Wait 'til they note the spike in Brie prices at Whole Foods!

Dear Verizon,

This commercial would be slightly more believable if I could buy the idea that anyone in it really gave a damn if their cable bill went up by $20 or $50 or even $100 per month.  I mean, maybe if you showed me people living in an apartment, or a trailer, or even in an f---ing modest home and not a surburban palace (one of these guys is hosting an f--ing POOL PARTY when he gets "blindsided" by a bill increase, for crying out loud!  These people are concerned about cable bills?  Yeah, I'm so sure.)

On the other hand, I'd like to thank you for not being the company that continues to harrass me with DISH IS HOW YOU DO IT ear-bleeding crud ads.  It's not much, but I really do want to make a point of mentioning that you had nothing to do with that.

One more thing- I'd also like to thank you for feeling so threatened by DISH IS HOW YOU DO IT that you gave me a nice discount on MY cable bill just because I called and warned I might switch.  Hey, maybe I should be thanking Dish.  Not going to, though.

Peyton Manning sure has a lot of time on his hands- not to mention a lot of space for more rings.

"Does Peyton ever talk?" Yes, he is talking all the time.  He kind of has to talk, considering that he's the star of roughly 80% of all commercials running during NFL games.

The better question is "Does Peyton ever do anything else?"  And the answer is, "yes, he sure does.  Very often he likes to take a break from starring in commercials to kick back, relax, and watch Tom Brady win another Superbowl Ring."

Which leads us to one more question: "Who is Tom Brady?"  And the answer is "he's the quarterback of the New England Patriots.  You might not know much about him because he doesn't star in a lot of commercials- he leaves that to guys like Peyton Manning, and Aaron Rodgers, and other quarterbacks who don't regularly win Superbowls.  If you want to see Brady playing a starring role on your TV, you have to wait until February.  Then you'll recognize him- he's the guy holding that big trophy."

"Peyton Manning?  He's the guy shilling for pizza when the network cuts away from Brady holding that big trophy."

Another "Old People And Their Silly Problems Sure Are Silly" Commercial

aaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

(pause, deep breath)

AAAAAAAhahahahahahahahahhaaha!!

Full Disclosure;  My dad uses a cane.  Well, sort of- actually, he OWNS a cane which he would use more often, if he and it were ever in the same place at the same time.  But that's rarely the case- usually the cane is in the car while he's in the living room, or it's hanging on a chair in the kitchen while he's in the computer room on the other side of the house.  Sometimes it's on the tractor.  Sometimes it's hanging on a shopping cart at the store he visited earlier that day.

And his cane isn't small.  It's a full cane, which means it's more than just a handle.  So though it's always getting lost, it's also always being found.  I love the "fits easily in the glove compartment" line-- yes, of course it does.  Doesn't mean it's ever actually going to be put there.  Much more likely it's going to end up on the floor, where Gimpy Gus can't find it or reach it.

"Mom, why aren't you using that Amazing Not-Cane I got you?"  "Oh, I don't know where it is.  It's somewhere.  Maybe you could look for it if you get a chance, but it's no hurry, really."

If it was just a handle, I think it would be used once and then never seen again.  If you buy this thing for the old person in your life, better buy about a hundred of them- or put one of those tile things on it so you can use your phone to find it every fifteen minutes or so.  And I do mean YOUR phone, because your parents aren't using SmartPhones and have no idea what Apps are.

Of course, I'm being optimistic when I predict that the Amazing Cane Handle will just get lost all the time.  It's more likely it will used again and again and again, each time doing terrific damage to your parent's car as it's left in the door while it's being slammed-- again and again and again. Accompanied by loud curses.  Every single time.

BTW, if you can stand on the cane while it's attached to your car, why on Earth do you need to use one?  Seems to me that's pretty darned agile.  I don't get it.

"Um....the thing is, I'm kind of not interested in thoughtless idiots with moron friends, sorry."

1.  The guy in this ad has a lot more guts than I could ever hope to have, if he's calling the day after a date using a tablet.  The Next Day phone call is hard enough- to do it with actual, visual contact?  Pretty damned impressive.

2.  This woman is an absolute idiot to want to take this call in front of her friends.  She has no idea what this guy is going to say, first of all.  Second, is she going to let the guy know that their conversation is not private, but is being shared with her idiot friends?

3.  This guy gets a great red flag at the end, finding out exactly what kind of friends last night's date has.  Run away, buddy, run away.

