Sat, 07 Feb 2004 08:15:01 GMT

2/5/04

The Stimulant Bowl

The best clash during the Superbowl never happened on the field. The most significant battle was waged on-air: the fight for the flaccid American penis. Two erectile stimulant drugs, Levitra and Cialis, threw their top hats into the ring to compete with Viagra. It’s still not clear which erectile stimulant drug paid Janet Jackson to reveal her beast. Though it is clear how red-blooded, middle-aged men reacted: we reached for our enhancers before reaching for our wives.

As made evident by the barrage of erectile dysfunction ads in the Super Bowl, Viagra is no longer the only erectile stimulant men are placing in their sexual medical cabinets. The two new erectile dysfunction drugs, Cialis and Levitra, battled each other in the Superbowl in a quest to upend Viagra as the erection drug of choice. But while they all have the same basic effect, the new drugs have very different approaches to advertising, as well as different degrees of erectile longevity.

Levitra is for the evening; Cialis is for the three day weekend. Cialis claims to give users up to 36 hours of erectile happiness. In a disclaimer, it warns that one of its side effects might lead to a medical condition: the dangerous, four hour erection that requires medical attention. It has been reported that wives have been responding to this emergency by rushing their husbands straight to the bedroom.

In the Cialis commercial, two lovers are seen in separate outdoor bathtubs that overlook a jagged coastline. The lovers are not seen, except for their hands, which brush and caress suggestively. In the Levitra ad, we don’t know why a boastful Mike Ditka is impotent; it’s apparent why the Cialis guy is: it’s a result of dragging two bathtubs into the lovers' backyard.

Cialis is romantically suggestive; Levitra is a bullying, locker-room bravado. It’s not manly to get laid without chemical assistance. Doing it on Levitra takes one tough, impotent hombre.

The Levitra spot steals, badly, from an old comic routine by George Carlin, who artfully contrasted the war-like game of football against the gentleness of baseball. The Levita script is about as subtle as an erection at the in-laws dinner table.

Ditka: Why do I love football? It’s fast, action-packed, play-after-play

“Play-after-Play”. Ok, we get it. He could have said stroke-after-stroke, or with enough medication, session-after-session.

Football: Come rain or snow, “we stay in the game.”

OK, again we get it. Sissy, flaccid baseball players are eunics in stripes.

In football, it’s Levitra. Baseball could use Levitra.

OK, Mike, football has always been called “a game of inches,” and now we know why.

Take the Levitra Challenge. It works for me.

We’re encouraged to carry our condition of impotence around like a proud, medaled warrior: a Purple Heart for our broken penis.

Football, ya gotta love it.

Ditka throws a football through a tire. Someone off-screen yells “wahoo,” as he throws his arms up in the air in victory.

This is a middle-aged man bragging about sexual conquest to his buddies. But as Mike is boasting, at 64, that he just got laid, the Cialis guy is in his third day of love-making.

HobokenAL