Thursday, November 20, 2008

Orthodontically in Arkansas

Just a quick note to say that I love Arkansas as much as the next person. Okay, that's a lie- I do love it here, but if the next person is, say, for example, my spouse, I lack the passion one associates with one who was born here. Because everything here is named after the primary state university's football team and although this is a wonderful place to live and raise a family and all of that, I just think that's a little odd. There is (I promise) a chain of pizza places called Jim's Ra*zorback Pizza. Since I have issues with food prepared in gas stations I have never personally eaten any of that pizza, but it's a local dining option nonetheless. There are Razorback bookstores (Razo*rBooks), schools of Razorback hair design, radio stations with the call letters HOGZ. You can (and, again, I promise) buy platinum, gold, silver and even diamond studded razorback jewelry at local jewelry stores. What I'm saying is there are times I'll be driving and around and I start to laugh out loud thinking of what Rob suggested one afternoon as we drove past a brightly colored mural of a razorback frolicking on a football field painted on the side of a gas station/laundromat. He looked at it and said "It brings me a lot of joy to know that if a natural disaster like Pompeii ever happens here and Fayetteville is frozen under volcanic ash that archaeologists thousands of years in the future will say things like the 'people of this city worshiped the wild mountain pig.'" In reality? That's totally what they would say.
As I was coming home to SmallTown yesterday after a trip to Fayetteville, I was troubled when I noticed yet another thing that tried to cleverly combine the name razorback with the services they were offering. There is (once again, I am not in any way making this up) a website for an orthodontic practice called Razorbra*ces.com. I have two primary thoughts on this: 1.) the unfortunate orthodontists in this practice must have hired the marketing people who do Oklahoma's advertising and 2.) these marketing people must have never had braces to think that people who did at one time have braces are driving by their billboards without cringing a little. Excessive, that's what all this "razor-worship" is.

*I have just had one more thought- I typed this up without first checking to see that this practice is in no way associated with my cousin Adam, who is smart and funny as well as an orthodontist in Arkansas. If it is, please have Kim e-mail me, and I'll take this post down...
Edited to add- as near as I can tell from the website, my cousin is not in any way associated with this practice, so let's feel free to think there's a problem here.