Seriously Depressing Bud Lite Commercials

Actually, if your beer has your team's name on it and this is important to you, that makes you a pathetic tool, and about as far from a "legend" as you can get.



And in THIS commercial for the same product, the utter stupidity of going for beer because the company that made it also bought the rights to use the team logo is actually demonstrated when one of the actors sticks a can into a beer cozy with HIS team's logo on it.  That's right, folks- you always could carry a beer with your team's logo, long before this dumb idea was greenlit by Bud Lite.  It didn't even have to be a Bud Lite (even better.)  You just needed to invest a dollar in a foam beer cozy.

"What if?"  Yeah, what if?  Not answered.  Probably because "who gives a damn?" is a better question.

Oh but please acting like a moron with zero life or taste in beer, scruffy loser Steelers fan.  Catch that beer passed to you by one of your equally vapid friends.  Then please, open it immediately and let all that awful watery crap spray all over your face.  Loser.

Buick isn't going to let Lexus make the only disgusting car commercials this holiday....

1.  I guess it's supposed to be "funny" that the guy unloading boxes from his trunk got a black eye from Black Friday shopping.  Because being assaulted going for bargains- or any reason- is just f--ing HILARIOUS, especially during the holidays.  Ugh.

2.  The message here is that all of that awful violence and hassle could have been avoided if.....the injured guy had just done his Black Friday shopping at Buick?  How does this make sense in any universe?  So he wouldn't have been beaten up buying presents because that kind of thing doesn't happen at the Buick Dealership....but neither does buying presents for anyone, except maybe yourself.

"I found a way to avoid the hassle of Black Friday-- I went down to Buick and bought myself a new car."  Um, what?  Huh?  How does this go over with the wife and kids?  If this commercial was a scene in a bad sitcom, I'd suspect that the douchenozzle who bought himself a Buick might be in line for a black eye after all, he'll just have to wait for Christmas morning when he tells the people who live in that house with him that the Buick he came home with the day after Thanksgiving is the only present he bought because....well, Black Friday is dangerous.

I'd say this is going to get worse before it gets better, but seriously- how can it?

Lexus' Make December Great Again for the One Percent and their horrid offspring....

Hey look everybody, it's another Lexus December to Remember, in which we are treated to two months of watching  people who already have everything see their dreams of Just A Little More come true.

In this ad, two alleged adults have decided that having a massive house and tons of money are really really nice but what would make them really happy is a new Lexus sitting in front of that massive house on Christmas morning.  Why they don't just go out and buy a new Lexus instead of attempting to con a fairy tale into giving them one kind of escapes me....but what do I know, I'm still mystified that people could be so immensely shallow they'd flip over a Lexus anyway....

The punchline of this ad comes when Barron Trump pops in on the people who Ooopsed  him into existence, sees that they are appealing to Santa Claus, and apparently threatens to veto the request unless a puppy is added to the list.  He does this in an adorable way which makes his parents think that if they don't obey, they are going to end up in the cornfield.  This is all super adorable and also very relatable to the viewing audience, right?  We really want this nasty little creep to get a puppy from his shallow, materialistic, greedy pig parents, right?

Anyway, because it's the holiday season and because people like this always get exactly what they want, come Christmas morning Mommy and Daddy have their $60,000 car and Barron has his puppy, and the rest of us are shopping for deals on a new television set because we just tossed a heavy object through the old one.  Thanks again, Lexus.

As long as they don't start snarking on commercials....

Hey look, yet ANOTHER new YouTube Channel featuring obnoxiously bubbly young white people with way too much time on their hands and who share a dream of getting rich without effort by producing videos of themselves doing obnoxiously bubbly white things!

And they even have an awesomely hip and totally with-it names and a super-clever name* for their group- they're the original Three Musketeers!

And you can bet that over the next several weeks they'll be making a hundred or so superawesomeamazing videos in which they endlessly mug for the camera while prancing, playing, cooking and taking selfies while also endlessly reminding us how young and hip and free-spirited they are By The Way Please Don't Forget To Upclick They Really Really Want This To Be Their New Career!

My guess is that they did a quick survey of YouTube and saw that reviewing movies has been done to death,  the market cornered long ago by people who know how to do more with a camera than just point it out themselves before downloading to YouTube.  Ditto discussing Religion or making instructional videos.  Plus, they aren't really talented at anything other than being young and perky- so they'd thought "hell, we've got $100,000 each in college loan debt and no skills to show for it- let's try cashing in on this whole interwebs thing- we already love to use Twitter and spend most of our lives looking at OTHER people's videos, how hard could it be?"

Good luck, kids.  I won't be watching this version of "The Three Musketeers" but I'm sure that having a job and friends and a life and a functioning brain, I'm not part of the target audience anyway.  And I really don't want to meet anyone who is- because that would be really, really sad.

