Oh, and I don't know who Aubrey Plaza is, nor do I care

Remember when commercials for cellphones actually showed people using them- or attempting to use them- when they were away from their homes?  Nowadays you are just as likely to see people in these ads sitting in their own living rooms, in front of big-screen televisions and right next to laptop computers, b----ing and moaning about how slow their streaming is. 

What are you doing, you freaking idiot?  You are with another human being- she's sitting right there.  You've got a tv there, and a computer, so plenty of distraction if you just can't bear the thought of actually having a conversation.  You've got all these options, but you'd rather just f--k around with your phone because that's the one piece of electronics in the room that isn't working absolutely perfectly.

You people are seriously sick. 

Open letter to Buick: Your commercials aren't working

No matter how much you wish your commercials featuring people bleating "Buick" every few seconds bore any resemblence to reality, they never will.  People simply do not talk like this.  Take some comfort in the fact that nobody says "my Honda," "my Nissan," or "My Chevy" either.  They may say "My Lexus," "My Audi," or "My BMW," but that's because they bought those cars so they could let other people know they own one.  Nobody will ever, EVER feel that way about a Buick.

So you are not going to get people to refer to their Buicks as Buicks.  It will always be "that's my car."  No, THAT'S my car.  No, I meant THAT car over there.  I hope that every time you hear a Buick refered to as a car it stabs you a little bit in the soul, but that's because I'm not very nice.  Plus, I don't think any of you own your souls anymore anyway.

Oh, and that black couple near the end of the commercial- I wonder why you thought this was necessary?

Woman:  "I like that Buick."

Man (looking at billboard:) "Me too,"

Woman: "I meant THIS one."

Stop.  What difference does that make, Woman?  Do you just live to have arguments with this guy?  Could you be just a little more petty?  Turns out the answer is yes, because....

Man:  "I knew that."  (Why did you think this was necessary, Man?)

Woman (sneeringly, with dismissive eyeroll:)  "Did you?"

Ugh, why? Why why WHY?  Man:  Why are you with this nasty woman?  Woman: Why do you search out ways to put this guy down?  You've got him to the point where he's willing to lie about which identical Buick he was referring to rather than admit he made a mistake.  You've reduced him to near-invisibility already.  You need to kick him some more, really?

Oh, and Buick?  Here's how the conversation goes:  "I really like this car."  "Me, too."  "I meant this car."  "So did I."  "Did you?"

Because nobody cares about Buicks.  Just in case I didn't make that clear enough already.

"Dilly Dilly" is Latin for Tasteless

What is the saddest thing about this commercial?

1.  The people in this commercial would rather drink Bud Lite than Mead.  In other words, they'd rather drink watery dreck than actual beer. 

2.  Bud Lite continues this ad campaign, which never featured anything resembling a pitch designed to make you want to drink it's product.  I don't think this is the right answer, because there is no such thing as an effective pitch that could convince me to drink Bud Lite.

3.  The number of people who think that these ads are funny, based on YouTube comments.  This would be really depressing, except for

4. The number of people who are obviously being paid to post witless OMIGOD I LOVE THESE COMMERCIALS dreck on YouTube.  Or, if they can't come up with anything, just posting "Dilly Dilly" or other lines from the commercials.  WTF is with these people?

Take your pick.  This is all very sad. 

Verizon just keeps shoveling this crap at us

1.  Nobody is going to "hold up" because someone who couldn't/wouldn't be at the party isn't quite able to watch the "surprise" moment on her g-d d--d phone.   And I suspect that the woman who expected everyone to just stop acting normally because she wasn't able to stream the party is not going to be invited to many more parties after this one, because seriously Put Your Phone Down you Jagoff.

2.  Nobody is going to go back to "starting positions" for that person, either.  Because the party is for and about the people who are actually in attendence, and the guests at the party are GUESTS, not performing seals for someone who isn't even there.

3.  The next time someone uses the term "game changer" on television, I'm putting a brick through it.  Enough with the "game changer" line.  It's played.  It's done.

