This was going to be a random declaration.

[kiya]

I was going to say that the next car commercial I see that uses "We Will Rock You" shall be deemed morally deficient if it doesn't include cars stomping their tyres.

Should be easy to do with CGI.


So I went upstairs to make this proclamation to Kevin, who's camped out in the bed waiting for Suzi to call for their date night. He was amused, and flopped his hand over for me to give him a squeeze.

Arthur, however, took this as an invitation to come over and be petted.

He leapt! to the bed!

Put in a brief cameo appearance as a bouncing cat head!

And fell off again.

By the time I'd picked myself up off the foot of the bed, he'd managed to figure out how to get up onto the bed again, and was looking deeply perplexed at why the humans were all quaking.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

There's a Hyundai commercial with "Thick As A Brick" as the background music. Somewhere Ian Anderson is cashing the cheque for this thing and laughing his head off at how stupid the marketing people were.

Um. Hello? Did these people read the lyrics of this song?

Really don't mind if you sit this one out.

My words but a whisper -- your deafness a SHOUT.
I may make you feel but I can't make you think.
Your sperm's in the gutter -- your love's in the sink.
So you ride yourselves over the fields and
you make all your animal deals and
your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick

[kiya]

That one gives me a case of the howling giggles, too.

I think they want the cheerful little whistly bit and didn't think of what it would do for people who actually know the _song_.

[avram]

Yeah, they probably read the lyrics, and don't care. I've lost track of the number of commercials that used really inappropriate music. A beer company (Budweiser, I think) used the Stones' "Wild Horses", which is about someone who died of a herion overdose. Microsoft is a multiple offender, having used the Stones' "Start Me Up" ("Oooh, you make dead men come") for its Windows 95 launch, David Bowie's "Heroes" (about an abusive relationship), and an old bit of Latin church music whose lyrics -- which were played when the "Where do you want to go today?" tagline showed on the screen -- turn out to be something about the souls of the damned writhing in Hell.

[kiya]

and an old bit of Latin church music whose lyrics -- which were played when the "Where do you want to go today?" tagline showed on the screen -- turn out to be something about the souls of the damned writhing in Hell.

*tears of laughter*

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Cars, or at least specific cars with sufficiently good suspensions and whatnot, can be made to bounce on their front tires (pivoting around the back ones). Apparently this is done competitively. No, I don't get it either.

[brooksmoses]

It's a historical thing, sorta. The original purpose of a hydraulic adjustable suspension was so that you could drive your car around with it sitting just barely above the ground looking cool, but jack it up to legal height if the local constabulatory or a speed bump were sighted. I'm told that sufficiently cool adjustable suspensions also allowed you to park whereever you wanted -- because, if you set the car down on the frame, there was no way they could tow it!

Then, someone noticed that they could make their car bounce up and down with their hydraulic suspension, if they cycled it repeatedly. A few rounds of one-upmanship on coolness of suspension hydraulics, and ("Hey, watch _this_!") someone got theirs to actually hop off the ground. And then, of course, everybody wanted one.

So, there you have it -- a very predictable combination of "Hey, watch _this_!" and one-upmanship.

- Brooks