At Tysons, it's all about the effort

This commercial would have been so much better if that kid's "thank you for going all out on reheating pre-cooked fried chicken parts" speech had been snark.  Little sister could have added "and the Pillsbury canned biscuits really put an accent on the love, mom!"

Then dad could have stopped playing piano long enough to throw in with "hey, that looks like actual salad she's serving up, too!  That must have taken upwards of two minutes to get out of the bag into the bowl, and who do you think put the dressing on the table?  We should all give Mom a big round of applause for using the spacious, well-equipped kitchen she has with such awesome effect!  Way to go, Mom!"

Then mom could have given her whole family the middle finger before announcing "screw all this, I'm going back to school!  Kids- the piano man can do the cooking from now on.  Get ready for a steady menu of Stouffer's Pot Pies and Hot Pockets."

Then the children who, after all, simply don't know any better having been raised by these two jackasses, give eachother high-fives and suggest that dad eases into his new role slowly by ordering online at PapaJohns tomorrow night.  Hey, we can try that new pizza-sized chocolate chip cookie while we're at it!

Panera: Food for Rich White People

"Clean Pairings."  Did you hear that noise?  That was my soul dying under the weight of the narrator's self-satisfaction.

Ugh, the pretention!  It BURNS!

Seriously, though- the entire message of this heaping, steaming pile of bilge is "when you've got money, you don't eat prole food- you don't go to KFC or McDonald's or Burger King or even Subway.  You go to twee designer bread places like Panera, where you can get 'dirty' salads with 'clean' dressing, $5 cups of Low-Fat Vegetarian Garden Vegetable Soup with Pesto  sprinkled ever so gently with organic garlic, and $4 pitas to dip into it.  You bring all this stuff home to your Not Very Appreciative kids, all of whom would just kill to see a bucket of fried chicken or a sack of White Castle burgers just once, if only you asked them.  But you'll never ask them."

So, to all you "progressive" posers-- please, continue to bring this overpriced junk home and dissapoint your kids, time and time again.  Don't be too surprised when they begin to find reasons to not be home for dinner, coming home later with grease on their faces and empty Quick Wipe packets in their designer jeans.  Because believe me, there are only so many dirty salads one can eat, and there are only so many ways to disguise tasteless lumps of warm bread.

Here's a better idea- buy some rolls and salad (buy them at Whole Foods Market and make sure they are 'organic,' if you insist) and a can of soup, throw it together yourself in your kitchen,  Send the money you saved to Oxfam, you awful pretentious twats.

Two Pieces of Bad News For Flo

1.  Progressive Insurance is using an animated talking box to sell its insurance in this recent commercial (and several others playing during news and NFL playoff games.)

2.  The box is totally out-acting Flo.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Flo.  Man, was that a long and painful run.  You will not be missed (and if anyone out there wants to write in and tell me that they will, in fact, miss Flo as the Progressive Insurance spokeschoad- please don't.  You are too sad for me to want to know about.)

The three moments in this Chevy ad that make me want to really hurt someone. Or several someones.

1.  When one of these zombies actually says "this reminds me of my first Lexus."  Did you buy it right after you came back from your 14th trip to Europe, you little twat?

2.  When another woman responds to the car's map capabilities with "this car gets me."  That's nice.  It's still just a freaking car, loser.

3.  When one of the guys here bleats "this is a game changer."*

So congratulations, Chevy. You've created a commercial that makes me want to inflict damage on THREE people, instead of your usual one.  Great job.

*this hackneyed cliche needs to be put to bed, right now.  No, not bed- it needs to be buried underneath thirty feet of cement, where it will never bother anyone, ever again.  Enough already.

Another cringeworthy effort from McDonalds

There's nothing about this incredibly cheesy-even-for-McDonalds ad that makes me the least bit interested in taking advantage of the ridiculous "any two items from the Dollar Menu for two dollars, you know like always except we've got this two for two slogan thing going" deal.   Certainly not the revoltingly bland, stupid twentysomethings having a virtual party with their crap junk food.  Certainly not the gang signs captured for Facebook by those people who seriously have way, way too much time on their hands.*

And don't even get me started on how nothing on the McDonald's Dollar Menu would induce me to visit one of their grease pits.  Except the coffee.  McDonald's has excellent coffee at an excellent price.  But I only need one at a time, thank you.

*the first woman who actually walks up to the counter and makes the "two" sign as if she thinks the kid at the register is too stupid to know what the word "two" indicates should be tossed into the deep frier.  At least it would get that stupid grin off her face.

The clever dishonesty of Credit Repair Ads

1.  This video offers a binary proposition- either you are contacting CreditRepair.com, or you are "waiting around instead of working to fix your credit."   There are no other options, apparently- calling your creditors and working out payment schedules, cutting back on unnecessary spending, cutting up unused credit cards and cancelling them- nope, unless you hire CreditRepair.com, you are just "waiting around."

