What the hell was that?

I've noticed a disturbing trend in commercials recently: the previously accepted dimensions of rank stupidity and pointlessness are being shattered, replaced by a Brave New World in which no idea is too idiotic, too brain-dead, too "this makes absolutely, positively no sense to risk having our product laughed off the market through association." Welcome to Anything Goes Marketing.

I mean, can we all agree that not all that long ago, rapping hamsters comparing the Ugliest Automobile Ever Invented to a giant toaster would have been confined to a bad LSD trip? But in the year 2011, the path to man-sized rodents chanting the praises of this rolling eyesore has been well-paved by ads portraying stock-savvy babies, talking Volkswagens and pretty much every level of stupid you can imagine in the service of cell phones.

The really bad news (besides the very existence of this commercial) is that ad men all over the country are sitting up and taking notice that the goalpost has been moved yet again. "Red One" followed by a groin punch is checked by talking babies. You give us talking babies? Here's hamsters rapping about South Korean Imports. It's your move, market geniuses. Show us what else you've got.*

The other really bad news is as the commercials get more and more blatantly insipid, they become harder and harder to snark on. For example, you'd THINK that rapping hamsters would be easy to put down. In fact, commercials like this are SO stupid that they are almost snarkproof- like trying to review sour milk or the latest "Saw" movie. Sometimes, all you can do is just sit in awe of the brilliant awfulness of that mess which just marched across your screen.

*Or don't. Because as much as I do enjoy writing this blog, I'd be more than happy to retire it for lack of material.

Line, Line, Everywhere a Line

I've never been to Cici's, but according to this commercial, I guess this is how the Pizza Buffet "line" works- you start at one end of the heat lamp table. You proceed slowly through the varieties of pizza until you get to the one with the toppings you like. If that means you stand there for several minutes as the people in front of you ponder the different offerings, oblivious to the fact that there are other people waiting, well, that's just your problem. It's apparently taboo to just take your tray to another part of the table- the part that includes the pizza you like. Nope, you are just supposed to stand there like a doofus waiting to be in front of that pizza, even if that requires looking like an idiot with an empty tray (as opposed to an idiot with a tray full of greasy, artery-clogging slop.)

Personally, if I were the woman in front of this guy, I'm pretty sure I'd turn and ask "what are you doing? If you know what kind of pizza you want, why don't you go directly to that pizza and take some? Are you mentally ill? Are you just looking for an excuse to stand next to me? What?"

Of course, if I were the guy, and this was actually a line, I'd respond by asking her if she were going for the World Record for Slowest Building of a Salad in the History of The Universe. Or I'd remind her that in only four hours, the restaurant would be closing.

Instead, we get this weird "Line Jumper!" pizza-deprivation hallucination, in which this guy imagines that committing the sin of getting some pizza will make him a social outcast and turn the other people in the restaurant into finger-pointing lunatics. The woman he "jumps" seems especially irritated- from the tone of her voice, I think she's had a particularly hard day and this is about a lot more than "line-jumping." Not at all surprising that this hallucination includes a cameo by the guy's Grandmother- because the only thing ROTFLMAO more funny than talking babies or smart-ass kids is a pissed-off grandma, right?

At the end of this truly stupid waste of time, the guy decides that having all hell rain down on him from the other patrons for line-jumping is totally worth it, and he goes for the pizza. We aren't surprised that nothing like he imagined actually happens, because after all- there really isn't any line here for him to jump, and even if there was, I simply can't understand why anyone would care that much. Is it because I've never been to Cici's?

Am I just blind? Is there a line here for him to jump, and I just don't see it? What the heck?

Postscript- anyone out there ever been to a Cicis? Can you tell me if people really dress like this to fill themselves with white flour, cheese and sugar? Or is it more like the sweatpants brigade I see waddling into IHOP and Golden Corral every time I drive by?

Another Postscript- don't you just love the way the pizza table is in such pristine condition? These people are not the first customers- the place is already full- so in reality, wouldn't there be jumbled piles of rejected slices, puddles of salad dressing, and scraps of toppings everywhere if this scene was at all realistic?

And yet another Postscript- "Lollygagging?" Really?

Deleted Scene from "Idiocracy"

It's official; Verizon has run out of ways to show the knuckle-dragging, technology-addled, socially retarded losers who make up the sad population of customers for their stupid, life-sucking little toys how SuperAwesomeAmazinglyFast these things can download stuff they have no intention of ever actually using or even looking at.

As near as I can tell without subjecting myself to watching this commercial more than a few times (come on, I'm not getting paid for this, you know) the ad involves three twenty-somethings who have no idea how short life really is who have been talked into spending an afternoon at some kind of shooting range to watch a rocket take out a Verizon phone. So far, so good- although I think the commercial would have been even more entertaining if they had just picked one of these "Woo-Hoo" glue-sniffers to hold the phone instead of taping it to the target.

The object of the "contest" here is to download as much as possible before the rocket reaches the phone. I guess. This makes sense to someone out there- actually, it makes sense to a lot of people on YouTube, who naturally think that this is all ROTFLMAO hysterical and epic and all the rest.

