A man and his quest for toast

HOW A TOASTER AND A SONG FROM GREASE CHANGED TELEVISION

The long and the short of it, to abuse a pun, was that Bob was a midget, though he preferred the term "vertically challenged individual," not least of all for the inconvenience it caused others. For Bob was short not only in stature but in temper as well. In fact, Bob was lacking in many areas. To say that his I.Q. was equivalent to his height would be slightly misleading unless one added that the equation required Bob's height to be measured in meters in order for it to hold.

Thus, the disadvantaged Bob awoke one seemingly uneventful morning and immediately thought of the one thing: toast with margarine and marmalade. It is often said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. While this maxim is somewhat impractical in an autopsy (the fastest way to a man's heart, truth be told, is through the ribs), it does have a certain metaphorical truth. For Bob, the metaphor would go something like this: The fastest way to Bob's heart is through his stomach via a margarine and marmalade-laden piece of toast--at least on this particular morning.

Having so adorned his bread, Bob placed it in the circa-1970 toaster oven, its setting already fixed at the proper darkness. The toaster oven failed to transform the greasy bread into Bob's fondly anticipated delicacy, and so it was, half an hour later, that Bob (who had not moved from the stool placed just so by the kitchen counter) began to suspect some fault in the machine.

"Damn diodes," he cursed, completely oblivious to the fact that he had unplugged the machine the night before so that he could use the blender in order to clean his socks (an experiment, it must be said, that met with less than complete success). Bob was nothing if not a master of improvisation (which is to say, he was nothing). Casting a keen eye along the length of the smooth Formica counter, Bob fixed his gaze at the microwave oven.

"Ah ha!" he ejaculated to nobody in particular, though his enthusiasm soon waned as he realized that he had no idea how long one should cook bread in a microwave. The solution, however, was obvious. Bob overlooked the obvious and chose what must be confessed to be a most innovative (if stupid) course of action. To follow his logic is somewhat difficult, but the major premises went something like this:

Premise 1: The toaster oven is set to the proper setting.
Premise 2: The toaster oven isn't working.
Premise 3: The microwave is working.
Premise 4: The toaster oven will fit in the microwave.

There is, of course, no single logical conclusion that follows inevitably from these four premises. The disastrous course that Bob ultimately chose is, on the other hand, relatively easy to divine.

He gingerly placed the toaster oven in the microwave oven. A minor obstacle, which occurred when the door to the microwave wouldn't shut because the toaster oven's cord was in the way, proved nothing that a pair of scissors and a snip couldn't fix. Pushing the "10" button, Bob thought that ten minutes should suffice. His finger was precariously close to the "start" button, when destiny seemed to intercede and save Bob. The phone rang.

It rang again.

Deep in the recesses of Bob's cerebellum, a synapse fired off a message destined to alter the course of Bob's life. Another synapse, however, prevented that change when Bob realized he had no phone. The truth, that there was someone at the door, did not occur to him as he pushed the button.

The microwave lit up, a fan began to spin inside the oven, and Bob peered close to monitor the bread-to-toast transformation.

* * *

And so it was that a quite startled Jehovah's Witness, his finger poised once again to strike the doorbell, watched as a small but distinctly human shape emerged from the front plate-glass window and careened toward the 8:45 Los Angeles bus. A disinterested observer would have been quite rational in speculating about the outcome of these events. The most likely conclusion would have involved a spatula and a small, greasy stain on a means of mass transportation. As it happened, however, the most likely conclusion wasn't even in the top ten.

What happened was one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that seriously call into question the laws of probability. Just as the Jehovah's Witness was about to re-press the doorbell, Margaret Dumont (whose name never caused her any problems because people no longer watch Marx Brothers movies) began to open the stodgy window on the sweltering bus in an attempt to get fresh air. Had Margaret known that the outside air in Los Angeles is almost invariably worse than the air inside, she might never have opened the window, and Bob might have, to quote a certain dead poet, "shuffled off this mortal coil." Margaret, however, was spectacularly unread, and she therefore opened the window.

And so it was that the 8:45 pulled up in front of MegaAds, a multinational conglomerate advertising firm at which Bob worked, with a very small man wedged very firmly in a bus window with his legs kicking furiously. Two tubs of margarine later, Bob was sufficiently lubricated for rescuers to extract him, and he found himself with both feet planted firmly on the ground. (As it turns out, certain jokes and "The Phantom Tollbooth" were all incorrect in supposing that midgets' feet do not reach the ground.)

