Will McCarthy break the cycle?

Melissa McCarthy has been perfectly satisfied to make one movie after another in which she plays a "funny" fat woman doing what America thinks "funny" fat women do (like eating their own napkins- that's considered so "funny" it's actually included in the trailer) like be fat and make stupid, snarky and decidedly unfunny comments about being fat until the credits mercifully roll and the tasteless clods who paid upwards of ten bucks to watch this dreck giggle their way out of the theaters.

Hey, I get it- it's a living, and we all need to make a living.  When Cass Elliot's career was on the wane she allowed herself to be humiliated on one awful variety show after another, celebrated for her weight issues much more than her beautiful voice.  Every generation since the Silent Era has featured comedians trading on their girth, from Fatty Arbuckle to John Candy and Chris Farley.   And we know what they all had in common- they were "funny" because they were so big and clumsy and goofy.  Oh, and they all died early - Farley at 33, Candy at 43, Arbuckle at 46.

Mama Cass?  She didn't make it to 34.

McCarthy will be 45 in August.  She's been pretty fortunate in her career- inexplicably popular sitcom, inexplicably popular movies.   Unlike Farley and Candy, she's apparently decided that her health is more important than her ability to make slack-jawed idiots laugh at her Just Because She's Fat And Fat Means Funny, because she's recently lost fifty pounds in order (in her words) to become a "healthier, happier person" for herself and her family.

I'm not a Melissa McCarthy fan, but I'm rooting for her to keep this up and break the cycle.  No, I'm not going to see this movie, partially because from the trailer it's clear she's still playing on the "laugh at me because I'm unhealthy" theme, but also because what passes for humor in movies these days just isn't for me.  But I'm pulling for her to move beyond the Fat Lady stage and be funny AND healthy.  Because I was sick of seeing talented people drop dead way too early a long time ago.

Nissan's summer of pain continues

1.  This is a series of commercials featuring these same two guys bantering for several minutes at a time while cruising around in a Nissan.  No, really.  It's a series.

2.  Read the comments, I dare you.  The people who wrote them actually share the planet with us, the Sane Ones.   These posters are the biggest tools on the planet- one of them things these guys should have a reality show.  Another thinks that specific parts of the "conversation" between the two "stars" are actually "funny, " even "adorable."  I'm not kidding.  Check for yourself.  I hope that every day, their parents thank them for posting using fake names.

3.  This four-minute lump of Obviously Made-For-YouTube steaming dung almost made me appreciate Nissan's current Made-For-TV ad campaign - you know, the one featuring drooling rubes screaming their fool heads off with excitement at the experience of driving around in- a Nissan.  Almost, but not quite.  Because at least this dreck is only on YouTube.   The Hicks Yelling Woo Hoo commercials are on my television twenty or thirty times an hour during every baseball game, almost impossible to avoid.  I hate you so very much, Nissan.

An Aleve blast from the past, and a question

It's been eighteen years since this woman stopped gulping down eight Tylenol every day and instead started gulping down two Aleve every day.  So my question is, did she ever actually go to a doctor to look into her daily back pain issues, or did she just continue to take over the counter masking drugs until her liver finally exploded?

(BTW, I found this ad while searching for the recent obnoxious Stereotypical Italian Mom With the Nasal Accent who loves to make Sunday dinner for her family but doesn't like back pain or asking for help.  I'll post that one when it shows up on YouTube because....ugh.)

Off to Louisville Again!

Yep, it's that time of year again.  Time to head off to Kentucky to spend a week grading Advanced Placement essays in the cool confines of Louisville (likely average temp for the week 90 degrees.)

I'll try to post from the computer lab, but just in case I get too busy or the service isn't available, here's a heads-up to explain spotty or non-existent updates for this blog between May 30 and June 8.  Hope you all take the opportunity to shift through the archives if I can't post new ads while I'm away.

Meanwhile, this ad is a lot of buildup without a whole lot of payoff, don't you think?

Yeah, I'll never get it, AMC

Twice every year- on Memorial Day and then again on Veteran's Day- AMC "salutes the veterans" by running a marathon of machine-gun fire, bombings, and actors in costumes being blown apart by grenades and torpedoes.  And twice a year, I just shake my head and wonder what any of this has to do with "saluting our veterans."

