Let the station do all the "Playing"

Remember when the park was the Best Place to Play?

Remember when it was the woods, or the beach, or the batting cages or the local baseball diamond?

Remember when, a night or two every year, it was the county fair?

Remember when it was the hill behind your house on the weekends and during those magical times called Snow Days?

Well, now that it's the 21st century, the Best Place to Play is the couch in the Room Where The TV Is.

Enjoy your atrophied brains, obesity and juvenile diabetes, you morons.  The sun is still shining, the parks are still there, and on snow days that hill still beckons.  Not that you give a damn.

What the hell, Allstate?

Ok, as near as I can figure, here is the story behind this ad-

Once upon a time- all the way back in 1971, in fact- this guy was in an Allstate Commercial for a few seconds.  Some years later, this guy died.  Even more years later, one of his kids became engaged to be married, and another one of his kids decided "hey, it's really sad that dad isn't here to share this very special day so wouldn't it be cool if we could find that Allstate Commercial he was in back in 1971 and show it to everyone before the wedding?"

Because nobody in this family has any common sense or taste, nobody said "well, actually, no, because while we all miss Dad and everything, the day is going to be about the couple actually getting married and it's supposed to be joyous- not sure how showing a grainy, washed out old commercial featuring Dad shilling for insurance before the ceremony is going to do anything except detract from the reason we're all together. 

I mean, we all miss Dad and wish he could be here.  I want to make it clear that I totally understand that.  But we've got old home movies featuring Dad we could show.  We could, and certainly will, spend at least some of the day reflecting on our best memories featuring Dad.  Are you suggesting that we should try to replace all that with a ten-second clip of Dad in an Allstate Commercial?"

Nobody said that.  So while other people were doing things like arranging catering and fittings and booking the church and renting the hall and sending invitations and doing all those things that are normally part of the preparation for weddings (I assume.  I was just a groom after all, I didn't do any of that stuff.  I just showed up) this woman was writing to Allstate and asking the company to find a copy of the old Cheesy 70s Commercial With Dad Wearing Ugly Clothing.  And because of her exhaustive efforts to carry out her plan to do this rather pointless thing that no one had the guts to tell her was pretty stupid and kind of a waste of time, everyone got to spend a few minutes of the wedding day pretending to appreciate a rather maudlin look at Dear old Dad, and then pretended to laugh because Hey Her Heart was in the Right Place.

But don't tell me that the message of this ad is anything larger than "Allstate is totally shameless when it comes to pretending to care about it's customers, especially when an eight-second YouTube search can find the video clip one of those customers desperately wants to see for some reason, and when Allstate can later use it in a modern commercial."  Because I'm not buying it.

Hope this family enjoyed the trip down memory lane, though, and that it didn't put too much of a pall on what was supposed to be a happy event.  Sort of.  Actually, I don't care.  Don't have to be nice, just have to be honest.

Oh give me a break, NFL

None of these coaches needed to go "undercover."  Not one person in 10,000 has the slightest idea what they look like, and even less care.

Hell, they could walk around wearing name tags and nobody would know who they were.  We'd all just be wondering why they were wearing name tags.

What kind of insane ego trip is this?  Nobody is watching football to see the coaches!  I mean, I might recognize one or two NFL quarterbacks on the street.  I MIGHT recognize Bill Bellichick.  That's it.  THESE guys?  Come on!

Hyundai and Red Sox Nation can go to hell in the same car wreck

I'm a Red Sox fan.  I am NOT a member of "Red Sox Nation," because "Red Sox Nation" is a cheap marketing gimmick created by the current owners of the team in order to sell more caps and jerseys.  I am not buying in, and neither should any Red Sox fan whose support for the team predates 2004.

I am a proud Pre-2004 Red Sox fan.  NOT a member of "Red Sox Nation."  So we've got that out of the way...

The people in this ad, the people who wrote this ad, and the people who put this ad on television should all be locked into a room and forced to listen to this ad until they go insane (or ten minutes, whichever comes first.)  In real life, I'd like to see both of these shmucks dragged out of their car and beaten to death by Yankees fans.  They'd totally deserve it.

I bet neither of these idiots were Red Sox fans before 2004.  They probably own red and pink caps and jerseys with their own names stitched on the back.  The very first Sox t-shirt they ever owned was the one which said "2004 World Series Champions."  They are disgusting posers and I don't want to see them on my tv anymore.  How do I know they are posers?  Well, this may seem repetitive, but- only posers would sing this god-awful Neil Diamond song because the corporate overlords of Fenway told them to during the 7th inning stretch- and only pond scum uber-posers would sing it at top volume in their freaking cars (the freaking cars that I hope they are soon dragged out of and beaten to death by Yankees fans.)

