it.

From the Streets of Sacramento to the Freeways of LA

I love to throw together truthful parodies of the crap I'm working on sometimes, if only for the benefit of keeping my coworkers lighthearted and mindful that we're really just bullshitters at the end of the day. (My boss called my "cynical" yesterday. I said "You are too, you just try to hide it.") Or I like to inject truth into an ad that I know the market will respond to, even if the client might freak out. Those ideas usually get shot down, but I've always believed in speaking to the audience honestly, and if I can talk someone into letting me do it, I know it will get results.

Sometimes when the camera's rolling, things get a little playful. This spokesman is doing a stand-up for some car dealer in San Bruno, a San Francisco suburb, in what appears to be the late 60s or early 70s. The info at YouTube says this was a live broadcast, but I can't believe that. I'm sure it was to tape, with the crew goofing off and saying what they really thought of this business of selling used cars. At any rate, it's gold. Lots of adult language, so if that might offend you, don't watch.



Here's an essay I wrote in 2002 about used cars.