Hey Dodge: Your Hypocrisy is Showing!

Dodge has produced and televised approximately 1200 commercials for its "Caravan" minivan model in the past three years.

1199 of those commercials have been disgustingly sugar-laden homages to breeding- the joys of having lots and lots of kids so you can justify spending forty grand or so on a freaking bus, complete with fold-out table, DVD and a sound system better than the one you've got in your actual house.  1199 commercials featuring grinning young idiots who seem thrilled to death that they've managed to produce smaller versions of themselves and are now in the process of sacrificing every waking moment to the needs of the noisy little terrors- needs which include vehicles which can seat all of them and, in the future, several of their equally messy and attention-sucking little friends.   1199 commercials devoted to convincing the viewing public that being a Normal American means popping out spawn and strapping them into a Suburban Blandmobile and taking them...well, wherever these people are always taking them.

1199 commercials telling us that the pinnacle of life is reached when you Settle- when one of you puts on a chunk of rock and changes her name, and the other sticks his pretty little trophy into a house with a fence and a yard and one of these things taking up most of the driveway. 

1199 commercials practically begging us to be Real Americans and get married, have kids, live in the suburbs and drive around in something that takes up two spaces and always seems to be featuring Finding Nemo on the screen in the back.

And one commercial which suggests, obliquely, that nawwwww you are actually better off not having kids, because they are noisy attention-vampires and all the other things I just bitterly ranted about for three paragraphs.    Hey Dodge, who do you think you're kidding?  Without people willing to produce children, you're out of business.  And did you really think we were going to forget about those other 1199 commercials?

Kit Kat: So little content, so much Hate

The ad agency hired to peddle Kit Kats doesn't think that words are necessary to describe the product.  And I find myself at a loss for words to describe how much I loathe these disgusting dollops of minimalism.

I think I'll just have to be satisfied with explaining how very, very much I'd like to see the people responsible for this noisy pile of Stupid coated with low-grade milk chocolate and buried up to their necks next to a nest of fire ants.   It's not so much that I hate the exaggerated ripping and snapping and crunching, not to mention the repulsive "MMMM" sounds.  What really bugs the hell out of me is that you just KNOW the people who "wrote" this swill think that they are Awesomely Clever and Immensely Proud of the final "product."

How do you know this?  Well, maybe it's because this is somewhere around the 40th version of the same commercial.  The only thing that changes is the setting and the faces of the people involved in this crime against the viewing public.

Oh, and I'd also like to ad that as Incredibly, Massively, Bag of Rocks Dumb this all is, it would at least be bearable if it wasn't showing up on my television during Every. Single. Commercial Break.  But it is.  Which means that the background noise I have on while I'm typing away at exams and papers in my den is forever being interrupted with Rip, Snap, Crunch and MMM MMM MMM.  As it is, I once again find myself really, really wanting to hurt someone.  Loudly.

What dad SHOULD have told you

Here's another car commercial which I guess is supposed to be a cute and cloying slice of life, but which leaves cold, cynical jerks like me inspired to type things which would NOT win kudos for the advertising team which was paid real money to write this dreck.

The cutesy is supposed to be delivered with the "clever" cutaways of Father and Son exhibiting the same nervous ticks and mannerisms as they drive their cars.  They both scratch the backs of their necks.  They both drink beverages as they drive.  They both tap their fingers against the steering wheel. Wow, it's like they are mentally linked, like E.T. and that stupid Eliot kid.  Except- who doesn't do all this stuff? 

"My dad told me to get a Subaru.  But I'm nothing like him."  Hey, calm down, buddy.  Advice from Dad doesn't normally mean that he's trying to treat you like a clone of himself.  This isn't exactly like the father in Dead Poet's Society obsessively insisting that his son become a doctor until that son finally kills himself.  Throttle down the angst, ok?  Nobody thinks that you are like your dad, even though you end up basically doing what he said, and even choosing the same color (which is supposed to be the visual punchline, but isn't.)

At the ad's conclusion we learn that, indeed, this guy is nothing like his father.  His father, after all, managed to purchase a substantial house in the suburbs with a huge driveway.  The son?  He still lives with his Dad.  Nope, they aren't alike at all.

