Ad executives are idiots

I really just wanted to go to bed. But I figured I'd watch some of the late night shows this fine Memorial Day. Given that The Daily Show was not on, I settled for second best: flipping between Leno and Letterman, because together, they make it marginally... only marginally... worth it to stay up the extra hour when I should be sleeping because I have work tomorrow.

Anyhow, nobody cares about that, so I'll get right to the point. Both shows went to commercial, so I just stuck with NBC, I mean, NBC is 4 and CBS is 3 so who cares. I was half-paying attention, but then I saw... the Foxwoods commercial. The first thing I hear is the Foxwoods jingle. Foxwoods, for those who live not in the Northeast, is a gargantuan casino run by the Pequot tribe in eastern Connecticut. People around here know the song well, the whole "wonder of it all" bullshit. Anyhow, we're all pretty used to these commercials, so I basically tuned it out.

Then... the leprechauns came...

No, I haven't taken my first foray into the world of drug-induced hallucination. A bunch of goddamned LEPRECHAUNS were jumping out of a limo... in a Foxwoods commercial. Because the first thing I think of when I think of Foxwoods Indian Casino... is LEPRECHAUNS!!#! My first thought was that it was a St. Patrick's Day promotion... but it's goddamned MAY already! The leprechauns were having a grand old time, getting massages and chugging mugs of beer. Playing the slots (but since they're all frigging midgets, one has to sit on the other's shoulders to pull the handle). Going all in during a poker game. By this point, I'm sitting here in my living room, with my family asleep, yelling "What the FUCK?!" to myself. I probably woke them up, but this was just too unbelievable.

Leprechauns... getting drunk and gambling... at an Indian casino. I wanted to get a picture of the commercial to put on the site, so I Googled "leprechauns foxwoods." Just grasp that for a minute. The two search terms I'm entering are:

1) Foxwoods: a casino in Connecticut run by Pequots
and
2) lep-re-chaun (n.): One of a race of elves in Irish folklore who can reveal hidden treasure to those who catch them

And I found some things. Things that made me even more stupified than before. These Foxwoods promotions are coming from Kaplan Thaler Group, a Madison Avenue advertising firm. Think about this. Someone, somewhere, was sitting in a conference, and said, "Hey, you know what would get people to our casinos...? LEPRECHAUNS!" How many executives in a Madison Avenue board room plus how many drugs yield a commercial featuring self-indulgent LEPRECHAUNS???!!! Well, apparently 25 million dollars worth of drugs, because according to the article I read, that's how big Foxwoods' advertising budget is. I don't know about you, but if I spent $25 million and all they could come up with was a bunch of midgets running around in leprechaun suits, I'd be pretty pissed off. Slip someone enough LSD and they could probably come up with it for only the nominal fee of the drugs.

Have all the good ideas been used up? This is the best Madison Avenue can come up with? And you know what, somewhere, someone saw that commercial and subliminally thought - man, I wish I were having as much fun as those LEPRECHAUNS.