CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Ronald McDonald Has a Pretty Sweet Gig

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

this entry brought to you by yeah yeah yeahs, "rockers to swallow"


I was thinking about Ronald McDonald, and started wondering how many Ronald McDonalds there have been. I remember when I was a kid the first time the actor playing Ronald changed, I remembering being very annoyed-- and then within a couple weeks actually liking the new guy a great deal more. Then a third Ronald came several years later and I got used to him, but I remembered liking the second guy more. As far as I can tell, there have been five seperate Ronald McDonalds throughout my lifetime. The current Ronald changed around 2000, and I like him a good deal.

Then I thought, you know, that's a really damned good gig. You're the spokesperson for a company for years at a time-- but unlike, say, the "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy, you don't get the hassle of people bothering you on the street because nobody recognizes you out of your make-up. You get paid presumably millions of dollars a year-- because McDonald's is a huge corporation, and you show up in dozens of commercials a year all around the world and perform at various corporate events. And yet, minus corporate events, you're just doing commercials, so your shooting schedule is only a day or two at a time before you get weeks off. Best of all you're not really expected to do much but put on some easily applied make-up and be a joyful, comforting guy that is easy around kids. I suppose the only real caveat about the job is that you must like kids, because you're going to be around a few-- and you're going to be doing this for years. Still, this is a cake gig, probably the easiest job in the entire world and you probably get paid extremely handsomely to do it. And all you have to do is be friendly! Well, comfortably friendly. Being too friendly is a no-no.

Do you think that Ronald came up from clowning before he got this seriously sweet gig, or do you think he's just an actor like any other actor that went to a casting call? Do you think that whenever Ronald retires, clowns know in advance and, like in the beauty pageant world, will use cutthroat tactics to ensure that they are picked over everyone else? And do you think that previous Ronalds are so seriously rich that they no longer have to act again, which is why we never hear of actors having previously been Ronald? Or do you think they go back to clowning? Because I cannot imagine going back to normal old clowning if you were frigging Ronald McDonald. Do you think somewhere in a bar there's some drunk grumbling how he used to be fuckin' Ronald McDonald goddammit, and he was one of the most goddamn recognizable and beloved faces on the fucking planet, and all of you ungrateful assholes can suck his dick, and everybody around him is totally ignoring him?
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with love from CRS @ 7:11 AM 

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