I don't remember grandma having a Chocolate Wonderfall, but I'm sure she did.

Who's got comfort food like grandma used to make?  Who's got food like people used to actually cook before they got pathetically lazy like us?  Why, the answer is America's Favorite Feeding Trough, Golden Corral, of course!

Remember when your grandma used to serve up endless piles of pot roast, fried chicken, orange macaroni and cheese?  Remember the mountains of tasteless mashed potatoes and sludge gravy?  And remember how every Thanksgiving she'd put out a vat of drumsticks and another of sliced rubbery cranberry sauce?  Remember that?

Remember how you'd eat so many rolls, using the last couple to sop up that gravy- you'd have to unbutton your pants?  That was awesome.  How can we get those days back?  What's the matter, being morbidly obese effect your hearing?  I told you already- Golden Corral!

And this is even better than grandma's place- here you can end your night of binge eating by sticking marshmallows, cookies and your fingers into Hershey's chocolate syrup and give yourself a nice little energy boost (you'll need it to prevent your slipping into a diabetic coma, fine at grandma's but kind of hard when people expect you to drive home later) by shoving your hand into a cotton candy machine!!  You'll feel like a kid again- a big, fat, disgusting kid with no pride, dignity or common sense!

And when you are finally done shoving all the greasy, cheap warm food which kind of reminds you of the stuff grandma used to make (please don't say so out loud, we don't need grandma spinning in her grave or coming back to haunt you for desecrating her memory) down your cake hole, you'll feel Comfortable knowing that while your night of Comfort food did plenty of unseen damage to your internal organs, it went pretty light on the wallet.  Around ten bucks- awesome!  We don't have to make this an annual thing, kids!  We can gorge ourselves on meat loaf, fried shrimp (is there any other kind?) and macaroons on a regular basis!

And here's another Comforting thought- back when you went to grandma's place, you followed dinner with a lot of dish-washing and maybe some yard work or a game of touch football or a walk in the park.  Now you can just go home and get back to your Netflix account or catch up on what was recorded on your DVR.  Like I said before- Better than a trip to Grandmas!

Add "Camping" to the list of things McDonalds has no idea how to portray in its ads

This commercial is entitled "camp," but when I see it I don't find myself thinking "camp." More like "trailer park."

Because after all, it's kind of hard for me to imagine that not only did these people decide to go "camping" in the middle of a gravel pit using ugly 1960s-era campers (the most god-awful uncomfortable things ever invented, believe me) but that they think that a quick trip to the McDonalds drive-thru to stock up on dollar menu items somehow goes along with "camping."

On the other hand, sending someone from the trailer park to grab a bag of warm grease after scrounging up a few bucks works very well with me.  If I ignore the "camp" title, this commercial is perfectly logical.  I'll even excuse the lack of screaming, half-naked children and the fact that everyone in this ad seems to have plenty of teeth.

Even ignoring the "camp" title, I still want to sock every single person featured here right in the mouth.  I don't know why- maybe it's the stupid slow-motion bit.  Or the fact that they are all gaping at each other like they've never seen other human life forms before this moment.  Or that this group is so obviously balanced in terms of race and sexuality but (as usual) not age. Or maybe subconsciously I really can't ignore that McDonalds wants us to think these people are camping.  There's just no figuring some things, I guess.

Know who forgot that the house and security came with this guy? This girl.

1.  Hey, lady?  That's a pretty nice house you've got there.  Looks spotless, too- and there you are, sitting in a gleaming living room on a comfy couch while hubby is driving home from work.  He brags incessantly about the great deal he got on a Jetta?  I'd buy some earplugs.  After all...

2.  You already put up with that stupid three-days-growth beard and the fact that he thinks that scoring a great deal on a freaking VOLKSWAGEN is something to brag about.  Did I mention the nice house?  But if all else fails, you can....

3.  Build yourself a time machine, go back a few years, and decide that your soul wasn't really worth the nice house and guy who makes enough money to buy you stuff if the guy who makes enough money to buy you stuff is an obnoxious braggart who is so f--ing full of himself that he apparently spent several WEEKS telling everyone in his contact list about his new car, in exactly the same words, from the comfort of his living room. Because if that parrot learned this entirely from hubby's conversations with YOU about the car-- well, AGAIN- you wanted this, you got it.

4.  If all else fails, that parrot would probably look just fine on a bed of rice.  And I'm sure hubby's expecting dinner on the table when he walks in from the driveway and his precious Jetta.

Does it have room for my gun rack, free weights and chewin' tobacco?

Raise your hand if you are sick of being buried by the horseshit which permeates every single commercial for ever single truck (but is ESPECIALLY noxious and overbearing in Ford commercials.)

Each one of these horrible, suffocating blankets of  faux-patriotic steaming garbage reaches out of the television to grab American males by the....err...neck....and pummel into us the message that if we really want to be considered something more than females with penises, we'd better have a three-day growth of beard, dirty hands, and a big-ass truck to haul junk around in.  We'd better live on a ranch which has easy access to suburbs and contains big bales of hay to throw around, fences that need fixin', women who need lovin' and calves that need findin' and savin'.  We'd better master our silent, strong, confident stares, and everything we do must be done in a totally natural, Matter-of-Fact, "get 'er done 'cause it's what we do" manner.

