Thursday, 16 April 2009

...yeah yeah? no no!

I never realised I was a gambler, until I saw this animated advertisement on the sidebar of a online newpaper.

And the million dollar question is...


Alarmingly, this advertisement has informed me that in the great 'Hairlotto' caper of which I unwittingly take part, not everyone wins (gasp!). The one-armed bandit spins it's three segments, randomly revealing three lucky... or not so lucky punters.


I will now present to you the three 'players', followed by a series of short questions.


"Hi, I'm Mr One. I enjoy waterskiing at my favourite resort, wearing $80 Calvin Klein underpants and maintaing a ridiculous, expensive yet fashionable pointy hairdo. My perfect day would be scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef followed by a romantic sunset dinner of freshly caught (by me) lobster with that special lady in my life, whoever she may be that week."



"Hi, I'm Mr. Two. I enjoy driving my 1964 convertible Porsche to my cabin in the mountains, where after a long day bareback horseriding through fields of wildflowers (in a masculine, 'Marlborough Man' kind of way) there's nothing I enjoy more than putting up my feet beside the open fireplace and freshly stuffed grizzly bear (shot by me) whilst sipping on some fine Cognac with the special lady in my life, whoever she happens to be that week."




"Hi I'm Mr Three. I'm into golf, strangling small animals and masturbation. Actually, I don't have that much time for golf anymore. Sometimes I get these dreadful headaches. I enjoy spending my evenings hanging around in bushes, with an axe, outside the bedroom window of that special lady in my life, whoever she may be that week"





Question 1: Who didn't go to a hairloss clinic?

Question 2: Which punter do I look most like?

Question 3: Guess which punter 9 out of 10 blokes look like, and will continue to look like, regardless of how much money and time they waste on trying to improve their appearance.



So it looks like it's finally arrived fellas; marketing male beauty products by preying on modern man's metrosexual insecurities of self image. I mean, women have been doing this to themselves for eons but now we're going to follow suit? WTF? Why are we making a rod for our own backs? It would seem that the golden age of marketing stuff to men, when being a squat, hairy, leather-skinned yob in a wifebeater, downing a pot of VB surrounded by mates slapping your back in approval was something to aspire to, is finally over. Still, we've saved a lot of money on cosmetics over the last... I don't know... four million years!

I've got a few issues (surprise) with this advertisment, which may be really disguising an unconscious desire to have a long flowing mane once again (not that I ever really did... I had a mane, but it didn't really 'flow', as happens after three years of washing your hair in saltwater). I have only one hairstyle with which I must live the rest of my life.... the RFS (Really Fuckin' Short), no longer than a #2 on the clipper comb scale. The mere contemplation of anything else brings me dangerously close to divorce. Its the "Crazy Old Balding Hippy Look Clause 1.2 " as written in the fineprint of my marriage certificate.

I digress. To begin with, not only did Mr. Three forget to go to a hair clinic, the sorry remnants of his hair has turned into a drunken bird's nest, his skin has turned a pasty white and he looks a wee bit confused. Now everyone knows that the bird's nest issue can be fixed with a nice comb-over, but obviously baldness had other side effects I was unaware of, like anemia, disorientation and an inability to hold a hairbrush.

Secondly, the gambling analogy confuses the intent of the advertiser. If male pattern baldness is a gamble as is implied, surely being concerned over such a loss is pointless. It's not like I can buy a losing ticket for a horserace, then go to a clinic to have my losing ticket made into a winning one. However, hairloss clinics only have any effect on 70% of men, and full regeneration on an even smaller percentage, so I guess it really is gamble. You could pay thousands of dollars for nothing, though I'm sure they try to sell nice toupees to the unsuccessful. So if saving your hair is akin to gambling, then I'm orf to buy some nice scalp tonic.

Perhaps the Shane Warne campaign wasn't working... after all, he is just a bogan butt-nugget (Yeah yeah!). But if we're going to sink so low as to imply that balding men are ugly, dishevelled, unsexy and genrerally uncool in order to sell a 'might-work' treatment for the financial gain of a few 'scienticians', then I'm afraid this is war, civil war, and I'll have to ask this marketer to step outside to sort this out, old school 'Kings Rules' bareknuckle style, or pistols at 10 paces perhaps? This is only fitting to defend the honour of my hair-lite brothers from this traitorous scourge, these filthy betrayers of the time honoured tradition of male cosmetic apathy. Hang em high!



The answers to the questions...

Q1 - Mr. Three
Q2 - Mr. One
Q3 - Mr. Three


.

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7 Comments:

At 16 April 2009 at 21:27 , Blogger Miles McClagan said...

#3 is surely Rik Mayall photoshopped to look marginally less Mayall? Surely? Buy our product and don't look like Ade Edmondson is surely more apt?

 
At 17 April 2009 at 16:48 , Blogger Kath Lockett said...

I might not be a bloke being subjected to the fickle finger of hair-or-hairless fate, but as a woman I get sick and tired of these ads intimating that the baldie blokes aren't likely to attract women.

Maybe not the kind of women you'd normally cross the street to avoid perhaps, but there's loads of 'number two clippers please' guys who seem to have landed pretty nice partners.

But don't get me started on the guy in the Godfrey's ads, who has the worst combover I've ever seen. In SA, they used to run captions across his head to try and disguise it!

 
At 17 April 2009 at 23:51 , Blogger Catastrophe Waitress said...

oh i love a balding bloke!
especially if he's sort of rough-looking and has gone very short with the clippers. if he ALSO has glasses? jackpot!

 
At 20 April 2009 at 16:37 , Blogger Femikneesm said...

Bald men can be totally awesome - example to cite - Captain Jean Luc Picard.

 
At 26 April 2009 at 21:08 , Blogger Catastrophe Waitress said...

where on earth are you?
have you got another blog going on the side or something?

 
At 27 April 2009 at 00:20 , Blogger Cinema Minima said...

No way! I'm a one blog guy. I've tried to have two going at the same time before but I got in trouble.

I'm monobloggist.

 
At 27 April 2009 at 09:37 , Blogger Catastrophe Waitress said...

snigger!

 

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