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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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Bill Kurtis finds Internet on Sand Island
One of the funniest commercials on TV right now is the one with Bill Kurtis supposedly on a deserted island logging onto the Internet thanks to his AT&T Laptop Connect Card. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be funny or not.
In the commercial, Bill Kurtis, in a dark Steve McGarrett-type dress suit, walks in front of a crashed plane and says, "We've come to this island and you'll never believe what we found ... the Internet! Seems it can't hide here either!"
The island he's apparently gotten to is Sand Island, because waaaayyyyy in the background on the left side of the screen you can clearly see Diamond Head and a bit of Waikiki. It would be hard to believe that the producers of the commercial accidentally left in one of the most photographed tourist-destination icons in the world. So it's pretty funny that Bill Kurtis is supposedly on a deserted island with Diamond Head in the background and even funnier if having Diamond Head in the background was accidental.
One clue that the commercial is intentionally funny is that the name on the crashed plane is "Amelia," as in Amelia Earhart. The plane looks to be an actual reproduction of the Lockheed Electra twin-engine plane Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937 over the central Pacific Ocean. Flying with her navigator, Fred Noonan, Earhart was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world.
You can only hope AT&T included a crashed plane named "Amelia" in the commercial as a joke because, otherwise, it is in really bad taste. Hey! Let's make fun of a famous dead woman! Maybe next time Bill Kurtis will find the Internet where police found the Lindberg baby or in the jungles of New Guinea where Michael Rockefeller disappeared.
I see many possibilities for AT&T's Internet connection card campaign.
"Hi! I'm Bill Kurtis and I've come to this remote Oregon forest where you'll never believe what I've found! The Internet and D.B. Cooper! That's him hanging in the tree back there by his parachute. If ol' D.B. had had the AT&T laptop connect card, he wouldn't have had to hijack that plane!"
The reason it's hard to tell if AT&T intended for people to know Bill Kurtis actually was in Hawaii is that so many companies try to use Hawaii as a generic tropical location in their ads, but inadvertently include well-known visitor attractions. Not long ago, an insurance company was silly enough to use Hanauma Bay as a generic beach in a national magazine campaign. If people didn't recognize Hanauma Bay, they certainly noticed the dead Elvis by the coconut tree.
If AT&T really wanted us to know the "Amelia" commercial was a joke, it should have had Sayid or Hurley or some other character from the TV show "Lost" emerging from the wrecked plane behind Bill Kurtis, carrying a case of Spam.
CORRECTION Friday, July 18, 2008
Bill Kurtis is featured in an AT&T commercial for the Laptop Connect Card. His name was originally misspelled in this article.
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Buy Charles Memminger's hilarious new book, "Hey, Waiter, There's An Umbrella In My Drink!" at island book stores or
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