A Message from your friendly Halloween Mafia

Yeah, I can totally remember back in the late-70s when I was Trick or Treating and my gang came across the odd house that wasn't offering snack-sized Butterfingers.  We were a lot tougher than this cartoon ghost suggests we should have been- we didn't stop at TP'ing those Butterfinger-less houses.  We'd generally set them on fire, but only after smashing a few windows and hanging a dead cat or two from the mailboxes for a few nights in a row afterwards, subjecting the inhabitants to our own special brand of psychological terror.  At least that's how I remember it- though I might just be thinking of the plot of almost every second-feature horror movie I watched at the Drive-In as a teen....

Because Butterfingers are really that awesome.  Right up there with Clark bars and candy corn* and popcorn balls** or raisins.***    Awesome enough to wreak horrible vengeance on any family that dares offer Milky Ways, Snickers, Peanut Butter Cups, Take 5s**** or any of the other 200 or so candy options available at sales prices in oversized bags this time of year.  Uh huh.

*Anyone still handing this stuff out deserves to have their house TP'd.  All the candy corn ever manufactured was produced in 1955 and jammed into a huge silo in Kansas which is emptied every October and then refilled with the 99% left unsold in November.  Yes, it's 60-year old candy- and it was gross when it was fresh.  You wouldn't eat it.  Stop asking kids to.

**I can't believe these are still on store shelves either.  Come on.  Who wants to eat stale popcorn held together by cheap carmel (that is carmel, right?)

***None of the completely illegal and creepy actions I described above suffice to punish anyone who hands out raisins on Halloween.  October 31 is not the day to preach Healthy Eating.  Offering raisins on Halloween is like eating a salad on Mardi Gras.  No.

****My students love these things.  Why are they so damned hard to find in the month leading up to Halloween and virtually impossible every other time of the year?

How did the people in these Passat ads ever reach their current ages?

I guess we are supposed to be glad that the drivers in this commercial own cars which warn them when they are about to hit something, because god forbid they get their heads out of their asses and actually pay attention to their surroundings.

The first guy we see takes a moment- literally, about a microsecond- to reflect on the fact that he was so distracted by a 30-year old Willie Nelson song that he nearly backed into traffic and caused a serious accident before turning the song back on because hey, he'll hear a beep if there's another problem, right?

The second driver is actually responsible for the safety of his wife- whom he presumably loves- and his daughter, whom he also presumably loves- yet he's too absorbed with the same fricking song to notice that he's about to plow into the car in front of them at high speed before the car beeps, saving his family and his own worthless life from his oblivious asshattery.  This makes his daughter laugh.  Because his daughter doesn't know that Dad is a moron who almost got her, mom and the people in the other car seriously hurt or even killed.

The third driver doesn't seem to be doing anything dangerous- he just sees that the apparently worthless "a car is passing you" light which shows up in the driver's side mirror (which also shows that a car is passing- so, what's the point of the light again?) and acknowledges that a car driven by Willie Nelson is, in fact, passing.  For some reason, Willie Nelson feels compelled to beep at the first car- to make sure that the driver looks and sees that it's Willie Nelson?  Because Willie Nelson can hear his signature song on the other guy's stereo?  What the hell?

Bottom line:  The message of this commercial is that it's perfectly ok to be a distracted dumbass if you drive a Passat, because the car will do the responsible thing FOR you.  Great.  As a pedestrian, let me say that in my opinion we can't get to self-driving cars fast enough, because clearly the concept that drivers need to kind of be aware of their surroundings while maneuvering several tons of steel and fiberglass is going away very quickly.

And in the end, your invisible coffin will be lined with gold. Congratulations.

I'm going to skip the more obvious theme of this commerical- that Jim Cramer is a money-obsessed vampire who sees absolutely EVERYTHING in terms of dollars and cents and that this is a GOOD thing- and instead focus on a piece of product placement which, if you think about it, actually fails pretty miserably.

In the original Ironman film in 2006, Tony Stark announces that Stark Industries is halting all weapon production.  That night, we see Pepper Potts watching Jim Cramer discuss this decision on his headache-inducing show Mad Money.  Cramer is ranting about how terrible this decision is and how his advice to stockholders is to SELL SELL SELL.

Moments later, we see Potts tell Tony that the stock had dropped 56 points on the news.

So Jim Cramer's advice to people who own stock in a company which has (presumably) always done extremely well and has a well-known genius as it's president is to dump the stock AFTER it has dropped 56 points- basically, to take an enormous loss?  Not to see this as a fantastic opportunity to buy up stock at suddenly bargain-basement prices?  Who would listen to this?  Is Cramer totally on the take here, urging his viewers to sell to further depress the price so he can buy more?

Well, possibly.  Cramer does sell this "opportunity" to find out in advance what he buys and sells, for a small subscription fee- he promised to let people know BEFORE he buys or sells, but big deal if "before" means a thousandth of a second before the deal goes through when he sells.  But that's not the topic of today's post.  It's the product placement, which seems pretty silly when you think about it- how is showing Cramer to be a panicky idiot any great advertisement for his show?

