New Years' Resolutions for people who desperately need them, courtesy of the Commercial Curmudgeon

The NFL:  Stop focusing on the celebrations, please.  Watching a multimillionaire pose and flex his muscles every time he does what he was paid to do isn't entertaining.  I swear that fifty percent of the replays are of pomping and posing rather than actually playing.

NBC:  Your intro to "Football Night in America" (WTF-ever) redefines the term "overblown."  First of all, all the fireworks and crowd reactions and laser shows and appearences by Carrie Underwood in the world will never be enough to convince anyone that whatever game you were handed this week is the freaking Superbowl.  Second, nobody in the history of the universe has ever uttered the phrase "I just can't wait till Sunday Night."  Never.  Ever.  Ever.

MLB.com;  Two things.  First, stop it with the horrible-pun headlines.  Seriously, they suck and aren't even forehead-slapping entertainment.  They are usually so painfully bad that I can imagine the writer groaning but being forced to go with it because MLB.com demands that every headline have a pun.  We aren't children.  We don't need puns.  Yours are just rank.  Stop.  Please.

Second- Derek Jeter is retired.  That means you really need to stop inserting him into stories which have no logical connection to Derek Jeter.  That six month sloppy Valentine you gave him in 2014 was a painful experience that you insisted we share, but we got through it, and now it's time to move on.  So the next time someone bumps into Derek Jeter in a restaurant and wins $2 on a scratch-off ticket a week later, don't try to sell us another Magic of Jeter story, ok?  It's over.  Done.  MOVE ON.

Wendy's:  Time to retire Red.  Seriously, enough already.  Let's move on to the next marketing idea.  In real life, Red would be fifty pounds overweight and be on meds for severe high blood pressure and Type 2 Diabetes, not a cute, slim, energetic little hottie.

Progressive: Time to retire Flo.  She was never interesting as the ghostly-pale (she makes vampires look like they just got back from Bermuda) spokeschoad inhabiting a windowless, glowing-white virtual world insurance store.  Now that you've got her out and about- fishing, riding motorcycles, and (good lord whose idea was this) singing I can say you've jumped the shark with her, turned the boat around, and jumped it again.  Put her on the unemployment line behind Red, please.

Verizon:  Wow, where to start?  First, I know I complain about cellphone ads which show people obsessed with texting and talking and streaming.  But I'd rather have those than your stupid still shots of people jumping around with face-absorbing smiles because you offer them a way out of their contracts if they SWITCH FOR NO GOOD REASON RIGHT NOW.  It's bad enough that every phone ad suggests that Our Phones Are Our Lives.  Showing people throwing confetti around because they switched data plans- come on.   We aren't that sad.

Lexus, Audi, and BMW:  I know the economy is getting better, but 99 percent of us will never be in the market for one of your cars, and the one percent who are don't need these commercials to convince them to purchase a LookAtMeMobile.  Which means that the only reason you even make these commercials is to piss us off.  Why?  What did we ever do to you?

McDonalds:  If you are going to show people hoisting enormous hamburgers on tv, you should start actually selling enormous hamburgers in your restaurants.  The food in your ads bear no resemblence to anything one can buy at a McDonalds. Not that I would buy food at a McDonalds anyway.  McDonalds is good for one thing- coffee.

Geico:  A whole lot, and I'm not even going to snark on the lizard because he's actually the least offensive thing you've got going.  I don't see the moron tag team with their "happier than a camel on hump day" bit anymore, but that ad with seriously brain-damaged "adults" yelling "what day is it" at camels in the zoo?  That's a thousand times more horrible because I can totally see people doing that (because most people are rock-stupid hicks.)  Please stop making ads which suggest that people who are already vapid morons act like even bigger vapid morons for our viewing pleasure in the real world.  Because I swear I am going to hurt someone in 2015, and it's going to be your fault.

Every Company on the Planet:  For the love of G-d please please please make 2015 the year you stop trying to convince us that everyone in the United States lives in a palace.  This year, show us families living in modest homes rather vast, cavernous mansions.  Show us single people living in apartments instead of million-dollar suburban spreads.  Stop showing us people with bathrooms and rec rooms twice the size of my apartment.  And most of all, get over the idea that the interior of every house is supposed to glow white as if it's scrubbed every few hours by a cleaning crew larger than the average college football bench.  My irises can't take another year of that, seriously.

Salt-N-Pepa's response to learning "Where Are They Now?' MTV docs don't come with an honorarium

Actually, if you're Salt-N-Pepa, you recognize that you haven't had a hit since the mid-90s, you just got one of those dreaded "Icon" awards (which, like an "Achievement" award on Oscar night, is basically an acknowledgement that your time has come and gone and we don't really expect to ever hear from you again,) and royalties don't pay the mortgage like you thought they would.

So if you're Salt-N-Pepa, you pick up a few extra dollars making total asses of yourself, making fun of your stupid theme song (whose popularity is a great symbol of the bloated crapfest that was Music in the 1990s) for the insurance company that simply can not stop bombarding us with rock-stupid advertising.

The wrong people have money burning holes in their pockets

The guy in this ad has a fricking MacBook, but it takes him all of 20 seconds to get sold on a crummy SurfaceProWTF-Ever-- "I think I like the SurfacePro3....no really, where can I get one?"

Tell you what, buddy- I'll hop on over to BestBuy, pick up a SurfacePro3, and trade it to you for your Suddenly Not Good Enough For You MacBook.  Jagoff.

Another Jared "Buy Her With This" Ad

Dan needs a diamond that will convince Julie to have sex with him and only him for the rest of her life- or until Dan finds someone younger, prettier and even more insecure and vulnerable than Julie, at which time Dan will dump Julie for that younger, prettier and even more insecure and vulnerable girl- and Jared is the place to go for that kind of flypaper.  I mean, just check out the larger than life diamond!

Once Jared has helped Dan pick out just the right ancient rock with which to guilt/bribe Julie into giving up her personality and last name to become Dan's dishwasher, handmaiden and babymaker, Dan takes Julie out to a nice restaurant and lets her know that if she wants the dinners out and dancing and weekend trips to the beach and jewelry to keep coming, she's going to have to ditch everything that makes her Julie and become Mrs. Dan.   Because this is a jewelry commercial, of course Julie says Yes, because hey she's almost 25 and being your own person is Really Hard and Dan isn't all that repulsive and gotta marry someone after all.

Dan gave her the ring with all his heart but with a little less money in the bank than before he went to Jared, but that's ok because Julie has accepted the Token That Says She's Taken.  This is supposed to be sweet or something.  I'm way too bitter to get it.

You've been warned

If I see just one more commercial featuring a guy who lives in a house featuring a living room twice the size of my apartment, I'm going to have to hurt someone.

Seriously, you'd think that just once television would take a break from convincing me that the average American makes $300,000 a year and lives in a palace with a seperate garage for the family Lexus.  I get it, television.  I'M POOR!  Now stop reminding me, please!

I'll be getting a tie and maybe an Amazon Gift Card for Christmas....

...but this little snot with a direct line to Santa can ask for video games and freaking CARS and get virtual guarantees that hey, no problem, you've been a good kid for a number of years in a row so...., you want computer-assisted parallel parking with that?

What the hell universe am I living in, and where's the freaking exit?

Wait till Mom opens her nice box of Therapy Sessions

It's kind of refreshing to see a commercial featuring Deranged Lunatic Mom rather than Clueless Doofus Dad for a change.  Still, while Clueless Doofus Dad is generally a harmless character we expect to see in every other ad, the occassional appearance of Deranged Lunatic Mom is always a little jarring.  I mean, she's always so....deranged.

This woman is supposed to be so sadly techno-addled that she has to "direct" Christmas morning, letting her family know that they aren't showing enough emotion, or need to turn their head this way or that, etc.--- in real life, the kids would just agree to plug their ears while Dad told Mom what she could do with her suffocating micromanagement of the present-opening ritual.  We are finally let in on the "joke" when she actually brings in a double for her husband ( I guess, I'm not really sure I know what's going on here.)

Lost in all this bs is the fact that the family is opening one expensive electronic toy after another (including a tricked-out watch that was wrapped turned on, without it's box) revealing it to be yet another super-priveleged, overindulged collection of one-percenters we really can't relate to.  Maybe I should be grateful that Lunatic Mom distracts me from this just a little.  I'm not.

So.....who went out to get the KFC Bucket of Death?

(Before I begin- please, again, note that at the end of the commercial, the bucket of fried crap is completely full despite the fact that this family of four is eating chicken and has more on their plates....KFC has never been good at logic or continuity....)

Somehow this guy got himself a wife, a family, and the kind of gigantic house everyone in tv land lives in, but he's too stupid to know that you don't drag a tree through a door top first ( I mean, seriously, what kind of brain damage do you have to even TRY to do it that way? Has anyone involved in writing tv commercials ever brought a tree into their own house?  What the hell?)

Naturally wife moans "oh no" before he even tries to bring the tree in- hell, before she even gets a chance to see it.  Because that "oh no" means "my husband's a brainless jackass who does stupid things, a black Clark Griswold if you will, so if he says he's found 'the one' and is beaming with delight, this means trouble...."

And yet, when the family sits down to consume their bucket of greasy, life-shortening, artery-clogging crud, the tree is decorated and looks awesome, which makes me kind of wonder what the "oh no" was all about- except that it's a commercial and Dad has to look stupid, it's the law after all.  WTF-ever, television.

