Well, I guess Rich Woods is just trying to be honest here, but this is a pretty damning "advertisement" for Surface Laptop, isn't it?
I mean, you can't describe it as "fast" or "easy to use" or "innovative" or "reliable?" You've got "sexy" and nothing else? It could be as functional as a paperweight and be described as "sexy." Are laptops just cars now? All about the looks? Nobody gives a damn if they actually work, as long as they let you show well to total strangers as you sit in Starbucks?
When I buy a computer, I don't look for a machine I want to stare at or date. Rich Woods does? Maybe you could keep your personal issues out of your reviews, Mr. Woods?
So, which is superior at providing over-the-top, redefining excessive glitz, hammer-to-the-head Oh Please Be Convinced That This Is The Most Exciting Thing In The Freaking Universe crank up the volume commercialism? ESPN's College Football Gameday or NBC's Sunday Night Football?
ESPN's features the musical--um, "stylings?" of something named Lzzy Hale (seriously?) screaming her ass off before transitioning to three hours of the musings of recent NFL washouts and ancient fossils drooling over college-aged men (Lee Corso is eighty-two freaking years old. He's been ranting about these young men on television for thirty freaking years, never mind that the last of his brain cells died out at least tweny years ago. It should be downright ILLEGAL for him to crowd-surf. Enough already.)
NBC's features the downright embarressing pomping of Carrie Underwood introducing whatever matchup happens to be the last of the day as if it's the freaking Second Coming. I've never managed to get through either of these cringe-worthy eardrum-assaulting celebrations of excess without slamming down the mute button- and they are almost worse with the sound down.
Only one of them can be the Most Significant Event in Human History since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Commandments. So which is it?
Kind of makes you wonder where football in general is going- if it's still "America's Game" and dominant in the ratings, why all this fake glitz and glam? Do I detect the slightest hint of desperation here?
At least the family is being honest toward the boyfriend- they all love another team to the point that they insist on wearing THEIR jerseys to the dinner table but will not tolerate his. So they are openly jerks who take their sports waaaayyy too seriously. He should know this before he gets too involved with this Nowhere Near Worth It girlfriend.
But there's nothing admirable about the guy, either. When told that he "can't" wear his jersey at the dinner table, he responds by wearing something far more obnoxious than a simple jersey. I can get him refusing to pretend not to be a Raiders fan to avoid "conflicts" with the stupid family. But to respond to "don't wear that" by revealing a blinking-light Raiders sweatshirt is just way too close to giving the middle finger to the other people at the table. You don't look proud of your team, buddy- you look stupid and childishly confrontational. And then you sit there and make little faces like you're trying to quietly pass a stone or really would like to say something if you could work up the nerve, but you can't. Nope- you're just going to sit there and be a passive-aggressive douchenozzle.
So everyone in this commercial is kind of a jackass. Nothing new to see here.
(A Little Trivia: This song was the one my graduating class picked for departing ceremonies when it was time to leave Spaulding High School in June, 1982. The ONLY reason we wanted chose this song was so that we could sing the "I get high with a little help from my friends" part, which we were forbidden to do but did anyway.)
All of the self-indulgent wankers in this ad really wanted to be at that Civil Rights/Out of Vietnam rally, but there was this cool outdoor rock concert on a farm in Upstate New York so hey, priorities.
And when the music stopped, all the males in this ad went on to become hedge fund managers or government employees with massive pensions. A few of them went into teaching public school in New York and took a retirement bailout offer from the state at the age of 55. They've spent the last 25 years touring Europe every fifteen minutes.
The female flower children in this ad went on to earn their MRS degree and now all live in the suburbs of Washington DC or Baltimore or NYC where they raised their 2.5 kids and did all the white bread conformist crap they cursed their parents for doing but justified it by shopping at organic farmers markets and Whole Foods.
Every single person in this ad did extremely well by discarding the "values" of their youth for the siren song of Capitalism and totally sold out way before they reached the age of 30. If they saw someone stuck in the mud today, they might whip out their phones and call AAA, but only after tweeting the oh-so-hilarious situation to all their friends and posting it to YouTube first.
