While watching football over the weekend, I was forced to suffer through dozens of erection commercials, Cialis being the prime offender. I've found it amusing that when Viagra et al. came out the advertisements were for elderly men, but, ever since, the age of the "pitch men" has been skewing more and more young. Now they're in their late 40s. It's not too long before they have twenty-somethings waxing romantic, I'm sure.
At any rate, what the hell is with advertising these days? Take Cialis, for instance. I guess that there's not really any good way to say "Hey, look, we get that you're having a *hard* time finding your spouse of two decades sexually attractive, but if you take this pill, some how, some way, you will be able to defy the laws of nature in order to flop around spastically for a few minutes until you get back to work so you can pay for the mortgage and the kids' student loans." That might not be "sexy," I realize, but those commercials are retarded. Then it struck me; they're not for men. They're for women.
The bathtubs.
Seriously, I watch the Cialis commercial and the first thing that pops to mind is, "What in the hell are people doing with cast-iron bathtubs in a forest or in the surf?" THEN I think, "How the hell do you get the water to those tubs?" THEN I think, "What in the hell does soaking in a bathtub have to do with erections?"
That's the key question.
The answer: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Unless something startling happens to the way my mind works when I get older, I do not find a bath to be the sort of thing that gets me ramped up. You know who does? Women. There's an adjective for when women like things that men don't. It's called "gay." The cialis commercial has nothing but gay stuff in it. Soaking in bathtubs is gay. Watching your wife putt indoors is gay. Walking on the beach holding hands is gay. Don't get me wrong, we men end up doing a lot of gay stuff for you women, but it's not because we necessarily want to do it. It's because we have to do it. Hell, at some point, I may very well go soak in a tub with my lady if that's what I have to do, but right now I'm thinking that the last thing that I want an old, wrinkly body to do is go soak and get prune-y. I really would need a pill to get up for that.
*MY* commercial would show older guys out at the bar, having a few too many drinks, oggling the young, nubile bartendress. Then the next scene would be one of the guys looking at the bartendress as he exits the bar, shaking his head and muttering creepily to himself. Then getting home, waking up his wife, whom he somehow convinces to get frisky. The clincher should show the older woman, from behind (above the waist) as she takes off her granny night gown. You'd see the guy look at her sagging breasts, gulp, and then he'd pop a pill and drain a glass of water. "Cialis...because she's not 23 anymore." Fade to black.
***Update*** Several ladies have complained about the fact that men don't get especially sexually attractive in their elder years and said they need a drug to get them in the mood. As I patiently explained to them, it's been out for years, it's called "Box Wine."
