Well it happened the other day, I actually had an impulse buy. This sort of thing is pretty rare for me. I see things all the time that I think might be nice to have, but more often than not I just ignore it. But every now and then I come across something I just HAVE to buy. This time it happened in the supermarket. While I was wandering down an isle I was supposed to be looking for soy sauce but instead something else caught my eye: liquid smoke. Actually it didn't even catch my eye because it was liquid smoke, what caught my eye was that it was STUBB'S liquid smoke. Man, it takes guts to sell something by labeling it "stubb's". Right on the front label there is a picture of Stubb which, looks like it's from the 50's or 60's (a black guy in a cowboy hat). For some reason I thought all this was amusing so I bought it. Another thing I thought was peculiar were the quotes on the front of the bottle. The first one was "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm a cook". I'm thinking eeeehhhhh????. With a bemused look upon my face I wondered, 'what kind of marketing gimmick could this even be?' I really don't think it could be. No big corporate marketing machine would be crazy enough to put something like that on the front of a bottle by itself. I mean picture an ad agency putting together a new look... picture people in a big office clamoring around they're new bottle: a picture of a black guy with a cowboy hat, the text STUBB'S in the background, with that quote underneath - I just can't see that happening! The other quote on the front is "My life is in these bottles". It obviously shows he's proud of his work. But I also thought this was weirdly poetic... [archen style philosophy] My life is but smoke within a small bottle... hmmm, if I shave my head and become a monk I think I'll contemplate that one for a year or two.
The last quote is on the back of the bottle: "To me, cooking has always brought folks a little closer together. So enjoy this liquid smoke with your friends and family" - C.B. Stubblefield. Something about that strikes me as really direct, simple, and honest, and I don't think we get that much anymore. Corperations can't even mimic it. The thing that comes to mind is this terrible Pillsburry commercial. I donno what even happens in the commercial, but the background song is agonizingly painful (sung by a girl who sounds suspiciously like Cheryl Crow). It's about a family getting together in the morning and making crescent rolls or something to that effect. Come on here people, a song about baking crescent rolls? Lame marketing agent me thinks...
Ya know, another thing is that I don't even know what in the hell to do with liquid smoke O_o; I guess you put it on steak while cooking or something. I know my family always had it in the cupboard, but being from a family with a lot of cattle ranchers who eat a lot of steak - this isn't so surprising. Course there are a lot of things in the cupboard that I never knew what they were for. Like vanilla extract. What kid who sifts through the cupboard looking through the spices hasn't happened upon the vanilla extract experience. You open the bottle and it smells SOOOOoo good, but once you try some you find out it tastes like total $h*t! Who knows maybe someday I'll learn how to cook and actually use it.
So I guess I'll have this unassuming bottle of liquid smoke sitting in the cupboard... and maybe it'll be joined by a bottle of soy sauce (I totally forgot!). I guess it was something I had to buy though... because it was so simple... In an age where American corporations push their products with all the marketing they can muster, where faster and sleeker are better, the packaging is in flashy colorful, and products even have names which sparkle, such as the soda "Surge". Extreme this, extreme that.... And then there is this simple little brown bottle with a simple paper label that says "stubb's" on it. I guess I'm just the sort of person that is attracted to that sort of stuff. But all in all I'd like to think that somewhere down south there is a liquid smoke company with men in business suits scurrying about trying to climb the corporate ladder... and at the very top with in an extremely cushy chair at the head of the corporate table sits a rich crotchety old black guy in a cowboy hat smoking a big 'ol cigar named Stubb.
Stubb: "What? Change my bottle? Hell I don't care if you graduated from Harvard or not, consider your ass fired! Anyone else thinkin' they can go changin' my bottle?"
Staff: "No sir, Mr Stubb sir!!"
Stubb: {cackle}