In Honor of Halloween, the MLB Playoffs, and my upcoming trip to the dentist....

When I was a Freshman in High School, the Yankees won the World Series 4-2 over the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I was (and am) a Red Sox fan, but a lot of my friends were Yankees fans (I had different taste in friends back then) and also big-time Reggie Jackson fans.  We didn't talk about baseball much, obviously.  We hunted and were on bowling leagues and skipped school together, but we didn't talk about baseball.

I wanted nothing to do with the Yankees or Reggie Jackson, but the Reggie Bar is my all-time favorite candy bar.  It was just awesome- just a glob of carmel and nuts and chocolate; what a Take Five bar would be if they switched out the pretzels for nuts, maybe.  It was about as uncomplicated as you could get in a candy bar.  And it was plenty good enough for me to ignore the fact that Reggie Jackson was there on the package, in his Yankees uniform.  Great candy.

Around the same time as I noticed Reggie Bars, Twix were introduced in the United States (they had been introduced in Great Britain in the 1960s, but in the world before the internet, who knew?) and I thought they were amazing, too.  I eat one every once in a while now and I don't think they taste as good as they did thirty years ago; I wonder if they suffered the same fate as Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is considerably less fatty now than when I was eating it once or twice a year back in the 70s and imagining that I would live on it when I was an adult, or McDonald's apple pies, which used to have an awesome thick fried crust but are now slimmed down and contain more fruit- yuck.  Or maybe I just don't find candy bars as tasty as I did when I was a fat little kid.

Whatever.  Reggie bars were discontinued in 1981- interestingly enough, the year that the Dodgers turned the tables on the Yankees and beat them in the World Series, again four games to two.  I  am not sure I noticed- I don't remember feverishly looking for them in the two or three stores available to me in my home town.  Maybe the end of the Reggie bar was so traumatic I've blocked the memory.  In any case they weren't around very long and I've seen the wrappers- yes, just the wrappers- selling on eBay for anywhere from four to ten bucks each (or a signed one for $499.  I'm not kidding.)  Not going to buy a wrapper, and probably wouldn't buy a bar nowadays if they were rereleased because, as I noted above, companies can't leave recipies alone and they'd probably mess this one up too.

So here's to you, Reggie bar.  Never liked Reggie Jackson, always hated the Yankees, but this was a nice candy bar.  I wonder how many kids got them on Halloween and wish they'd kept the wrappers.

I have to admit that "Orbitrim" is a pretty cool name- too good for this stupid gadget though

I just love commercials like this, they are so cheesy and fun and who knows, the products they offer might even work at least a little.

This one- for a trimmer head you can attach to that weed-wacker which doesn't work (I know it doesn't work, because weed-wackers, like electric razors, don't work.)  It ends "accidental mistakes" (can I tell you how much I love that phrase?  As opposed to "intentional mistakes?")

Then we have another spokesperson, Ghada Dergman, who is both a "Professional Landscaper" AND a "TV Personality" for something called the "Vanilla Ice Project" (how the heck did I miss that?)  She gives us this wonderful line- "it is a great product because it allows us to eliminate both your edger, weedwacker, and your hedgetrimmer," using the word "both" to list three things before spinning dramatically to tell us "AND my guys love it 'cause it saves time!"

(BTW, do people really hire landscapers to do things like weed wacking?  F--k you, lazy rich bastards!)

The thing is, if professional landscapers use this product, why isn't it available at high-end gardening stores and not just through cheesy commercials? Shouldn't I be able to find this at Home Depot?  Shouldn't there be gas-powered weed wacker models which have this design built in?

Oh right, I forgot.  Weed wackers don't work anyway (unless "cut for three minutes and then fumble with the fishing line release container for twenty minutes to get another two inches out before cutting for three more minutes" means "works.")- why make one with another feature which makes it not work even more?  It's dumb enough that you have to attach a power cord or add gasoline to get them to not work.  Putting a plastic ring around the trim line is like putting your electric razor in the charger- why bother?  Works just as well when the battery is dead!

The Hartford uses cliches it doesn't even understand....

"When it matters most" didn't include Game Seven of the 2001 World Series or the 2004 ALCS against Boston, I guess, because The Great MarianoTM wasn't particularly steady in THOSE moments, in fact totally choking them away.  The Marlins and Red Sox fans are most grateful that while television continues to treat Rivera like he was some kind of god of relievers, he could actually gag with the very best of them in the playoffs.

Just change time measurement to Before Google and After Google

Just imagine- in the not-too-distant past, this breakthrough in time-wasting, pointless, one hundred percent unconstructive and completely unhelpful mind-numbingly stupid garbage would have been technologically impossible.  Someday we'll refer to that time as the second Dark Ages, perhaps.

