Another Deranged Lunatic with Online Access, a Credit Card, and no obvious reason for Living

So this woman's entire life is shopping.  Oh wait, no- she does go to the gym.  But other than that, it's shopping.

Her day doesn't even START until she's gone to Haute Look.  And it's made very clear to us very quickly that this woman lives to buy clothes online.  Sometimes, she "changes up the look" of the guy who makes All This Possible (one of them has to work for a living, right?)  But mostly it's all about buying Stuff for Herself.  From Haute Look.

Sometimes, there are simply no words to describe the disgust I feel for the zombies who waltz their way through ads like this.  Here's a giddy shopaholic who carefully spaces out her clothes shopping so it's something she can do everyday.  Here's her enabling husband, who saw something in this horrible excuse for a human being once, a long long time ago, but now is too busy trying to keep up with her insane spending habits to think about those good old days.  Here's their house, which will be featured on an episode of Buried Alive maybe two seasons from now.

Nope, can't think of any original way to describe this mess.  Anyone care to take a shot?

Does it work on Eyes and Ears?

I'm never going to be a parent to one of these little human things, so maybe I shouldn't be passing judgement right and left on TV parents, but I can't help but think that the guy playing the "parent" in this ad maybe should have put off impregnating his partner for a SECOND time until he had at least the rudiments of the whole parenting thing down a little better than he does.

I think the "dad" here is a total dick for ignoring his Older Child's desperate attempts to get his attention, shrugging him off again and again so he can continue to talk to Breeder Dad No. 2.   Maybe someone was hurt and Older Child wanted to tell him about it.  Maybe Older Child threw up and now feels feverish.  Maybe Older Child just ate something that a Strange Man NOT inclined to ignore him has been offering to the other neglected kids in the Park for Stupid Daddies and Their Equally Stupid Daddy Friends Who Naturally Are Also Daddies.  No matter- Stupid Daddy is talking now, buddy.  Shut up until Daddy's Much More Important conversation is over.

Kids usually act like clueless, annoying little squeak toys in these ads (and in real life, too) but it seems to me that the little boy in this commercial is doing exactly the right thing- he's politely trying to get Daddy's attention.  He's not walking around the house carrying his sloshing potty so he can "show mommy what he did" (see archives.  Groan.)  He's not announcing that he "went potty" and then encouraging his parent to go find where he thought "potty" was (again- see archives.  Double Groan.)

The result is that the Kid in this commercial, unwilling to ask Strange Man Not Inclined to Ignore Him to take on the role Daddy is supposed to play and bring him to a restroom, stands there and fills his pants.  And because he's too old to be wearing diapers, this probably also means that his fun day in the park with Daddy is over, and it's time to be washed as best as Daddy can manage before being bundled up in the car and brought home to Mommy, who for all her faults at least understands that having a Second Kid doesn't mean that you are now entitled to completely ignore the First Kid.  And that believing that Daddy could actually manage to take care of two of his own kids at the same time was every bit as stupid as it sounded when it first entered her brain.  Lesson learned.

For the sixth year in a row- I'm off to Louisville!

Louisville also offers an Unbridled opportunity for 1200 Unbridled Advanced Placement history teachers to get together and engage in the Unbridled grading of roughly 1.2 million exceptionally Unbridled exams.

Maybe Louisville's motto should be "Louisville: Sans Bridles."

Anyway, it's that time of the year again, and for the first week of June I'll be busy grading exams, walking along the amazing waterfront, checking out the really cool fossils along the Ohio River on the Indiana side, and attending four Bats baseball games.  As usual, I don't know if I'll be able to post from the Computer Lab or not- the last four years it's worked ok, as long as I've stored a few commentaries in advance, but just in case I can't access the site while I'm there, this is just a head's up explaining why I'm suddenly not around.

Also, since I am going to be grading from 8 AM to 5:30 PM for six straight days, I might not like the idea of sitting down in front of a computer to post commercial insights- as I've said, there are a lot of things to do in Louisville which do not involve being in a dark basement computer lab.  

And if I CAN continue to post (and choose to do so)- well, I don't mind giving a salute to one of my favorite little cities in the world once a year.  If you've never been to Louisville, I really do recommend it.  It's just a fun, friendly place with a small-town atmosphere and big city amenities.  And I guess it's Unbridled, which is also a plus.  I suppose.