Quick note concerning the first twenty seconds of this Buick ad

1.  The Valet Monkey is trying way too hard to find this fricking car.  He's running up and down the parking lot muttering "Buick...Buick....Buick...." as if his life depends on getting it to the douchenozzle Eurotrash couple waiting for it inside of thirty seconds.  I guess his entire salary is tips?

2.  Why doesn't he just use the freaking carfinder on the keys right away?  Seems to me that they'd teach this in Valet Monkey 101.

3.  Why does Eurotrash Dickwad need to ask for his Buick anyway?  The way he and TrophyWife are sneering at Valet Monkey, it looks like it must be an entire twenty feet away.  Is it a We Ate at a Restaurant With Valet Service so Damn It We're Going To Use It?

4.  If you don't want to punch Unshaven Eurotrash "It's the Buick" scumbucket in his self-satisfied face, you are a far better person than I am.  He and TrophyWife both.  Assholes.

Jan is a pink slip away from wall to wall coverage on CNN, in my opinion

"Ahh, the bold new Camry..." Oh shut up, Jan.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for you wax nostalgic over a brand new freaking car.

"So you've driven it?"  Um, no, jackass, "it's a blast to drive" is just something salespeople say to get you to buy the car.  They think it's "a blast to drive" because that's what it says in the sales manual.  Like when I managed a video rental store and told people that Weekend At Bernies was a light-hearted, laugh-filled avalanche of wackiness.  It's just something we sales-liars say.

Anyone else think that Jan enjoys her gig at the Toyota dealership way, way too much?  I mean, I bet she wasn't even asked by management to wear that stupid hat.  I bet she just slapped it on the day after Thanksgiving.

I appreciate people who like their jobs.  But I don't appreciate people who act as if they'd respond to being laid off by going home, assembling an arsenal of automatic weapons, and returning to shoot up their former place of employment.  Jan looks like she really can't imagine Life After Being a Chirpy Shill for Toyota.

Same goes for Flo, by the way.  At this point, I doubt Progressive would dare to fire her.  At best, she'd become Bartelby, responding to requests to leave with "I would prefer not to."  At worst- well, I think we've already covered the Worst Case Scenerio, haven't we?

(oh, and BTW- anyone else seriously doubt that this dealership really let Jan take this car "out for a spin" in the desert like that?  Why would they do such a thing?  I think Jan needs to break away from her sad, Toyota-centered dream world, don't you?)

BMW decides to pile on this holiday season....

These are the toys that come from "Santa's Other Workshop"- because cheap Chinese junk is fine for the masses, but Santa knows what the one percent wants this Christmas.  It's the same thing they want every Christmas: Everything.

Because Santa can't actually deliver Everything, he'll drop by with a brand new BMW for the Last People On Earth Who Actually Deserve Stuff Like This right after he leaves Johnny Almost The Bike He Asked For and a note explaining to Suzie why he couldn't quite manage to fit those Boots Without Holes she really, really wanted into his magic sack.

Have I ever told you how much I really, really hate this time of year on television?

The geography of this Jeep commercial is suspicious

"When you're a pampered, self-centered Eurotrash douchenozzle with a model trophy wife, it can be hard to find the true spirit of Christmas from the warmed seat of your Jeep.  Even looking down your nose at the Not Nearly Good As You masses as they hussle about trying to make a buck- the pathetic little peons, some of them even try to get by with part-time gigs as Santa Claus, makes you think about what it's like not to be among the one percent- for a few moments, anyway."

"Best thing to do is just get away from it all- because you can.  Take your disgusting selves out of the city and it's huddled masses of People Who Are Not You and find a convenient mountain right next door with a Christmas tree which has been placed there and decorated Just For You and take in the Northern Lights which whip and flicker for no other reason except You Want Them Too and after all It's All About You Jackasses."

"Then stand there looking at the tree and the lights and each other and remind yourselves how awesome it is to be So Very Much Better Than Pretty Much Everyone Else on the Planet.  As if that's necessary."

Ummmm....how does this babysitter keep her job?

I'm sure there have been enough incidents to convince Mommy to fire her....maybe she's a little too cute for Daddy to let go of?  Just a thought.....

I mean, this smoke/carbon monoxide detector doesn't do EVERYTHING- if the obnoxious brats this girl is supposed to be watching are drowning each other in the bathtub, it won't yell clueless teen girl into getting off the couch, will it?  One of the kids is "really into fireworks"- but she figures as long as no smoke is being detected, she can continue watching tv and doing a YouTube video about the awesomeness of Nest Detectors?  Does she have an explanation for the parents and the police when Trevor blows his fingers off or fires one of his little rockets into his sister's face, blinding her for life?

I suppose this is a fairly useful product for the average tv family which of course is living in a vast, gleaming-white suburban mansion (it wouldn't do anything for me- if there's a fire in my apartment, chances are I'll know it before the detector does.)  But if I lived in one of these houses and installed one of these systems, I don't think I'd let the babysitter know about it.  Especially this babysitter, who sees it as a "oh good I can just ignore the kids if anything happens this thing will let me know before the damage gets TOO bad" excuse to nap while earning $10 an hour.*

*I have no idea how much babysitters make these days.  I suppose I could have asked a few of my students, but that would be doing research, and as I've mentioned many times in the past, I'm not getting paid for this gig.  So $10 an hour it is.

Infiniti Q50 commercial gets Karma wrong

So let me see if I understand this ad:

Infantile rich jackass lusts over black Infiniti.  Being Infantile, he notices a guy volunteering for the Salvation Army and decides "hey, maybe if I'm nice to this old man, somehow that will translate into me getting my childish, selfish wants fulfilled.  Worth a shot!"

So this guy blows an entire $1.86 on a cup of coffee at Starbucks and hands it to the Salvation Army guy.  There's no dialogue, so we can't know if he shared his Stunningly Self-Absorbed Christmas Wish with the guy (maybe "so.....I did something nice for you, can I have a $40,000 car now?")  But that doesn't matter- the guy believes this man is Santa, and if Santa sees us when we're sleeping and knows when we're awake, he doesn't need to be told that we are fantasizing about owning a new car.

We do know is that he notes a tear in "Santa's" jacket and proceeds to follow "Santa"  to "Santa's" luxury apartment and spend all of five minutes sewing it up.

At this point, let's remember that this guy's actions are all clearly being dictated by "If I'm nice to this guy, he'll get me that car."  Very important that we keep that in mind.

Next thing we know, rich guy is running out of his multi-million dollar suburban palace to  find his Christmas present- sure enough, "Santa" was REAL and decided to reward a few dollars of charity and a few minutes of attention with a $40,000 car.  Because Santa is every bit as big a dickwad as rich guy.

I mean, think about it- people all over the world perform random acts of kindness every single day, without any thought of immediate or future reward, Just Because.  Then there are the people who struggle with illness or poverty of their own, or that of a loved one, who want nothing more than for that illness or poverty  to go away.  For pretty much all of them, Christmas will come and go with no obvious reward.  But this manipulative dicktard basically bribes Santa for an hour or so, and gets an intensely juvenile Want fulfilled.  Just like that.  Heartwarming, huh?

BTW, the only way this whole mess results in actual Karma is if the jackass unsatisfied with his gilded life and multimillion-dollar house who managed to buy Santa gets into a horrible accident the very first time he takes his LookAtMeMobile out for a spin.  A horrible accident that leaves him disfigured, crippled, dead broke- and in desperate need for the prayers and best wishes of people who are nowhere near as loathsomely juvenile as he is.  THAT'S Karma, Infiniti.  Glad I could help.

Buick's Depresssing Salute to Black Friday

See, this ad is "funny" because Neighbor #1 just got back from Black Friday shopping and somehow got a black eye for his troubles.  What we are supposed to gather from this is that another customer didn't like the way Neighbor #1 was reaching for that particular object at Best Buy, punched him in the face, and took it instead.  Because it's the season to be jolly, and all that, I guess.

Neighbor #2 has so much empathy for Neighbor #1 that he responds by showing off HIS Black Friday purchase- a new Buick.  At which point, I'm going to snap out of my "how sad is it that the violence associated with Black Friday Hysteria Shopping is being celebrated here" mood and switch to "I would be perfectly ok if Neighbor #1 gave Neighbor #2 a black eye of his own because jeesh, what a pompous jerk...."

I won't even comment that most car commercials regularly show people acting as if every day is Black Friday at the dealership- rushing in to "claim" cars, practically knocking people out of the way to get the "best" ones, as if there's a limited quality available.  I'm too busy going back into Depressed that the period between Thanksgiving afternoon and the following Saturday has become a kind of Hunger Games for consumers is now considered normal.  Yet really wishing that Neighbor #1 would leave Neighbor #2 flattened in front of his suburban palace, sprawled grotesquely beside his beautiful new Buick.  I guess I'm kind of conflicted about this one.

Audi's salute to a city filled with douchenozzles, I guess

Judging from this ad, Raleigh is some magical place where everyone makes $500,000 a year, lives in a suburban mansion, and drives a massive LookAtMeMobile to Very Important Places which are Very Important because they are pretty people with pretty cars who have places to go (casually, of course.)

As far as I am concerned, it's a magical place which can't be obliterated by a meteor quickly enough.  Hell, I'd take a fast-moving plague if a meteor isn't available.  We could even agree to bury these pigs in their f---ing cars.

"See mom, I'm not wasting my life playing Xbox! I'm 'winning!'"

"Let me tell you something you already know"- ummm, why, exactly?

"Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows"- is that really what you wanted to tell me?  If the answer is "yes," then you're right- I already knew that.  Everyone over the age of two already knows that.

"It's not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit," blah blah blah already horribly cliche'd clips from Rocky Balboa which has nothing to do with this ad since nobody sitting their fat butts down and playing stupid video games is either hitting or taking hits.....

"This is what winning is" -- or something like that, I'm not watching this awfulness any more times than I actually have to.  Winning is playing XBox? Um, whatever- I don't see a whole lot of "winning" going on here, unless being an adult and spending money on a stupid, time-consuming toy is what "winning" means nowadays ( I actually don't doubt it.)

Home Depot just broke the Wasteful Consumption meter

I get that ramping up the electricity usage is just something that gets done this time of year- December is "to hell with the bill, to hell with the planet, let's just wrap miles of bulbs around everything and crank up the juice" month.  It's "we won't be satisfied until our house can be seen from space" month.  It's "let's see if we can use so much electricity that we crash the grid or at least melt every bit of snow off our lawns" month.

But this family- good lord, they actually created a sign screaming CHEER for their living room?  What the HELL for?  What kind of lunatic actually does something which screams "Be Happy Dammit, Or Else," let alone does it exclusively for his own family?

Reminds me of that blinking billboard in the classic film Flash Gordon- "All Citizens Will Make Merry Upon Pain of Death."  Jeesh, people- it's bad enough that you are going to consume more fossil fuels in one month than the average not-insane-with-conspicious-consumption-fever uses in a decade.  You have to burn out your eyeballs with gaudy, silent demands INSIDE as well as outside?

Ok- cute or not, this girl's time is up, AT&T

Once this woman finished explaining to the stupid knob customer how easy it will be for him to waste his life fooling around on his new phone with it's awesome gigs plan (WTF-ever, 21st century) it was really time for this commercial to be over.  Buy this phone and this deal, and you never have to have a conversation with an organic life form ever again.  Message received.  Over and Out.

Naturally, AT&T could not let it go before adding an Exclamation Point of Dumb, however.  So we get this other jackass who hasn't noticed that there are fifteen people waiting to be pandered to and told where to sign hundreds of dollars a month away on a stupid toy and instead decides to try to steal Cute AT&T Girl's sale away from her with a little attempt at levity which- I don't want to be overly harsh here- really ought to get him bludgeoned to death in an alley on Christmas Eve.*

New Year's Resolution AT&T- let's move on from this.  This girl is easy to look at but you've run out of plausible things for her to say.  Do something revolutionary and actually end an ad campaign before we are tearing our hair out with bored despair whenever one of your stupid commercials comes on, and a girl who went from being a  Very Pleasant Break from Flo to Oh Her Again finishes up at Oh God I Never Want To See This Person Where's the Damn Remote Make It Stop.   Please.

More comments on this classic Kay Jewelers ad

I commented on this ad produced for My First Crush* way back in 2009- I don't think I was even embedding at the time- but I thought it deserved another go-around (and since I'm not being paid to do this blog, I don't mind repeating myself from time to time.  I mean, I'm not ripping off anyone.  And based on the hit counter, it's hard to imagine anyone noticing anyway.  So maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned that I've done this commercial already...

Anyway, this poor woman has apparently accepted the idea that her husband's father is going to be moving in- she's got the chilling family portait (featuring the Patriarch Hovering Over All) out of storage to be displayed so that when he shows up, he'll think it's always been there.  She's got this resigned "well, maybe he won't live very long" look on her face.  She makes some odd comment about their daughter needing a new pair of headphones- five years later I still don't know what that means- does Grampa shout a lot?  Does he play the television too loud?  Did Mom just discover Grampa's collection of Dean Martin CDs?  What?

"Thanks for making our home, His Home" says her husband, who deep down probably wishes that his wife had put her foot down and said No because he couldn't.

"This IS his home" she replies.  Well, I guess that's supposed to be sweet.  Again, all I hear is resignation, perhaps mixed with despair and sherry.  At least it's not 1955 and Mom probably works outside the home so she doesn't have to vacuum around the old guy's splayed-on-the-living-room-couch snoring (is THAT why daughter needs headphones?)

And then she gets the payoff- a piece of crap jewelry.  If I were her, I'd make sure that jewelry kept coming- or better yet, was eventually upgraded to an Audi.  A "diamond" pennant from Kay Jewelers for turning your perfectly-sized home over to Grampa?  Jeesh, what's next- a night out at the Olive Garden?

*Jane Seymour wasn't actually my first crush. That would be Linda Kaye from Petticoat Junction.  And when Seymour's character got killed off after the pilot for Battlestar Galactica, I didn't have much problem moving on to Phoebe Cates.  My heart was more flexible back then.

Well, today wasn't that bad. Until now.

If you are a pretty white person who has the time and money to wax poetic about how "great" today is while some black guy sings about it, yeah, today is pretty great.

My day was pretty great too, until you jackanapes invaded my tv screen.  Please stop making me wish for a Santa Claus And His Choice of Audis commercial.  Please.

For all the wrong reasons, Honda gives us a blast from the past

About half a dozen of these horrible Honda "remember when you were a kid and a simple toy could make you happy- you know, before you became an entitled douchebag who thinks CARS make good Christmas presents" commercials popped out of nowhere and on to my television a few days ago.  They are all very depressing, but this one is probably the worst, because it includes a really cool toy from the mid-1980s, otherwise known as the Decade When Everything That Makes Life Worth Living Peaked.

I mean, when you think about it, the 80s were the decade of The Cars and R.E.M. and Michael Jackson and Madonna in her cute Material Girl stage and the last decade until rap music invaded the airwaves and dumbed down music, apparently forever.  It was the last decade in which pretty much nobody had a cellphone- which meant you could be legitimately out of touch and have a conversation with someone without being interrupted by Someone More Interesting On Their iPhone.  It was the last decade without the internet, the last decade without 24/7 "news," and the last decade in which we didn't fight a single war for no clear reason in the Middle East.  It was the decade in which the real Star Wars Trilogy wrapped up and we had no idea that Lucas would go insane and ruin it with CGI recuts and three god-awful crap "prequels" later.  It was the decade in which Democrats and Republicans could get together to fix Social Security and grant amnesty to undocumented workers.

It was the decade of Danger Mouse and miniature GI Joe Action Figures and Zelda II (if you had an inside girl at Waxie Maxie's- and I did.)  And it was the decade of He Man and Skeletor as toys, not as lame-ass spokesjokes for Honda.  (From almost ruling Eternia to this- man have you fallen far, Skeletor!)

"Remember when you wanted me for Christmas?"  Well, no- but I remember when my nephew did.  Neither he nor I grew up to imagine getting Hondas for Christmas, but I bet we'd both appreciate a cool He-Man toy in our stockings.

I need help with this NFL Commercial

Can someone explain to me why I should give a flying damn about this woman and her Vikings Steelers Giants Whoever family?

I mean, how could this possibly have any impact on me at all?  I'm a Patriots fan who used to be married to a Buffalo Bills fan (I lived in the Buffalo area during the four years in which that team perfected the art of losing the Superbowl, failing by a larger margin each time.)  I rooted for the Bills (the Pats stank at the time) but never became a fan.  My wife remained a big Bills fan.  The rest of my family, and hers?  Couldn't care less.  Because jeeesh- it's football, not a freaking religion.

And it's not like a Red Sox fan marrying a Yankee fan- I mean, that would be too much, of course.

So can someone explain this to me?  Please?

The North Pole would love to provide a health care plan, but the boss's daughter wants a new Lexus, so....

Ok, as near as I can figure it, the guy in this ad (who bears a striking resemblence to Santa Claus) works hard in a brutal sweatshop in some Northern climate (Siberia?) doing work which has become automated in most of the civilized world.  (I'm not actually sure that giant wheels have been turned by humans since the 15th century- outside of a Conan The Barbarian movie, that is.)

Anyway, this fat bearded guy is so ungrateful for the job some benevolent factory owner "gave" him that he's constantly pulling this whiny "oh my poor back" bit, until every other employee on the floor gets it, your back hurts, oh boo hoo Don't You Know There Are People Who Don't Have Any Jobs At All Get Back To Your Wheel.*

Finally, three ghosts visit the factory owner (they find him at his winter palace in Vail) and convince him that he's being too hard on his employees (especially the elderly ones with bad taste in clothes.)  So he decided that yes, it's time to provide a health care plan.  Thus, the bottle of Aleve.

Did I figure this right?

*Are we supposed to find it heartwarming that Santa pops a pill and gets right back to cranking out crap for spoiled kids? I have a better idea for an old man who is doing work which is causing him constant pain- STOP DOING THAT WORK.  And a bottle of Aleve?  F--K THAT!  Fill out a Worker's Comp form and get an attorney!

Even the cute AT&T girl can't save this one

The guy who posted this banal garbage to the internet goes by the name "NoMoreBoredom."  Wow- it didn't take much, did it?  Some jokes just write themselves.

This ad isn't funny.  It's not even remotely amusing.  It's actually head-to-desk rock-stupid and more than a little insulting.  And I may be overreacting here, but I really wish that everyone involved in it's making would just apologize, swear off any career involving cameras, and crawl under a rock.   And die.

Nothing funny here.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.

