Wear your best friend on your wrist!!!

Hey, this is really cool!  Now you can take your life-sucking games anywhere you go even before your parents have given in to your pathetic whining and sprung for that iPhone like all the other parents of your friends did before THEY hit the age of eight!

(Of course, if you are still f--ing around with this stupid crap when you hit the age of ten, get ready to be mercilessly bullied by your iPhone-owning friends!  And feel free to show this blog post to your parents in case they don't get it!)

Until then- yaaaaayyyy something to do other than make actual, human friends and play actual, human games (holy crap, these kids are OUTSIDE and TOGETHER and all they can think to do is f--k around with this nonsense?  Do kids even own whiffleballs or frisbees or bikes anymore?)

I take back that part about this being "really cool."  It's actually really, really sad.  If I had a kid, I might get something like this to keep them occupied during long car rides or rainy days.  No, I take that back, too- I'd use long car rides to TALK TO HIM and rainy days to PLAY GAMES WITH HIM.  I can't think of ANY instance in which I'd day to myself "man, I wish I had bought that stupid virtual friend thing to keep my kid's brain occupied, because books are so lame...."

And since my kid would be wildly popular- like the kids in these ads seem to be- he'd never lack other kids to engage in actual play with-- you know, actual play which burns actual calories and actual muscle and develops actual social skills.  Not this garbage.  Adults spend waaaaaayyyy too much of their lives staring at screens- why the hell would we want to introduce that ugly addiction in childhood?

Oh right, Capitalism.  I keep forgetting.

Nissan: Where the Salesmen are just decorative

Here's another ad people who actually make a living selling cars must loathe, because it's so damn common.  This woman doesn't need to be sold a car, she just needs to be followed around until she picks the one she's the most insane about and shown where to sign.  The cars might as well be in vending machines.  I wonder if Toyota shows this commercial to salesmen whenever they ask for a raise- "seriously?  You don't do anything NOW!  People are so desperately manic to buy our cars, you are practically in the way when they come in- a chimp with a pen could do your job!"

"Yeah yeah yeah love the cars, love the deal, here's my wallet give me my keys!"  And the salesman looks flustered and stunned by the whole thing- well yeah, I guess I would be stunned too if I walked into my new class late one August and had all the kids tell me "never mind about teaching us stuff, we read the text over the summer lets just start writing essays we'll grade ourselves and watch prep videos and see you after the AP Exam Mr. J!"

 I'd be stunned- and then I'd wake up.

"Thanks, Mom- these go great with those corrective shoes you gave me for my birthday last year!"

When I first started this blog more than seven years ago, I searched for this commercial on YouTube, but failed to find it.  At that point it was already 17 years old- but I remembered it like I had seen it yesterday because it was just so stunningly stupid.

This week, I finally found it.  And since like everyone else I did not have a blog back in 1991, and since I'm not adverse to snarking on commercials from the distant past, here it is, in all it's glorious awfulness.

This woman suddenly realizes that hey, it's Christmas and hey, she really ought to get to work buying all those people in her life- her husband, her family, and herself- some presents.  She's a little concerned about money, but especially concerned about having enough to buy herself something.  Seriously.  She's going to buy HERSELF a Christmas present.  Because that's not something she can leave to those other people.*

Suddenly she remembers that hey, those people in her family all have one thing in common- they all have bad eyesight.  Maybe they bump into things a lot or have stopped reading because the words are too blurry or are getting headaches from eyestrain.  Here's a wonderful idea for presents, and it only involves one trip to one store- "America's Best Contacts and Eyeglasses, for myself, AND my family!"

Sure, the element of surprise will be lost- she's going to have to make appointments for those kids and her husband and herself.   The element of Joy will be lost, too, as soon as her family realizes that the trip to the store for eye exams basically constitutes their freaking Christmas presents.  Happy Holidays, everybody!

In real life, is there any way this woman gets away with this?  I think that even back in 1991, eyeglasses were things that parents were kind of supposed to provide to their kids when they were needed- not as holiday presents.  What is this woman going to get her kids for their birthdays?  Braces?  Measles shots?  I mean, come on.  What the heck?

Anyway, she looks pretty happy with her "solution," and goes back to lovingly decorating the tree.  And we all kind of wish there had been a sequel in which she told her family what they were all getting for Christmas- a session of "Better Here, or Here?  Clearer Now, or Now?  Let me know when you can see the little red farm house in the distance" followed by a delightful several minutes picking out cheap frames.  And being told again and again that Yes, No Kidding, This Is Actually Your Christmas Present.  Really.  I would have loved to see that, no pun intended.

This commercial still makes me laugh, and I'm glad I got a chance to snark on it.  Better late than never.   And I bet this woman hasn't seen her kids for years, and hasn't got Clue One why that is.

*And now I suddenly understand why she sees the need to buy herself a Christmas present.  If this basic-essentials-for-Christmas bit is a regular thing with her, I don't imagine her family is all that generous in return .