Maybe the Kentucky Board of Tourism should hire me to write these things.

Progressive's Punted Plot Point

Wow, Jessika sure hates talking about exercise and weight loss, doesn't she?

Wait, this commercial ISN'T about weight loss?  It's about Progressive and it's continuing Let Us Spy On You device?  What the hell was the first five seconds about then?

I mean, we see Jessica's friend eagerly telling her about how good she feels about exercise- she just hasn't lost any weight yet.  Well, that's fine.  Exercise is only part of the equation, after all.  But it's an important part, and while I can understand why Jessica might not find this a particularly interesting topic of conversation, her inability to grasp what her friend is saying comes off more like "shut up" than "I don't know what you mean."

The rude brush-off results in Jessica throwing herself on to her friend's car- seriously, the first time I saw this, I looked to see if Jessica had a huge butcher knife in her hand.  Wow, great lesson learned here- if your friend wants to talk about her weight loss, pretend that you aren't interested- and then try to kill her.

Then, we are in another commercial- this one for car insurance.  The narrator tells us that Jessica is a "rate sucker."  Why?  What did Jessica do to suggest that she's a bad driver?  Show a lack of interest in someone's self-centered babbling?  How does this make her a bad driver?  If failing to pretend to show interest in someone else's This Is All About Me rant makes one a bad driver, I'd have been cancelled by every insurance company in the country long before now.

Seriously, what the hell is going on here?  What does the first five second of this ad have to do with the last ten?  Anybody?

All is forgiven if Ally empties the company's bank account and vanishes after this phone call

It was around the 150th viewing of this obnoxious crud (which means, around the sixth inning of the Orioles-Jays game) when it suddenly hit me:  Verizon and Blackberry want us to empathize with the Realty Company boss who is being annoyed by a lackey while she is trying to recharge her batteries over a multi-week vacation.  Needless to say, they fail miserably.

First, Ms Bossperson is shown with some uber-pretentious, spa-approved cooling pad on her forehead.  No, I don't know what it is or what it's actually called and no, I don't really give a damn.  I probably don't know what it is because I've never spent weeks of vacation at an f---ing spa.

Second, she's communicating with her Still On The Job Making Money for Ms Bossperson lickpittle on some Stupid Pointless Nobody Asked For Or Really Wants This videophone.  Why?  All she had to do was not answer the phone.  If she absolutely felt the need to answer the phone, she could have just not activated the video option.  Instead, poor Totally Put Out Bosslady lets her Lucky If She Gets The Day After Giving Birth Off toady go through this idiot "update" on some property I suppose the Very Important Company is interested in buying or selling or WHAT THE FUCK-EVER I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WATCHING THESE MONEY OBSESSED DICKWADS before telling her "yeah, that's awesome you are working, but my marathon vacation is still on, so stop caring about my company until I decide to come back, ok?"

Third- toady at the office is perky and bright and super-enthusiastic about this deal which, if successful, could make her vacationing boss a buttload of money....but boss is all whatever, that's nice, my stock options last month equaled your salary for the past five years desk jockey, I've got another week of vacation and I'm going to keep spending it acting like sleeping in and lounging around the hotel pool is really wearing me out, you know being on vacation is really in many ways more exhausting than going to work, tee hee not really don't call me again or I'll replace your ass with a secretary who understands that when the boss is away, the boss is away, and is not to be treated like- well, like I treat you every weekend.

Keep telling yourself that, lady. Anything to dull the pain, I guess.

Yes, playing chirpy maid to a house full of kids and pets is exactly like directing a movie- if the movie is about a woman trapped in a mobius strip in which every day is exactly the same.  Maybe we could call it Groundhog Day Without the Funny or Heartwarming Message at the End.

But hey, whatever keeps you sane, MommyWife.  Your daughter is now a Diva who must be catered to (keep the fridge full of Pediasure.)  The animals are Extras.  Here come the financial backers- the guy who walks in wearing a suit who instantly demands food and occasionally insists that you provide sexual favors (hey, maybe this IS like being a director!)

