600 frames of annoying, courtesy of Budweiser this time

I get that a lot of work probably goes into making commercials like this.  I get that they require a lot of camerawork and choreography and maybe there's even a certain level of skill and art involved.  Or maybe there's a very simple CGI program being used and I'm just sounding really stupid right now.

But man, what a waste.  Because all commercials like this- commercials which show the same person or persons wearing a dozen different sets of clothes, appearing in front a dozen different backgrounds, doing the same thing over and over AND OVER (whether it's texting or walking around with idiot friends or drinking beer) just gives me a freaking headache.  And makes me hate the people who are in them, almost as much as I hate the people who subjected me to this crap roughly 400 times while I watched the Atlanta Braves get royally hosed by the refs (infield fly rule? Are you fucking KIDDING ME?) and their own sloppy fielding in the National League Wild Card game.

License to Sell

James Bond fans, of whom I am one, have long suffered with the ubiquitous product placement that has gradually consumed more and more of the films over the years. I thought that it peaked during the Brosnan age (with "subtle" nods at Virgin Airlines, Hertz Rent A Car, Sharper Image, Norelco, etc. etc. ETC.) until I watched people stare at their cellphones for two hours in between playing cards in "Casino Royale." I get that these films cost a lot of money, and if Barbara Broccoli can get back some of that cash by inserting a commercial here and there, I supposed I have to understand.

 Still... James Bond drinks vodka martinis- shaken, not stirred. Martinis were good enough for Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce "Waiter with a Gun" Brosnan. Sure, this was parlayed into product placement opportunities in the later films, but that was acceptable because Bond drank vodka martinis ANYWAY- might as well let the audience know what brand of vodka he preferred. Didn't change the character, just cheapened him, slightly. But if Skyfall (I thought Quantum of Solace was a bad title- still, both were better than Tomorrow Never Dies or Die Another Day) is going to show us Bond drinking a beer- well, sorry, but that's just going to leave a bad taste in the mouth of THIS Bond fan. Hey Barbara, why don't you just have 007 reach into a bucket of KFC or use Kayak.com to book his next exotic travel adventure or scan recent texts on a Sony Ericson phone to learn more about it's previous owner (oh wait, he already did that, several times, in Casino Royale?)

 Then again, who am I to question Barbara "I Inherited this Empire from my Dad, and I've been working with my brother to destroy it since the mid-90s" Brocolli? After all, she's the one who insisted on replacing Dalton, a classically trained Shakespearean actor with a refreshingly dark take on Fleming's iconic character, with a talent-deficient mannequin, simply because that mannequin was more popular with American audiences. And I'm not even going to get into the stunt casting which marked the whole Brosnan period (no Bond fans really want to be reminded that Denise Richards was cast as a nuclear scientist in one film, and both Madonna and Halle Berry had prominent roles in another. You'd have thought Madonna's theme song would have been torture enough...) BTW, anyone else think that Craig is so pale in this ad that it's very hard to see where his hair ends and his face begins? I mean, that's just weird.

Share Everything- whether they want it or not

I know this is supposed to be a cute little slice of life, demonstrating how wonderfully awesome the Connectivity of whatever stupid electronic device which happens to be on the screen is.  See how relatives who can't be grandson's tuba concert can now "enjoy" it along with the parents?

Now, of course, we can take the snark in several directions at this point.  Mom and Dad let Grandma and Grampa know that just because they happen to conveniently live on another continent* doesn't mean they get to skip out on watching grandkiddo launch an epidemic of ear bleeding in an evening of exquisite torture.  Sorry, guys- you WANTED grandchildren, well, here's your grandchild.  You BOUGHT him that fucking tuba, well, here it is, being used.  Enjoy.

Or we could wonder at the kid who has been so acclimated to being surrounded by glowing screens instead of actual people that he sees absolutely nothing at all creepy about seeing his grampa and grandma's heads sitting in his parents laps, grinning like idiots as they "appreciate" his god-awful murdering of some perfectly good piece of music.  I can't help wondering if he wouldn't be perfectly happy with absent grandparents, followed by a "Sorry we couldn't make it" card, containing money.  I'm sure the grandparents would have considered it a bargain.