*Come on, Effort is hard!

(Editor's Note:  Turns out that these three "kids" didn't "spontaneously" decide to start their own YouTube channel Because What The Heck We Love To Have Fun, but are instead the hosts of a show being funded by M&M Mars.  So this is basically the Mickey Mouse Club for candy bars.  I'm going to keep my original comments though, because the "kids" are still total tools.)

I have different "Questions," North Face

It's not actually about questioning "sanity" or questioning "motivation" for me.  It's more like questioning priorities.  As in, why do the people in these ads always choose to feed their colossal egos instead of, I don't know, handing over a little of their obviously overflowing bank accounts to people in actual need?

I mean, think about it.  Every single one of these North Face "Question" ads features some unbelievably self-absorbed white person reflecting on how the world (or, more likely, their tiny and rapidly diminishing circle of friends) simply can't understand their "need" to climb that rock or ski that mountain or do any number of ego-stroking stuff they can do because they have enough Capital One Awards points saved up.  The local food bank?  Meh.  Nothing but losers with lame ambitions there.  Ugh.

(I also like the "can't do this" cry from the woman trying to climb that rock- how about "I shouldn't be doing this, this is really stupid" or "why aren't I doing something more productive and beneficial to society with all my 'determination?'")

Anyway, I thought this was a good ad to feature on Thanksgiving- god knows the people in this ad have plenty to be thankful for.  Like being able to give the middle finger to the rest of us, who wonder why it's always the most shallow people who have the most disposable income.

You people are weird

1.  Hey, wait a minute!  They are already using this song in a Three Musketeers Commercial!  I JUST posted about it! WTF????

2.  "Owning a dog brings out the best in people?"  Um, seriously?  Then why do all my interactions with dog owners include these people saying things like

"Oh he's just being friendly" (as the damn thing jumps on me,) and

"Oh don't worry, he doesn't bite" (oh then there's no problem that he's growling and baring those teeth he doesn't use, thanks for letting me know...) and

"Oh he barks to warn me, that just shows he's a good watchdog" (never mind that if a dog barks at everything, his bark is absolutely f--ing useless as a danger detector, you STUPID KNOB!) and

Not to mention that dog owners just love to walk their dogs on twenty-foot leashes which seem designed to make me trip and which allow the pair to take up so much damn room I have to walk into the street to get around them.  And how so many dog owners prefer transparent bags to carry their precious little bestest friends waste around (seriously, what the hell is the matter with you people?)

I guess the "best" in me will stay hidden away until I own one of these things.  Which is to say, forever.

Nintendo's idea of a family gathering....

This woman is very clever- instead of just being honest and telling us that she wants to keep her kid occupied while she entertains other adults, she pretends that she's doing the kid a favor by letting him have "me time" with his stupid electronic game.  Because he can't have "me time" when it's not the holidays and family isn't around to visit- he can't be asked to adjust his precious game-playing schedule in any way whatsoever because, well, family.  God Freaking Forbid.

So instead of talking to aunts and uncles and grandparents he probably rarely sees, Little Tommy (or whatever the hell his name is, I'm not watching this crud again) just zones out and wastes the entire day staring at a screen while his relatives attempt to form a bond- ANY kind of bond- by offering him tips on how to "win" the pointless nonsense game he's playing.   His response is to glare angrily at this invasion of the "me time" promised by mom.  My response is to lose just a little more hope for the future of humanity.

Oh, and the mom has a daughter, too.  She's in another commercial, with another toy she's obsessing over 24/7 while mom bleats something about "boundaries."  This is a very sad tv family.

Just a few questions, Kohl's....

As long as we are going to use the tagline "give a little more...."

1.  What's the average wage you pay your overnight cleaning crew and shelf restockers?

2.  What does a cashier at Kohl's make?  How about a manager?

3.  What kind of health benefits does Kohl's offer?  Are these benefits available to part-timers and temporary workers (like the ones you hire to work between mid-November and early January only?)

4.  What is the official corporate position at Kohl's concerning an increase in the minimum wage?

5.  Is it fair to assume that you rob your employees of a break period to make them watch this commercial before asking "ok, team, every week we are going to ask you to document something you did to 'give a little more' to a customer over the preceding seven days.  Your continued employment here at Kohl's will depend on how well you respond to our 'give a little more' challenge....?"

Do these questions seem a bit intrusive?  Well, just asking- I mean, you're the ones who decided "give a little more" was a message which really seemed appropriate for the Holiday season, after all.  So I don't think it's all that unfair to ask if Kohl's, Inc. is into "giving a little more," or that's just something you celebrate when your employees do it (not to mention thinking that it would be just fine if the customers adopted it, especially while shopping at Kohl's....)

And then I'm going to kill you, right here at IHOP...

