Ohh.... you're the slut I slept with once, years ago! Oh, you aren't? My Bad!

I had to go find this commercial on YouTube just to make sure I got it right, I was so taken by the bizarre, sick premise:

A guy is going down the escalator at some mall, and he's tapped on the shoulder by a woman who says "excuse me, I think you are the father of one of my kids." The guy looks taken aback, but only for a moment- then replies "Ohhh.....Cancun, Spring Break?" She answers "Um, No."

The guy freezes with the mortification of realizing that he just exposed himself as a guy who at one time regularly had sex with anonymous strangers while on vacation, AND suggested that the woman who tapped him on the shoulder is the girl who put out for him some years back. The narrator intones "Not Smart."

Then we see the guy guzzling out of a big bottle of purplish Minute Maid juice, which apparently has some kind of Anti-Asshat chemical designed to prevent social faux pas like this one. We rewind. The woman asks again "excuse me, I think you are the father of one of my kids." This time, the guy responds "And my daughter is in your art class- Sister Mary Catherine!"

Wow, double "fun" whammy here. Not only is this woman NOT the girl he remembers shagging in Cancun, she's a teacher- and a NUN. Oh, the hilarity!!

Of course, to get to the rib-splitting "punchline," we must accept that any woman would walk up to a guy she believes has a child in her class and say "I believe you are the father of one of my kids." Not "I believe your kid is in one of my classes." Not "I believe I teach one of your kids." Nope. "I believe you are the father of one of my kids"- which makes NO sense, unless...

---and this is why I had to check it out on YouTube, because I couldn't believe my ears....

The guy whose shoulder being tapped is a PRIEST (you know, a "FATHER?") When I first heard this commercial, I thought that the punchline was that the guy was a Priest who teaches this woman's kid at a Catholic School-- whose response to the woman's question was to instantly assume that his illicit tryst during his college years had finally come back to bite him in his nether regions. The odd "Sister Mary Catherine!" closing line implanted this impression in my brain. Since I was mistaken, this commercial doesn't fall into the Burn In Hell, You Soulless Creeps category, but it's still pretty sick.

I mean, think about it: A guy gets his shoulder tapped, and within seconds he's telling a woman he clearly doesn't recognize that Yes, I Suppose I Am The Father of Your Baby. You really get the sense that this has happened to this guy before- maybe the last time he went to the laundramat, while watching a film at the local cineplex, waiting in line to pay for his coffee at 7-11.....

Maybe he's visiting the mall pharmacy to refill his prescription for Valtrex.

What's in your wallet? Nothing the rest of us want to see.

I have a credit card. It's a Capital One card, in fact. So yes, I am actually going to snark on a company that gets my business. I feel justified, because I don't use the feature being pimped in Capital One's "build your own card" commercials-- the "put the picture of your choice on your credit card" feature.

Seriously, why would anyone want to do this? I can see having a credit card featuring your favorite sports team. But a picture of yourself, or someone else, on your credit card? Don't you people realize that you are going to have to show this card to waitresses, drooling Best Buy employees, etc.? And you want to personalize it?

Here's a commercial for Capital One I find particularly grating: A mommy is looking over pictures of her toddler son, trying to decide which one she wants to use as the personalized image on her new credit card. One by one, she eliminates different images, finally deciding on-- "Spaghetti Jimmy"- an image of her idiot moron kid sitting in a highchair with a bowl of spaghetti on his head. And smiling.

Um, Ok. Mommy finds this image funny and endearing- why, exactly? Is she actually going to wave this credit card in the faces of all the merchants in this town- "check out my son, Jimmy- he's a freaking slob who drives his mother to drink by dumping spaghetti on his head!" Hey, was the spaghetti HOT when Mentally Deficient Jimmy decided to use it as a baseball cap? 'Cause that would have been even funnier!

Actually, my first thought upon being shown this card would be "so, you dumped a bowl of spaghetti on your kid's head thinking it would make a cute picture, huh?" My second thought would be "how long did it take you to get out the camera to take this picture? Did the sauce burn the kid too badly while it stayed on the kid's head? Did you have to yell at the kid not to take it off?" My third thought would be "your kid looks awfully happy to have a bowl of spaghetti on his head. Is he getting therepy? Are you?"

Seriously, why didn't Witless Mommy in Capital One commercial go for "Torturing Cat Jimmy" or "Sticking Fork in Wall Socket Jimmy" or "Eating Lead Paint Jimmy?" I mean, as long as showing your kid acting like a retard passes as public entertainment, why stop with the cliche'd Spaghetti-on-the-head bit?

Better yet, why not spare your kid the public humiliation and leave his image off your credit card, you dim bulb moron? Here's a tip: People really aren't all that interested in seeing pictures of your kids. Don't subject the poor sap down at Giant Food to uploaded images of your idiot spawn, please. Believe it or not, he's no more impressed by your kid's ability to make an ass of himself than I am.

