Art Imitates Life

Nice to meet you.

I like you.

I really like you.

I love you.

No really, I love you. And you aren't getting any younger. Just sayin'- you could do a lot worse than me.*

I "love you," but I'm not "in love" with you.

We don't have as much in common as I thought we did.*

I need my space.*

I can't stand the sight of you anymore.*

Can't you read a simple restraining order?*

Let me tell you about my new boyfriend.

--Unedited Version of this New York Life commercial.

*Not actual moments from my own life

It's a Dead Man's Party

Here's another one of those commercials that are so spectacularly awful, so knee-deep in stupid, that it's almost impossible to work up the energy to even snark on it. I'll give it a shot anyway, because next to cell phones, the "adults playing stupid video games" phenomenon really bothers me more than any other.

So we've got two arrested-development exhibits sitting on a couch apparently oblivious to the fact that a party featuring pretty girls has broken out behind them. They are using handheld controllers to manipulate characters on a tv screen into punching, shooting, slicing and gouging each other while tossing seriously lame quips that would be considered weak by 15-year olds , Roger Moore, or any character in the last Star Wars Trilogy.

One of the pretty girls notices that two loud males are doing what I guess passes as the "sociable" thing these days- playing a freaking video game rather than, oh, I don't know, mixing with other guests and engaging in conversation (hey, they aren't texting people not at the party- that's something, right?) Her reaction to their game is perplexing to say the least- is it astonishment, interest, disgust, what? I'd go with disgust, but I really doubt that's what we are supposed to infer, because...

By the time one of the characters in the incredibly violent, obviously pointless knob of a game is being sawed in half on the screen, it appears that most of the people at this party have become so bored with their attempts to make conversation with people whose social skills have been retarded by years of texting and IMing that the "action" on the television is an acceptable distraction. We aren't allowed to watch these sad misfits gather around the couch, however, because the makers of this shameful mess would rather show us scenes of other males all over the country reacting to the dismemberment of their avatars with primal screams (these guys must make awesome neighbors, don't you think?)

I'm still sane enough to believe that while this reaction suggests a truly depressing disconnect from reality (seriously- do people get so caught up in this dreck that they forget it's just a game? IS IT just a game to these losers?) that is not the message we are supposed to derive from all this. Which means that all we are really left with is a decision concerning which aspect of this ad is most responsible for the empty feeling- is it that in this day and age, it's perfectly acceptable to play video games during parties, making these "get togethers" as socially isolating as everyday life? Is it that these worthless, grubby mushrooms think they are being clever with So Obvious They Really Need To Be Left Unsaid quips like "I hope you didn't plan on having children?" Is it that conversation is now seen as decidedly inferior to playing video games?

Or is it more elemental- maybe the most depressing thing about ads like this is the very concept of adult video games. I played video games when I was a teenager- Space Invaders, Time Pilot, Qbert, etc. I had an Atari game system, and I had friends over to play games like Tank Commander, Mad Bomber, Frogger, and Atari Bowling. Sometimes my parents played, too. It was always a lot of fun and quality time.

But at some point, I went away to college and drifted away from video games. I'd go to an arcade now and then, but the home system got packed up and passed on to the younger kids in the family. These days I play arcade games one week a year, while on the annual vacation at Hampton Beach NH. It's fun because it's kind of nostalgic, and it's different. Video games, you see, are not part of my everyday life. Because I'm an Adult.

So I guess my real question is, when did it become ok for people to simply refuse to let go of childhood? What's the deal with people in their twenties, thirties, forties still wasting time sitting in basements, pretending to gun down terrorists or space mutants or Orcs for hour after hour, taking breaks for sleep and to pick away at a fake guitar while acting out the fantasy of being a rock star you REALLY should have abandoned by the time you graduated High School? Even if people have all this leisure time, why are they using it for THIS?

I'm sorry, I just don't get it. I never will- not as long as there are People, Books, and Outside to be experienced. The best part about those things is that they almost never drive me into a primordial scream. Almost never.

And what do we fertilize delicate flowers with?

Why is everyone so darned serious in these commercials? I mean, they are already at a chain restaurant dive which prides itself on featuring cheap junk at low prices (all you can eat for under five dollars?) Do they think that being carefully meticulous in building their salads they can somehow mitigate the shame of choosing THIS as an appropriate place to eat?

And who actually eats at All You Can Eat joints, anyway? Why would anyone look forward to a night of gorging ones self with carbs and sugar before waddling back to the car hoping that there's something left of that roll of TUMS you left in the glove compartment? Why would anyone want to eat until they couldn't eat anymore (and if you DON'T want to eat until your stomach is pressed up against your lungs, why go to an All You Can Eat place at all- why accept All You Can Eat quality if that's not your intention?) It's really not enough that we live in the richest, fattest nation on Earth without demanding the right to consume enough calories to feed your average Ethiopian village for a week at one sitting (and all for under five dollars!?)

I do like the way this commercial cuts through the BS- no, Cicis customers are not there for the salad bar. You can pretend that you are going to pay All You Can Eat prices and then just build yourself a healthy little pile of greens and tomatoes (sloooowllly....jeesh, how long is this woman's lunch break? Good thing there's nobody in "line" behind her....he might be compelled to become a "line jumper...") but in the end, you are going to be piling that plate with slices of pizza, cinnamon buns, and all the rest of the fatty dreck places like this specialize in. And because you are a typical slob, you are going to value your sitting down time more than your dignity, and show your disdain for the idea of actually getting up more than once to refill that plate. Of course, this means that you are going to sit down with a disgusting mountain of "food"-- but what difference does that make, when the rest of the sweaty herd around you has done the same thing?