4.  Someone please show this loathsome Verizon spokeschoad the door already.  He's as played and done as the term "game changer."

Who needs Soma when you've got AT&T to feed your "thing?"

Maybe being wrapped in an electronic cocoon using a virtual reality device in public like a mentally ill, socially inept, friendless dweeb is your thing.

Maybe hibernating on your couch watching witless, generic action movies filled with explosions and machine guns and interchangeable "actors" doing stuff while your brain atrophies and starts to leak out of your ears is your thing.

Maybe walking into the woods and then staring at a screen because you figure "hey at least I'm outside" and if you go more than a few minutes without getting electronic stimulus pumped into what's left of that brain I mentioned in the last paragraph you'll collapse into a sobbing ball of Absolutely Nothing is your thing.

Whatever your thing is, if it's basically Doing Absolutely Nothing while the minutes of what you laughingly refer to as your "life" tick away, AT&T has the service for you.  If your thing is being a lazy, witless, hollow cretin who simply can't deal with the real world, is terrified of being left alone with your own thoughts, and simply must be entertained All The Freaking Time, AT&T has got the perfect drug to feed your thing.

So here you go.  Enjoy your Thing.  When you look up and notice that another day you'll never get back has passed you by, don't forget to thank AT&T.  They- and so many other Nonstop "Entertainment" companies- made all this possible.  Sucker.

The New Pizza Hut Steroids and Cocaine Pizza?

1.  Why would any parent be proud of a kid behaving like an obnoxious nutcase in response to something her team did on the television?  Seriously, this girl looks like she's experiencing a severe case of 'roid rage.  It's not funny, it's not entertaining, and it sure as heck doesn't make me hungry for craptacular bland pizza.

2.  What year was this commercial filmed in?  Because, sorry, the Pittsburgh Steelers have done absolutely nothing this season to make this little girl react with anything but shame at the embarrassment that is her 0-1-1 football team.  So what's she responding to?  The blocked field goal that allowed the Steelers to avoid losing outright to the Cleveland Browns in week one? Or is it the comeback that allowed them to lose by only six to the Chiefs?  Either way, it doesn't take much to make this girl go bezerk, does it? 

My Irony meter just snapped in half

This commercial immediately followed one which warned that smoking is a serious addiction, and told us where we could go to get proper treatment for this health-destroying disease. 

Let me make it even more clear:  I was minding my own business, watching the Yankees-Orioles game on the YES Network, when this ad came on reminding everyone that addiction is a disease that requires real medical treatment and there are many viable treatment options out there for people who want to beat the addiction.  To smoking, I mean.

Then this ad came on. 

Progressive's "Son" Commercial is too real to be funny

"What happened to my son?"  Well, there are two possible answers:

A.  He is using all that crap you bought him because he asked for it and giving him an electronic cocoon is a lot easier than actually being a parent.  So your son, who grew up in a gleaming-white plastic house, has grown up to be an isolated little creep because daddy wanted to be left alone.   Or,

B.  He bought all this stuff with his own money, which he has because he's still living at home despite being financially independent enough to buy thousands of dollars worth of Virtual Life Because the Real Version is Too Hard crap.

Take your pick, jagoff.

Or maybe this is a green card situation, Walmart?

..and if you're extra-quiet and can get to the store really fast, your trophy wife might not notice that you're doing your grocery shopping at freaking Walmart.  I mean, she may be willing to ignore that you're an ugly hairy doofus who is nowhere near good enough for her, but if she picks up on the fact that you're buying groceries from WALMART she might start getting a little suspicious about the existence of that economic stability she sold her youth for.

The Colonel's cure is far, far worse than this family's disease

Not going to comment on the colonel's long arms.  Too obvious, and anyway intentional.

Not going to comment on the fact that it's the WOMAN of the family who "forgot dinner," like it was her responsibility and her's alone.  For the same reason- this is supposed to be all retro and stupid so that is also intentional.

