FAR Too Soon for a Macarena Revival

Is it me, or is the Michelina’s TV ad the creepiest to air nationally in some time?

First, a third-rate Ted Knight imitator newscaster (a bad imitation of a parody) comes on with breaking news about Michelina’s, then in a befuddling disjunction, a breeder-hipped woman on a treadmill in a health club starts belting out “The Macarena” with new lyrics advocating Michelina’s frozen food, while doing the Macarena hand movements and making perplexingly lascivious facial expressions and pelvic thrusts, as though frozen food makes her horny. Damn, it’s weird.

At the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta, “The Macarena” became the unofficial theme song and line dance, with even the female American gymnasts doing a routine to it in their victory performance – it was ubiquitous unto saturation. As dance crazes go, it was relatively inoffensive, but after a time the Macarena dance and theme song wore out their welcomes and were laid to rest, other than at particularly irksome weddings.

Why revive it now? Why frozen food? Why this strange woman shaking her sturdy midsection all over the screen? Why the newscaster? Who thought any of this was a good idea? Most peculiar – we don’t eat much frozen food, but if we did, I would run screaming from Michelina’s.