Since its beginnings in 1975, I've been a big fan of Saturday Night Live (SNL), the irreverent comedy program on NBC. One of the features of this program is comedic commercials for a, shall we say, wide assortment of oddball products. Since they are written tongue-in-cheek, a viewer knows that none of these so-called products would ever see the light of day...or would they?
I remember one specific fake ad from the early years of the show. If memory serves me correctly, we see Gildna Radner mopping the floor with the "product". Dan Aykroyd grabs the spray can and squirts what looks to be whip topping on his ice cream. They start arguing about what the product is for. Chevy Chase, the "product" spokesman appears and says something like, "Yes, Fluckers is a floor cleaner AND a dessert topping!"
I mention this comedy sketch because I read a brief article in the Christian Science Monitor today that made me take pause.
Yikes!! Fiction has become reality!
I remember one specific fake ad from the early years of the show. If memory serves me correctly, we see Gildna Radner mopping the floor with the "product". Dan Aykroyd grabs the spray can and squirts what looks to be whip topping on his ice cream. They start arguing about what the product is for. Chevy Chase, the "product" spokesman appears and says something like, "Yes, Fluckers is a floor cleaner AND a dessert topping!"
I mention this comedy sketch because I read a brief article in the Christian Science Monitor today that made me take pause.
Andrew Meyer believes that he's found a "whey" to help Vermont's dairy farms by turning a cheesemaking byproduct into an eco-friendly wood finish.The irony here is that every morning I sprinkle sweet whey into my fruit smoothie. So, now the faux TV ad plays in my head: Fluckers is a wood finish AND a nutritional additive.
Like other water-based substitutes for traditional (oil-based) polyurethane, Vermont Natural Coatings' (VNC) PolyWhey dries fast and emits no toxic fumes. It releases very low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), about one-quarter the amount released by some polyurethanes. Unlike other waterborne finishes, its hardness makes it a viable option for professional-grade work, experts say.
Yikes!! Fiction has become reality!
I have to look up SNL on the schedule. I don't even know which station or what time!
ReplyDeleteI suppose I spend Saturday nights watching mysteries on viewer-supported television (our KCTS9).
One of my favorites was Chevy Chase introducing a trash compacter that turned 30 pounds of trash into...30 pounds of trash! (Of course that was real, some relative of mine had one.)
ReplyDeletePeople have been using milk based wood finishes for centuries. This is not really new. Nothing wrong with the whey in your smoothie just make sure the polyurethane stays in the garage.
ReplyDeleteOh, and a lot of the old masters used egg as the foundation for their paints as well.