The Hyundai Summer of Shame Event

"Uncensored," Hyundai? You use this word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I'm pretty sure that if you stuck a "hidden camera" (yeah, right- a hidden camera which magically knows when to switch from driver to passenger and back again to catch "spontaneous" comments and responses) into the dashboard of a Hyundai, you might OCCASIONALLY catch a remark here and there that is not 100 percent gushing praise of the South Korean import. Where are the comments about that Honda they drove yesterday that was also pretty nice, or the conversations which have nothing to do with Hyundais at all?

I simply do not believe that these are "uncensored" testimonials from people who have no idea they are being filmed. Therefore, Hyundai, I think your commercials are deceptive and insulting. Let's cut to the chase- I think you are lying to us when you call this ad campaign "Hyundai Uncensored." I think you are doing it deliberately. I think that these people are well aware that they are being filmed, and if they aren't actually reading off a script, they are given "suggestions" on what to say IF they would like to appear on a nationally-broadcast television commercial.

When you show four or five people bleating the same "forty miles to the gallon!?" line, that kind of reveals that this is not "uncensored." You see, Hyundai, whenever you cut stuff out, you've censored it. And unless all these people came up with "Forty miles to the gallon!" at the same time, this has gone through the splicer. Fail.

More- I think these commercials show your utter disdain for the buying public if you REALLY expect us to swallow this crap as legitimate.

Which leads me to wonder- what are you really trying to accomplish here? If your goal is to irritate the hell out of us by pushing the dishonesty envelope, mission accomplished- but you are still miles behind cell phone companies in that department. If you were just trying to see what you could get away with, well-- you can say pretty much anything you want in a commercial, unless it's for medication, and even then the laws are pretty damned lax.

Meanwhile, I'd really like to know what your definition of "Uncensored" is. Because to you, it seems to be "choreographed, scripted, and edited to the bone." And you really thought we wouldn't notice?

INCONCEIVABLE!

They could at least throw in a bundle of Sham-Wows

Ok, here's how it really works:

MyCleanPC.com, DoubleMySpeed.Com, FinallyFast.com etc. etc. all sell you the same "service." Each company preys on the roughly 99.9 percent of us who don't know how computers work and don't care to learn. We know there are these scary things called "viruses" which may lead to "identity theft" and "security breaches" and "inability to access Facebook within five seconds oh my God why don't I just kill myself now?" We know that every once in a while (every two or three minutes) we see something pop up on our screens that we don't recognize and which does not disappear when we swat at it. Anyway, these companies promise to "clean" our computers of scary stuff and continue our march toward having Absolutely No Patience At All.

They all work the same way, too. Once you are conned....errr, convinced...into allowing these scum-sucking scam artists access to your computer, their "free diagnosis" MAGICALLY reveals that OH MY GOD YOUR COMPUTER HAS ROUGHLY TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND PROBLEMS ITS REALLY AMAZING THAT IT'S STILL FUNCTIONING AT ALL! Pretty much all of these "problems" are things called Registry Errors, and being told that you need to fix them is the equivalent of a car dealer telling you that you need to trade in your Honda for a new Lexus because your current ride has dirt in the tire treads.

So now that you are scared out of your mind by the flashing red lights and the endless REGISTRY ERROR messages, you sign up to have your PC "cleaned" via a download, available the instant you provide a valid credit card number and put your remaining brain cells into a safety deposit box. Within seconds (lots of seconds) the Registry Errors are magically removed- and magically replaced by custom-made viruses which will just as magically appear at regular intervals to convince you that you need to subscribe to Registry Defender for a monthly or yearly fee in order to keep your computer "safe." That this is the equivalent of paying Protection money to a gang of goons because "it looks like you've got a nice laptop here, be a shame if anything were to happen to it" doesn't occur to most of us techno-idiots, because hey, isn't that illegal?

Here's what I don't get about all these commercials (besides the already-implied "why is this legal?") Why can't Best Buy, Toshiba, Wal Mart, Dell, Sony, etc. give every customer a 30-second warning NOT to fall for this crap? I mean, how long would it take to hook buyers up with decent antivirus and antispyware protection before they leave the store or the website AND explain why it's important? Wouldn't that just be good customer service?

And again- WHY IS THIS LEGAL????

Sorry; It's the teacher in me...