Best Buy: Image v. Reality

All Best Buy commercials are basically the same: An employee who looks like working at Best Buy is the absolute thrill of her life tells us about this time when this person came in without Clue One what they wanted, and Omigd it was so Kewl to be able to hold their hand and guide them to whatever overpriced piece of junk the store was trying to pawn off on customers that week, and gosh you should have seen the smile on the customer's face when they walked out the door, it was priceless and it's the reason Life is Still Worth Living.

The most recent one I've seen uses Mother's Day as an excuse to drown us in Good Customer Service Treacle. "This kid came into the store, looking for something for his Mom for Mother's Day, and he knew he didn't want to get just anything, or a video game, but he didn't have a lot of money to spend, so I showed him this really neat keychain, and he could put images of himself with his mom (aside: raise your hands if you carry around downloadable images of yourself with your mom. Anybody? Anybody?) and his mom would look at it and say 'wow, this kid really loves me!'"

As if we arent' already drowning in sickly syrup already, the commercial ends with the Deleriously Happy Employee gurgling "we all think about our moms." Um, ok. Good "point."

Look, it's not that this commercial is so bad- it really isn't. It's just that I've been in a lot of Best Buy stores over the years, and I've never been approached by anyone who looks like my satisfaction as a customer is the Most Important Thing to Them Ever. More often than not, all the Best Buy employees I encounter in a store are forever jabbering away on their Blackberries (I heard one of them tell the person on the other end- LOUDLY- how bad it sucked to work at Best Buy, don't apply here, the manager is a FUCKTARD and he won't give me Saturday off the MFing MFer....) or playing the video games set up to entice CUSTOMERS to buy the latest Brain-Dead Delay Your Adulthood Pointless Toy being peddled to the thirtysomething crowd. The most I have ever gotten out of a Best Buy employee is "you need anything?" or "finding everything ok?" And that's actually all right- I don't want advice from people who I'm sure know which new cell phone is the Must Have Phone of the Month but who probably can't tell a toaster from a clock radio, anyway.

So how about a little honesty, Best Buy? Let's have a commercial in which an employee rags about how she had to stop texting her BFF for five minutes to help some lame-ass loser pick out
a vacuum, like she knows anything vacuums I mean they are all the same, like, right? And then this idiot even asked about a warranty, and I had to go in the back and get Bob the manager 'cause he's like middle-aged and he knows about shit like that. And then you know what happened, Bob rang up the sale under his code key so I didn't even get credit for the sale even after I stopped texting to help and all, the prick.

I'd appreciate that commercial. Because just once, I'd like to be able to watch a commercial and say to myself "that is so what really happens. I am so there."

The Lowest Common Denominator: E Trade's Smartass Baby

For some reason, ETrade thought it would be a good idea to present a YouTube-quality commercial featuring a wildly gesturing baby staring into the camera as a bad voice-over feeds us nasty snark about the baby's "golf partner" being unable to follow the rules of investing, or golf, or both, or something.

Look, when you use a baby to sell a product- ANY product, you've totally run out of ideas. You are willing to let some dipshit parents exploit their kids in commercials for products real babies couldn't give a damn about or even begin to understand. But because we are a nation of mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers who think exploding cars and fart jokes are FRICKING AWESOME, E-Trade can shovel out this slop and we'll eat it up and ask for more.

Of course, the "baby" is a total ass, trashing his (father's?) portfolio management skills and golf game, suggesting that if he doesn't get his act together the baby will have to "bail him out" in the future. When the pathetic adult apologizes to this rude creep, the baby responds "read the rule book, Shankasaurus."

Oh, WTF-ever, E-Trade. Some of us who have achieved Upright Status have noticed that babies aren't automatically funny just because they are in commercials using dubbed voices. And some of us who have learned to chew gum and walk at the same time long ago got tired of the "smartass kid disses dad" motif. I hope dad leaves the little brat in the locker room- find your way out of that highchair all by yourself, you know it all little prick.

Actually, "Lowest Common Denominator" is not completely accurate- there's a way E-Trade can sink lower. It can use a chimp. And I suspect those commercials are not that far off.

John Commuta's "Debt to Wealth Program"- and if you order now, you get a free bag of magic beans!

I'm stuck on the Beltway, and I hear another one of these commercials that seems to provide roughly 90 percent of XM Radio's advertising revenue- a commercial that promises to sell you a "system" that will eliminate your debt, no matter how big it is, in roughly the time it takes me to travel from New Hampshire Avenue to Rockville to pick up the bagels:

"I had a thirty-year mortgage, and I make $30,000 a year. Just using the money I make already, I paid off my entire mortgage in a year and a half, and now I own my house free and clear."

