Dolmio's Pepper Hacker: Passive-Aggressiveness Squared

At first, this seems like kind of a cool idea- just shut off the electronic devices and MAKE the addicted jackasses you happen to share a home with interact with you.   But after a few viewings, this commercial became more disturbing than hopeful.  Here's why:

1.  Everyone in this ad except Mom is a drug addict.  The drug just happens to be what is laughingly referred to as "connectivity."  Why did mom let things get so bad?  Because mom's a spineless jellyfish when it comes to disciplining her kids?  If that's the case, why am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Mom?

2.  The kid who throws his phone to the floor in anger because he's mysteriously lost his signal- I don't care if that phone is broken or not.  This kid has a serious problem that isn't going to be addressed by cutting off the signal.  Again, this is drug addiction.  I wonder- if he were shown a video of himself acting like this, would he recognize his behavior as being irrational?  I also wonder- if that phone is broken, is Mommy going to rush him to the store to pick out a new one?

3.  The little kid who freaks out and throws a tantrum because he can't play with the tablet at the kitchen table- well, now we know where the phone-thrower came from.  In a few years that kid will be a mute, passive potato curled up in his room staring at a glowing screen 12 hours a day.  Because by then...

4.  How long is it going to be before one of those other people see this commercial and get rid of the Pepper Hacker?  Considering that their lives are spent "online," I give it an hour.  Then the shaker is myseriously broken or missing, and everyone can go back to ignoring that Older Female In The House Who Always Seems To Want Something.

5.  I'll finish up by going back to the general theme- if you aren't going to parent your kids, if you are going to let them do whatever they want including ignoring you, play with their idiot devices at the kitchen table (seriously, this makes me retch, why would any adult let their kids do this?) and throw tantrums when they are "disconnected," this Pepper Hacker thing is simply not going to solve your problem- that you are a wimpy, pathetic enabler who also happens to be scared to death of her kids.

There is simply no reason for ANY of this to be happening in a sane household.  Kids need structure and boundaries.  If you aren't going to give those precious gifts to your kids, please DON'T HAVE ANY.  Because these dullards are the kind of people I end up having to dodge during my walks, as they are too busy staring at their phones to devote more than a third of their attention to operating their deadly motor vehicles.  They are emotionally chained to their glowing boxes, and if you introduced them to Unlimited Talk, Text and Data before they were potty-trained, it's your fault and you need to stop whining and looking for ANOTHER electronic device to fix the problem YOU created.

You can never find a good Plantagenet when you need one...

All I can think of when I'm subjected to these celebrations of pointless, bland suburban idiocy featuring unshaven Upper Middle Class douchenozzles wasting their lives obsessing over their f--ing lawns is how much better off we all would have been if Edward had just razed Scotland to the ground, and then burned the ashes, 700 years ago like he wanted.

Sure it would have been a real tragedy for the people of the time, but we'd be spared the vacous bleating of this jagoff with his "quit yer lollygagging" crap, and people have to die of something anyway, after all.

I'm going to build a time machine, drop in on 1300 or so, and tell the English Royal Family to go all out and finish the job.  Don't stop at Sterling.  Posterity will thank you.

An open letter to State Farm

This skit was mildly amusing in 2-minute doses once a week on Saturday Night Live 25 years ago.  I don't know why you think that translates into "funny in 30-second doses repeated forty times over the course of a three hour football or baseball game," but take it from me: It really, really doesn't.

And just to cut you off at the pass- "Mr. Bill" was a great SNL skit in the late-70s.  I don't want to see Mr. Bill and Sluggo trying to sell me insurance, either- though it would be more entertaining than this crap.  And that's saying absolutely nothing.

Oh, and a side note to Mr. Carvey and Mr. Nealon?  I don't want you guys to lose your houses because you can't pay your mortgages.  I really don't.  But if it's either continuing to watch you do these awful commercials or having you lose your houses?  Hey, life sucks, guys.  I'm sure there are plenty of cheap apartments in the less-fashionable neighborhoods of LA.