Audi brings the pain, right on time

Yeah, because the guy who takes the temporary Santa gig at the local mall is SO in the market for a new Audi.  I'm sure the other people in the crowd include your average Starbucks barrista, High School teacher, metro bus driver, and grocery store cashier.  All running down the street, trying to catch up to the truck delivering Audis, so they can be told where to sign away half their monthly take-home pay for the next four years.

Seriously, bite me, Audi.

This guy can date this girl, and I'M going to be alone Saturday night? I'm not buying it, Taco Bell

1.  The girl in this ad is really cute, yet her "new boyfriend" looks like he's just rolled out of a dumpster, wearing the same clothes he put on in October.

2.  Dad sees that New Boyfriend has his hands full, yet offers to shake hands.  Does he expect New Boyfriend to just drop the food on the ground, because

3.  Girl doesn't make any effort to take some of his food so he can shake Dad's hand.  I guess she expects New Boyfriend to drop the food on the ground too?

4. I know this is kind of repetitive, but why is this girl with this guy?  Oh right, I forgot- because guys write these ads.

(oh, BTW- January 1 will mark the sixth anniversary of this blog, and this marks my 1500th post.  Wow, who would have thought there were so MANY bad commercials out there....I really thought I would do this for a week or so and run out of material....)

The greasy stuff does help clear nasal passages a bit. I'll give you that, Vicks

I've always thought that commercials for Nyquil and Dayquil were amongst the most hilarious and dishonest on television.  They always show people looking like they are on their deathbeds, coughing and sneezing and aching, etc.  Then they pop this pill or gag down a cup of this glowing green mostly-alcohol "medicine," and five minutes later they are off fighting fires or directing traffic or taking down terrorists or winning gold medals.  Please.

I mean, come on.  If this Nyquil junk works at all, it's as a sleep aid- I've noticed that if I gulp down half a bottle or so before bedtime, I can pass out pretty quickly and sleep through the night.   When I wake up, I'll have another day of coughing and sneezing and achiness to look forward to- but at least I got some sleep.  That's if I take Nyquil.  If I take Dayquil with my coffee in the morning, I suppose it adds a couple of calories to my breakfast but that's it- I'd call the weirdly transparent little gelcaps a placebo, except that placebos are kind of supposed to make you feel better.  Dayquil doesn't qualify.

So whichever monster pharmaceutical company that produces this stuff?  Please, stop insulting my intelligence.  There's nothing miraculous about the healing powers of alcohol and bad artificial, gag-inducing flavoring.  Thanks for helping me get to sleep, but I'd sooner believe that Saint Blaise medal I found in a box of Cracker Jacks relieved my cold symptoms than this overpriced crap.

Wow- and I thought Flo was just a freakishly bad computer animation!

And it turns out I was wrong- this commercial proves that "Flo" is an actual human being who has not seen the sun since the Clinton Administration but has instead been "starring" in horrible insurance commercials waiting for that Sitcom offer that is apparently never coming.  My bad.

As for the people who are just blown away by the sight of Flo in the Flesh- well, not a whole lot going on in your lives, is there?  Personally, I'd be too busy being grossed out by this fishbelly-white, overexposed weirdo than thrilled to be in the same room with her, as you clearly are.  What the hell is the matter with you people?

And Flo?  Seriously, I'd rather watch a dozen AFLAC Duck Commercials in a row than learn that your contract has been picked up for another season of Progressive Knows How To Beat An Idea To Death Just As Much As Geico.  In other words, you've gone to seed.  A long time ago, actually.

Eat Like That Guy You Know- the one that has Type 2 Diabetes.

I have no idea why, at the end of this ad, we see the apparently athletic, fit White Guy eating disgustingly fatty, salty, totally devoid-of-nutritious value orange chees-y macaroni crud cooked up by the Black Guy From The Food Court.  Or why he was introduced playing with one of those little helicopter toys popular in the trendy electronics stores two years ago and then playing hackeysack like it's 1999.  Simply put, I have no idea what any of this has to do with eating life-shortening sludge.

Or why, if we knew a guy who ate like this, we would want to emulate him.  Any suggestions?

Warning: These Walmart Ads may be used to induce vomiting

I tried to find the brand new one with the grinning idiot who bleats "wait till FRIDAY? That's CRAZY" but it's ok that I didn't- it deserves it's own post anyway.

At first I thought this woman actually said "Thanksgiving HUG" but replayed it again and heard "Hub," which is just a little less horrible, but just barely.  This insane "say goodbye to your family and rush to Walmart before you are finishing digesting your turkey" message is made even worse by the chirpy delight this woman takes in telling us about it.

"We don't want you to miss these 'special events'-- hmm, the whole time I was growing up, 'special events' on Thankgiving meant eating walnuts, then playing touch football, then eating dinner, then watching football and cleaning and basically just enjoying eachother's company.  Then eating desert.

When did "jump into the car and head off to Walmart to push and shove your way through crowds of idiots" become more attractive than any of that?  Oh yeah- around the time society collapsed, I guess.

Hey, it could be worse- you could be one of those people saying goodbye to their families before dawn ON THANKSGIVING in order to make sure the shelves are stocked with Made in China crap so that the heirs of Sam Walton can earn a few more million to toss onto the pile.  If you are one of those Walmart employees, get there extra early and maybe there will be something nice in your store's "Contribute To Your Fellow Employees So They Have Enough To Eat" box.

To all of you on the corporate board at Walmart, from this nobody blogger:  there's a special ring in hell reserved for you loathsome, bloodsucking, soulless toads.  There just HAS to be.

Ameriprise and Tommy Lee Jones aren't speaking to me. Are they speaking to you?

For most of the people in this ad, the answer seems to be "yeah, maybe, if I don't add to the hundreds of thousands I already have in investments, and I don't cut back on the Aspen ski vacations."  I mean, none of these characters look like they are hurting at all.

For me, and for a growing number of Americans, the answer to "will I outlive my money" in retirement is "depends.  If I don't retire, the answer is no.  I won't outlive my money.  I'll just keep working and living off my paycheck until one day I simply don't wake up.  Then I 'win,' right?"

Or it's "no, I won't.  I don't make the salary that would allow me to put enough of it into retirement.  So just like the vast majority of working-class people since the dawn of the industrial age, all I really have to look forward to is work until I can no longer do it, followed by poverty until that day I simply don't wake up."

My question is, what does Tommy Lee Jones and this investment group want me to do about it?  Oh, right- absolutely nothing.  This commercial was not written for me.  It was written for people who have large amounts of disposable income at the end of every month who are spending it on luxuries instead of giving it to this investment group to play with.   Definitely NOT me.

It would be nice if the answer to Mr. Jones' question was something other than "take more of that extra money you have and put it into investments," because that's really not an option for an already huge and growing segment of the population.  How about "let's push Congress to write realistic tax law which shifts the burden to those who can most afford it and takes it off those who can least afford it (and who have been carrying that burden for more than thirty years now?")  How about "let's strengthen and expand Social Security so that it's more like a pension, recognizing that if we are going to have a permanent economy of stagnant wages we are going to have to do more to provide for the people we are denying the ability to save for themselves?"  Or maybe "let's adopt Socialized Medicine in recognition of the fact that the cost of medication is an enormous contributor to poverty in retirement?"

Any of those would be better answers for people who are forced to spend every penny of their paychecks than "invest more."  But I don't know why I expect anything other than this from advertising firms which believe that the answer to "my kids use too much data" is "get this unlimited data plan."  So my only response to Ameriprise's "invest more of what you don't have" advice is "which kidney should I sell?"

The game that crushed a thousand "Friend"ships?

I've personally been forced to "Unfriend" people on Facebook for their refusal to take a hint and stop "inviting" me to play this game, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

It's not the game in particular.  It's that I happen to think that video games are an enormous waste of time and best left in childhood.  No, I do NOT want commentary from "gamers" (cough-losers) insisting that apologize for daring to suggest that spending hours pretending to blow things up and be soldiers and conquer planets is a pathetically sad waste of a life- there are plenty of blogs out there celebrating "gaming" (cough-written by losers-cough) and anyone who wants to piss their lives away playing video games is perfectly free to do so.  I'm entitled to my opinion, you are entitled to yours.  It costs me nothing if you want to spend yours playing with a toy pretending to be someone or something else.  Go for it.

But after the hundredth or so "invite" from people who simply could not comprehend my refusal to respond, enough was enough.  So sorry I dropped your Friends counter a bit.  I wonder if you even noticed, or were to distracted by your idiot game?

"I'm so glad I married you instead of adopting you!"

"She's still the one for you" (because the babysitter won't give you the time of day.)

"And she reminds you every day" (that you live in a shared-property state and you'll lose half your wealth in the settlement if you let your eye wander a little too far.  Sorry, buddy- you bought her, you're keeping her.  Another divorce would just cost a bit too much.)

I know I've done this before- but seriously, could they please make just ONE Cialis commercial which features a guy who WASN'T born during the Kennedy Administration married to a woman who WASN'T born during Carter Administration?

I mean, I guess this is kind of a public service to the women out there- yeah, he's got money, yeah, he can give you a nice house- but guess what?  His libido is going to go long before yours is.  Better talk to your doctor about slipping these pills into his Metamucil- I mean, if you want to keep having sex with him, that is.

And hey, there's still all that money and that nice house.

Kate Upton Not Included

In the end, you've just wasted more of your life playing an intensely childish game in order to justify your purchase of an Android device.

And that part of your life you wasted? Guess what- it ain't coming back.  Sucker.

Yes, Android junkies. You have all the time in the world. And this is what you are doing with it?

