Jell-O Spreads the Hate

Unwilling to let Volkswagen, Sprint and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese corner the market in loathsomeness, Jell-O has inaugurated a series of Parents v. Kids commercials in which Mommy and Daddy terrorize their kids into keeping their hands off of the Made for Adults desserts.

In this version, Mom and Dad are perfectly willing to traumatize Son and Daughter with stories of "Choco-Beasts" instead of simply ASKING them to stop "stealing" their Jell-O. The kids, who will probably need years of therapy before they can ever sleep in a tent more than five feet from the house again, run terrified into the house, but it's all good because their parents get all the Chocolate Goo in a Cup to themselves.

All in good fun, because except for the soiled pajamas, fear of the dark and new-found distrust of their parents, no harm has been done to these kids.

Thanks, Jell-O!

Generic Advertising At Its Best

I challenge anyone to argue with anything this guy says. It's all so bland, so obvious, so "no duh what on Earth is your point?" repetitive and cloying (right down to the dull Empty Room with Escalator background) that for a moment, it left me wondering "who in the world would be inspired to go anywhere based on this ad?"

Then it hit me- despite what we are told at the end of the commercial with the "Possibility City" tag line, it's entirely conceivable that the pitchman has no idea what municipality he's supposed to be talking about. It's easy to imagine this ad being used to encourage tourism and business investment in ANY city ANYWHERE in the United States. This commercial has NOTHING to do with Louisville, Kentucky- it's just a standard, Fill-in-the-name-of-customer-here advertisement available to any local Chamber of Commerce looking for a cheap little spot to run during baseball games or between other commercials.

Not that this ad even succeeds in encouraging investment or tourism. I mean, if you hear a single line which suggests that I should open my wallet and spend some money in Louisville Kentucky OR ANYWHERE ELSE, please point it out to me. All I hear in this ad is that cities are iffy, Hit or Miss propositions. They can be great. Or they can suck. They can provide inspire. Or Depress. They can provide a wonderful education. Or they can beat you over the head and deprive you of aforementioned wallet. And on and on.

Anyway, to the point: I will be in Possibility City for the next nine days, grading Advanced Placement essays with 1200 history teachers from all over the Not As Full of Possibilities as Louisville United States. So my next blog update won't appear until June 9. I will, however, be checking my email and responding to comments while I'm away. Later!!

Is there Life After Hockey?

"Dream come true?" "Happiest day of his life?" REALLY?

Spending a day with the Stanley Cup "and all his friends" is going to do this? REALLY?

Um, how, exactly? I mean, I get that this kid is a "big hockey fan"- but actually, let's start right there. Who the hell is a "hockey fan?" Surely they mean that he's a fan of a professional hockey TEAM, right? I mean, the kid doesn't really just follow professional hockey without rooting for a particular team, does he? Because that's actually pretty stupid (not quite as stupid as his 70s-style shorts, but pretty close.)

And mom telling us that this is a "hockey family-we're crazy." Thanks for telling us what is already obvious, Weird Mom. Just wondering- what do you guys do during the offseason (otherwise known as the month of August?)

Let's be real for a moment. For exactly how long will it be really be Super Awesome Amazing to have this big, ugly trophy sitting around? I give it thirty minutes, tops, before the kids get sick of looking at it and touching it and having their pictures taken with it and want to move on to do something else.

Now, maybe if this kid's team had actually WON the cup,* and paid him a visit, and gave him a tour of the locker room and a behind the scenes look at the rink, etc. this might be an enjoyable, even extremely memorable experience. But- just having the trophy for a day? Is it just me, or does this seem like a lot of hype for not a whole lot of payoff?

I love when companies to do this- they make a colossal big deal out of very little, and are aided and abetted by the Discovery (no pun intended) of some weird loser who, with the help of his ultra-indulgent parents, has managed to devote his Just Getting Started But Not Much to Celebrate Life to some narrow niche activity which has turned him into an obsessive little creep with sadly limited interests. Truthfully, I don't think that this kid needs to spend a day with the Stanley Cup. I think he'd be better off getting out of his room every once in a while and trying out different activities. It would be nice to think that one day this kid wakes up and, like Frances with her bread and jam, suddenly realizes that variety isn't a bad thing, and that even your Very Favoriteist Thing Ever can become a real bore when you let it become the center of your existence.

Seriously- What am I missing here?

*Go Bruins

Some On The Spot Research would have been helpful here

This is hysterical.

Cicis, my favorite punching bag of a restaurant, had the "great idea" to scatter pennies around the sidewalk in front of their feed bins. The fat, sweaty slobs who frequent places like this would snatch up the pennies, hoping to find one that was labeled "Free Buffet." The Fat, Sugar and Carbs-addled loser who found the "lucky" penny would then jump up and down (sorry for the mental image) with delight at the prospect of saving the four dollars he usually had to cough up to gorge on pizza and cinnamon buns.

Just two problems: First, as previously implied, Cicis is practically free anyway. It's not like this is Ruth's Chris handing out free dinners. Getting excited about a free buffet at Cici's is kind of like rushing off to Sears upon learning that they are having a sale on tube socks. It's four dollars, people.

Second, the whole campaign presupposes that the prospective customers still retain the ability to see the sidewalk, bend over, and return to an upright position. Ever check out the crowd at Cicis, Golden Corral, Denny's, or any of the other All You Can Cram Into Your Cake Hole troughs? All I can say is, I hope Cicis had paramedics standing by for the people who couldn't quite make it back up- or at least a number of comfortable chairs and oxygen tanks for those who needed a recovery period after ten seconds of jumping around, chins jiggling, after "winning" another chance to add some artery plaque.

