The color of repression: With Christmas around the corner and the only decent spot to burn an Eatons’ campaign celebrating repression with a series of fifties images bathed in the color purple – I feel it is time to exercise my powers as a future seer and take a peek into the year 2001. As long as I can differentiate between my visions and hallucinations, I can quite accurately predict the future. In fact, from my early days in Medicine Hat, I knew I would one day be here, drinking amongst all you back-smackers.

A peek ahead to 2001:

January: Apple Box’s Clare ‘Cash’ Cashman gives birth to quintuplets. The new babies, dubbed collectively ‘loose change,’ create a flurry of excitement in the community. Swiftly, the newly elected federal government acts to make up for the poor treatment of the Dionne quints in decades past. The plan involves an ad campaign similar to Molson Canadian’s ‘Rant’ – ‘The Runt.’ The new spot features the smallest member of the Cash quints eating back bacon and watching hockey. Despite the feds’ best intentions, and a brilliantly produced spot, the newest of the newborns still sues. Turns out, the suit does not cite mental damage or poor treatment, but rather better residuals, Internet rights and pay-per-play.

February: Don McLean finally retires and takes up macrame and professional weaving in Florida. At last, some rest.

March: In the u.s., military intervention by nato due to ‘election irregularities’ leaves thousands of Palm Beach residents homeless and dying in the streets. Desperate and confused, the super power finally swears in a new president – former Partners’ head Don McLean. Hey, he has plenty of experience running an ‘Evil Empire’.

April: Just in time for the hockey playoffs, Wayne Gretzky vows to cut down on the number of endorsements he agrees to. His new, more selective plan for selling includes only ads for: pain killers, cereal, gas, coffee, cars, beer, home appliances, fast food, canned goods, and candle wax. But that’s it. No more. The Great One has his limits.

May: The Bessies finally reaches its logical conclusion when a huge orgy breaks out at an after party that includes 66% of the industry. The resulting ‘spot-baby boom’ ensures a future for the troubled business and an end to the increasingly seedy after parties.

June: Atom Egoyan, continuing to direct spots with such deep, intellectual artistry that they open the soul as well as the wallet, becomes the first Canadian to win a Nobel Prize in Advertising – a brand new category created just for him.

July: Someone realizes that sending old, out-of-vogue Canadian directors through post-production can make them look 20 years younger and considerably more American. All while achieving that real film look.

August: The person who figured out how to send directors through post is quickly canned, due to several face-scanning injuries and one death by transfer. ‘I am not a zero or a one! I am a free man!’ one director says, the scanner mashing his nose.

September: Wayne Gretzky, desperate for more, breaks his vow and agrees to shoot a campaign for frozen dinners. Apparently, Gretzky is attracted by the spot’s creative that features him skating over the frozen turkey, winding up and shooting a pea directly into the cranberry dessert. ‘I’ve wanted to get back on the ice for a long time,’ Gretzky says, deeking out the stuffing.

October: A council of agency and production people finally develops a profit model for advertising on the Internet. Hewn from hard plastic and hobby glue, the creation is a beautiful scale model of a computer surrounded by stacks of cash. However, within seconds of its completion, a semi-toxic sleeping gas is unleashed in the room, sending everyone into slumber. Amid the snores, three agents file in and steal the profit model. When the council members awaken, mostly naked and chaffed, they realize their model is gone and their memories erased. They turn to the glue.

November: The u.s., finally fed up with productions coming to Canada, closes the border and drops a bomb on Toronto. Producers, forgetting what the service business is all about, begin bar-fighting with Patrick Swayze’s Road House character at a truckers tavern outside Regina to kill time. In this manner, roadhousing continues. Unable to cross back to the States, the Swayze character is forced to stay in Canada to star in a new picture, Road House 2 – ‘This Means War’. As usual, the problems with the business are blamed on u.s. commander-in-chief Don McLean.

December: With a growing list of enemies, yours truly, Rick Ricketts, is assassinated and left for buzzard-bait. However, my death is not entirely in vain. The blood drained from my body is used to disinfect ‘new roadhousing’ wounds due to its high alcohol content. *

-rricketts@brunico.com