Not going to comment on how sad it is that Jason Alexander has descended to this level.  Gotta pay the bills, I guess. 

Nope, I'm going to save my snark for the fact that the colonel walks in with enough food to poison  feed about forty people for some reason- and even if we are supposed to assume that the family chooses only ONE of these offers, there's still enough calories there to kill provide nutrition for several African villages for chrissakes.

And of course each bucket of steaming fried chicken parts is overflowing.  But I'm not going to snark on that, either.  Because that's always the case in these commercials, and I've done that bit before.

Bounty Paper Towels, Iced Coffee, and a Laptop= Recipe for Horror

A little girl loudly announces her entry into a room which is ridiculously gleaming-white and clean even for television standards, and her father doesn't even flinch.  He's so intent on staring at (daughter? Trophy wife?) that he doesn't move a single muscle as his daughter charges in.  So when she sticks him with her toy sword he is so startled that he drops his coffee on to the (gleaming white, of course) table.

Seriously, great acting job there, buddy.  You couldn't even begin to turn around when you heard your daughter?  You still could have spilled that coffee.  Instead you act like you had NO IDEA she was there, just to set up a really stupid scenerio for a paper towel commercial?

Anyway, the guy throws what looks to be two or three ounces of weak coffee on to the table about three feet away from his DaughterWife's laptop.  It couldn't be more obvious that unless they both stand there yelling "NOOOOOOOO" for maybe five minutes, none of that liquid is actually going to reach the computer.  It's not at all clear that they DON'T intend to stand there for ten minutes screaming about a situation that poses zero danger to the computer, except now the narrator jumps in with "Quick!  Grab a Bounty paper towel!"

Yeah, you'd better catch that spill "quick"- not because it poses the slightest danger to the laptop, but because as long as it's sitting there it creates a really jarring contrast with the otherwise all-white world these weirdos live in.

And then we see that the "mess" the towel picks up is about three teaspoons of coffee.  Wow, good thing you've got super-absorbent towels to to deal with a crisis of that magnitude.  Good thing you don't have to try to rely on a napkin or a sponge, because no way those would be up to the challenge. I mean, there's an ICE CUBE among the carnage. After all, we are told that Bounty is "two times more absorbent than the leading ordinary brand," which is a pretty awkward way of attempting to make a claim.  What brands are included in the "ordinary" category, anyway?

Oh, and if you're on a budget (like nobody on tv commercials) you can buy this Bounty Essentials stuff, which comes with no statistics concerning it's effectiveness but if you can't afford regular Bounty you have no business complaining if it doesn't catch up your spill before it reaches your Rent-A-Center electronics.

More fun with Humira!

(Again, I'm apologizing for the poor quality of a Humira ad.  Sorry-  I don't know why Humira isn't putting official versions of their ads on YouTube, but I am grateful to the people who are recording them and putting them up even if the sound and picture quality is pretty bad.)

So this almost ridiculously diverse band (seriously- there's another woman, a black guy on drums, and an Asian guy.  Please) is deeply concerned because they are all set up at the Annual Oshkosh Pumpkin Fest and their lead singer is once again in the bathroom.  Oh noes, all the thirtysomething white people with terminal bad taste will be so dissapointed if she doesn't show!

Oh, but phew- she DOES show, because she talked to her doctor about her bowel issues and he recommended Humira.  Now she can do what she's being paid to do- wave at the crowd, jump up and down, and (I guess) sing a song now and again.

When the show is over, the hot, sticky band climbs into their RV to look at pictures on their phones of...well, I have no idea what.  Maybe they are reading reviews of their performance?  Checking replies to their resumes from Monster.com?

Then it's off to another gig at an abandoned old theater.  The show is set for 10 PM- so this band has concerts in the middle of the day at county fairs AND at run-down old movie houses at 10 PM.  And the evening gig is "sold out?"  Well, I guess that's not hard when your venue only seats 25 (I mean, come on- it looks like they are playing in someone's living room.)

