Jan 3rd, 2003

And Nobody Knows it But Me

Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is like, a whole web site devoted to the poem in the Chevy Tahoe commercial. You know the one, James Garner doing a voice over, guy standing on the edge of a remote cliff by his glamorous Chevy. And you on the couch, thinking: Uh, did my mother read that to me when I was a child? Is it Robert Louis Stevenson? Is it Robert Frost? Is it Dr. Suess?

Well, the answer is no. It was none of those men, and you never heard it before you saw the commercial for the first time. It was written by a guy named Patrick O'Leary who works for Chevy's ad agency. And as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter that it was ad flak. I love the recitation.

In fact, so many people love it, that if you go to Chevy's web site and go to the Tahoe page, the poem is formatted as a PDF with nice type and a parchment graphic, suitable for downloading and printing out. Which I just did and hung it over my desk, right next to a particularly poignant Dilbert cartoon.