Your life is like a Movie- a really stale, cliche'd movie which involves a lot more cleaning and cooking and soul-sucking Same than action or romance scenes, but a movie.  Keep pretending that you are directing that movie, and that it's not directing you.  And that there's a point to all this, which you'll get if you just keep at it long enough.

Hey, guess what, Mrs Director?  One of those Dinner Scenes is coming up again.  Put the vacuum away and get back in the kitchen.  Um...."Action!"  For what it's worth.

What is this Passat Commercial good for? Absolutely Nothing.

In 1970, the United States was in it's fifth full year of combat in Vietnam- more than 35,000 young Americans were dead, thousands more permanently injured, having been torn away from the most prosperous nation on Earth to fight in a jungle on the other side of the planet against an ideology few understood and fewer still thought fit to explain to them.  They left behind Moms and Dads and Sweethearts and while many came back with their bodies intact, none returned without internal scars they would carry for the rest of their lives.

The evolution in American attitudes toward Vietnam can be traced through popular music, so often a useful window into the soul of a nation.   In 1965, Sergeant Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets made the Top Ten on the American Singles Chart.  It told the story of a dedicated military man who gladly gave his life "for those oppressed" and who left behind a final wish for his son- that he grow up to become a soldier, just like Dear Old Dad.  It fit the "lets go get 'em and beat 'em like we always have before" mentality that dominated in the first year of Boots on the Ground.  America to the rescue- the Vietcong could harass the South Vietnamese army, but once WE showed up, it was going to be Game Over.

Nine years later, the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam, which was only months away from ending a nearly thirty-year Civil War and becoming unified under Northern-Communist-rule.  After a final tally of 57,000 dead and more than a quarter-million wounded, not to mention an immense waste of money and energy which sucked the life out of Lyndon Johnnson's Great Society dreams- many Americans were beginning a re-assessment of our misguided adventure in Southeast Asia which continues to this day.  Reaching the Top Forty on the billboard charts was a song called Billy Don't Be a Hero by Paper Lace (much better known for the atrocious The Night Chicago Died.)  Billy, in stark contrast to Sadler's Green Berets, reveals a deep level of cynicism concerning the concept of "heroic sacrifice"- when the title character is killed, a letter to his fiance praises his actions on the field of battle and assures her that "she should be proud he died that way."  Her response is to throw the letter away.  My guess is that if she went on to have a child, she wouldn't be raising him to be a Green Beret.  Just a hunch.

In 1970, Richard Nixon had taken over from LBJ in the management of the Vietnam quagmire and was in the process of expanding military operations into Cambodia and Laos, not to mention intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam and Communist-held portions of the South.  He was also proceeding with the implementation of "Vietnamization," turning the responsibility for fighting the Vietnamese Communists over to the South Vietnamese Army and scaling down the use of the draft here in the US.  And it was in this year that Emerson, Lake and Palmer gave us Lucky Man, the somber tale of-- well, a Lucky Man who has it all- wealth, looks, health, and the respect and love of all who know him- but who goes off to war, takes a bullet, and bleeds to death on some unnamed battlefield.  At it's essence, it's a song about the unforgivable waste that is war.

Except that now, in 2013, the Suits have decided enough time has passed (and we kill with Drones instead of putting our own people on the front line now anyway, much cleaner that way) that they can get away with using a somber ballad about pointless loss in a commercial about a piece of Eurotrash with a beautiful wife and child who gets his Volkswagen crumpled in an accident he walks away from unharmed.

Which means that in this commercial, Lucky Man is played for laughs.

Which means that now, in 2013, Volkswagen has decided that there's simply no such thing as being too shallow, too callow, or too utterly lacking in taste or respect.  Or that they are still bitter we didn't care for "Punch Dub Days," and are going to make us pay.  Hard.

Hey, Everyone In America Over the Age of Forty- remember how angry you were when Revolution was used to sell sneakers?  This is a hundred thousand times worse.  This is Boycott-Inspiring bad.  All I'm left with is the hope that Emerson, Lake and Palmer lost control of this song years ago and Volkswagen snatched it out of the public domain or some vampire third-party which bought the rights and soullessly resold it to everyone's favorite German auto maker.  But either way...ugh, this is so. Damned. Sad.