shining brilliant awesome as always. From the back of one of Newman’s cartons…
LEGEND:
The marathon in Africa…I’m halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What’s around? Water’s bitter! Beer’s flat! Gator, blah blah!…Fading fast. Then a vision – sweet Joanna! – Tempting me with pale gold nectar…Lemon is it? Yes, by golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon aid!… Power added! Asphalt churning!… Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler) – in the market – Newman’s Own.
From the back of a Pink Virgin Lemonade carton, to be exact. Is that not shining brilliant awesome? I actually think, if I could be paid to do stuff like writing things like that, I would be down for a career in marketing..maybe. Maybe for little while.
That’s my new (and likely semi-permanent) favorite phrase.
This how it came about. We were sitting eating hamburgers and salads, and I was reading the backside label on the bottle of Newman’s own Light Honey Mustard dressing.
It went like this:
The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race. An armada of balloons loaded with Light Honey Mustard. The starters gun – Bazoombah! They all rise majestically into the air. Newman’s Own Balloon, with fewer calories, more taste, and secretly propelled by charity, flies faster than Kraft and further than Wishbone. First across. First on the ground. El Piloto quaffs much quaffs of Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard in victory. A medium light Italian starlet, daughter of Butch Cassidini, named Bitch Cassidini, leaps into the balloon basked, kisses Piloto, her lips smeared with Newman’s Own Light, she murmurs, “You taste of Sicily, of Vesuvius, of Naples, baby,” and patting his fanny she whispers, “and no fat.”
–the ingredients list is after that, followed by the nutrition information. That is nuts! It’s slightly vulgar and very odd. It’s seriously gutsy and awesome marketing. Naturally I then read the backside label on the bottle of Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing:
LEGEND: When Butch Cassidy got zapped in Bolivia circa 1911 by the local cavalry, he had a revolver in his hand, six peso in his pocket, and a recipe for Ranch Dressing in his safe deposit box which was later given to me in reverence of the motion picture and in return for a percentage of the gross. On the back of this recipe in Butch’s own hand was writ: This stuff is so good it ought to be outlawed.
Again, awesome marketing.
After a bit of talk and laughing and some mild arguing, this happened:
David (me): “and that marketing director had to stamp it off, and be like ‘yeah, put that on a label-
Jason (my brother) finished the sentence: -baby.”
And so it was made: put that on a label, baby.
That’s my new line; I think I’m going to keep it for a while too.
