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Authors: Augusten Burroughs
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to try this curious recipe in our
Adweek
test kitchens,” they snidely remarked.
I was thrilled to see my ad in
Redbook
. And I was especially proud of my fast and simple recipe. I liked to imagine extremely busy moms in Tennessee reading my recipe and thinking,
Wow, I never realized you could make a potato so quick
, and then serving it to guests. I liked to imagine the guests crunching into the rawish potato, gluey with melted cheese. The potato slices would surely have been scalding hot in some places, cool in others. They would have been starchy and caused cramps. “Gosh Phyllis, these potatoes are so . . . fresh.”
This was great advertising.
Maybe what I need to do is diversify. Perhaps I’ve spent too many years in traditional consumer advertising and now need to write commercials for prescription yeast-infection medications or make infomercials.
As cheesy and downscale as infomercials are, they can be curiously persuasive. Last Saturday I spent the afternoon sitting on the curb in front of Dean & Deluca drinking one double espresso after another, like the alcoholic that I am. As a result, I was still charged at three in the morning. So I turned on the TV and started cycling through the channels, hoping to find either an incest movie or a conjoined-twin separation documentary. Instead, I found something equally compelling: an extreme close-up of a man’s forehead, with his fingers sliding back through the hair. And then, instantly, another image of another man, doing the same thing. Then a man rising up out of a pool, shaking the water from his head and smiling. The camera then zoomed in really tight so I could see a pimple just above his eyebrow and, yes, his hairline.
I continued watching, and this compelling montage of mens’ foreheads turned out to be an infomercial for a doctor specializing in “hairline-rejuvenation surgery.” This phrase was repeated over and over, in every possible context. “Many of our patients resume their active lifestyles just two days after hairline-rejuvenation surgery,” and “even during intimate moments, Dr. Sisal’s hairlinerejuvenation surgery is completely undetectable.” I figured the reason they kept using this phrase was to distance this procedure from the dreaded “hair transplant,” which everybody knows results in a head that looks as though it belongs on a doll.
Just as I was about to change the channel, having satiated my unexpected need to gorge on men’s foreheads, they showed a series of before-and-after images.
These were truly remarkable. I put the remote control down, fluffed the pillows, and leaned back on the bed. Men who were once balder than me were now standing before a mirror and running a comb through their thick hair, smiling confidently at their own reflections. One man was shown blow-drying his hair and using a round vent brush.
I nearly wept. I used to own a vent brush! I owned three different-sized vent brushes!
This was the “get on all fours and get banged like a bitch!” porn equivalent for bald guys.
The perfectly named Dr. Sisal explained that he used a magnifying glass during the procedure. I could relate to this. I used a magnifying glass myself at least once a month to monitor my Rogaine progress. The doctor then explained that the patient is given a local anesthetic, and “donor” hair is taken from the back of the head and placed in “micro grafts” to the front of the head. These micro grafts were the secret, Dr. Sisal said. Instead of transplanting clumps of hair to the front, creating an obvious rug, by implanting hairs individually he was able to achieve a “natural appearance that gives you the confidence to participate in any activity you wish.”
The idea was thrilling, because the activity I wished to participate in was standing in front of the mirror and applying large gobs of hair gel.
While I’d wasted my life writing misleading ads for potatoes and engineered butter substitutes, people with
Adweek
test kitchens,” they snidely remarked.
I was thrilled to see my ad in
Redbook
. And I was especially proud of my fast and simple recipe. I liked to imagine extremely busy moms in Tennessee reading my recipe and thinking,
Wow, I never realized you could make a potato so quick
, and then serving it to guests. I liked to imagine the guests crunching into the rawish potato, gluey with melted cheese. The potato slices would surely have been scalding hot in some places, cool in others. They would have been starchy and caused cramps. “Gosh Phyllis, these potatoes are so . . . fresh.”
This was great advertising.
Maybe what I need to do is diversify. Perhaps I’ve spent too many years in traditional consumer advertising and now need to write commercials for prescription yeast-infection medications or make infomercials.
As cheesy and downscale as infomercials are, they can be curiously persuasive. Last Saturday I spent the afternoon sitting on the curb in front of Dean & Deluca drinking one double espresso after another, like the alcoholic that I am. As a result, I was still charged at three in the morning. So I turned on the TV and started cycling through the channels, hoping to find either an incest movie or a conjoined-twin separation documentary. Instead, I found something equally compelling: an extreme close-up of a man’s forehead, with his fingers sliding back through the hair. And then, instantly, another image of another man, doing the same thing. Then a man rising up out of a pool, shaking the water from his head and smiling. The camera then zoomed in really tight so I could see a pimple just above his eyebrow and, yes, his hairline.
I continued watching, and this compelling montage of mens’ foreheads turned out to be an infomercial for a doctor specializing in “hairline-rejuvenation surgery.” This phrase was repeated over and over, in every possible context. “Many of our patients resume their active lifestyles just two days after hairline-rejuvenation surgery,” and “even during intimate moments, Dr. Sisal’s hairlinerejuvenation surgery is completely undetectable.” I figured the reason they kept using this phrase was to distance this procedure from the dreaded “hair transplant,” which everybody knows results in a head that looks as though it belongs on a doll.
Just as I was about to change the channel, having satiated my unexpected need to gorge on men’s foreheads, they showed a series of before-and-after images.
These were truly remarkable. I put the remote control down, fluffed the pillows, and leaned back on the bed. Men who were once balder than me were now standing before a mirror and running a comb through their thick hair, smiling confidently at their own reflections. One man was shown blow-drying his hair and using a round vent brush.
I nearly wept. I used to own a vent brush! I owned three different-sized vent brushes!
This was the “get on all fours and get banged like a bitch!” porn equivalent for bald guys.
The perfectly named Dr. Sisal explained that he used a magnifying glass during the procedure. I could relate to this. I used a magnifying glass myself at least once a month to monitor my Rogaine progress. The doctor then explained that the patient is given a local anesthetic, and “donor” hair is taken from the back of the head and placed in “micro grafts” to the front of the head. These micro grafts were the secret, Dr. Sisal said. Instead of transplanting clumps of hair to the front, creating an obvious rug, by implanting hairs individually he was able to achieve a “natural appearance that gives you the confidence to participate in any activity you wish.”
The idea was thrilling, because the activity I wished to participate in was standing in front of the mirror and applying large gobs of hair gel.
While I’d wasted my life writing misleading ads for potatoes and engineered butter substitutes, people with
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