Thanks again, Cicis. You make this blog so easy to maintain sometimes. Almost makes the damage you are doing to our nation's health worth it.

"Look At Me"- Might as well replace In God We Trust on the money

This commercial does a very good job summing up what I loathe the most about our current obsession with "sharing" every little thing we say or do (I won't say "think," because I don't think there's a whole lot of "thinking" going on.) Unlimited Talk and Text is a GOOD thing, you see, because it allows us to desperately scream LOOK AT ME to a world increasingly disconnected from human contact- because we are all too busy trying to get noticed to realize that we have created little electronic islands around ourselves.

So while we walk down the street, sit on park benches or on the metro, or do anything else that used to at least create the possibility of bumping into an old friend or making a new one, we are encouraged to burrow deeper and deeper into our own little cocoons of isolation by keeping our eyes fixed on to the little glowing screen. As the airwaves become more and more congested with pointless garbage, we find it necessary to shout louder- where once we talked, now we text, because it's harder to ignore a text. Where once we texted, we now upload videos, because maybe a short of me doing or saying something really stupid will get me some attention before I am drowned out by the Next Really Stupid Thing.

This country is like a guy who finds himself on a crowded beach, surrounded by people with loud radios, each one playing his own tune. Rather than asking his fellow sunbathers to turn down the volume, he pulls out his own radio and cranks it up, providing his own contribution to the increasingly oppressive wall of noise. And cell phone companies just keep responding with the "solution:" Louder Radios.

And telling us this is a Good Thing. And using the closing song to The Yellow Submarine to do it.

I wish people who bought in to this technology would be honest for a moment and ask themselves: what happens if you get your wish, and people stop what they are doing and actually pay attention to you? Once you've hooked us with the video of your stupid face mugging for the camera, or taking a pratfall, now what? Do you really have anything to say? Or did you just want to be acknowledged for a moment, and it's ok for us to just move on now?

Have you always been this sad?

What's a little fracking amongst friends?

Ugh, this slimy, smarmy dick makes my blood pressure rise every time his nasty mug graces my tv screen- which is every morning, and several times every morning. There he is again, with that fixed know-it-all "this is so obvious, and so EASY" little smirk, explaining to us stupid non-vampires that "new technology" makes it possible to "unlock" a "hundred years" worth of natural gas from subterranean rocks. This "breakthrough" means a hundred years of OPEN signs, and lots and lots of patriotic bunting (and, we can presume, picnics featuring fried chicken, hot dogs and apple pie, fireworks, and White Presidents. You know, like G-d intended.)

All we have to do is ignore those flea-bitten, unpatriotic hippies who bitch and moan about flammable water coming out of the kitchen faucet, as the released gas makes DDT look like a benign chemical by comparison. Thankfully for this money-grubbing corporate whore, Rachel Carson has been dead for fifty years and the Bought and Paid For Media has no great interest in reviving the environmental movement. So it's Drill Baby Drill with a different kind of poison being extracted from the ground- it's not black, it's not slick, it's conveniently invisible- but it's effects sure as hell aren't.

But hey, life is all about trade-offs, isn't it? You want low-cost energy? Then let the oil companies tear the hell out of every National Park from the Green Mountains to Muir Woods. Stop bitching about oil spills which do no real harm unless you are a shrimper, a fisherman, or a living organism which depends on the sea for life. And when pompous, preachy little pricks with confident smiles tell you that we can make America energy independent, how dare you even ask about the environmental cost? I mean, come on- you want potable water? You can buy it by the case at your local Shoppers Food Warehouse.

After all, don't you WANT America to be a land of red, white and blue bunting and OPEN signs? Isn't that WORTH a little drinking water?

Priorities, people!

In the end, we'll all be working here

First, let me express how impressed I am at the ability of this advertisement to capture the truly agonizing, painful, hopeless experience of having to work for the bloodless corporate giant that is Wal-Mart.

Confronted by a customer who has found a lower price on the cheap, Made in China item she's interested in purchasing because she hasn't received a raise in salary in eleven years and has long since given up hope of ever buying Quality again, we get roughly 200 Wal Mart drones bleating "Match It!" Each of these zombies seems to be enjoying their moment of delusion, as they pretend that they have some say in the policy they are promoting, or how it is enforced. Of course, in real life, none of these sad little worker ants has any authority whatsoever, and in fact are more likely to be chastised later by a manager who happened to see them on a security camera saying something other than "can I get that for you?," "you'll be wanting the extended warranty with that," or simply "Welcome to Wal-Mart" during business hours.

The "associate" who has been confronted with the lower price gives a mock "thank you" to her fellow Grateful to be Making Minimum Wage God I Once Had Such Aspirations How Did It Come To This apron wearers as she confirms that yes, Wal Mart's policy is to never, ever let any small business offer a lower price- after all, the principle goal of this environment-raping, community-pillaging, middle class-gutting behemoth is to push all such companies completely out of existence, leaving a world in which prices don't HAVE to be matched, because the only source of ALL consumables is your local Mall In A Box.

Enjoy the low prices for cheap crap while it lasts, America. Don't forget to stop by on the way home to grab a coffee at that new Starbucks which just opened at the site of the old hardware/furniture/grocery store you helped drive out of business because it couldn't match Wal-Mart. What a nation of selfish, penny-wise and pound-foolish idiots we are.