All of this is in the service of selling us a drug which as near as I can tell helps calm overactive bladders, I guess.

Hyundai Humor= Total Fail

There is so much wrong here, but I'll just focus on two things that really stuck out:

First, how terrified is this kid of his dad that he can't just come out and tell him that he needs to use a bathroom?  At one point, they are at a car wash.  I bet that car wash has a restroom he could use- but this kid is so frightened of telling his dad that he needs to urinate that he'd rather sit in the back and sweat and squirm in building agony than say "hey dad, I need to relieve myself.  Can you take me to the bathroom please?"  I bet he's even more in terror of what will happen if he wets the seat.  Poor kid, that guy must be an absolute monster.

Second, the dad finally gets that his son needs to pee so he pulls over on the highway....and the kid exits on the side facing the road and runs around the rear of the car to head off into the woods.  Huh?  Why did he exit on that side?  Why isn't the dad going with him to make sure he's ok?  Jesus freaking Christ, buddy- first you frighten the kid into suffering in the back seat for god knows how long, then you let him exit where he could easily be killed by a speeding car, then you let him run off into the woods by himself to urinate...what the hell is the matter with you?

Oh, and let's never mind that all of this is played for laughs by Hyundai.  Never mind that unless you're a 14-year old boy I don't want to hear that you think that this is funny in the slightest.  Seriously, if you've reached adulthood and you think Kid In Agony Because He Needs To Urinate is totally LOL hilarious- or even slightly amusing- I don't want to hear it.  If you think it's funny enough to sustain an ad that runs for a full minute, well...I really don't want to hear it, and maybe your parents should thank you for posting on YouTube under a fake name.

Let me correct you, Verizon Fios Spokeschoad

What this person sitting at the gate waiting for her flight needs to "let her pals know" is that she's a totally self-absorbed douchenozzle who has never heard of these things called "earbuds" and who just assumes that everyone at the gate wants to listen to whatever she's watching on her f--ng phone.

Oh wait, she doesn't need to let them know that.  They know it already.  As does everyone else at the gate, including all the people who were trying to catch a little shuteye or maybe enjoy a book or something while waiting to board their flights.  They all know that one of the people also waiting for that flight is a selfish jackass who thinks that being able to carry her tv around through her phone makes everywhere she is her Living Room.  So enjoy the game, everyone at the gate.  You're going to hear it- and her response to every play, so you might as WELL enjoy it.

Hell, I strongly suspect you'll continue to "enjoy" it while the flight is in the air.  Basic human decency doesn't compute with this woman, why should airline rules?  I mean, there's a game on her phone!

Meanwhile, Verizon Spokeschoad?  I hope your plane crashes.  Into the Andes.  And you survive.  So you can be eaten by your fellow passengers.  Slowly.  Feet first. 

Humira, please fire your casting director!

(Sorry for the quality of the video, I'll swap it out when I find a better one.)

Isn't it adorable that this 14-year old girl* has finally brought her 25-year old boyfriend home to meet the folks?  "See daddy, this is the guy I have been talking to online all this time- I TOLD you you'd like him!"

(Oh and there's a few moments of tension where it appears she isn't sure he'll show up, because he's got this issue with having to go to the bathroom a lot and she forgot to tell him that her parents do, in fact, possess an operating toilet despite living in a dollhouse.)

In one scene, the little girl shows her boyfriend photos of last year's ballet recital before taking him for a walk to visit her Very Bestest Place on Earth, the tire swing daddy attached to the tree for her in the summer of 2014.  Later, daddy pulls boyfriend aside for some alone time to ask him about the size of his bank account to see if he's truly worthy of buying his daughter.  They also eat lunch in one of those weird No Escape If You're Not on the Aisle kitchen booths made for couples but incredibly awkward for more than two people.  Do these things really exist in real life?  But I digress...

It's all just so adorable, and apparently has something to do with some drug that does something.  Personally, I'd settle for a drug that makes me forget this commercial.  Oh wait, there already is one.  It's called bleach.

