Off to Hersheypark!

My June Ritual:

1.  Grade Advanced Placement Essays in Louisville, Kentucky for six days.
2.  Come back to the DC area and give my students their final exams.
3.  Get my report cards and other paperwork done, and say goodbye to school for the summer.
4.  Take in a few Orioles games with my niece, then head to Vermont via Hersheypark.

This morning, I'm off to Hersheypark for the eighth straight year.  I'll spend two days walking from one ride to another, holding my niece's purse and soda as she goes on all of them, several times.  The only ride I go on is the one in Chocolate World- the one with the singing cows and the free sample when you are done.  After the insane g-forces of that wild ride, I'm pretty much spent, and spend the rest of the day recovering.  My niece has a stronger constitution (she's the only person I know who is younger than I am ;>) ) and is just getting started after the Chocolate Ride.  Ah to be even younger again....

This is a nice, family-friendly place, and the crowds are never too intense.  The people are friendly and the price is reasonable and the noise level is more than acceptable, even to a curmudgeon like me.  I need a new lapel pin, and I need to get a certain someone a souvenir, and I need to buy my dad some sugar-free chocolates, but otherwise it's just a lot of walking around watching people being happy.  Which I kind of like, in small doses.

The only reason I'm posting this is to let everyone know that I'll be away for a while- we expect to detour to Mystic, Connecticut to check out the Maritime Museum after we leave Hersheypark on Wednesday morning, and should arrive at my boyhood home in Vermont very early Thursday morning.   So enjoy the week, everybody, and look for my next post on Thursday.  I'll be having fun at the Sweetest Place on Earth :>).

Skinnygirl, Pizza, and a society which still has a long way to go

Here are two ads I saw BACK TO BACK while watching a high-quality movie on cable Sunday afternoon.

Well ok, actually it was Blue Lagoon: The Awakening, on Lifetime.  Look, there was nothing else on, ok?  And I was cleaning, so it was more like "listening to background noise" than "watching."

The first commercial is obviously aimed at America's female population.  A skeletal model-type with pipe-cleaner arms, sunken cheeks and pronounced cheekbones (seriously, she's just screaming "FEED ME") sends a shout out to all her sisters who have made a line of alcohol products called "Skinnygirl" a success (I wish I was kidding.  I wish this had turned out to be a parody.  I really do.)  These alcohol products are low-calorie, so women who like to drink can continue to do so without worrying that they might gain weight and therefore be unattractive to the highly selective Males.   So we have a breakthrough in alcohol technology.  Now all we need is a breakthrough in stupid, sexist "when it comes to women, less is more" technology.

The second commercial is obviously aimed at America's male population.  It's an ad for take-out pizza.  No, the pizza is not low-carb, low-fat, or low-anything else.  In fact, it comes with cheese sticks and dipping sauce.  There's no mention of calorie counts, and why should there be?  Men don't worry about stuff like that.   We can be as disheveled, unshaven, slovenly and soft as we want.

Skinny?  That's for the chicks.

Maybe I'm being a bit oversensitive here.  But it strikes me that in the year 2012, we should be able to do a little better than this.  Do we REALLY need to continue the hideous, destructive message that women are more attractive if they cast a smaller shadow?  Would it be so horribly wrong to show women drinking the same damn alcoholic beverages as guys do, and maybe even scarfing down a few slices of pizza along with them?

Would it be so damned awful if every woman in every commercial featuring food didn't look like she was a prototype for the next Barbie doll (there's a Katniss Everdeen barbie now, which I find especially heartbreaking; it's cool to be a tough survivor and a huntress, girls, but it's even cooler if you can fit into slinky outfits and turn the heads of the boys.)  We almost elected a female President four years ago- but women can't drink the same vodka as the guys because if they do, they might not be stick figures who could make SI's Swimsuit Issue?

What the hell is the matter with us?

DirectTV would prefer you be the Mushroom of Sloth, I guess

Here's what almost all these DirectTV commercials all have in common: They are almost all arguments  for getting rid of your television, because getting away from TV ultimately leads to you actually going outdoors and doing really cool things.

This particular guy feels "helpless" because his cable bill is too high.  Funny, when I felt that my cable bill was too high, I didn't feel helpless.  I just cut out the premium channels.  Now I kind of wished I had felt helpless, because if I had, maybe I would have

A.  Gone outdoors.  Always a good idea.
B.  Taken a karate class.  Nice social activity.  Good exercise.  Another good idea.
C.  Become the Fist of Goodness.  This just sounds cool.  And who doesn't think being the Fist of Goodness isn't a better deal that sitting at home staring at the glowing idiot box as your body turns into a mushroom?

