ohbloodyhell8

I trust we would have lunch in one of the finer restaurants of Chicago.  I’m sure we would have a wonderful table and outstanding service.

Once we had ordered our meals, I would rip him a new one.  How dare he sell out to Honda.  Really?  Ferris, you do not have the right to sell out my teen years.  This simply speaks to the consumer generation that we are.  I recently read an article for something at work and it was about consumerism.  The author theorized that we join a cult beginning in childhood and that cult is consumerism.  As I read this piece, I recognized every brand name included in it (there were many).  I also realized that the author’s claim that we function by the calendar of consumerism is true in my own life.

I feel the cycle as it rotates around every year.  I feel it starts at the school year with school supplies.  Then there is Halloween (yeah, I’ll never give that one up).  Then I feel like I have to buy new Thanksgiving stuff-even though I do not need anymore.  Christmas obviously has consumerism dripping all over it and I work harder every year to help my sons keep the birth of Jesus at the center of it.

New Year’s, Valentine’s, St. Patrick Day through Memorial Day through Fourth of July.  The list and cycle goes round and round.  And the mother of all consumerism-the Super Bowl.  People often miss the game discussing the commercials.  The price of a spot during the game is the highest in the business.  Which brings us back to Ferris.

Ferris Bueller peddling Hondas?  More to the point…Matthew Broderick is peddling Hondas while ripping off Ferris.  Life does move pretty fast but not so fast that I didn’t notice the commercial as I walked away from my television.  I usually do a little chore during commercials, put away laundry, clean, put stuff in backpacks, whatever.  I stopped in my tracks tonight (yeah, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl so I only saw it tonight for the first time)-selling a Honda?  The late, great John Hughes must be rolling over in his grave.  But we did it to ourselves.

We want all the stuff.  We want the fame and glory that we were weaned on during our teen years.  We want the brands because then we’ll be like the people in the movies we grew up watching.  Hell, we want the movies to show where the fictional characters are now.  I’d laugh my ass off if they were to make a really good reunion movie of The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  I would love to know what happened to them.  They were such a part of my teenage years, my formative years (as they say…).  These films helped shape my views and my cultural foundation.  The characters helped me feel more normal because they showed it was okay to not be exactly like everyone else.

And now dear Matthew is hawking Hondas.

But the lunch would be divine.  He would probably have played hookie from work that day.  Maybe I would play hookie from work that day too.  It’s perfectly okay…I’d be with Ferris.  Driving around in a Honda.  When did product placement in films begin?  I’m sure it has been around for a long time, but it is so overt today that movies even mock the fact that they have product placement funding part of the film.

We asked for it, we got it.  Toyota.  Oops, sorry, this is supposed to be about Honda.

Probably wouldn’t have to even pay for lunch since Ferris is so charming.

Maybe I should have lunch with Cameron.  Or switch movies and go out with Duckie.