This Nissan Ad gets a rerun, and another invitation to get the hell off my tv

I know I've posted on this horrible commercial already, but after vanishing (unwept and unsung) for several months, it's made a comeback in a big way- like, showing up during Every Freaking Break during Every Freaking College and NFL Football game, and plenty of times during the week as well. I don't know why it happened (other than the standard "G-d hates me" explanation) but I find it very hard to believe it's because of "popular demand."

Because I find it very hard to believe that people really like ads which remind them of the most douchenozzley thing people do with their cars- crank their stereos up and force every neighborhood they drive through to "spread their joy" (share their taste in music, whether we want to or not.)  So if we are sitting in an outdoor cafe, nothing makes us more joyful than dicktards with great sound systems?  How about if we live in a housing project- are we just sitting on our balconies waiting for some jackass to come by blasting 2 seconds of his music as he speeds by the interstate off-ramp which services our hovel?

(Or, far more commonly- if we live in a suburb, and he needs to let us know he's coming from six blocks away by showing off his awesome bass at three o'clock in the morning? Really?)

And is this guy just playing the same damn song over and over again, because sometimes he's on the highway and sometimes he's at stop signs- what the hell is his deal, anyway?

Acura breaks it's own pretention record

The actual product being offered shows up at the 37-second mark of this 60-second ad.  Which is actually not bad considering that T Mobile is currently producing ads which only incidentally show its product in the final three or four seconds of  60-second ads.

But even T Mobile can't manage this level of smothering self-importance.  This is Apple-level over-the-top indulgence.  Maybe the people who built this thing (it's a freaking CAR, for Chrissakes) are overwhelmed by their brilliance, but it's pretty damned obnoxious to expect us to be.  I'd tell Acura to get the hell over itself ("Made for Mankind?"  Then why aren't you giving these things away? Don't you really mean "Made for the One Percent?")  but considering that we are only a few weeks away from the Season of Red Ribbons Around Cars Which Make Great Christmas Gifts If You Have Money Falling Out Of Your Ass, it's hardly worth it.

CVS doesn't sell handguns, either. My world is coming to an end!

I can't even begin to express my disgust at this ad, which tells us everything that is wrong with American consumerism AND American "health" care.  What the HELL are PHARMACIES doing SELLING CIGARS IN THE FIRST PLACE????

"If your Drug Store has stopped stocking your favorite cigars...." GOOD!!!  Drugs are supposed to improve health or at least allieviate suffering.  What the hell do CIGARS have to do with EITHER?

Every time I hear this radio ad- at least a few times a day- I laugh, and then kind of sad.  Then I remember the scene in Michael Moore's Sicko where the director is told that pharmacies in England do not sell cigars, cigarettes- or candy, or potato chips- because hey, it's a pharmacy.  When are we going to catch up?

Cheap cigars are still being sold out of every 7-11 in the country.  I assume there are still Cigar stores.  There's the internet.  In other words, cigars aren't going away,  They are just aren't being sold next to the baby formula and antihistamines anymore.  Boo f--ing hoo.

(BTW, if you find yourself "panicking" because your favorite pharmacy has stopped selling your favorite cigars, GET HELP.  You really, really need it.)

LegalZoom's heartwarming tribute to Capitalism

"My mom made the BEST toffee ever.  She'd make it on cold winter days as a very special treat- I can still remember coming home from school and finding a plate on it on the kitchen table and how happy it made me to eat it while drinking a glass of milk and telling mom all about my day....

And when I got older, I would help Mom make her toffee for holiday gift baskets, it was so much fun to make batch after batch and break it up and put it into gaily decorated boxes and hand them out to the mailman and the gas man and the sitter and my teachers at school, they all loved my Mom's toffee so very much...

And all along, my dream was that someday my Mom would kick off and leave me the recipe, so I could turn the recipe that had been passed down through five generations going back to the old country into a business employing six people at minimum wage and earning me some serious coin after the second year, once the industrial toffee-pulling machine had been paid off allowing me to can those teenagers I allowed to 'intern' with me during their summer before starting college.....

