Perhaps it's my incredibly short attention span, but I've always considered billboards to be great reading. There is no wording more succinct than the stuff you see on billboards. Sometimes, they're informative, sometimes artistic, and often times, just plain baffling. I love the variety of driving up and down I75 and consider myself a connoisseur of flash media.
Once, when the boys were babies, we went the wrong way to LasVegas from LA and almost ended up in Tijuana. It was the billboards that told me I was in trouble, atleast an hour before I got the nerve to tell my ex-husband. What should have been a three hour drive turned into eight hours, with babies screaming in the back seat about sitting too long. Somewhere around San Diego, I told my ex about my little navigation error. Having quit smoking several weeks before, all he said was "I'm buying cigarettes" and started searching for the next exit.
The all time best billboard was in downtown Chicago, near the Greyhound Bus station. It was for Camel cigarettes and it pictured a man from the shoulders up, smoking a huge cigarette. In my memory, the man was blowing smoke rings through a whole inserted in his mouth. In reality, he was probably just blowing smoke, which on it own was pretty damn clever for the late 1970's.
My current favorite is a billboard for Red Gold Tomato's that was erected a few months ago. It had a bright green, papermache vine built all the way from the ground up and around the billboard. For a few days, it was a huge mystery what it was for, and then one day it bloomed shiny delicious tomatoes the size of cars in beautiful 3D. It's gone now, but that's the nature of billboards, they come and they go.
There is one billboard that is baffling and I wish it would go away already. For whatever reason, it brings out the worst in me. I see it everyday on my way to work, and resent it for catching my already limited attention.
It has a huge picture of a child on it, but only from the nose up and forehead down. The oblong snap shot is all big blue eyes and white blond hair, and even though I can't see anymore of it, she strikes me as a girl. The only words are "Consider Foster Care".
This is how I sound as I slowly process the billboards message.
The first day I think "What's that? A billboard for Swedish nannies?".
The second day, I think, in a bad middle eastern accent "Hey lady! How much for the little girl?" in homage to the Blues Brothers.
On the third day, I think "Isn't 25 too old to be a foster child?"
On the fourth day, I think "Is this supposed to reassure white supremacists that they can be foster parents too?"
On the fifth day, I think "Why am I still making fun of this very serious, socially relevant billboard? Hey, cheese coney's are on sale!"
On the sixth day, I think "This could be a billboard for pedophile services."
On the seventh day, I'm thinking "Hey, Ayrian kids need love too."
Yes, I'm ashamed. Yes, I feel bad about it. Yes, I know I will be punished by the universe for having such terrible thoughts. But mostly, I blame really bad advertising. So there you have it.