1.  Never mind the barely-visible words.  Please, please, please, cellphone-addict losers- do attempt this.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?  Just make sure I'm not innocently walking along the street below.

2.  It's the easiest thing in the world for me to believe that a person falling to his death from a rooftop would spend the last few moments of his life looking at his cellphone.  Everyone wants to die with their loved ones nearby, after all.

This Nissan Ad gets a rerun, and another invitation to get the hell off my tv

I know I've posted on this horrible commercial already, but after vanishing (unwept and unsung) for several months, it's made a comeback in a big way- like, showing up during Every Freaking Break during Every Freaking College and NFL Football game, and plenty of times during the week as well. I don't know why it happened (other than the standard "G-d hates me" explanation) but I find it very hard to believe it's because of "popular demand."

Because I find it very hard to believe that people really like ads which remind them of the most douchenozzley thing people do with their cars- crank their stereos up and force every neighborhood they drive through to "spread their joy" (share their taste in music, whether we want to or not.)  So if we are sitting in an outdoor cafe, nothing makes us more joyful than dicktards with great sound systems?  How about if we live in a housing project- are we just sitting on our balconies waiting for some jackass to come by blasting 2 seconds of his music as he speeds by the interstate off-ramp which services our hovel?

(Or, far more commonly- if we live in a suburb, and he needs to let us know he's coming from six blocks away by showing off his awesome bass at three o'clock in the morning? Really?)

And is this guy just playing the same damn song over and over again, because sometimes he's on the highway and sometimes he's at stop signs- what the hell is his deal, anyway?

Acura breaks it's own pretention record

The actual product being offered shows up at the 37-second mark of this 60-second ad.  Which is actually not bad considering that T Mobile is currently producing ads which only incidentally show its product in the final three or four seconds of  60-second ads.

But even T Mobile can't manage this level of smothering self-importance.  This is Apple-level over-the-top indulgence.  Maybe the people who built this thing (it's a freaking CAR, for Chrissakes) are overwhelmed by their brilliance, but it's pretty damned obnoxious to expect us to be.  I'd tell Acura to get the hell over itself ("Made for Mankind?"  Then why aren't you giving these things away? Don't you really mean "Made for the One Percent?")  but considering that we are only a few weeks away from the Season of Red Ribbons Around Cars Which Make Great Christmas Gifts If You Have Money Falling Out Of Your Ass, it's hardly worth it.

CVS doesn't sell handguns, either. My world is coming to an end!

I can't even begin to express my disgust at this ad, which tells us everything that is wrong with American consumerism AND American "health" care.  What the HELL are PHARMACIES doing SELLING CIGARS IN THE FIRST PLACE????

"If your Drug Store has stopped stocking your favorite cigars...." GOOD!!!  Drugs are supposed to improve health or at least allieviate suffering.  What the hell do CIGARS have to do with EITHER?

Every time I hear this radio ad- at least a few times a day- I laugh, and then kind of sad.  Then I remember the scene in Michael Moore's Sicko where the director is told that pharmacies in England do not sell cigars, cigarettes- or candy, or potato chips- because hey, it's a pharmacy.  When are we going to catch up?

Cheap cigars are still being sold out of every 7-11 in the country.  I assume there are still Cigar stores.  There's the internet.  In other words, cigars aren't going away,  They are just aren't being sold next to the baby formula and antihistamines anymore.  Boo f--ing hoo.

(BTW, if you find yourself "panicking" because your favorite pharmacy has stopped selling your favorite cigars, GET HELP.  You really, really need it.)

LegalZoom's heartwarming tribute to Capitalism

"My mom made the BEST toffee ever.  She'd make it on cold winter days as a very special treat- I can still remember coming home from school and finding a plate on it on the kitchen table and how happy it made me to eat it while drinking a glass of milk and telling mom all about my day....

And when I got older, I would help Mom make her toffee for holiday gift baskets, it was so much fun to make batch after batch and break it up and put it into gaily decorated boxes and hand them out to the mailman and the gas man and the sitter and my teachers at school, they all loved my Mom's toffee so very much...

And all along, my dream was that someday my Mom would kick off and leave me the recipe, so I could turn the recipe that had been passed down through five generations going back to the old country into a business employing six people at minimum wage and earning me some serious coin after the second year, once the industrial toffee-pulling machine had been paid off allowing me to can those teenagers I allowed to 'intern' with me during their summer before starting college.....

And then I achieved the larger vision in my dream, shutting down my local operation and moving the whole enterprise to Singapore, where it now employs 200 11-year olds making $600 a year under the supervision of very reasonably priced overseers.  Once I replaced the cane sugar with corn sugar (sugar is sugar!) and added an amazing array of artificial colors and flavors, the money REALLY began to roll in!

Every once in a while, I even whip up a batch of my Mom's Now Famous Toffee- it almost tastes like the crap I sold 4.5 million boxes of in 86 countries last year!  Thanks, Legal Zoom, for making my dream come true!

Oh, and thanks, Mom, wherever you are!

Verizon, Kmart, and the march toward unfettered Crudity on American television

These commercials are supposed to be Get-Around-the-FCC clever and funny.  If you think they are clever and funny, please keep your comments off my blog, stop eating paint chips, and please please please don't breed.  Or tell your mom you aren't ready to be on the internet without supervision yet.

I can't even begin to describe how unclever and unfunny this all is.  It's just so stupid and rude and manipulative and gross.  It makes me wonder what I ever found offensive in "Punch Dub Days"- I'd take a million of those ads if it meant I never had to see crap like this ever, ever again on my tv screen.

I wish I could say I'm boycotting Kmart because of their disgusting ad, but fact is I don't shop Kmart and I'm not even sure if there's one anywhere near me.  I do have Verizon, and as soon as it's economically feasible, I'll dump the service in protest of their revolting new campaign.  Because man is this ever wretched.

No More Posing, NFL

As this commercial plays ad nauseum (no bad pun intended there) the Player's Union is demanding the immediate reinstatement of Ray Rice.

I guess the NFL's message is "No More," while the Union's is "well, ok, domestic violence is bad, but this young man has the right to knock his wife cold, drag her body out of the elevator, and go right back to making money on the football field."  Uh huh.

Way to give unions a bad name.  Just what they need.  Meanwhile, the NFL has to stare down the Player's Union on this one.  I suspect that public opinion will be on the NFL's side, but I'm not positive.  Here's what I AM positive of- the Union is making an ass of itself, and needs to get slapped down hard ( unfortunate word choice unfortunate, not intentional.)

Ally's bankless banking commercials: Oddly Familiar, Oddly Aggressive

In one way, these ads look a lot like all of the other ads out there- this one in particular does the usual "white guy standing in the middle of a massive, immaculately decorated, gleaming-white-clean living room" (seriously, why does everyone in TV land have to possess living rooms and kitchens larger than my apartment?)  That's the "familiar" part.  All white people in tv commercials live in multi-million dollar homes with cavernous rooms that look like they are maintained by 6-man cleaning crews.  Got it.

But in another way, these ads practically beg us to dislike Ally Bank.  The operator is always sneering at the concerns of the potential customers.  In one I did earlier this year, a woman tells the Ally Bank Phone Bank Serf "I'm nervous about trying new things. "  Instead of just explaining why Ally Bank's "no place to complain in person, your money is at the mercy of a computerized phone menu" strategy is a good thing, the operator challenges this "irrational" fear- "what's wrong with trying new things?" (and the message is instantly botched- like it is in this ad- by showing examples of why the caller is exactly right to worry.)  In this ad, the caller's "I don't like hidden things" is not greeted with "I understand, here's why you have nothing to worry about" but rather "why is that?"  Again and again, Ally comes off as an aggressive car salesman challenging their potential customers to reach way down, find their guts, and just sign on the freaking dotted line, you weird spineless coward you.

What's the deal?  Here's my take on Ally's Bottom-Line Strategy:

1.  Ally Bank is the intelligent choice for very successful people.  If you want to be successful like these people on tv, you'll go with Ally Bank.

2.  Ally Bank gets that No Branches is a legitimately scary idea (no WAY I'm handing my money over to a company that will never, EVER provide a person I can sit down with and look in the eye if I ever have an issue with them, but that's just poor, unsucessful, cowardly me) so it's focused on shaming potential customers into buying in- "what's the matter with you?  Are you deranged?  Get with it.  Just give us your money. We'll always be here, just a phone call and 20 callers in the queue ahead of you away.  You don't like walking into banks and sitting down with people and discussing stuff anyway.  That's for cowards."

PASS!

What the thirty-something execs at Subaru think of the concepts of "grandma," "Woodstock," and "Love." This isn't pretty.

Ah, ok, I get it now!  "Grandma" was a stoner who hitched her way to Saugerties during the Summer of Love in order to experience Woodstock and the feeling of being soaked to the skin because of the incredibly crappy weather that marked most of the three-day music festival.  Judging from the stringy grey hair and the vaguely hippy-ish clothing, we are supposed to assume that Grandma never really got past her hippy phase and has spent most of the last forty years eating homemade yogurt and granola when she wasn't working in her organic garden and planning firebombing raids on Exxon-Mobile drilling rigs.

(Grandpa is sadly absent- while Grandma was living in the past, he was the CEO for Walmart who organized the shift to All Chinese Products back in the early-80s. Or he designed low-grade atomic weapons for the Defense Department.  Because someone had to finance Grandma's self-indulgent delusions.  Grampa died at 55 of a heart attack but he left a very nice insurance policy- thank goodness, because hey those annual excursions to visit the tortoises in the Galapagoes don't pay for themselves.)

