We have questions about this three-year-old video of industrial cranes. And you are going to listen to us work through them (if you would like).
In November of 2012, Swiss equipment manufacturer Liebherr posted this video of a series of cranes being lifted by increasingly larger cranes, with a mere sentence (a threat, really) of explanation: "This is how you impress 2,000 of your best customers......."
I'll concede that maybe four of the pictured "best customers" look pretty impressed. Most of them look like they're squinting. But one man, one beautiful man in expensive sunglasses looks like he is sipping wine out of an actual wine glass while he watches the spectacle from the edge of a large dirt pit.
The easiest way to understand this man's riveting interior life is to try it on for size. Let's step into his skin, shall we?
Everyone should have the courage to live life like they're drinking wine at a crane-lifting exhibition.
I also dance like nobody's watching.
I understand myself. I am self-actualized.
Ha. Ha. If this gets picked up by the American media, will they refer to it as the ultimate claw crane game?
Do you get to keep the crane if you pick it up with the other crane?
Sips wine and thinks ruefully about the arcade industrial complex, gentrification, stereotypes of Europeans.
This would be a great drinking game. Drink every time you think of a crane pun.
Weapons of mass construction!
Ugh.
Man drinks deeply, heartily, and sighs a deep sigh of development mogul ennui.
Do these crane operators have girlfriends that they'll present the cranes they win to, like we're at an arcade?
Will the cranes sit on their shelves like so many teddy bears from so many first dates at diners with crane games?
All the world is a reminder of failed romance.
And this time, it's not even a date trying to impress you. It's a corporation.
Man vows to power hour this bottle of wine, in order to combat the uncontrollable melancholy brought on by remembering his first date at an arcade.
Unlike the cranes, I couldn't get that relationship off the ground.
Cranes establish a building's solid foundation, something Jennifer and I never had.
Man swills the last dregs of imported Trader Joe's three-dollar Merlot and hums the chorus to Demi Lovato's "Skyscraper," an ode to recovery and to building materials.
But ultimately, BECAUSE of the pain, BECAUSE of the heartbreak, I grew stronger, just like these ever-bigger cranes have done.
Ultimately I AM the skyscraper.
The man starts dancing right then and there, like nobody is watching, and makes a promise to himself.
I am rising from the ground. I will love like I've never been hurt.
Note: Revisit this post in 2018 when we discuss how the pictured 10-year-old boy managed to become a "best customer" of a construction company.
Liebherr's second specialty is refrigeration, so hopefully their next promotional video will be of a nesting doll of increasingly small and increasingly cold freezer units.