Heart of Bitterness

Davidoff: Adventure®

Whilst passing through the Sears fragrance department this morning, I couldn't help but notice that the spokesmodel for the latest, heavily advertised new fragrance (Davidoff: Adventure®) looked familiar.

It took me a few seconds to identify this latest manifestation of the decline and fall of western civilisation: it was Ewan MacGregor, the actor who burst into the public eye with his preformance as a junkie in the indie favourite Trainspotting, then immediately commenced his street-cred downward spiral by acting in no less than 3 Star Wars movies.

In the advert he is staring searchingly into the lens, half-reclining on a desolate hillside somewhere, perhaps Afghanistan.

What is with the scarf, though? That doesn't look adventurous. In fact, it doesn't look practical at all!

Ewan's opening monologue from Trainspotting:

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing ga me shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

But who would want to do a thing like that?

A quote off Davidoff's website of Ewan describing Adventure®:

I think it is important to go out and discover what an extraordinary world we have, and the people who live in it, and to broaden our minds instead of to narrow them… The thing about a real journey is that you have to lose control of it. You can't control an adventure. You have to give yourself in to accepting whatever experience is round the corner. And you never have any idea what that might be.

My guess is that someone at Davidoff saw one or more episodes of Ewan's crappy around-the-world-by-motorcycle series, and thought Ewan would make a perfect spokesmodel for a fragrance called Adventure™. (The presence of a motorcycle in the background is a dead give-away.)

I understand Davidoff's reasoning for hiring Ewan. What I don't understand is what Ewan was thinking when he agreed to the contract.

Still EM also appeared in that piece of shit the Pillow Book, so maybe he makes poor decisions. And again, we must come back to the Star Wars films...

In retrospect, perhaps Ewan sucks as an actor, Trainspotting aside, and he has realized this and gone the Mariah Carey merchandising route...