I did nothing BUT flinch

Most of the time, like most things, TV commercials fill me with an overwhelming feeling of impotent rage. They make me wish that I had a button that I could push that would cause a sudden jolt of electricity to go through the bodies of all the people responsible for the commercial.
It just seems to me that there ought to be some method for consumers to register their displeasure that’s a little more immediate, and painful, than simply refusing to purchase the products or services being advertised.
In any case, every so often there are commercials that make me laugh or entertain me in some fashion.
Little Caesar’s used to make great commercials back in the day, but they’ve been gone for a very long time.
Lately the commercial that’s been entertaining me is for Lee Jeans, though the commercial itself has very little to do with jeans.
The commercial in question features a giant woman walking casually down a city street, inadvertently leaving a path of destruction in her wake.
She spots a guy in a window (the guy, at least, appears to be wearing Lee Jeans; the 90 foot woman is wearing a dress), and apparently likes what she sees. She turns to check her reflection on the side of a nearby building (the expressions on the faces of the guys inside the building, at breast level, are great), then taps on the guy’s window.
He turns to look, and, despite being a little nonplussed, waves to her. She signals for him to not go anywhere, then turns to the rooftop of a nearby building to borrow a brush from a painter. She paints her number on a sign and motions for the man to call her, then walks off into the sunset, and the tagline of “No matter what happens, don’t flinch," attributed to Buddy Lee, comes up on screen.
Throughout the commercial an odd remix of “Pretty Woman” plays.
As mentioned, this commercial has almost nothing to do with jeans, and if it weren’t for the shot featuring a picture of “Buddy Lee” that can be seen on the side of a building that the woman was standing next to, you wouldn’t even know that it’s a commercial for Lee Jeans until the end.
Still, I find it entertaining. If you haven’t seen the commercial, you can find it here: http://www.joeytomatoes.com/buddyleeprettywoman.htm
As a cross-promotion for the “Don’t Flinch” campaign, Lee has put up a Web site that is supposed to be the personal blog of the “90 Foot Babe.” You can visit it at http://dontflinch.blogs.com/
You can also call the phone number in the commercial and hear a recorded message from the 90 Foot Babe.
It’s all rather silly, but at least it’s not as irritating as most ads.
Of course, the thing that makes the commercial entertaining is the 90 Foot Babe, who is indeed a babe.
Obviously she's not really tha tall, but seeing her makes me think about how, in the real world, I don’t typically go for tall women, simply because I’m not very tall myself.
Something between 5’ and 5’5” is pretty much the ideal for me, but it’s not as if I don’t find taller women attractive. While I think I’d look silly if I were with a woman who was quite a bit taller than I am, I’m not entirely opposed to the notion.
90 feet would be a tad excessive, though.
I did once fall hard for a very tall (though not quite 90 feet) woman several years ago.
When I was living in Minnesota, there came a time that I noticed this very tall, very beautiful young woman in a bar.
She was amazing. She had what I described as “classic” features. She was, to my mind, very much like a statue of an ancient Greek goddess come to life.
Indeed, privately I referred to her as “The Goddess,” but when speaking of her to others, she was simply “Tall Chick.”
I’m not certain why Tall Chick stood out so prominently, what it was about her that made her tower figuratively above the crowd, in the same way that she literally did, but for the first time in my life I felt myself truly drawn to a tall woman, and despite the vast differences in our heights, I was willing to ignore just how ridiculous the two of us would look together and I thought “Comparisons to Mutt and Jeff be damned!”
At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. The reality of the situation bore no resemblance to my internal bravado.
Throughout most of the summer of 1999 I caught periodic glimpses of Tall Chick whenever I went out to the local bars. Typically, there would come a moment in the evening in which we would make eye contact, and frequently she would smile at me.
At this point, though, I should mention that apart from her “classic” features, there was another aspect to Tall Chick that made the term “Goddess” more apt: the almost religious sense of terror she engendered in me.
On my best day I’m at least a little intimidated by an attractive woman, but in the case of Tall Chick it was something else entirely. Under normal circumstances it would be possible for me to approach a woman and say hello (and then it becomes a matter of struggling to not trip over my tongue from there, but by that time I’ve at least made the approach), but that was decidedly not the case with Tall Chick.