Sure, you might not do a good job on your costume.  I don't think this guy's outfit is terrible- it reminds me of Peter Parker's first effort in the original Spider-Man movie.  But he could have done worse, and may do better in the future.

Sure, you might slip up and crash through a skylight and interrupt a dinner party.  But so what?  That comes with the territory when you are a Super Hero, doesn't it?

Once again, the message here is supposed to be "if you don't have 300 channels in HD, you are going to end up doing something really stupid and destructive."  The message I keep getting is "if you get off your ass and stop watching television for a while, you might end up meeting cool people and doing interesting things."  Maybe DirectTV needs to go back to the Hoarding Cats guy, or the jerk whose daughter married an "undesirable" (grrr, that ad still pisses me off to no end....)

I wonder if Fist of Goodness is trademarked.  Because, as usual, there's nothing good on tonight.

Just a few questions, Weather Channel

1.  When did you decide that being the channel of choice for seniors and shut-ins who just want inoffensive, non-threatening music in the background while they get Weather On the Eights every- well, eight minutes-just wasn't good enough for you?

2.  What the HELL does "Pyros" have to do with the weather?  I almost don't even want you to try to answer this question, because I can only imagine the twisted, insane logic your spokesperson would use to try to justify this crud.  Fireworks?  Detonation switches?  Big explosions and colors and hicks moaning "oooooohhhh" and "ahhhhhh?"  This is Weather?  Really?

3.  How on earth did you pry this junk out of the hands of the History Channel?  Because it looks right up their alley.  And I bet that their spokeschoads could make a better case for sticking this in between Axe Men and Ice Road Truckers (as a break from the usual Ancient Aliens and American Pickers marathons) than the Weather Channel could for running this crud when all we want is to know whether we need to bring an umbrella to work tomorrow.

So The Weather Channel is going the way of the History Channel, MTV, and all of the other niche market providers who have decided that their original mission statements needed to be tweaked.  For our benefit, of course.

Which leaves us stuck waiting until the latest Not Weather show on The Weather Channel wraps up, so we can get a report on.....the weather.  Oh, it's coming- but only after we watch Stuff Blowing Up.  Thanks for nothing.

Google: the perfect choice for forgetful, self-important shmucks

Jeesh, I really hate this guy.

The week he brought his ugly spawn home from the hospital, he took "about a million pictures" of it.  First, you can't hold a baby and take pictures of the thing at the same time.  Which means he was spending a lot of time holding up his phone and snapping pictures and not a whole lot of time actually interacting with his kid.

In other words, this dumbass's definition of "being a father" is a lot different than mine.  And when he says he "never liked anything so much as being a father," I can only assume that he means that he never enjoyed taking photos with his phone so much until he was able to take photos of this little mammal that came out of his wife.

When Dickwad was done "taking about a million pictures" of this kid's face, fist, wrinkled feet, etc. (because you can't get enough of those, can you?)*  he left his phone in the back seat of a taxi.  Which means that for a few minutes, he thought that he left his "million" pictures of his kid in that back seat too.

Except......he continues his yawn-inducing narrative with "I've lost about a million phones," and at this point, what I've lost is any confidence that this guy understands the concept of the term "million."  He's taken a million pictures.  He's lost a million phones.  I'm guessing now that to this dope, the word "million" actually translates to "three."  Which actually makes his obsessive photo-taking a bit easier to take.  Maybe he's shot THREE pictures of his kid.  That, I can understand.

Anyway, the "happy ending" comes when he, and we, learn that the million or three photos doofus took of his ugly little offspring are safe and sound and stored away by Google.   Anyone else find it a tad alarming that when you use this phone, all of the stupid, spur of the moment photos you take are tucked away in some virtual vault, courtesy of Google?  That all of those photos you looked at the next day, realized that you should not have taken, and quickly deleted are still available- probably forever and ever- in the Cloud (if that's not a trademarked term?)  Oh sure, maybe you can go into Google and delete them- or maybe you can't.  Maybe you just think you can.

Not that anyone's ever going to steal the pictures this guy took of his baby.  I mean, who would want to?  After all....

*It's just a baby, and it looks just like every other baby out there.  Don't even try to convince me that it isn't virtually identical to every other white baby on the planet of the same age.  Might as well try to convince me that it's a Miracle.  And we all know that's not about to happen.