Grandma remembers everything about Woodstock- where she skinny-dipped, where she banged that guy who would become Grampa about nine months later, where she almost OD'd on hashish....the decade or so after that is a little hazy, but it hardly matters, because those three days were the absolute highlight of her life anyway.  Kind of like that horrid old woman from Titanic, her entire existance encompasses a few hours from her 19th year.  All the crap after that- the kids, the mortgage, the koi pond, that organic garden, the trips to Whole Foods and the Think Globally Act Locally meetings in the Lincoln Navigator- all that kind of fades into obscure haze compared to those hours listening to tinny music out of crap sound systems in that soggy field in upstate New York.

This Minute of Twee wraps up with Incredibly Embarrassing Grandma hugging the tree which once provided a little shade while she and Future Grampa Did It To High Flying Bird- at least, she thinks that was the tree.  I mean, who knows- she was so plastered, it's kind of amazing that her son turned out as well as he did.  Still- she and the family are hugging a tree.  That's "love," in Subaru's book.  But let's not forget that love in Subaru's book is also stalking a female bicyclist and lovingly stroking a gearshift knob (see the archives.)  Subaru just keeps getting weirder about this.

Amazon, Amazon's Not-Kindle, and Dishonest Advertising

Most commerials are deceitful in one way or another, usually engaging in dishonesty through omission. But this ad contains an outright LIE.  Two of them.  Did you hear both?

1.  "With a free month of Amazon Prime for new members, you'll get unlimited streaming of more than 40,000 movie and tv episodes...." um, no you won't.  First, you can't logically put the number "40,000" and "unlimited" in the same sentence.  Second, it's not possible to stream 40,000 tv and/or movie episodes in one month- what the ad is really saying is "you can go back and watch up to 40,000 pieces of crap on your phone IF, when the free month is over, you subscribe to the service."

2.  "You have a lot to do."  Um, no you don't.  If you had "a lot to do," you wouldn't have time to turn your brain into warm, mushy pudding watching crap on a tiny screen.  And no, I don't count watching tv as "doing" something, sorry.

Oh, and for "good" Italian food? I guess that would mean a trip to The Olive Garden

And if you think that a national chain of fast food restaurants is the place to go for good barbecue, you've never, ever had good barbecue.  And if you insist on going to Wendy's for barbecue, you never, ever will.

Shouldn't "Red" be 100 lbs overweight and shooting insulin on a daily basis by now?  She sure should not be eating Every Freaking Meal as if she's going to the electric chair as soon as it's done.

Actually, this is more about seeking validation through face time than beer

Can someone explain to me why I give a flying damn about any of the people in this ad?

As near as I can tell, it's nothing more than totally random people urging other people to help them celebrate the holidays by drinking crappy beer.  Most of these people strike me as being really ugly and stupid and not at all interesting, but willing to offer beer in exchange for a little companionship.

The guy at the beginning is hoping to seal the deal by presenting his beer in an old-timey wooden box- yeah, because that might con someone really dumb into thinking that it will make the contents taste better. Not buying it.

(The woman who points out that she hasn't seen the people she is begging "for six years" is especially depressing.  So she's hoping that Budweiser will break down the barrier?  Really?)

And does Budweiser really expect us to make our own little video clips and send them along so they can be used to make commercials for their swill, for free?  Oh, who am I kidding, I bet a million exhibitionist losers do exactly that.

Did I miss something here?

I can see how the Woodford Way would lead to a long, lasting, meaningful relationship

"When I see a man drinking bourbon, I think 'there's a guy who knows how to build a bookshelf.  And not just a bookshelf-kit IKEA type bookshelf.  I mean, this is a guy who already knows where the lumberyard is.  Probably because it's next to the bar, but he knows where the lumberyard is.  Making him a man.  A man who likes to work with lumber and drink alcohol, which to me is just an awesome combination."

"Speaking of awesome combinations, he's also a guy who lets me use the saw, and thinks it's cute that I don't know how to use the saw.  Yes, that means exactly the way it sounds- it means he thinks it's cute when I endanger myself playing with a very sharp instrument.  I bet he'd really giggle if I drew blood, I'm such a silly girl I can't even manage to handle something he can operate while drinking bourbon.  He's so amazing, he makes me swoon."

"So I guess what I'm saying here is, I really, really like guys who drink whiskey and can build bookcases.  Because drunk and handy with tools, that's just so hot.  I really have to remember to add that to my eHarmony profile- 'Seeking Guy Who Likes To Get Drunk Quickly And Then Operate The Saw and Let Me Operate it Too.  There's got to be a lot of people who fit that description, and I'm sure they are all really nice."

"I bet he'd make a good soulmate, too.  I mean, what more could a girl want?"

"I'm here to say yes to whatever you offer me."

The guy in this stupid ad has no idea what a "gig" is, but thinks he's getting a great deal because the amount he "gets" per month is doubled if he takes this girl's offer.  Rather than simply admit he has no idea what a "gig" is, he'll take the offer because $160 a month is a fair price to pay rather than just tell a total stranger you have no idea you know what she's talking about.  If you've got the money, I guess.*

Because he can't think of an actual pick-up line, he decides that this girl is offering him a great deal because he's a celebrity ( I have no idea who he is and no, I don't care.)

"We are just talking loudly for some reason."  Probably the same reason you are standing in the middle of a virtually-empty store discussing gigs instead of acting like every single employee and customer I've ever seen in every actual AT&T store I've ever been in- employee behind the counter, customer on the other side of the counter, store crowded and noisy with frustrated people wandering around waiting for their turn to be assisted (their place on line being displayed on a monitor.)  If I ever walked into one of these stores and was actually greeted by someone like the people in these ads always are, I think I'd faint.

*In another one of these awful ads- which I don't think I'll bother giving it's own roasting- this woman reads the mind of the hipster doofus who saunters in- "yes, we have the new iPhone."  The customer is stunned that she knows what he came in for, which is kind of like being stunned that Red wants to get lunch at Wendy's.  "I knew you came in for the new iPhone because evey witless zombie with money burning holes in his pocket wants the new iPhone.  Why should you be any different?"

Once again, Apple makes us long for the sweet embrace of death. Or, at least, deafness

There is no longer any doubt in my mind that Apple won't be satisfied until everyone on the planet loves their phones and totally loathes their company.  If you don't want to hunt down and kill the people who came up with this ad, you are a far, far better person than I am.

I mean, there is just no point to it.  "This phone is big.  This phone is bigger.  Let's repeat this incredibly simple idea five times because this ad simply must be at least 20 seconds long for no good reason, even if repeating the idea makes a simple, effective ad horrible and obnoxious."

They must have got the "idea" from that insanely craptacular "frog protection" credit card ad.  You know, the one that had you looking for a window to jump out of.  Ugh.

Well, at least she's not at a swimming pool. That's something, I guess

Well, actually, no- she's supposed to be chaparoning.  It's "her turn."  Which means she's kind of supposed to be the adult in the room who is making things are going ok.  Not just another warm body who happens to be older than the children, with no responsibilities, leaving her free to watch tv on her stupid phone while the kids do whatever.

I know I'm talking to the wind here.  As I've posted before, I see more actual parents of actual children totally ignoring their own kids playing (and often doing things that really, really require supervision) so that they can stare at their Much More Important phones.  Why should I expect more from a teacher/chaparone who isn't even related to these kids?  Oh yeah, that whole lawsuit thing.  I guess.  But still, there's this game on, and never mind that anyone who has a phone like this is certainly DVRing everything back home anyway.

I hate this century so very much.  Have I mentioned that before?

If you can't beat the Zombies, join the Zombies?

Yes, I suppose that if you don't understand the tv-addled morons who bleat lines from the shows they are sadly devoted to, you might feel a little "left out."  Of course, it's kind of like being left out of a group's drug addiction (actually, it's exactly like that,) but if you absolutely must be a part of the crowd, then by all means get Xfinity and devote every spare moment of your life catching up on all the brainless crap your co-workers are watching.

Or, just do what I do- shrug and move on, confident that the fresh air, sunshine, exercise, books and friends who "deprive" you of time to turn your brain into pudding watching all this crud as your eyes burn out of your head is a fair exchange for witless, violent junk, even if it means you don't always know what your stupid, time-sucking coworkers are talking about.   Your choice.

The most depressing pool party ever

There is so much wrong and sad here, it's almost impossible to know where to start.  I really should get paid for this gig- but doing work I'm not paid for is kind of a way of life for me anyway, so....

This festive-looking gathering is one kid's graduation party, being hosted at his house by his parents.  The kid has a lot of pretty, racially diverse friends who have shown up because it's a good setting to talk about and demonstrate their phones and after all Hey There's a Pool to sit around.  He has more friends than these though because he and his guests keep getting texts from people who are NOT there- one even asks "hey, what's up?"  (I suppose the reply will be "I'm at my own graduation party, kind of awkward to let you know you weren't on the invite list.")

His dad can't be Typical TV Dad Stupid- he has to ramp it up a notch by claiming he can smell the picture of ribs that his son just took (doesn't occur to dad that what he smells is the ribs he is cooking, which are directly under his nose, oh no....)  Naturally, Mom is there to let Dad know what a clueless jackass he's being.  Of course.