Then again, why is a commercial showing Cramer to be an obsessive creep about money a great advertisement for his show?

"The Check Cleared, So Here's Me, Endorsing This."

1.  How did the conversation you had in the back seat of the car that got you yelled at by your parents turn into a good idea for a cell service commercial?  When did "annoying" become entertaining?  Oh, right- Jamie Foxx.

2.  I get the whole idea of celebrity endorsement deals.  But don't they only make sense when the celebrity has something- ANYTHING- to do with the product he or she is endorsing?  Why the hell should I take Jamie Foxx's advice on cell service plans?  I mean, could it be more obvious that he's bleating memorized lines in exchange for a paycheck?   "Hey, I'm a famous, recognizable face.  I'm here to tell you to buy this because I'm famous and recognizable.  Ok, so Jamie Foxx telling you to use this cell service maybe doesn't make as much sense as Matthew McConaughey showing you how much fun it is to drive a Lexus because he probably owns one, but it certainly makes as much sense as Magic Johnson extolling the firtues of Rent-A-Center because while Jamie Foxx might actually use this cell service, there's no freaking way Magic Johnson has ever stepped foot into a Rent-A-Center!"

3.  On another note, does anyone listen to the Sirius/XM radio show "The Foxxhole with Jamie Foxx?"  May I ask why?

And if you want to sell out, sell out

Other than the use of a classic Steven Georgiou/Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam song to sell cars, there's nothing especially offensive about this commercial.  It's message seems to be "be who you are, and show the world who you are by driving this particular vehicle and defacing it with a gaudy bumper sticker," which again is not especially offensive except for it's overbearing sickly tweeness.   If you want to advertise that you think America is SuperAwesomeAmazing or that you're voting for Trump hey, go for it.  Whatever.

But I still can't forgive the use of the song to sell Jeeps.  I'd like to think that the song has fallen into Fair Use and Mr. Islam has no responsibility for this travesty, except that's obviously his voice....so, unless you've run into some hard times and need the money, shame on you, sir.  This isn't the Cat Stevens I remember at all.  Sad.

For some people, November 8 is the Beginning of the End. Might as well cash in now!

The scenes of Not Caused By Humans storm damage didn't convince me to buy this 25-year shelf life Must Have Survival Food, nor did the happy scene of the extremely white family passing around bowls of hot Gourmet Survival Comfort Food while nuclear winter went on its merry way outside.  I think what really sold me on this stuff was the crazy-eyed woman suffering from the collagen overdose.  Really, will lip enhancement services be available after the apocalypse?

But wait- even if I do purchase the 25-year emergency food supply I NEED, how will I be able to hold on to it in a world where clueless niave tree-hugging hippies and Berniebros and supporters of Killery Lock Her Up Clinton didn't think ahead like I do?  Oh right, I forgot--



Hey, NRA tool- I've got a message for every frightened, bed-wetting little boy who feels more like a man when he's carrying an AR-15 and who thinks that AR-15 is going to protect him from terrorist attacks and a tyrannical government which has nuclear weapons: Issues.  Get help with them.  Until you do, please stop donating and voting.  We are trying to have a society here.

So much wrong with this Mercedes Benz Commercial....

(First- yes, I am aware that it's actually not even for Mercedes Benz, but for a line of special cleaning products designed specificially to keep your Mercedes Benz looking Showroom-New.  Doesn't help.)

Can we just start with the juxtaposition of the guy washing and waxing and shining up his car while his date is primping and preening HERSELF?  She's not busy scrubbing her immaculate-even-for-television ridiculous glowing-white house.  She's getting HERSELF Showroom-Ready.  Meanwhile the guy isn't shaving, he isn't showering, he isn't applying deodorant and, as it turns out, he's not wearing the correct sneakers (I guess.  Whatever.  I don't get that part at all.)  He doesn't need to- he could show up wearing bright orange shorts and black socks with white shoes for all his date gives a damn, because Let Me Step Aside So You Can Check Out My Ride.

And that's another thing.  The guy seems to realize that he's ridiculously underdressed for his date with a woman who spent hours getting ready (always with a giant smile on her face, like this guy is a great catch- because he has a hot car?  Really?)  She's dressed to the nines and ready to go....somewhere glamorous, I guess.  But he looks like he's ready for an afternoon in the bleacher seats at the Cubs game.  Did they get their wires crossed, or what?  If a mistake was made, it was cleaerly made by the GUY in this situation, as he sort of sheepishly acknowledges before reminding his date that Hey Once Again, Check Out My Ride- Does It Really Matter How I'm Dressed?

The bottom line here is that this woman spent all afternoon getting ready for a date- with a fricking car.  I hope they are very, very happy together.  Oh, and here's another bottom line- I've seen puddles far less shallow than these idiots.  They totally deserve eachother- and I still don't know if I'm talking about the guy and the girl, the guy and the car, or the girl and the car.