Bag This, State Farm

This is one of those commercials which just doesn't seem complete without one of the characters just kicking the crap out of several of the others.

Here's a reasonable-looking guy with his head firmly planted on his shoulders, trying to save a little cash by brown-bagging it. Times are tough, and eating out can get seriously expensive, and every dollar counts, right? Well, check out the response he gets from his friends- derisive laughter that I wouldn't tolerate for two damn seconds before getting up and walking the hell out.

And check out the smarmy little prick sitting in the booth- "what some people won't do to try to save money!" Yeah, what a freaking nut, bring lunch from home! What's next- bringing coffee in a travel cup instead of hitting Starbucks? Where will the insanity end?

Thankfully, Mr. State Farm is available to give us REAL clues on how to save money, so you don't show poorly for your "friends" by demonstrating what I thought was just common-sense frugality. I'm sure that after a few minutes on the phone with an insurance agent, you'll be back to blowing $30- $40 a week with the guys at the lunch counter.

"When you are on date, do you bring two of those?" No, asshole, when I'm on a date, I take her to a nice restaurant. Because I can afford to do that, saving so much money by not eating out every day. It's called budgeting, and it's not dumb, or worthy of derision. It's smart, which is a lot more than I can say for the people I thought were my friends.

Seriously, why would anyone want to have lunch with these jerks? This commercial just makes me angry at State Farm, which is actively sneering at the idea of saving money unless it's done by purchasing their insurance.

The Summer of Mac 'n Me

Why is it that every woman in these mac'n cheese commercials is on the phone while her kid is eating?

Why is this girl, who looks well past three years old, eating dinner by herself? Way to model good eating habits, lady. Why the hell aren' you sitting with your daughter, with your OWN food? Better yet, why aren't you serving your kid real, nutritious food that might actually be good for her, instead of this crap? Oh yeah, I forgot- because it's something you can throw together while you blather away on the phone.

Why are all the kids in these commercials so damned creepy-looking? I mean, really- each and every one of them looks like they are one chant away from summoning up the power to wish their loathsome, lazy-ass parents into the cornfield. They look sooooo pissed off to be Only Children living in massive suburban palaces with their wealthy but utterly clueless, senseless and tasteless parents. Yeah, we really feel for you guys. Other than the fact that you'll be needing heart surgery before you graduate from High School, you seem to be doing ok.

Finally- if this kid knows that her idiot, disgusting mother is going to return again and again to "poach" a forkful of this orange crud, why doesn't she just eat the damned junk already? I's like she knows it's really, really bad for her and she's actually quite satisfied to have mommy take the fall by consuming it.

I mean, she does kind of look like that girl from the original "The Bad Seed," doesn't she?

Remember when it used to mean a book and a hot bath?

Who writes this crap? Let's take a look at the four people in this commercial that we are supposed to identify with. They all have two things in common- they are all insufferable idiots, and they all have magically fresh McDonald's "Frappes" (give me a break, they are coffee-flavored milkshakes) overflowing with whipped cream in their hands:

Jackass No. 1 works in customer "service." We know this because he's sitting in a cubicle wearing a headset. "My Me Time is when I'm dealing with a problem I had nothing to do with" he sighs as he continues to pretend that the caller is Very Important To Him as he drifts into a Me Time coma. He clearly is paying no attention to the caller's complaint, and it's equally clear that the caller will get zero satisfaction from this douche. I only hope that the call really is Being Monitored, so this asshole finds himself and his precious milkshake out on the street soon. Plenty of Me time available then, jerkoff.

Next, we come to a lovely couple inexplicably trying to crowd themselves on to an inflatable mattress while they balance their milkshakes. Groan. Her "Me time" is "when my inlaws are in town" the female tells us. Haha, nothing fresher than a "I hate my inlaws" joke, is there? But, for Christ's sake, accepting the idea that the inlaws have taken the master bedroom and the hosts must make do on an inflatable mattress in the den, WHY do they have to sit on it NOW, while balancing their milkshakes? Wouldn't it be more comfortable just to stand or sit in a chair? Is taking a milkshake to bed just part of their daily routine? Is there a McDonalds across the street in this poorly-zoned suburb? Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!

Finally, we have an angry-looking consumer of air travel standing by the baggage carousel, informing us that his "Me Time" is when his bags go to Bermuda- but he doesn't. This should be the most realistic of the segments, because yes, there are a lot of McDonalds Restaurants in airports, so that unlike the other characters we aren't left wondering where the hell he bought his milkshake or how he managed to convey it to his current location in straight-from-the-machine condition. But still, I wonder what this guy is still doing at the airport, still standing next to the baggage carousel, when he KNOWS his bag was sent to the wrong place-- does he plan to stand there gaining weight with every sip with a stupid grin on his face until the bag is returned?

