The Most Horrifying Thing I've Seen This Year

The most horrifying thing I’ve seen this year?   Besides the evening news, I mean.

That’s easy.  Painfully easy.  

It’s a TV commercial for Lay’s Stax, potato crisps akin to Pringle’s, I guess.  In the commercial, Dana Carvey, who was once considered funny, plays the dual roles of an oily croupier and a ghoulish probable woman, each trying to upstage the other in their ability to shuffle decks of oblong, cardboard-flavored items.  The croupier, I guess, is supposed to be snobbish and superior, and the woman is salt-of-the-earth, skilled with the commoners and crunchy salted snacks alike, and ultimately, she wins out, showing up the smirking dealer by hurling a crisp against her shocked nemesis's skull, while a crowd of well-dressed onlookers clink their glasses together and laugh with ohsomuch joy.

Dear God, this one hurts.

Carvey labors under hundreds of pounds of ugly wigs and uglier makeup and disturbingly ugly dental prosthetics in order to tell a story that enlightens and entertains no one, and more interestingly, may actually convince the viewer to never, ever purchase Lay’s Stax.  I'm so deeply affected, I won't even consider buying them, even when I'm shaking and weak with hunger.  In fact, I feel a deep chill of terror whenever I’m walking in a supermarket and catch sight of the canisters.  You ask why?   I answer:  the solitary memory of Dana Carvey in drag, clownish red lips curled over garish teeth in a fiercely unpleasant grin, and saying, in perhaps the worst imitation of a joyous feminine Southern accent ever, “Ten for me!”  Like a flippin' demon freshly spawned from the maw of Hell.

Did I mention this one hurts?

Who dreamed this one up?  Who signed the check to produce it?  Who said, “Hey, I know, let’s get Dana Carvey to play two of the most repellent characters in advertising history!”  I mean, the Pringle's ads - nubile-yet-active teens eating piles of crisps, while extreme sporting to the latest European technopop, or dancing like they've just been released from an institution, or even doing nothing at all, like good consumers oughta - at least they have the sensitivity not to make me wonder if all things good and decent have been exterminated.  Unlike a certain ad I won't mention and can't forget.

Okay, I realize that I have a lot of pain to work through, and the people at Frito-Lay aren't responsible for all of it..  But I got my feelings out in the open, which is a good thing.  Better to vent my anger instead of letting it fester and chew me up, like the masticating jaw of Dana Carvey working over a pile of...aw, never mind.  Let's never speak of it again.