Friday, August 24, 2007

The Taste Is Gonna Move Ya

I'm not quite sure how to lead in to this video without making myself sound like too much of a loser. But I ask you, what's the point of having a web log (aka "blog") if you're not going to expose your foibles? So I'll just lay it out. In the early 1980s, I was a college student at BYU trying to adjust to life knowing that the woman I loved was married to another man. I wanted to fall in love again -- I probably missed being in love more than I missed my freshman girlfriend -- but every time I went out on a date, there was just no chemistry. Mix in the unrequited love with a tablespoon of shyness, two cups of sexual repression, and a dash of voyeurism, and I had all the ingredients to become a 40-year-old virgin with bicycles and cats and vaseline coupons.

When I first saw this Juicy Fruit commercial, I fell in love again. It's the blonde with the purple top. Again, this is embarrassing, but I used to study on the living room couch in my apartment with MTV turned on so that I could catch a glimpse of her whenever this commercial appeared, which was about once every four hours during its peak rotation. I had to endure awful videos by the likes of Duran Duran and Cindy Lauper just to catch an infuriatingly quick glimpse of my beloved. I had a whole story built up around her. Maybe her car broke down in a remote area, and it was hot, and she needed to remove her sweatshirt . . .



An odd thing about seeing this commercial again for the first time in more than 20 years is how it does nothing for me anymore. I was hoping for a rush of emotions similar to what the guy in Mumford experienced when he opened the box of his adolescent smut. You'd think there would at least be a residual tingle.

4 comments:

  1. Dude (requisite BYU-speak), there is are two glimpses of her, both lasting for about 0.78 seconds. In one of those breif shots, only one half of her is visible.
    Are you turned on by a lack of bilataral symmetry? I'm suddenly concerned for you.

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  2. . . . is are. . .

    I call it a "verb tense incongruity" and use it as a literary device to build tension.

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  3. There are FOUR glimpses of her.

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  4. I was all set to to tell you about those little pills from Pfizer or to warn you against long periods in the saddle of a bike. Then I saw the same thing Botched did -- the 0.78 second glance. Maybe with freeze frame you could build a case for a tingle, but that's about the only way. And yet, in those younger, Mormon days -- when so much was played out in the mind -- something like that was gonna move ya.

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