Mom and Dad seem to be seeing their son's phone for the first time- I guess he paid for it himself at least- um, right?  Oh, who am I kidding.  Mom and Dad paid for the phone- they just don't know anything about it because Newly Minted Graduate Son picked it out, they just paid for it and continue to pay for it.

Now that I think of it, this isn't a party at all-just  a gathering of people who want to compare phones which quickly devolves into two camps- those who have this Cool New Phone Which Will Be Ancient Crap Next Summer and people who still have Last Summer's Cool New Phone Which Is Ancient Crap Now.  If I showed up with my LG Xpression, which I believe was the Must Have Phone of February 2011, I probably wouldn't even be allowed in.  And if I mentioned I didn't have a phone or didn't bring it with me?  They'd look at me like I was Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.  No phone?  How do I watch tv?  How did I FIND the party?  How do I breathe?

Well, I didn't know how to start this critique, but I sure know how to end it.  All the people in this ad need to die and end their worthless lives right now.  Sometimes "harsh" and "true" are the same things.

Subaru gets Love wrong. Again.

I guess this is supposed to be a Dad trying to connect with his Son, but it's so devoid of human emotion, it feels a lot more like Mom's New Boyfriend trying to connect to Her Kid to me.

Dad's being a total fail here on so many levels.  First of all, why is the kid in the back seat?  So Dad can keep his distance, reminding himself that the kid is there now and then by glancing into the rear view mirror?  Are Subarus so unsafe that it's not recommended kids ride in front?  What the hell?

Secondly, there's no dialogue between the two at all.  Dad seems to think that all he has to do is show the kid a few disconnected objects- a tree, a view- no need to let the kid know WHY he's showing these things.  Why is this tree so important?  Because it's big?  What ABOUT the view?  Is it supposed to inspire?  Why isn't Dad doing any instructing or explaining or just plain SHARING?  I don't blame the kid for not responding- he has no idea what this is all about.  So he takes refuge in his cell phone, as if he is alone in on this journey- because he might as well be.

The father finally- accidentally- discovers something the kid likes- Bison.  So he does something right- he brings the kid to see more bison.  Cool.  Does this lead to a discussion of bison including what other animals they are related to, or what they eat, or how they were hunted almost to extinction 120 years ago?  That would be great.  Considering that all we see at the end of the ad is the two mutes staring at a herd, why do I doubt this?

Maybe Subaru should just drop this "Love" ad campaign.  They don't seem to know what the word means beyond "Love means using your Subaru to do stuff."  And they don't even know how to illustrate THAT meme very well.  At all.

Snickers Halloween Ad: Because being clever and different is so very, very wrong

In real life, a "Horseless Headsman" is a really brilliant, out-of-the-box idea, and if this costume was actually possible to make in a non-CGI world the kid who pulled it off would be praised as a genius.

In Reel Life, the other kids sneer at the "Horseless Headsman" and assume it's a stupid mistake because hey, we all know what a "Headless Horseman" is- we've all seen someone go to a Halloween Party or trick-or-treating dressed as him, it's pretty standard, it's as imaginative as a vampire or a ghost, so that's obviously what the kid Was Supposed To Be because thinking outside the box is way uncool.

Personally, I'll take the Horseless Headsman kid and reject the one who thinks Oh Wait You're Right I Wanted To Do This According To Script.  Because, you know, it's actually pretty clever.

Well, at least there's no mystery as to where the Snickers bar came from.  I just wonder why the Horseless Headsman kid would be hungry- I'd think with a costume like that, he'd be collecting a lot of candy from adults who can appreciate imagination and are willing to reward it.

Well, AT&T, you really had me going for a few seconds there!

For about the first fifteen seconds of this ad, I thought I might actually be watching a commercial for cell phones or data sharing or some other 21st century thing I don't really understand or want to understand that I actually liked, because it featured kids doing something approaching Cool which required something approaching Skill instead of the usual brain-dead texting and movie-viewing crud we expect to see in commercials for cell phones or data sharing.

Those first fifteen seconds were not only Not Horrible, but actually pretty entertaining and fun.  I could even ignore the fact that these kids were splayed on furniture while the sun streamed in from the window- something my parents would not have tolerated.  Can't have everything, after all.

But then of course AT&T had to remind me that I was watching a commercial, which meant that the kids HAD to end up acting like spoiled, disrespectful, unappreciative assholes to their father who provided all this, and that Dad had to end up being portrayed as a clueless, About As Uncool As Even Dad Can Get buttinksy who needs to get back into the kitchen and finish cooking the kids dinner instead of trying to be a part of their lives with his lame-ass non-electronic music Thank Goodness None Of Our Friends Were Here To See This OMIGD I Would Rather Die.

Nice save, AT&T.  Just make sure nobody ever edits this ad- you wouldn't want anyone to be left with the impression that kids can just have fun with your overpriced, stupid gadgets without sneering at Dad too.  That would be just awful.

Another take on this awful Buick commercial

In another version of this ad,* we see the spoiled Suburban princess actually spying on the Garcias using a pair of binoculars as she drools over their new Buick- "Looks like the Garcias have a new car."

"Good for the him" her husband intones.

"Good for her" she replies.  Yeah, because living in this f---ing palace with freaking gold gates isn't good enough for you- now you want a new Buick, too.  I know that everyone in TV land lives like this- but why does every commercial have to pretend that everyone in REAL LIFE occupies massive palaces in gated communities?

The Garcias live in a gilded cage- good for them.  Both of them.  Except, they have neighbors who stand at their windows and evaluate them through binoculars.  I'm not sure it's worth it.

*When I find the "Good For Her" version of this ad on YouTube, I'll replace it here.  But you've all seen it.

Like the commercial, hate the website

Is there a more depressing site on the web than weather.com?  It's not the weather- I expect it's usually accurate as weather forecasting sites go.  It's the little stories that the site is always asking us to click on.  Man, they are downers- "This woman died on her honeymoon," "Child's Final Tragic Moments," "Horror at Beach House- You Won't Believe It..."

I mean, what the hell?  Why is Weather.com always trying to tickle our Morbid bone?  I go to the site to see if I need an umbrella, not to find out if a blonde girl has been abducted and beheaded (yes, she has) or if a guy has been killed by a freak tidal wave (yes, he has.)  This other crap?  I'd rather read about the One Trick To Cut Your Car Insurance If You Live In Maryland (what a coincidence- I do!) or Why Doctors Hate This Man or Why The IRS Hates This Man (same man?  Don't know...)

Either way, this potato chip ad is a painful experience

When I saw this ad on American television, I had no idea it had been made in Australia.   Didn't find that out until I looked for it on YouTube.  Since YouTube never, ever lies, I guess it really was made in Australia.  Still, I can totally understand why Lays thought it would work very well here in the States.

It seems like an American commercial, because the kid is being an absolute nasty ass for no reason whatsoever (unless "because she can" counts as a reason.)  She can see that the creep across from her is hungry, or at least so stoned that he can't tear his eyes away from her potato chip, and her response is to tease him with it.  Not give him a chip, not change seats, not tell him to act like an actual grown-up and use his voice or to stop staring at a little girl he doesn't know and her snacks- just to act like a jerk.  Yep, totally American.

But you can tell it's Australian because it features a commuter train which looks like it might actually be somewhat comfortable, and which seems to be traveling at a reasonably fast speed.  Comfortable, High-Speed Commuter Rail?  That's about as Un-American as it gets.

Not trying to scare anyone here, but....

When you watch this commercial, just imagine this:

Some people think that this ad is LOL funny.  And some of those same people buy car insurance.  Which means that they are actually on the road, operating heavy machinery which sometimes travels at high speed.  Sometimes on the very same road you are driving on.

And they think this ad is LOL funny.

Sorry if that freaks you out.  But I felt I had to say something.

Completing the KFC "Couchgating" Commercial

Turns out this wasn't a one-year deal; nope, KFC loved it's "Couchgating" bit so much that they brought it back for the 2014 NFL season.  Isn't that awesome?  But they didn't have time to tell the audience EVERYTHING that is necessary for a legitimate "couchgating" party, so I thought I'd lend a hand.  Here's what they left out:

1.  Magic KFC Bucket:  This is the bucket of chicken which not only remains full, but is always Overloaded, no matter how many people already have pieces of chicken in their hands or on a plate.  Note that in each scene in this ad, there are chicken parts everywhere, yet every bucket is spilling over with chicken.  Because KFC doesn't actually overload it's buckets (they actually come with white lids which hide the fact that the pieces are smaller and darker than they appear on tv) you will need at least two to pull off this effect at your Couchgating party.  I suggest three- that way you can  give everyone a piece from the first bucket, then add the leftovers to the other two to make them look like they are bursting with chicken goodness.   To keep the illusion going, refuse to allow your guests another piece.  Their hearts will thank you later.

2.  Ethnically and Sexually Diverse Guest List.  This is really important.  It's not at all necessary to have an equal number of men and women- you can have only two women, as long as one is an African-American.  And just one African-American guy is fine.  If possible, include a person of Uncertain Ethnicity to cover any questionable moments.

3.  Totally tasteless friends who will eat anything: This is an absolute must.  After all, you are serving up maybe $50 worth of greasy, mass-produced chicken- it would be a real shame if it went uneaten, except that it would keep those buckets filled.

4.  Lots and lots of wet-wipes.  The last time I ate at KFC (about twenty years ago) these were provided- but dont' take any chances.  I suggest you lay in a large supply yourself; I think 20 per person would be a good rule of thumb.  That is, unless you WANT chicken grease all over your couch and furniture as a reminder of that Sexually and Racially Diverse crowd you inexplicably invited into your house to eat poisonous fried junk for three hours.

