Almost as Good as Gold

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 10:10 am

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 from not one, 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...

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 4:34 pm

... and then he kisses a tiny, miniature giraffe. Why does the weight of the gold bricks bother you and not the giraffe? I find that miniature giraffe to be really disturbing.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Mon Oct 04, 2010 9:02 am

Flack wrote:... and then he kisses a tiny, miniature giraffe. Why does the weight of the gold bricks bother you and not the giraffe? I find that miniature giraffe to be really disturbing.

I realize the idea of the tiny giraffe was patently ridiculous. Until that moment, everything else was at least to some extent possible or plausible; it's been pointed out now there are more millionaires in Moscow than in New York City.

I don't know why the gold bricks disturbed me more; possibly because I was duped for so long. I probably saw that commercial maybe 5 or 6 times before it hit me that if it really was gold, it would weigh a hell of a lot more.