Hamsters!

Okay, so I never get to write about anything other than 1) weight stuff 2) poverty and 3) local Toledo stuff for the local Toledo weekly that I slum it up with sometimes.

Here's something I wrote that's not going anywhere else. I think hamsters are damned important. Also, er, "urban".

“What’s the difference between a hamster and gerbil?” my boyfriend asked as I changed lanes doing about 80 miles an hour. We’d been talking about my latest obsession, the Kia Soul commercial where “urban” hamsters head-bob in unison to The Choice is Yours by the Black Sheep.

“Gerbils have a longer tail,” I said. “Also, they’d probably buy American.”

Ironically, this conversation about a Korean automaker and its spokesrodents happened on the Southfield Freeway near Detroit. As I zoomed by Ford’s world headquarters, a shiny glass building that dominates the highway, I pondered urban hamsters in baggy pants and hoodies. Hamsters who live on Hamsterdam Avenue and drive shiny new Kia Souls while their (strangely nude) non-Kia cohorts drive things like washing machines and cardboard boxes.

These anthropomorphic rapping rodents have a seriously macho quality. The female hamsters in the ad wear old-school cheerleader skirts. They have no tops to speak of. The urban paradise of the Kia hamster features everything a dude could possibly want: woman-free time with the boyz in the Kia, the all-male barbershop for relaxation, and topless cheerleaders at the roadside, waiting in lush anticipation for the first hoodied-ham-stud in a Kia Soul to pull over and open the shiny green passenger side door. As a feminist, I should find all of this kind of insulting. Instead, I envision my own suburban Kia fantasy.

The man and woman hamster ride silently. No music – sadly, not a bit of Black Sheep to lighten the mood in their pristine silver Soul. The Hamstress (despite having no facial expression of any kind) seems distressed. She fishes around in the I-used-to-be-a-plastic-bag recycled tote and seems relieved to discover that she has indeed remembered the Hamayonaise.

I can’t stop talking about this Kia commercial. I’ve also watched it online at least ten times. I find myself finishing thoughts with “Do, da, dippity,” imitating the cadence and accent of the Black Sheep frontman, despite the fact that I am the whitest woman on earth; I carried a Bermuda bag to school every single day for at least six months in the fifth grade.

Why are these hamsters so fascinating? Part of it is the animation and the catchy song. Created by David & Goliath, the Los Angeles ad agency also responsible for the Bacardi & Cola campaign, the ad is an intricately detailed mini masterpiece of cutting-edge computer animation and smart ideas. According to D&G’s chairman, David Angelo, the hamsters represent sameness, going around in circles, and only the Kia Soul can save us from the sad ubiquity of workaday middle class existence. The shiny green hamster car would deliver Emma Bovary to a young lover (exactly five minutes after she drops the kids at soccer practice, one presumes).

Not only have the ads tapped some sort of angsty, bourgeois zeitgeist, they’ve sold a lot of cars. According to a Kia dealer quoted in Fortune, “"Demand has definitely exceeded expectations. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we've sold out.” Fortune also found that 80% of Kia dealers nationwide had sold out on the Soul.

As successful as this ad is and as much as I personally enjoy it, I wonder about the urbanness of those dancing hamsters. They live near Hamsterdam Avenue. They frequent a barbershop, where the neighborhood’s elderstatesrodents gather to gossip and soak up the culture. In their baggy pants and hoodies, these cunning urban rodents are clearly stand-ins for African Americans.

Are African Americans cool enough to sell Kias, but still somehow too threatening for ads? I wonder, though I like to think – because I pretty much watch this commercial on a loop and have talked it up to everyone who’ll listen to me for more than 30 seconds – that the hamsters are just cuter and cleverer than any human beings (regardless of race) could ever hope to be. Also, African Americans couldn’t drive a toaster or washing machine, and these bad “choices” kind of make the ad.

I will not apologize for loving the Kia hamsters. I will not buy a Soul, either; I’m driving my six-year-old (mostly) paid-for Saturn Ion til it explodes in a shower of bolts at the side of the road, just like Elwood’s police car in the Blues Brothers. I’m not in the market for a car, but I think the hamsters could sell me almost anything else. Like, for example, a Black Sheep song from 1991.

Money Shot? NOT!!!

I have an essay on Salon's front page! Totally thrilled. Of course, the art....is not my favorite. I've been lucky with that kind of thing. I especially love the paper doll illustration from the first thing I wrote for them and the teddy for my Nerve sex thing. Of course, the cover art on the book....wellllll.....yeah. Not my favorite thing in the world.

So the kid's eating ice cream, not getting the wrong kind of facial.

But, more to the point: YAY!

Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio

There's never anything a single person can do alone. And I'm not single, really, just geographically inconvenient to my sweetie, who lives in Michigan and who I won't see tll next week. I'm at Starbucks working, but thought I'd treat myself to a midnight movie. No dice. The new movie company in Toledo, Rave Motion Pictures, now declines to show movies after 11 pm. So I could go to a bar or a Waffle House. I think I'll go home and watch a movie on the tube, snuggle my cats and rest up. I've got a killer week ahead between the three jobs I'm juggling, my writing, and social and family obligations.

Tomorrow, I'll help my (sort of) stepdad move a stack of 40-pound pavers into the backyard so he can anchor his new cantilevered umbrella over the patio furniture. There's leftover ribs in it for me (in the job, not, I hope, in the furniture).

All this underscores a need to move. Not to Michigan, though my sweetie would love that. I miss Boston. I miss movies that start at 1 am and having a million things to do any night of the week. I miss the ocean and the Cape. I miss all of it. No idea if I'll ever live there again, or anywhere other than here.

Still, despite being nearly as good a pilot as he was a singer, John Denver got it right when he covered that shitty song about my town. It's like noplace at all, and I want to be someplace....someplace lovely.

Julianne: Ben Folds Project

"I don't miss Julianne"
From "Julianne", Ben Folds Five

The thing is, I do. Julie, one of the best friends I've ever know, lives in Canada now. We met online through the quiz tournament community, becoming friends and then quiz teammates at various masters' events. For the last fifteen years, Julie and I have had many adventures in a variety of crappy old cars, chugging along I-75 at 80 miles an hour.

I miss her. Then again, we've never lived in the same town, so I can't say what it'd be like to see her all the time. I doubt I'd get sick of her. We could hang at the bookstore or have coffee in my tiny apartment. We could watch Metalocalpyse with Rick (her husband, and another dear friend, though Ben Folds has yet to write him into a song). Julie has comfortable furniture and loves to cook, making her the perfect hostess.

So I do miss Julie (formerly Julie Ann -- a first/middle combination she always despised and correct via a maiden name swap out). I miss her a lot.

"She'd make a reason for the things that I did and give me credit for the things I never did." Ben got that right, though he doesn't know Julie. For a genius and a thinker and a PhD biologist, she's by far the most optimistic person I know, especially where other people and their variouos bad behaviors are concerned. When the optimism falters, she happily offers to unleash her lab wasps on thine enemies. I love that in a pal.

Disclaimer: Unlike the Julianne in Ben's song, Julie looks nothing like Axl Rose. Nor does sohe go home with strange musicians and sleep in her clothes. Strange invertebrates? Most definitely, but that's another story.