Kind of like the Optima Tax Relief ads, which suggest that one has only two options when they get a tax bill- sit around and wait for the IRS to smash down their door and drag them off to jail, or-- you got it-- hire Alan Thicke's personal gravy train.  "Don't take on the IRS on your own"- oh, heaven forbid.  You might find that you can deal with your tax issues without hiring a middle man to take a nice big bite out of you for doing something you are perfectly capable of doing yourself.

(One more quick note concerning Optima Tax Relief- all their ads give you the same two arguments, usually delivered by Mr. Thicke in the same breath: First, the IRS is out to get you, with their Freeze and Seize manuever, their garnishing of wages, their relentless army of ruthless agents.  Second, the IRS is a very reasonable agency staffed by people who would rather just leave you alone and "go home and play with the kids."  I don't get how they can be both, but they are, according to Mr. Thicke.)

2.  The narration in these sleazy ads always include the following "claim," which is so transparently deceptive that I can't believe anyone actually falls for it- "on average, our customers see SIGNIFICANT improvement in their Credit Scores."  Um, how can you justify using the terms "on average" and "significant improvement" at the same time here?  If you are saying that the average customer's credit score improves after they engage the services of CreditRepair.com, why don't you tell us how many points the score goes up- ON AVERAGE?  You know, instead of using weasel words designed to present an impressive-sounding claim which is only impressive-sounding until it's examined carefully?  Or did I just answer my own question?

This sentence could easily be translated into "the average customer sees their credit score go up after hiring us."   By how many points?  Doesn't that mean a good portion DON'T see their credit score go up?   "It's a significant improvement."  What does significant mean?  You'll notice the improvement?  Is a rise in credit score from 350 to 360 a "significant improvement?"  Is that increase- about three percent- about "average?" If not, why not tell us what the average score of a customer is when they sign up, and what the average score of a customer is when they are no longer using the service?  You know, instead of this "on average" and "significant improvement" crap?

Oh, right, because those Truth in Advertising Laws are almost toothless, but not quite.  So I guess you'd better stick to the weasel words and manipulation of the language to convince desperate people that you actual peform a service worth paying for, and aren't just bloodsucking vampires trying to take advantage of the most economically vulnerable among us.  Yay Capitalism.

The Brave New World of AT&T

I only got through the first 39 seconds of this awfulness, but that was enough to see a little girl wake up and start "communicating" with the internet before she had wiped the sleep out of her eyes, and her father taking in a stream of nonsense on his bathroom mirror while brushing his teeth.  I'm sure all this digital noise appeals to some people, but I don't know who they are, I don't want to know who they are, and they are way to distracted to have time for another actual human being in their lives anyway.

Someone else can watch the rest of this horror- I'm sure it involves a "happy family" sitting around the kitchen table at breakfast, absorbed with their own personal electronic best friends, before "seamlessly" moving on to the same revolting self-absorption in the "family" SUV.  And I'm sure the message- "your life is lived on the web, and your value and gratification level can only be measured in the amount of data you can let pour all over you in any given day" is relentless.  But I'm not being paid to write this blog, so I'm not going to subject myself to it.

Instead, I'll just continue to congratulate myself for being born into a world where none of these "wonders" were available outside of science fiction books and movies, because ugh I can't imagine what this is doing to the brains and social skills of people who buy into the idea that any of this is necessary, let alone a net positive.  This is just gross.

Silverado Presents: The price we have to pay for watching playoff football*

The only way this commercial could end well is if these walking male cliches- and their dirty jeans, three-day beards, and generally scruffy "I'm just killing time 'till the next Trump rally by driving out into the wilderness with three total strangers" attitudes beat the commercial spokeschoad to death with his own sense of smug.  And then pushed the "mobile office" off that cliff.  And then fulfilled a suicide pact.

Meanwhile, anyone else get totally disgusted at the fact that Chevrolet and some hideous crap sitcom called "Superstore" apparently bought ALL OF THE FREAKING AD TIME for the Packers-Cardinals game?  Hell, I'd actually welcome a Trump ad right about now.

("Real People.  Not Actors."  Yeah, no kidding.)

*this, and having to listen to Chris Berman's schtick- which was so very played twenty years ago- in the postgame shows on ESPN.  His act is so worn out, he ought to take it to Branson.

The best iPhone ad I've ever seen

Ok, so this isn't actually an iPhone ad.  And this post really falls under the category of Personal Privilege, since it's not a commercial at all, just something I found very, very funny which did a great job channeling my own thoughts about stupid cell phone addicts and their pathetic need for whatever new electronic gadget has a small "i" attached to it's name.  You people make me sick.  Especially when you divide your attention between your damn phones and the damn road while you are manuevering your damn cars, making me jump out of your way, dicktards.

