Is it Live or is it Memorex?

Some people might say that the reason I can’t remember things, like people’s names, is because I’m getting older – okay, getting old. I disagree; I don’t think it has anything to do with age. I am not an expert on brain chemistry, but my theory is that we only have so many brain cells and only so much “memory storage space.” My memory storage space is taken up with a vast quantity of information that I learned. I know a lot about bankruptcy law, and even more about personal service contracts, the music industry, and copyright. I know an awful lot of theology, a decent amount of art history, and quite a bit of my college math class and science classes are still taking up space.

But the bulk of the space is taken up by valuable information from the past. Things like:

"We’re having Beefaroni, it’s made with macaroni; beefaroni’s good to eat; beefaroni’s full of beef; hooray, it’s Beefaroni." I don’t think I ever knew anyone who actually ate Beefaroni, though.

"I am stuck on BandAid brand, ‘cause BandAids stuck on me. It holds tight in the bathtub and it sticks on bandaid knees; I am I am stuck on BandAid brand, ‘cause BandAids stuck on me." The original version was just “I am stuck on BandAids…”, but the word “brand” was later added for trademark purposes.

Or this old Mad Magazine parody of the commercial for a game called Fascination:

“Suffocation, Remco’s suffocation; suffocation, the game you have to play. First you take a plastic bag, then you put it on your head, then you lay, on your bed. Suffocation, Remco’s suffocation; suffocation, the game you have to play.” I don’t recall ever hearing of anyone trying to play Suffocation. Were we smarter then, or was it just that with no 24 hour news, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram (and so forth, ad infinitum), we just never heard those tragic stories?

And do you remember “40 little French girls” singing (off camera) “four different kinds of new automobiles, for all the kinds of new people on wheels, who want to go Chevrolet. Four different ways you can go anywhere, feeling the feeling you’re floating on air.…” That’s all I remember. I think the announcer may have started talking at that point. I can quote commercials with music much more readily than just spoken word. (Hmm, if Sister had only sung those Latin lessons, maybe I might have actually retained some of it.)

Of course, there are plenty of beer ads, for local brands like “My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer, think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer” (don’t encourage me; I can sing the whole thing), and I know that Miller High Life is “the champagne of bottled beer” and that Schaeffer is “the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.” Pabst Blue Ribbon, when it still prided itself of being the beer for the upper classes (not the PBR of the working class), against a very 1880s German beer garden background, reached back to Tin Pan Alley in 1902 for their Good Old Summertime theme music, playing gently in the background. They weren’t alone in co-opting more highbrow music; I still hear the Blue Danube Waltz as "Gimme Rival Dog Food arf arf, arf arf.”

There were the cigarette ads, too: “every Parliament gives you extra margin, the filter’s recessed and made to stay a neat, clean, quarter inch away” and that there is a “call for Phillip Morris.”

If all those cigarettes and beer are discoloring your teeth, never fear, because “you’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

Nowadays, I don’t watch many commercials (thanks, DVR fast forward button). Hopefully, that will keep my memory storage from reaching overcapacity with nonsense I don’t need to know, but just can’t erase.