Instead, I'll just project ahead to a future commercial for the same product- one which shows  no actual human beings in the audience at all.  Just an auditorium full of laptops, sitting on the chairs, glowing away and featuring the faces of people who had Better Things to Do (like watch paint dry or, far more likely, check out a movie on their Kindle Fire IV.)  And the kids on the stage smiling appreciatively at the floating heads on the glowing screens, as if this is all perfectly sane and normal.

Seriously, though....is it just me, or does anyone else find this "reasonable substitute for actually being there" more than a little creepy and weird?

*On subsequent viewings (or maybe the viewing of a longer version) I see that the kid peeks through the curtains and is disappointed to see that Grandparents (or parents, how would I know) are not in their assigned seats.  Then he is relieved to see their glowing faces on the screens.  So they were SUPPOSED to be there and "couldn't" make it- but they DID find time to sit in front of their computers, or at least glance at their tablets from time to time while the kid plays his heart out on stage.  Kid is just fine with this.  Whatever.

Oh yeah- you can still use it to read, if you are into that kind of thing

Three years ago, I read a Boston Globe article praising the Kindle as the device which just might lead to a Renaissance of Reading. For an entire generation of children, it made reading fun again- being able to carry around a personal library in the palm of your hand made you cool and the object of envy- which meant it made READING cool, too. Kids were downloading the Harry Potter series and Goosebumps and whatever it is kids read these days, and a glimmer of light broke through the clouds. Briefly.

So much for the Renaissance. First, the Kindle introduced a touch screen. No big deal- it's what the kids like these days. Then the color screen was introduced, and for me, this was the first warning bell. Why do books need color? Good books create the color in the mind of the reader. I don't need to go through this step by awful step, do I? Let's skip to what is currently the basement, because that's where Kindle has taken us with it's beautiful little idea.

Look what the kids are doing with their Kindles now- they are playing brainless, pointless race car games. They are watching cartoons. They are downloading movies. In short- it's not a book anymore. It's a fucking television. I thought the idea was to get kids AWAY from this mindless junk. I mean, we've already got cell phones and laptops and tablets for this crap. As it turns out, Amazon didn't have as much faith in the intelligence of the public as we might have been lead to believe, three years ago. Turns out, downloading books was just the hook to reign in the Luddites who were thinking that no technology was immune from debasement. "Hey look, here's the Kindle!" Amazon shouted from the mountaintop. "It encourages literacy! You'll love it! And your kids will love it- which means they'll love reading, and they'll grow up to have functioning, active, inquisitive brains, unlike those kids who play video games and watch tv! Get a Kindle- do it for your kids!"

Now, my Second Generation Kindle, with it's buttons and virtual ink on grey background and its icky books sure looks retrograde compared to the pretty colors and images and awesome sound of the Kindle Fire (or the Kindle Fire HG- I think that's what the latest one is. Can you use it to update your Facebook page, call and text friends, or get directions to the concert? Do I really want to know?) If you listen very closely, I think the word "reading" is actually mentioned in this commercial, but it's hardly central to the advertising campaign for the new Kindle. Amazon is done selling good-tasting veggies (and teaching kids that veggies CAN taste good.) Here's a big bag of colorful candy, children. Never mind exercising your brain- here's another way to keep yourself glued to trash.

Yep, the Boys on the Board of Amazon decided somewhere down the road that while it was nice being praised as part of the solution for a while, the real money is in being part of the problem.

Criticizing this garbage? It's a snap!

Ok, let me see if I get this straight- The owner of this phone has decided that the best place to do her banking, and the best time to do it, is in the middle of her living room, while her demon spawn jumps up and down screaming their ungodly, obviously Satan-infused lungs out, the adorable little tikes. She rubs her finger around a screen for a while, taking a picture of a check, taking a picture of her children (does she, in some unguarded moments, secretly wish she could deposit them, too?), sending the picture of the check along to the bank, getting a confirmation that it's been deposited, Mission Accomplished.

