Those Nutty Mad Men

Several of my friends have suggested I watch a popular TV show called "Mad Men." I have not done so, mostly because it is about the world of advertising, a world I left years ago, never to return. A second reason is that I believe all advertising is stupid. If you disagree, just take a look at the talking gecko that represents GEICO insurance. Just because "gecko" sounds like "GEICO," we are supposed to respond to this nitwit cartoon character with an Australian accent who spouts inanities about anything but insurance. I don't get it, and as a longtime GEICO customer it makes me wonder if maybe I should take my business elsewhere. But then, those other insurance companies have equally silly and nonsensical ads too, so I stay put. (Don't get me started on Flo.)

A baked potato with butter on the top....

As further evidence that those Madison Avenue types truly are a bit off, let's look at the sell line for Ruby Tuesday, a chain of restaurants often found in shopping malls. Decent, unexciting food, big salad bar, the typical burgers, fries, onion rings, blah, blah blah menu, nothing out of the ordinary. As the camera pans over food you probably make at home on a regular basis, an omnipotent voicover intones, "What if there was a restaurant where eating felt more like dining?" Not to be too nitpicky but since I am, first of all it should be, What if there WERE a restaurant, not WAS. But forget that and ask yourself, what exactly is the difference? Eating is dining, dining is eating, look it up.

The inference of course is that Ruby Tuesday is so fabulous, so fancy-schmancy, that it exceeds the normal shoveling all-you-can-eat into your mouth, transforming your meal into an exclusive foodie experience similar to what you would have in the finest restaurants in all the land, which it certainly does not. Lies and innuendo, all of it. I have had two meals at Ruby Tuesday in the past year, and both times it felt just like eating. And dining too. And my baked potato was cold and I asked for it with butter on the side and they brought it swimming in butter. Oh, it was eating, believe me. Those Mad Men truly are, and not in the Madison Avenue way. Sort of like dining and eating.