DEAD MAN SHILLING

Don't get your hopes up, Red Sox haters - this isn't about Curt. That's "Schilling".

It appears Hoover has revived their blipvert for the FloorMate which featured actor Trevor Goddard as an Australian Outbacker. Based on one poster's response at the Blog of Death, they were showing the ad well into 2005, two years after Goddard's death by overdose. (Maybe accidental, maybe not.)

I'm of two minds on this. Perhaps it might seem like Hoover is making money off a dead man. But at the same time, acting in commercials IS acting. Actors do good work, hard work, in them. Actors in old movies and TV shows eventually die - sometimes even before their work first premieres - yet we don't expect those films and series to be yanked off the air forever.

So why should we insist on it for actors in TV commercials? I bet viewers have no trouble enjoying his two years worth of work on 'JAG' as Mic Brumby, even if they no he's dead. So why should a commercial be any different?

Unless of course, the actor is appearing as him or herself. That can just be creepy, like when Jerry Orbach appearing in a blipvert for weeks after he passed away.

A couple years ago I saw an ad for a local New York furniture company which had the late comedian Phil Foster as its pitchman. And by that point, he had been dead for at least a decade. It felt like a broadcast backwash that had bounced back to Earth's airwaves from who knows where.

Maybe there was an encrypted message in the commercial, returned from outer space......

"SEND MORE PHIL FOSTER!"

BCnU!
Tele-Toby