Oh, and when you can't put your f---ing phones down long enough to scan your damn groceries properly when you are in front of me in line.  The phrase is "I'll call you back."  Learn it.  Live it.

Oh, and when you try to use your f---ing phone to gain access to a baseball game or an airplane.  Your ticket is on your phone, isn't that awesome and special- until it doesn't work.  Then I'm being held up with my Inferior but 100 Percent Functional paper ticket while you wave your digital one around waiting to hear a beep. Jagoff.

Oh, and when you haven't figured out that everyone on the train can hear your stupid, pointless, vapid conversation.  You would not believe the incredibly personal information I've heard you blather over your damn phones at high volume.  What the hell is the matter with you idiots?  If you don't have any respect for your own privacy, that's your problem.  Why are you making it the problem of the person you are talking to- and the problem of everyone within twenty feet of you, you braying jackasses?

For all the rest of you-- Enjoy the R-rated wonderfulness.  I know I did.

The happy ending to this Verizon ad

An estimated 1600 sad, techno-addled and addicted morons were crushed to death in a tragic stampede which apparently started when someone yelled out into a crowded room "look, there's a door leading to more data!"

The tragedy comes on the heels of the Great Hey I Wasn't Finished Recharging My Phone At the Airport Recharging Station Asshole massacre of last fall, and the Christmas You Are Using All The Bandwidth Streaming That Movie Dicktard melee of last month.

Officials expressed something less than total surprise at this occurance, because after all, More Data.

The fourteen people in the room who were reading books or carrying on actual conversations with each other or just entertaining themselves with their own thoughts were unharmed in the incident.  That's the happy ending suggested in the title of this blog post.

Wendy's most recent contribution to the problem

My favorite part of this ad is when the narrator says "you're still sitting there?" after he tells us we can get roughly 2000 calories worth of greasy fatty sludge from Wendy's for four dollars.

I'm pretty sure that the audience for this crap is usually "just sitting there."  If it's moving at all, it's going online to see if there's any way to just order it so they can continue to just sit there, because man getting off the couch and into the car and over to Wendy's just sounds soooooo tiring.

(There's another version of this ad which is kind of an update- Wendy's tells us that people have been tweeting and texing to let Wendy's know how much they LOVE the new four items for four dollars deal- one tweet even reads "Wendy's 4 x 4 has my heart."  Well, there's probably a lot of literal truth to that....)

What these Michelob Ultra Ads are really all about

"It's not about hiking, or swimming, or just walking.  It's about being twentysomething pretty white people with great teeth and really, really horrible taste in beer who have found something to do for a few hours on Saturdays before getting down to drinking that really horrible beer."

I don't understand- meteors used to hit this planet and wipe out all life on it every few dozen millions of years.  Why doesn't that happen anymore?

Um....whose trophy is that, again?

This dad sure shows around the word "we" a lot, doesn't he?  I'm pretty sure he didn't play a single down of the season.  Maybe he coached, but I doubt it- if he coached, he'd know in advance what kind of trophy the team would be getting. Which means his entire level of participation involved sitting in the stands- and now that the season is over, putting down his son's trophy.

It IS his son's trophy, isnt it?  Kind of hard to tell, considering that he's not satisfied with "seeing" it, as he told his son he wanted to- nope, he's taking on himself to view the trophy as a very dangerous step down the road to games in which kids play for fun, and competition is simply not that important. This horrifies KIA dad, so he decides to deface his kid's trophy while thinking to himself "no way, that's not gonna happen."

What's "not going to happen," again?  Oh yes- his kid enjoying playing football for the sheer fun of it, picking up some great friends and learning about teamwork on the side.  Kid doesn't know it yet, but those days are OVER.  From now on, every game is about WINNING, and all WINNING means is scoring more points than the other team.  Think you "won" because you spent several hours outdoors getting great exercise and having fun with your friends? Check the final score, Nancy- you LOST.  Why aren't you CRYING?  Probably because you've been brainwashed by our liberal, emasculating, man-hating society.

What this commercial really needs as its punchline is for some guy to roll past in his Lexus to snark on Woody Hayes and his KIA- because, you know what?  A KIA is the partipation trophy of Suburban dads.  Stick your attitude on your own trophy-free shelf, Dad.  And give your kid back HIS trophy- he earned it, not you, dumbass.

Pringles Presents: The Most Bored, and Boring, People on the Planet

Seriously, these people are way past having nothing to do.  They've made having nothing to do into an art form.  With greasy slivers of stuff that might have once been a distant relative of a potato.

