So you want to make commercials eh?

Making commercials is easy, and it always has been. That is unless you want to be some art school asshole, and make a real message with a ground breaking commercial that is so concept driven it seems like you stole the idea from God. Then your shit out of luck buddy boy, but if you want to make a commercial that stands the test of time, like "where's the beef?!" or "leggo my eggo!" then follow me lemming, I can teach you the way.

Modern mainstream commercials are always based on one simple rule, try to think of the most asshole thing you could possibly do, then make a thirty second movie about it. Don't believe me? Oh ye of little faith. Think about it, every commercial you have ever seen is just some dude or chick being a complete asshole to the rest of the world. I think car commercials are by far the worst, and easiest example to make. Think about every car commercial you have ever seen in your entire life. They are all pretty much the same right? Some guy driving his brand new car down the longest, most dangerous, deserted back road he can find. Testing the limits his machine. Now imagine if you will, riding with that person. It would be like, "FUCK STEVE! Why the hell are we even on this road?!? We could of taken the interstate jackass! And for the love of mike SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Your going to make me spill my big gulp!"

Truck commercials are even worse. It's always some guy plowing through a big mud puddle and then fishtailing his truck up to the construction site so the tailgate can fall down and show the giant load of bricks he's carrying. I've never worked construction before but I'm pretty sure if I got a job on some site and started driving through giant mud puddles and doing doughnuts at the build site I wouldn't have my fucking job for very long. Construction workers, albeit a rough group of customers, always seemed to be very into job safety to me. At the very least I wouldn't have anyone to talk to when the sandwich truck showed up because I'd be that fucking guy who drives through the mud puddle whenever I got a chance!

And retail commercials aren't any different. It's just a different type of asshole message. Here, take a look at this commercial from Target. Well what did you see? Did you see a bunch of people enjoying all the products they bought at Target as they brought themselves closer to their families and other assorted goals in life? Really? Because this is what I saw. Do you remember getting haircuts from your dad?! Because I fucking do! And they where never cool, he just made you look like Bobby Hill from King of the Hill. Why the fuck do you think Bobby's' hair is like that?! BECAUSE HIS DAD FUCKING CUTS IT!!!

So there you have it. Everything you need to know about making commercials for the average schmuck. Raise your head up high and know that you too can make just about anything and put it on TV and get someone to buy some shit they don't need. It's just that simple. But fret not, because all is not lost. All commercials are not like this. Every now and then you come across something that is really brilliant. Something that someone actually had to sit down and work very hard on. Probably some skinny girl jean wearing asshole. But lets not hold that against him. Because no matter how much it would suck to get stuck in the elevator with that guy, he still brings us stuff like this. Without even coming to our houses.

tommyservo

Some pictures, just for you.

Funeral

This last weekend I went to my grandmother’s to attend my great grandmothers’ funeral. She passed away at the age of 94. This meant that I had to see my extended family which I always feel is a little awkward. Most people usually think that they are completely different from their parents, I don’t. I am totally like my mom and dad, but it’s hard for me to imagine my parents being related to the rest of these people. Don’t get me wrong I love my family, that is not the case, I just don’t know how to relate to them and still be genuine. I’ve always been told that I am supposed to be polite and not swear around them but this goes against my base nature. So I assume this identity that is similar to me, but not quite and move amongst them undetected.

So, with my disguise firmly grasped, I traveled to the far reaches of East Texas to observe and live amongst the reclusive Servo clan, to observe their customs and watch as they put their matriarch to rest. I can honestly say with no self deception that I loved my great grandmother. She was a sweet woman and although I didn’t see her that often later in my life, my memories of her as a child are strong and filled with the warmth. She was the first person I ever knew that had a police scanner and I can still remember sitting with her in her old beat up recliner and listening to it drone out the days events all over town and thinking to myself that it was completely foolish for anyone to watch the news when you could just have one of these in your living room. Sitting there in her lap, sleepily looking out her giant picture window at the world that, while smaller, seemed all together new and different than my own. I will never be able to know what that world must have been like for her, but I know that her being there for me made it seem safer than it probably was.

I think that the true tragedy of her death is the affect that it will have on her son, my great uncle, Billy Dan. When Billy was a boy he suffered a fever and it left him mostly deaf and mentally handicapped and he has spent the past seventy something years living with his mother. Billy Dan has been an ever present fixture in my childhood. As a boy I adored him because he was the nicest person I knew and he had the biggest pocket knife collection I had ever seen in my entire life (but you couldn’t play with any of them because knives are not for children). And as I got older I always felt a certain affinity for Billy because he was the only person that felt more awkward than I did. So I would spend a lot of time with him sitting off in some corner, neither of us talking, because we both knew that we didn’t have anything to say to one another, and being completely ok with that. It absolutely breaks my heart to have to watch that sweet man try to cope with his own mother’s death. The one person in this world who has meant everything to him is gone and I don’t know how well he will be able to deal with that, and that worries me.

All is not so bleak, Billy Dan lives at a local nursing home and he has many friends there (people who are as nakedly genuine as him usually do). And he has my grandmother and my great aunt to help him cope. So I think he will be ok. But I still cant help but feel his heartache.

So I escaped relatively unscathed from my family. They all mean well, and the awkwardness I feel around them is no fault of theirs, so I guess they are all pretty decent people, salt of the earth and all that. And I saw Mur put to rest. It was probably for the best (god I hate that expression and its appropriateness). She lived long enough to ride this planet around the sun ninety four times, and that’s nothing to wipe your nose at. So god bless her for having the courage to live that long.

tommyservo