Amused Cynic

How to beat Obama in 2012….

Sometimes I really crack myself up. I heard that phrase on the radio this morning, the morning of the coronation, and immediately thought not of His Obamaness, but instead, of this TV ad:

There are so many more important “O” words than “Obama” to remember on this “historic” day, as the lovely and mesmerizing Sabine Ehrenfeld reminds us in that curiously departed commercial. Men went insane over her (as well they should have), not unlike Sarah Palin. I wonder whatever happened to her. I’ll bet she’s having a blast with her family.

It’s all about the mesmerizing babe. The moment you’ve been waiting for—the lowdown on the Overstock hottie. I talked to her by phone last week. (Jealous much, gentlemen? Ad Report Card talks to all the fine ladies.)

The lovely Sabine Ehrenfeld (pronounced “Sa-BEAN-uh”) was driving back from a snowboarding trip with her children, on her way to casting calls the following day. Still, she found time to chat in a delightful and disarming manner. I learned the following:

In addition to German and English, Sabine speaks French and Italian. She is proficient in basic tactical pistol skills, because she thought it would be a fun thing to learn. She also has a private pilot’s license and 350 hours in the air. After reading the Richard Bach book Biplane, she was inspired to fly solo—in an old-style, aerobatic tailwheel plane—from California to Montana. With camping gear in the back so she could land along the route to sleep and refuel. I am not making this up.

Overstock.com’s Simon was looking for “a 38 year-old brunette” to play the part (that’s Overstock’s demographic—about two-thirds of their bargain-hunting customers are women) when she saw Sabine (who is in fact 41) on television (in a Kotex ad). It was love at first sight. Sabine is gorgeous, but in a non-threatening way. Men find her approachable, women think she’s friendly. “We didn’t want someone that the gal in rural Minnesota couldn’t relate to,” says Simon. I guess she means the Minnesotan gal who flies aerobatic planes and speaks four languages.

Can someone say “Palin/Ehrenfeld” ticket? Yes. We. Can.

And let us not forget, on this momentous day, James Thurber’s classic work, “The Wonderful O.”

“The Wonderful O” opens in a tavern, with the meeting of two sinister, seafaring men, Black and Littlejack. Black has a ship, and Littlejack has a map he thinks will lead to treasure. Together with their piratical crew, they sail to the far island of Ooroo, where they expect to find a trove of jewels. Instead, they find an island full of ordinary people, going about their daily lives.

Enraged, Black and Littlejack order their crew to ransack Ooroo with their axes, spades and cudgels, looking for the fabled sapphires and emeralds and rubies, “but all they got for their sweat and pains was the stones that towers are built of, and the sparkle of fountain water.”

And so begins the real destruction. Black, as it happens, despises the letter O; his ship is called the AEIU. Black explains to Littlejack that his O-phobia has to do with the vowel’s shape: “I’ve had a hatred of that letter ever since the night my mother became wedged in a porthole. We couldn’t pull her in and so we had to push her out.”

To punish the islanders for the absence of jewels, and to avenge themselves against other offenders like portholes, Black and Littlejack set out to remake Ooroo and its inhabitants. They ban the hated O, first from books and signs, then from musical instruments, games, tools and on and on until almost no one can practice a trade and almost nothing makes sense anymore. The island of Ooroo becomes the island of R and coats become cats and poets become pets. “Books were bks and Robinhood was Rbinhd . . ., it was impossible to read ‘cockadoodledoo’ aloud, and parents gave up reading to their children, and some gave up reading altogether, and the search for the precious jewels went on.”