9/13/10

Greyhound - Relax, with gritted teeth.

Here's a 1954 Greyhound ad featuring a really nice painting of a terrified woman making an escape from some wintry hell, by the skin of her teeth. The gritted teeth are a parody of a real smile. She's looking out the corner of her mouth, hoping not to be recognized. Her back is straight as a broom handle. The ad says "relax", but she's clearly scared to death... of what? Let's investigate.
Looks like she's afraid of that boy outside pulling the sled. What's on the sled? Could be a kid in a red snow suit, or the flayed corpse of one of his playmates? I think that's the only reasonable assumption.

Or the sled's passenger could be a simulacrum of a kid in a red snow suit made from a pile of beef cutlets. That's also the only reasonable assumption. Either way, the kid waving at the bus is bad news.

This reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life" that featured Billy Mumy as a spoiled boy with god-like powers that held an entire town in a grip of terror. He turned his dad into a jack-in-the-box. This sled-pulling boy must be similarly terrifying. How did this lady manage to get on a bus and make her escape? Barely. That's how. "Hey lady! Dont'cha wanna go sledding with me and my new brother, Lil' Beef? After that, we're gonna have a cookout, ha ha!"

See the wonderful amenities Greyhound provides for the passenger escaping a nightmare scenario...

1. Wall-mounted vomit duct, for when the offal piles up a little too high and your stomach lurches.

2. Bulletproof, zombie-resistant Pana-View windows give you a clear view of the carnage.

3. Never-Flex seats favor the posture of rigid horror. You can slouch when you're dead.

4. Patented armrests are extra-pliant for easy nail-digging.

5. Some kind of bagel-based suspension.


I'm definitely booking Greyhound for my next apocalypse.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How could you have missed the Colorful Pleasure Map? We'd better tell the Christian Coalition about that!

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Wow, you're right! I haven't had a pleasure map of any kind at all since grammar school health class. I can't imagine the mess in the class if it were in color, too. Good catch, mystery reader. And thanks for thumbing through back issues of P.A.G.!

-Mgmt.

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