Maybe Dad's advice to Son should have been "learn the bus and train schedules until you've earned enough money to buy a car AND pay rent in your own damned apartment."  That's what I would have told him.  But like I said at the beginning, I'm just a cold and cynical jerk, after all.

"Brand New" being a very relative term here

Groan.  Where to start.

Ok, first off- hey TBS, guess what?  When comedy shows are actually, genuinely funny, we don't need to be served up the tagline "Very Funny" with every commercial for the Very Funny Comedy Show.  In fact, "Very Funny" sounds more like a desperate "no, really, you'll like this one, we promise, it's not like the others we said and continue to say are 'Very Funny.'  This time we mean it!"  We viewers are really good at deciding what is Very Funny and what isn't- which explains why TBS's ratings are consistently in the toilet, and why you don't hear much about the Very Funny Frank Caliendo show anymore.

In fact, if any of the tripe you shovel into your prime time slots were at All Funny, let alone Very Funny, they would have been picked up by one of the real networks- ABC, CBS, NBC or (sort of) FOX.   Don't believe me?  Well, check out all those comedies you run during the day.  See what they all have in common?  That's right- they are all major network comedies which have gone into Syndication.  (You didn't mean for us to think that you were responsible for Friends, Seinfeld or Family Guy, did you?)

Here's another tip- there's nothing new or funny or fresh about a comedy featuring four scruffy guys and their women issues.*  How on Earth anyone thinks that they can get away with rewarming the same old dreck and calling it new is just beyond me.  It's pretty obvious that TBS's "new" venture will include all the stale, rehashed Men Are Sex-Obsessed Pigs Who Have No Idea What 'Sensitivity Training' Means jokes we've seen a thousand times on a thousand other sitcoms, none of which qualifies as Very Funny, either.

I'll wrap this up with a few more Sledgehammers of Truth for you, TBS.  Conan O'Brien is not funny.  George Lopez is pretty much the opposite of funny.  And "comedies" featuring sassy black kids and their sassy black mothers and their clueless, bumbling black fathers have never been funny.  EVER.

I'm sorry I had to break the news to you, and maybe I was a bit abrupt, but consider this intervention an act of love.  By someone who really hates your crappy, rerun-dependent channel.

*who mysteriously manage to meet and date gorgeous, 100 percent available models working as waitresses, secretaries etc. every. Single. Week.  Because every sitcom is a peek into the fantasy world of male "comedy" writers. 

It's like Corona has a camera in my house!

This happens to me so often, I'm almost tempted to join one of those PeaPod programs and just have my groceries delivered to my door.

I mean, pretty much every time I go to the store, I'm stalked by gorgeous women who are irresistibly attracted to me- or, at least, attracted to that case of Corona I'm carrying around under my arm.  Naw, I'm sure it's me.

Of course, they may just be curious to know why I've decided to pick up the case of beer before moving on to the produce section; doesn't seem to make much sense to carry that case around with me when I'm still shopping, unless I expect a rush of beer drinkers with bad taste to strip the store of it's supply of Corona while I'm looking for Just the Right Melon.  Naw, I'm sure it's me.

Anyway, while I always walk into a store alone, I never, ever walk out that way.  Nope- every single time I run to the store for beer, I end up coming home with a leggy, hot brunette eager to use her Passport to join me on whatever trip I've won this month from Corona.  Almost makes the fact that I have to drink Corona worth it.   Almost.

The thing is, I didn't know that this was a common enough experience to use in an actual commercial.  I know that being stalked by hot girls in grocery stores who say "hi" to me as if they are delighted to meet me and my beer (Naw, I'm sure it's just me, and the beer is strictly incidental) as I'm walking out is an everyday occurrence in MY life, but I thought it was because I'm exceptionally hot, not to mention an awesome listener with a great sense of humor.  Not everyone fits that description.  So what's the deal?

Corona just decided one day to take a routine episode of my life and turn it into a commercial?  Without even asking me first?  Well, that's fine I guess- I'd just hate to see Lesser Guys get their hopes up and rush out to the store, thinking this might happen to them.  Because after all, They are not Me.