 Then, she....ummm....hands the phone to Thing One who, having finally won Mom's attention, proceeds to....ummm...pick up the phone and play with it. So...all this time, Mommy's Little Miracle was actually just clamoring for his turn to play with the phone? Even if this is the case- is it really a good idea to let a kid play with a phone which we were just shown can be used to do rather sensitive stuff like banking? I can just see this kid playfully pushing a few buttons and transferring Mommy's 401(k) to that nice guy who is trying to get out of Nigeria with his suitcase full of gold coins. While we're at it, can someone explain to me why this thing is shot in some odd, ugly negative theme? Never mind- I mean, it's not as if any of the rest of this makes any sense.

Samsung's rather lame effort at self-parody. I think.

Ok, this is pretty funny. Samsung is really tearing those iPhone 5 losers a new one here, aren't they? I mean, listen to how they talk- they are babbling, glassy-eyed zombies who know they are online to buy something, know that it's a new cell phone, but are only vaguely aware (through rumors and hearsay) of the reasons why it's slightly better than the practically-new phone they already own. Haha what a bunch of losers- I bet half of them are drowning in student debt, and here they are anxiously awaiting the moment they can get their hands on this year's Shiny Status Symbol You Hold In Your Hand.

 Except, wait- oops, turns out that while Samsung is poking fun at Apple Devotees, they have NO problem with their own tech-addled clientele. The people Not On Line Because They Already Have Samsungs are having a grand old time explaining to the Apple Drones that hey, here's the phone, it doesn't have a picture of an piece of fruit on it but it's got all this stuff you claim you want from the phone you are waiting on line for. This makes the Samsung owners somehow superior to the current and future Apple owners (you know all these people on line have iPhones already, right?) how, exactly? Oh, right, because they aren't on line.

 Here's what this commercial is missing- a third group of people, who stop the We Are So Much Better Than You Pathetic Dweebs Samsung owners in their pompous blather to show them their wallets, which are fuller because they didn't respond "how high?" when Samsung called out "Jump, new product here!" Maybe that third group could also tell the Cell Phones Are Our Friends crowd how they have these great conversations with each other, how they took their kids to the park the other day and actually watched them play (and played with them) instead of obsessing with some stupid electronic device. Maybe they could talk about how liberated they feel whenever they leave the house, because they know they are out of touch, totally untraceable and unreachable, truly free to be alone or with the people they are with, and not handcuffed to the phony Connectivity provided by "This is the Future of Awesome" buzzing, beeping and glowing things. I imagine that this would create a moment of communality between the Apple and Samsung tribes against the weird, unassimilated Luddites who dare suggest that there may be Life Beyond Phones. I'd also imagine that this would result in a lot of jumping up and down and chest-thumping and hooting in rage and confusion, except that I doubt that these phone dweebs could manage anything that so closely resembled exercise. My guess is that they would all just whip out their phones, take photos, and post them on Facebook under the title "check out these weirdos they don't get how SuperAwesome my Best Friend is!"

So- what are they selling here? Remote controls with giant Mute buttons?

Ok, I may have jumped the gun on crowning my Most Annoying Commercial of 2012. But you can't blame me- I had no idea that the makers of the HitlerMobile were going to treat us to twenty seconds of ugly idiots laughing their asses off at....well, none of our business, I guess. What ARE these people laughing about? Is the ancient old duffer looking at the Volkswagen and remembering when we made REAL cars made out of heavy steel instead of fiberglass? Is the guy about to lose a lung in his kitchen recalling the time he was reading the details of the lease agreement and the salesman said "this is a really good deal?" Are the rest of the idiots (except the baby) in this ad just celebrating an announcement that "Punch Dub Days" will not be returning to airwaves ever, ever again? Are all of them (except the baby) just drunk out of their minds? What? (As for the baby- it's just gas. And that kid has no idea he's being used in a commercial for a crummy car commercial which makes ugly German cars. So it's got an excuse. Which is more than you can say for the rest of these people.) (Come to think of it, this would make a great commercial for "The Hopper," that device which allows you to skip ads when you watch prerecorded shows- at least I think it still does that, once you get through all of the conditions and disclaimers. "Look, you could be skipping through this obnoxious, awful wall of noise if you had The Hopper!" Well worth the price, and I don't care what it is.)