adrian is rad

I’ve talked about Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of My Tears before. I still really like it and I’ve been listening to it a lot. One thing you’ll notice if you search for that song is that Smokey Robinson’s song Tears of a Clown might also come up. If you listen to it sounds quite a bit different (though obviously still Smokey Robinson) but the subject matter is very similar.

I decided to look at the two songs side by side.

They’re both about girls causing an internal sadness. Smiles are an outside facade. Both talk about tears in private; in Tracks of my Tears you can see the remnants of the tears if you look closely; in Tears of a Clown there is no public indication of the sadness. In both he refers to himself as a clown.

I’m bidding (and getting outbid) on ebay for tickets to the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh. It’s scary. I feel I could get screwed in so many ways. It’s also exciting.

Between this and my adventures on shopgoodwill.com, I’m starting to remember why I used to be hopelessly addicted to ebay.

I was walking around the other day and this phrase and the way of saying it popped into my head: “so sad!” I couldn’t figure out for the life of me where it was from.

Then! Revelation! It’s from a funny Washington Mutal commercial. They made a series of commercials that were quite funny. The acting and writing in all of these are impressive (for non-national commercials).

The basic premise was introducing a character who had some bad personal trait (untrusting, dishonest, etc), demostrate this, show that some feature that Washington Mutual offers gives them peace of mind (or reversed that trait) and then changes the character’s life to display this new trait.

To be more specific, these are my top three:
(you should really watch these, at least the first one)

1. “Tom.” This is where the “so sad!” comes from. Tom has “weak principles” demostrated by him steeling lemonade from a kid’s stand and then throwing the cup on the ground. He becomes honest from his encounter with WaMu. Three scenes of him being honest: talking to a girl at a bar, “I’ve never had a girlfriend and I still live with my mother”; walking in late for a meeting “Sorry, I’m late. I had a job interview. Nailed it!”; and talking movies with guys over poker, “Have you guys scene Steel Magnolias? I was bawling. So sad!”
2. “Geoffrey” Geoffrey is untrusting displayed by a scene where he walks up to a hostess at a restaurant. “Name?” she asks and then he looks suspicious: “Why?” Some identity theft thing makes him more trusting. The kicker of this one is a scene where he enters his house and there’s a robber in black and a ski mask and everything carrying out his stereo. “What are you doing?” The robber replies “Factory recall” and Geoffrey says “Oh. Okay.” Then the robber stands there for a moment before he says “Excuse me.” Geoffrey says “Oh. sorry” and gets out of the way.
3. “Rick” Rick is frustrated with his home loan and brought that frustration to his construction job site. After WaMu he’s much more easy going. He proceeds to pull a few really dangerous practical jokes which he thinks are hilarious and rides a wrecking ball into a brick wall, which he thinks is great fun.

“Debra” is also pretty funny.