What gets downloaded in the few seconds it takes for the rocket to reach it's target? A photo. A video game. "Gulliver's Travels." Hmmmm...I'm going to be impolite and make an educated guess as to which of these downloads will be deleted, unseen, by the recipient.

The way these three sacks of mucus jump up and down in celebration of their "victory" (over what? Over whom?)...well, it's all so depressingly familiar, isn't it? But who could blame them for being excited- I mean, not only did they get to download stuff really fast, but they also got to see this Epic explosion- I mean, that's a full day, and then some.

Hey guys- Verizon lets you download really, really fast. Get it? Just in case you don't, expect to have this message repeated again and again in a series of commercials featuring people finding out how much crap they can add to their phones before....the car slams into the guard rail? The space shuttle on that video explodes? The possibilities are endless.

Just be sure to have your finger on the Mute button, unless you really want to spend your summer hearing people shriek "woo-hoo!" while jumping up and down and staring at their phones.

Dad's a Fat Moron, Again

This commercial opens with some fat slob apparently continuing the rant begun more than an hour earlier, after the little kid next to him struck out on a high fast ball to lose the state championship. "Find your pitch and stick with it, Consistency, Consistency, Consistency" this rabid dick keeps pounding into the kid, who seems to be taking this all in stride. Clearly, he's seen this all before.

"Consistency?" the kid interrupts, and then points out that Dad has taken three different types of pizza from the All you Can Eat counter. Pretty blonde Never In A Million Years Actually An Employee Of This Kind Of Fast Food Dump does her part with an appreciative "yes I was listening to your idiotic raving" smile and shrug. Kid ends up with the upper hand, of course, and for once we don't mind, because, seriously, buddy, the game is over and maybe the kid just wants to relax with some pizza without being beaten over the head with your pointless, cliche'd "tips."

And then we are sitting with our pizza, hearing something that sounds like a Public Announcement endorsing fatherhood- something about how important it is to be a dad, whatever. My guess is that it's about how dads are important because kids need someone to bark vague, clueless suggestions (diving: "keep your head down." Football: "keep a low center of gravity." Tightrope walking: "Don't fall") when not bringing them for cheap, greasy pizza kept warm under lights and being spat on by other drivel-blathering Dads. Sounds nice, except that judging from this guy's waistline, I would suggest that he speed up the lessons, or hire an actual coach to give his kid REAL instruction that might actually be of VALUE to him, because clearly THIS dad has spent a little too much time at All You Can Eat pizza joints. Sooner or later, you'll be hearing from your heart, buddy. Probably a protest of how sadly consistent you are in your lousy food choices.

We humans have already had that conversation. Just FYI.

1. "Allergies?" No, lady, that guy doesn't have allergies. He's just carrying a box of Allegra for the heck of it. Seriously, if you are that desperate for an excuse to start a conversation with a guy you will later playfully insists "loves you," I would like to make you aware of several internet dating services...

2. "You know you can't take Allegra with Fruit Juice.." There are actually several opportunities for snark here. First of all, is that even OJ he has in his hand? It looks like a faux-juice drink to me. But let's go along and concede that it is OJ, and this woman just saved her coworker from a possibly fatal reaction to his over the counter medication. The guy seems oddly unappreciative.

3. The "solution" to not being able to take Allegra with OJ is not to find another drink, but to switch medications? Yikes. What if he's been taking Allegra for days or even weeks during allergy season- is it really ok to just stop using it and switch to Zyrtec instead? Maybe it is- but that still seems like a strange fix, when in five minutes he could just grab a soda or bottle of water to wash down his Allegra.

4. My favorite part of the whole commercial- the until-the-very-end silent zombie coworker, who has spent this entire conversation staring at his fucking Blackberry, so engrossed in whatever is on that little screen that he has apparently been rendered completely deaf. I say this because he reveals that he had NO IDEA what his coworkers were talking about before he took his eyes off the screen-- "you know you can't take Allegra with Orange Juice? Just FYI..."

Wouldn't this part have made a whole hell of a lot more sense if the coworker had ear buds on until he spoke up at the end? Or if he just walked into the scene at the close of the ad to put in his two cents? The first few times I saw this ad, I didn't even realize that he had been with them the whole time, probably because my brain rebelled against the idea that he could not be aware of what the two others had been discussing for the past thirty seconds. I mean, what the heck?

Or maybe it's just that I have no experience with Blackberries, I Phones, Droids, etc. etc. Based on what I see in my everyday life, it's just possible that the use of these gadgets DOES render the user completely oblivious to his or her surroundings. Which means that in reconsidering this ad, we must insert this little notion: if that girl had not been there, the Blackberry guy would have been too distracted to notice that his coworker was taking Allegra with OJ until it was too late. Which leaves me wondering just one more thing: would Blackberry guy remember that he could use that thing to call an ambulance before his coworker fell into an irreversible Allegra/OJ induced coma?

(BTW, I do like the fact that this guy's medication and juice take up the rest of the park bench, leaving FYI-guy to lean against the wall with his precious Blackberry. Nice.)

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.