Almost makes going to church seem like a good idea

How does any of this brain-dead crap contribute to society?  Between Chris "I comment on baseball for two weeks out of the year because World Series" Berman's Done To Death By The End of the 90s irritating noises schtick to Jim Crow-level shucking and jiving, this commerical just left me depressed, with a slight headache, and more determined than ever to just leave my television off until 1 PM Sundays at the very earliest.

(In fact, I am beginning to discover the joys of listening to the one game broadcast over XM/Sirius on my old non-NFL XM package as I walk.  Exercise, fresh air, and no Chris Berman or badly-disguised racism in sight.  Perfect.)

SimpliParanoid

"Your connection to emergency services can't be cut because SimpliSafe doesn't rely on landlines."

Seriously?  I thought burglars just waited for you to leave the house before breaking a window and stealing your stuff.  I didn't know that they were elite squads of terrorists who did things like cut landlines before invading and holding your family hostage.  And what good does cutting landlines do anyway in the age of cellphones?  What am I missing here?

Isn't this all about striking terror into the hearts of freakishly skittish suburban white jackasses who can't believe they own big houses, know damn well they don't deserve them, and live in a constant state of guilt that Those Other People are going to hit back hard some night in the perhaps not-to-distant future?  I mean, if you find yourself investing in a home security system that is immune to having your landline cut, you are one step away from investing in a Safe Room and Glenn Beck Collapse of Society Survival Kits.  My guess is that you've probably watched too many Die Hard movies and ought to just invite Stephen Seagal to sleep on your couch.

"In this same universe, at a time which now seems far, far away..." Walmart gets Star Wars wrong

"You see, there were these knights called Jedi.  All they needed to be Jedi was to dedicate themselves to protecting the Republic and undergo serious training at the hands of Jedi Masters.  Those Jedi Masters had a habit of insisting that the potential trainee was 'too old to begin the training' no matter how old they were, but were also proven wrong on every occassion...

"This for example allowed a simple farmboy with a lust for adventure and a yearning to find purpose in his life to become a Jedi very late in life (in his early-20s) after meeting a self-exiled Jedi Master in the desert, rescuing a princess, and completing that training with the help of another self-exiled Jedi Master, finally confronting his dark side in a climax featuring a battle with his fallen father.  In the meantime two Death Stars are destroyed, friendships are forged, and the Empire is brought down by the forces of Good."

"Afterwards, there are three horrible films you need not ever watch, and are by no means recommended unless you want what I just taught you to be totally and horribly retconned.  For example, you'd learn that determination and pluck and devotion have nothing to do with becoming a Jedi after all-- it really just depends on how many 'Miticlorions" you have in your blood.  If you don't have enough, sorry- doesn't matter how pure and big your heart is, or how sincere your determination is, you are out of the club because you don't have the right blood type.   You would also learn that in the age before the original Star Wars films technology was BETTER than it would be later, people moved and acted in a bizarre wooden manner, Jedi didn't do anything more strenuous than sitting around in semicircles pondering their own awesomeness until it was way too late to do anything else, children were called 'younglings' and R2D2 could fly (never mind that that skill would have come in handy several times during the first three movies.)"

"And never forget this important lesson, my child:  R2D2 and C3P0 do not have an 'origin story,' because machines don't need origin stories, Han Solo fired first (just as you can see on my original VHS tape, don't watch the DVD version because it's non-canonical,) and there is no such thing as a Jar Jar Binks."

Little Caesar's knows it's audience

No, not Crazy Cat People- though anyone who would own this many cats certainly is crazy, and I can't imagine having an appetite ever if I had to live with all those cats.  I don't want to live with even ONE cat.   Ugh, turns my stomach to think about it.

By "knows it's audience," I mean knows that people who are dumb enough to spend good money on the cheap, mass-produced crud that makes up a Little Caesar's pizza are the same people who think that ordering a pizza online, "with those confusing passwords and stored credit card numbers," is too complicated to handle on a regular basis.  It's almost frightening to think where we are going as a society when ordering a pizza online- which was sold to us as pretty damned close to miraculously wonderful about fifteen minutes ago- is now described as "too complicated."

Meanwhile....I wonder how many kitty litter boxes this guy has?  Never mind- again, I don't even want to think about it.

Here's a Michelob ULTRA POINTLESS commercial I wouldn't mind dropping into the stump grinder....

"We have really stupid names for our really stupid clubs.  One of those names is actually kind of insulting- 'Freedom Hikers,' which sounds a lot like 'Freedom Riders,' except the 'Freedom Riders' were young people who rode throughout the segregated, viciously racist South risking their lives to stand up for the oppressed black population of the region and help them register to vote, while we just stumble around the woods for a few hours, whooping now and then for absolutely no reason, and then salute our Obvious Epicness with  heavy glass bottles of beer we dragged into the wilderness because hey, we're really cool but that doesnt' mean we're bright."

