30 To 60

Commercials are a fascinating art form. Most people maybe wouldn't even consider them eligible for art, saying they're too compromised by their objective. I can't think of any art that isn't compromised by commercial aims except maybe chainsaw sculptures or something.Commercials are as capable of being really pleasing artistically as anything else, and if they fail at that, at least they're over pretty fast. I'm not at all sorry to work in commercials when the chance comes up.

I was listening to some of the old Bud Light radio commercials the other day. They began as "Real American Heroes", and switched to "Real Men Of Genius" after 9/11 made it briefly seem unwise to throw around words like hero. The commercials are uniformly brilliant. They are these wonderfully bombastic, overheated tributes to people and things that are at best dubious recipients of such praise. This fantastic narrator lavishes praise on Chinese food deliverymen, golf ball washer and more.

The narrator leads me into what really makes the commercials. They have this idea to emulate a certain kind of presentation, and they then make sure to assemble their emulation from exactly the same kind of prime ingredients as the original. That's the secret of good parody, is that there are no shortcuts. A parody song had better be a dynamite song. These commercials take that to heart. The narrator is fantastic. The singer who echoes his words was the lead vocalist from Foreigner. It's perfect.

I could listen to those commercials for hours, and I think I have. I would love dearly to be part of something like that. I have other aspirations, but I'm by no means better than applying my abilities towards something that. I audition for commercials often enough, and plenty of the time I think to myself that they look like something pretty cool to be a part of, setting aside any notion of the movie I would stand to make. I love good commercials.