Viva Viagra?

I swore I wouldn’t write about this. I didn’t want to dignify it with the attention that it doesn’t deserve. But after seeing it yet again on the NFL channel the other night, I’ve decided to take a deep breath and throw out this question to the populace at large:

What’s wrong with this country, that we’re playing that embarrassing “VIVA VIAGRA” commercial?

Have you seen it, the particular one I’m talking about? No, it’s not the one where the guy gets all mushy and puts Tupperware candles in the pool — nor is it the one where the guy seems to be picking up a hooker at a wedding reception.

The one I’m referring to is the very first, pivotal ad in that new marketing campaign which appears to showcase Viagra as the new Las Vegas party drug. It features a group of about five guys playing a jam session in an old barn, while a depressed-looking golden retriever looks on. The guys — a drummer, a bass player, a guitarist, and I forget who else — each take a verse of the classic Elvis Presley song “Viva, Las Vegas!”

But these guys — to the cringing embarrassment of television viewers everywhere — have changed the lyrics. They’re singing about how they can’t wait to get home to their women now that they’re taking Viagra.

Obviously, there are no women in the commercial, or the guys wouldn’t be just singing about it — at least, one hopes. If these guys want to improve their relationships, then why are they sitting around with a bunch of other guys, postponing their happy reunions with their supposedly-waiting girlfriends and wives?

The pathetic thing is, you get the feeling that there aren’t any women for them to go home to at all. If there were, they wouldn’t be sitting around in a barn all day singing about Viagra in an all-male jam session.

The whole thing puts me in mind of those yucky fantasy football commercials, where the guys are too busy playing with their imaginary teams — or imaginary friends, I like to call them — to do things like have normal relationships.

These guys in these commercials don’t need Viagra. They need a good shrink.

Apart from the sad lack of taste, the biggest controversy surrounding this work of utter codswollop — other than outrage from Elvis fans seeing their song travestied — is the whole Viagra/Las Vegas gestalt. It’s difficult to see a medical drug being marketed with all the insouciant pop-culture bounciness of a casino vacation package.

Once upon a time, Viagra was marketed as a clinically-tested drug to treat a known medical condition. Can you imagine a group of guys sitting around singing, with big goofy smiles, about pills to shrink an enlarged prostate?

My husband Tim and I have been busy making up our own lyrics to this song, none of which I can share in print. But Tim has been singing our one-and-only cleaned-up version for his colleagues at work, complete with Elvis air-guitar licks.

It reminds us both of our days as touring musicians with the cruise ships. You’d be surprised how many people — men and women both — take cruises to Mexico in search of cheap, prescription-free Viagra. It’s the most-marketed drug in the port pharmacies.

That’s when we first began to wonder — do that many people really need Viagra, or is it becoming the new recreational drug for 30-plus baby boomers?

Anyway, let’s get back to this abomination of a commercial. The only thing that could make it palatable for viewer consumption, as far as I’m concerned, is to give it an alternate ending. I’m proposing two of them:

ALTERNATE ENDING #1:

Guys finish playing their stupid song, and the dog, whose name is Ol’ Blue, yawns. Suddenly the barn door is flung open by the Prison Warden.

Prison Warden: “Okay guys! Break time’s over! Back to the cells!”

The guys pack up and head back to jail, while Ol’ Blue lopes off to guard duty in the swamps.

ALTERNATE ENDING #2:

Guys finish playing their stupid song, and the dog, whose name this time is Bo, yawns. Suddenly the barn door is flung open by the sheriff, accompanied by what’s known in the hills as “revenuers.”

Sheriff: “Okay, guys! Where’s the still?”

Bass Player: “Whut still? We ain’t got no still!”

Revenuers find moonshine still and start smashing it with their pickaxes. The sheriff hauls the men off to jail, while Bo lopes off to join a bluegrass jam session at another still nearby.

If you really want to look up the entire lyric to “Viva Viagra” — and mind, I’m not encouraging you to — you can find it posted in blogs on several websites, including one at espn.com, as well as www.pharmamkting.blogspot.com. Just Google “Viva Viagra lyrics” — horrified blog posters everywhere are joining in the fray.

At least, it got our attention — and I guess that was the whole point, wasn’t it?