And as if to give a big Cicis Thumbs Up to this behavior, the ad concludes with a delightful shot of this idiot shoveling food into her cake hole as if someone's going to be stealing it from her in a few minutes, before looking around to check if someone here looks like they might be familiar with the Heimlich Maneuver (I'm guessing that the staff are all experts at it.) She can't really be feeling a modicum of shame for what she's doing, can she? I mean, she's at CICIS!!

So come to Cicis, where you are encouraged to play Disgusting Pig At The Trough. I'll think I'll pass on the Cheesy Deliciousness, thanks anyway.

Your real problem is sitting to your left, lady

A long, long time ago (the 90s) in a galaxy far, far away (Western New York) I was a married person who spent several weekends a year visiting my brother-in-law and his wife, whose prized possession was their yacht. It wasn't just their most prized possession, however; it was their pride and joy, their child. They had framed photos of the yacht all over their home in Lockport. They spent every free minute of their lives between April and October working on the yacht, fishing off the yacht, rafting off the yacht, or just sitting on it's spacious deck, reading the newspapers. My wife and I spent many a lovely summer day rolling along the Niagara River on that yacht. The year of our divorce was also a year of reversals for my relatives, who had to sell off their baby. Very sad times, all around.

The nasty old woman in this commercial would not understand my brother and sister in law. As near as I can figure from this rather confusing, pointless little nub of an advertisement, she does not approve of the boat purchased by her close relatives, or the fun they derive from it's usage. She's sick of hearing about the boat, and when she is finally coaxed into experiencing it, she sits there acting as if she's been weened on a pickle and cant' wait for this awful thing to stop so she can get off and get back to her couch. Where she will go back to bitching about the boat.

This is a commercial for insurance- as near as I can tell (seriously, I might be completely wrong about the message, wouldn't be the first time.) Beyond that, I can't figure the selling point- this woman should not be worried because the boat owners have insurance? Really? How would the knowledge that her relatives are insured make any sane person less worried about her grandkids dying in a boating accident? Isn't that kind of mercenary?

Personally, I think all this whining about "the boat" is all about blocking the real issue- this woman's husband is suffering from a serious eating disorder that she is refusing to confront and deal with. She's about to lose her life partner to a heart attack or diabetes, but she doesn't want to talk about that- she'd rather obsess about the boat, the boat, the boat. Maybe his life insurance is paid up, and she just doesn't care. But what about the rest of the family? Seems to me this guy isn't just her husband- he's also Dad and/or Grampa to some of those people on the boat. Does nobody notice that this guy has serious problem?

Isn't it time for an intervention here?

"But he has a lot of GOOD qualities, too" she told me as she wiped her eyes with her well-worn hankerchief

I've gotten a lot of mileage from beer commercials over the past two years; in fact, there are times when I think I could write a blog snarking on nothing BUT this particular industry's nonstop assault on our intelligence.

Here are two examples of a common theme which runs through a lot of these ads. It's not the scruffy, beer-obsessed twenty-something jerk whose mind and life rotates around cans of low-alcohol, low-taste, foamy liquid. I'm done complaining that this guy is never shaven, never dressed in anything but jeans and a battered, unbuttoned, un-tucked-in shirt, and clearly threw away his comb the day he moved out of his mom's house. I'm also completely over the fact that he almost always seems to live in a very substantial suburban palace, despite being either single or married without children. And no, I'm not going to take the most obvious route and focus on the pathetically Pavlovian response the guy always gives at the very MENTION of beer.

No, the common theme I'm going to focus on concerns the rather sad situation faced by the women in these ads. Now, of course, women are always the long-suffering side of any television partnership, but this axiom is taken to another level in commercials for lite beer.

In Commercial #1, we see a couple enjoying what on television is considered "quality time"- guy watching tv, woman reading a magazine. The magazine is, significantly, Bride. Subtle, huh? By the end of the ad- which features Not Reading Groom Magazine boyfriend appealing to girlfriend's desperate need to believe that boyfriend has a Sensitive Side and is therefore really worth all her false hopes and successfully escaping to spend time with his real loved ones (they come in six-packs.) Poor, deluded girl. If she only knew what a dick her boyfriend was- I'm sure she'd respond with an eyeroll before returning to her Bride Magazine.

Commercial #2 is much, much sadder, but the message is pretty much the same. This time, the female character is taking a pregnancy test and anxiously keeping her significant other apprised of the progress as he stands in the kitchen (which is just off the bathroom. Ok.) I get the idea that maybe this is a young couple that has been trying to get pregnant for some time, and this is a very big moment. For one of them. Because while the female half of this "relationship" is expressing emotions completely appropriate for a woman who realizes that her life may very well be about to be altered in a very dramatic fashion, the Male she Inexplicably Chose to Mate With is engrossed in watching the mountains depicted on his beer cans turn blue.

The test is positive, and the beer reaches optimal drinking temperature, at about the same time. The "hilarious" punchline shows the (crushed, disappointed) woman stomping off (probably in tears, too bad we aren't allowed to see that, because what could be funnier than seeing the face of a woman who just realized that the father of her future child cares more about beer than her or their child?) while hubby(?) is left wondering What He Did This Time, and Will The Guys Get Here Before Kickoff This Week Cause He Can't Wait to Show Them These Awesome Cans.

The simple meanness and sexism of these ads really rankle. What are women to the guys who write this crap? Attachment-hungry, desperate, gullible prisoners of their own lack of self-esteem and the poor choices resulting from that fatal flaw. What are men? Cold-hearted, overgrown children who reserve their empathy for buddies who are out of light beer. Thank God that these characters are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental- or very, very disturbing. But what is going through the minds of the hateful choads who write these ads or think these situations are anything but really, really depressing?

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?