Lame Adventure 118: Bottoms Up

Will Skyy respect you in the morning?

I know this billboard is supposed to make me want to don my red vinyl leggings, strap on a coordinating pair of ankle spikes and proceed to get intimate with the nearest Stanley Cup-sized bottle of Skyy vodka.  That is the message here, right?  Yet, every time I look at this ad when walking down West Broadway en route to the Chambers Street subway station, all I can think about is suffering a glass shard in a very intimate soft body part.  The thought of finding myself bleeding profusely in the emergency room due to a self-inflicted extreme act of embarrassment does not make me lust a supertanker of vodka.

My clear spirit of choice is gin but I do have a taste for sake, too.  Since I’m more dull center than cutting edge, I prefer both while sitting upright and holding a glass.  In the case of the sake, a wooden box, or a handle-less miniature cup works nicely, too.

A little background about Skyy vodka, for those of you that read Lame Adventures primarily for its vast educational component … it was created by Brooklyn-born inventor and entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar, who launched it in 1992.  Now 80-years-old, Maurice resides in San Francisco, where Skyy is produced.  He could be lifting a glass of Skyy vodka today in response to the Giants trampling the Rangers for the second straight game in the World Series.  Among his vast and varied accomplishments, Maurice is the mastermind behind the D-Fuzz-It sweater comb and New York’s first multiplex, the Quad Cinema.  He owns much of Tulsa, Oklahoma and in 1997, he opened his wallet and donated $5 million to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, so the film school is now called the Skyy Vodka Institute of Film and Television.  Possibly I’ve gotten the name in that last factoid wrong.

No Grey Goose for Maurice!