The Awl

Television Commercial Plays Havoc With Meaning Of Common Expression

Dave Bry — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:30:11 +0000

Geico's "Rhetorical Questions" ad campaign has never been my favorite. Not even among the various rarely-amusing ad campaigns the insurance company has been concurrently running over the past few years. (I guess the cavemen ones would be my favorites? If only because of the one where the cavemen pull up on their motorcycles to the song that goes, "Don't wanna hurt you/Try not to mess with your feelings..." I kinda like that one. That song is by a Swedish band called the Sounds, apparently.) But as lame as all those ads have been, this latest one takes the cake.

"Could switching to Geico really save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance," asks the announcer we've seen ask that question so many times before, in his mock hard-boiled detective voice. Then, answering himself, "Does it take two to tango?"

To illustrate for us that, yes, it takes two tango, the commercial makers then show us a silly video of three people clumsily trying to dance the tango together. So we can see that the tango doesn't work very well with three people dancing it together. Clearly, it would work better if there were only two of them.

Except that's not what that expression means! No one ever says, "It takes two tango," to get across the idea that there are too many people trying to do something at once. That would be, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," or, even more appropriately, "Two's company, three's a crowd."

"It takes two to tango," means that the thing you're talking about can not be done by just one person. As a quick visit to Wikipedia, or Eric Hirsch's The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002) would have told the Geico ad copywriters:

"It takes two to tango is a common idiomatic expression which suggests something in which more than one person or other entity are paired in an inextricably-related and active manner, occasionally with negative connotations. The phrase recognizes that there are certain activities which cannot be achieved singly—like arguing, fighting, making love, dancing the tango."

But they couldn't have not known that, right? Everybody knows that. Is it just that they loved the bit where three people are dancing the tango so much, that they decided, "To hell with making any sense..."? Is the joke supposed to be on them, the ad guys? Like, "Look how dumb we are!"? Or, "Look how unafraid we are to look stupid!"? I don't get it. (Maybe I'm the stupid one?) But how many people must have had to green-light this? How did it actually get on air?

What's going on with the world?

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Questions About Heaven

Jeff Johnson — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:40:42 +0000

Do you believe in heaven? Will you “make it” up there, one day? Looking down on your loved ones for all of eternity? Do you think looking down on your loved ones for all of eternity sounds like heaven? Does it sound pleasurable? Being able to see what your kids, relatives and friends are up to and not being able to do anything about it? Except for maybe sending them a sign? Do you really believe you could send a “sign” that one of them would understand? Wouldn’t be too cryptic?

Don’t you think that if everyone in heaven could send a sign to someone on earth, it might get sort of chaotic? Or mundane? Wouldn’t a telecommunications company try to start profiting in some way off of this? Could you really cope with not being able to just blurt out, “He has herpes, Louise!” or “Don’t you have a job interview tomorrow? Why are you up smoking pot and watching 'Law & Order' reruns, Keith?” or “Watch out for that bus, Gary!” and have it, you know, get to Gary, and save Gary, and not freak Gary’s ass out, or subsequently send him off on some path where he becomes a guru, holding seances in mini-malls? Wouldn’t the worst thing be to send a sign to Gary and then have people think he was crazy? What if he lost his job? Lost his home? Started doing push-ups for pennies in fast-food parking lots while teenagers taunted him? Would you quit with the signs? Or torture him with more?

Could you cope with being in heaven, and being lucid and coherent, but not able to watch over your loved ones still on earth? Wouldn’t you be curious? What else are you going to do with your time? Would you maybe feel sort of “stuck” up there? Wouldn’t that drive you insane? Wouldn’t that be hell? Wondering over and over again how they were doing? And would you be prepared for them just to arrive one-by-one, out of the blue? Could you handle hearing all of their causes of death? “I was beaten by my husband for 40 years,” or “I drowned” or “I fell off a chair lift in Tahoe,” knowing you had been playing 7,562 holes of golf, listening to harp music and chewing on clouds?

Does heaven have the Internet? Are there interesting activities? Do you get to watch Keith Moon and John Bonham participate in a drum-off? What if you got there and had amnesia about all of the things that could potentially worry your soul? Would heaven even feel good? Or would it be just like having Alzheimer’s for eternity? “I don’t know who I am or why I’m here, but I know that nothing bad is happening to me—but not really, since I don’t even know what BAD is! Because I have no frame of reference.” Would that suck more or less than the fears about the people left on earth? Should I just go with the flow? Feel confident in the fact that all of this shit somehow makes sense? That it is coherent in a way we don’t understand? Will never understand? Doesn’t being alive come with enough challenges as it is? Crummy ones? Unresolvable ones?

