Care.com-- choose wisely....

https://youtu.be/x6FZK0tsJqs

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...because this has got #choosepoorlyandyouvepickedyourhusbandsnexttrophywife written all over it. 

If I were any of these wives, I certainly wouldn't be asking my husband for his help in choosing the next "babysitter" to come into the home.  I've seen enough Lifetime Channel movies this summer to know that that would be a BAD idea, unless you're ready and able to veto anyone HE likes.  

(BTW, very sorry about the lack of instant video and the appearance of the embed code instead; I hope it's just a temporary connectivity issue while I'm here in Vermont.  I can't think of any other explanation, but I'll look into it if the problem continues when I'm back in Maryland, the land of Regular, 21st century internet.  In the meantime, just cut and paste, you lazy twats!)

Kelly Clarkson, Wayfair, and the last gasps of the Easily Triggered

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1.  How does the sudden appearance of Kelly Clarkson cause a very hot dish to suddenly not be very hot anymore?  I mean, one second this guy is frantically looking for a place to lay something he just took out of the oven, and the next he's just standing there wondering why Kelly Clarkson is standing in his kitchen bleating a pitch for Wayfair, everyone's favorite source of crap furniture not named IKEA.

2.  What does Kelly Clarkson have to do with ordering crap furniture, anyway?  Wikipedia tells me that this woman has a net worth of $45 million.  She doesn't need to do this.  But then again, Shaq doesn't have to pitch garbage car insurance and Alex Trebek doesn't need to pitch garbage health insurance and Tom Selleck doesn't have to push Reverse Mortgages.  Money is money and there's never too much, I guess?

3.  Does Wayfair also sell the space you need for crap furniture?  Because this thing doesn't solve any "where do I put this" problems I have when taking something hot out of the oven.  I have to leave my kitchen in order to change my mind.  Oh right, I forgot- Wayfair is for people who live in typically large TV houses.  Who also have zero taste in furniture.  I'm only in the second category.

4.  Two guesses why this ad irritates some people.  Hint: It's not because Kelly Clarkson randomly shows up in the kitchen.  

Xfinity's answer to people who forgot to care

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OR....you could, you know, just raise your kids to NOT be addicted to their electronics. 

Oh, but that's too hard.  Never mind.  Here's an App that allows you to see at a glance that the WiFi in your home is being used.  So you never have to assume that rules that were put in place- and modeled by the adults- are actually being adhered to.  Instead, you can just skip all that parenting crap and just spy on your kids, assuming that without direction they'll just do whatever they want, whenever they want (after all, getting them out of your hair was the original point of getting them addicted to their devices before the started first grade anyway, right?

The most depressing thing about this Geico Commercial...

...isn't all the stuff about Neighborhood Associations.  Yes, they can be this tyrannical, allegedly in the name of keeping home values up but more often to feed the little Fascist that exists buried inside all of us, waiting for an opportunity to spring out. 

Nor is it the idea that I'm supposed to feel sorry for this couple who just want to enjoy their vast Suburban McMansion.  Everyone in TV commercials lives in a house like this, or an almost equally massive luxury apartment- doesn't matter if the inhabitants are dog walkers, kindergarten teachers or hedge fund managers, they can all afford sprawling housing units that look like they have bedrooms the residents haven't discovered yet.

No, the most depressing thing about this Geico Commercial comes at the very end, when the stars of this dumb nugget of an ad let us know how we can see "more stories" featuring actors placed in contrived situations which have nothing to do with Geico but are supposed to amuse and entertain Because You Are Very Dumb.  It's depressing because you know there are people who will actually want more servings of this rotten decaying carcass of a concept because What The Heck It's Like Watching TV.  Never mind that these people were more particular in their choice of entertainment when they were babies fascinated with car keys and anything else they could shove into their mouths.

More hate for Chewy.com!

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Made the decision to have a pet?  Well, why not just farm out the most annoying part of the responsibility that comes with that decision to some anonymous guy who delivers parcels for a living?

Bags of pet food, litter etc. are HEAVY.  So....don't deal with them! Let some total stranger be the victim of your overbearing sense of privilege instead.  Just go to Chewy.com, order those 50-lb bags of kibble and 100-lb sacks of litter to be delivered to your Suburban McMansion, or your apartment on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator (and if the FedEx guy leaves it with the lobby manager, go online and throw a hissy fit about the Poor Quality of Service until you get an official Apology from the shipping company, KAREN.)  Having a pet- a 100 percent voluntary activity, btw- should not mean extra work for you!  It should mean extra work for total strangers with jobs that don't offer health insurance!

