Paul's Comments

There is a TV advertisement for the Direct TV satellite service, where some supposedly very rich guy with a Russian accent is telling how he likes the good things, choosing but two apparently solid gold busts of himself as to which he likes better.

He mentions, in broken English, as a couple of prototypical "heroin chic" emaciated female model-types are waiting on him, with one of them holding out a silver tray with a pyramid of 6 gold bars with a remote control on top, that when he got the chance to get Direct TV with some months free, he jumped at the chance.

As he says this, he picks up the remote control from on top of the tray of bricks to turn on the TV before putting the remote back on the tray one of the attractive ladies is holding.

These were ordinary looking apparently gold bricks, about the size of pavers (like those regular ones that are made of red clay and used on brick houses), since they were just a little larger than the remote. But here's something that you might not realize: a brick of gold that size is worth, at today's prices, about $400,000 each. Now, I can accept a guy might have the kind of bravado to have a tray with $2.4 million in gold sitting on it in his living room.

What I can't accept is one of these women casually handing a tray with them sitting on it. You see - or you might not - that a brick of gold that size weighs about 30 pounds, so a stack like that would weigh more than that model does. Even if she was using both hands, I doubt she could just casually hand carry a tray with 180 pounds...

One guy who read this asked me why I didn't find the (next scene with the) guy kissing the miniature giraffe strange and was only bothered by the gold bars. Maybe I saw the giraffe as clearly ridiculous, didn't think about it, or was (partially) shocked by the fact I saw this commercial at least 5 or 6 times before I realized she couldn't be lifting a tray of gold bars.