Who writes this crap? People who don't mind poaching other ad campaigns for ideas, obviously. Some years back, Haagen-Daz gave us a series of ads in which people were encouraged to "have some more" in response to personal disasters, a terrific "fatty food makes everything better" message well-suited to the current McDonalds campaign. But I suppose that the idea that we should fill our down time by consuming calorie-dense crap has been around for at least as long as mass-produced ice cream and the golden arches. Watching alleged grown-ups consider drinking milkshakes as a form of "Me Time" is still pretty pathetic, though.

We end the day with the traditional burning of a giant, cross-shaped celery stalk

There's a place- a very magical place- where people aren't afraid of vegetables. A place where white Anglo-Saxon Protestants gather with their children to joyfully consume huge amounts of vegetables in a wholesome (did I mention WHITE?) setting. Where boys wear pants and girls wear their moms 1960s-era hand me down skirts. A place which just looks so gosh-darned lush and green and wholesome, you just want to pick it up and hug it to death. Or take a photo of it and use it to create a Hallmark Card, or a commercial for your Republican candidate for the Senate.

That place is Hidden Valley.

In Hidden Valley, nobody attempts to distract their spouses when the word "vegetable" is uttered in front of small children. You won't catch anyone banging pots and pans, or crashing grocery carts into pyramids of soup cans, to drown out the "v" word. In fact, in Hidden Valley, vegetables are to be celebrated, not shunned or disguised as junk food.

Yes, in Hidden Valley, people love their veggies. Specifically, they love them drowning in thick, fatty tar called "salad dressing." Pouring Hidden Valley Ranch dressing all over your salad isn't EXACTLY the same as deep-frying it or encasing it in fudge, but it's pretty darned close. And teaching kids that vegetables are really yummy if you can't taste hem isn't QUITE as bad as hiding a single serving in a can of Chef Boy-R-Dee's Big Ravioli, but almost. And eating salad dressing mixed with vegetables is a far better idea than daily trips to the local McDonald's where you can watch them sugar the french fries as they explain to your toddler why the Shrek Over and Over Again Collector's Glass she's been shrieking for was too dangerous to keep adding to Happy Meals, but it's still not the way to develop healthy eating habits (especially the way the people in these commercials do it- jesus, is a bottle of Kraft Salad Goo a "single serving," or what?)

Oh yeah, one more thing- in Hidden Valley, self-satisfied suburban parents think that they are being responsible caregivers for their Precious Little Ones by keeping them away from Mac n' Cheese and Canned Ravioli and feeding them food that was naturally green, red and orange before they slathered it with bottled white crap? Can't you just see these pretentious idiots carefully selecting each piece of produce at the local farmer's market, paying upscale prices for the stuff labeled "organic," and then wrecking their own good intentions by adding loads of fat and salt to their groceries?

The Stupid! It Burns!

And He and his Kin lived Happily Ever After

I think that the following are fair assumptions, based on my observation of people who seem to be obsessive-compulsive when it comes to using their cell phones in public places:

1. Cell phones, far from making life "easier" or "more fun," simply create more work. It's been years since I first heard a person complain "Now that I have a cell phone, I'm on call 24/7!" and then gave me a dirty look when I asked why they

A. Had a cell phone, if they wanted to be out of contact, or
B. Had a cell phone they did not know how to turn off, or
C. Felt that just because they received a call or text on their cell phone, they were compelled to answer it (has Voice Mail ever achieved the same usefulness as an Answering Machine? Apparently not.)

(Actual quote from my twenty-something niece: "the problem with texts are, you have to answer them.")

2. FaceBook, far from being a fun distraction from the real world and a new way to engage in "Social Networking," has become a time-sucking obsession for people who are convinced that

A. If they note what they are doing, someone, somewhere, will care, or
B. If they throw themselves at the mercy of the World Wide Web, one of the other 5 billion people out there will find them interesting enough to want to talk to them, or
C. If they spend enough time on FaceBook, they will somehow convince themselves that they have this really cool life which includes lots of friends and fun.

