Mrs. Blankenship, Get Me a Drink

Yesterday I was listening to my radio at work like I always dreamed. I always dreamed I'd be a Work Lady and have a radio at my desk, along with multicolored pens and one of those big calendars you get from an office supply store, with lots of reminders written on it. I'd also have lots of pictures in frames on my desk of my awesome life. Sometimes I feel foolish for having had those dreams, but have them I did. I think it's because my first real job was not at an ice cream stand or a car wash or the Penny Alley in Louisville (though I did buy some snap bracelets there.) My first real job was filing paperwork at my mom's office in Canton, a lovely, indiscriminate little office building of a company called EMP. It doesn't even matter what EMP stands for, because I want it to remain a perfect symbol to you; the quintessential American Office, a bastion of paper clips and furnished restrooms and water coolers and bitter forty-somethings. It was a veritable no-mans land, where daily folks went to grind their gears and make money so Johnny could play baseball and so Dad could afford a dozen donuts after Sunday mass.

This may be turning into a sentimental and surely exaggerated vision of suburban life in the early 2000's, so I'm going to stop there and continue with my original thought. The radio and all that.

Anyway, on the radio there was a commercial about cars. Something has happened to me with commercials since I started watching Mad Men. And can I just say something about Mad Men? If I could describe it in one word, I would say, OMGSOHANDSOME, but then if you gave me a second word, I would say UPSETTING. Because that is what that show is. Every night I am excited to watch a new episode on Netflix and after each episode I think to myself...my, that was upsetting. Why do we do this, TV lovers of the cosmos?

Anyhow, what Mad Men has done to me aside from questioning my own sadism is it makes me analyze commercials. What would Don Draper think of this? If I were pitching this to Don (we're on a first-name basis, just think of me as Betty except with better teeth), would he say "I like it, draw it up" or would he say "IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE? GET OUT"? How would he pitch this idea or that idea to the client? How would he start?

Anyhow I was having these thoughts as I listened to this car commercial involving little Jimmy who requests that his Pop take good care of his car because it is going to be his in 16 years when he graduates or whatever. It's a silly commercial, really. And I shook my head, thinking "I couldn't agree with you more, Don. Crap. Just crap." But suddenly, something happened. I realized.... I know this voice. Who is this voice?

You know who it was?

It was Don.

And lo, I leave you with this, because, do you like websites?