In the world of McDonalds, who ISN'T "smart?"

In the some faraway land I never want to visit, being "smart" means being able to read the Dollar Menu at McDonalds, figuring out that each item on the Dollar Menu costs $1, and buying stuff off that Dollar Menu.  That and being able to come up with dishonest crap responses off the top of your pointed head at a moment's notice.

This guy is sitting on a park bench, trying to enjoy his breakfast in peace in the typical McDonalds customer style- he's got a steaming hot coffee with no lid, and unwrapped food sitting there on the bench next to him getting cold.  If there is one common denominator weaving it's way through each and every one of these McDonalds Dollar Menu ads, it's the apparent determination of the actors sit like zombies with their coffee but never drink it, and never touch their food until it is ice cold.   Whatever.

Anyway, his blank, dullard Waiting For My Coffee To Cool and For the Flies to Find My Food time is suddenly interrupted by the approach of a cute but breathtakingly pretentious newcomer who feels compelled to ask him if he likes the sculpture staring him in his face.  Naturally, the question bowls him over and leaves him grasping for a good reply- not only that, but also convinced that the keen intelligence he displayed minutes earlier in making his food choices ought to now provide him with just the right answer for this person he's presumably never met.  (Personally, I don't know why "I have no opinion on the sculpture, I just sat down at this bench to eat my breakfast, you might as well ask me if I like the sidewalk because that happens to be right here too" would suffice.  That or "no, I don't care for the sculpture, but I wasn't willing to pick up this bench and carry it to one that I like more."

Instead, this guy decides that he's smart enough to vomit out some french phrase he's heard in a hundred different movies and thinks will make him sound intelligent- and because the woman is the pretentious phony I suspected she was, she responds positively to his obvious bullshit.  If I witnessed this scene in real life, I'd point out that before she assumes this guy has class and taste because he can bleat crap in another language, she really ought to check out his breakfast.  But my guess is that she's so desperate for someone to talk to, she probably noted the cheap junk he was (presumably) about to eat and thought "ooohh...brains AND taste!  I'm going after THIS guy!"

That phone is the least of your problems, lady

Here's a woman who is obviously terrified of her little girl- specifically, terrified of being seen as a "parent" rather than as a "best friend" or, as she puts it, "the bad guy."

Because mommy/best friend is so scared of getting on the wrong side of her little girl (how old is this kid?  Ten?  Twelve?  And she has her own phone and unlimited talk and text?  What the hell was this woman thinking when she agreed to this arrangement? Oh yeah- "this will prevent an argument" and "Dad won't approve, and I'll be the Good Guy again."  Maybe she's worried she'll be dumped from her daughter's Facebook Account (you KNOW this little girl is on Facebook.  All the time.)  Maybe she just can't bear that "I'm not sure if I like you or not, Lame-Ass Mom" look Daughter Who Runs The House gives her whenever Mommy says something that does not include "of course I'll buy that for you, honey."

So cringing, frightened mom wrings her hands and reenforces daughter's entirely accurate opinion of mom- that she's a spineless, easily-manipulated asshat who can be batted around like a cat toy because she simply must be popular with daughter.  Awesome.

Somehow, I don't think a brochure from the good people at CommonSense.com is going to fix this family's problems.  Maybe years of therapy, but not a brochure.  As a childless person, maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't the easiest solution here be for Mommy to tell Daughter that she cannot use her phone as often as she has been doing, and if she fails to stay within Mommy's guidelines, the phone will be taken away?

Did I just cause heads to explode, or what?  Once again I find myself typing, "what am I missing here?"

Here's a guy who needs fifty percent of his dignity back

This is, I believe, the 208th Capital One commercial featuring Jimmy Fallon singing the merits of getting "fifty percent cash back" for using a certain credit card.  "Who doesn't like fifty percent more cash back?" Fallon always asks.  And then we are given an example of a child who doesn't care about cash or credit cards or any of the things that Fallon thinks are important because he's been hired to read a script handed to him by Capital One.

Fallon's a pretty accomplished television star, and a somewhat less accomplished film star,* which makes me wonder why he needs to do crap like this.  Then again, we've got Michael Jordan, who is worth roughly 400 billion dollars, ripping talking tags off of the shorts of fat doofuses and tossing them on grills.  We've got Shaquille O'Neal pitching compact cars.  And let's not forget Magic Johnson urging people to sign on the bottom line and empty their wallets into their nearest Rent A Center.  Still- does he really need this kind of money?

Especially since these ads are kind of counterproductive- I see them every day, and with each viewing I am reminded that if Jimmy Fallon is this annoying in a 30-second commercial, he is probably downright intolerable in a 90-minute feature film.  Therefore, I intend to avoid any opportunity to actually pay to see a film featuring Jimmy Fallon.

Not to mention that anyone who understands credit cards realizes that there's an even better way to save money than Capital One's Fifty Percent Cash Back plan.  It's to use cash.  Cash, you see, carries an unbeatable interest charge from month to month.

*I did like Fever Pitch, but I think that it was because of the subject, not its male star.

As a Greek myself, I take special exception to Yoplait's newest puddle of Dumb

Even the children over at the YouTube What Is this Song I need this Song I love this Song what is this Song brigade recognize the witless idiocy of this particular ad for the impossibly overpriced milk product known as Yoplait.

