Like many troubled Americans, I have spent some time “talking to someone,” the operative euphemism for spending $140 for a 50-minute session in which a skilled professional will alternate between laughing at my jokes and saying, “That must have made you angry.”
When I finally realized that my anxieties were mutating into panic attacks, and my panic attacks were driving me to benzodiazepines, and my benzodiazepines were…well, that’s all the time we have today.
Sure, I’ll be back, but I have finally realized that I can find out more about myself from the Madison Avenue mystics who are spending something like a billion dollars this year — enough to buy the entire Freedom Caucus, and isn’t freedom what we’re really after anyway? — to sponsor the NCAA Basketball Tournament. These people know more than I do about my hopes, my insecurities, my dreams and, most importantly, what devices I use when I am not eating junk food or taking the medications that make me less depressed, more masculine and, with any luck, no more ill than the next guy.
So, having watched four rounds of commercials, this is what I know to be true:
* Perhaps because I consume cardboard pizza, assembly-line burgers, masses of chicken fat marketed as “wings,” and gallons of the Real Thing, I am also susceptible to the other Real Thing, namely that affliction known as strokeheartattackdiabetes. I am indebted to Big Pharma, which has a drug for each of those things, although not yet one medication for all those things. If you are into irony, it is true that when all the drugs for all these maladies are taken, you are at risk for stroke, heart attack and diabetes, but not an erection lasting more than four hours. We’ll get to that soon. What matters now is that it’s a fact of life that a vast majority of the products we turn to for our problems eventually become our problems.
Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses, but at some point opiates became the religion of the masses
That’s trouble for us, but a windfall for the ad agencies. Take Ogilvy & Mather, the mega-agency that brings you the aforementioned Coke commercials. Nobody is hoping that all that sugar gives you diabetes, but, should that happen, Ogilvy also does ads for Bristol-Myers Squibb, the makers of Metformin — which happens to be the go-to drug for diabetics. See the point? It’s a win-win!
One hand washes the other. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses, but at some point opiates became the religion of the masses. This might even prove my point. It is also worth noting that the current administration has appointed Chris Christie to solve the opioid problem, and when Chris Christie is the official personification of a drug-free America, I believe that we are not necessarily on the path to eliminating unhealthy substances from our lives.
More significantly, there are 18 official sponsors of the NCAA Tournament, which suggests that the erectile dysfunction industry is spending something like $55.55 million to make me and my fellow Baby Boomers feel confident and virile even though we are not. If my math is correct, that means something like $38 per every U.S. erection in a typical month, although most of these emblems of concupiscence occur on birthdays, anniversaries and sometimes in the event of a major furniture purchase. The rest of the time our virility may be enhanced, but we are merely all dressed up with no place to go. The money spent on those commercials is effective but not necessarily efficient.
And speaking of those Viagra spots, I am nonplussed by the suggestion that my testosterone levels experience an uptick at the sight of a woman wearing a basketball jersey. I yield to no one in my admiration of the incredible athletes of the WNBA, but I rarely fantasize about a woman who can posterize me with a head fake and then get to the rim before I can turn around to see what happened. As likely as not, this sort of humiliating event will, in fact, lower my testosterone levels to the point at which even free-basing those hits of extra-strength tabs that are supposed to work for three months will not resuscitate me. I believe “faked him out of his shorts” is just a figure of speech, at least in this case. In the end, however, the fact that I am not reacting as intended almost certainly says something about my childhood, so there is much work to be done. Note to self.
You may laugh or at least grin slightly, but this is no joke. These Mad Men know how to spend a buck. My respect for the advertising industry grew exponentially — and I regret that choice of words — when I realized that I was receiving more emails from purveyors of ED medication, Russian mail order brides and organ enlargement nostrums than I was from my friends. I took no offense from this, except that it troubled me that these people knew so much about me. They will get to you any way they have to.
I also know that I am supposed to find it funny when the smirking dude selling me the official phone of the NCAA Tournament tells me that he loves the smell of Napalm in the morning. Maybe because I never got around to seeing “Apocalypse Now,” I am mostly reminded that there is a fine line between cellular devices and war crimes. And whose fault is it that I never saw the movie? Having watched this clever spot, I know that I am the one to blame. More insight.
Pete Rose, banned from the Hall of Fame by various baseball commissioners, might one day soon be the commissioner
I also know now that I am supposed to be amused by the sight and sound of Dick Vitale in a Subway commercial. I will work on this, because, for now, Dick Vitale simply makes me nostalgic for the Jared Era. Lots of issues there.
The advertising industry, however, is spot on with those Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that promote the premise that it’s possible to fix a sporting event. There was a time when I would have wondered if the lords of sport would have been comfortable with this message, but given the scramble of pro franchises to move to Las Vegas, I guess there’s a new comfort level with the idea. We cannot be far from the time when the blood-spattered jerseys of Arnold Rothstein (who, according to legend, fixed the 1919 World Series) and Bugsy Siegel (who pretty much invented Las Vegas) will be enshrined in Cooperstown. And Pete Rose, banned from the Hall of Fame by various baseball commissioners, might one day soon be the commissioner. And for all of this and so much more, we can thank Don Draper’s rightful heirs.
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And then there’s the actual tournament, which features a group of awesome athletes who may have peaked a bit soon with their stirring victory over Kentucky; an Oregon team getting 5 vs. those incredible North Carolina dudes; and the good-vibes team from Gonzaga, which has basically been handed a bye into the championship game but is no lock to cover the number — 6 1/2 — vs. a plucky South Carolina team.
I say take the points in both games. I picked either North Carolina or Kentucky to win it all and I’d like to be half right, but I also took Oregon to make it to the Final Four, so I’m taking the Ducks on the futures line, which means I’m getting plus-470 to win the title.