Sears doesn't know what the word "possible" means.

"Doers:  They don't worry if something's possible, they just do it."

Um, come again, stupid narrator reading stupid script?  If they "just do it"* then it's been proven to be possible.  If it's position on any possibility scale is unknown, did you mean to say that they don't worry about this and just go ahead and attempt it?

And by the way, what's the thing we non-Doers were supposed to consider possibly not possible that Doers just tackle because, hey, they're Doers?  As near as I can tell, it's scraping rust off a bike.  Raise your hand if you weren't sure this was possible.  I guess there are more of us Doers than I thought.

*Nike's legal team called.  They'd like to talk to you about this whole "just do it" crap.

Verizon Presents: The Saddest Commercial of All Time

Here's something everyone who has ever been in love and has had that love returned has in common:  Each and every one of us can remember the exact moment that the object of our affection first said "I love you."

In my case, it was a slight variation on the phrase- she said "I think I'm falling in love with you."  I will never, ever forget what I was doing at the moment, or what that statement did to my heart, or what I said in response.  Never.

The horrible people in this ad will, I suppose, never quite forget that moment, either.  If things work out, they'll someday tell their children that they heard it over a tablet's speakers.  They did not reach out and touch or kiss their Suddenly Very Significant Other because she was just a voice in a box.  By that time- ten or fifteen or twenty years from now- I doubt the kids will think that there's anything strange about this at all.  It will seem perfectly normal- "when did mommy first say she loved you- was it in a phone conversation, or a conversation streaming over your tablet, or did she text it, or tweet it, or did she leave it as a message on Facebook, Daddy?"

I'm so glad I was born when I did, so that the woman I will love for all of my life said those words right next to me, whispering them into my ear, instead of into an electronic device, hoping that some phone or cable company managed to get them to me before our call/video chat was dropped.

Sometimes I wish I was younger.  Not today.

Yes, there's actually a sequel to this ad. You know, for hopeless losers or people with commercial blogs

I figured out that if you edited out all the times this guy stutters unnecessarily or repeats himself as if he doesn't think that the two ugly morons standing right there heard him the first time, this minute-plus commercial would be about 30 seconds long- and be the normal painful experience we are all used to.

Instead, it really does play out like it thinks that the audience is hooked by the cutting-edge comedy and Neil Simon-level banter and will demand more if it doesn't reach something resembling a satisfactory, unrushed conclusion.  You know, like the drooling morons who live vicariously through the lives of television commercial actors.*

I really can't see myself bothering with Part II- I doubt it reaches the level of wit we hear in lines like "No...not....not 12 thousand...12.....12......"  So it would just be a letdown.  Besides, I've got this plate of glass shards I'm sure I would enjoy jamming into my eyes slightly more than watching even one more second of this.

*Check out the solitary comment on YouTube.  I bet this guy's parents are sooooo glad he posts under a fake name.

Before there were "Selfies..."

According to Wikipedia, the card game Solitaire dates back to the German-speaking regions of Central Europe in the late 18th century.  So this whole "stuff you can do when you have no friends that doesn't involve reading" thing is actually pretty old.

But this is maybe the saddest toy I've ever seen- a jump rope for people who simply can't manage to round up even two people to play with.  Maybe I was too old by the time it came out (apparently it was popular for a few minutes in the mid-80s) or maybe it just wasn't a big-time fad on the campus of the Catholic University of America, but I really don't remember this at all.  I do agree with the Nostalgia Critic's take on it, though- it probably should have been called "Trip It," and maybe it vanished off the toy shelves when the class action lawsuits filed by people who had lost teeth falling to the sidewalk began to build up.

Or maybe it was just ahead of it's time and should be reintroduced in 2015, when being a socially isolated loser whose Friends are just names and photos on Facebook and where owning a stick that lets you take photos of yourself is Just Fine No Really You Are Perfectly Normal.