Another reason to hate AT&T

TV commercials in general are insipid and annoying. But this one really makes my blood boil every time I see it.

Yes, I think we can all agree that life is filled with random chance and unpredictability – but to then turn around and say that something happening two seconds earlier is BY DEFINITION superior to something happening two seconds later belies this premise!  Suppose those ballet scouts (who, as we all know, are constantly roaming the streets looking for the next Maria Tallchief…) had been walking just a bit slower – the aspiring ballerina with the AT&T phone would’ve already crossed the street while the Brand X ballerina would’ve been discovered.

Or suppose that couple had been machete-wielding maniacs rather than balletomanes? Not only would she not be dancing Swan Lake, she’d be dead, cut down in her prime – and AT&T would be to blame!

Or what if she’d continued to wait tables and someone tipped her with a lottery ticket that turned out to be worth $46 million – then she could’ve become a famous ballerina on her own terms, without those two task-masters who discovered her on the street bleeding her dry, emotionally and financially, constantly criticizing her dancing and her weight until she developed both a dangerously unhealthy eating disorder and a raging cocaine habit, eventually ending her career before she’d even reached the age of 30, after which she spiraled further out of control until, at age 33, she was found dead of a heroin overdose in a shooting gallery in the South Bronx?

Or suppose after she was discovered and became a world-famous ballerina, with a long and successful career in which she became the most acclaimed dancer of the 21st century, she found herself approaching her 100th birthday, frail and alone in her beautiful townhouse on Fifth Avenue, just down the street from the Metropolitan Museum, surrounded by all of the trappings of wealth, the walls covered with Matisses and Van Goghs, sparkling chandeliers hanging overhead, freshly-cut out-of-season flowers artfully arranged in Baccarat vases in every room, but feeling nothing inside, just a black hole of despair and regret as she remembered her one true love, Dylan, with his crooked smile and his cowlick and his half-written novel, who’d waited tables with her back before she was discovered but whom she’d abandoned to pursue her dream-turned-nightmare of becoming the most celebrated ballerina in history?

So I guess what this commercial is really saying is don’t use AT&T. You will either die young or lead a life without even the merest sliver of happiness and completely devoid of humanity.