Sixteen floors later, Bob found himself in his office. That such an incredibly stupid (or academically challenged, as Bob preferred) person should be employed at such an important firm leads a person to one of three possible conclusions: (1) Bob was related to someone of great power; (2) Bob was employed in a special community outreach program and performed only menial tasks; or (3) Bob was the unwitting butt of a complex and very expensive practical joke.

Originally, #1 was the sole necessary explanation. Bob had indeed been the nephew of an extraordinarily brilliant curmudgeon who was able to sneak a clause into the fine print of a contract when he sold his advertising firm in order to move to Tibet in search of Richard Gere. By the time the new owners' lawyers had pored over the contract and discovered the clause, Bob's uncle had died in one of the worst yak accidents in Tibetan history, and Bob was ripe for firing. At this point, the third explanation, specifically that Bob was the unwitting butt of a joke, seemed applicable.

While elements of #3 definitely existed, Bob was in many ways the most important member of the firm. To understand his importance, however, one must understand the nature of 1990s' America.

Let us suppose that you, the reader, were a time traveler from nineteenth-century America, transported to the present day. If I, the author, were to show you television advertising (say during an afternoon talk show), quite probably the first impression you would have would be of the technological marvel known as television. However, once that amazement wore off, you might begin to marvel at the absolute stupidity of television fare. To see an intoxicating beverage advertised by use of amphibians and reptiles while a reggae track plays in the background surely would be as great a shock as John Bobbit must have had when he awoke and scratched himself one morning.

Now it must be admitted that television advertising exists to do only one thing: sell products. Given the expenses of producing and airing such an ad, great care is taken to assure the manufacturer of a favorable return. In other words, advertisements sell products no matter how stupid the ads. But there is another part to the equation. The shows that the ads interrupt also exist to sell. The shows sell their audiences to the advertisers. And it is into this second equation that Bob fell.

With all the talk of demographics and other impressive-sounding terms, Bob was ideal as a test audience for one very good reason. Television, it has been shown, lowers brain activity to a level lower than that attained during sleep. Bob, whose intellect was naturally that low, provided a perfect case study for advertising executives. More to the point, when the manufacturers' representatives showed up for sales pitches, they were instantly impressed by Bob's intellectual shortcomings and realized that he was simply too stupid to feign enthusiasm. What's good for Bob, they said, is good for us.

Thus, the aforementioned frog and alligator ad actually had its genesis over a decade previous when the advertising team asked Bob what he thought of their "When you've said Budweiser, you've said it all" slogan.

"What? No frogs?" Bob had asked.

And though the executives had not at the time understood his words, neither had they forgotten them. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

* * *

But on the day during which Bob had experienced the miracle of flight, the executives looked at him as if to ask, "What have you done for us today?" Little could they know that Bob would soon provide them with fodder that would sustain many a cocktail-party anecdote.

After lunch (at which Bob still did not get his toast, in large part because he had not seen "Five Easy Pieces" and therefore did not know the secret for ordering toast at a restaurant that proclaims not to serve toast), Bob was called into the big and austere boardroom, where executives were ready for the pitch, or the pre-pitch, as they called it (since the actual pitch was the one made to the manufacturers' representatives).

As Bob hopped up on the leather chair reserved for him and then upon the Los Angeles white and yellow pages so that he could see above the table, a small movie screen descended noiselessly from a slit in the low ceiling. At the C.E.O.'s nod, an assistant dimmed the lights, and the computer-generated advertisement began to screen.

Today's client was a laxative company tired of having complete strangers meet in drug stores and discuss their excretory shortcomings. Something new was necessary. The executives had chosen to emphasize the active lifestyle that laxatives supposedly facilitated. As the spot ran, Bob watched silently and attentively--or so it appeared. In reality, Bob's mind was anywhere but in that room or on the screen. His train of thought, disjointed as it was, went something like this:

"Boy, Richard is unfortunate not to have a name that's a verb like mine."

Richard was in fact Richard Winchester IV, the C.E.O. of MegaAds and was just about to see his net worth go from eight to nine figures. Had Bob realized that Dick is a common nickname for Richard and that it can indeed be a verb as in "don't dick me over," Richard would never had seen his income change except for a precipitous decline when the laxative company rejected the ad campaign, withdrew its business from MegaAds, and started a trend leaving MegaAds filing for bankruptcy and Richard facing a criminal prosecution for embezzlement when previously contented share holders finally looked at the books. As it was, however, Bob never thought of Richard's nickname and its possible uses as a verb, and Richard's status was secure.

"My name is a verb. I am special.

"Special K is my favorite cereal.

"Serial killers are bad people, but sometimes I admire them.

"People are stupid. I wonder why they don't figure out things like I do.