This commercial makes an excellent point, actually. After a long day of raping, pillaging, beheading, burning, converting and infecting entire tribes of once-peaceful aboriginals, the last thing the European Tourists visiting the Caribbean wanted was to have all those good times ruined by an accident caused by drinking rum to excess.

After all, when the night of partying and spending the gold you obtained by melting down religious artifacts or holding children hostage has passed, there's another day of civilization-destroying and disease-spreading ahead of you. And you wouldn't want to miss that because you didn't designate a "driver" the night before.

I'd like to take a moment now and express my appreciation to the makers of Captain Morgan Rum and Disney Studios for providing us with an unerringly accurate picture of life in the Caribbean in the 1600s, without which this commercial would make no sense. Thanks for making my job easier, guys!

I don't want you to hate me- so don't watch the trailer. Just read the post.

If I go to see this pile of manipulative, hackneyed tripe posing as a summer date movie, I want to know at what point the line "when did you and I stop being us?" is uttered, so I have an idea of exactly how much time I have to pry my seat from the floor so I'm ready to hurl it at the screen.

If I go to see this musty, stale 90 minutes or so of painfully familiar drivel, I want someone to explain to me why Steve Carell is already doing a sequel to "The Forty Year Old Virgin." I also want to know when Steve Carell's fifteen minutes will be over. Because according to my watch, it was supposed to be sometime last week.

If I go to see this steaming, cavity-inducing sugar-laden Been There Seen That Where Do I Go To Get a Refund For The Two Hours I Spent Being Laughed at By Hollywood bowl of treacle, will someone PLEASE mistake me for John Dillinger and shoot me in the back of the head? It doesn't matter if you do it as I'm entering the theater or exiting. If you do it as I'm entering, you've "robbed" me of an hour and a half of my life that was hardly going to be worth living anyway. If you blow me away as I'm exiting, you take me down as I'm mulling when exactly my universe spun so hopelessly out of control that I would actually PAY to see something called "Crazy Stupid Love" and be reminded that screenwriters continue to believe that the country is filled with gorgeous women waiting to throw themselves at divorced, fortysomething men- as long as they know how to dress properly. Either way. It's all good.

I know it's too much to ask, but please- no more of these Fill in the Blank Dime a Dozen smarmy "romances" for a while, ok? They hurt my soul like you would not believe. On the other hand, I thought "Captain America" was fun, and am willing to forgive the groan-worthy last-minute obligatory appearance of Samuel L Jackson in the closing scene. It didn't hurt that Steve Carell was nowhere to be seen, and that we never once heard the phrase "when did you and I stop being us?"

I mean, come on. Gag.

You needed Ancestry.com to tell you this?

Right now, some writer at Saturday Night Live is wondering why he didn't do that Ancestry.com skit he had juggling around in the back of his mind when he had the chance. Blown opportunity- because no SNL bit could be as funny as this commercial is.

Of course, what makes this particular episode of the "I'm significant because a dead person who is related to me was significant" chronicles so amusing is that the stupidity is entirely unintentional. Brought to us by Ancesty.com/au, the Australian version, it features a woman who is completely dumbfounded- and slightly scandalized- to have discovered that one of her ancestors back in the Land Down Under was--- get this---a CONVICT!!

You know, lady, maybe this would not have come as such a shock to you if you had taken just a little time to learn SOMETHING of your continent/nation's history. You see, stupid, Australia was absorbed into the British Empire in the 1700s (though originally discovered by the Dutch, its shoreline was most expertly mapped by England's greatest explorer, Captain James Cook.) By the end of that century, the tiny, overcrowded island's government had decided that it would be a good idea to use Australia as a place to relocate it's population of "criminals" (I use the term loosely- English citizens were sentenced to "transportation" for crimes as petty as debt.) The vast majority of English-speaking peoples settling in Australia in the 18th and early 19th century were, in fact, convicted felons.

So for you to express AMAZEMENT that one of your ancestors in Australia was a CONVICT just reveals how stunningly ignorant you are of your native land's origins. Seriously, what's next? Look a little deeper, and you might find that a Swedish relative had (wait for it) BLOND HAIR AND BLUE EYES!! You needed Ancestry.com to learn this? Really?

