Velociworld

MISFIRE FROM MADISON AVENUE

I was sitting outside tonight, admiring a magnificent electrical storm, when a bolt of lightning hit so close I felt something, I don't know, melt in my head. Synapses, probably. And so now my thoughts feel like they are forced to detour through regions of my brain filled with ancient memories, like they were hijacked against their will in a synaptic dune buggy, and tossed, bruised but otherwise unharmed, in my frontal lobes, where my lips spew them forth without benefit of firewall, or guise, or filter.

And so I was barking at The Bride tonight about some gasoline commercials from the sixties, but I don't recall which gas. Texaco? No, they had The Man Who Wore The Star (pump jockey as Gary Cooper. Niiice stretch there). Exxon Esso? No, I think they put a Tiger In Your Tank.

Maybe Gulf Oil, because they had No-Knock gasoline, which I believe means they crammed extra lead into the product, and hoped poor people didn't paint their walls with that gas, because then they babies would pick those paint chips off the wall, and eat them, and go blind, and brame-damaged.

Because these commercials featured people sitting on their arses in the street, as if they were in a car, only there wasn't no car. Men in suits, women in dresses, they would drive around through the magic of primitive stop-action technology, waiting at red lights, making left turns, but on their arses.

And some were herky-jerky, sputtering, like, which leads me to believe it was No-Knock gas marketing. Pretty exciting to a 9 year old, but I wasn't buying any refined petroleum products, either.

See why I want to fix this problem? I know I won't be right again, but I'd at least like to reroute these detours to more hospitable areas of my brain, like the Island Of The Senator's Playboys, because I really don't remember those all that well.