"How come they never figured out the moral of the movie Grease. Isn't the moral that to get the man you love, you have to start smoking and dress like a slut?"

It was, in fact, the first original and fully accurate thought that Bob had ever had in his life. He had never shared that thought with anyone else, so it safely remained his secret. Nor did he voice this thought at this time. But he did something slightly more remarkable. He began to hum "Greased Lightning" (which he mistakenly thought was "Hopelessly Devoted To You"). As the lights came up, the advertising spot finished, the only sound in the room was Bob's humming.

Wendy, a young and ambitious sycophant, immediately jumped on the opportunity to score some points with the higher-ups. "Are you mocking us?" she said accusingly at Bob.

Bob's simplistic little brain heard "mocking," quickly scanned his tiny vocabulary, failed to find a match, and substituted "mopping" for "mocking." Thus, to Bob's ear, Wendy's statement went like this: "Are you mopping us?"

Bob's brain was now very confused, for he could not comprehend the sentence. His brain, therefore, inserted the word "for" before "us," and he interpreted Wendy as asking, "Are you mopping for us?"

Bob sincerely wished to inform Wendy that he was no janitor, but the strenuous activity his brain had just undertaken left him with a lack of R’s: "No, I am impotent."

Wendy interpreted this statement as a challenge to her authority and her sex appeal. She lashed out and told Bob, in no uncertain terms, that his tenure at this institution was in serious jeopardy. Language of this caliber, of course, sent Bob's brain into overload. Like a threatened animal, Bob's brain began to retreat, which meant (in practical terms) that it began to erase his recall of events in reverse chronological order. Thus, Bob began to recall and forget an unsatisfactory lunch, being coated with margarine, flying out a window, pushing "start" on the microwave, waking and wanting toast, and being in bed. It is these last two words that Bob finally uttered. Since Wendy had lashed out so quickly and since Bob's mind erasing all his memories had taken so little time, it was as if Bob had said, "I'm impotent in bed" all in a single breath.

Wendy, as it turned out, had the night before said things like "No, it happens to lots of men" and "We can just cuddle." Bob's statement therefore took on the air of an insightful insult. She blurted out, "You're fired! Get out!"

Both Wendy and Bob looked to Richard. Because of a bizarre dream he had had one night (a dream that involved Wendy, a jar of dill pickles, a tub of Cool Whip, and a canoe entering a train tunnel), Richard had a secret crush on Wendy. Because of a dream he had had the following night (involving Bob, a cigar, two bull moose, and a can of very old sardines), Richard had a secret loathing for Bob. He decided to support Wendy. "Out!" he commanded.

Bob hopped down from his phone books, hung his head low, and sulked out of the room. One of the executives, a man named Mark (another verb Bob had overlooked), had no love for Bob. But he had an intense dislike for Richard and, especially, Wendy. Mark therefore slipped out of the room unnoticed and overdubbed the advertising presentation with the song "Greased Lightning."

* * *

Bob, in his disappointment, walked into a secretary, who, as fate would have it, was applying lipstick at the time. The impact of Bob and her knee caused her to bend over, and her lipstick and Bob's lips made brief but fateful contact. Bob, however, hardly noticed, and he continued out the building. He was in a similarly saturnine state of confusion when he walked pass a dress shop, where workers were unloading a truck with the newest fall fashions. Bob absentmindedly walked through the rack two workers were wheeling into the shop. As luck would have it, Bob caused a blazing red frock to come off the rack and drape itself around him.

The next business on the street was a television studio where one of those insipid talk shows was being filmed. At a studio where names like Carney, Chevy, and Danny still caused executives to shudder and names like Ricki and Oprah caused those same executives to turn green with envy, the sight of a midget wearing lipstick and adorned in a stunning red frock struck them with all the force of, well, deus ex machina.

After a Hollywood double take, one of the producers asked (though he didn't know until later that he had spoken aloud), "If we could hire that guy, we could skip all the freaks as guests, sort of cut out the middle man, couldn't we?"

* * *

They filmed three shows that afternoon. Three weeks later, the first episode of "Bob!" aired. The first commercial, one that would go on to win all the top awards for advertisements that year, was an ad for a laxative to the theme music of "Greased Lightning." Sadly, however, Bob saw none of this, for he had died after the third episode, when the bearded lady from the circus that was in town mistook Bob for the midget clown with whom her husband had had an affair. Seeing nothing immediately on hand, she rushed onto the set of a cooking show, grabbed a jar of marmalade, and killed Bob with a sharp blow to the head.

Bob never did get his toast.


Copyright 1996, 1998 by Phil Mann. All rights reserved.