And if you're ever bothered by a twinge of conscience while pointing and clicking at pet supplies which have convenience built into their price (not that you care about price,) here's some tried and true bumper sticker logic to soothe your troubled soul.  Take your pick:

"It's their job."

"They are lucky to have jobs in these trying times."

"If they don't like it, they can always get another job."

"They are all young and strong, I have a bad back."

"I'm a hard-working professional I don't have time to shop for pet supplies" (so if Chewy.com didn't exist you'd....give up having pets? Doubtful.)

Personally, I think UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and the USPS should have strict weight limits on the packages they are willing to bring to the doorstep; all packages above that weight should have to be picked up at a central depot or should carry much larger fees in order to accommodate a second delivery person to assist in the transfer from factory to door.  This won't happen because Capitalism and Profit are King and delivery personnel are easily-replaceable assets, especially when you don't provide health insurance to deal with the injuries caused by the regular handling of heavy, bulky packages.  So keep it up, Pet Owners of America; you are truly in the vanguard of an Entitlement Craze that will someday make it possible to have Cinder Block Leggos and pre-filled swimming pools brought to our homes Because Hey the Customer.  All contact-free, of course; not because COVID will still be around, but because no customer will dare to risk making eye contact with the FedEx guy as he lugs whatever item you Simply Couldn't pick up at the Walmart three blocks away to your door. 

Eargo's Awful Hearing Aid ad that yes, is for a Hearing Aid

1.  The young man in this ad is the one who needs a hearing aid, I guess:  his stupid Significant Other is standing right next to him but he can't hear what she's whispering, but her dad- sitting ten feet away, can.  Because Eargo Hearing Aids turn you into the Bionic Man, or as I suggested before, this young man has very bad hearing.

2.  Stupid Significant Other is Very, Very Stupid.  She decides that THIS is the moment to ask- and insist upon an answer- her "hey I just realized we wouldn't be getting a hotel room tonight, this house is really small, and we'll be having sex later" question.   She won't move one step closer to her Young Gentleman when she realizes he can't hear her, either.  She'll just stand there with her mother close by, her father right there, repeating a question she can't possibly need the answer to Right This Very Moment in service of the gag.

3.  The real punchline is that the young man in this ad can do much better.  There's nothing special about this girl, unless he's really attracted to morons who have difficulty understanding their surroundings.  She could have asked her question concerning Protection in the car on the way to Mom and Dad's house.  She could ask him to step outside (not into another room, since its clear that this house is TINY and that the walls are made of tissue paper.)  But no- she needs to know RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW- again, because the gag requires it.  I'm not excusing her behavior, though- he can do better.

4.  Why do you want a hearing aid that allows you to hear people whispering to each other?  I thought that the best hearing aids allowed you to focus on what was being said to YOU and eliminated sounds (like other conversations) that could overwhelm those particular words?  If Eargo allowed Dad to hear a whispered conversation ten feet away, it also allowed him to hear every car driving by, every clink of every cup and plate, and a myriad of other sounds that would have left that whispered conversation just another ingredient in the wall of noise constantly assaulting his eardrums.  Eargo is making the claim made by those MAGIC SUPER EAR devices you found next to X RAY SPECS and Sea Monkeys at the back of the comic book.  Not very practical.

5.  The YouTube comments that follow this ad....oh my god, you people.  You people are the worst. 

Casper- the Audi of Mattress Entitlement

Ok, I've seriously never cared about anything less than the fact that this band of entitled suburban twats have new mattresses which will make their already-perfect lives even more perfect.  The fact that Patriarch of this tribe of overcompensated bottom-feeders pronounces that "the King has Arrived!" in a voice loud enough to be heard by his fellow Housing Association zombies just makes him easier to hate. 

I'd like to know who that girl wearing the red warmup suit and holding a cell phone is in the next unboxing scene-- she doesn't look a thing like the guy doing the unboxing OR the woman implied to be his wife.  The live-in nanny and future Trophy Wife, I'm guessing.  And now I'm just creeped out and sad.

That we are introduced to his offspring (who looks to be about five years older than her future Weekend Mommy) who also behaves as if she is getting a good night's sleep for the first time ever because while buying up every material possession imaginable ChildMommy and Daddy forgot to arrange Proper Bedding doesn't make me any more sympathetic or appreciative of the Relief that has finally come to them in the form of several thousand dollars worth of Casper Mattresses (the kings-sized Wave Mattress celebrated in the opening scene retails for $1495 on the official site.  That's just for the mattress.)

So I'm just left wondering why I spent so much time on a hot, sunny summer day analyzing a commercial for a product I can't afford being demonstrated by people I really wish would just die.  Oh, right- because the flies are really biting today.  That's it.