"Whatever we call ourselves, what we are is a group of Pretty White People looking for something to do before we start drinking really crappy, watered down swill we laughingly refer to as beer as we toast ourselves for being Pretty White People who are, by the way, really awesome because we like to have fun."

(Editor's Note: "What really brought us together...is what keeps us coming back."  Yep, I get it- each of these groups is made up of a bunch of young alcoholics who decided that they really ought to be doing something more with their lives than getting drunk in front of  a giant screen at Buffalo Wild Wings every Sunday afternoon.  So they decided to wedge in some non-drinking activity like hiking or running or swimming that would consume a few hours and allow them to pretend that the drinking part was just the wrap-up of a nice day and not the actual goal.  That final line kind of kills this idea, though- the narrator tells us straight out that the reason these people continue to engage in hiking, swimming, running, etc. is because of the promised beer at the end of the day.  Kind of sad- but at least they get outside for a while.  And none of these activities are going to be practical once the weather cools down; coincidentally, that also signals football season, and Buffalo Wild Wings awaits....)

Hey, it's that song you gagged on back in the 70s. With a Nissan!

As near as I can tell through one viewing of this gigantic smarmy steaming pile of manipulative tripe, Dad is a NASCAR driver who got married, had a son, and then went on a 17-year race circuit in which he never, ever came home not even once and his only contact with his son was some kind of failed mind meld which could only be attempted because his abandoned wife inexplicably allowed the kid to watch Daddy Almost Get Killed For the Entertainment of Screaming Rubes live every Saturday afternoon.

Oh, and one day dad showed up in a Nissan outside his kid's school, and his kid got into the car because he recognized dad from television.

That's all there is, right?

NFL's latest is especially depressing

Yeah because before Fantasy Football, friends never had anything to talk about.  They just sat around awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact in between texting and making phone calls.  Every once in a while they wondered "why are we friends again?  Oh yeah because Facebook."

And what did friends do before cell phones and Facebook?  Well, that's a pretty stupid question.  Obviously friends had not been invented yet.  Friends were invented by Mark Zuckerberg, and one's value is measured by how many one has on Facebook.  Without Facebook, how could there be friends?

And before Fantasy Football, there were friends outside Facebook but just to have someone to be with when you were talking and texting.  Just like before Fantasy Football there was still football, but people just watched the games without obsessing over "fantasy stats" and alleged big piles of money to be made by being a shameless loser geek online.  Man did life suck back then.

Coming back to reality- can we please admit that Fantasy Football is just another excuse to sit on your sorry ass and stare at a computer screen instead of actually doing something of value with your life?  Ok, it's fine if it's just a hobby, though a hobby that involves no movement other than finger taps strikes me as not particularly beneficial (notice that weight gain?  Sore back?  It's all about you being immobile, idiot.)  If it's so consumed your life that you aren't able to talk to people about anything else, well, I feel sorry for you and urge you to seek therapy.

Oh, and while you're at it, get a freaking life that doesn't involve following the accomplishments of someone else you don't know and will never meet.  It might include making some actual friends.  If that doesn't sound too awkward and scary for you.

Wow....um, really, Samsung?

Here's another "hilarious" commercial featuring Real Young Parents dealing with their Real Child and succeeding brilliantly because they've invested in an expensive product with a feature you never thought you actually needed (and actually don't, unless you are as demented and frightening and frightened as these Real Young Parents.)

The "Code Red!" Young New Dad is yelling about as he runs down the stairs of his Spotlessly White Enormous HouseTM is instantly recognized by his partner in crime, Young New Mom.  Seems that the Center of Their Universe Now That They've Successfully Produced Their Contribution To The Next Generation spilled juice over her favorite stuffed animal.  Not being a dad myself, I can only imagine the horror that has gripped New Young Mom and New Young Dad once they realized that their Precious Gift From Heaven is experiencing a certain level of discomfort.  I mean, even PGFH's backup favorite stuffed animal isn't available-- this is an emergency!!

Fortunately, Young New Dad and Young New Mom have Samsung's state of the art washing machine which features some kind of instant wash option, so PGFH will not have to wait more than a few seconds to get her toy back.  And family harmony will be restored until something that can't be solved with expensive technology pops up.  Maybe it will drop her ice cream cone.  Maybe Young Family will find itself in a traffic jam when PGFH really really really doesn't want to be in the car anymore.  Maybe the store will be out of PGFH's favorite flavor of Pediasure.  God help us if there isn't an App for that.