And then I achieved the larger vision in my dream, shutting down my local operation and moving the whole enterprise to Singapore, where it now employs 200 11-year olds making $600 a year under the supervision of very reasonably priced overseers.  Once I replaced the cane sugar with corn sugar (sugar is sugar!) and added an amazing array of artificial colors and flavors, the money REALLY began to roll in!

Every once in a while, I even whip up a batch of my Mom's Now Famous Toffee- it almost tastes like the crap I sold 4.5 million boxes of in 86 countries last year!  Thanks, Legal Zoom, for making my dream come true!

Oh, and thanks, Mom, wherever you are!

Verizon, Kmart, and the march toward unfettered Crudity on American television

These commercials are supposed to be Get-Around-the-FCC clever and funny.  If you think they are clever and funny, please keep your comments off my blog, stop eating paint chips, and please please please don't breed.  Or tell your mom you aren't ready to be on the internet without supervision yet.

I can't even begin to describe how unclever and unfunny this all is.  It's just so stupid and rude and manipulative and gross.  It makes me wonder what I ever found offensive in "Punch Dub Days"- I'd take a million of those ads if it meant I never had to see crap like this ever, ever again on my tv screen.

I wish I could say I'm boycotting Kmart because of their disgusting ad, but fact is I don't shop Kmart and I'm not even sure if there's one anywhere near me.  I do have Verizon, and as soon as it's economically feasible, I'll dump the service in protest of their revolting new campaign.  Because man is this ever wretched.

No More Posing, NFL

As this commercial plays ad nauseum (no bad pun intended there) the Player's Union is demanding the immediate reinstatement of Ray Rice.

I guess the NFL's message is "No More," while the Union's is "well, ok, domestic violence is bad, but this young man has the right to knock his wife cold, drag her body out of the elevator, and go right back to making money on the football field."  Uh huh.

Way to give unions a bad name.  Just what they need.  Meanwhile, the NFL has to stare down the Player's Union on this one.  I suspect that public opinion will be on the NFL's side, but I'm not positive.  Here's what I AM positive of- the Union is making an ass of itself, and needs to get slapped down hard ( unfortunate word choice unfortunate, not intentional.)

Ally's bankless banking commercials: Oddly Familiar, Oddly Aggressive

In one way, these ads look a lot like all of the other ads out there- this one in particular does the usual "white guy standing in the middle of a massive, immaculately decorated, gleaming-white-clean living room" (seriously, why does everyone in TV land have to possess living rooms and kitchens larger than my apartment?)  That's the "familiar" part.  All white people in tv commercials live in multi-million dollar homes with cavernous rooms that look like they are maintained by 6-man cleaning crews.  Got it.

But in another way, these ads practically beg us to dislike Ally Bank.  The operator is always sneering at the concerns of the potential customers.  In one I did earlier this year, a woman tells the Ally Bank Phone Bank Serf "I'm nervous about trying new things. "  Instead of just explaining why Ally Bank's "no place to complain in person, your money is at the mercy of a computerized phone menu" strategy is a good thing, the operator challenges this "irrational" fear- "what's wrong with trying new things?" (and the message is instantly botched- like it is in this ad- by showing examples of why the caller is exactly right to worry.)  In this ad, the caller's "I don't like hidden things" is not greeted with "I understand, here's why you have nothing to worry about" but rather "why is that?"  Again and again, Ally comes off as an aggressive car salesman challenging their potential customers to reach way down, find their guts, and just sign on the freaking dotted line, you weird spineless coward you.

What's the deal?  Here's my take on Ally's Bottom-Line Strategy:

1.  Ally Bank is the intelligent choice for very successful people.  If you want to be successful like these people on tv, you'll go with Ally Bank.

2.  Ally Bank gets that No Branches is a legitimately scary idea (no WAY I'm handing my money over to a company that will never, EVER provide a person I can sit down with and look in the eye if I ever have an issue with them, but that's just poor, unsucessful, cowardly me) so it's focused on shaming potential customers into buying in- "what's the matter with you?  Are you deranged?  Get with it.  Just give us your money. We'll always be here, just a phone call and 20 callers in the queue ahead of you away.  You don't like walking into banks and sitting down with people and discussing stuff anyway.  That's for cowards."

PASS!