eHarmony: the Outtake Reel

"Ok, what brought you to this site?"

"What brought me to this? Dammit, I thought you weren't going to ask me that! I told you before- Desperation. Despair. End Of My Rope Horror at dying alone. "

"No, no-- we're supposed to be on script. Just read the cards."

"Oh right, right. Sorry. Ok- what brought me to this site? I was sick of all the usual ways of meeting people- getting set up by friends, taking out personal ads, writing to guys in prison-- and here was this site which showed me all these Gentlemen who....what are you laughing at?"

"Sorry- I was just thinking of how we make you use the term 'Gentlemen' when you describe the guys we show you on the site. That always cracks me up; but please, continue."

"Ok- anyway, I see all these Gentlemen who share my core values...."

"Just for the heck of it- can you describe some of these Core Values?"

"Well, I think Willingness to Settle is a core value. And eagerness to Take What You Can Get. And exhaustion from years of disappointment. And being sick of spending Saturday nights having long conversations with your cat. And the strong conviction that the Internet is a great place to meet That Perfect Someone, which is sometimes powerful enough to mask the fact that you are long past trying to find someone who is anywhere near perfect and eager to snatch up Passable if such a person is still available- and willing to take Tolerable if Passable is not."

"I'm getting depressed- I think I'm going to put down my camera for a while, call my wife, and tell her how much I love her-- why are you crying now?"

"I was about to ask you if you are free tonight. How do you feel about extramarital relations? 'Cause when I noticed you were a male, I thought, 'boom!'"

If this doesn't work, God's just going to call it a day with you

I could spend this entire post ripping into the "we talked to God recently about you, and here's what he told us to pass on" message that introduces this commercial. But snarking on the "God invented the internet because He realizes that even the endless spaghetti dinners and picnics sponsored by your church aren't helping you find someone to breed with, you loser" is too easy, so I'll save that for later.

Personally, I can't think of any good that could come from Christians Mingling. I mean, once Christians start mingling, we all know where that leads. Next thing you know, they are talking face to face. Then they are holding hands in public. Then they are running through wheat fields, falling into each other's arms, spinning themselves wildly around in circles, and all those other weird "romantic" activities that leave Christians too exhausted to think about having Icky Sex.

When they recover from all the running and spinning, they go back to mingling and holding hands until Society begins to look askance at their overly Sociable Behavior and begins to ask "so, when are you Christians getting married?" So the Christians get married, usually by a guy wearing a funny black and white collar who introduces the couple to a building full of people who serve as witnesses to their move to Advanced Mingling 202. If they are Catholic Christians, they get married by a guy in a black frock and then get to hear that guy tell them all about the joys of marriage and family and children- because seriously, who could possibly know more about marriage and family and children than a Catholic Priest?

Then there's this big party in which everyone eats too much and drinks too much- especially the Christian Bride and Groom, who are anxious to be in condition to do nothing but collapse into bed when this is all over. Just in case, though, they open their life of Christian Married Bliss by shoving pieces of pastry into eachother's faces while friends and families laugh appreciatively. THAT should take care of any amorous feelings that might survive the Open Bar and dancing with every relative and friend you have.

Once the alcohol, noise and sugar high has passed, the Married Christian People are left with- well, themselves. Not to worry, though, because being Good Christian Married People, children are right around the corner.

So what comes of Christians Mingling? More Christians. And we are supposed to think that this is a GOOD thing?

"Sometimes, we wait for God to make the first step...." well, that's certainly my plan. If God wants me to hook up with someone again, He will have to set that up for me (he's got my cell #.) I love the implication though that having faith that God's Will Be Done is pretty stupid, and what God really wants is for us to find someone to mingle with by using an internet dating site. The only thing missing is a little disclaimer at the bottom that says that God has not actually been hired as a spokes-Supreme Being to endorse this hilarity.

Tommy's talking to his imaginary friends at the breakfast table again....

Here's another of these stupid "what's on the agenda" orange juice ads. This one features an intensely ugly little boy who is starting his morning the same way the woman in the previous ad does- by suffering a weird hallucination featuring the Specters of Little Crises to Come as he pours himself a tall glass of OJ.

