A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!

Latter-day life lessons

By Ed Goldman

FAN BELCH—Years ago when Jay Leno overtook David Letterman in the late-night TV wars, Letterman’s people responded to the news with typical insouciance: They took out billboards in major cities proclaiming, “We’re Number Two!” I’m sure they were aware of the scatological allusion some viewers would infer—and that made it all the funnier.

I’m wondering if the good Dr Pepper is about to embark on a similar campaign. Just before Summer it was revealed to be in a tie for second place with Pepsi for the most popular American soft drink, a list still led by Coca Cola.

I’ve never been a fan of Dr Pepper (which has been around longer than Coke or Pepsi—like since 1885, as opposed to 1886 and 1893, respectively. To me, it always tasted too much like Smith Bros. cough syrup  (invented in 1926; for the sake of orientation, this was the year before the first movie with sound, “The Jazz Singer.”)

But among carbonated sodas, Dr Pepper has struck me as the most periodically hip. Its 1970s TV campaign featured an awkwardly dancing young actor named David Naughton (who later played  the title role in the John Landis movie “An American Werewolf in London”). In the ubiquitous TV spots, he and other young people pranced around proclaiming, “I’m a Pepper/She’s a Pepper/He’s a Pepper/We’re a Pepper: Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?”

My answer then as well as now: No. 

WEEK DAZE­—Committed drinkers like to raise their glasses any time of the day or night and say, “Well, it must be 5 p.m. somewhere.” It’s comedic but also telling in that it implies they would never drink before even an imaginary 5 p.m.—whereas of course they would and will. This is why they’re alcoholics.

My new variant on this is that no matter which days and nights I work, there’s a lousy Monday somewhere. I don’t mean “Well, one person’s Saturday is another person’s Monday” or anything as continental as that. I mean that even if I’ve worked through the weekend, when the genuine Monday that everyone recognizes as such comes along, stuff goes haywire.

Some of my friends think that because I work for myself and often work at night or on weekends (out of choice), I must be impervious to Mondays—that it’s just (ho-hum) another day. But because my friends work or live regular weeks, their dreaded Mondays become a common denominator for us if my schedule is at all dependent on theirs. This happens with socializing, to be sure. I have no need for a Sunday night dinner to instead become a Sunday afternoon soiree because, as the joke goes, “Tomorrows a school day”—meaning we’ll all have to get up early.

But this isn’t just about other people. There seems to be something ironic afoot in the cosmos—or at least something on a rigid schedule.