So when they were young they enjoyed free love, cheap and safe marijuana, practically-free college, a soaring stock market and all the benefits a strong labor movement had to offer. Now they sit in their pretentious Tudor suburban palaces dreaming of the Lexus they hope their significant other picks up for them in this year's December to Remember promotion. They all put Bernie Sanders yard signs up last fall and then voted for Trump. And none of them ever, EVER gave a flying damn about anyone but themselves, I don't care WHAT the song says.
BTW, one of the YouTube commentators who clearly is no more than thirty years old posted that he really wants a VW van now. I suggested that he could simulate the experience of owning a vintage VW van by tearing out the back seats and removing the seat belts and heating system of an SUV. To make the experience even more genuine I might have added that he should rig the engine so that it fails to turn over at least fifty percent of the time when the key is turned. No one who has ever owned one of those rusty, unreliable, uncomfortable and unsafe crapbuckets would fantasize about possessing one now, except to use as target practice. With these over-indulged losers packed inside.
I challenge anyone and everyone to read the original lyrics to this Supertramp song and explain to me how any of it has to do with buying stuff online and sending it to the other side of the planet, in the process destroying the brick-and-mortar economy while reducing everything about the holidays to the amount of cash you manage to spend.
And again, the only thing more depressing here than the actual commercial are the comments that follow. I think everyone on the planet is either a paid troll for industry or seriously deranged. Either way, it's awfully sad.
(Hey, remember when you had to wait till Friday morning after Thanksgiving to start spending yourself into debt because TV Told You Too? Well, those dark days are OVER. Black Friday has already begun online! Stop reading this! Get out your credit card and start surfing and shopping! Go Go Go Now Now Now!)
I guess the "bit" this year is that Lexus is going to show us a parade of spoiled rotten little brats having orgasms over luxury cars before transforming into spoiled rotten big brats having orgasms over luxury cars. This is the second one I've seen in the last twenty-four hours, and once again the only message I really get out of them is that I can't wait for this season to be over so we can say goodbye to this horrible dreck for another year.
The "adult" in this ad is kneeling before his new diety- an extremely expensive, totally unnecessary LookAtMeMobile. He's letting his family know that the big, beautiful house and the massive bank account and the trophy wife and trophy kids are great and all but this car makes all that shrink into insignificance because that life, while a fantasy to 99.999 percent of the world's population, was seriously lacking before this car showed up.
So congratulations, you nasty little piece of crap. Your practically-perfect life just got even better. Absolutely heartwarming. Know what else would be heartwarming? A massive gasline break leading to a fireball which turns you and your scummy family into boiling liquid. Your hearts would be warmed for several seconds before they ceased to exist. My heart would be warmed for much, much longer. I know what I'm asking for this Christmas. I don't have a zillion dollars in the bank, so it's not one of these cars.
First- neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of the car. Is it really a "minor fender-bender?" Not if they are going to be using "accident forgiveness" for it- you get that ONCE. If it's just a "minor fender-bender," they are paying for it out of pocket and holding off on the accident forgiveness for a major accident. If this kid is talking about accident forgiveness, it kind of implies that this was a serious, costly accident. Which leads us to our second point.
Neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of their kid, or if anyone else was involved in the accident, or if anyone was hurt. Just don't give a damn. "The car has been damaged in a non-specific but expensive way? You're grounded. Now go away." Ugh.
(Oh, and if you think you can stomache it, check out some of the YouTube comments. This kid is such a good actor, this kid is so cute, the Dad in the commercial symbolizes everything wrong with American Males today, the Mom is a Rhymes-With-Witch, etc. It's pretty sad. Forget I suggested it- don't check out the YouTube comments. Not worth it.)
8. "You can get these Morgans for the same price we charged three years ago!" Well, isn't that nice- despite the fact that silver MIGHT skyrocket in value, they are offering these coins in 2012 at the same price they were offered at in 2009.
Wait a minute- let's go back to that convenient silver price chart you showed us at the 56-second mark. You know, the one that showed silver jumping from $6 an ounce to $20 an ounce between January 2005 to March 2008. The price tripled but you are willing to sell us silver coins for no increase in price? That would sound like a great deal, except for two reasons. First, you are selling these coins in 2012. Why does your graph stop at March 2008? Is it because the price of silver peaked in that month, leveled off, and then started to drop? Just askin'. Second- well, I'll save that second point for the end of this commentary.