These Awful Charmin Bears can please Just Go Away Now

1.  Is the father bear in this ad listening to the narrator, or watching tv with his family?  In other words, is the father bear aware that he and his family are the subjects of a commercial, because that would be the only explanation I could think of for his sudden decision to hug his atrociously blue-for-some-reason family at just the right moment in the narration.

2.  What's the point of this ad, anyway?  A few months ago, Charmin wanted to assure everyone that the company wasn't intentionally keeping toilet paper off the market to create an artificial panic?  Did anyone think this was happening?  (Oh, who am I kidding.  This is the United States.  A significant population of citizens totally believed that COVID was a scam created by Marxists, Queen Elizabeth, Hillary Clinton, and Big Toilet Paper* to sink the American Economy and get Bernie Sanders into the White House.)

*and the people who make "vaccines" (autism delivery systems.)  And some company that found itself with 25 million face masks and no market for them.  They were all in on it.  Just keep peeling that onion, Sheeple!

Leaf Fitter knows its target audience

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It looks for all the world like a group of a few dozen Senior Citizens were offered tea, sandwiches and something to do with their sad, retired lives* and took the bait, sitting in on a sales pitch for one of these gutter lid things being given by a guy who sounds like he'd really, really rather be selling them Time Shares.

It's hard to imagine that the gutter cover salesperson could have found a friendlier, more enthusiastic-to-learn-about-gutter-lids audience than these people, so he can stick to the soft sell....but I still wish he had broken into a song and dance about how they got trouble right here in River City or they really really need a Monorail but meanwhile the answer to their Upper Middle Class Comfy Suburban Lives is a screen for their gutters.

The sales guy answers all of their questions so nicely, I imagine that besides signing up to get the gutter things installed more than a few of these grandparents slipped him their granddaughter's phone number- "I can't believe she's still single, she's so smart and talented and cute, she's a real catch just give her a call!"  At any rate, from the looks of things Leaf Fitter is going to be very, very busy over the next few days installing cheap pieces of scrap metal with holes in it on to the homes of old idiots who were so mesmerized at their salesperson's description of Permanently Clean Gutters that they totally forgot they pay a kid $10 to clean those gutters once every spring.  And those are just the people who are sure they HAVE gutters.  The rest are NOT sure, because they never checked, but they would like this guy to call their granddaughter anyway.

*I guess I should be grateful that they are taking some time off from blathering into their awesome Consumer Cellular phones about how awesome their Consumer Cellular phones are.  That's something, anyway. 

Sun Basket makes no attempt to hide the Sexism

Not to pick on Sun Basket specifically; every single one of these Easy-Prep Gourmet Meals-in-a-box services (I think there are about 26,000 of them, up from 1500 in the days before Narnia fell under the spell of the White Witch of Covid, where it's always winter and never Christmas) feature delighted young trophy wives opening crates of ingredients designed to make their easy lives even easier (and to fulfill their end of the bargain with Their Husband/Lord and Master.)  They all operate under the assumption that only women really benefit from very expensive meal packages arriving at the door of Suburban McMansions; the guys just expect dinner ready when they get home, and maybe kind of expected Trophy to put some effort in, but as long as they stay young and cute, Sun Basket etc. works just fine.

And of course, Sun Basket presents the meal prep as "so easy a guy could do it," because to a Male, cooking is almost as alien a concept as giving birth (the other part of the bargain with TrophyWife.)  As for a man actually being handed a set of ingredients and a recipe, well- I'll just paraphrase Lyle Lanley's take on giving a spinning wheel to a mule- "he doesn't know how he got it, and danged if he knows what to do with it."

What's a "California Psychic," anyway?

"I'm very conflicted....and skeptical...." and Stupid.  Don't forget Stupid.  This doesn't work without Stupid.

"they can't be for real, can they?"  No, they can't.  Not going to stop you from pulling out that credit card and giving it to a total stranger bleating generalities at you over the phone, is it?

We asked these skeptics about California Psychics, and here's what that had to say!  (It helps that neither they nor our tv audience knows what the word "skeptic" means!)

"You know, it was probably the best psychic reading I ever had!"  And I'm sure that was a really, really high bar to get over.  Pretty depressing to think that this woman has thrown enough money at "psychics" to have a rating system in place.

"I got everything I could imagine from my reading..." wow, if you are impressed by unfalsifiable claims, there's a doozy for you. 

"She told me all this stuff, and I thought 'how could she possibly know that?'"  Umm, what kind of "stuff?"  That you are susceptible to believing medieval BS (especially medieval BS that places you in a good light) bleated at you by a total stranger on the phone?  Honey, California Psychics figured that out about you before they even answered your call. 