*I mean, just check out her bedroom.  WTF??

Liberty Mutual customer asks: "How DARE car insurance companies hold me responsible?"

I'll give this to Liberty Mutual:  The woman in this ad is probably a very good representative of people who are at fault in auto accidents.  I mean, just listen to what she says here:

"You barely clip a passing car- minor accident, no big deal!"  Well, that's exactly what I would expect you to say.  It's "no big deal" because after all, it was your fault.  And of course the other driver- the one whose car you HIT- is going to be uber-unreasonable by actually stopping and demanding that you exchange insurance information, can you believe it?

"Minor accident, right? Wrong! Your Insurance Company is going to raise your rate because the other car got a scratch so small you could fix it with a pen!"  Again, this is exactly what I'd expect the driver AT FAULT to say- "it was NOTHING!  The other car was BARELY damaged- just a SCRATCH you could fix with a PEN!"  I'm sure this woman would have exactly the same attitude if it was her car that had been damaged, and would have been more than willing to let the other driver attempt to fix the "scratch" with a pen.  I'm absolutely positive that would have been the case.

"But NO!  Your insurance company is going to raise your rates!"  Sorry to keep interrupting you, stupid clueless bent-out-of-shape-because-you-are-being-held-responsible woman, but....if the other car only had a "scratch," why didn't you just offer to fix it out of your own pocket?  Funny thing about car insurance- the rates don't go up if you don't use it.  If your negligence resulted in a minor accident, you should have just paid for it yourself.  That you used your car insurance suggests to me that just maybe that "little scratch" was a bit bigger than you are telling us it was.

Based on the comments, I'm not the only person who would like to tell this woman exactly what she can do with that pen (and it has nothing to do with switching car insurance companies.)

Two quick points about this Heineken Commercial

1.  What country is it taking place in?  Because, sorry, when we got to the reveal that these people were watching a SOCCER GAME, the first thought that popped into my head was "ok, this is happening in some foreign country."  It sure as hell isn't taking place in the United States.

2.  When I found this ad on YouTube I thought "wow, finally- an ad immune to the ubiquitious 'what is this song?' post."  I was wrong.  I scrolled down ten posts and found TWO people who did not know the name of the song, let alone the artist.  And I was probably a little too nasty in my replies, but for chrissakes, people.  I'm now convinced that YouTube employs some kind of bot that just automatically asks for the names of songs heard in commercials because....there's simply NO WAY actual humans did not know the name of this song.  No way.

McDonald's can't even get its celebration of a decent program right

1.  At first, I thought that the manager in this ad is being quite the jackass because he doesn't know if it's a letter of acceptance or rejection before he reads it- uninvited- in front of the entire staff. What if it had been a rejection letter?  Anyone who has ever applied to college knows to dread the thin reply letter.  The rejection letters are always thin.  The acceptance letters are thick because they include school calenders and further information about the school.

But then I noted that the envelope seems to be already opened when the kid hands it to the manager.  So the kid knows it's an acceptance letter, I guess.  But this leads me to my next point:

2.  Once he knew he was accepted, why didn't the kid just go down to McDonald's and tell the manager?  Why bring the letter with him....UNLESS he WANTED the manager to read it in front of everyone?  If the kid wanted everyone to know, why not just tell everyone himself- you know, like a normal person would?   Which leads me to my last point-

3.  What if it WAS a rejection letter, the kid had opened it and KNEW it was a rejection letter, and he went down to McDonald's to ask for some advice on how to proceed next- and to let the manager know that, in spite of all his hopes and dreams, he was going to need some hours this autumn after all?  If that were the case, man did the manager screw up big time by turning a personal moment into a cringe-worthy faux pas.  Great job, Stupid McDonald's Manager.

Ancestry.com: Yes, I know who I really am, and the answer is "better than this."

"Do you know who you really are?"