9. At the 1:18 mark, you tell us that "Several prominent silver brokers charge twenty or thirty dollars more for a similar silver dollar. These minted silver dollars are heavy with .900 Pure Silver..."
Ok, STOP. Now the dishonesty has become blatant for anyone willing to actually listen to this ad with their brain in the "ON" position. I'm not going to ask for the names of the "prominent silver brokers" because that's not the real point. The REAL deception is in two parts here- First, the brokers charge "twenty or thirty dollars more" for a silver dollar SIMILAR to the one being hawked here. What does "similar" mean? It doesn't mean the same- so though the narrator clearly wants you to think so, those other brokers are NOT selling the SAME coin being offered here at a higher price. THEY ARE SELLING A DIFFERENT COIN. Second, WHICH minted silver dollars are "heavy with .900 pure silver?" Well, since you've already told us that the ones YOU are selling contain .77 pure silver (check the 44-second mark) we can only assume that you are talking about the coins offered by your competitors. That explains why they cost more- though you don't want us to put that all together, do you?
This goes on for another twenty seconds, meaning that I could probably throw a Part III in here, but I'm not going to because I'd rather cut to the chase with this little nugget- just before the end, the narrator tells us that these coins are "rich in historic value." That might be the only shred of honesty in the entire ad, but the fact that the company peddling this crap spent 95 percent of the commercial trying to convince us that it was the SILVER IN THE COIN and NOT THE COIN ITSELF that was valuable prevents me from cutting them any slack here. Maybe they watched an early version of this ad and realized that SOMEONE might do the math and figure out that what was being offered was .77 of an ounce of silver (selling at about $18 an ounce at the time of this ad) for $19.90 plus shipping and handling. So they decided they'd better add something about "historical value" to make up for the fact that this is a really stupid way to purchase silver (actually, there isn't a smart way, but that's an argument for another time.) I really think that they should have stuck with the "piece of history" bit but I guess they know their audience thinks that history began with World War II and ended with Ronald Reagan, so Hey It's Made of Silver the Metal that got more valuable Because China, or something. People are so weird.
1. "Just Located!" What, again? Seems like every few weeks a huge number of Morgan Silver Dollars are discovered in an attic, a sunken Confederate warship, or under the 50-yard line at Giants Stadium (they were looking for Jimmy Hoffa, found these Morgan Dollars instead!) Seriously, how many times can they pull this same pitch?
2. "The most sought-after coins in American history." I'd like to see the raw data, please. What's the second-most sought-after coin? 9/11 Commemoratives? I hope so, 'cause I got five of those. I wanted more, but there was a strict limit.
3. "9:45 New York. National Collector's Mint releases 3487 of the last surviving Morgan Dollars still in existence..." notice the trick in language- I bet a lot of hillbillies watching this ad heard "the last 3487 in existence" and thought "I'd better snatch some of them up, once they're gone, they're gone." But because I have ears and critical thinking skills, I'm left with two questions- how many Morgan Dollars are actually still in existence, and how did you you come up with that number considering that we keep finding more?
4. "Condition is important, and all the Morgan Silver Dollars released are guaranteed to be in Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine Condition." More fun with language, kids! None of these coins are guaranteed to be Uncirculated, just "Uncirculated to Fine Condition." Who judges what "Uncirculated" means? Doesn't matter- all that's required is that the condition of your coin be "fine" for this ad to live up to this particular promise. And what does "fine" mean? Whatever this company wants it to mean.
5. "Over 320 million Morgan Dollars were melted during both World Wars....all were .77344 oz pure silver...." MORE fun with language, kids! So the government melted lots of coins, and those coins had a lot of silver. What does this have to do with the ad? Well, nothing, since the product for sale isn't a melted coin. How much silver is in the coins being offered today? Seems like that would be a good piece of information....which we aren't going to get, because we think we just got it with this blurb about coins which don't exist anymore.
6. "When Silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a poor nation. Now China is rich, and uses three times more silver!" Ok, now it's time to play Correlation v. Causation- except that the ad doesn't come out and claim that silver has anything to do with China's wealth, does it? So what's the point of this little nugget of not-history? I strongly suspect that it's just there to equate Silver=Rich in our little brains. And it's followed quickly by....