Coke's new ad campaign gives me whiplash

Remember when Coca-Cola was running it's "Share a Coke With...." ad campaign?  It was roughly yesterday.  I still have about a dozen cans in my refrigerator which suggest that I share them with A Friend, Mom, Sweetie, a Superstar, etc.

Well, so much for that deal.  Maybe it's because Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and Valentine's Day and the rest of those Togetherness Is What Matters holidays are over.  For whatever reason, nowadays over at Coca-Cola it's all about getting your soda delivered in a colorful package and making sure the rest of the world keeps it's damn grubby mitts off.

This kind of reminds me of watching "Roll a Rollo to your friend" and "You can have a Half and still have a Whole" (Almond Joy, in case you don't remember or are under 40) going the way of carbon paper and being replaced by Twix "Two for Me, None for You" nastiness.  And I wonder if, sometime in the late autumn of next year, Coca-Cola will pretend to be in to be into the whole sharing thing again.  Until then, I guess I'll enjoy the colorful cans.  I guess.

Isn't Jan jumping to conclusions here?

I thought that the stupid customer in this commercial just brought her friends to help her pick out a car- why does Jan just assume that every person she brought with her is ALSO in the market for a brand new car or truck?

I mean, wouldn't that be a rather odd coincidence- "I want to buy a car, and I brought along with me three friends who are also interested in purchasing?"  Holy crap, really?

And Jan has her usual stock answers for each person- she can let them know exactly what is available for each one of them without even a glance at their credit scores or even asking them individually what they might be looking for.  She can just TELL which ones want a sportscar, truck, 4-door, 2-door, lease deal, used (excuse me, "certified pre-owned,") etc.?  How?  By looking at their shoes?

I suspect that this is all about Jan refusing to ever, ever get up from her freaking desk.  In magical tv land, this does not prevent her from selling 200 cars and trucks a day to excited, blithering idiots who rush in bleating "I want it I want it I want it where do I sign?"  Damn I missed my calling- selling cars looks like the easiest damn job in the world.

Still- I came in here with a person interested in buying a car.  That doesn't mean I want to buy a car.  And it certainly doesn't mean that you get to hand my friend a sheet of paper and say "sign here where it says you agree to pay $400 a month for the next five years, do it quickly and I might even show you the actual car you're buying."  It's going to take a little more than that, Jan.

Buffalo Wild Wings performs a nasty bit of surgery on this guy, for absolutely no reason at all

1.  These kids are a little too old to be acting like mommy is going away to have cancer surgery and will be back in a week or longer.  Either that, or those apron strings are really, really tight.  I shudder to think how they'd handle "I'm leaving because your dad can't appreciate my love for my college basketball team, and I'll see you ever other weekend."

2.  Daddy can't appreciate college basketball "because he went to art school?"  I wonder why Buffalo Wild Wings didn't just go with "because dad's gay and we figure gay people don't like college basketball," because that's EXACTLY what they really WANT to say here.  I get that this is supposed to be about exaggeration being funny, but the "art school" bit is not only mean and stupid, it's also 100 percent unnecessary.  The commercial would have been every bit as effective if the kid had just said "Dad's college team didn't make the tournament."  There.  Done.

Except "Dad's team didn't make the tournament" doesn't leave dad looking like a eunuch which, again, is the real point of this commercial.   F--- off, Buffalo Wild Wings.

The cure for wage stagnation: Lots and lots of coma-inducing grease and carbs. Wooooooooooheeeeee!!

I can remember when Golden Corral commercials weren't so open about appealing to the No Money No Taste Just Wanna Stuff Ourselves Hillbilly market.  A few years ago ads for America's Feed Bin featured what looked like Middle Class families heading out for a nice, affordable night of togetherness, sitting at tables congratulating themselves on saving money ("for about ten bucks!") which might have been spent on a babysitter for the kids and a much nicer dinner for the parents.

About six years ago, the slack-jawed yokel image began to permeate GC ads- suddenly we were supposed to be interested in grandma's reaction to the fountain dribbling Hershey's chocolate syrup ("My jaw....just....dropped!") you could stick strawberries, macaroons and your own fingers into, Make-Your-Own cotton candy, and all the other things that scream UNSANITARY GIMMICK to anyone with a modicum of taste.

Now, Golden Corral has gone Full Hick on us, hiring everyone's favorite Seriously He And His One Joke Are Still Around poser to hawk the attractions of heavy, greasy food piled into warming pans to be picked at by blue-collar and no-collar bottom-feeders who appreciate a break from their usual diets of 7-11 pizza, the McDonald's dollar menu and bags of Tyson's frozen chicken somethings.  Only on special ocassions, of course- because I think GC still requires shirts and shoes.

Listening to this crowing jackass scream about America's lard pit while a crowd of fat morons pour out of limosine sure doesn't do anything for my appetite.  Then again, neither would walking into a Golden Corral.