Alabama Chicken and Re-animated Popcorn Magnates

Thanks to the advancements of channel selection, digital video recorders and Nintendo handhelds, I pay little attention to commercials anymore. However, there are still times when I'm caught off guard and I found myself glued to an advertisement that inspires me to dedicate a blog post to them.

I'm sure quite a few people have noticed that the Lynard Skynard song Sweet Home Alabama is currently being used as background music for KFC commercials. To those of too young enough to remember, KFC is actually the initials for Kentucky Fried Chicken. What exactly do Alabama and Kentucky have in common, outside of their proximity to each other? What's next: Outback Steakhouse advertisements using Toto's Africa?

I can laugh off Alabama...er.... Kentucky Fried Chicken's poor song choice, but I can't ignore the creepiness that is the digital reanimation of long-dead product spokespersons. I'm talking about the recent wave of ads that brings back our favorite old crazy popcorn guy, Orville Redenbacher. Forget that he's been dead for twelve years. Computers are more than capable of recreating famous faces with ones and zeros, if you don't mind that they look like they're talking with a broken jaw and, also, they just happened to have left their lips home that day.

You can call me an advocate of respecting the dead, even if I was once under fire for trying to throw a graveyard dance party. It's bad enough forcing Orville to do commercials posthumously. But now they show him doing some wacky shtick. The whole commercial is a blooper reel showing all those times Orville just couldn't convey his message of "popcorn love" properly - mostly because he was dropping things or being stung by bees.

But hey, if this trend is going to catch on, how's about we sic the 'digital grave robbers' on Colonel Sanders. They can show him dancing around to Sweet Home Alabama while beating Neil Young over the head with a Crispy Strip. Tasty!