Light and hearty observations from a fat and ugly guy. Home of hackneyed drivel and ersatz-existentialist effluence. Choleric biliousness a specialty, since 1958.

Six Flags? I take my hat off to them...not

My poor son is stuck with me this weekend, which means I must be furtive in my attempts to sneak cigarettes and drink whisky. The cigarettes occur outside on the deck while he's busy watching Tom & Jerry on Boomerang; the whisky occurs in a coffee mug. He asked me, "Dad, you really drink a lot of coffee, won't you be up all night?" and I said, "Son, I haven't been up for 12 years." He had no idea what I meant by that, but you, you loyal shlubbies, you know, dontcha?

So yesterday comes the news of the kid decapitated at Six Flags in Atlanta. He apparently jumped some security fences and had this terrrible thing happen to him while trying to retrieve a cap he lost on the Batman ride.

With that in mind, last night Nigel Jr. and I are watching George Lopez on Nick Jr. and on comes an ad for....Six Flags! Not only that, it was an ad for some crazy summer promotion they're doing, and the copy actually had this line in it: "So much fun, you'll lose your mind!" First time I heard it, I went, "no way"...but sure enough, it was repeated again before the ad ended.

Back in my radio days, airlines had a contingency plan for whenever a commercial airliner crashed, anywhere in the US--that was, stations were required to immediately suspend all play of any of their airline ads until further notice. Not a bad policy, I suppose. But I can't believe the Six Flags people didn't have the smarts enough to contact their own ad agency and order the immediate suspension of all advertising...especially one that mentions "losing your mind" when some poor kid just lost his head.

posted by Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines @ 10:26 AM