Another Golden Corral Ad (hey, it's been a while!)

What's the difference between a Seafood Restaurant and Golden Corral?

1.  At a seafood restaurant, the customers tend to be wearing clothes which suggest that they are doing something special.  Clothes like pants with zippers and shirts with buttons.  At Golden Corral you are far more likely to see customers wearing sweatpants and pullovers.  You should be grateful.  Believe me.

2.  At a seafood restaurant, you tell the waiter what you want and he brings it to you on a plate.  You eat what's on your plate and then the dinner experience is over.  At Golden Corral you bring your plate up to a trough with a sneeze guard, stand behind a few drooling yokels as they pick over the Fried Everything, and eventually load up with more food than you really want to eat, figuring you'll lose at least ten percent of it on the way back to your booth.

3.  At a seafood restaurant, you're likely to get food that used to swim around in the water.  At Golden Corral, whatever you end up eating spent a lot more time swimming around in grease and bread crumbs than H20.  In fact, at Golden Corral you'll be eating a lot more grease and bread crumbs than seafood.  And don't forget to save room for macaroons, the Chocolate Wonderfall and the Cotton Candy Machine!

4.  And oh yeah, there's the whole price thing.  At a decent seafood restaurant, you'll get pretty good food at a pretty high price.  I hope you don't react like these awful hicks.  At Golden Corral, you'll get really crappy food at a price which seems pretty low, unless you take the time to reflect on the quality of the junk you just ate, at which point you'll realize the price is pretty high.   But if you are a Golden Corral customer it's all about quantity not quality anyway, so no worries.

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.