Naturally, this stereotypical kid's stereotypical problems are not the same as some career woman's, so the script is tweaked somewhat. This kid's going to miss the school bus, get in trouble for being handed a note by a cute girl in class (I think he's REALLY hallucinating at this point) and suffer a pop quiz in his "favorite subject, math." (As a teacher, I find this part particularly confusing: this kid looks too old to have one teacher for all his subjects- so wouldn't this have to be a math teacher? If that's the case, what ELSE would she be springing a pop quiz on? Do I just chalk this up to Once Again, the People Who Write These Commercials Have No Clue?)

He's also going to be told to clean his room or suffer the wrath of his mom, who will not allow him to watch tv or play video games (it's 2011. Shouldn't this be tweaked to "text friends or go on Facebook?") In other words, this is going to be a No Good Very Bad Day. Good thing he's got his orange juice- because there's just something about a boost of citric acid that allows you to take the soul-crushing problems of being an ugly 10-year old in stride.

But what does this do for me?

I want to know what she's washing down with that OJ

Ooooh, check out this woman's day, it's going to be sooooooo haaaaaard!! I guess it's a good thing she's holding an early morning meeting with all the people who are going to be tormenting her over the course of the day (does this make sense to anybody? Anybody at all?)

"I'll roll my eyes at you when you try to tell me what to wear" says Mysteriously Not-Texting Daughter. Seriously, I can't remember the last time I saw a commercial featuring a teen-aged girl in which that girl was not holding a cell phone. Wake Up, Florida Orange Juice! It's 2011!! Mom won't be crumbling under the weight of daughter's normally crushing eye-roll, however. She's got her OJ.

"Though I said I'd be here between 8 and 9, I'll show up at ten" says Cable Guy. "Making me late for work?" asks Apparently Single Mom Who Must Handle Everything Herself. "Yep" answers Cable Guy. Not to worry- this situation, which would break the will of most of us who don't drink juice in the morning, is easily handled by SuperMom. She's got her OJ.

"Principal Miller" is now asked for her intake, and she informs Mom that her son will be involved in a turf war involving switch blades, sidearms, and a monopoly on the playground's heroin traffic. Ok, she doesn't say any of that- just some dull crap about a scuffle- but you'll excuse my embroidery. Anything to stay awake as this dreck wears down. No problem for Mom. She's got her OJ.

There's some crap about elevators being out, which means that this woman will have to walk down 18 flights of stairs "in high heels." Why she's required to wear high heels in the first place- Jesus Christ, is this 2011 or 1955- is not a question to be answered in this brief ad. Or ever. Because it doesnt' matter. Nothing matters. Because it's all good, because she's got her OJ.

What I want to know is, when was orange juice fortified with the kinds of---err, "vitamins"---which make life's little annoyances somehow easier to take? I mean, isn't this really a commercial for Vodka, or Pot? "I've got my Orange juice"--- sure you do, but that's not making you calm in the face of Life's Little Disasters now, is it?

Come on, lady, fess up. What are you popping just before guzzling down that Orange Juice that is making you so damned relaxed? And is it available in my area? Because I have more compelling problems than a kid's eye roll and a late Cable Guy.

I've looked at Clouds from both sides now, Take II

In some respects, this commercial would have made a lot more sense back in the late-1990s. I mean, wasn't it back then that every smarmy, semi-educated twentysomething thought that he was just a few clicks away from taking his "Start Up" to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and himself out of his mom's basement into a plush Manhattan penthouse apartment?

Of course, back then, the "CEOs" of these mostly Fly-By-Night .com entities couldn't keep in constant contact with the rest of the dreamers on the "payroll," such as it was, because cell phones were still very limited in their utility, and the internet was something you accessed through phone lines. All this made it a lot harder to pretend to be doing the job you were hired to do and basically steal time from your boss while organizing your dream enterprise. Nowadays, everyone over the age of six has a high-end I Phone or Blackberry, and now, thanks to "The Cloud," we are all in touch and ready to crunch numbers and organize graphs and all those other really important things that people who want to get rich do to...well, get rich. I guess.

So the self-important Cloud Person in this ad spends a great deal of time coordinating, planning, and sharing, and when it's all done, he can whip off the apron and dump the job at Starbucks that was only keeping him in pizza and expensive gadgets. As far as I can see, the "CEO" doesn't even inform the poor manager of the coffee joint that "hey, thanks for giving me a job at a place which is also a Hot Spot, and not paying enough attention to notice that while I was supposed to be emptying the garbage cans between whipping up lattes and keeping the skim milk dispensers, I was actually using you to do my own work. See ya later, sucker."