7. "Will this drive the price back up to $50 or even higher?" Well, apparently not. When this ad was made, in 2012, the price of silver was just under $21 per ounce. Today it's just over $17 per ounce. So if we take this ad's math to be accurate, once upon a time silver was selling at $50 per ounce. Then it dropped to $6 per ounce, then rose to almost $21, and now it's at $17 per ounce. Yeah, sounds like something I want to bank my retirement on.
I'm only a minute into this 108-second ad, and I've got to get back to work. I'll do a Part II next time.
The only silver lining here is imagining all these privileged idiots with obvious blood pressure issues who clearly think that because they own expensive cars they are entitled to pretty much everything else- including convenient parking places- will eventually suffer massive strokes and die with blood oozing out of their noses as they lay aside their pretty cars. Hopefully before they run anyone over driving 50 MPH through parking garages.
Other than that, this ad is nothing but bad news for people who watch tv. It's not yet Thanksgiving, and the Season of Awful is already underway. Strap in, everyone. This is going to hurt.
Some people were excited to hear the news. Some were skeptical.
And then there was everyone else, who couldn't give a flying damn about any of this, especially since Diet Coke has been around for forty years and has always had about a calorie a can which is functionally the same as zero calories. And that this is just Coke Zero renamed and repackaged. This managed to excite some people and make others skeptical? Really? Oh well, why the hell not- this is a country which elected a reality tv star/grifter President. Anything's possible.
No celebrity endorsers holding the bottle "just right" so we can see the label.
The narrator is basically admitting that Coca Cola has absolutely nothing new to sell here. It's just Coke Zero in what looks like a retro Coke bottle, which I suspect is the really big selling point here.
A few years ago I saw a commercial featuring an assembly line of consumers quickly using their credit cards to swipe and chip their way through purchases at some coffee shop. The monotonous but speedy and efficient process was suddenly interrupted by some loser who LOL Can You Believe It actually attempted to fumble for cash No I'm Not Kidding That Stuff Is Still Out There And Even People Who Aren't Your Grampa Still Try To Use It Sometimes.
Flash forward to today, and we get obnoxious crap like this ad, in which we are informed that using your credit card to swipe or chip is LOL lame and soooo very 2016 and look at all the disgusting, stupid, hilarious things which happen when people reach for even THAT level of interaction. In the few months that are left before every store is equipped with AmazonGo, we must use this scan option if we don't want our bratty kids rolling their eyes and bleating "dad....dad.....dad....." while the rest of the crowd behind us wonders why we insist on inserting pieces of plastic into card machines because we just figured out how to do that.
Not to mention that this Android Pay thing is happening despite the fact that a lot of stores haven't even gotten around to switching over to Chip technology yet. I can see stores getting super-cynical about payment methods that are all the rage for a few months before being classified as ancient history and replaced with the REALLY EFFICIENT way of paying for stuff. Maybe this is all about getting us ready for the "final" transition to cashier-less stores with no payment methods other than product detection on our phones (back to that AmazonGo thing again.)
Ok, we get it. Human interaction is disgusting and slow and sloppy and we really need to stop engaging in it- the only reason people did that for thousands of years is because they didn't have a choice. We do. So we should listen to the commercials and the kid bleating "dad....dad....dad...." and stop trying to have a society here. Society sucks anyway- after all, "social" implies "other human beings," and why on Earth would we EVER want to share the shopping experience with other human beings?
I thought I was completely jaded about product placement, and as far as I'm concerned the last Star Wars film was released in 1983,* but this still managed to tick me off by scraping the bottom of the barrell, getting all the way through it, and then tunneling through the muck underneath until it suffocated from lack of oxygen. If I cared about the crap that passes as Star Wars these days, I'd be angrier, but as it is I really can't go beyond ticked off. And it's not because Lucas started making sci-fi fantasy movies again in the late 90s. It's more because Lucas had to molest my childhood with "Special Editions" which demonstrated that he didn't even understand his own films. Oh, and midichlorians.
