STOKED, BOTHERED & BEWILDERED

         She sits at her desk, or maybe it's a trestle table, in her dark suit and Paltrowish blond hair, waiting for the summons to take her company public. She can't be more than thirty, but already her company's time has passed, eclipsed by the bear market a tenth of her age. In the deep background people can be seen working. Her dialogue mentions inventory, so they must be assembling doodads or widgets or, more likely, centerpieces for tables. It's the dim lighting in this loft with low ceiling that creates the mystery.

         The middle ground is empty. Something passed through at the beginning of the pitch, but as she prattles about her friend "Brown," the overall composition begins to resemble Watteau's "Pilgrimage to Cythera." The French 18th Century genius used a rise in the ground to hide his lack of technique in arranging figures in perspective. Here there is no perspective but rather two planes, each waiting to be 'stoked.'

         That's the term she uses at the end of the commercial, just after two refugees from a Silicon Valley start-up, circa 1999, buzz through the vacant middle space on skateboards. Apologies! 'Skateboard' is the wrong term; and razor scooter is also passé. It will suffice to say that the young men are riding a people-moving device that is very 'in' today and, as the ad copy says, they are 'stoked.' According to our smiling CEO, all her employees are 'stoked,' and it is Brown that has done it.

         As I see this ad for the twentieth time, I start to figure it out. Thoughts have swirled through my head for a day or two, finally forming a critical mass as the hot water hit my neck this morning. 'I think I know what her employees are making.' I check my definition at Dictionary.com and learn that I am on the right track.

Stoked: "Being or feeling high or intoxicated, especially from a drug."

I can't prove it but I bet they are rolling joints for distribution, and "Brown," according to her testimonial, has helped her company manage the inventory. Just shows to go you, huh? I thought UPS only delivered books, toys and the like.

         I will have to get out my giant magnifying glass and place it in front of my miserly nineteen-inch television screen this Sunday when the National Football League playoffs resume. That is where I must have seen the advertisement; it certainly wasn't played during my other favorite show, the local news. I wonder if the glass will help me make out what the employees are doing. If I'm correct, it will certainly embarrass United Parcel and the poohbahs who run the NFL, not to mention Gwyneth Paltrow.

         My thought takes two tracks now. Is it possible she is talking about a different "Brown?" I am sure I have seen UPS trucks in the ad, but maybe I am wrong, and maybe "Brown" is short for "Brown Gold" or "Ecuadorian Brown." Then again, if my memory is correct, maybe the company that employs Mahoney, the guy in shorts who visits the man standing in the big warehouse in another of their ads, is out to cut into the lead of Federal Express in delivering hemp. I have to hand it to them; it's a neat way to jiggle their stock price.

         I don't think any of my mutual funds hold UPS; my investments specialize in riding 'down' escalators, so my mind turns away from “Brown.” Now I begin to wonder where our employer finds her happy and stoked labor force? Anyone I know with a job is certainly not happy, or stoked. I wonder if what I am seeing is only another Madison Avenue fantasy.

         When flackery turns Sunday afternoon into a parade of the dumb talking to the dumber, with occasional breaks to allow men in helmets and pads to maim each other, some of my impressions may not be accurate, but that did not stop my brain from spinning a theory. There is a particularly odious thirty-second spiel where young men bleat, shout, gargle, croak, anything but sing, a song about this most wonderful time of the year. As they make this ungodly noise, they quaff Coor's and behave like bozos. If I ever saw any of these party-hearty types heading toward my house, I would hold my breath and flush myself down the toilet. I doubt that my opinion would matter to the lady who runs that company served by 'Brown.' After their roistering is done, I am sure the obnoxious crew takes a seat in back and begins rolling joints for her.

         As "Brown" fades into a car commercial in my mind, I despair of ever seeing the football game again. I want to get up and place a call to rid myself of this drivel, and I know just the person to do it: the young black woman who sits in the Cubicle of Modern Business. She is tempted by Spam on her computer that asks her, "Are you fed up with your job? If so, click here." She is obviously not stoked; after making sure no one is watching, she uses her mouse. Music blares, a man’s face fills the screen. He congratulates her; she has unleashed a virus that will attack all of the other workstations in the other cubicles. The infection will be traced back to her. The camera pans back to show his face popping up on other screens. People are looking around, yelling, smacking their computers. “Want to get away?” the narrator intones.

         I want to whisper in her ear, “Go work for Gwyneth, set the virus loose there. Drive her out of business so I don’t have to watch her stoke her employees.” Maybe the boys will invite her out for a Coors and I can send them to the unemployment line too. I am imagining a Sunday afternoon with nothing but football and auto commercials. Those I can take; they all look alike and induce sleep. The reverie builds in my mind. Happiness is breaking out, but then I hear the horn outside.

         It’s Big Brown, with a package in his arms. The dog is out front. She is barking at him. He is standing on the road, at the edge of the driveway. I run out to him. “Here’s your new laptop,” he shouts. From a distance of fifteen feet, I could swear that he winked. Could ‘laptop’ be a code? I wink back, sign his Exer-sketch pad and take the box from his arms.

         “Thanks, man. That dog kind of worried me. Didn’t want to carry it past her and drop it on the ground.” He breaks into a laugh.

         “That’s okay, it’s not heavy. You really like your job, don’tcha?”

         “Yea, man. I’m stoked.”
         “Cool!”

         He jumps back in his truck and I wend my way back to the house, my ‘laptop’ in my arms. I should have one of those scooters, but I don’t. I only have Sly Stone, beating out a rhythm in my brain. Boom-shockalockalocka, boom shockalockalocka. I open the front door. The house is stoked.

Valatie January 16, 2003