Six degrees of weirded-out.

I went to sleep last night very disturbed. Was I wrestling with some sort of daily problem or stressing out about work, you ask? No. Was I feeling down or depressed about something? Not at all. In fact, I was in a really good mood when Dawn and I tucked ourselves in after a date night. We settled in and caught the end of "ER" and talked about the upcoming weekend. But then it happened.

NBC aired a commercial for undergarment superpower Hanes. And it wasn’t your typical guys-in-tightie-whities-getting-their-wastebands-snapped-by-a-mischevious-woman type of ad. And it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill “people shopping for clothes” type of ad either. Nope, this one sent my mind to places I didn’t want it to go. This ad was disturbing beyond comprehension, not because of its shock value or strange imagery, but more for its subtlety and undertones. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’ll give you a little bit of background:

The ad stars everyone’s favorite Hollywood everyman Kevin Bacon and none other than Hanes’ highest-paid and most-recognized spokesperson, former NBA superstar Michael Jordan! I could probably just leave it at that, and leave you going, “Whaaaaaaa????” but I won’t. I’ll further confuse you by telling you that the ad begins with Kevin Bacon playing basketball, wearing one of Hanes’ vibrantly-colored “tees.” So Bacon (for comedic value, I will now refer to him as K-Bake) is shooting hoops by himself and he puts up this shot that…looks...like…it’s going in…and then, BAM! Out of nowhere comes MJ to block the shot! Wow, just like during his playing days. Except this time, Jordan isn’t all sweaty and trash-talking like he would to Patrick Ewing. No, this time, he’s decked out in Hanes gear and gives K-Bake a little wry smile. And then K-Bake looks around really confused like he's having flashbacks of Tremors.

So the ad presses on, flashing some colorful images of K-Bake in multiple different shirts (or as my wife would call them, “tops”), and in comes the jingle, “Look who we’ve got our Hanes on now.” Um…yeah, it’s Kevin Bacon that you have your "Hanes on." So what? It’s Kevin Bacon. I mean, I can understand Mr. Jordan inspiring people to buy undies, but Bacon? What is likeable about him? I mean, really. But, I digress. Back to the commercial. So now Bacon is just arriving at home wearing his Hanes clothing and he decides to "shoot" his keys towards a red bowl of some kind as if to say, “What a zany day on the hardcourts. To show my exhaustion, I will take one last jump shot and land these keys in that bowl across my studio apartment.” Makes sense, I guess. So the keys are in the air, everyone’s thinking about how cool K-Bake was in Footloose and then – POW!!! – out of nowhere, here’s Jordan again to swat the keys away and keep them from going in the bowl.

Okay, wait. Hold on. Jordan is in Kevin Bacon’s house now? Are these guys roommates, or is Jordan some sort of expert at picking locks? And why doesn’t Bacon care? He just gives Jordan the old, “You got me again, ya big lug” awestruck stare and Jordan peers (I don’t want to say lustfully, but close…more like “creepily”) back at K-Bake. Another blocked shot for Jordan. You should be proud, MJ. You blocked a guy who’s seven inches shorter than you and probably sucks at basketball. And not only did you block him, you blocked his keys. That's tough to do. Retirement’s treated you well, you haven’t lost a step. Must be the Hanes underwear.

But there’s more wacky hi-jinx from K-Bake and MJ to come. Kevin Bacon is now in his…recording studio?...apparently fresh off of writing a composition of some sort, acoustic guitar leaning next to him. Well, apparently K-Bake isn’t too happy with this particular song he’s written, because he wads it up violently and tosses it towards the trash can. As a viewer you’re like, “Ho-hum, I’ve seen this before, Kevin’s just tossing away a piece of refuse." But no. The paper ball is near the garbage bin when – BOOYAH! – like a white-collar Superman with a porn moustache, here comes none other than future NBA Hall-of-Famer Michael Jordan sliding by on an office chair to block it from going in, much to K-Bake's dismay. Rejected, Kevin! Take that! Michael 3, Bacon 0. Needless to say, the two exchange looks again like Al and Peg Bundy might – frustrated, yet mischeviously bonded to one another somehow…

And in the final scene – the climax of the ad, if you will, Bacon is in his kitchen staring at the walls of his apparently very expensive and lonely life in NYC (wife Kyra Sedgwick and their two children are apparently never around, which is why they bought themselves a pet…uh…Jordan). Anyway, so Bacon is sitting around contemplating…um...probably his role in Animal House, when he decides it’s time to eat a grape. He pulls a piece of fruit off of the bunch and then looks around to make sure that no one (i.e. Jordan) is around to prevent the following act from occurring (if this isn’t evidence of these two apparently shacking up together, I don’t know what is). So K-Bake notices the coast is clear and tosses the grape up in the air. Cue the slow motion…the grape is falling, falling, Bacon’s mouth is agape, falling, falling, OH SNAP! – he’s done it again. Jordan catches the grape! What an athlete! And he’s wearing Hanes!

By this time, K-Bake is visually frustrated, and Jordan is kind of…uh…turned on?...I don’t know what’s going on. Then the "Air-man" proceeds to ask "What?" and eat the grape and give K-Bake a little wink (what the heck is that about?) and the audience is left feeling just a little uncomfortable. Actually, even K-Bake is feeling a little bit awkward about his pal Michael Jordan by this time. I just wish this commercial didn’t leave so much to the imagination. I wish after the opening scene they would have been in the locker room and K-Bake would have tossed his sweaty shirt to his locker and MJ would have snagged it and taken a big whiff of it like Hannibal Lecter might. Okay, maybe I don’t wish that would happen, but at least that way we’d know what was happening between these guys and we wouldn’t have to try and figure it out for ourselves. It’s just flat-out weird. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but these guys are not linked in any way except for the fact that Hanes paid them a lot of money to appear a wee bit “chummy” in a nationwide commercial. What was Hanes thinking? Were they sitting around asking, “Well, we have Michael, but we really need someone that could play a good sidekick. Who could we get?” Was the first answer to this question really "Kevin Bacon?" If it wasn’t, then it was turned down by pretty much anyone else offered the part after they read the script for the commercial. In fact, Bacon could have been one of their last choices, he probably just jumped at the opportunity to act with possibly the only person on the planet with whom he hasn’t acted before.

watch the ad