As if this isn't all appallingly obnoxious enough, he lets his ex-coworker know that no, there is no room on his Cloud Team for him. That poor dope is just out of luck, because he was too focused on doing his job, and not enough on cheating his employer.

So it's come to this. 20th century morality blended seamlessly with 21st century technology. All we can hope is that this "CEO's" Start-Up ends like pretty much all the Start Ups of the 1990s did- in the dustbin, surrounded by a big pile of worthless stock. And that this guy ends up back in his mom's basement, wishing he could work up the courage to walk back into that coffee shop and ask for his old job back.

Oh, Suburban Princess Narrator, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways....

Back before I started to embed these ads, I did a post on this commercial which got me a very funny "sorry you didn't like our ad!" response from a very alert member of the Angie's List team. Because this particular commercial continues to pollute the airwaves, I thought I'd give it another try. It's a challenge to determine what I hate the most about the awful narrator: Is it that

1. She has so many plumbing issues in her suburban castle that she has a "favorite plumber?"

2. She has a Papillon?

3. The Papillon's name is Molly?

Or is it that

4. She sees no problem in asking her plumber to walk her dog (because plumbers aren't professionals, or anything. I'm a schoolteacher- I'm sure if my principal called and told me that the cleaning crew was sick and would I mind very much mopping and waxing the classroom floor, I'd be fine with that.)

5. She tells us that Joe will always be her plumber because he's willing to sacrifice his "time and dignity" parading her fucking little rat/dog up and down the street "until her 'business' was done." (And, presumably, cleaned up after it, too.) Not because he's a good plumber.

6. She presumes that her plumber has gone off the clock before doing this extra little job for her (seriously, tell me this isn't so. Please tell me that Joe continued to charge this woman $100 per hour to walk her dog around. Because God Damn It, it's NOT HIS JOB.)

Actually, I don't think it's any of these things. I think the real reason is embedded deep within the context of the ad- which is that what this woman likes most about this plumber is that he's a freaking little worker-drone monkey she can order around with impunity, because after all, if he steps out of line and refuses to ask "how high?" when she says "jump!," there's this little website called Angie's List, and we wouldn't want a bad review now, would we? Want to keep food on your kid's table, don't we? Scoop that poop, monkey!!

Seriously- shouldn't the comments on Angie's list be restricted to how well people actually do their contracted JOBS? Instead, we get bitching about painters stepping in red paint ("they did the job on time and budget, but they are far from true professionals," this guy sneers. So, on time and on budget is not as important as their attitude, you elitist scumbag prick?) or "the domestic slave I hired because 'I was TIRED of cleaning my house' kept whistling this annoying tune..." Good Fucking Lord. You assholes don't want laborers. You want robots who will do things Just So or else suffer the wrath of Angie's List.

Sorry for the rant. Back to the commercial at hand- I wish someone would make a parody of this ad in which Joe either A) hands this woman a bill including the time spent walking her dog, and the citation he received for refusing to pick up the poop because god damn it.....or B) refuses to walk the dog, leaving it to mess all over this woman's lovely furniture. And Angie's List be damned.

That and that ugly little "dog."

The Late Night TV Mark of Quality

Wow, I am SO glad I saw this commercial before consulting that fat, bearded weirdo from TaxMasters who always looks like he's got a steel pole jammed up his ass. I mean, what could be more confidence-inducing than a cartoon character named Max presenting his case for taking on the IRS to a crowd of zombies who look like they thought they were attending a session of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University?

I mean, look at the "possible, not typical" savings! And all you have to do is what you ALWAYS have to with with ANY of these Tax Debt/Credit Card Debt scumbag vulture organizations: Send them money. Lots of money. Basically, all the money you have. Keep doing that for a few months (say, six. Or eighteen.) Call every once in a while for an "update" ("your case is pending.") If you are amazingly fortunate, BlueTax actually manages to get you the discounted settlement you could easily have negotiated on your own, and without paying a hefty "consulting fee" to BlueTax. If your case is much more typical, you'll be told "sorry, nothing we could do for you. And if you'll read the contract you signed with us, you'll see there are no refunds." Or the number you've been calling will be mysteriously disconnected, as the guys who got your money have moved on, changing their name and cartoon spokes-figure.

My bet is that I'm one of the lucky ones, though. I mean, after all, this guy is so cute. And that weird little scream he gives at the end of the ad- if that doesn't convince you, what will? I mean, these guys are CLEARLY professionals who respect your intelligence, right?