Are you in good hands?

[davidn]

As a result of my wilfully limited experience with American television, and especially its adverts, which are usually the visual and aural equivalent of poorly-typed email spam, there's something that's been nagging at the back of my mind for a while. That something is the Allstate Insurance man.

Who is this mysterious individual? If the adverts are to believed, he always seems to be present whenever there's a road accident, just standing some distance away and observing the events. His presence doesn't seem to be malevolent - that is, he doesn't actually cause the scenes that we're seeing - but you'd still check your mirrors twice if you noticed him at the side of the road, wouldn't you? It would be a sure sign that a truck was about to ram into you or you were stopped below a portacabin on an elderly crane.

But his earnest, calm warnings whenever these things happen point to something more suspicious. You could just think that he had an unnatural Jeremy Beadle-like amusement in watching other people being injured or crashing their cars into each other, but if he's a normal human he surely can't be in all these places at once, or tell when and where a disaster is going to happen in advance. It would seem that the natural possible conclusions are that he's either a ghost, a Time Lord, or one of another race of ancient guardians of the universe who have been sent to watch the actions of mankind and warn of the future but are forbidden to directly intervene with the course of their fate. The way that he seems also to be able to manipulate time points further to this theory.

Or it could just be an advert, I don't know. Whichever way, this line of thought has now made me picture Malcolm Somerset at the end of 6 Days a Sacrifice, looking serenely down from the cliff top at the crater once occupied by the Optimology building*, and then wandering down to ask if they had nano-explosive detonation insurance.

I have quite a lot of jetlag.

* Sorry, I just spoiled the ending

Comments

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

I should have looked for him when I was almost sideswiped by a semi on the way to work this morning.

[davidn]

I can picture him being there somewhere off in the middle distance, shaking his head at the near-missed opportunity and then mysteriously fading from sight...

...And, well. Lucky you!

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

It was scary, but did lift my faith in my reflexes (specifically those to hit the brakes, honk the horn, and shout "what the hell!").

[(Anonymous)]

That isn't just any old insurance man... that's the President!

-Don

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

(hahaha, I work for Allstate Insurance!)

His name is Dennis Haysbert. As noted in Don's comment, he is also very well known for playing the President in the television series "24".

His voice is actually famous for being so... velvety and thick.
People really do swoon a little when they hear his voice. There's no doubt in my mind that people remember Allstate because of him (oh, and because we've been around for ages and ages and are not one of the ones going bankrupt).

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

... do we run commercials in Massachusetts? I thought we didn't write business in Massachesetts, why would we spend money on commercials there?

[davidn]

I suppose if you say that you don't send out agents who can control the flow of time to observe accidents then I can take your word for it. You'd make a fortune here, though, people in Boston drive like intoxicated lower primates.

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

We do business in the other 49 states, sure. The official company line on why we don't want Massachusetts has something to do with the insurance regulation framework there is not conducive with business-- but maybe the real reason is that we don't want to deal with Masshole drivers.

I wish I could manipulate time-- the work day would last 5 minutes and my vacation would last years upon years.