I will become an advertising executive

Overheard today on North 7th & Havemeyer, as I walk the long walk to the police station:

Teenage girl: What I'm concerned about is pollution. When that stuff gets on your skin...

Adolescent boy: What stuff?

TG: Butane. It's like lighter fluid. It will mess you up.

AB: Cool! I'd set stuff on fire!

TG: (Very upset that she is walking next to a pyro-in-training) No, Cal! Then you'd get burned. Do you want that? Your face will be horribly disfigured.

AB/Cal: (considering what it would really mean for his face to become horribly disfigured) Wow! Then I'd look just like Michael Jackson!!


This conversation prompted me to consider a turn on the ol' career path. Why, you ask? Well, consider this:

a) Smokey the Bear is kind of played out.
b) Fire is still bad, whether or not Smokey is passé.
c) Michael Jackson is frightening to adolescent boys.
d) Adolescent boys are the prime fire-starting cohort.

a + b + c + d = Award-winning print & television public service announcement that makes the connection between setting fires (not just forest fires, mind you, but any kind of hot, burny fires), getting horribly disfigured from the flames, and subsequently morphing into Michael Jackson. (Um...but not cool morphing, like in that "Black or White" video.)

Now, where's my Obie? Is that the award advertising executives receive?