Our stories would go like this- "there was a time in history when people had lots of really, really moronic ideas for sucking precious moments out of their lives, but those ideas never went beyond the momentary daydream stage because the technology did not exist to make dumb notions into sad reality.  Then Google came along, and eventually teamed with Apple to make every fleeting non-thought something that could be acted out and shared with an incredibly disengaged, apathetic, and bored world."

Of course, nobody will hear these stories, because they'll be too busy watching their phones with their mouths hanging open to notice that a fellow mammal is trying to have a conversation with them, as if its like a million BG or something.  Want to tell me something?  Put it in a video or animation and send it to my phone, grampa!

Lots of mugging going on in this disgustingly sexist Gatorade Ad

Let's pretend for the sake of argument that it's not staged (of course it is, but let's pretend it's not.)

We have a woman here minding her own business, walking down the street drinking a bottle of Gatorade she presumably did not shoplift but actually purchased with her own money.  She suddenly finds herself accosted by a total stranger who jumped out of a van in front of her, steals her drink, and then mocks her attempts to get it back.  In real life, this results in a call to the police.  Because this woman has by now figured out that she's being humiliated for the tv audience, she goes along and proceeds to act like a total tool, jumping up and down in an attempt to get her drink back as she is abused by the onlookers, not one of which yells "give her back her drink, you asshole!"*

Ok, so this whole thing is staged.  Which doesn't make things any better, because it means that the makers of the ad think that the sight of a woman laughing hysterically as she attempts to rescue her drink from the stranger who came out of nowhere and snatched it out of her hand is not only funny, but will endear us to the product and make us want to buy it.  Even the opening of the ad makes zero sense- apparently the woman has not "earned" her Gatorade because she isn't sweating, but the time to replace electrolytes is BEFORE you become dehydrated, not after you are already sweaty and thirsty.  So you haven't "earned" your Gatorade until you've got sweat pouring down your shirt? What the hell?

What the commercial's messages- Assault is funny, humiliating people is funny, watching people humiliate themselves for a few seconds of facetime on tv is funny, you have no right to drink that Gatorade you purchased until you are already sweating- all adds up to me boycotting this junk.  I'll just assume I haven't "earned" the privilege of drinking overpriced sugar water and don't want to risk being treated like a kitten chasing a spot of light for the benefit of jackass tv droolers.  F- you, Gatorade.

*In all of the "Burn it to Earn it" Gatorade ads featuring males, the guy is forced to engage in some kind of sports-based contest in order to "earn" his Gatorade back.  But in the ONE ad I could find featuring a woman, she's just supposed to jump up and down and giggle like an idiot.  Hmmm.....

Only in America. Sadly.

Fifteen minutes after this "great idea" business got going, the last of the Liberal White People With Too Much Money Willing To Go In For Anything Once had tried the "make your own expensive smoothie" experiment and moved on, leaving a mess sitting in an otherwise empty back alley.  The next day, no one showed up because even though yeah it was an interesting experience yesterday that doesn't mean this is something we are pretentious enough to want to do on a regular basis, especially when there are 200 smoothie places within walking distance where someone behind a counter will whip it up for us in about thirty seconds flat for a lot less money.

I'm not the kind of person who is going to shed a tear for the twat who decided to take Posing to a whole new level by starting this "business" and then discovering that the whole Pick Your Own Fruit Make Your Own Smoothie Pay Me For the Privilege thing was a bridge too far.  I'm more like the kind of person who wonders why a meteor couldn't crash into this alley during the height of the Be Seen By Your One Percenter Friends Being Ridiculously and Overbearingly 'Liberal' By Making Smoothies in the Same Freaking Alley You Passed Out In Years Ago When You Were Still Alive craze.

Why did they make this McDonald's Commercial?

Here's how how it translates:  "You like McDonald's All Day Breakfast, but you don't like that you can't get everything you want because McDonald's offers only a limited All Day Breakfast menu.  But if it was McGriddles that you wanted All Day, now you can get that- so you have to find something else to complain about.

Meanwhile, if you wanted pancakes, or biscuit sandwiches, guess what?  You still can't get those items.  But to distract you from noticing that we actually created a commercial to announce that there is exactly ONE MORE ITEM on the All Day Breakfast menu, here's twenty seconds of headache-inducing stupidity featuring very stupid people behaving in very stupid ways."

Thanks, McDonald's.  Get back to us when "All Day Breakfast" at your restaurant means what it means at Denny's and IHOP- the breakfast menu, all day.  Until then, STFU with this crap, please.