iLaugh.com

Looks like the conspiracy to swipe secrets from Coca-Cola's chemical cauldron isn't the only "fake coke" story kicking around the internets (Linky-dink goes to Atlanta's Daily Report, including testimony that the secretary was "too damn stupid" to mastermind the scandal).

This newly popularized YouTube video of a "Synth Coke" ad, wherein some scumbag talks a gaunt crackwhore into sticking around his dingy apartment with the promise of surrogate snow, shows a side of advertising you don't see too much these days — that is, the sub-legal advertising hastily appended to Betamax porno videos in exchange for a handjob and a Styrofoam cup full of Quaaludes.

Have a watch-see:

This brings back crazy memories, because I actually tried Synth Coke back in 1982. I never found out exactly what was in it, but to this day, I refuse to believe the claim on the packaging: "Beats Chlorox!"

I was at some New Wave disco in Pittsburgh, chewing on a handful of unnamed pills, when some mustachioed New Englander in a silver cowboy hat started to chat me up. (At the time, people didn't make the distinction between "gay" and "straight," as they do in today's healthily repressed society.)

As the insistent screech of The Normal's "Warm Leatherette" emanated from the speakers, this guy - "Mister Marvelous," he called himself — offered me a bump of white powder from between his knobby, gray
knuckles.

"Coke?" I inquired casually.

"Naw, baby. Naw. This shit is Synth Coke."

I shrugged and hoovered it up anyway. It was the '80s, after all.

My rationale, if you want to call it that, was that I heard the word "synth" and merely free-associated it with New Wave: a wild new sound coming out, marked by technological innovation and weird hair. Sure, the music itself was crap, but it was only a harmless, synthesized version of the terrible rock ‘n roll that came before it. I figured Synth Coke was the same deal — cocaine, tricked out for a bold new decade!

How wrong I was.

Now I can't remember all the details of my Synth Coke trip — my mind won't let me. But let's just say, while cocaine always offered me a fleeting sense of unstoppable self-confidence and razor-sharp focus, Synth Coke just made me feel panicked and wobbly, with the distinct sense that my frontal lobe was leaking out of my nostrils. Actually, I'm not even sure those feelings were drug-induced; it was the mere fact that I was about to nosebleed to death from snorting an almond-sized line of dried powdered seagull droppings, crushed glass and hemlock extract.

It all kind of goes dark from there. But when it was all said and done, I found myself in a filthy bathroom stall, trembling like a baby leaf, mouth caked with blood and vomit, my stomach and anus clenched tighter than Martina Navratilova's forehand grip.

I looked over at the mirror, wincing to protect my dilated pupils from the harsh shithouse lights. And there he was: Mister Marvelous smiling smugly to himself as he washed off his dick in the sink. I'm pretty sure he winked at me as he pulled his pants back up, but I was too distracted by the feeling that Gary Numan and Grace Jones were playing bumper cars in my skull with late-model Ford Pintos.

I resolved to never touch Synth Coke again. Fortunately for me — and for the world — I heard "Buzz Productions" was raided by the FBI a few months later and their operation destroyed. I also resolved to stay away from New Wave clubs, and especially mustachioed New Englanders in cowboy hats.

The irony is, I probably would've let him if he'd just asked nicely. Like I said, it was the '80s.