If this is a "Code Red," what will these frightened idiots call those problems?

Filling the vacuum left by this Jimmy Johns ad

Sometimes there's so little to the actual commercial, I find myself looking for things that simply arent' there- or, more accurately, things I'm probably not supposed to be thinking about or even noticing.

There's really nothing to this ad, except that it takes about twenty seconds for it's writer to get us to the "so fast you'll freak" punchline.  In that twenty seconds, we are supposed to aborb a few things without even really considering them--

1.  This fat, ugly man-child has landed himself a hot girlfriend....meh, it's television.  Nothing new there.

2.  Seeing a bloody zombie made the fat man-child think about ordering food.  My guess is that he's never answered "no" to the question "are you hungry?"

3.  The hot girl is apparently leaning toward answering "no," but then she thinks "JimmyJohns."  Maybe a better motto than "so fast you'll freak" is "what you want to eat when you aren't hungry but your fatass man-child Seriously Why Is This Guy Your Boyfriend partner is thinking about food AGAIN."

4.  In the middle of the day, this woman is so frightened at the sight of a zombie that when she sees the JimmyJohns delivery monkey appear outside her sliding glass door, she faints.  Um, wouldn't this scene make a LITTLE more sense if it was at least DARK outside, instead of noon?

5.  I don't know why this woman is so suprised.  From the look of this guy she's hooked herself to, she should be pretty used to his ability to make the transition from "I'm kind of hungry" to having fatty, crappy fast food in the blink of an eye.

Oh, and my mommy is trying to figure out how to put a meter on a polar bear

Maybe your mom has been hired to do a few showy, underfunded prop projects that look really good to easily-conned twee greenies with blinders on, but when all is said and done she works for a company that rapes the environment,  is dedicated to squeezing every ounce of energy out of every starving backwater on the planet, and hides behind a compliant media which is generally supportive of what it's doing because GE is writing the checks.

It's nice that you think Mommy is a superhero who is out to save the world, but someone needs to let you know that if we do find our way out of the Global Climate Change crisis, it won't be General Electric leading the way, sorry.  Not unless there's a buck in it.  Actually, about 10 billion of them.  A year.

Coke, Pepsi, Battery Acid, Whatever- which one is offering concert tickets?

I guess the message of this ad is that Coke and Pepsi are interchangeable; there is absolutely no reason to choose one over the other that has anything to do with taste.  People just randomly buy Coke or Pepsi depending on which one is closer, or which one is more convenient to pick up without having to stop taking selfies.

The message also seems to be that if you do accidentally choose Pepsi, you'll be given concert tickets.  I guess.  Because the idiot who congratulates herself for her wise if not completely random choice seems to think that "eligible to win tickets" equals "won tickets."  And she's supported in this odd theory by her less-fortunate friend, who darn it chose Coke, probably because it was the machine not being accessed at the moment she decided she wanted a soda because her friend was buying a Pepsi.  That friend got nothing but a bottle of Coke with a name on it which is not even hers.  Oh, and 12 ounces of Coke, which I guess doesn't amount to much when compared to a very slight chance of winning concert tickets.

As it turns out, Prematurely Thrilled Pepsi Drinker was not being premature after all- she really DID win concert tickets, and there she is having a great time with the Pepsi she just purchased (that's quick turnover on prize redemption, way to go Pepsi!)  Her friend?  Well, she's left with her Coke.

Which brings me back to my original thought:  Coke and Pepsi don't taste the same, at all.  If you like Coke, would you really buy a Pepsi instead if Pepsi was offering concert tickets to every 10,000th purchaser?  Isn't the whole point of buying a soda drinking the freaking soda?  Not to these women, I guess.

Carnation really doesn't get the "Essentials...."

I really don't care if adults want to take the ultimate short cut and guzzle this stuff every morning, trying to trick their brains into thinking that they are actually consuming something that will get them to lunch.  I mean, they are adults and can make their own decisions, and at least this is better than a quick stop at the McDonald's drive-thru for sausages and eggs wrapped in pancakes.

But the final scene features an entire family standing around a MASSIVE kitchen "enjoying" this crap instead of....oh, I don't know...getting out of bed a few minutes earlier and sitting down to cereal, fruit, some orange juice, and an actual "hey we're a family so we might as well get to know eachother" breakfast.   Kids kind of need nutrition (again, not to mention the "look how much we care" gestures like actual food and quality time) to start the day.  Mom and Dad will be grabbing a coffee and a donut in the breakroom before 10- around the same time these kids hear the first gurgles of an empty stomach as they struggle to undertand algebra.   Something's wrong here- though they ARE standing ridiculously close together in that kitchen- so we'll know the parents are at least somewhat emotionally attached to their kids, perhaps....

