Coming down off of Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
just outside the Thornton Gap entrance to Shenandoah National Park, heading east

Want a brand-new antique table of your very own? Apparently, that’s not an oxymoron. If you’re interested, you can visit their website.

One thing that has always struck me about American advertising and, in this case, the choice of a company name, is the fact that it relies so heavily on tickling the customer’s sense of humor.  Years in Italy, including 3 years of Italian commercial arts school, accustomed me to the idea that an advertisement has to be beautiful, sexy, aesthetically perfect… but hardly ever funny.  Of course, Antonio Banderas wearing his most seductive Zorro face to sell breakfast cookies might be unintentionally funny (I think the mothers were the target of that commercial), but in the U.S., humor is usually the main marketing device of ads and commercials that are meant to be memorable because they made you laugh. Some are ludicrous, some are wacky, some indulge in darker humor and some appeal to the more childish side of our funny-bone, but even the bad ones stick more in my mind, at least, than the up-teenth lingerie-clad beauty selling the latest sports car or heart-throb pushing coffee (here’s lookin’ at you, George Clooney).

Anyway, this collection will be the first of a collection where you’ll find some of the  business and advertising ploys in the comic vein that have caught my eye.