I'll admit however that "Don't Just Eat Them" is not only a good tagline, it's also good advice. Almost as good as "Just Don't Eat 'Em."  Pretty much anything you do with Pringles is healthier than eating them.

One more thing- I give the guy on the park bench permission to beat the adorable young couple trying to kiss with Pringles in their mouths to death.  They deserve it.

"The Forest?" Again?

Remember that part of Brave New World where they show babies being shown flowers and then being electrocuted to condition them to hate the countryside and want to spend their entire lives in the cities?

Well, we seem to be living in a century where Hollywood absolutely loathes the outdoors.  Maybe it's the leaves, or the fresh air, or the wild animals.  But I've lost count of how many "scary" movies take place in the supposedly scary scary woods.  Jeesh, what do we own all these guns for if the sound of crickets gives us nightmares?

But hey, if going to the movies makes everyone afraid of those oxygen-producing monsters, that's fine with me- I spend every summer in a farmhouse on the edge of those Might As Well Be Hell Itself woods.  I hear those horrible crickets, and at night you can see a billion stars from my parents' front porch, and sometimes you can hear coyotes and there are always herds of deer enjoying the salt licks and corn dad puts out for them when it's not hunting season.  I hope I'm not terrifying anyone too much.  But if I am, that just means more Scary Nature for me.

Back to my original thought- I'm becoming convinced that this generation of movie-goers is being conditioned to hate nature, probably to grow the population of global warming deniers and fuel the demand to just pave the hell out of everything as soon as possible- before the trees eat us.  Because you know they will, if we let them.

A few of my favorite things about this Credit Repair Commercial

1.  The old guy who actually has a LIST of all the things he "requires" in a credit repair company.  You'd think someone whose credit is in the toilet would have divorced himself from the idea that he has the ability to put conditions on people who claim to want to help him repair that credit, but I guess you'd be wrong.

"Listen, I want a Money-Back Guarantee and a military discount and I want to be able to cancel anytime at no charge..."

"Um..you do realize you are the one with the crap credit, right?  Did you notice what happened when you brought your List of Demands to Rent A Center?  Did you notice how they laughed at you?  Do you get that you really aren't in any position to make demands, and it's your own damn fault?"

2.  The "Yes Yes Yes" girl.  As in "Yes!  I finally found someone to take more of my money in exchange for empty promises!  I am SO LUCKY, I'm going to treat myself to another round of binge spending with my 29.99% interest Secured VISA Card!  Just gotta get them to raise my credit limit to $1000!"

3.  The fact that if these idiots had spent one-tenth the energy trying to find a Credit Repair company on...oh, I don't know...paying their freaking bills on time....as well as, oh, I don't know....living within their means....they wouldn't be going through any of this?

Rated R for Republican Propaganda

Just take a look at some of the YouTube comments.  I dare you.  If this film doesn't include a scene in which an evil Secretary of State is cackling "what difference does it make" while watching a video of the Benghazi attack sitting next to a Kenyan-born Muslim Marxist President, I think half the audience will burn the theater they are in down around them.

And since it's a Michael Bay film, we know that the propaganda won't be cluttered with anything like relatable characters or plot development.  I mean, we've all seen Pearl Harbor.

Propaganda from the Church of Frozen Food

I didn't even know that there was a Frozen Food Council, but there was no such thing, how else could I explain the existence of this "Not a Commercial" which spends more than a minute singing the praises of frozen foods?

I mean, look at this.  Grandmas love frozen foods ("but don't let my grandkids know that, never mind I just said it on a Not-Commercial.")  Dads love frozen foods.  Mom love frozen foods for the saddest reason- "because dinner is the only time we have our whole family together."  Ugh, really?  Well, that seems to be an argument against frozen foods- maybe if you made dinner more of an event rather than something to be got through quickly through the use of Heat, Eat and Run precooked garbage, Family Time could be made less rare?

I'm frankly surprised that this ad doesn't end with a big American flag dominating the screen while the narrator intones "Eat Frozen Food- or the Terrorists will Win."  Weirdness.

Admitting they ran out of ideas years ago. It's what Geico does

1.  This ad admits that we got sick of Geico's awful commercials years ago and do our best to skip them whever possible.  Well, at least you got one thing right, Geico.

2.  Naturally the mom in this commercial is playing both cook and waitress, because that's what Moms do on tv. Naturally Dad is waiting to be served and has a big "gee, glad I married you, or I'd be sitting here with an empty plate" smile on his face.  Because that's what dads do on tv.  Still.

2.  Geico then rips off a classic gag from "Police Squad" to pad the rest of this awful commercial.  I didn't sit through it beyond the dog eating the guy's dinner, but does it end with one or more members of this family attempting to "escape" from the fake room and finding themselves "trapped" by the camera?  Leslie Neilsen is spinning in his grave.