It’s always fun to look back at the things you couldn’t appreciate when you were a kid.  Maybe I’m just a little hard on myself, but whenever I look back, I think, “Man, you were such a dunce, small Jerome!  What pedestrian tastes you had!”  Sometimes, it’s food; other times, a book; and others still, a movie.  I mean I just rewatched the Back to the Future trilogy and not only is it the shit, it’s also a lot heavier than I remember.

Anyhoo, there is a point I’m trying to make, that being that on very rare occasions, that thing you failed to appreciate?  It’s a commercial.  And the commercial I rediscovered is Spike Jonze’s Ikea commercial from more than a couple years back:

As a quick primer on Spike Jonze, he directed a couple noteworthy films includi- man, fuck that.  Here is his Wikipedia page.

My recollection of this isn’t the most vivid, but I can pull up images of myself sitting on the floor in front of the TV while my mom was asleep on the sofa behind me (65% of my childhood) and this was probably one of the spots that ran – I would guess – between Must See TV shows on Thursdays.  (I also used to memorize entire Friends and Seinfeld scenes.)  The only thing that makes me certain I’d crossed paths with this commercial before is the music.

I’d heard it once and coming across it again, it was much like an echo from a distant time, which – in turn – is probably the tagline of some time travel movie. But yes, it was so familiar coming across it on teh Internets that I became sure I’d seen it before, except in that instance long ago, I didn’t laugh, lol, or rofl.  I sat there with the blankest face.  I don’t think I was irritated – I didn’t carry a condescending view of stuff I didn’t like – but I was bored and, perhaps from sheer laziness, stayed on the channel just to wait out the ads.

Actually, when I rewatched it, I had no recollection of the ‘twist’ at all.  That dunce was so dense that he must’ve not only not gotten it, but he also forced it from his memory – that’s how much he didn’t get it.

ALTHOUGH there is the distinct possibility that in spite of my pedestrian tastes, past me had enough wisdom and foresight to realize that future me – the one that is now present me, the one that saw the commercial again, the one writing for you right now – would acquire the faculties to appreciate it and therefore set out to flush that vital moment of the ‘twist’ from his/my memory so I could more thoroughly enjoy said commercial as future me.

But that’s just stupid.

OR IS IT?

It is.