Oh F-Off, Lexus

From the lack of smiling, I can figure that the message of the commercial is clearly NOT that owning a Lexus F Series LookAtMeMobile will make you happy.  I guess I have to give Lexus a little credit for being the very first car company ever to produce a commercial which does not suggest Buy This= Joy.

On the other hand, we see a lot of  sneering.  We also see one guy in particular who looks like he's going to to boil over in rage at having to wait for a Not-Lexus train pass before he can continue to race along wet roads at high speeds in a mad effort to overcompensate for- something or another.   (The GALL of that train to be in his way- I bet it's not even TRANSPORTING Lexuses.  May even be filled with non Lexus-owning lesser people!)

Maybe it's the same guy later who lives for Stop Signs and Red Lights so he can peal out and let everyone within half a mile or so know that he was at that Stop Sign or Red Light?   And then roar through city streets at roughly 50 MPH (like everyone else in car commercials?)

But what we see most of all is coveting.  Pretty people living Pretty lives stopping and staring and drooling at Pretty cars as they go about doing their Pretty things in Pretty places with their Pretty friends.  We get the impression that each one of them is more than capable of buing a Lexus F Series and the only reason they haven't already is because they weren't aware these wonderful life-affirming things existed, were right there, waiting to make their Already Amazing Existence even more Amazing.  Warms the heart. Or makes you really, really sick.  One of those.

Because dad's brain is now a turnip, apparently

Your car is now a Hot Spot.  Well, thank goodness- because actually planning ahead was soooo exhausting and burned soooo many brain cells.  Now, thanks to the new Chevrolet (and your internet-addled kids) you can do all your planning and decision-making on the run, and you never have to put any advanced thought into anything at all!  This is even better than that OnStar "how may I kiss your ass today, sir?" Operator At Your Beck and Call service, because it doesn't cost you a monthly fee (or does it?

Meanwhile, those of us who can't afford this car will just have to keep our lives organized in order to keep people from discovering that we are flightly, thoughtless, forgetful nuggets of self-asorption too stupid to remember important stuff.  Clearly we will be in the minority soon, as dependence on electronic devices to get us out of the freaking house in one piece will be the norm before the end of next year, if it isn't already.

BTW, why was it so important for the kid in the back to complete whatever arrangements she was making before Mommy got back into the car- it's not like Mommy was going to ask what they were doing.*  The point of arming your kids with these stupid toys is so you DON'T have to engage with them.  Suddenly DVD players in the car seem quaint- how did that happen so fast?

Oh, and check out the-- umm, "comments" the YouTubers left- eighty percent of them are by sniveling little corporate brown-nosers bleating the title of the commercial.  Good job, doggies.  Here's a biscuit- just jump a little higher for the boss!

*"You guys ever going to put those down?"

No Answer.

Mom smiles helplessly and forgets even asking eight seconds later.  And why not- YOU'RE the reason they HAVE those things, stupid!

What are the Logistics of a Mass Slaying? Because this commercial badly needs one. Now.

If you don't want to beat each and every one of these self-important, self-satisfied jackasses to death by the third "great," you are far, far better person than I am.  And if you don't want to toss the "I love Logistics" guy out the window while yelling "I Love Gravity!", well, you just lack my imagination.

If we can't have any of those things happen, and it's also too much to ask that a meteorite vaporize this building five seconds after this meeting of the no-minds ends, how about a sequel revealing that the start-up was a collossal failure and these adorable perky young people are now being adorable and perky in their mom's basements and in dumpsters behind Burger King?

I mean, instead of the actual sequel we've got running now, which is exactly the same except that the word "great" has been replaced by "awesome" (seriously, that's the only difference.  One word.  Repeated six times.  Know what a killer tornado would be right about now? Awesome.)

This commercial explains so much about my life

Obviously, the reason I don't have crowds of pretty young people in my house for spontaneous parties is because I lack decent coverage for my phone.  Now I feel bad- how many nights was I just sitting there at home, reading or watching tv, totally oblivious to the fact that between six and twenty good-looking partiers were standing right outside my door desperately trying to reach me on my phone to let me know that they were there waiting to gain entrance to my abode for a night of laughter, dancing, and watching me take more calls on my phone?

Now, I know what you're thinking- "hey, John, they could have just knocked."  To which I reply, no they couldn't, because that's not what the hip young people qualified to be my friends do nowadays.  Knocking is soooooo old school.  What are you, forty or something?  It's all about the connectivity, man.

Now, I know what you're thinking- "Um, ok, John- but you don't have a basement.  You've got the top level of a duplex.  Kind of hard to see how they couldn't reach you from your door 20 feet away..."  To which I reply, "shut up, that's why."

Watching this commercial with the sound off...did I get the message right?

Jill sits in the coffee shop ruminating over a cup of java and her own fleeting youth, wondering what she's going to do when she reaches the age at which people who actually have jobs "retire."

She makes a decision: She's going to try to seduce that nice young broker whose office she's been passing pretty much every day.  She gets up and leaves the coffee shop, passing that creepy stalker guy who is always sitting at the table near the door trying to make eye contact and drawing sketches that are almost certainly destined to be Exhibit A in the trial which takes place six months after her mysterious dissapearence.

Anyway, she waited too long to go after the broker guy- he's really not interested in this woman who is at least ten years older than he is besides being an obviously broke goldigger- but her visit isn't a total loss, because he casually mentions that she goes to the same coffee shop as one of his best clients, a scruffy weirdo who obsessively sketches portraits of his future victims- errrr, soulmates- as he drinks his coffee, in no hurry to get to an office because he's got more money than Mitt Romney.

With dollar signs in her eyes, Jill saunters back to her regular table at the coffee shop, and this time makes eye contact with Sleazy Creep But Hey The Clock Is Ticking And He's Got Money at the table next to the door.  Next thing you know, they are walking out the door together.  Happy Ending, right? Well, yeah probably, unless you are a morbid weirdo like me.

So....how'd I do?  Close?

Derek Jeter's retired. There are playoffs to be watched and enjoyed. Let's all just move on please.

Because MLB and Gatorade aren't quite satisfied with the six-month Derek Jeter wankfest that was the 2014 baseball season, we are being subjected to this ridiculous sloppy kiss Valentine featuring everyone's favorite Aw Shucks I'm Just a Ballplayer I Don't Deserve or Want all this Attention retiring New York Yankee.

No, not Mariano Rivera.  That was 2013's I"m Saying Goodbye Before The Season Starts But Gosh I Hope You Don't Make a Fuss ridiculously dragged out forced lovefest, featuring almost daily lectures from every color commentator in baseball that If We Aren't Eternally Grateful That We Had The Opportunity To Breathe the Same Air As These Legends There Is Something Seriously Wrong With Us.  But the message was not lost on the Most Humble Man Ever to Don a Uniform and Just Want to Play Baseball Please Don't Make a Big Deal of it.

This year it was Derek Jeter's turn to casually announce his retirement during spring training Just in Case Some Teams I Don't Know Maybe Want to Do Something Special Just Sayin'.  This year we had another Unassuming Humble Yankee spending month after month reluctantly participating in pregame ceremonies including gaudy gifts which wasted everybody's time and delayed starts.  And we got one tribute after another from teary-eyed ESPN yakkers who couldn't stop reminding us what an incredible human being Jeter was because all he did was go out every day and play ball for more money in a month than most of us will make in our lifetimes, gosh what a champion on and OFF the field.

And all because MLB and Gatorade flatly refuse to understand the concept that Derek Jeter was a beloved player in exactly one city, to exactly one fan base.  Just because the bland, nonpartisan morons at MLB and Gatorade think that Jeter was just adored by all baseball fans doesn't make it so.  As a Red Sox fan, I don't expect anyone but Red Sox fans to wish David Ortiz a fond farewell when he exits the stage.  But somehow, I was supposed to love Jeter because I love baseball?  To hell with that.

And since the Laws of God and Nature have been brutally violated and we aren't permitted to witness His Greatness during the playoffs this season (despite Bud Selig's Operation Red Sox And Yankees in the Playoffs Every Year rigging- note to successor- maybe we need a few more Wild Card spots?) we'll just have to be happy with these nauseating commercials.  Or hit the mute button, fast.  Gag.

And here's the worst part- there are a whole SERIES of these Dodge Dart ads!

These aren't commercial satires.  These are actual commercials.  You know, put together by a company that actually wants you to buy it's product, and not grab a gun, head to the advertising agency that produced this, and kill everyone in the building you can find until the police show up and put you out of your misery.

And all for a Dodge Dart.  That's right, a Dodge Dart.  A $15,000, $199 per month piece of crap Dodge Dart.  You've got to be kidding me, right?

Nope.  This neighbor really, really wants to touch this other neighbor's Dodge Dart- and the other neighbor "won't let him" (personally, if I were a major nutcase like Neighbor #1, I wouldn't be waiting for "permission" to touch his garbage car.  I'd just touch the damn car and ask what the hell he planned to do about it.   But if I were a major nutcase like Neighbor #1, I'd be a really, really sad human being, and the very thought is sending me into a spiral of depression so I'd better stop right now.

If I were Neighbor #2, I'd wonder what horrible turn my life took where I'm so proud of being the owner of a freaking Dodge Dart in the first place.  Because he might be even sadder than Neighbor #1.  Well, ok, he's not- but it's closer than it has any right to be.