Amazon's interesting take on Honest Reviews

Your review could not be posted. Thanks for submitting a customer review on Amazon. Your review could not be posted to the website in its current form. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines: http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines

from John F. Jamele on September 21, 2017 Came in three parts, no instructions and after struggling ... Came in three parts, no instructions and after struggling for a while couldn't figure out how to put it together and will be returning then (I bought two to "save money on shipping"- doesn't save me any money if I have to send them back.) I see I am the second customer of the 12 to review this item with this problem. Seems to me that sending instructions would be more helpful than just replying "sorry, return it," especially when you are selling an item specificially to people with mobility issues.

We encourage you to revise your review and submit it again. A few common issues to keep in mind: Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at www.amazon.com/feedback. We do not allow profane or obscene content. This applies to adult products too. Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively are considered spam. Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable content in your review. "Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it." I explained how it came in pieces and I was unable to assemble it. Check. "We do not allow profane or obscene content."  Nor did I include any.  Check.  "Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively are considered spam."  Didn't include any of this.  Check. "Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable content in your review."  Check. Someone please tell me how my review violated Amazon's guidelines.  Or just assure me that I am not crazy in suspecting that Amazon has decided that poor reviews are simply not going to be made visible to potential customers because Amazon doesn't make money unless people buy the stuff advertised on it's site.

Ameriprise: Be Brilliantly Entitled

Oh please spare me the wistful musings of entitled rich white people who, having experienced a life which would seem like a magical fairy tale to 99.9 percent of the planet, "finally" get to start living their real dreams thanks to their financial counselors.

Check out this woman.  She's been "fortunate" that her work has allowed her to travel around the world, in the process aquiring artifacts from interesting, exotic and very, very poor nations which she can then display on her 12-foot walls (I can hear the dinner party conversations already- "Oh yes, I picked that one up in Kenya, it's hand-painted teakwood, I think the woman with five starving children asked three dollars but I got her down to $1.25, you know me and my nose for bargains!"

But now, she's done with all that traveling (she looks like she may be pushing 60, after all- what, is she expected to work forever?) and because she's managed to sock so much money away (see the previous paragraph) she can start Living for Herself (she comes pretty close to telling the audience that she sees this as Giving Back, but I guess even she wasn't capable of getting those words past her lips without gagging, so she uses "sharing" instead.)  So she's opening a Bed and Breakfast (the most cliche'd dream of Upper Class white people who are afraid that not enough of us lessers realize how awesomely huge and beautiful their house is- not enough dinner parties...) so she can show off her foreign bauble collection and not incidentally continue to make money as she rides her wings of self-important douchery into old age.

Here's hoping that nobody shows up to stay at her mansion full of appropriated culture artifacts and that she spends the last few years of her ridiculously pampered life sitting on her wraparound porch sipping herbal tea and petting the cat who is the only creature on the planet she hasn't bored into insanity with her pretentious blather.  Which was probably Plan B anyway.

Dr Pepper, Redefining Sad

Even if I were willing to pretend that this fat, loud, disgusting blowhard is carrying around ten pounds or more of Dr Pepper instead of a tray of empty cups, I would never be able to get past the fact that if Larry The Moron Dr Pepper Choad really did work at some stadium he'd have the easiest job on the planet, because nobody in the history of sports held in stadiums has ever, EVER purchased a Dr Pepper from a vendor.   Sorry.  Meanwhile, the guy selling beer doesn't have time to shmooze and bleat slogans at the fans- because he's too busy actually selling beer.

I'd say that this guy has the easiest job on the planet except for two things:  First, Toyota Jan has that gig already.  Second, staving off suicide on a daily basis must tax this guy's energy way more than walking around hawking soda nobody wants to drink.

Which of these Pizza Hut commercials is more detached from reality?

Commercial #1- a guy in traction stands in the middle of the kill floor at his local Pizza Hut to bore- err, entertain- the employees with his exortation to live every minute like it's their last because it may be.  "Living each moment" means watching sunsets, staring at the ocean...and eating Pizza Hut's special brand of cardboard both stuffed and topped with the most disgustingly tasteless mass-produced cheap "cheese" the corporate monolyth known as Pizza Hut could buy by the metric ton?