As much as this woman attracted me, she terrified me more.
Based on our observations of her, my friends and I concluded that Tall Chick was single, and because she spent so much time out in the bars, it was clear that she was single and looking.
From what I could see, she was extremely friendly and approachable. Even when she shot guys down, which, in all honesty, I only saw her do in the most extreme conditions (fat, old, unemployed guys who spent ALL of their time sitting in bars), she seemed to be very gentle about it.
(I’m not suggesting that every guy who approached her “got lucky” or anything; I don’t think I ever saw her go home with anyone. I simply mean that if a guy asked her to dance, or if he could join her at her table, she usually said yes.)
Somehow the fact that she was so approachable, paradoxically (I’ve never said that my brain makes sense), made her that much more terrifying. Maybe I thought that being gently shot down by her would make things worse somehow.
Apart from being afraid of her, though, Tall Chick was usually in the company of friends who seemed far less friendly. Her girlfriends often “circled the wagons” and did their best to keep “undesirables” from approaching Tall Chick.
They all looked very mean, and added to my fear.
The closest I ever came to Tall Chick was when I was sitting at the table next to hers. She was sitting right behind me. My friend Eric was encouraging me to turn around and say something to her, but I just steadfastly shook my head. What could I say? "Hi, I think you're beautiful and you scare me." Somehow I don't think that would come off as charming.
There did come a night, though, when a combination of anger, fatigue, and liquid courage made me feel bold enough to approach her. I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I knew that the moment had come and I could no longer stand on the sidelines watching.
I began weaving my way through the crowd toward her, dodging the bumping and grinding bodies all around me. I was bold. I was confident. Like Caesar descending on Gaul, I would be victorious. Veni, Vidi, Vici, I would declare! “I came, I saw…I was cut off at the last possible second by some guy who stepped in front of me and asked her to dance.”
I was literally within inches of her when he stepped in. He actually bumped me out of the way. The guy came out of NOWHERE. It was like God had just suddenly made him appear in front of me in order to say "No Tall Chick for you!"
Defeated, I retired to Eric’s car to pass out in the backseat while he was getting busy with the monstrosity that he was willing to settle for that evening. If you ever want to meet the model of a man who is decidedly not picky, you should meet Eric.
Of course, his scattershot approach has paid off for him, and at last account he was happily married to a lovely young lady and cheerfully stepping into the new role of father to their little girl.
In any case, Eric, while the fount for many a possible anecdote, is not the focus of this entry, so…
Hoping that one day my boldness would return under more ideal circumstances, I resolved to be prepared.
I sat down and came up with an opening line with which to approach Tall Chick. I realize that using a line can come off as way too artificial and cheesy, but anything had to be better than the “Duhhh….” that would be likely to fall from my mouth if I approached her unprepared.
Besides, it was a GREAT line, drawing on comparisons to Helen of Troy and demonstrating the fact that I was brilliant, thoughtful, sincere, and, in a bookish, poetic sort of way, sexy.
I rehearsed this line in my head constantly, and could recite it (without sounding like it was rehearsed) on a moment’s notice without having to give it even a second’s thought. It was as natural as breathing.
The very first time I saw Tall Chick after having come up with the line, it instantly disappeared from my mind, and I’ve never been able to recover it.
It was like it was a balloon and the sight of her popped it.
By the beginning of 2000, most of my friends had departed Minnesota for greener, or at least different, pastures, and, left on my own, I didn’t get out much, so I didn’t see Tall Chick too often.
At that time I was working for a printing company that owned several local newspapers in the area. In celebration of having completed the final printing of a very large project which virtually everyone in the company (myself included) had contributed to, the company rented space in a local bar in order to throw a party for all employees.
By around 9 pm it became clear that there was a strong contingent that wanted to keep the party going as long as possible, and, quite naturally, I was among them, since if it meant more drinking I was always up for it.
We stayed at that bar for a while, then eventually moved on to another one, then went to the bar that typically proved to be the final destination on most nights out in that town, a place called "The Woodshed."
There were actually several groups of us, and the group I was with had arrived well before the others. As soon as we walked in the door I spotted Tall Chick. I sighed, then went over to grab a table while some others went to the bar to get us all drinks.
