It's What We Do? Really?

Fortunately, anyone who has been watching commercials for more than a few years must by now be completely indoctrinated into "men are bizarre, incomprehensible idiot slobs" theme, and therefore won't take too much offense at Budweiser's latest "look at these stupid, ragged weirdos and how they greet each other" ad.

"There have been many versions of the Social Greeting over the years." Has there now? I'm stuck in the 18th century, I guess, because I still greet people of the same sex with a handshake. Maybe it's my famous Vermont-bred fastidiousness.

"The Fist Bump was fun, for a while." Really? "The Low Five. The Chest Bump" (Seriously? I've never seen two guys who weren't already drunk out of their skulls chest bump each other.) "The Bro Hug Double Back Tap Combo" (now we know Budweiser is just making crap up.)

It goes on. "The Forearm Grab." "The Head Butt." "The Outlaw" (pretending to shoot the guy you are greeting. Oh sure, I've seen that done, many many times. And by 'many, many times,' I mean Never, of course.)

Finally, we get to the point of the commercial- Budweiser unveiling the new, socially acceptable greeting- people banging glasses and bottles of Budweiser together. Oh, goody! If this becomes popular, we can expect bars and restaurants to get a lot louder. And a lot stupider.

But I'm not too worried about it. My guess is that this ad was created by the same creative team of geniuses who brought us "Five Dollar Foot Longs" last winter, and within a week or so were trying to tell us that the "Five Dollar Foot Long" jingle had taken the nation by storm, and that everyone was doing it. (Everyone cool, I mean.) Oddly, this craze is in very little evidence in my neck of the woods- I'm sure that the DC suburbs are just a tiny island of the terminally Uncool, and if I just traveled beyond my immediate surroundings I would find people singing "Five Dollar! Five Dollar! Five Dollar Foot Longs!" in the streets of every other town in the country. And since I clearly live in a Dead Zone for social phenomenons, I expect that I will continue to see people shaking hands and occasionally hugging their greetings, the clueless philistines.