If you watch Canadian television, you've probably seen those obnoxious cheese commercials, featuring adults who won't leave the parental nest because their parents keep making delicious meals with cheese. Yeah, whatever. My parents could have fed me filet mignon three times a week, and I'd have still moved out. In one of these spots, the parents turn their 40-something year old's son bedroom into a shrine to tackiness, with gaudy floral wallpaper, a stuffed deer's head on the wall, and a kitschy lamp. "Can't get your kids to leave home stop cooking with cheese!" a nosy, crochety old woman says at the end of the ad - just like that, with no pause between home and stop. It used to drive me nuts, but then I stopped watching television and the problem went away.
Well, it appears Dairy Farmers of Canada has kicked their cheese campaign up a notch. Now it's pushing the "Cheese for Life" club. I'd heard the radio ads, but nothing prepared me for what I found in the bottom of my Loblaws bag last night. A little booklet entitled "Pleasures of Cheese" , full of cheese recipes, which is fine. A waste of paper, because it went straight into the recycling bin, but whatever.
But on the back cover - bear in mind this is a booklet full of recipes and the pleasures of eating - it says:
"Your daughter won't leave home even though you clean the toilet with her toothbrush? Join the club. Enter the Contest."
The fuck? Is that supposed to be funny? Is this some lame-ass attempt to appeal to the urban, 20-30 something market? Look, I can tell tasteless jokes with the best of them, but that's just gross. Eww. The masterminds behind this campaign might be cooking with cheese, but I think they're smoking crack.
