Eight Feet Deep

 Early this morn­ing I was awak­ened by an ago­niz­ing pain in my left, lit­tle toe. I think I might have frac­tured it last night as I was putting my nor­mally hurt­ing feet – cour­tesy of neu­ropa­thy from a still undis­cov­ered ori­gin — up for rest.

 For some rea­son I had dif­fi­culty going back to sleep but it wasn’t just due to the pain. No, it was because I couldn’t remem­ber all the lines in that hilar­i­ous Dos Equis TV com­mer­cial, “The Most Inter­est­ing Man in the World.” Click here to see the ad.

 The bearded, non-celebrity can be seen boat­ing, play­ing jai alai or lead­ing a night-time expe­di­tion with all in tow dressed in their fin­ery. The voice-over pro­claims that “His rep­u­ta­tion is expand­ing faster than the uni­verse. He once had an awk­ward moment just to see how it feels. He lives vic­ar­i­ously through him­self. He is the most inter­est­ing man in the world.”

 Slate critic Seth Stephen­son points out that the most inter­est­ing aspect of the ad is the subject’s line: “I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, I pre­fer Dos Equis.” Stephen­son equates such an admis­sion to Tony the Tiger say­ing he doesn’t like cereal but when he eats it, his brand is Frosted Flakes.

 It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine just to whom the adver­tiser is pitch­ing. It would hardly be the “Whaz­zuppp???” crowds of bygone Bud Light ads or the other babe-laden  ads which equate drink­ing tons of beers with find­ing tons of fine women. Sometimes  it is hard to fig­ure out just who an ad has been crafted for, espe­cially when humor is involved. Humor crosses many dif­fer­ent lines when it hits and just as many lines when it doesn’t.

 Nonethe­less, hats off to the firm that came up with this cam­paign for its clever humor and its appeal to mem­ory. It kept me up try­ing to remem­ber it word for word this morn­ing, didn’t it? Dos Equis has an accom­pa­ny­ing Web site with the cam­paign, the fun­ni­est part of this medium is that the most inter­est­ing man sup­pos­edly leaves a note telling peo­ple to explore what’s around his place. There, in his study one finds a num­ber of empty match boxes from for­eign spots which can be opened and which con­tain local insults, something Mr. Most Inter­est­ing insists is help­ful to know when oper­at­ing in var­ied cul­tural climates.