Who is this jackass talking to, anyway?  Because it sure as hell isn't the people in the room with him. Telling Pizza Hut employees to "live every day" as they struggle to keep up with the demands of decorating plates of dough with sugary crap and shoving them into ovens for minimum wage is pretty low.  Especially when one of those workers is a guy who should be enjoying his golden years with his great-grandchildren but instead is trying to make rent spending them working the late shift at Pizza Hut.  Because Capitalism.

Commercial #2- I guess the punchline of this mess is that Not-E.T has arrived on Earth to complement us on our ability to produce children who have "excellent hiding places" ( I don't even want to speculate on what that means) and to let us know that not only is the universe totally devoid of pizza, but that the alien is just going to punt his search for the best pizza on Earth and stop at the very first place he visited, Pizza Hut.  Because, come on- if Not-E.T. thinks that Pizza Hut is "the best," he has

A.  No taste buds, or
B.  No desire to explore the planet for pizza, having tasted what passes as pizza at Pizza Hut.

If "A" is true, the alien has no business judging pizza.  If "B" is true, the alien is perfectly welcome to return home and let his own race know that Pizza Hut is the best we can do; I won't let the slander bother me.  But he should stop looking into the camera and trying to convince US that Pizza Hut represents the pinnacle of pizza-producing mastery, because we know better.  Because we've eaten pizza produced pretty much anywhere else.

Because "Palm Beach Research" sounds so legit!

First of all, am I really supposed to trust some guy who feels the need to start his presentation by pretending to shred a Social Security check and then can't figure out which camera he's supposed to be looking into?  Shredding the check makes zero sense and doesn't make anything approaching an actual point- if he was railing against the inadequacy of the minimum wage and tried to "demonstate" his point by shredding a paycheck, would anyone react by thinking "hey, this is someone who has a valid argument, I need to listen to him?"  If not, why would destroying a Social Security check add to anyone's credibility?

I think that the "point" he was trying to prove by pretending to shred a Social Security check is that he's a moron who thinks we're morons too.

Anyway, he goes on to explain that his idea comes from his "friend" Tom Dyson, who wrote a book about an obscure law allegedly signed by Ronald Reagan which we can get for free (just $5 for shipping charges) which I guess will tell us how we can get 70% more per month than that Social Security check we might as well shred because Reasons (Reasons in this case being "it's not very much, so it's nothing.")  His "friend" has "given away lots of free books in the past," which is kind of a non sequitor considering that I know the difference between free and $5 at least as well as I know the difference between a small check and a handful of shredded papers.  This "friend" of Tom Dyson- who I guess was too busy or too wise to the ways of the law to pitch his own scam- wants us to take advantage of this amazing offer but also warns us that his books have been snapped up quickly in the past and if we don't act very soon this one too will probably be gone before we know it so Better Click Right Now.

I suppose this junk is a cheap version of those "If You Live In (Insert State Here) You Can Save $25,000 a Year on Your Mortgage Using This Simple Trick" and "Doctors Hate Him Here's Why" ads which are forever popping up in the margins at Weather.com - just make a quick buck clickbait tossed out there in the hopes of nabbing a few very gullible fish.  This one caught my eye because of the name- Palm Beach Research.  It just sounds so awesome- like the "Correspondence College of Tampa" professor mentioned in an episode of The Simpsons as an expert on The UFO Conspiracy.  It's got the word "Research" in it, so it must be on the level, right?

Oh, and just one more thing- I can't agree that if you're getting a Social Security check, you might as well just run it through a shredder because it's not very much money.  I totally understand that it's not very much money, but you have to be a very special brand of peevish to respond to "not very much" by turning it into "nothing at all."  If your Social Security check is an insult, please cash it anyway and give the money to people with less pride but a lot more common sense than you have.  Let me know if you want my address.  I have kids to feed.

Rocket Mortgage: So simple, even a Girl can use it

Or "Don't ask Sarah about Mortgages.  She's just a girl."

Sarah is a fifth-grade teacher who uses the magic of cliche'd math problems scrawled in chalk on a blackboard to mold young minds (all eight of them in her equally cliche'd tiny class of kids.)

Sarah is also super-cool because she creates robots advanced and powerful enough to win competitions for her Girlbot team or whatever that t-shirt says (I don't care.)  I guess she's a fifth-grade math teacher because she likes making $25,000 a year despite having technical skills that could earn her 3-4 times that much in a starting position outside the public sector.  Whatever, Sarah.  Your life.