These two women are sitting roughly eighteen inches apart.  The person eating the yogurt has the cup strategically turned toward the camera which, incidentally, means turned toward her friend sitting on the bench.  Which means that the yogurt-less friend can clearly see the label on the cup.  And yet...

These two alleged adults proceed to engage in a conversation you'd expect to hear from two five year olds.  It's one step up from "Dinosaur!"  "Ball!"  "Dinosaur!" "Ball!" or the average exchange of ideas from actors in a McDonald's commercial.   For the ad to work, we are asked by Wizards of Madison Avenue to believe that

A)  Idiot blond woman thinks "Yogurt" and "Greek" must absolutely be two different things, AND

B)  Idiot blond woman simply cannot fathom the possibility that Yoplait, a company which makes Yogurt, now makes Greek-style Yogurt, AND

C)  Idiot blond woman either can't read, or is so incredibly nearsighted that it's a wonder she managed to find her way to that bench.  Maybe she thinks she's talking to someone else, about something else?

Just a thought.  Which is exactly one more thought that went into making this ad.

And now from Verizon: The Hard Sell

Wow, Verizon is really done fooling around now, isn't it?

There's no subtlety at all here.  We get a lot of stupid graphics thrown at us which, I guess, show us all the SuperAmazingAwesome things that are just waiting for us in the Verizon Hive Mind if we would just drop our pointless "considering" and "thinking" and above all "budgeting" and just went along with the flow like Everyone Else Who Is Cool And With It.  See all this cool stuff?  Well, if you can't, watch it on YouTube, where you can actually pause now and then, because if you only see this ad on tv you are clearly not supposed to be actually examining the toys spinning in the circle- you are just supposed to be dazzled and overwhelmed with the Need to Possess All This Stuff. 

You are also supposed to be dazzled and overwhelmed by the music- "What Are You Waiting For?"  As in "what the hell is the matter with you losers, we are offering you Eternal Happiness Through Sharing Everything, And You are Still Just Sitting There?  Did we mention Connectivity?  Did we mention Sharing Among Up To Ten Devices?  Can't You Hear the Song?"

I almost think it's a sly joke that the song also includes the lyrics "Here We Go Again."  Yes, indeed.  Here we go again- another commercial for another All Talking All Texting All Sharing All The Time package designed to get you to buy into the notion that if you aren't using something which includes a glowing screen and a keyboard 24/7, Man are you pathetic and lame and you might as well be your parents.  No, make that your grandparents.  The ones who use Jitterbugs.  That kind of lame.  You don't want THAT, do you?

Anyway, this minute-plus pile of crap is the television equivalent of a full-body mugging-- it's what Verizon settles for until technology actually allows the company to reach out of the television and grab us by the throat and give us a good throttling for failing to buy Every Single Thing They Offer The Moment They Offer It.  This is what we get for not being on line at the Verizon store 18 hours before their latest toy hit the shelves- Slightly Less than Two Minutes of Hate which is supposed to have us on the phone with Verizon before it's over, but leaves Luddites like me just shaking my head in despair.

Hey, Verizon: My wallet is still in my pocket, and I'm still getting by with my one laptop which never, ever attempts to communicate with my one little Nokia phone which can't even stream video.  Better crank up the volume.

"Well Ok, you CAN have it back, but not until next year....

...when this SuperAmazing technology is outdated and lame!  Then I'll not only gladly trade it in for the Next Big Thing, but I'll probably toss it to the sidewalk rather than risk being seen with it!"

I'd like to say that the women in this ad are seriously damaged, sad people, but they are downright normal compared to the Australian guy who calls the phone "Sexy."

Seriously.  "Sexy."  A phone.  Because it's slim, I guess.  Anyone else think this guy is just parroting the salesman who talked him into trading in his perfectly good, six-month old SmarterThanItsOwner phone for this thing?  "It's sexy, and it will make YOU look sexy, not to mention totally with it.  Take this thing out at a party, and you'll have people asking you about it in about thirty seconds.  You can pretend they are interested in you.  Let's face it, it'll be pretty much the only thing you've got going for you."

As the guy left with his "sexy" new phone, he didn't hear the salesman mutter "see you in six months, sucker."

Do I desperately need to make friends? Yes, yes you do.

"Does Speed Dating Really Work?"  Um, that kind of depends on your definition of "work," doesn't it?

Does it get you out of the house for a few hours?  Sure.  If that's your goal, it works.  Does it allow you to engage in a truly desperate, humiliating experience with equally desperate, sad, lonely people who can't figure out how to meet each other through traditional means?  Yep.  If that's your goal, it works.

Does Ask.com work?  Sure, it does.  It's a nice way to get answers to all those burning questions you have but are too humiliated, or friend-deficient, to bring up to an actual human being.  Questions like "Why is Water Blue?" (Seriously, that's a question in one of these Ask.com commercials.  No kidding.)  And does it encourage you to remain socially isolated, seeking solace from crippling loneliness through electronics (as if people who can't bring themselves to ask an actual acquaintance if Speed Dating works would ever work up the nerve to engage in Speed Dating.  Please.  The next question- after SpeedDating.com, a proud sponsor of Ask.com, lets you know that Yes, In Fact, Speed Dating leads to Meaningful Relationships- is "Can I do Speed Dating by texting, or do I actually have to show up in person?")

I have a question.  What kind of emotionally crippled losers are so bereft of people in their lives (not to mention, an apparent inability to spend ten minutes of research on the web) that they have to direct their queries to strangers working for Ask.com?

Let's see. Who can I ask?