Ugh. Just pay your damn taxes, scofflaws!

"If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more in back taxes, you are probably feeling the stress, anxiety, and fear that comes naturally to people who ignore their obligations to pay their fair share year to year and who figure that, eventually, the free ride is going to come to an end and the Big Bad IRS is going to demand that you stop making others carry your burden.  For some reason, we are expected to feel sorry for you."

"Inexplicably, we are also expected to feel sorry for you when you chomp like a starving bass at bait like this commercial, and hand over even more money you don't have to a Tax Dodging Service, like all the phony people with initials instead of last names who claim that with one phone call to this Very Friendly and Knowledgeable Company they managed to get their perfectly legitimate tax burden reduced by 95%, when you find yourself in even bigger trouble with the IRS and with less money than you would have had if you had just called the Treasury Department and come clean, morons."

"Personally, if you fall for this ad and throw your money at this bs 'service,' I think you get exactly what you deserve, deadbeat.  May sound mean, but as someone who pays his taxes on time all the time and doesn't look to skip out on my responsibility as a citizen of this country, that's how it is."

Unless he's in a bomb shelter and Armageddon has arrived, there's simply no excuse for this

I just gotta ask- if not for Amazon Fire TV, what was the most likely scenerio for the guy in this ad- opening a book, or committing suicide?

Earth to the People of Earth:  When you find yourself having no idea how to get on with your life between seasons of your favorite show, television has become way, way too important to you.  Instead of being in a "show hole," imagine if this ad had depicted a man trapped in an airplane on a six-hour flight and suffering withdrawal symptoms because he badly wants a cigarette.  Or suffering from the DTs because he forgot to pick up some cash and the liquor service can't check credit cards.  Would anyone think there was anything funny about it?

The guy in this ad is sitting in a dark room, all by himself (except that his best friend, the television, has suddenly stopped servicing him.)  He has lost his reason to live because Game of Thrones is on hiatus.  I wonder if he ever expected more from the world than this.  Fortunately for him, Amazon is not going to make him think about it for very long, 'cause Look More Stuff To Watch Wow That Was Close You Almost Actually Got Up.  Ugh, this is sad.

Four more dollops of joy from Reddi Wip

Commercial No. 1- Never mind the weird casting (is this guy the woman's husband, or father, or what?  They don't even look like they really even know eachother, let alone should be sitting at a table together) or setup (is this breakfast- he looks like he just woke up, she looks like she's taking a break from the office.)  Let's just jump to the fact that the guy here seems to be adding Reddi Wip to everything simply because it's there and he enjoys squirting it.  Where the hell does he get off adding it to the woman's fruit bowl- the can was just sitting there.  Isn't it safe to assume that it was perfectly visible to the woman and if she had wanted some on her fruit, she would have added it herself?  And what's the deal with her reaction- she looks annoyed, and resigned, and satisfied all at the same time.  What the hell?  Enough is NOT said here- and I don't think I've ever made that comment about any other commercial.

Commercial No. 2-   Why is the dad here sneaking downstairs?  Is he afraid that Mommy will catch him "stealing" a cookie from Santa, or what?  There's something really weird about a scene featuring Dad sneaking around in his own house.  And why was there a can of Reddi Wip just sitting out there- isn't this stuff supposed to be refrigerated?  Was it left out just in case Santa wanted to add it to his cookies and cocoa?  So the adult in this ad actually believes in Santa?

And wouldn't it have been a much better response to "what are you doing" for Dad to say "I'm eating a cookie that I bought and which is in my own house, go back to bed" instead of stupidly slathering his face with Reddi Wip?  Why does Dad owe an explanation to this kid (who is too old to believe in Santa, but gotta blame this on Dad) at all?  GO BACK TO BED.

Commercial No. 3- why are the two males in this house acting like starving dogs who haven't been fed in days?  And does food deprivation really make one's sense of hearing so acute that the slight gas-release sound made by a Reddi Wip can be detected on the other side of closed doors?  Please.

Commercial No. 4- this idiot kid's eye-rolling about being at the kid's table must have made him an absolute delight to his fellow kids.  I'm sure they were so happy when he came back because he found out that only kids were getting Reddi Wip on their pie.....but why was this the case?  We've already seen that adults like Reddi Wip at least as much as kids to.  The message of this ad- "being an adult is overrated"- clearly suggests that Reddi Wip is something we are expected to outgrow.  It's not for grown-ups.  But that message contradicts what we saw in the other ads.

I know, I know.  I think about this stuff way too much.

I wonder why I didn't get to this Reddi-Wip Commercial back in 2009.....

Why does this restaurant keep a container of Not Reddi Wip available if it's waitresses are going to bad-mouth it and do their best to convince customers to choose Reddi Wip instead?

Why is the waitress here determined to convince the customer to pick Reddi Wip?  Does she just love the noise Reddi Wip makes when it's applied to pie?  Does she hate the idea of opening that Not Reddi Wip carton?  Or does she just love being a condescending pain in the butt (seriously, just put the damn topping on my pie already?)

What if the woman had said "Oil?"  Would the waitress have then responded to the question "where can I freshen up?" with "restroom, or dumpster in the back alley?"

Owen's job description continues to confound me

Again, maybe I'm just skipping over the absolute dreck that this series of "Owen" commercials has become, but I just have to ask- wasn't this greasy geek himself just hired by GE a few months ago?  Why are people throwing their resumes at him- for all of the banal generalities he's thrown around about his job (he's going to "change the world" by "making it easier for machines to talk to eachother"- looks to me like he's just sitting in an incredibly sterile environment tapping away at a keyboard while the world outside the enormous windows just passes him by) he's never mentioned that he has any power to hire anyone.  In fact, in an earlier ad he made it very clear that he does NOT hire people.  So why are resumes being brought to his attention like this?  Doesn't GE have a human resources department- and if Owen is the human resources department, what happened to all that "getting machines to talk to eachother" and "changing the world" bs?

The Levittown Hillbillies?

1.  Someone invited these people to a wedding?  Seriously?  I would have hired guards to keep them at least 200 yards away.

2.  This lunatic lives in a freaking palace of a house?  I know that's kind of required for all commercial-world dwellers, but still-- this woman can't have a job that calls for more skill than restocking the shelves at the dollar store. She didn't pay for that house.

3.  These people must be the absolute delight of their neighbors.  Actually, I'm pretty sure that the neighbors are going to use the next few days to try to sell their houses to unsuspecting wannabee suburbanites who won't know until it's too late that they are living next to such loud, obnoxious jagoffs.

4.  Please don't buckle up, kids.  Just keep driving too fast and yelling "ROAD TRIP!!!!" every few seconds.  Nobody wants you in the neighborhood, nobody wants you ruining their wedding, and I know at least one blogger who never, ever wants to see you on tv again.

5.  Oh my God, I just looked at the side panel on YouTube and realized....this commercial is one of a series.  I am never going to run out of material.

On the road again....

Here is where I'll be until the evening of June 27th, and I definitely will not be posting until then.  Enjoy the archives while I"m away!