Earth to Ace: This isn't rocket science....

Let's make this brief.  In fact, that's basically my advice to your ad team:  Make it brief.  Tell us what your product is, why it's something we can't live without, and where we can buy it.  Then move on- and let US move on.

Every once in a while, a company discards the 31-seconds-or-less rule which is supposed to rule Advertising Land in a country dominated by people with Attention Deficit Disorder.  I don't know why- if I find myself on a fourth or fifth paragraph of commentary, I stop typing and start editing.  And if I know there is a limit to how much of my grumpy snark people are willing to read, why can't more companies figure out that we don't want to see a fricking sitcom situation where we expected to see an Ad?

Simply put:  A really stupid idea does not improve with length.  Watching even an entire minute of this crud is like trying to politely listen to a six year old recite the Gettysburg Address.  It's about as entertaining as getting a tooth pulled- in slow motion.

I'm going to be kind of mean here.  If you sat through the entire three minutes of this stupid, Not In The Least Bit Funny junk, you either desperately need to get a life, or you are an incredibly lazy twat who couldn't find the remote because it was wedged halfway up your butt as you were splayed on the couch.  Please don't tell me you sat through it because you "wanted to see how it turned out."  Leave embarrassing stuff like that for the YouTube comment page, where NOTHING is too embarrassing.

And please, if you really DID watch this whole thing and actually enjoyed it, PLEASE keep that opinion to yourself and don't contact ACE to report it.  Because if you do, next thing you know three-minute commercials become the standard and the distance between me and my sanity gets much, much longer.

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.