NIKE "BEAR BUTTE RUNNING CLUB" VIDEO

Turn off the video, and it sounds like a typical boring documentary on running. But with the pictures, whoa Nellie! It's like that Saturday Night Live skit with Rob Schneider, the Sensitive Naked Man, in which the character seems oblivious to the fact that he's nude and that that might be a problem for some of us. In this Nike clip, everyone at the Bear Butte Running Club is buck naked, but no one seems to notice. Instead, they talk in a rather deadpan manner about "really getting back to basics" and "natural running." Somehow, Nike persuaded runners like David Olds and Lauren Fleshman (yes, that's her real name) to go au naturale for the sake of a few laughs. In case you don't get the joke, a clothed Nike pitchwoman shows up late in the video and describes the company's Nike Free 5.0 shoes as "completely naked ... uh, natural" and then turns all sorts of colors when a runner (whose privates are obscured by the shoe in an angle from her point of view) asks if they come in a size 15. The video reveals the naked truth about Nike: The company isn't as humorless as many of us thought.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman