In Germany, once you reach a certain magical hour of the night, all of the TV stations switch their commercials from normal advertisements to spots for phone-sex lines. These phone-sex commercials don't leave much to the imagination, either -- they heap on the nudity and suggestive writhing around. (And you want to make sure the number six figures prominently in your phone number, because sechs-sechs-sechs sounds a lot like sex-sex-sex.) Quite the thing for the jet-lagged first-time American business traveller to stumble on as he's flipping through the channels late at night ...
You can tell how little the broadcasters care for these particular clients, because often they'll play the same commercials over and over again -- one ad two or three times in a row, a different ad, and then back to the first ad for a couple more times. Obviously they're contracted to play a particular commercial n number of times, and they don't care exactly how they get there.
Some mild deja-vu, then, as last night we were watching TV and a political ad featuring Governor Schwarzenegger came on. And then it came on again. And then after a couple of different commercials, they came back to play the same Schwarzenegger ad one more time.
And Schwarzenegger happened to be speaking out -- in his still strongly Germanic-accented voice -- against Proposition 66. Coincidence?
I'm pulling for a Kerry victory tonight, but whatever happens, at least some part of me will be glad that the election is over. (And let's not even talk about the political robo-calls -- with four voters in the house, they've been going crazy. Besides local Torrance races, we've received 'calls' 'from' Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giulani, Michael J. Fox, and most of the cast of The West Wing, among others. Is it any surprise that the politicians wrote themselves out of the 'do-not-call' legislation?)
Posted by Kevin at November 2, 2004 10:44 AM