I don't mind the special ceremonies before baseball games- I'm as cynical as they come, but even I find them heartwarming as long as I can mute the vapid, jingoistic faux-patriotic prattle from the talking heads in the booth.  I've never cared for the fly-overs-- those jets are expensive, dammit, and I didn't pay my taxes so they could be used to impress slack-jawed yokels waiting to watch a game.  But the salutes are generally pretty innocent and worthwhile and certainly well-deserved.

But showing Saving Private Ryan two or three times in a row?  What the hell is that all about?  I suspect that there are no more than a few hundred survivors of Normandy still living on the planet.  Are all veterans of all wars supposed to "enjoy" the carnage?  Is this something that veterans really have an appetite for?  Does AMC and other networks really work under the assumption that what veterans really crave on holidays created to honor them is wall-to-wall war movies?

Or are these films for the consumption of non-vets; a kind of "look how Awesome America Is/Was" sloppy Valentine to military service?  Either way, how does depicting the sons of farmers, mill workers, shop keepers, teachers etc. being gunned down on a celluloid battlefield accomplish that?  I really don't get this at all.

Audi's "Be Yourself- A Showy Douchenozzle" Campaign

Personally, I'd rather see Lexus's with red ribbons being handed to teenagers in front of glowing surburban palaces than be subjected to this crap.

Because while all car commercials use bad music, most don't use atrocious faux-folk music crap to sell their LookAtMeMobiles.  This song is awful and the guy singing it sounds like he died several days before taping and what we are hearing is the last puffs of air being expelled from his throat as his chest is compressed.  I imagine that the song itself is a remix of a 60s salute to non-conformity, which makes its use in this ad only about ten thousand times worse.

I mean, it's bad enough that the theme of the song is "buy this car so everyone will know you can afford to buy this car."  That's expected from Audi.  Don't try to sell us the "noncomformity" crap on top of it, ok?

Be the Batman, and a legend in your own mind

Ugh, just when I thought that these commercials could not become more pathetic....

This stupid, disjointed, confusing drivel was, I believe, intentionally created for the sole purpose of making my head hurt.  Or maybe you just have to be a "gamer" to understand how these Unconnected-to-the-Sane scenes are supposed to come together to form a commercial that makes some level of "sense."  Since I'm NOT a gamer, here's what I get out of it-

Guys are naturally nervous and concerned when suddenly surrounded by a gang of toughs in a dark alley, especially when it's raining really hard and they've just spent god knows how long staring at an Old Timey picture of allegedly dead parents in an equally Old Timey locket.

Guys are also nervous and reluctant to react when a group of equally scary and equally Properly Diverse toughs decide to pick on an old man on a train for absolutely no reason.

On the other hand, when buildings explode into flames, firemen may hesitate, but then they'll go in, because that's what firemen do, and this

Inspires the guy being threatened in the dark alley to curl his fist, which

Inspires the guy on the train to move toward his own gang of toughs, causing them to consider backing off

Which leads Batman to stand on a roof and sneer, because apparently he's a lot better at doing that than actually stopping all these bad things that are happening below him, but he's not really needed because we are now being told that we can

Be the Batman.  Uh huh.  WTF-ever.  Actually, the only thing anyone watching this ad is supposed to be inspired to do is

Get into your not-Batmobile No Matter How Much You Like To Pretend It Is car and

Get to your nearest Secret Tactical Weapons Storehouse, which us sane people refer to as Walmart, and buy the latest version of what seems to be two or three hundred video games involving Batman and a hospital for the insane featured for about five minutes in Batman Begins, and

Get back to what your Batcave, which we non-man/boys call dens or basements, and spend the next eleven hours engaging in all your violent fantasies which involve fighting back against all the fellow sapien life forms inflicting imagined slights upon your weird, paranoid sad little self on a daily basis, and

Actually, "and" nothing.  Just stay there.  The fewer doughy juveniles with persecution complexes there are out here in the Real World, the better.  Just stay there.  Be the Batman.   Your avatar is much, much more fun and interesting than you'll ever even attempt to be.  Leave life for us idiots who don't have 60-inch screens and an insatiable desire to remain children forever.  It's just not for you.