Commercials I Would Like To Live In

Ugh, Pepsi. Gross.

God, I wish my life was more like a cold medicine commercial.

Not the whole commercial, mind you – because the first half is usually pretty bad. People are dramatically sneezing at the office or in the street or at a football game (“GO STATE!”) and looking miserable. Their friends either regard them with a mixture of concern and embarrassment or just outright ignore them, already severing the emotional ties once it becomes clear that their acquaintance has become ridden with disease and will die shortly.

But the second half of a cold medicine commercial? High times, friend. People are laughing and frolicking, swingdancing, cheering for State*, and just having the best old time. Beggars are walking and blind men are seeing, all thanks to cold medicine. The only thing keeping them from going out and enjoying the bejeezus out of life was the lack of Sudafed in their bloodstream, and now, in those precious few hours before it makes them fall asleep, they’re going to have so much fun.

*We’ve seen a lot about State’s football program on AllState and Delsym commercials, but I feel like their academics lag significantly behind as I’ve never seen a commercial where somebody sneezes while graduating from State.

If I couldn’t get a cold commercial, I suppose the next best thing would be a commercial for the Snuggie or some similar product. Things start out pretty rough for the people in those commercials too, but their fortunes start to turn around as soon as they purchase a machine that squirts out exactly the right amount of toothpaste every time, or a ladder that is in some way superior to all other store bought ladders. At that point, they start dressing better, they smile, and their world stops being black and white (also, the music changes to upbeat synth-pop instead of “Werp-werrrrrp” every time something goes wrong).

When I’m fantasizing about a successful career, I’d like to be in a commercial for an online or privately owned community college, because according to those commercials, only the most attractive and successful people received their associate’s degree in personal time management from these schools. Everyone in these commercials is motivated and driven to get their life on track, right on down to the beautiful girl in tight shorts and an oversized T-shirt who explains that she goes to class in her pajamas every day because she goes to online college.

I would not want to live in a commercial for an actual college, because those commercials tend to play up symbolism and sentimentality rather than stressing how successful their graduates are – after all, they are actual, real colleges. That’s really all they need to say:

“The University of Oregon – tuition keeps going up, but it’s also a real college. PS – Do you like football?”

Some people argue that it would be more fun to live in a beer commercial, thanks to the abundance of sports stars, scantly clad women, and beer. Also, nobody in a beer commercial is ever truly sad – at the very worst, everyone is lounging around sweating through their shirts on a super hot day, bereft of beer. But even then that unhappiness doesn’t last long, because eventually a gigantic train smashes through the wall, followed by snow and classic rock, and then everybody is drinking ice cold beer in the snow in swimsuits without being too cold.

The way I see it, though, that’s all people in beer commercials do. They just party nonstop with beautiful women. And sure, a never ending party with free beer and all your best friends and hot women may be fun for the first few decades, but eventually even the rowdiest of individuals get all partied out. Sometimes a man just wants to sit in the dark and play video games, and that never happens on a beer commercial. Nobody ever sleeps on a beer commercial – or, if they do, it’s as part of a prank, and when they wake up they’ve got dongs drawn all over their face.

On cold medicine commercials, people are just kicking back and enjoying the simple pleasures. Yeah, the women are beautiful, but they’re not quite as easy as the beer commercial girls. Yeah, guys are having a good time together, but they’re having a really restrained, responsible good time. Sure it may not look as glamorous, but I think that in the long run it’s a much wiser choice. It’s the sort of life that I’ll want to live forever, not just in my twenties.

Most importantly, though, people in cold medicine commercials are in a better position to enjoy their newfound happiness because they’ve actually experienced the misfortune of disease. In a beer commercial, people are so happy that they don’t know how lucky they are; cold medicine people know true suffering, and their happiness is that much sweeter for it.

Hell, though, is living in a HeadOn commercial – much like watching one is also hell.

Truman Capps is applied directly to the forehead.