Stupid Shortcuts come in Kosher!

"I want to keep 'regular' and promote digestive health and feel great, but not if it's going to take any actual thought or planning which might distract me from downloading stuff to my cell phone or dancing through a field or something!  To heck with that- I don't have time to eat a decent, balanced diet including actual fiber!  Just give me this junk I can pour into water and be on my way!"

"Benefiber:  When you're too old for Pediasure, too young for Metamucil, and too stupid and lazy to actually take care of yourself!"

(I have no idea why I went for the Israeli version.  Maybe it was the "yum yum" at the end.)

Dove joins the "make our next horrible commercial for us" parade

Fifty-seven seconds of guys acting like Human Beings with their kids to get to the punchline "Real Men Show They Are Strong By Being With Their Kids," or something like that.   Followed by two punchlines:

1.  This is an ad for soap.  I don't have any idea what soap has to do with any of this, unless Dove is trying to tell us that if we REALLY want to be strong for our kids, Hey We'd Better Use This Soap.  Actually, I think it's more like "the last fifty-seven seconds was brought to you by this stupid soap company, who'd a thunk it?"

2.  This is also an ad for exhibitionist jackasses who live to make videos of themselves doing perfectly ordinary (and perfectly boring) things and posting them in public places on the odd theory that anyone outside their house could give a flying damn.  Dove is actually inviting guys to take videos of interaction between themselves and their kids and send them to Dove.....so they can be included in a compilation that will be used to torture the next round of Gitmo detainees, or what?  I mean, seriously- I thought fifty-seven seconds of this dreck produced by actual cameramen with high-grade equipment was painful.  Hours of additional material posted using shaky iPhones?  Good lord, I think I'd rather be waterboarded.

New Name, Still Crap

I guess they got the idea from Kentucky Fried Chicken- every few decades, a junk chain "restaurant" should change it's name or logo-- not so much that it's loyal customers don't recognize it as the same hole-in-the-strip-mall they've been buying their artery-clogging junk since they were kids, but enough to convince a new generation that they are different from that greasy carb factory they wouldn't be caught dead in except Hey Look The Name Is Different.

Good luck with this, Dominos.  I see you've got yourself an army of paid shills to pimp the new name in the YouTube comment section.  But I'm still not going to be laying down money to buy your mass-produced poison, be it pizza, pasta or whatever crud you're peddling at 7-11 prices this week.

Oh, and the dramatic music?  Yeah, hate to break it to you, but you changing your name just isn't that big a deal to anyone with anything resembling a life.  Which means it probably is a big deal to most of your regulars.  I'm sure they'll adjust, though- they got through the transition to KFC without too much trauma, after all.

Progressive's Name Your Own Way You'd Like To Be Shafted Ad

By coincidence, I have always looked upon Flo's Progressive commercials as great candidates for a toxic waste dump....

"So, with Progressive, I can name my own price?"

"You betcha!  We don't have price tags here!  Just tell us what you want to pay, and we'll create a policy that matches your budget!"

"Ok- I want to pay $100 a month."

"Sounds great!  At that level of coverage, there's no deductable, and we provide a rental car free of charge for up to two weeks while your car is repaired or, if totalled, while you pick out a new car one model year younger than the one that you trashed."

"Actually, $100 is a bit much.  I want to pay $50 a month."

"Sounds good!  At that level of coverage, there's a $500 deductable and we provide a rental car for an additional $10 a day for up to a week, after which it's totally on your own dime.  And if your car is totalled we'll hook you up with a new car of the same make and model of the one you lost."

"Actually, I'd kind of like to pay $15 a month.  You said I could set my own price, and that's what I'd like to pay."

"Sounds like a plan!  At that level of coverage, there's a $2000 deductable.  We suggest you hitch to the emergency room because the ambulance ride isn't covered, and you take care of your own rental!  If your car is totalled, we'll hook you up with a 1981 Renault LeCar and cancel your policy!"

As for the guy getting scrubbed at the end of this ad- hell, I feel dirty every time I watch one of these stupid things.  Being in one?  I totally get what he's going through.

