If you listen to as much radio as I do, then you are probably someone who gets stuff done. You can have the radio on and still do the laundry or whatever you need to do. Maybe not as much as you could, or you wouldn’t be on the internet reading this stuff. But with radio, you also stay informed and you are up on the latest whatever. So you probably have heard the Preparation H commercial. If you haven’t, go turn on the radio and wait.
In case you have heard more than one, or you really don’t have time to listen to the radio as it might get in the way of that scrabble game you play on Facebook with someone you know but don’t ever get to physically be in the same place with, then I will give you the nickel tour of my fave. It extols the virtue of Preparation H via the sad tale of a guy who takes a romantic carriage ride through the park with his beloved. He speaks in a deep voice with a hip urban vibe. In the process, the bumps and horse-trot-induced jerky ride send shockwaves to the poor guy’s hemorrhoid filled asshole. I am just taking it that he has hemorrhoids. He could have poison ivy of the ass, or maybe his wife threw cayenne pepper and fiberglass resin in his ass while he was asleep. But he does talk about the itching and burning. It being Preparation H, I am thinking rhoids. At any rate, I have heard this commercial several times, and I laugh out loud every time. I guess as comedy goes, I have a sophistication level that reaches far enough to enjoy Monty Python and not so high that I can ever chuckle along with the pretense of humor in a Garrison Kellior show. But when I find lowbrow humor, I can go waaay below Curly Howard drinking out of a rubber boot. And this is about as low as it goes.
Not that I want to tell you about that one slim aspect of this wonder of a commercial. That would be too easy, and besides that, anyone who knows me knows I laugh at shit like that – pun intended. No, there is so much more to behold here. Lets start with the creative process. The agency that came up with this had to have been the happiest and most fun place to work at in the world the day they got this assignment. Having a hemorrhoid cream company as your client assures a good sense of humor will develop if there wasn’t one. (Yes – rhoid imagery is hard to suppress right now) And they have the BEST. But if this is the campaign that the client bought into, what in the hell did they reject? I tell you who knows: the guys that came up with this work! And I bet they die laughing still over each one of them. I bet the client did too. The secret to happiness is loving what you do for work. And I bet these are a lot of happy people. Why not?
It goes beyond the concept of adults at an ad agency brainstorming over how to illustrate a really bad place to have your ass if you have hemorrhoids.
Once, a countless number of years ago, a small semi-aquatic creature dragged itself out of the primordial ooze and used its primitive lungs to breathe life-giving air. In doing so it set in motion the evolutionary process that lead to modern mankind fighting against all odd to survive (creationists, play along). In the years that followed we gathered together to survive, to spread over the globe, to create great civilizations, to withstand anarchy and war that followed their collapse, to contemplate our existence and creation in great religions, to invent, to philosophize, to love, and learn. In the past one hundred years, humans have come up with wonderful inventions: electric light, air travel, space travel, harnessing of atomic energy, medical advances, and standards of living that would have been unimaginable a generation or two before. We can communicate directly from our desktops with any number of people around the globe, we can digitally send volumes of books and music to anyone instantly. And with radio we have the latest news, sports, and entertainment for free floating in the air. And what do we do with that technology? We have the deep and accented baritone voice of an adult tell us how he slathers his festering asshole with a soothing cream. Or, as I like to think of it, the zenith of western civilization.
I think if we could communicate with that first creature to leave the water, and tell it of the commercial for Preparation H, he would turn the fuck around.
