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the dish
04/03/2008 = 08:31 AM

Today, a great brouhaha is ensuing over the bill that got moved yesterday, which gives the FDA control over the tobacco industry.

RJ Reynolds, a company for whom I personally have little love, in light (every pun intended) of their having made a fucking fortune over my addiction to their product (an addiction with which I continue to struggle to this day, despite having long ago stopped giving my money to the cause) ran a television spot protesting this bill, saying that the FDA has enough plates spinning already.

My stars and garters, how I love a good run-on sentence.

At least I have the decency to turn each one into its own paragraph. Good grammar, no. Good humor? Debatable. (Verdict: no. Good Humor is ice cream.)

The point is, I do try not to make big blocks of text that make you label my blog TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read).

Bleh. That's not the point at all.

My point is that the television spot, and the subsequent passing of the bill, has been all over the news for the past few days, and no one has covered the most important story; namely, "Who's the plate spinner in the TV spot?"

(If this isn't a human interest story worthy of CNN.com, I can't imagine what is. Those people write about Britney Spears like she's actually done something useful with herself.)

Since the major media collective has missed this story, I'm going to scoop them right here, right now.

Although RJ Reynolds failed to take into account the fact that the FDA knows good and well how fatuous it would be to add another plate to their routine without having more than one person spinning each individual plate, and placing at least two people holding pillows under each plate, thus rendering Reynold's metaphor somewhat skewed, it was Andy Martello who spun the ceramic fuck out of their carefully-labeled-for-television plates, making it just possible that the viewing public could forget for thirty seconds as well, which, as I'm led to understand, was their primary goal.

Did I mention how much I love a good run-on sentence?

Andy Martello (click HERE for his Wikipedia info and HERE for his homepage that isn't his blog) is a great performer, a funny guy, a terrific writer...

... and a cigar smoker.

Someone should have caught that. It might have mattered to RJ Reynolds or the FDA or, you know, someone.

(Well, someone did pick up on it, but that someone was Cigar Weekly, who did a piece about it because of Andy being in the ad, and probably for no other reason. I find that very pleasing to my personal sense of humor.)

It doesn't matter to Andy, in case you were wondering. Andy and his wife live in North Las Vegas, where the bumper stickers say "Honk if you're NOT looking for work as a performer."

They used to live in Chicago, but a freak microburst took out their home exactly one year ago, and Andy mostly works a day job to feed himself, his wife, and his cat, taking whatever entertainment work he can get to feed his passion.

If you're passionate about the tobacco industry, whether for or against RJ Reynolds stretching a metaphor to make its case, you've got to love the plate spinner, who made it look, even for thirty seconds, like the government might not be quite right in their thinking.

That's powerful, that is.

And if I didn't already know who the plate spinner was, I'd be curious to find out. I'd want to do a story about him and find out about what else he can do.

I'd also be somewhat curious as to whether or not he could do a competitive piece against the tobacco industry, wherein he equates smoking to eating fire.

(I know they're not equal. Duh. I just said that because I happen to know, personally, that Andy Martello is also a fire eater.)

He also spins the diabolo, and if he were to misspell the name as "Diablo", suddenly everyone would be all over his shit, because of the Juno tie-in.

My ultimate point is, screw the tobacco industry and screw the FDA. Get the story about Andy Martello and pass it on. If he can fool people for the tobacco industry, he can fool people for your business, too.

He's here all week. Try the Suntuoso.

(This is a Golf Widow post. If you see it on another site, it's been plagiarized.)

Tags: tobacco;  FDA;  plate spinner;  Andy Martello;  Juno

drinking: coffee
listening to: The Kinks, Predictable
andy martello: probably the only guy in the US who was, at the time, more interested in the cigar Clinton used than the intern he used it on