What I'd Appreciate right now

1.  A sudden terrorist attack centered at this AT&T store, focused on these two people.

2.  A meteor strike at the same place, at the same time, just in case the terrorists miss.

3.  AT&T actually hiring writers to make their ads, rather than handing crayons to monkeys and then just throwing up on the screen whatever the monkeys came up with inside of twenty minutes.

Barring any of that, I really, really appreciate my mute button every time this putrid, steaming pile of absolutely nothing shows up on my television.  I do continue to think that this girl is very cute.  But she's just as cute when I can't hear her spewing noxious, vapid dialogue that I'm pretty sure actually kills brain cells with it's toxic danger-level of Dumb.

Here's a better idea for a Budweiser Commercial which will never be adopted

Budweiser is really good at laying on the manipulative tripe, and always has been.  Dogs and twangy music are especially good devices, because most people are slack-jawed, overly sentimental morons who respond to such cues like Pavlov's dogs to his bell.  "Sad"- looking dog, rain, cardboard box, Deeply Concerned Owner (oh, excuse me, not owner- FRIEND)= You Must Care About All This Crap.

I admit that I didn't watch this ad during the actual Superbowl, because I mute the commercials (I know that's heresy to some people, because I hear it on the Monday after every one- "you didn't watch the commercials?  That's the BEST PART!")  But in my free time I plan to go through each one on YouTube and a majority are likely to get their own posts.  I'll also admit that I couldn't get through this entire ad, because it made my teeth ache with it's sickly-sweet glurge.  But I'm going to take a wild guess that in the end, a perfectly healthy, immaculately groomed puppy somehow makes it back to it's careless-- excuse me, "caring"- um, "family."  And that I'm really, really supposed to care.

Hey, Budweiser?  How about giving us some commercials that, oh, I don't know, have something to do with your BEER?  Maybe "drink Budweiser, because it's cheap and if you drink enough of it, you may actually manage to forget that you can't afford to drink anything better than Budweiser."  Or how about "Budweiser- drink it and drive, and chances are you'll eventually run over a dog as cute as this one."

Yeah, not a chance.

This isn't "Hunting." It's "Ambushing"

Where I grew up, boys hunted.  It's just something we started doing when we reached a certain age.  When Freshman year in high school rolled around, you took a hunting safety course sponsored by the NRA, you went to the range to take your test, and you got your hunting license.  Not some boys.  All boys.  A lot of girls, too.

And when deer season came around, we went to the pancake breakfasts at 5 AM, headed out into the woods before the sun rose, shivered, peered into the icy fog, and walked.  We walked quietly, trying not to make too much noise on the frosty leaves and grass, but we walked.

Some hunters used tree stands.  I never liked them- first, I always thought it was too cold to sit perched up in a tree, twenty feet or more above the ground, for hour after hour.  Second, I could never equate just waiting around for a deer to pick the wrong clearing to wander into with "hunting." Hunting had to mean walking, or it wasn't hunting.  Not to me.

In all the years I engaged in this annual ritual, I never once fired a gun at an actual deer.  Not because I got cold feet or was succumbed to a nagging concience; I just never saw a deer while hunting.  Neither did anyone I ever hunted with.  Maybe it was me.   When I was fifteen, I shot a huge raccoon out of a tree (my best friend's father, a brilliant taxidermist, turned it into a rug for me.)  That was the only animal I ever managed to kill while hunting.

Now, to this commercial- what these people are doing with their fake hay bale makes me rethink the whole tree stand issue.  Hey, "hunters"- this isn't freaking Vietnam.  If a deer sees you before you see it, it's going to run away, not kill you.  If you bag your deer by hiding inside one of these things, you arent' a hunter- at best, you are a trapper.  I put you one very small step above the scumbags who put out salt licks to bait their prey.  If you are in the market for a little house you can set up in the woods and sit in until a large animal comes close enough, do real hunters a favor and just stay on your couch and drink beer in front of the tv.  Because you are giving them* a bad name.

*I haven't hunted in 30 years, not because I have any moral objection to it, but because it's not an especially safe or popular activity here in suburbia.