It's the end of the economy as we know it

Yes, this is EXACTLY what our debt-ridden, impulse-buying society needs: A way to use our credit card to buy ANYTHING, ANY TIME we want to.

Remember back in the old days (also known as "yesterday") when you actually needed money to buy stuff?  When you realized you hadn't brought enough cash with you, so you put off buying that soda you didn't really need anyway?  Or when you saved up that fifty bucks you owed a friend by skimping on movies and meals for a while?

Remember when you told your friend that hey, sorry, I don't have that fifty bucks right now, but catch me next payday, ok?

Well, those days are gone forever.  Next time you pull that "hey, I'm short of cash at the moment" BS, your "friend" will pull out his phone, insert a little box into the headphone jack, and demand that you pull out your credit or debit card.  No kidding.  As this dopey woman tells us (when she isn't lunging at the camera- really, what the hell is that all about?) this box thing "makes us all merchants."  Oh joy.

A few questions- first, where is all the wonderful information concerning the transactions made with this device stored?  Can I assume that a copy is available to the IRS, which will eventually come knocking to ask why I didn't pay tax on that $1 can of soda I bought from a "friend?"  Second, how hard is it for someone to intercept these transactions and collect credit card numbers through them?

Finally- how FUCKING STUPID ARE WE ANYWAY???  Do we REALLY need another gizmo which encourages us to spend money we don't have simply because it's EASY?   Exactly HOW MANY TIMES do we have to blow up the economy before we figure out that what we really need is a device that encourages us to SAVE  (but really, where's the money in that?)

I understand the temptation, but I'm in horror at the idea of people actually trying this

When I was 14, I got braces.  Back then, they seemed to come with the territory- you went to High School, you got your driver's permit, and you spent an afternoon in the chair of an overpaid sadist who took his sweet time attaching pieces of barbed wire to your teeth.  Barbed wire which broke into razor-sharp shards on occasion.  Shards which would hook on to your tongue and the side of your mouth.  Usually on Friday afternoons, so you'd have to wait more than two days to go in for what was euphemistically called an "adjustment."

When the braces worked "well," you just had the constant pain and the hassle of rubber bands which took forever to get on, but seemed to break within moments after being set in place.  You learned how to smile so the railroad tracks running across your teeth didn't show (not that you smiled very often, anyway.)  And you dreamed of the day when the damned things, which surely were popularized during the Spanish Inquisition, would finally be removed from your teeth.  For me, that day was almost four years after they were put on, and about a year before I left for college.  I can still remember rubbing my tongue along my teeth, and what a simple pleasure that was. 

I hated having braces (I've never met anyone who enjoyed the experience, and I'm sure I don't want to.)  But even when I was a kid, I understood that they were a necessary evil for me, and that Good Things come to those who wait.  Which is what really creeps me out about this commercial.  Braces have been part of the popular culture for quite some time; there's nothing mysterious about them or what they do.  So why would ANYONE believe that gaps between teeth is something that can be "fixed" with the application of a few tight rubber bands?

Is it the "well, it makes sense so it must be true" theory?  I mean, I get the concept- your teeth are too far apart.  So just apply a small band between two teeth, and over time the gap will be closed as the teeth are inexorably drawn together.  So simple, so easy to understand.

Except-- please.  Your teeth are resting on gums which are not made out of spongy pudding.   I know that pressure applied over YEARS will draw teeth together, because I lived it.  Two weeks?  Jeesh, why not claim it only takes two hours, so the image of blood flying from crushed gums as the teeth are forced together can be included in the cool graphics?

And I love the "OraBands come in two sizes" line- wow, two sizes, they MUST work.  Because teeth and gums and mouths only come in two sizes, right? 

It's one thing to get conned into believing that you can save money growing your own bananas or fixing your own flat tires- is anyone really going to risk their health and their looks because they think that thousands of dollars in oral surgery can be replaced by two $20 rubber bands?  I mean, they don't even come with Miracle Sunglasses or that stuff that removes the gunk from your headlights.