PriorBlog

My brother-in-law came over last night to watch the Eagles playoff game.  The game watching was accompanied by a bunch of beers, the last of which, a Sierra Nevada Winter Warmer from the year 2000 given to me by beer connoisseur Clark Johnsen, really brought the party to life.  Unfortunately, this happened just as Akers kicked the game winning field goal, and Matt was out the door to do bigger and better things, like going to sleep. 

Bummer for him, because on channel 35, Rocky IV was on.  I wonder if they were playing it in honor of James Brown, who appears just before the Apollo Creed v Ivan Drago fight?  Could make sense considering we are still in a month of “national grievance” over his death. 

Speaking of death, Apollo sure met his when he faced Drago.  How could anybody forget the tautological menace that was Ivan Drago.  “If he dies, he dies.”  As the celebrated philosopher A.J. Ayer once said “can’t argue with that!”  IV is by far the most Hegelian of the Rockies, and was made with an eye towards a decisive turn in world affairs.  It’s worth noting, that the Berlin Wall came down in ‘89, just about the same time that this movie hit the black market in Moscow.  Mikhail Gorbechev reportedly wept openly when he first saw Rocky IV, as did Mikhail Barishnakov, and a couple of other famous ballerinas.

If you think my watching Rocky and football wasn’t manly enough, I also saw a few Ford commercials which caused me to suffer from an overabundance of testosterone, resulting in headaches, nausea, and zits.  My favorite Ford Truck commercial is the one with the guys in the barn at night, each one with square jawbones, whose job it is to place an unidentifiable giant heavy thing into the back of the FORD TRUCK.  The looks these men give one another convey respect and trust, they seem to say, I wouldn’t trust just anybody to place this unidentifiable giant heavy thing into the back of my FORD TRUCK, but I can trust you because of your jaw, your rugged suede jacket, your sturdy barn, and the fact that even though it isn’t showcased in this here commercial, you undoubtably own a FORD TRUCK yourself. 

At the end of the commercial the FORD TRUCK drives away carrying the heavy thing, and the remaining square jawed man looks seriously into his barn.  The hard day’s work is done seems to be the feeling, although the ad takes place at night.  Perhaps they were working on a science project together, although they seem too old. More likely the thing was a thresher or some other type of bygone piece of machinery unrecognizable to the effete, just a hulking mass of iron and grease to them.  What is it, this giant thing?  And why, so strong, so terrible in weight must this thing struggle for life against a sea of nano-gadgets, like the undeniably sissy iPod, much like these brave FORD TRUCK driving men are themselves an increasingly diminished race, finding themselves on the cusp of mythology, their, let’s face it, Neanderthal-ish jaws buried squarely in the past? 

I did a quick search on Youtube to find the commercial in question just for you, my three readers.  It was very revealing.  For we all know the truth that these commercials rarely convey.  Your average Ford Truck driver is in fact quite different than the men in the commercial.  For starters, he enjoys spending his nights sitting naked behind his computer and speaking softly (you’ll definitely have to turn up the volume on this one) instead of placing unidentifiable giant heavy things in the back of his trucks.  He also puts videos of himself on the internet… 

One more thing, an update on BearingPoint.  I asked my dad about it and he said that the golfer Phil Mickelson wears a BearingPoint hat during golf tournaments.  As if it wasn’t easy enough to hate golf for being such an elitist “sport,” now pro-golfers are walking around with war profiteer hats on.