But Sarah doesn't know anything about mortgages, because you know that involves math and stuff and Sarah...doesn't know a lot about math?  The subject she teaches and uses to make robots?  Sarah really needs to use Rocket Mortgage and its one-page thirty-year contracts she can read and apply for on her Smartphone because a traditional bank mortgage requires too many pages and too much jargon for her pretty little head to manage?

Is that really the message here, Rocket Mortgage?  Because is sure sounds like it.  Sarah may be a genius math teacher and techie but mortgages involve big numbers (like six figures, scary!) including percentages (even scarier!) and it's not like she's got the kind of Guy Brain she'd need to be REALLY good at math.  Right?

Password Troll. Just another sign of the Very Dumb Times we live in

Four minutes-plus of this cloying, manipulative and self-indulgent crap.  I watch it, so you don't have to.  And I don't even get paid for it.  Maybe someday you'll have the opportunity to thank me.

This entire mess- all FOUR-PLUS FREAKING MINUTES OF IT- is a tale of how ANNOYING and OH SO HARD TO REMEMBER ME BRAIN SO SMALL passwords are.  Never mind that they protect your bank account, retirement fund info, and a lot of other really important stuff (and not just your Netflix and Hulu accounts.)  Don't let that worry your pretty little heads- the important thing is to stop taxing that brain of yours with having to remember stuff that doesn't involve eating junk food.

Passwords- or what us old fogies call "Security," is for losers who have the time to remember junk like letters and numbers did I mention how PAINFULLY HARD THAT IS?  So trust these guys with all that and you'll never have to worry about security- I mean, passwords- ever again.  It's  not like you really care about it now.  It's just that this archaic password stuff still exists even though you don't know why because gosh it really slows you down when you want to buy stuff, man that sucks.

I wrote this blog post in just under two minutes- half the time I spent watching this awful password troll crap commercial the YouTubers think is just awesome because it is so true man it's hard to remember stuff plus it's lame.  Actually, that's a lie.  I didn't watch the whole video.  Because I don't need a "point" jammed into my brain over and over again until I "get" the genius who developed this steaming pile of smarmy crud.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to give these guys my lame passwords and start celebrating the fact that I'll get to my stuff almost 4 seconds faster than you stupid 20th century losers with your security codes.  Right after I contact MyCleanPC.com and get rid of all these registry errors.  Only $39.95.  Awesome deal, and I can do it with just a few clicks.

I'm still more interested in eGuillotine than eTrade

The barely-human pig-creature in this commercial defines success as having the leisure time to spend some part of the final years of his worthless, pointless and utterly meaningless life polluting the ocean with golf balls hit off the back of a f--ng yacht.  Jimmy Carter he is not.

And if this makes us "mad," we are supposed to respond by getting eTrade.  I guess the theory is that if we want some level of revenge against revolting lizard subhumans like this grizzled old money-grubbing leach on humanity, we need to use an investing App to make ourselves even more rich- and then what?  Buy a submarine, torpedo this guy's yacht, and then hit golf balls at his bobbing head until he goes under for a final time?

Discover the pain only commercials like this can provide

1.  I've watched this commercial four times, and I still can't figure out whether or not the same actor is playing the prospective Discover Card customer and the Discover Card Phone Center Monkey.  If it is the same actor, it only makes sense if this is the way Discover is saving a little bit of money by only hiring one guy to cover two roles and thinks this is clever in some way.  If they are two different actors, how depressing is it that Generic Thirtysomething Guy on TV Commercials has become SO generic that they might as well just clone this stupid scruffy loser and sell him to ad companies already?

2.  Tell me how this jackass has a FICA score 100 points below mine but managed to finance a million-dollar house complete with a brick backyard barbecue and a patio featuring indoor furniture.  Or is that his living room in the background, and this house has windows instead of walls?  Either way, f--k you you douchenozzle and f--k your "just callin' cause I got even more spare time than I do spare money" attitude.

3.  Unlike the bored jerkwad calling from the ridiculous million-dollar McMansion, nobody has ever said "I'm so proud of you" to the phone monkey working in the Discover Card boiler room.  And certainly not in English, as I'm pretty sure Discover isn't paying Americans to take pointless calls from bored rich people who somehow managed to achieve financial success without being aware that there are ways of getting their credit score for free AND that checking doesn't impact the freaking score.  The guy wasting time with the pond scum and his dog should be a lot browner and his accent should be a lot more Middle-Eastern.  I'm sure his name is still Bob, though.

