Selling In

Last December, the Volkswagen Polo TV ad opportunity came along. What sold me on it was the fact that the Spanish crew was prepared to come all the way from Barcelona to Kipling Saskatchewan and shot the whole thing on location. That, coupled with the fact that they probably dropped in excess of $40,000 into the Kipling economy for motel rooms, meals and assorted donations to local causes made it an offer I couldn't refuse. And Nolan Hubbard got to appear in his first commercial. And it was broadcast in Spain. And dubbed in Spanish. It was fun. It was good for Kipling. So I sold out and hawked ultra-compact German vehicles to Spaniards.

I didn't really talk about it much around here, or more precisely, at all, but the day after they filmed the VW commercial in Kipling, I flew to New York to shoot a Mastercard commercial. I guess co-opting the one red paperclip story to promote a credit card company pretty much spits in the face of hardcore bartering community. (and what I believe many people take one red paperclip to be all about.) But I really dug the ad agency's take on for the Mastercard commercial. There was no "Now you should trade up to an apartment building!" or "What are you going to trade for next, the president of the United States?!" It was just a fun, heartwarming corner store fable of a guy who bought a pack of gum and tricked people into a series of trades and walked home with a coffee maker.(In a positive way of course.) Simple, fun, and despite what others may be led to believe, not at all like my day-to-day corner-store-going life. I was sold. Everyone else in the ad were actors, playing roles. The casting director complimented me at the end of the shoot. "You're really good at this Kyle. So natural." I won't lie to you. It was the compliment I'd always been waiting for. It's been a long and hard road to become myself. I've practiced everyday for more than 27 years. I accepted the beer in his outstretched left hand and changed the subject to something totally different, like my new pink-striped shirt or the binge drinking of expense account beer. I know it's important, but I can't remember what I changed the subject to. I blame the long day of filming. And the free pink-striped shirt.

Also, I think now is a convenient time to mention the uncanny similarity between that got-it-from-Mastercard's-casting-van pink-striped shirt and the shirt my mom forced me to wear to school the day Jostens came in 1992. It's actually kind of creepy how similar Dom and I looked back then - even though we lived 4500KMs apart and didn't speak the same language. But thank goodness I never did anything like this. Or this.

Anyhow, I guess what I'm really trying to say is that opportunities to bring car-buying Spanish TV audiences to rural Canada or for a guy to do fake internet ad trades for giant corporations aren't exactly the sort of thing that come along very often. So as long as I can help the community that traded me a house for the movie role or create situations that will make easy segues into onslaughts of embarrassing pictures of me, or Dom, I'm in.

So hopefully after all this, I'm still edgy. Yeah, edgy's where it's at. If you don't say you're edgy, then your aren't. It's simple logic. So with edgy in mind, when my friend Evan and all around favorite person who wears foam-mesh Puerto Rico hats asked if I wanted to be part of something edgy, and most importantly, nice, I had to say yes.

This time I'm going to be in a Superbowl Ad. You can read all about that here.

Have fun - Kyle