Well, I could be super-philosophical here and reply that life is just a journey we all take to discover who we really are- and the answer is the combined thoughts, feelings, and experiences of each individual lifetime.  The sum of our lives arrives at the very end, when we add up all those thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  It's left to others to evaluate who we were and what our lives really meant.  Ok?

Oh, I guess not Ok.  Because all of these obsessive "Who Am I" celebrations of DNA-tracking and navel-gazing want us to focus not on who we are, but on who our ancestors were.  What does this have to do with who we are?  Oh, you see, you are who they were.  Which means- you aren't really anyone.  Just the product of people who came before.  THEY were someone.  Yay them.

So we have these teary-eyed jackasses with way too much time on their hands and money burning holes in their pockets discovering that they share DNA with people they didn't think they liked- one guy habors prejudice against Germans, then discovers that he's part German, so wow there's an eye-opener now he has to go out and find some other group to hate (maybe My Heritage DNA or Ancestry.com can help him with that.  I'm sure they can.)

And at the end of all this unbelievably sad self-absorption the idea that we are what we do is totally lost to the much easier (it only takes a vial of spit and a credit card) theory that we're just a bag of chemicals handed off to us by our ancestors.  And now that we know exactly what percentage Lithuanian we are, we can sit down, have a wistful, satisfied little cry over it, and find something on television to distract ourselves from the notion that we still haven't added one thing to our own legacies because we've been too busy trying to reduce the meaning of our lives down to the cellular level. 

My Heritage DNA celebrates Racism by pretending to oppose it

"I don't know about you, but when I'm filling out forms, I never know which race to check."

I leave it blank.  I mean, it's not even required to get a passport these days. 

"People tell me it's obvious- you're black."  The "people" who are saying this to you are probably just sick to death or your stupid obsession with race and don't want to hear about mystified you are by the question anymore. 

"Well, I just my Heritage DNA results back" (proving my point that you're obsessed with race- you just NEEDED to know what "race" you "belong" to, even though you could have just left that part on every form blank, because you've decided that your "race" defines who you are.  Not sure why this is anyone's problem but yours, but...)

"And it shows me that actually, I'm 72% West African, 14% British, 7% West European, 3% East European and 3% Finnish..." I thought we were talking about race.  I'm not aware that any of those categories is a race.  Are you telling me that you think that "British" is a race?

"Now you tell me, which race box do I pick?"  I told you already what I do- I leave it blank. 

"And if I pick that one, do the others get dismissed?"  See, I didn't fall into your stupid trap.  I didn't suggest you pick one.  I suggested you leave it blank. 

"See, who we are is more complex than the one that society gave us..." So society gave you a label?  Then why are you struggling with this?  Oh right, because you like to complain about stuff that doesn't mean anything to people who aren't completely self-obsessed douchenozzles.

This guy then goes into a rant about how we must never judge a book by it's cover or people by the color of their skin which I guess is a good point but doesn't go very far in selling this Heritage DNA product because after all if where our ancestors come from doesn't matter, if we should be judged by who we are as indivuals, why the f--k do I give a damn what percentage Norwegian I am? 

The last twenty seconds of this ad is just this guy preaching about interconnectivity and each individual being a beautiful tapestry of colors etc. etc. etc., and it's nice but also banal and nothing we haven't heard a million times before from better speakers who weren't shilling for a company that WANTS you to be obsessive about your bloodline.  This guy's pitch is just about the most shameless hypocricy I've seen on tv- Stop focusing on race, go out and find how much of each race is in you by sending us a vial of spit.  We'll settle your identity "problem" by telling you straight out how black, white, Romanian, Jewish, Protestant, Zorastrian, Brazilian and Transalpine Gaul you are because those are all races and you need to know so you won't be pigeonholed by some form that isn't actually requiring you to make a choice.

My original suggestion- leave the damn box blank- works just as well, but only if you aren't a race-obsessed idiot who thinks that DNA is Destiny.  This guy doesn't qualify, which is why he responds to an optional question on a form by going on a quest to find Who He Is based on where people related to him used to live.