I'd call it shameless, but that would require explaining to the people who made this ad what the word "Shame" means, because they clearly don't know. All they know is that there's money to be made and there's a sci-fi fantasy movie to be released next month and it will make a billion dollars because it's got this iconic label on it that means something to millions of people my age or thereabouts. Oh, and they couldn't give a flying damn about our childhoods.
*There's this thing called the Star Wars trilogy. It includes three films, and they are called Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. There's no such film as A New Hope and they certainly aren't episodes. It ends with the empire being destroyed and the Republic being restored. And yes, I mean ends. Because the other stuff that's come along which uses the label "Star Wars" has nothing to do with Star Wars and everything to do with Capitalism.
Don't celebrate Christmas like everyone else, because you aren't like everyone else. You're a pampered, white, rich American brat for whom three days for shipping seem like a crushing burden and is the reason why you spend $99 a year on Amazon Prime.
Oh, but this is an ad for eBay, that worldwide garage sale Weird Al Yankovic rightfully parodied more than a decade ago. Ok, so if you buy your Christmas presents on eBay you certainly aren't like everyone else. You aren't even like most spoiled brat American white people who live to have stuff show up on their doorstep in ugly brown boxes pretty much every day. You are a different level of impulse, Live-For-Today shopper who has totally bought in to the Need It Right Now Gimmeee Gimmeee GIMMMMEEEEE philosophy that comes as a pre-loaded App on your Smartphone.
And no, I'm not apologizing to the jackass Youtube commenter who desperately needed to know what music accompanies this disgusting salute to instant gratification. I really do want you to go die in a fire. Because I hate you and the rest of your "I need to know what every piece of music I ever hear on any commercial right now plz plz plz" ilk. You'll never contribute anything to anyone's life. You are dumb as dirt and more vapid than I ever thought possible. You won't be missed. So go find that fire. Bet you can find one nearby using your Smartphone. Maybe you can even get it delivered.
*wouldn't it be cool if this kind of behavior actually GAVE you consumption?
In thirty-one seconds of narration and silly visuals accented by a zombie-pale woman who worries about wrinkles despite the fact that she's never been in the sun in her life, we learn that this bottle of pricey goo is
Two Serums in One! (Wow! That's twice as good as just ONE serum! Where do I buy this stuff for the girl in my life who is starting to look her age, which is my age, which sucks?)
With 21 Potent Plant Abstracts! (That sounds so impressive! So, what are these plants? What do you mean, Shut Up That's Why?)
Hydric and Lipidic Systems! (I don't know what those are, but if I admit that I'll look stupid, so This Is Impressive Too!)
And here's the hilarious punchline: "After seven days, Instant Radiance!" Ok, stop. That doesn't even make any sense. Seven days isn't "instant." Does the narrator mean that there's no gradual improvement during those seven days, but the effects of the two serums with hydric and lipidic systems from 21 plant abstracts suddenly show up "instantly" on Day Seven? Will it hurt? Will it be scary?
If I thought that even one in ten of the people posting how much they love this ad were sincere and not paid whores for Budweiser, I don't think I could go on. There is simply no way that more than a few dozen people on the entire planet think that this crap is even remotely funny, let alone Comedy Gold worthy of being imitated in real life.
As for being "Superbowl Worthy," I can totally buy that, since I think the Superbowl is the toxic waste dump of bad ad ideas. There, I said it.
"The Future" being one owned and controlled by idiots who don't read or write because Hey TV Was On Every Time I Planned To Do That Stuff.
"Does this sound like me?" Well, no- it sounds like a literate person, and we know you aren't that. As soon as the people who read this notice that it's not filled with grammatical errors, they are going to know you didn't write it. And because they know what Grammarly is and get most of their information from Alexa and Siri and can't get to the local Starbucks without consulting turn-by-turn directions on their iPhones, they probably won't care either.
Oh, but this guy is going to be the "VP of Analytics." Whatever the hell that is. All I know about that job is that doing it doesn't require any actual English skills, because this worthless choad has already survived the interview and the rest of the hiring process and is now just momentarily flummoxed because for at least one day he has to pretend to know just a little bit about the language he allegedly grew up speaking (but never writing unless absolutely forced to, which wasn't often because Sports and TV.
