September 30, 2005
I’m thinking of getting some sponsors to earn a little extra cash. In a world where a box of cereal strategically placed in a movie will earn the producers an extra fifty-thousand bucks, I can’t help thinking that I could get a piece of that action myself. Not that I’m greedy. I’d be perfectly content with twenty-five thousand bucks. And it doesn’t just work for movie producers. Athletes get paid ridiculously high amounts of money for wearing corporate logos all the time. The corporations then take their logo, slap it on some cheap shoes and t-shirts made by people who are paid 47 cents a month, and people like you and me pay ridiculously high prices to dress like athletes, which, technically, is us paying companies to use our bodies as advertising space when it should be the other way around.
Race car drivers seem to have the best deal. Every available piece of real estate on their bodies and cars is covered by some product placement. Not that I’m knocking race car drivers. If anything they’re smarter than anybody else because they’re taking better advantage of the system, and all the money the corporations spend is pretty much wasted because it’s impossible to read an ad when it goes by you at 200 miles an hour. If corporations want to really get their money’s worth they should stick ads on the backs of chess players. Endorsements seems to be the biggest cash cow for public figures. Maybe if I get a few I can be a public figure too. Admittedly I’m the type of guy who, if I made my money from commercials, would have a love-hate relationship with them. I’d be like Alfred Hitchcock who would complain during the segments of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" about the sponsors who sent him a big fat check every week. That attitude, to me, made Alfred Hitchcock the coolest guy in the world. Well, that and the fact that he directed "Rope".
It’s occurred to me, though, that if I become a public figure maybe I won’t need to do endorsements. Lately a lot of famous people have tried to earn extra money by copyrighting their catchphrases so anyone who says, "You’re fired" or "That’s hot" or "We can still be friends" will have to pay them money. Heck, even "catchphrase" has been copyrighted as the game Catchphrase(c), made by Parker Brothers(tm), a division of Hasbro(R), Makers of Quality Games (cos(A ± B) = cosAcosB sinAsinB). The only thing I have to do is come up with a catchphrase. As the other examples prove, it doesn’t have to be original, or even all that catchy. It just has to be something I use frequently enough that I can justify claiming it’s my own. But I digress.
Enjoy this week’s offerings.
Two women were playing golf. One teed off and watched in horror as her ball headed directly toward a foursome of men playing the next hole. The ball hit one of the men, and he immediately clasped his hands together at his groin, fell to the ground and proceeded to roll around in agony. The woman rushed down to the man and began to apologize. "Please allow me to help. I’m a physical therapist and I know I could relieve your pain if you’d allow me," she told him
"Oh, no, I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine in a few minutes," the man replied, still in pain, in the fetal position, still clasping his hands together at his groin.
But she persisted, and he finally allowed her to help. She gently took his hands away and laid them to the side, she loosened his pants, and put her hands inside. She began to massage him. She then asked, "How does that feel?"
He replied, "It feels great, but my thumb still hurts."
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