(By the way, the narrative style of this commercial really irked me.  I don't know who this guy is.  I don't care what he thinks is important, or how he found himself living a life in which he finds very little to care about.  He sounds depressed to me, but why should I care?  And why should I care about how many photos he took of his kid or how special he thinks being a father is now or how many times he's lost his phone?  What was I supposed to get out of this?)

Pepsi's latest uses spousal abuse to sell soda. Classy.

A lot of people are posting all over the internet comments about this commercial, accusing it of exhibiting a certain level of racism.  I can understand why- if you think that black women are routinely portrayed as possessive, aggressive, controlling jerks determined to frighten their spouses into absolute obedience, I totally get why you'd think this commercial just screams Racism.

Personally, I'm too busy being stunned at the Sexism to notice the Racism.  When I first saw this ad, I honestly didn't even notice the race of the couple with the horribly disfunctional "relationship."  What I did see is a woman being an absolute tyrant and a guy cowering like a beaten  dog in her presence, even to the point of hiding in the freaking bathtub in the hopes of enjoying a burger without wife/mom giving him a beating.

I also noticed that the abuse goes beyond the psychological.   The guy in this commercial is legitimately afraid of suffering actual physical harm from this woman- and in the "hilarious" conclusion, we see that his fear is completely justified.  We also see that the woman's repeated terrorizing of her boyfriend/husband/little boy is not out of concern for his health- when he has the temerity to politely smile at a cute girl, she attempts to damage his skull with a Pepsi can.  She throws the can so hard that she takes out the cute girl, knocking her to the pavement.  I can only imagine that the last few words uttered in this ad are lost to the hoots and applause of the glue-sniffers who think this kind of crap is even remotely funny.

Can we for a moment just try to imagine an advertisement in which the roles are reversed?  Imagine if you will a commercial in which a woman cowers in terror from her husband as she attempts to consume something that has slightly more calories than a plain rice cake- and when she's caught, he looks for all the world like he's going to slap her around (for her own good, of course.)  There's no WAY this version shows up on television.  Maybe in the 1950s and 60s, but not now.  Not a chance.  And that's a good thing.

Here's what's NOT a good thing- that this kind of noxious crud is not only acceptable, but on some level FUNNY, to ANYBODY.   Psychological abuse isn't funny.  Physical abuse isn't funny.  And people getting hurt- not funny at all.

Hey, Pepsi- Sleeping With The Enemy was not a comedy.  Glad I could help.

And what do we fill Corrals with? These hicks certainly fit the bill

"It makes me feel like a kid again."  Well, you've certainly retained the same IQ score, haven't you?

"This must be one of those Golden Corral things..." yeah, that's a good guess- showy, cheap non-food inbred troglodytes like you are encouraged to ruin your appetite on instead of consuming the meatloaf, mac n' cheese, fried chicken and grade-B "steak" (which is also showy, cheap non-food, so I'm not quite sure what my point is here.)  Sounds like Golden Corral to me, too.

Seriously- are Golden Corral commercials SUPPOSED to be funny?  Each and every one of them features easily entertained High School dropouts and their drooling, idiot spawn who like nothing better than to spend an evening filling their plates with warm junk that's already been picked over by hicks who got there first.   And last year, this All You Can Scarf feed pen introduced the "jaw dropping" chocolate "Wonderfall"- an endless river of Hershey syrup the fat yokels are encouraged to stick marshmallows, fruit and macaroons into instead of filling their plates with greasy junk for a fourth time.   Apparently the CEO of Golden Corral decided that this thing wasn't saving his company quite enough money, so now America's Favorite Slop Trough has added a cotton candy machine- something else for the (literally) unwashed masses to stick their hands in and consume instead of meat, potatoes and assorted white flour carbs.  Very appetizing.

Personally, if I were the guy picking up the bill for the herd enjoying (snigger) a night out at GC, I'd be pretty damned angry if my guests were spending all their time consuming chocolate-drenched cookies and cotton candy at $10 a plate.  Then again, what would I be doing bringing people I care about to this place to begin with? 

And so we leave these fat, ignorant, tasteless examples of America at it's Best to gaze in wonder at the chocolate syrup and the Just Stick Your Hand In There With Everyone Else cotton candy machine.  Go to it, loathsome knuckle-dragging bottom-feeders.   Sure, your eating habits are appalling and you are setting a horrible example for your children and you're putting a tremendous strain on the health care system.  But at least you are finding a way to keep amused as the world falls apart without f--ing around with your cell phones.  That's something, anyway.