Assuming these two things, I have to make one more assumption about anyone who would buy a KIN, this new gadget which combines the obnoxiousness of the cell phone with the fantasy life offered by FaceBook: Judging from how long this idiot spends scrolling through photographs, maps, contact lists, etc without ever actually accomplishing anything of value other than managing to avoid eye contact with his fellow carbon-based life forms and developing a crick in his neck, I believe that it's reasonable to conclude that the photographs shown on the screen (especially the one of the girl at the beach, which appears in multiple ads) of people having fun dancing, hiking, mugging for the camera, etc. are all pre-loaded. Because there is simply no way that anyone who owns one of these stupid things actually knows any of these people or does any of this stuff. What the KIN offers is another element for the weird parallel universe some people began to live in when they realized that no matter how many times it was updated, The Sims just didn't cut it for them. FaceBook allows one to indulge in the seductive fantasy of popularity- "look how many friends I have"- without fear of rejection or loss. KIN takes it a step further, making it easy for you to take your FaceBook with you, so there's no excuse for you to not update it constantly with photographs of random people doing random things, with whom you can now claim to have a strong interpersonal bond.

It's only a matter of time before we hear someone complain "Now that I have a KIN, I have to add to my FaceBook page 24/7!" But don't worry about answering- they aren't really talking to you, they are just repeating what they just texted onto the internet. Because really, if they wanted to start a conversation with you, they might have to look up sometimes. Can't have that.

Kind of odd, though: if the guy in the AT&T Commercial hadn't looked away from his phone for two seconds, he would never have met his destiny and we would never have been blessed with their offspring, the 57th President of the United States. Now I don't know what to believe.

Happy July 4th from our friends at Budweiser

Anyone who has been alive for more than a few years has probably become numb to the weirdly hypocritical way in which America treats it's historical icons. On one hand, we've got an entire "news" network dedicated to elevating them to the level of sainthood, arguing that their every utterance was inspired by God, and everything they wrote was meant to guide this nation for all eternity. Support of slavery? Disdain for the idea of equality for women? Look away, nothing to see here....

On the other hand, the Founders have always been used to sell, sell, sell everything from mattresses to automobiles. They've been part of the ad culture for as long as there's been an ad culture. Washington's image appeared on cigar boxes in the 1880s. I used to play with Lincoln Logs. Ben Franklin Paint. Ethan Allen Furniture. Turn on the Hotel Channel in Philadelphia, and you can watch some fat oaf in a costume urge you to visit every single attraction the city has to offer 24/7.

This Budweiser ad makes me wonder if we might want to tone down our treatment of the Founding Fathers as readily-available, public domain pitchmen in the future. I mean, presenting Washington , Jefferson and Franklin as beer-crazy, party-loving leches is a bit much.

Well , Ok, maybe you can keep Franklin in there. But do we really need to see The Father of Our Country propositioning a woman with a line like "how'd you like to be the 'Second Lady?" First of all, the line is ridiculously awkward. Second, dammit, George Washington was almost legendary in his devotion to Martha, who outlived him. It's one thing to use GW to sell me beer. Don't slander him while doing it, please.

How about this revolutionary (no pun intended) concept- for one weekend a year, ad agencies leave off exploiting the vague, cloudy memory that most Americans have toward the people who fought for our Independence from some country, wrote some Declaration, and then wrote something else that isn't the Declaration but which, according to Glenn Beck, still calls us to be a nation which worships Capitalism, God, and Guns, not necessarily in that order? You know, that document that Obama is spending every day huddled with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and George Soros plotting to destroy?

Nah. Pass the beer and Hillshire Smoked Brats, I've got to post LOL THS IS THE FUNNYST COMMERSHAL EVAH on YouTube.

Keep on Living the Dream, Guys!

What do guys do? I mean, what do they do when they aren't throwing big heavy filth-covered pieces of machinery into Ford F-150s, having orgasms at the sight of beer, or pumping gallons of Round Up on to that one weed sticking out of their driveways?

Well, we knew already what they DON'T do-- they don't shave. They don't comb their hair. They don't make themselves presentable in polite society in any way, shape or form.

Thanks to Hillshire Farms, we have a pretty good idea of What Guys Do, at least on the weekends. They stand in their designated cubicle-yards grilling artery-hardening, environment-robbing meat products, pouring god knows how many toxins into the atmosphere (and into their bodies) in the process. Ah, suburbia, ain't i wonderful?

And as they turn the one or two sausages they used an entire bag of charcoal and half a can of lighter fluid to slightly brown, they attempt to make contact with the other Neighborhood Guys, who are producing their own clouds of pollutant in their own cubicle-yards, standing next to their own suburban palaces, which by the way are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same. The dominant Guy of the Herd sings out the marching orders- to pay homage to Meat- and his supplicants (one of which is, judging from the mustache, a retired 70s porn star) respond appreciatively. My guess is that the one guy on the block busy putting the final touches on the beet salad keeps his mouth shut. No point in upsetting the Neighborhood Association, after all.

None of this looks at all familiar to me, which means that either I'm not a Guy, or I'm not a Real Guy. But that's ok- being a Guy doesn't look like a whole lot of fun in commercials, and not especially healthy, either.