4 Minutes’ Hate #2: Running In a Cirkalur Mozh’(n)

Eppeness a-rruns in cirkalur mozh’(n)

thote is like-a-little-bwote upon the sea

eppeness a-rruns, eppeness a-rrruns

eppeness a-rruns, eppeness a-rrruns

why-all?  Bee-o-koss.

why-all?  bee-o-koss.

I hadn’t heard this Donovan ditty before I heard it on a new Cheerios commercial.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s a kind of safe-as-milk hallucination, in which several small children cavort on oversized fruit Cheerios (aren’t those called “Froot Loops?”—a little late to be horning in on that market, isn’t it?) in a giant bowl of milk.  A gigantic mother observes from over the rim of the bowl, smiling of course.  (Now that the children have ingested the Flintstones Children’s LSD™, she is free to go meet up with the guy she met last night at the biker bar, where she is known as Leather Lucy.)

The reason why this commercial bores into my skull like a blunt drill is kind of interesting to me.  I hate a lot of commercials, and since I am a 4-minutes’-hating kind of person, and since my irrational rage feeds my brain like a mushroom in the dark, sucking up fetidity from what I see and hear, I spend more time than is healthy thinking about the particular reasons why I hate particular commercials.  This one falls into a particular class of hatable commercials: those that fuse image and sound at a conceptual level that is absolutely cloying.

To put it more simply: words and image match TOO well in this commercial.  “Happiness runs in a circular motion,” the lyrics (supposedly) go.  And we have kids, who are, in their junior lysergic bliss, outlandishly happy to be jumping from Cheerio to Cheerio, with each Cheerio, of course, round.  “Thought is like a little boat upon the sea” (again, these are the “official” words—I maintain that my above transcription is more accurate).  And the kids upon the Cheerios float upon the “sea” (really more like a pond, but oh well) of milk. 

On top of that, there is the gratingly childlike tone of the song in general.  Before I searched the lyrics to the song, I didn’t know it was Donovan.  I assumed it was some kind of Raffi-like monstrosity spouting a hokey tune for kiddies to dance in a circle to.  I could see some clean-cut, earnest eyed dude in a loud shirt stroking his acoustic guitar from the seat of a chair in the Children’s Room of a library. 

Then you have the “Why? Because/Why? Because.”  That, of course, is the predominant dialogue held between adults and children.  And that’s around the time when Leather Lucy—I mean, Mom—peers over the rim of the bowl. 

It all fits together so perfectly that it’s like a concentrated blow, a psychological karate-chop to my sensibilities.  Repeat ad infinitum (thanks, TV Land; your Star Trek marathon exacts a terrible price), and I get the urge to run in a circular motion, much like an inmate in a padded cell.

My four minutes is up.