DUH: I'M NOT, LIKE, REALLY SMART AND A STABLE GENIUS SOMETIMES

Yesterday I posted a reel of commercials from the 1960s (scroll down, sucker) and I urged interested viewers (both of you) to skip ahead to 3 minutes and 25 seconds and watch a very funny, completely inexplicable/bordering on surreal commercial for Pizza Rolls. The premise is that several very weird people invade a very sixties cocktail party and annoy the hell out of the hostess, who dispenses with them after they rudely ask out of place questions (i.e.: 'do you have bad breath?' 'Your husband doesn't like your coffee...' etc.) The ad made no sense to me until my friend, journalist extraordinaire Marc Myers cracked the code for me and helpfully pointed out that the commercial was satirizing other commercials of the era, bringing the characters and pitch lines into the party in inappropriate places. Below are the original references, also courtesy of Marc. It's astonishing and embarrassing for me to have not realized this nice, simple pop-culture joke. All I can say is 'duh'...






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