Two parents, three growing kids, a big kitchen....and five glasses of chocolate milk for breakfast?  Fail, Mom and Dad.  Maybe the tagline for this commercial should be "Because We Care....Sort Of."

Dish is how you come close to ruining my summer

Pretty much the only thing worse than this horrible ad is it's radio version, which assaulted by eardrums roughly four hundred times this summer, jumping out of my headphones to commit a brutal crime against my eardrums during pretty much every commercial break during every baseball game and most XM/Sirius talk shows.

I didn't even realize that the jackass screeching this swill was "singing" "DISH is how we do it" until maybe the 100th time I was subjected to this commercial, and by then I was getting pretty good at just muting my radio during ad breaks because I kind of LIKE my ears, and I REALLY would like to hold on to my sanity for a few more years.  Once I realized that he was saying DISH instead of THIS.....it didn't help at all.  Not even a little.

I'm just really hoping that this was a summer offer and it's about to end, and that Dish Network just irritated and turned off a lot more people than it conned into locking themselves into a two-year committment with a massive cancellation fee and then discovered just how incredibly crappy the service is whenever it gets cloudy (my parents have a dish because cable doesn't reach where they live- and whenever it rains hard, the only channel available is the NO SATELLITE SIGNAL PLEASE WAIT SEARCHING......screen.)  I can't feel sorry for anyone who decided to reward Dish Network for this garbage by signing up.  You get what you pay for, idiots.

It works if you can forget "Episodes I, II and III"

I was fourteen years old when Star Wars hit the movie screens for the first time (it was called Star Wars- that Episode I A New Hope crap didn't take hold until some years later.)  Like so many of my generation, I was transfixed by the experience of watching what seemed at the time to be nothing short of magic.  I'll always be grateful that I was able to experience the original film-- 35 times in five weeks- before George Lucas decided to "fix" and "improve" (come damn close to ruining) it.

I can remember there being NO Star Wars vehicles, action figures, etc. that first Christmas after the original film was released (1977.)  I do not remember it being a problem, since whiffle bats worked great as light sabers and GI Joes were perfectly good stand-ins for our favorite characters.  Seems strange now, but back then it was not automatically assumed that films would come with a built-in merchandising campaign.  By "Episode VI" (gag) stuffed Ewoks were on the shelves BEFORE the film showed up, and Sears was devoting an entire page of it's wonderful Christmas catalogue to tie-in stuff.

I'm so glad I wasn't a little kid in the late-90s, and I could take that three-serving steaming bowl of crud Lucas dumped all over us with a grain of salt.  I will probably give Episode VII a try, because what the heck....but I can't help but note that all of these home movies date from the late-70s and early-80s, and not the turn of the century.....hmmm.....

Xfinity's drive to turn us all into zombies continues unabated....

Woman near the end of this horrible Joys Of Sitting On Your Ass Watching TV Whenever Wherever ad:  "What does it not do?"  Easy answer- it doesn't do anything to encourage you to get off your overfed ass and go outside and actually do something, you addicted moron.

But she's just the last person in the long parade of slouching couch potato jackass mouth-breathers who populate this two minutes of sludge.  Everyone here is just enchanted with the idea of getting rid of their "dissapointing" DVR-- "it only lets you record two shows at the same time,"ooooh poor baby how DO you find the courage to get through life?  With Xfinity, you can record up to FOUR shows at the same time while watching a fifth show- well, it's about damn time, and never mind that there has never, ever in the history of television been more than two shows worth watching on the tv at the same time.  Hell, I can't remember I flipped back and forth between two shows because I was actually interested in both of them.  More like "meh, whatever, I might come back to this, but let's see what else is on just in case it's better...."  I don't have DVR at all, and believe it or not, I couldn't care less.

The people in TV land apparently all have so many channels and so many fun things to watch that they need to be able to record four shows at the same time even when they are home watching a fifth show.  Which leads me to two questions- what kind of cable package to they have, and where do they ever find the time to watch all these recorded shows?

Oh, and if you're carrying around your television on your phone, forever watching one show while recording four others for later consumption, do you ever get around to doing anything other than watching tv?

Oh, and for you people who have bought in to this TV Is My Life crap- do you really want your kids to emulate your sad behavior?  Really?