Come on! What was your mortgage on, a used piano crate? Even the most MODEST of 30-year mortgages have to start with a balance of half a million dollars or so. In my area, more like $1 million and up. People in this area who make $30 Gs a year don't take out thirty-year mortgages- they have a hard enough time finding an affordable APARTMENT. But we are supposed to believe that John Commuta can manage your finances in such a way that $45,000 in salary paid out over a year and a half can be used to completely pay off a THIRTY YEAR MORTGAGE??

I understand that in advertising, as in politics, Big Lies are more successful than small ones, because many consumers, upon hearing a Big Lie, assume that it MUST be true because no one would have the audacity to tell such a whopper. I think that's what John Commuta is going for here- a claim that "we can manage your salary to pay down your mortgage in half the time" might elicit a shrug and a "yeah, right." A claim that "We can get your mortgage PAID OFF in EIGHTEEN MONTHS!" causes people to think "wow, it sounds unbelievable, so it must be true." Never mind that the math simply doesn't work.

Who falls for this crap? Desperate people. Worried people. People on the verge of losing their homes. People buried with credit card debt.

People ripe to be taken by scumbag scam artists like John Commuta, who have figured out that outrageous claims bring in more revenue than reasonable ones, especially during bad economic times. "Debt to Wealth" means YOUR debt becomes HIS wealth.

You're better off selling your cow for a bag of beans. At least, you can eat the beans.

Now I feel old. And disgusted.

What happened?

One day I was in High School, and Jamie Lee Curtis was dropping jaws all over the country by stripping off a supertight top and giving us an unforgettable three seconds of full frontal nudity. What we could never have guessed was hiding under her rather drab, almost Puritan coverings in Halloween and Halloween II was right there for us to enjoy for a brief moment in Trading Places. And later, we get to see her in all her bubbly, bouncy glory wearing short shorts and Pippy Longstocking pigtails- awesome.

I blink, and suddenly there's Jamie Lee Curtis again- but she's not displayed on a massive piece of canvas at the local drive-in (partially because there isn't one.) She's not even entertaining us from the downtown Cineplex-6. She's on my television set, looking thrilled as all get-out at the opportunity to tell middle-aged women about Activa, The Yogurt That Keeps You Regular.

It hits me. Hard. Jamie Lee Curtis is a Middle-Aged Woman, fit only for commercials in which she delights other middle-aged women with the News that Great-Tasting Activa can help ensure Regular Bowel Movements through some added chemical or something....ugh. Former Sex Symbol Jamie Lee Curtis, pitching yogurt. And seemingly very happy about it.

It seems almost inevitable that one day I'll see Phoebe Cates trying to sell me FiberCon and Jennifer Jason Leigh pitching for ExLax. Because it's suddenly become the mission of the advertising industry to Make Me Feel Old. Very, Very Old.

And if I feel old now, how do you think Jamie Lee Curtis will feel when she gets replaced as Activa's spokeswoman by Catherine Zeta-Jones in a year or two?

Verizon bids for the Nobel Peace Prize

The founder of Toms Shoes of Los Angeles appears on the screen, handing out pairs of shoes to grateful villagers in some unnamed South American nation-- "I give away a free pair of shoes for every one that I sell." That's awesome- a great idea, and if Verizon, the makers of this commercial, can give this guy a shout out, I'm all for it.

Except...."If it wasn't for The Network, this wouldn't be possible..."

Um, What? It wouldn't be possible for you to give away shoes if not for Verizon Wireless? Why not? It seems to me that charities managed to function for many, many years before The Network came along to make Our Lives Worth Living. But now this guy is telling us that he could not give away shoes without The Network? I think an explanation is in order here.

Does he mean that he would not be able to find the people who need the shoes without The Network? That's preposterous on it's face. Or he wouldn't be able to know, on a day to day basis, how many pairs of shoes he is supposed to be giving away? That doesn't make sense, either- the number of shoes to be given away would be decided long before he left the US, because gee, those shoes have to be flown into the recipient nation, don't they? Or are we supposed to believe that this guy flies into a village, counts people who need shoes, matches that to the number of shoes he's sold, and then acts accordingly? A bit far-fetched.

I have to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that Toms Shoes is just doing a little cross-marketing with Verizon. Here's a chance for some free publicity, and all we have to do is say that Verizon is somehow vital to our work. Never mind if it makes no sense- this is exposure, and it helps us AND Verizon....

Which brings me to another point. Verizon is clearly very proud of it's "role" in "making it possible" for Toms Shoes to engage in such a noble enterprise. But other than being praised, what is VERIZON doing to help out the less than fortunate? I mean, other than sending a camera crew to show shoes being handed out. How does this big sloppy Valentine from Verizon to Verizon help make life better for anyone?

I hope Toms Shoes sees its bottom line improve based on the positive attention it gets from this commercial. I'm just sorry that, in order to get it made, we had to give such an obvious butt-kissing to Verizon, which, near as I can tell, did nothing but film the sequence and run it to improve its OWN image. How about a charitable contribution, Verizon? Because I don't think that filming someone handing you credit for HIS charity quite cuts it.