I’d like to congratulate the people who came up with the Discovery Channel “Boom-De-Yada” commercial (available here). In my humble opinion (am I in the wrong forum?) this is simply the single best commercial of its type since the old “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” ad for Coca-Cola.
The ad doesn’t make any claims or assertions about the product it is promoting; it’s just a pure “feel-good” ad. The song and the various images (Adam setting Jamie’s arm on fire, Steve Hawking, the singing astronauts in zero-g) just work together perfectly.
We don’t have cable, but we just got back from a trip in which we stayed in a hotel and got to watch lots of Discovery Chanel (I got to see Cash Cab–yay!). I flew home with that commercial stuck in my head, and I’m sure I was driving my husband nuts humming “boom-de-ada” over and over.
Okay, how wrong is it that of all the things people love between the commercial and the XKCD version what I love is, “There must be Taft slash fiction.”
Oh, it’s a cool little promo spot (and yes, the clever self-referentials are a lot of fun **and ** serve to cut down on potential treacle factor, e.g. Mackowicz doing the “BOOM-de-yada” just as he fires the grenade launcher ).
And of course, the end tagline: “The World is just awesome”… I first thought* that* myself some time over 40 years ago and it hasn’t failed to live up to it… (humanity, OTOH, well…)
But I don’t watch enough of the Discovery Channel to recognize everybody. I guess the “Dirty Jobs” guy and the “Mythbusters” guys are in there, and of course Stephen Hawking. Little help on the others?
The first “Boom de ah da” chorus is started off by one of the crews from Deadliest Catch. If you watch the link astro provided, you’ll see their captains singing third. Left to right they’re Sig Hansen from the Northwestern, the Hillstrand brothers (Andy and Johnathan) from the Time Bandit, what looks like Keith Colburn from the Wizard, and Phil Harris from the Cornelia Marie.
Bear Grylls from “Man vs Wild” is the one who sings “I love arachnids” in the original commercial.
The guy who sings “BOOM de ah da” while firing a weapon is the host of Future Weapons.
It looks like the guy fighting the tornado might be Josh Bernstein with a show called “Into the Unknown.”
(Mike Rowe used to sing with Baltimore’s opera, as a side comment.)
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