Fifteen seconds in, I'm pretty sure this guy wishes he had just taken himself to IHOP and left this latest mistake from Match.com at her home.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to IHOP, by myself, and ordering three or four of these Seven for Seven meals.  Not because I want to eat them.  I just want to see the look on the waitress's face when she takes my order as I sit there all alone.  My guess is that, this being America, she won't bat an eye. This is the land of Golden Corral and Cici's Endless Pizza and Frosted Fried Dough and Supersized Sodas and Taco Bell's Fourth Meal Campaign,* after all.

*https://travelingmedicineshow.wordpress.com/2007/02/15/fourth-meal-the-ad-campaign-between-irresponsible-and-pure-evil/

Darn you M&M Mars, I hate you for making me do this....

Ok, do schools really ask new kids to stand up in front of the class and introduce themselves?  I've been a teacher for 22 years and I've never once requested that any new student put themselves in the spotlight like this...I'm pretty sure this is kind of a no-no, and that in real life it's much more common for new kids to be matched up with two or three "old-timers" in their classes who guide them through the classes and help acclimate them to their new surroundings...right?  I mean, nobody really does this Leave It To Beaver-level awkward stuff, do they?

Oh, who the hell am I kidding.  That's all I got.  This is actually a very sweet commercial with a very nice message and in fact doesn't annoy me in the slightest.  It doesn't even bother me that they use a Depression-era Spiritual for background music, because it works here.  I guess if Mars is going to make a commercial for this candy bar every thirty or forty years, it ought to do a quality job of it, and they do with this effort.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis (all half-dozen of you, from the looks of the counter) knows that I really don't throw out a lot of praise for commercials.  That would make me like that idiot who decided to start posting "What's Great About..." reviews for movies on YouTube (who the hell wants to watch that crap?)  But I've got to admit, this is a good ad.   There.  I said it.

I won't make a habit of this, I promise.

Thanks for nothing, KIA

"So feel free to let your mind wander as you cruise down suburban streets in your KIA, confident in the knowledge that if you start to drift out of your lane, your car will wake you out of your irresponsible fantasy world with an electronic beep and a tiny indicator light on your driver's side mirror."

"Of course, this little safety feature will do absolutely nothing to save the child who darted in front of your daydreaming ass, but hey we at KIA can't do everything, and that's what high-pressure hoses and dent-repair shops are for, right?  So please, continue to be a totally irresponsible douchenozzle with your car, endangering the lives of everyone around you because you simply can't be bothered to stay alert while operating heavy machinery and thought that you were being safe because you were driving a KIA and hey at least you weren't texting or watching a movie on your phone."

Explanation for the court and comforting words for the grieving parents of the kid you ran over while indulging in your childish daydreaming not included.

You just know this guy is going to spend the entire winter in the garage waxing his riding mower...

1.  At first, I thought that the "thank you" might end up being ironic/snarky, as in "thank you for using that ridiculous piece of machinery and spewing noise pollution while pointlessly consuming precious resources instead of oh, I don't know, a fucking broom which would work practically as quickly but wouldn't require ear protection and might not make me, your neighbor from two blocks over, aware that you are 'working' in your driveway."

2.  So because this guy is spending all of fifteen seconds interrupting the conservations and reading and sleeping and just plain being alone with one's thoughts with his Clearly Invented By a Sociopath leaf-blowing apparatus, he'll be able to take tomorrow off and watch football?  Seriously?  Because I can see the driveway and it's pretty damned obvious that fifteen seconds might be on the generous side when trying to determine how long it's going to take to clear it of leaves.  Does it take a lot longer on Sunday?  If so, why?

3.  "Don't get cocky."  Yeah, don't.  Because you're still a total douche who has bought in to the idea that because you've got yourself a suburban spread and a postage stamp of a lawn, you must stock your garage with ridiculously unnecessary pricey junk which allows you to pretend that the "upkeep" of this financial anchor is in any way a drain on your precious time.  After you've spent fifteen seconds blowing the leaves off your lawn, you going to take the gas trimmer out and manicure the hedges again, aren't you?  Because you can't quite justify putting the lights up quite yet and can't bear being in the house with the wife and kids, huh?

4.  The commercial isn't even for the product being shown.  WTF is that all about?

Is this the best Michael Phelps can do in his effort to cash in?

Never mind the computer being slow.  It's a lot more disturbing that Michael Phelps can't even be bothered to get dressed before rushing to the internet to do- well, whatever.  Seriously, Mr. Phelps.  You can check out the video of yourself swimming after you change.  It will still be there.

I'm sure what's really contributing to Michael Phelps' murder face is the fact that he's being stalked by a geek with a laptop who feels the need to sit three inches from him despite the fact that they are the only two people in the freaking stands after his swim.  It's called PERSONAL SPACE, you creep!