Will there be animals in heaven? Is there a separate heaven for that? Is heaven “vegan”? Because if you shared heaven with animals and were walking around up there eating a cheeseburger would it not be possible to run into the cow that was turned into that very burger? What would be the proper thing to say? “Thanks for taking one for the team?” What if it was a bacon cheeseburger? And the cow and the pig both were like, “Motherfucker”? And God was like, “They actually have a point, you know”? What if once on earth you went out and got wasted? And you got very hungry? And you didn’t need the calories, but you bought and ate a chicken sandwich? Maybe you even puked it back up later? What if you later happened upon that chicken in heaven? Or its soul? Is this too Safran Foer for you? What if the chicken was like, “I was killed so you could eat me when you were drunk. Nice meeting you. As I recall, you went to the gym the next day because you thought you were fat”? Would that ruin heaven for you? Would you start having to hide in heaven? Would that not suck having to hide from random animals? “I was your pork chop in Hilton Head, ‘97”? What if that didn't bother you? If you did not give a shit? Surely, someone else would be after you, no? Who would be all, "I see telling on you in the 2nd grade had a positive effect on you. You corrected your behavior. Kudos. Care to go on a walk sometime in the next 1,000 years?"? How would you avoid those fuckers?

Is there garbage in heaven? Plumbing? Charities? Social workers? Do you care? Do you get it? If you would rather die than read one more question, let me ask you this: Will you be going to heaven?

Now that football season is drawing to a close, Jeff Johnson has larger concerns on his mind.
(Last winter it was Popeye. )

Photo by h.koppdelaney, from Flickr.

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Ball Lightning, UFOs And Other Mysteries

Dave Bry — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:20:14 +0000

"Could it be that the meteor descending through the atmosphere, having passed through the ionosphere, actually created a transient conductive connection between the ionosphere and the ground, even if it was only for a few seconds? Was that enough to put charge into the ground, and then with the discharge form some kind of plasma ball above?"
—Queensland University of Technology astrophysicist Stephen Hughes asks probing questions about the not-well-understood phenomenon of "ball lightning," which has been posited as an explanation for the numerous reports of green fireballs seen rolling around the mountains west of Brisbane, Australia in May, 2006. This while a meteor shower lit up the sky above. Hughes also told BBC news, "If you put together inexplicable atmospheric phenomena, maybe of an electrical nature, with human psychology and the desire to see something—that could explain a lot of these UFO sightings."

And here is what ball lightning looks like traveling along power lines in Saudi Arabia.

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Penis Pictures: Do They Really Work?

Alex Balk — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:50:49 +0000

A reader asks: "Does texting cock shots ever actually work? Like, are there regular dudes who get ladies doing this? Are there ladies who actually welcome it? Because all I would think is that the guy is a total perv (or messing with me, in which case I'd just think he was an asshole). But maybe I'm just a prude?" It's a good question! Also, are there points for style?

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So Daddy Drinks A Little. So What?

Choire Sicha — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:00:50 +0000

Q. "I'm an alcoholic. Help me feel comfortable with my alcohol intake. On average, I figure I consume about 25 units of alcohol per week. I can remember the last day I didn't have a drink. It was six months ago and I was on antibiotics.... Is it reasonable to keep drinking like this given that I'm productive and it makes me happy"?

A. ?

(Photo by Simon Pearson.)

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Asher Roth, "Toni Braxton"

Dave Bry — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:20:32 +0000

What to make of Asher Roth? The preppy white Pennsylvanian rapper has always seemed so easy to dismiss. So similar in style and content to a young Eminem, so comfortable with his marketing, so enthusiastic in his wearing of Docksides. But here, in the song "Toni Braxton," from his mixtape, Seared Foie Gras With Quince and Cranberry, he's found a beat that fits him just right-the bit of Willie Mitchell's "Groovin'" that RZA looped up to make GZA's "Liquid Swords" way back in, Jesus, 1995-and he does his thing very well. The cartoon video's fun to watch, too. Is there a future here?