More Commercials

Visa has a commercial based on turning getting snacks and into seats at the theater into a mini-action flick. The protagonist couple get their tickets and see a clock showing “8:59”. The music ramps up and our heroes almost manage to screw up pay trying to find cash, but the woman saves the day with her Visa card. They enter their theater just as “9:00” shows up on the clock.

But I don’t understand why have all the rush and fuss just to make it for the “Please turn off your cellphone” notice and the fifteen to twenty minutes of advertising and previews.

True-Value Hardware features a commercial in their “empathic employees” series, this one with a woman as a customer with a dirty face. The empathic employee asks, “Squirrels?” She nods, and the employee has a flashback to working in a garden plot and encountering a squirrel damaging his plants, whereupon he presses his dirty hands to his face. “Repellents and fertilizer,” he tells the woman, “will bring your garden back.”

Now, the sort of arrogant or nearly oblivious squirrel portrayed in the commercial is what Diane and I call a “snack squirrel”. Depending on the state, it is possible that such are in season even now, in which case I think the proper response is, “Harris’ hawks. Harris’ hawks will take care of that problem in no time.”

I suppose red-tails would, too.