You can speak to a "California Psychic right now for "only $1 a minute" (I absolutely promise you that the unreadable text under this announcement includes the words "minimum charge.")  And if it's "not the best psychic reading you've ever had, it's FREE" (but it will be the best psychic reading you have- your aura will tell the reader so.  If you don't agree, it's because you aren't In A Good Place with your aura.  California Psychics can help you with that, too- just stay on the line.  One dollar per minute.

"I wasn't sure about the relationship I was in but now I know he was the right one."  Because the person on the other end of the phone knows that 99.99 percent of the women who call asking relationship questions want to be told that the time and emotion they put into their current relationship hasn't been wasted and he Really Is the Right Person.  Only the tiniest fraction want to hear "dump him," because that means starting all over again and that's a lot harder than just sticking it out.  Being told that your doubts should be set aside and you should just Go For It- whether its in maintaining a relationship with a certain guy or calling California Psychics- is just good business.  I do wish someone could call the guys and let them know they are dating loons who are really dumb with their credit cards, though.

Chantix will cure you of your desire to quit smoking

Seriously, the list of possible side effects from a drug that is supposed to help the patient quit smoking is downright....ummm....Depressing...

Not much more to say about this ad, which does a great job reminding people that there are Fates Worse than Cancer.  You CAN take this medication to help you quit smoking....but I don't know....you SURE you want to give up on those Nicotine Patches, chewing gum, and occasional overeating just yet?

FedEx, Chewy.com, and Overbearing Suburban Entitlement

Not really a commercial, but I'm going to comment on this video anyway:

I think this is what we are supposed to get out of this video is that

1.  The FedEx driver was not quite gentle enough with the packages from Chewy.com- packages which almost certainly carried nothing but dog food and toys built to be played with by DOGS. 

2.  The FedEx driver didn't lay down a soft mat on the doorstep before carefully placing the obviously not-at-all-breakable precious Dog Crap down in front of the palatial suburban mansion.

3.  The FedEx driver "doesn't care about his job that much" (an actual quote from the original poster of this video.)  Because he didn't spent ten minutes putting the packages down, but did it quickly so he could move on to the next Entitled Brat Homeowner.

4.  The person who posted this was so outraged that the FedEx Driver treated her like Just Another Customer (which- gasp!-she is) she felt it necessary to attempt to shame him on YouTube.  Accomplishing nothing but letting everyone know that she's a spoiled rotten little suburban princess drowning in her own Entitlement.  My guess is that all her neighbors knew this already, but now the world does, too.

Geico ads exist primarily to remind me that I'm out of the loop, I guess

1.  I'm supposed to know who Special Guest Star in this commercial is, I guess.  I don't.  Never seen him, never heard of him.  I'm not apologizing. 

2.  At the same time....am I REALLY supposed to know who he is?  After all, the idiot brushing his teeth clunkily tells us who he is, as if there's an audience in his house.  And he acts as if he's honored that this guy has appeared just outside his bathroom, uttering his name in an awed, hushed tone, whereas in real life I do NOT recommend that big black guys suddenly materialize outside the bathrooms of white men.

3.  The Not-as-Surprised-as-you'd-think white guy is brushing his teeth while staring at his cell phone.  Sigh....well, I guess this is realistic, but for the purposes of the commercial, there's no reason why he couldn't be just brushing his teeth like he's not completely addicted to that phone.  I don't look at my phone while I'm brushing my teeth, but I don't stare at it constantly as I cook or clean or eat dinner with friends, so I realize I'm an outlier here.

4.  What the hell is with this guy's house?  Judging from that corridor (it has a CORRIDOR) the Apparently Very Famous Motivational Speaker has to walk down to exit, that house is....well, actually, a typical Television House, actually. 

Downey Presents: What should have been this guy's utter fail

1.  What kind of idiot wears a shirt like that on a first date?  He was so unconcerned about making a good impression that he couldn't pick out a decent shirt to wear?  That's not a "first date shirt."  More like a "married for ten years with three kids, you got a ring, you've bought in, I don't give a damn anymore" shirt....

2.  So this guy's solution to making a poor impression on the first date for wearing a ragged t-shirt is to use Downey to be sure that his Date T Shirts are in good shape from now on?  Hey, buddy- it's not just that you wore a ragged t-shirt.  It's that you wore a freaking t shirt at all on a first date to a nice-looking restaurant.  Want to wear a t-shirt on a first date?  Take her to a carnival, or a picnic, or just a walk through the park.  Better yet, get over this "t shirt on a first date" bit and expand your freaking wardrobe.

3.  This guy got another date.  Never mind, I give up.  I don't understand people at all.