Drunk, late, gum commerical

I'm watching Stewart's show, and he's interviewing Jason Bateman, and it's just mind numbing. Finally, my diligence pays a dividend: a commerical break.

I must say, I really truly like the tee vee commercial as a medium. People — you know who I'm talking about, the undesirables — often pooh-pooh add-vert-is-mints. Not me. I like em'. They can't help but pull and put the blinds on our impulses and wants.

Ads are so fucking (least favorite thing about alcohol: all the casual swearing) insane and absurd — it's fun. Dentyne, the gum people, have paid to mention a few words and show us a few images:



First, before we get to the good stuff, let's check what was in fine print:

*New Dentyne Pure (TM) neutralizes bad breath odors caused by bacteria and food.

What is that asterisk about? Why is this in fine print? Legal reasons? It must be. The next, and last, piece of fine print says that Cadbury Adams owns Dentyne — good to know.

Okay, this ad has five shots in a tidy 15 seconds:

1. guy with tall hair making out with girl, city skyline watching.
2. tall-haired guy offers gum to co- office worker at place of work.
3. tall-haired guy offers gum to... (friend?) at gym.
4. tall-haired guy offers gum to sleeping companion in what I can only assume is a carpool.
5. Human head chalk outline ingests the gum and a bunch of lines swirl on the screen, one of them fairly clearly says "pure".

Office, Gym, Carpool = drab and predictable... what did you do today, successful young professional? 

If you look closely you may notice the three guys who have gum thrust upon them all respond with looks that vary on annoyance, and rightfully so. The guy offering them the gum is an ass. "If you're going to accuse me of sporting malodorous breath, please do so privately, or not at all" they seem to say.

And the things the voice over says, fantastically strange:

The average person will spend 20,000 minutes kissing.

Behavior research confounds me. Everything about this statement is inane (note: I know nothing about behavior research). Yes, this harp was recently plucked, but I liked it then, so I'm back: Why twenty thousand minutes? Why not convert it to terms we use: slightly less than 14 days. It's certainly more manageable. 20,000 minutes is mush, it means nothing. 14 days is so approachable that it's almost trite. Perhaps they assumed we'd all be depressed if we found out one dose of my cat's flea medicine does it's thing for twice the amount of time an average humanoid will kiss something (what we're kissing is unclear: just other people? are they talking only lip to lip? Please clarify, Dentyne). Whatever, next line:

Now there's a gum for the other forty million minutes.

Well, shit, if I've got 40,000,000 minutes to kill, can I get a cigarette? Am I supposed to feel frightened? disconcerted? Are they actually suggesting I spend all that time, seventy-six years, chewing a gooey, viscous, bizarrely flavored stick of synthetic rubber? What in God's fuck are they talking about?

Introducing new Dentyne Pure

Uh, alright, a pleasure...

It purifies your breath deliciously, instead of just covering it up.

I'm flabbergasted.

 Dentyne Pure. The new way to practice safe breath  

This ad is hilarious. Ad People are paid to come up with this stuff, so I can only assume they're good at it. Ostensibly, this ad is a good ad: it's going to move some gum — the Dentyne people would not settle for garbage.

That's funny, right?