I sat watching Tall Chick as I waited for my drink.
While I was watching, one of the other groups of coworkers arrived, and among them was Steve, a guy I got along with particularly well.
When he walked in the door, Tall Chick turned, rushed over to him, and threw her arms around him.
I think my eyes probably came pretty close to popping out of my skull at that point, and despite the fact that I liked him a great deal, my first thought was “Must kill Steve.”
I sat quietly and fought that urge down, and ultimately, noticing that I had seemed to shrink into myself, Steve asked me what was wrong.
I said, “You know Tall Chick.”
(I had mentioned Tall Chick to him many times).
He responded, “I do?”
I said, “She’s the girl who hugged you when you walked in the door.”
“That’s Tall Chick?”
He confessed that he barely knew her, and, in fact, couldn’t remember her name, but that he'd had some interaction with her through work. He added that he would do what he could to “hook me up.”
I got the distinct impression that Steve didn’t often drink, as he tended to go a little wild that night, spending a great deal of time out on the dance floor with a group of other coworkers.
In his efforts to “hook me up” with Tall Chick that night, he would yell for me to come out on the dance floor as if he had something to tell me, then would try to maneuver me next to Tall Chick and tell me to “go for it.”
I only dance under the most extreme of circumstances, and these circumstances weren’t quite extreme enough (read: I wasn't anywhere near drunk enough), and so I would flee back to my hiding spot and wish that I had what it took to approach Tall Chick.
On a positive note, though, at the end of the night I did end up spending a fair amount of time parked outside my house making out with the receptionist who’d given me a ride home. She was no Tall Chick, but she was kind of cute.
Steve had the next day off, so I didn’t get to talk to him about Tall Chick until the following Monday.
He looked through the list of contacts on his Palm Pilot and determined who she was.
When he told me her name he said, “Dude, you’re going to love this: she works at the funeral home. I worked on an ad campaign with her a while back, so that’s how I know her.”
I think that, with my nihilistic personality, he thought that the fact that she worked in a funeral home would ad some sort of additional morbid fascination for me. In fact, I did think it was kind of funny, but I don't think that, for all my negativity, I've ever been especially morbid. I suppose I could be mistaken, though.
It was entirely irrelavent, though, as I don’t think I ever saw Tall Chick again after that night, as I was fired shortly thereafter, and by mid-summer had moved back to Michigan.
Still, I often think of Tall Chick and wonder what might have been if I hadn’t been such a coward.
I can’t imagine that anything would have come of it, since I was pretty much a self-destructive drunk who more or less lived in squalor at the time. Then again, lots of chicks seem to go for that type, so who knows? Odds are that if I had put myself out there a little more back then, I would have had much better luck than I would now that I’ve cleaned up my act.
In any case, that’s the abbreviated Tale of Tall Chick, who, while not quite 90 feet tall, was indeed a babe.
When I worked in Tucson there was a woman at work whom I referred to as “Tall Chick Jr.” She wasn’t quite as tall as Tall Chick, and was nowhere near as attractive, but she did at least remind me of her a little.
Unlike her predecessor, I did actually engage Tall Chick Jr. in conversation, and very soon came to regret it, as it didn’t take long to discover that she was a complete psycho.
So I never really made a move on her, but I had established a pattern of talking to her on breaks, so I frequently had to listen to her craziness.
There was a time or two in which, in desperation, I thought, “Who cares if she’s crazy? It’s the weekend; I’ll make a move.”
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, though, on those nights I invariably failed to encounter her, and I moved out to Virginia before I ever got another shot at it.
So those have been my primary experiences with tall women. Most of the other women I’ve been attracted to or involved with have been much shorter.
And while I still remain intimidated and have difficulty approaching most women on those increasingly rare occasions in which I actually encounter them, no one has ever filled me with the combination of awe and terror that Tall Chick did.
I honestly don’t know why that is, and now, since she’s more than a thousand miles and practically a lifetime away, I suppose that I never will.
I’d like to think, though, that as I’ve gotten older and somewhat wiser, if she were to suddenly tap on my window, I wouldn’t flinch.