Oh Bite Me, Windows 10*

If I had a nickle for every commercial, tv show or film which "celebrated" an "amazing, gifted, awesomely dedicated and engaging" teacher with all of six freaking students, I'd be rich.  And retired from my job as an actual teacher with no fewer than 15 kids in each class who uses a computer which may or may not have a stable connection to the internet from one day to the next, and which randomly signs off at crucial moments during lessons Because That's A Problem We Can't Fix And No You Can't Either Because We Can't Give You Administrator Access.

*And you too, Mr. Toney The Amazing Teacher who uses rap to engage his kids, ensuring he'll live in their hearts forever blah blah blah.  Bite me hard.  Then, go die in a fire.   I'd type more, but I have to get up tomorrow and go teach actual information to my actual classes.  Without Windows 10.

Ok that does it, Mila! Our marriage is OFF!

Wow, what could be more heartwarming than watching Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, and other semi-talented but very wealthy young people spending gobs of money making someone's "Houzz dreams"*come true?  Hmmm...how about an extinction-level event featuring a comet the size of Alaska?  That would be even more heartwarming- and much, much more welcome than this self-indulgent tripe.

Someday, someone will explain the appeal of these "watch spoiled brats with unlimited budgets knock down walls, install ridiculously pricey appliances and basically do whatever the hell they want Because Money" shows which are currently a plague on our nation.  I just don't get it.  That being said, Mila Kunis could furnish my basement anytime.  If I had a basement.

I really hate everything right now.

("Houzz?"  Why, television?  WHY?)

Chevy's latest Real People, Not Actors insult puts a bow on my summer

1.  "If you are looking for adventure this summer," you aren't going to find it test-driving a Chevy, because you aren't going to find a Chevy dealer willing to let you drive 90 MPH around a freaking racetrack.  It would be exciting to do that- but you know what, it would probably be exciting to drive ANY car 90 MPH on a race track.  What the hell does that have to do with what you are actually going to be using a car for in real life, you stupid hicks?

2.  "I think I left my SOUL back there."  Oh, I have no doubt that's true, buddy.  And all you got in return was about five seconds of tv face time.  And for the next fifty years, you can entertain your friends with this clip of you pretending to wet your pants over a freaking Chevrolet.  Hope it was worth it.  No refunds.

3.  "Can I take this home with me?"  Cripes, that's the least they should let you do for surrendering what little dignity you had left to be in this ad, Stupid Woman.  Definitely, take the car home and thanks for proving once again that "What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?" was a prophetic vision of our future.  Sure people in the 70s would dance like a chicken for a few ounces of ice cream and chocolate shell, but they had more pride in their little fingers than these Chevy Real People, Not Actors do in their entire bodies.  If they don't at least get to drive off in these crappy piles of junk on wheels after their shameless buttkissing, they sold themselves way too cheap.

If you thought Nestle hated you, check out Dockers!

We all know and loathe the Kit Kat commercials which feature no actual dialogue, just horrible sound effects including beeps, rings, buzzers and bells to the "break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar" jingle.  We especially hate them when we suffer from sound sensitivity issues.  And that makes us hate companies which behave as if if they aren't aware such issues exist, or who are perfectly willing to give a gigantic middle finger to those who suffer from them.

So if you have Hypersensitive Hearing, Misophonia, Phonophobia, Hyperacusis, etc. you've probably trained yourself to leap for the remote mute button whenever a Kit Kat commercial comes on.  Well, now you can look forward to even more suffering, because Dockers is comign at you with what I'm sure they think is super-clever advertising but is in fact another painful wall of noise.  And they either don't know, don't give a damn, or think your suffering is funny.  So I've been subjected to this garbage during Every. Single. Commercial Break. On ESPN.com while watching the Red Sox-Yankees game.  I hope you burn in hell, ESPN.  AND Dockers.

(BTW, I don't think I suffer from any of the conditions I listed above; if I do, they've gone undiagnosed.  But I do find these ads obnoxious and grating and they do make me want to seriously hurt someone, so who knows.)

Another Breathtakingly dumb Geico Ad? Nothing surprising about this at all.

The only thing more depressing than the thought of human beings putting actual time and money into producing this drek is the response of the glue-sniffing Youtube commenters below it.  I really, really hope that at least most of them are just paid shills, because if this many people really enjoyed this ad (one suggests that it may convince him to switch to Geico, because hey if Geico is clever enough to make a "Running of the Bulldogs" ad, they MUST be awesome at providing coverage in the event of an accident, right?) I really don't know if I can go on doing this blog.   It's just getting too sad for me.