free variable

I haven’t posted about baseball this postseason. Even though I despise the Yankees and they seemed to be on a collision-course with the most catastrophic foul-up in the history of the sport, I avoided posting about them. I have been careful since there is a near-perfect inverse correlation between me posting a prediction about a sporting event and that prediction not being borne out by reality.

Evidence from last year: here and here; if baseball is too provincial, see a bonus NFL Europe example.

My desire to prognosticate is further tempered by a lifetime of Minnesota sports fandom and an attendant finely-honed sense of the existential absurd. However, now it’s safe to render judgement. To paraphrase the famous MasterCard ads, there are some things that the largest payroll in baseball can’t buy, apparently. Take that, Croesus!

Speaking of ads, I’ve identified a ludicrous trend in home-electronics-superstore TV spots. The current Circuit City line of ads (featuring The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” — if you watch televised sports in the US, you’ve probably seen it) seems to be insinuating that there exists a class of people who are desperate to spend large amounts of money on top-shelf home electronics, but have no idea what they want and are panicking at the prospect. This is absolutely insulting to one’s intelligence: who could possibly want to spend four figures on a television without a very good picture of why he (in these ads, it is nearly always a “he”) was doing so?

In my opinion, though, these Circuit City ads are in conversation with the ridiculous, prurient Best Buy ads that feature an implausible combination of events:

1. Some chowderheaded customer is perilously close to making some absurdly foolish decision, like buying the wrong digital camera, microwaving tinfoil, or wearing a Vikings jersey in rural Wisconsin.
2. The customer is approached by a helpful, kempt, and nametag-wearing Best Buy employee who can speak in complete sentences. The employee does not hide or pretend to be talking on the phone or working in another department. (“Sorry, I’m in ‘produce;’ I know nothing about TVs.”)
3. Before attempting to sell the hapless customer a warranty, the employee asks some leading questions: precisely why do you assume that the tinfoil needs to be microwaved, etc.
4. In a bizarre “fantasy” sequence, the Best Buy employee appears in some crucial non-store product-usage scenario with the customer. (Some recent ads have featured a customer actually inviting a salesman into his home, which is the sort of exposition — so one assumes — that might appear regularly on late-night pay TV.)
5. Even more inexplicably, the salesperson offers critically helpful advice to the knuckle-dragging lackwit customer, preventing a microwave fire or La Crosse Lager-soaked beating.

These ads, while absurd, may portend good news for America: after all, if these drooling idiots who need to be told by Best Buy or Circuit City employees how best to spend their own money on luxury items have significant market appeal, then the economy must be a hell of a lot better than Peter Jennings says it is. After all, you aren’t worrying about whether to get a plasma TV or an LCD when you’re standing in a Soviet breadline.