If you had told me that your family's Australian roots go back 200 years, I could have told you this myself, and with a great deal of confidence, too. And I could have spared you the charge you incurred by clicking that stupid leaf.

What a clueless dope.

If I had a nail gun right now, this tv would be history

I don't know how amazing Geothermal energy is- if it doesn't require frakking to get at, if it doesn't require burning "clean coal" (snigger) or finding mountains in which we have to deposit tons of nuclear waste which will still be around when your grandchildren's grandchildren are shopping for nursing homes, I'm all for it. Except...

This is not the commercial to sell me on Geothermal energy, Bosch, because for the entire thirty-one seconds this ad graced my father's big screen television, all I could think of was how many ways I'd like to do serious injury to this jackass kid.

Frying pan to the face- that one came first. Sledgehammer to the skull. Just smashing his smarmy puss into a concrete wall (warmed by geothermal energy, if you please) again, and again, and again.

Is this what you were going for, Bosch? Because right now, I hate Geothermal energy, and will continue to hate it as long as I have to associate it with this know-it-all dick. I hate Geothermal energy, and I hate you too, Bosch, because you inflicted this noxious little nub of a spokeschoad onto us innocent viewers, who were just trying to watch the Red Sox beat the Indians in peace.

Hey Big Oil- here's your chance. Hire this kid to appear in one of your ads. Have him die in a particularly horrible way at the end of the ad. Not only would I back off my criticism of your industry, but I might even go along with letting you drill in the only known remaining habitat of the Kodiak bear.

Hey, could you have the kid being mauled and eaten by a bear? Just asking.

Emulate Goofus, Sneer at Gallant

When I first saw this commercial, I actually thought that the guy with the law books (they say "LAW" all over them, just in case we don't get it) was looking for the place to take the Bar Exam, and instead got talked into blowing it off and spending the day guzzling beer with a bunch of not-at-all-clever losers. I tried to imagine the hate that must exist in the jerks who could write such an ad (it's actually becoming easier all the time, since it's clear that being a hateful sociopath is a prerequisite for a career in advertising.)

On the second or third viewing, I realized that in fact, this guy is not living some updated version of the High School Nightmare, where the student is rushing around madly trying to find the room where he is supposed to be taking the Algebra Final. It's not quite THAT bad. Instead, he's trying to find a study group.

So he's not at the end of his Law School Career, ready to take the test which will allow him to get his law license. He's a student, willing to go the extra mile by joining a study session designed to help him better understand his subject, get good grades, and pass that Bar Exam when the time comes. Good for him!

Unfortunately, he's waylaid by knuckle-dragging, drifting, purposeless jackanapes who apparently think that all of this "studying" and "planning" and "ambition" crap is for the birds, and what life is really all about is the drinking. The only "Bar Exam" this guy has to worry about involves reading the labels on beer bottles. Like the Designated Weak Kid in any Horatio Alger novel, our patsy quickly abandons the lame idea of working with like-minded individuals in preparing for a lucrative career and fulfilling life in favor of an evening of guzzling crappy beer with total strangers. Total strangers who thought that printing up fliers reading "BAR EXAM STUDY GROUP" in order to trick earnest young law students into buying beer was somehow witty.

Total strangers which include hot girls willing to steal beers right out of his hands, apparently for no other purpose than to be able to utter the Again Not-At-All-Clever punchline "so sue me." On what planet is THIS funny? Is it a pick-up line- is the guy supposed to follow the girl back to her table (or her car) to get his beer- or a reasonable substitute- back? Is stealing a beer the modern equivalent of dropping a kerchief or signing a dance card? Or is this just another example of a Beautiful Woman Doing What Beautiful Women Get To Do?

The bottom line for advertisements like this seems to be the utter contempt that the writers have for things like studying, ambition, hard work, etc. All those things are well and good, as long as they don't interfere with the primary purpose in life, which is to drink beer, eat crap, and have fun. Whether it's breaking up the office routine with a "spontaneous" party ("Here We Go!") or interrupting a guy's plans to hit the law books, it's all about having a good time and letting work- and tomorrow- take care of itself. This guy wants to be a good student, so he can be a good lawyer- what a lame dork! What he really needs is a beer and sex with a girl whose idea of foreplay is to steal that beer.

And yet, the MSM continues to tell me that Americans are the hardest-working, most productive employees in the world. I really need to travel more.