Where Celebrities Go to Die

Commercials. We watch hundreds—hell, thousands of them every day. Rather than get up and do something productive, like make a sandwich or spy on the kids down the street with binoculars, we sit mindlessly watching these miniature propaganda spots. There are so many of the damned things that companies are constantly looking for the key ingredient that will surpass the consumer's 3-second attention span drill their advertisement into the highest echelon of his brain's brand recognition mechanism.

Some companies, notably beer manufacturers, use humor to get their point across. Others use animation and/or cute kids to appeal to soccer moms looking for a way to facilitate their laundry-doing or dinner-cooking. (Because... you know... when was the last time you saw a man doing the cooking or cleaning in a commercial?) And yet other advertisers use no technique at all. They apparently hope the sheer pointlessness of their commercial will annoy the consumer into buying their shitty product (see: HeadOn).

One of the oldest ad techniques, though, is that of the celebrity endorsement. As the dumb curnsoomers, we're supposed to think, "Hey, that person is being paid to say something good about that product. It must be a useful and quality-made item, surely!" I suppose it's passable when the celebrities are relatively popular or... recent. But if you've ever watched network television or the Game Show Network between 9 A.M. and 3 P.M., you'll know that washed-up celebs are not quite as passable.


Lindsay Wagner
Because we loved her as... the Bionic Woman, and.... uh... the Bionic Woman... of course we'll take her word for it that the Sleep Number® bed—set to 35—has given her the best sleep of her life (even though the royalties from Jessie ain't enough to meet the month's rent payment).

Robert Wagner
Continuing the washed-up Wagner curse is Robert, who actually does have a respectable acting career spanning over half a century. Unfortunately, all that is overshadowed by his stunning, mesmerizing performances as Number Two in the Austin Powers films. And now he's doing reverse-mortgage ads. Funny how shit works out, eh?

Ed McMahon
Well, since the guy's on the verge of pulling an MC Hammer, I can understand why he'd do commercials. When you need money, you need money; and I suppose preaching the joys of motorized wheelchairs sure beats the hell out of being an 85-year-old hooker.

Betty White
I love Betty, so I won't be too harsh on her. After constantly wanting to bone her for the longest time, to the point of humping the TV whenever a Match Game or Super Password rerun came on, I couldn't possibly diss her. After all, she's just expressing her love for animals by doing 1800petmeds.com commercials. (Note well: electricity and ejaculate do not jive.)

Mickey Rooney
Ah, we finally come to poor Mickey. Would you believe that he's almost 88 years old and still acting? He's got more staying power than Keith Richards' and Bob Hope's love child. So why on earth would he and his wife be rounded up and shipped off to a cold, dark studio to do a life insurance ad chock full of horrible jokes and cookies? Beats me.


You can somewhat imagine the discussion among ad execs when they come up with these ideas:

"Listen up, men. We have no sense of humor and no money left for CGI. We need something that will appeal to these old fucks, pronto!"

"How about Lindsay Wagner, sir?"

"Lindsay who?"

"You know, Irene from Nighthawks? Susan Fields from The Paper Chase? Her."

"Huh?"

"The fucking Bionic Woman, sir."

"Oh well, we'll just hope the smelly geriatrics know her."