First, you celebrate prohibition by drinking non-alcoholic "beer" because Reasons. The only people who think this sounds intelligent probably add germs to milk to remind them of the good old days before Louis Pasteur came around and ruined everything. Or they use chamberpots because it was so much cooler back when you had to fling your personal filth out the window instead of all this lame plumbing stuff.
Then, you wash that horrible taste of not-beer out of your mouth with "1933 Repeal Reserve." If you are remarkably stupid- and the fact that you were just drinking non-alcoholic beer and are now drinking Budweiser in ANY form suggests that you are- you might just be able to con yourself into believing that this stuff is from the vaults of the Budweiser brewery. It was just sitting there for 95 years, waiting for you to enjoy it for a limited time. Uh-huh.
Deleted Clip: you then wash THAT horrible taste out of your mouth by consuming real beer.
Maybe it was visited by three ghosts on the night of August 10, 2017?
I mean, there has to be some reason why the State Farm Insurance Company, which was founded in 1922, waited ninety-five years before suddenly deciding that "starting today," it was going to work with Americans who are facing financial difficulties, publishing that declaration on YouTube on August 11, 2017.
What was so special about that day? Why not the previous week? Not enough Americans having a hard time making ends meet then? For that matter, why not during the Great Depression? Seems like State Farm would have had no problem finding a whole lot of people having a tough time making ends meet back then, too.
Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on State Farm. The company has a total net value of a quarter of a trillion dollars and an annual revenue stream of about $87 billion. I have quite a bit less than that and I have a hard time deciding exactly how and where to spend my money- it must be at least TWICE as hard for a gigantic insurance company to make decisions like that. Still, did it really have to take ninety-five years for State Farm to wake up one day and decide "hey, you know what we should do? Help people make good financial decisions and secure their futures for retirement and college and stuff."
Maybe this is just something corporate behemoths do when they've spent nearly a century becoming obscenely rich by taking premiums and not paying off policies except when absolutely required to by law and with as much foot-shuffling and delaying as humanly possible. I don't know- again, I don't have a lot of experience handling quite as much money as State Farm deals with regularly.
Maybe State Farm noticed that Steve Jobs behaved like a disgustingly, insanely greedy pig-human hybrid who insisted on moving his manufacturing base to Asia so he could build a personal fortune of $10 billion instead of the $5 billion he might have had by staying in North America and paying the people who put together his electronic toys a living wage....and then died of cancer at the age of 56 anyway. Kind of a nice reminder that there just might be more to existence than watching your vault of money burst at the seams.
Or maybe this is just a bit of cloying soft-sell from another "Company that Cares." If that's the case, I'd still like to know why, when I was hit by a drunk driver fifteen years ago, State Farm couldn't give me my $500 deductible back because it was unable to extract it from the drunk who had no assets. Oh right, I forgot. That was before August 11, 2017. They weren't in to giving a damn back then.
If you don't blink, and if you watch very closely, you actually can catch a glimpse of shoes in this advertisement for New Balance walking shoes.
No matter how hard you look, you won't see anything which suggests that the shoes are attractive, or comfortable, or durable, or has any of the qualities the typical consumer looks for in a walking shoe (I hope.)
You will, however, get a pretty good window in the lives of two people who are the only residents of an urban area whose paths intersect once as they wander about the desolate cityscape. I can only guess that the look on the girls' face as she passes the guy is one of annoyance- "we've got thirty blocks to ourselves- and you can't find somewhere else to walk? You have to cross into MY zone?"
"New Balance: They're Shoes you wear on your feet. So you can go outside." Hey look at me, I'm Darrin Stevens!
Here's an alternative response for this woman to give to her cat:
"Yes, I'm getting a dog. I didn't even think to ask you about it, because you're an f--ing cat and wouldn't understand what I was saying and besides, this is MY house and you just live here. If you don't like the idea of me getting a dog, feel free to run away and not come back."
For me, that works a lot better than this pathetic "oh please believe me I would never betray you" creepy pleading from crazy cat lady with an account at Wells Fargo. But if that cat just keeps going, right down the hall, right past the stinky litter box, right out the door, never to return, well, even better.
You have nothing to lose but the stench and the expense, Crazy Cat Lady.
*On television, is there any other kind of pet owner?
