wowza. i don't watch a lot of TV, but Sunday afternoon's sinus medication had me on the couch, flipping through 5000 channels of...well, nothing, really, when a commercial came on and i heard a song that i'd loved so long ago: the Buzzcocks' "Everybody's Happy Nowadays." now, while specific examples escape me at the moment (help me out, dear readers), i know we've all seen some bizarre commercial appropriations of once edgy music. what makes this AARP commercial really fantastic, though - and therefore absolutely forgivable - is how utterly chaotic the whole spot plays out.
first, a middle-aged woman in an office is surprised with a birthday cake. then, four other folks of varying sexes, ages and races are all shown blowing out candles on their respective cakes. one guy's friends even go so far as to put his picture on his cake. funny. at :08, this is nice stuff.
at :09, though, all hell breaks loose --- cake is thrown across a table, our first pink sweatshirted lady is being spun around (somewhat viciously) in her office chair, a grandmother gets spun around at a dance party, then our guy who presumably ate his own visage is shown on his knees with a balloon hat on doing some kind of wild office-guy dance.
the wtf? moment comes at :14 --- three people in gorilla suits madly jumping around a room filled with balloons, two kids - in the most excusable kid move ever - steal some icing from a cake, the intensity of the cake throwing at the hipster birthday party has gone from Ft. Sumter-style to Baghdad in, like six seconds!
things calm down by :20 --- an old man gets a banner wrapped around his head, kids run around a house some more, ol' pink sweatshirt takes some pictures, a dog wears a tiara (!) and the cakefighters have a good laugh about how much fucking frosting is all over them. the voiceover reveals that "AARP is an organization for people that have birthdays," which is awesome, because -- i'm not even kidding about this -- we all have birthdays. and i don't know about you, but i like being in organizations.
here's the clip:
but all joking aside, AARP is one of the more noble corporate lobby groups in America. before he passed away, my grandfather - easily one of the most decent, kind, fair and loving men that i've ever had the pleasure to spend any amount of my life with - was the job placement director at their regional office here in Jacksonville. he was in charge of helping low- or no-income senior citizens find work, which as you can probably imagine, isn't often easy.
but despite any familial bias i have, i think that any group acting on behalf of those in need or acting against those that would privatize social security - an act that RP is firmly against - is a more than "alright" organization. plus, they approved an ad that's essentially a whirlwind of insanity scored by one of the best, weirdest punk bands ever.
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