It's Been a Long Time Since I Rock and Rolled

Is it just me, or is it very wrong for the Led Zeppelin song Rock and Roll to be used in a Cadillac commercial? Are you SERIOUS? I bet Jimmy and Robert are laughing all the way to the bank. (Assuming they own those songs -- please, let this not be another one of those horrible situations where the artists don't have the rights to their own music.)

It's very interesting to me, what's happening to car commercials as the Baby Boomers get older. Remember This is not your father's Oldsmobile? That's the first one I remember that tried to say, "Hey, look, you can drive a fogey-mobile and still be hip..."

But that's not all. There's one out now for a minivan (I think Ford Windstar?) where the basic premise is a joke about swinging. Yes, I mean wife swapping. Have you seen it? The guy calls his next-door-neighbor over to the fence and asks him whether he and his wife ever think about, you know, swapping (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more). The neighbor seems taken aback, but kinda sorta says, er, yes. "What about the kids?" the other guy asks. The neighbor just goggles at him. Then the guy whips out his car keys and hands them over, and next thing you know he's got his whole family in the other guy's Ford Windstar or whatever and they're cruising down the road.

That is just twisted. No, really. Think about it. They're using the idea of swinging to make a minivan seem cool. I think it's for people who just... never thought they'd be considering a minivan. So they make this commercial that sort of pokes fun at the whole minivan thing while the underlying message is that you can drive a minivan and still be on the cutting edge of culture (if swinging could be considered on the cutting edge of culture). This commercial cracks me up every damn time I see it.

Say no MORE!