Sunday, December 12, 2010

To Cap it All Off

I'M TOO SEXY FOR MY PANTS: The guy in the shit-colored cap is Mike Rowe and I want him out of my life - NOW!

"I've been told they make my butt look good." This is the catchy line of a television commercial for a pair of Lee jeans. Who is the hunk serving as spokesman? Brad Pitt? George Clooney? Hell, Joe Jonas? Uh, no. It's a middle-aged guy in a baseball cap.

Meet Mike Rowe. Of course, you don't need me to introduce you to this guy, he's been all over your life for the last year-and-a-half. Until the commercials - first for Ford and now for Lee jeans - I'd never heard of him, and that was mighty fine with me. Of course, I didn't know about him because I don't watch television. Well, not what passes for television in 2010, anyway. So, you probably already knew that this guy was the host of something called Dirty Jobs on cable.

All I knew the first time I saw him on a commercial was there was some asshole in a baseball cap on my TV trying to sell me a Ford, and acting like I should know who he is. If there's one thing I hate [and, believe me, there's a lot more than 'one'], it's fauxlebrities who act as if I should know who they are. So that, in combination with the baseball cap that was making me angry, meant there was little chance I was going to like Mike Rowe from the beginning.

Still, I figured it'd be a few commercials and then he'd be gone. I mean, whose brilliant idea was it to use this schmuck as a spokesman? What, was Ron Jeremy busy? I figured the poor bastard who suggested to the boys at Ford that they use Rowe would get shit-canned in a few weeks and I'd never see Mike Rowe again.

Hardly. Instead, he's become a mainstay of Ford's commercials. And, may I say, Ford really sucks. I don't mean the cars - haven't driven one in 15 years. I'm talking about their commercials. Between Rowe and the incredibly obnoxiously annoying ones with voice-overs by Denis Leary, I wouldn't drive a Ford if it was the only escape for me from a Demi Lovato concert....well, ok, maybe I would - but that's the only reason.

The "make my butt look good" line comes from his new line of products he wants me to buy, jeans. Yep, there he is again - with the fucking baseball cap on! It's not even a cool cap. If it was a Yankees cap, or a cap that said 'Go Fuck Yourself', then maybe it'd be cool. But it's this bland shit-colored hat that you generally see worn by the toothless, the drunk, and the shiftless.

I tried to do some research on this asshole so that I could figure out just what the fuck the deal was with the hat.

That was when I found out about Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel [I didn't even know that network was still on the air, by the way]. Initially, I thought, 'Well, maybe that's why he wears the cap: he's constantly filthy.' Turns out I might not be too far off: I guess on this 'show' he performs difficult, strange or disgusting [or a combination of all three] tasks alongside the poor bastards who have to do it for a living. This is supposed to, somehow, entertain us: to watch people getting paid shitty wages doing shitty jobs with this capped asshole making a mockery of their lives and very existence. Sounds like entertainment to me.

He apparently came to Discovery's attention when he was doing local TV work in San Francisco and did a delightful piece on the artificial insemination of a cow. Personally, I'd have found it more entertaining if he'd actually inseminated the cow himself, but that's just me. He sent a tape of this brilliance to Discovery and, the next thing you know, there he is selling trucks and pants.

I've searched and searched and simply can't find any explanation for the hat. Is he bald? Balding? Is there a hatchet protruding through the center of his skull? He never even acknowledges it - like it's perfectly natural for a 48-year-old to walk around with a shit-colored baseball cap, without having to explain himself.

It reminds me of a great scene in a great film - Uncle Buck - where John Candy's character is driving while wearing this God-awful wool hunters cap with ear flaps. He turns to his passenger and says, "Do you like this hat? 'Cause some people get angry when they see this hat."

Consider me angry when I see that hat.


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