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Conference hydra::dave_barry

Title: Dave Barry - Noted humorist
Notice:Welcome! Please read guidelines in Note 412.
Moderator:SUBSYS::DOUCETTE
Created:Wed Jan 22 1986
Last Modified:Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1054
Total number of notes:3640

1052.0. "Fascinating Ad for Vanish Brand Toilet Cleaner" by ORION::chayna.zko.dec.com::xanadu::eppes (Nina Eppes) Tue May 20 1997 15:55

Dave Barry
May 16/18, 1997

I have received a number of letters from readers complaining that I focus too
much on "bathroom humor," instead of using this forum to educate my readers
about important issues that are of deep concern to our nation. OK, fine. I can
take criticism, and I admit that maybe I have become somewhat fixated. So
today my topic will be: China.

China is a large nation located over in Asia. You readers should be more
concerned about it.

Now, with what little space I have remaining, I'd like to talk about a
fascinating newspaper-insert advertisement for Vanish brand toilet cleaner.
You may have seen this ad: It features a portrait-style color photograph of a
middle-aged woman standing next to a toilet. She's smiling and holding a
package of Vanish, and next to her head is this quotation, which I am not
making up:

" `I have the cleanest and the nicest smelling bathroom in the neighborhood.
If anybody doesn't believe me, ring my doorbell and you can smell my toilet.'
-- Pat Mayo, Hometown, Illinois."

This ad was sent to me by alert reader Lee Burtman, who states: "As a very
busy teacher and mother of four (including two young boys just learning to
aim) I cannot imagine encouraging people to ring my doorbell and ask to smell
the toilet."

That was my reaction also. I mean, I don't want to get explicit here, but
there are times when I don't want my own loved ones going near my toilet. If
total strangers were to start coming to my door and asking for a whiff of it,
I would purchase a Sears Craftsman brand home flame-thrower.

So I decided to contact Pat Mayo of Hometown, Ill., which turns out to be a
real place, right next to Chicago (a large city). Pat said that she did,
indeed, invite people to smell her toilet; in fact, she makes the same
invitation in a TV commercial. Here, as she explained it to me, is what
happened:

A while back Pat, who is a real stickler for housework, purchased some Vanish
at the supermarket. She tried it and was very impressed with its
toilet-cleansing properties.

"I threw away my toilet brush," she said.

She was so impressed that she called the Vanish people, and they decided to
put her in one of those commercials wherein they use regular humans. As you
know, with a lot of TV commercials, when you see "typical homemakers" getting
worked up into an advanced state of rapture over the cleanliness of their
toilets, you are actually watching paid professional actresses who, in real
life, would no more clean a toilet than they would French-kiss a leech.

Also, remember the Ty-D-Bol man? the guy who used to float around the toilet
tank in a little boat? I hate to burst your bubble, but he wasn't real,
either. He was just a professional actor who happened to be six inches tall.
The real Ty-D-Bol man is only four inches tall and is always watching you via
a little periscope. Try not to think about it.

(Also, for the record, the so-called "Energizer Bunny" is actually Sylvester
Stallone in a costume.)

But getting back to Pat Mayo: She told me that she was filming the Vanish
commercial, and she was wearing a long-sleeved outfit under these hot lights,
and they kept putting powder on her, and the director kept badgering her to
say, in her own words, WHY she was so fond of Vanish, and finally she just
blurted out a blanket invitation to the world to come and smell her toilet,
and that's what they put on TV.

I asked Pat if anybody has actually taken her up on this offer, and she said
that about a week after the commercial started running, she was cleaning her
house, and the doorbell rang; it was two neighborhood boys on bicycles, and
they said "Hey, Mrs. Vanish, can we smell your toilet?" So Pat let them in,
and they flushed it a couple of times, and she gave them soda pops and sent
them on their way.

"They were bragging around the neighborhood," Pat said. " `We smelled the
Vanish Lady's toilet!' "

Yes, Pat has become a celebrity, and not just in her own neighborhood: She has
been interviewed on several radio programs, and she even got mentioned by Jay
Leno. You have to love a country where one day a person can be just a regular
private citizen in Hometown, Ill., and the next day her toilet is being
discussed on nationwide television. That is the beauty of the American way of
life, in stark contrast to the way of life in China, where -- even now, in the
late 20th Century -- there IS no Jay Leno.

NEXT WEEK'S TOPIC: "The Federal Reserve Board: What does it do? Who belongs to
it? What kind of toilets do they have?"

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