So I'm watching TeeVee and this guy comes on the screen
I hear his voice and look up and recognize the face but can't place him. I rewind a few seconds on my Tivo and watch again. Who is this guy!
I do this five or six times before Julie looks at me like I'm nuts and I realize that I've been watching an Outback Steakhouse commercial over and over again mesmerized by its "star."
I step back for a second and think about the known quanitities:
- The guys is male
- He seems to have an Australian accent
- Perhaps he is a comedian
So I Google Ausralian comedian. Nothing. I Google actor Outback Steakhouse commercial. I dig through the results and nothing. I look up from the search results and stare into the paused eyes on my television staring at me, challenging me to recognition.
Nothing...
I'm desperate. My sleuthing skills have failed me. I resort to actually visiting the "Outback Steakhouse homepage"http://www.outbacksteakhouse.com/. Those bastards taunt me with video of their entire new ad campaign highlighting this familiar bastard whose name eludes me.
Bastard!
I dig for his name and still nothing. I'm on my last leg (I ate the other one) and do the unthinkable: I click Contact and write the following message to the Outback Steakhouse Inc.:
Who is the actor in your new commercials? Thanks!
(Time passes)
Six hours later (good response time, eh?) Mail.app dings. Teehee, I have mail! I've been yearning for a little diversion. Who is this Nancy e-mailing me? Is it spam?
Thank you for your interest in Outback Steakhouse Inc. The actor/comedian that appears in our ads is Jemaine Clement.
Have a bonzer day!
Outback Steakhouse Inc.
A what? Nevermind that. I have the information I've been craving. I race over (that's a generous description of the process) to IMBD and pop this new name in the search box. Jermaine Clement eh? Who could this be. Load page... LOAD!!!!!
Ok. So there's no picture. Reading.... Words... Aha! He's one half of New Zealand's Flight of the Conchords who I just learned about at SXSW.
Wowsa do I have a bad memory! The Conchords sure are funny though so check 'em out. They put on a mighty good show at Emo's once the equipment worked.
Now wasn't that anticlimactic?
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Who is this guy?
that's the bliss of the whole thing...we don't need to waste our memory with unimportant stuff since it's out there somewhere for us to access. sorta like the universal mind or something. i just wonder what we'll do when global warming reduces us to living in the wild again. just die, i guess. and if i can't have google and a gonzer day, who wants to live anyway?
ooh! ooh! wade, will you come live with us in the wild?! I've been thinking about that day lately, and it seems so lonely! we can reminisce over random memories, those days of yore, when we had that new fangled invention called TeeVee (as sam so quaintly referred to it!) :)
I thought I was going to pee on myself when I saw that Outback commercial. I was dying to kwon who he was but in the opposite way i caught the comedy show but never got his name. I was doing my searching when i found this blog......THANK GOD...........thanks for the info...
ok, but howabout this?? could he be the same guy that does the voice for the geico gecko??? someone please tell me!!!
Very interesting. I heard the audio at first and thought it was Mick Jagger. Then I saw the guy's face and thought perhaps he was one of Jagger's offspring.
Thank you so much. I was going crazy trying to find out who this guy is!! Moving on now.
Ok so I just basically had the exact same story as you, I've been trying to figure out the name of the band that the guy is in, and I googled all the things I could remember and had no luck, then I googled the outback commercials and ended up at their website and found the page that you spoke of with the taunting commercials that do not name their star, and finally I googled "outback steakhouse commercial guy" and this blog was the first thing on the list, so I clicked it and here I am, and you have just given me the exact information I was looking for. Thank you for helping me feed my craving as well.
I am googling myself (in a way) and I came across this page. I am the writer and art director of the mysterious outback commercial. Sadly they won't be using jemaine anymore, b/c he doesn't "sell steaks." I've since quit that agency. Thanks for the kind words.
Check out the new commercial they traded him in for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mvm6KfJDE0
First, that's awesome that Peter weighed in with the rest of the story. Second, what the hell is Outback doing ripping off Of Montreal? Or, gulp, did Of Montreal okay it?
Hope they get paid, either way.