Oh and it's not jeans, it's a "Movement." Uh huh

Remember all those Pepsi commercials which suggested that the key to all Good Times was popping open a can of sugary battery acid?

I had to go to YouTube to find out that this was a commercial for Jeans and not just a Great Big Celebration of Pretty Wealthy Young White People Doing Stuff with all their free time and money. Because seriously, what the hell does any of this have to do with jeans?  We've got skiing and helicopters and glamourous locations and models dancing around and smiling and enjoying the carefree life and all that- would it really matter if they were wearing something than Hollister Jeans?  Really?

AT&T only steals from the very best

This commercial has often been compared to the classic 1956 French featurette The Red Balloon, in which a balloon forms a bond with a young boy and follows him through the streets of Paris.  Generally the comparison goes like this- "The Red Balloon was a magical,  daring, groundbreaking adventure in cinematography.  This commercial really sucks."

In fact, other than featuring a red balloon, the only thing the commercial really has in common with the film is that it feels thirty-five minutes long.  At least.

Another bland-as-hell slice of lifelessness from Mazda

1.  You're still Jeff and Susan.  Now you're just Jeff and Susan with a baby.  Get the hell over yourselves.

2.  Maybe Susan should be driving the car, least as long as Baby is along for the ride.  Jeff acts as if he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight.  I also can't look at Jeff's face without thinking "holy crap, this guy had sex with that woman?"  Money.  Is there anything it CAN'T do?

3.  They didn't do a good job baby-proofing the house.  The baby got in easily.  MY house?  That is TOTALLY baby-proof.

Hulu Presents: One of the most disgusting, rage-inducing commercials of all time

So in this ad, Hulu basically decides that it's one gigantic freaking joke that Americans have become disgusting television addicts, incapable of going anywhere without glowing screens to stare at, no longer able to carry on conversations with fellow humans, just taking in electronic entertainment while their brains atrophy.  Yeah, this is super funny.  The joke's on us, but it's super funny.  Right?

And to add to the joke, Hulu is giving us even more to waste our time on, because it's all about tv all the time, forever and ever.  Thanks to Hulu we will never ever ever run out of crap to glue our eyes to as the world continues to go on without us, all around us, totally ignored by us because Hey TV.

The final few seconds of this obnoxious crud is one of the loudest, angriest and most violent slaps in the face of society I have ever seen.  Remember, this isn't about turning the f--ng tv off and getting outside and actually taking part in society by interacting with the world.  This commercial is the equivalent of pointing and laughing at an alcoholic while handing him the keys to a wine cellar- and then laughing some more.

And in the end, some people watch this disgusting display and think "hey cool, Hulu looks awesome" because they are already lost.  They already eat lunch "with" people but spend all their time on their phones instead of talking to the people they are "with."  They already DVR hour after hour of tv and then binge-watch crap that does nothing but suck hours away they will never, ever get back.  They are already the walking dead (another show they binge-watch and are proud of binge-watching) and they think that's funny, or cool, or perfectly normal.

As I've posted before, I never stop being grateful that I grew up before all this became normal.  I can't believe this is a world anyone wants to live in.  Yet this commercial is not a warning.  It's an f--ing promise.  And yes, it's actually supposed to be funny.  Ugh.

How exactly does "Avoid Reality" mesh with "Call of Duty?"

"Screw this awful adult stuff; since we can't actually crawl back into the womb let's do the next best thing- retreat into a fantasy land in which we are space-bound warriors armed with laser guns!"

Well, if all you young white men were planning to vote for Trump, please feel free to bail out of the real world before election day and stay there until Cheeto Mussolini tells you to come out and exercise your franchise, November 28 or thereabouts.  Your contribution to Democracy will not be missed.

This Chase Commercial makes the woman who spent her points on a dress seem reasonable

"So one day I noticed that I had 60,000 rewards points built up on my Chase Ink Credit Card.  Don't ask me how I managed to build up that many points running a barber shop without ever thinking of anything else I might actually use those points for, because if you ask me such a thing I'll take it as doubting my acumen as a business person."

"Anyway, I had a number of options how I could use those 60,000 rewards points.  Maybe some new equipment for my shop?  Maybe a vacation? Maybe I could even donate them to a worthy cause?"

"After very little thought, I decided that I'd spend the points on chicken wire and plastic ferns and take an entire day erecting a gigantic green fake mustache over my barbershop.  Sure we had to close for the day to get this thing built, but now that it's done I think it looks really great.  I think my staff agrees with me, even though they seem to be rolling their eyes a lot lately and I do hear quite a bit more whispering than I used to- stuff about no bonuses and why I cancelled the staff Christmas party this year or me having my head up my ass or something."

"Anyway, I think it was a great idea, and I can't wait to get home to tell the wife how I used the 60,000 points.  She never bought the idea that I could be a good businessman- well, this is really going to show her!"