Mad House Brainwashing

On Saturday I braved the snow and winds in order to spend some time with my wife while we attempt to have some fun. We went to see Million Dollar Baby, the Clint Eastwood movie, a wonderful film BTW.

I haven't been to the movies for quite some time and was rather disappointed to find that we had to endure eight commercials before even the first preview began. Didn’t I pay the movie theater so that they don't have to resolve to brainwash their cliental? Isn’t this precisely the reason I came to the movies, to get away from everyday stressors like commercials? I have the same complaint of cable television, but that's another topic for another time.

It did get me thinking about advertising in general. I figure it’s only a matter of time until ordinary bloggers like you and I will have to resort to commercialization in order to attract readers. Can you imagine advertising, psychological profiling, age sector readership analysis for the average blogger? And what would a television commercial for this blog look like?

Follow me, it’s the ICU and a young Jack Nicholson emerges from the shadows wielding a syringe filled with Haldol, insanity apparent in his smile, unshaved shadow. He proceeds to inject every patient, one at a time, with the potent antipsychotic. The beds in the Unit rise and fall in unison while the nurses gather at the station and joke, ignoring the unreasonable picture. Nicholson (In a cross between “The Shining” and “One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) appears intermittently, sprinting across the small unit presumably having a nervous breakdown, laughing hysterically.

Then, all at once, the patients rise from their decrepit condition and do a dance number, tap dancing on their beds as the beds escalate and fall. Suddenly, the Nurses enter in the background in a perfect line high-stepping it in a long chain, the Rocket’s in nursing scrubs.

How about the background music? I think “Welcome to the Jungle” may be appropriate. How much more disturbing would it be if the scene was set to something soothing, something along the lines of “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. How truly insane and troubling would that be? I love it.

Of course I need a voiceover? Do I want the excitement guy? (ie: Next summer, one Resident...), or, would I be more comfortable with a story teller, someone like Morgan Freeman; “He was raised in a conservative family with deeply religious parents. Little did they know that their son was walking the thin line between genius and madness and he would continue to walk this line for the rest of his life…”. Can you hear him? Listen more closely and you will hear him breath.

Hey you never know. Coming soon to a theater near you: More Brainwashing.