Weekend Column – The Little Blue Pill

There’s the required jingle in the background – the kind that reminds you you are watching a commercial and you will never get that jingle out of your head.

And we see the captain, who is watching the crew use a high-powered winch to hoist a net full of fish. I say fish because it’s a fishing boat, but I swear it just looked like a big haul of trash because nothing is moving inside that massive net.

He nods as the net comes up and you hear the announcer say, “You’ve reached the age where you’ve learned a thing or two.”

Okay, I think I’ve got this one figured out. “This is the age of knowing what you’re made of,” the announcer continues.

I’m taking “what is Old Spice?” as my answer, Alex Trebeck.

My second guess is some deodorant – is Irish Spring still around? I’ve already eliminated cigarettes, as they aren’t allowed. It’s definitely not for some new GPS and I’m betting big bucks it’s not about seafood.

The captain heads down below decks and the announcer says that … how do I put this so it can be read in polite circles? Let’s just say if the equipment isn’t working right I should go see my doctor and ask him about Viagra (insert copyright symbol here so the copyright attorneys don’t send me a form letter).

The announcer tells me I can join 20 million other men in the same boat – yes, pun intended. Of course, that is then followed by the requisite danger list that takes up more than half the commercial and the announcer starts speaking really, really fast to get it all in within the time frame.

Being a journalist for 30 years, I have learned how to take a slew of information and boil it down into a sentence or two. In this case, basically, you’d better have a really strong heart or you are just going to flat out die if you take the little blue pill.