Give Patrick Carney Some: Doritos

You probably know drummer Patrick Carney as half of the Black Keys, the acclaimed Akron, Ohio, duo he formed in 2001 with guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach. But Carney has been equally prolific with his own ventures, including Audio Eagle (his record label and recording studio) and now Drummer (a band featuring four other Ohio skinsmen that just released Feel Good Together). Carney, the nephew of multi-instrumentalist Ralph Carney (Tom Waits, They Might Be Giants), always seems to have a lot going on, including Blakroc (a Black Keys project with rappers such as Jim Jones, Mos Def, Q-Tip, RZA and Ludacris with an album due next month) and a Black Keys New Year’s Eve show in Chicago. Carney will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.

Carney: I know somebody who works in marketing for Frito-Lay. She’s fairly high up there on the totem pole, and amongst her very important responsibilities is, when filming a commercial, locating and isolating the perfect, most photogenic Dorito. Her search can consume hundreds of bags; that’s thousands of Doritos, natch. After sorting through case after case of imperfect, broken, unworthy chips, she finally comes up with a small handful of supermodel Doritos. But what makes these Doritos so perfect? Just because Frito-Lay likes their chips to be perfectly symmetrical with powder evenly distributed, are those really my favorite Doritos? Who’s to say that that is what makes a Dorito perfect? When you open a bag of Doritos, you’re not looking for the Gisele Bündchen of chips; you want that broken-ass Dorito sliver at the bottom of the bag that’s been soaking in everyone else’s processed cheese powder, right? You want that fat little imperfect Dorito that curled up on itself while cooking (is that how they make Doritos—they’re cooked?) or the one that’s stuck to the back of the other Dorito, creating some kind of two-headed Super Dorito. Maybe this is why I don’t feel like Dorito commercials speak to me as a consumer. Maybe if the commercials spent less time worrying about the most perfectly formed Dorito and spent more time focusing on the good Doritos—the little malformed circus freak ones you know you like more—then we’d all give in to their extreme flavors and over-the-top cheesiness that much more willingly. Just a thought, Frito-Lay. Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDyJgy7Rq7g