The First Day of Summer: Favorite Guinness Commercial and Favorite Horse Commercial Are One and the Same

Surfers wait for that one wave. Guinness drinkers wait for their pints (they take a long time to draw). And around here, we wait a long time for summer to come around again, but so it has arrived today. To celebrate, here's a little bit of classic video, courtesy of our friends at Guinness.

This commercial is perennially called the best television commercial ever made. It's labeled "iconic". I've watched it enough times over the years, to be sure, but I still can't really tell you what's going on. But I also think that might be the point.

It's summer. President Obama tells us it's even "recovery summer". So let's just sit back and take this minute's entertainment at face value. Don't worry, Captain Ahab, we're living the dream.

I hope you agree that this video is a fitting salute to the first day of summer...and one of the most creative uses of horses in a commercial, ever!

By the way, the inspiration for this commercial was the famous children's book illustrator Water Crane's painting, Neptune's Horses. Neptune,  of course, was the ruler of the sea and in his second identity, as Neptune Equester, he served as the patron saint of horses in Roman mythology. He was supposed to protect all the horses in the chariot races. I've always loved this painting.

If you have a slow connection and you're having trouble seeing any horses in the Guinness commercial, try toggling the stop and play button, and leave the screen alone for a while to see if perhaps YouTube needs to load. You can also click on the lower right of the YouTube screen on the blog and the video will open in YouTube and it might play at a better resolution. This video was made in the last century so it is not HD.

21 June 2010 | The First Day of Summer | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com 

 © Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing

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