And they all leave me with the feeling that Ford does not consider me as even living in the same UNIVERSE with it's target audience.  I don't have a big house, and haven't loved the same woman all my life, I don't rope steers or milk cows or stack hay or ride fences on the weekends and I can't remember the last time I had the opportunity to haul anything with massive heavy chains.  You couldn't set my life to a cloying country music song. Hell, I even shave on days off.

Ford seems pretty determined to convince us that their trucks ought to be added to the freaking flag, or at the very least be inserted into what I guess is our new National Anthem, "God Bless America."*  And to convince those of us who aren't interested in owning one of these monstrosities (because, not living on ranches and having white-collar jobs, we really don't need them) that we are pathetic wussies who don't really deserve to live in this great open country with all of it's haul-able rocks and hay bales just waiting to be stacked and creeks which need to be crashed through and let's not forget those fence posts which aren't going to sink themselves...well, you can just bite me, Ford.  I'm not buying one of these f---ing things, no matter how many country music artists you employ in your attempts to separate me from my money.

*At Major League Baseball parks, the universal signal to use the restroom or grab another beer before sales are cut off at the end of the 7th inning.

Like no car-buying experience I've ever seen

I haven't purchased a car for ten years, but I've gone through the This Is What We've Got, This Is What You Can Afford dance several times in my life, and no current car commercial gels with my memory of the experience.

Instead, the all feature people who run into dealerships practically waving their money and begging salesmen to just lead them to a car, any car, and show them where to sign.  This woman knows exactly what she wants and actually discourages the sales guy to offer any kind of advice or input- any seller's dream customer.  In fact, the car salesmen in these ads aren't salesmen, they are cashiers.  They might as well be standing behind the counter waiting to ring up the customer's choice.

I wonder sometimes what actual car salesmen think of ads like this.  Besides actually being a customer and interacting one-on-one with a few, I've also accompanied parents and friends on car-purchasing excursions, and I have a pretty good idea of what actually goes into the buying and selling of an automobile.  Except for a house, it's the biggest commitment of hard-earned money that most people make.  We know customers don't really act like this- so when car salesmen see their jobs being portrayed as nothing more than valets who exist to hand people keys, how do they take it?

I wonder if their reaction is in any way similar to mine when I see teachers stereotyped in advertisements and television, and they think "jeesh, that's not all there is to my job- it's hard work, dammit!"  Seems likely, doesn't it?

An oddly compelling commercial from The General

I don't know what it is about this commercial that forces me to pay attention to it every time it's on.

It might be the clarity and simplicity of it's message- car insurance is easy and affordable to obtain.  No, that's not it.

It might be the Oh So Fun I Wish I Were Them people selling us this clear, simple message.  I mean- lampshade on the head? That's a CLASSIC.  And it makes so much sense that these people would be in a partying mood after discussing the purchase of the kind of cheap insurance only customers with no money and bad driving records would be interested in.

Closer--- but no, that's not it, either.

I guess I just don't know what it is about this commercial that grabs me.   Maybe it's a subliminal thing.  But it came on again while I was typing this, and I had to pause and watch, and for a few seconds after it was over, I forgot that I was typing this blog post.

What could it be?

Blackberry attempts to get into the shot of the photo of your life

I'll start by saying that I didn't even get through all of this- about a minute and a half through, I was just so damned sad at the matter-of-fact awfulness I had to just click "embed" and leave the rest alone.

The message of this commercial, in which multiple faceless people respond to their chirping Blackberries instead of interacting with each other like normal human beings, seems to be that your Blackberry is there for you at every one of those Very Special Moments of your life, making those moments somehow More Special- or, at least, more textable and tweetable.

The message I get from this commercial is- nowadays, people always have their phones out.  If they aren't already doing something on their phones, they will be any moment now, and when they do, well, that will interrupt what they were doing before they reacted like Pavlov's dogs and made that knee-jerk move for the phones.  If they aren't quite sure what to do, they'll soon be told- by their phones.  If they don't have anything to do, that's impossible, because after all they've got phones.

And all the things I've done for the first time- sat on a couch with a girl, walked with a girl, kissed a girl, got stuck in snow (I don't know why that scene is there, but maybe it makes sense if you watch the whole thing.  Not worth it) and be late for dinner- happened even though when I was as young(er)  blackberries were fruit which grew on bushes.  Somehow, I managed to do all this- without a glowing screen and the ability to text my thoughts instead of express them orally, or leave them unsaid, for better or for worse.

So, Blackberry?  Don't tell me that you are essential to my life, or anyone else's.  Don't tell me that you make life's wonderful moments better or more special, because that's BS too.  It's ok if cellphone commercials tell me that when Life Happens they are there because hey, I get that and knew that already.  But that's really all there is.  Everything in this ad happened or will happen to pretty much everyone and that is true whether we carry Blackberries or not, sorry.  You don't get to piggy-back on our moments.