As long as they don't start snarking on commercials....

Hey look, yet ANOTHER new YouTube Channel featuring obnoxiously bubbly young white people with way too much time on their hands and who share a dream of getting rich without effort by producing videos of themselves doing obnoxiously bubbly white things!

And they even have an awesomely hip and totally with-it names and a super-clever name* for their group- they're the original Three Musketeers!

And you can bet that over the next several weeks they'll be making a hundred or so superawesomeamazing videos in which they endlessly mug for the camera while prancing, playing, cooking and taking selfies while also endlessly reminding us how young and hip and free-spirited they are By The Way Please Don't Forget To Upclick They Really Really Want This To Be Their New Career!

My guess is that they did a quick survey of YouTube and saw that reviewing movies has been done to death,  the market cornered long ago by people who know how to do more with a camera than just point it out themselves before downloading to YouTube.  Ditto discussing Religion or making instructional videos.  Plus, they aren't really talented at anything other than being young and perky- so they'd thought "hell, we've got $100,000 each in college loan debt and no skills to show for it- let's try cashing in on this whole interwebs thing- we already love to use Twitter and spend most of our lives looking at OTHER people's videos, how hard could it be?"

Good luck, kids.  I won't be watching this version of "The Three Musketeers" but I'm sure that having a job and friends and a life and a functioning brain, I'm not part of the target audience anyway.  And I really don't want to meet anyone who is- because that would be really, really sad.

*Come on, Effort is hard!

(Editor's Note:  Turns out that these three "kids" didn't "spontaneously" decide to start their own YouTube channel Because What The Heck We Love To Have Fun, but are instead the hosts of a show being funded by M&M Mars.  So this is basically the Mickey Mouse Club for candy bars.  I'm going to keep my original comments though, because the "kids" are still total tools.)

I have different "Questions," North Face

It's not actually about questioning "sanity" or questioning "motivation" for me.  It's more like questioning priorities.  As in, why do the people in these ads always choose to feed their colossal egos instead of, I don't know, handing over a little of their obviously overflowing bank accounts to people in actual need?

I mean, think about it.  Every single one of these North Face "Question" ads features some unbelievably self-absorbed white person reflecting on how the world (or, more likely, their tiny and rapidly diminishing circle of friends) simply can't understand their "need" to climb that rock or ski that mountain or do any number of ego-stroking stuff they can do because they have enough Capital One Awards points saved up.  The local food bank?  Meh.  Nothing but losers with lame ambitions there.  Ugh.

(I also like the "can't do this" cry from the woman trying to climb that rock- how about "I shouldn't be doing this, this is really stupid" or "why aren't I doing something more productive and beneficial to society with all my 'determination?'")

Anyway, I thought this was a good ad to feature on Thanksgiving- god knows the people in this ad have plenty to be thankful for.  Like being able to give the middle finger to the rest of us, who wonder why it's always the most shallow people who have the most disposable income.

You people are weird

1.  Hey, wait a minute!  They are already using this song in a Three Musketeers Commercial!  I JUST posted about it! WTF????

2.  "Owning a dog brings out the best in people?"  Um, seriously?  Then why do all my interactions with dog owners include these people saying things like

"Oh he's just being friendly" (as the damn thing jumps on me,) and

"Oh don't worry, he doesn't bite" (oh then there's no problem that he's growling and baring those teeth he doesn't use, thanks for letting me know...) and

"Oh he barks to warn me, that just shows he's a good watchdog" (never mind that if a dog barks at everything, his bark is absolutely f--ing useless as a danger detector, you STUPID KNOB!) and

Not to mention that dog owners just love to walk their dogs on twenty-foot leashes which seem designed to make me trip and which allow the pair to take up so much damn room I have to walk into the street to get around them.  And how so many dog owners prefer transparent bags to carry their precious little bestest friends waste around (seriously, what the hell is the matter with you people?)

I guess the "best" in me will stay hidden away until I own one of these things.  Which is to say, forever.

Nintendo's idea of a family gathering....

This woman is very clever- instead of just being honest and telling us that she wants to keep her kid occupied while she entertains other adults, she pretends that she's doing the kid a favor by letting him have "me time" with his stupid electronic game.  Because he can't have "me time" when it's not the holidays and family isn't around to visit- he can't be asked to adjust his precious game-playing schedule in any way whatsoever because, well, family.  God Freaking Forbid.

So instead of talking to aunts and uncles and grandparents he probably rarely sees, Little Tommy (or whatever the hell his name is, I'm not watching this crud again) just zones out and wastes the entire day staring at a screen while his relatives attempt to form a bond- ANY kind of bond- by offering him tips on how to "win" the pointless nonsense game he's playing.   His response is to glare angrily at this invasion of the "me time" promised by mom.  My response is to lose just a little more hope for the future of humanity.

Oh, and the mom has a daughter, too.  She's in another commercial, with another toy she's obsessing over 24/7 while mom bleats something about "boundaries."  This is a very sad tv family.

Just a few questions, Kohl's....

As long as we are going to use the tagline "give a little more...."

1.  What's the average wage you pay your overnight cleaning crew and shelf restockers?

2.  What does a cashier at Kohl's make?  How about a manager?

3.  What kind of health benefits does Kohl's offer?  Are these benefits available to part-timers and temporary workers (like the ones you hire to work between mid-November and early January only?)

4.  What is the official corporate position at Kohl's concerning an increase in the minimum wage?

5.  Is it fair to assume that you rob your employees of a break period to make them watch this commercial before asking "ok, team, every week we are going to ask you to document something you did to 'give a little more' to a customer over the preceding seven days.  Your continued employment here at Kohl's will depend on how well you respond to our 'give a little more' challenge....?"

Do these questions seem a bit intrusive?  Well, just asking- I mean, you're the ones who decided "give a little more" was a message which really seemed appropriate for the Holiday season, after all.  So I don't think it's all that unfair to ask if Kohl's, Inc. is into "giving a little more," or that's just something you celebrate when your employees do it (not to mention thinking that it would be just fine if the customers adopted it, especially while shopping at Kohl's....)

And then I'm going to kill you, right here at IHOP...

Fifteen seconds in, I'm pretty sure this guy wishes he had just taken himself to IHOP and left this latest mistake from Match.com at her home.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to IHOP, by myself, and ordering three or four of these Seven for Seven meals.  Not because I want to eat them.  I just want to see the look on the waitress's face when she takes my order as I sit there all alone.  My guess is that, this being America, she won't bat an eye. This is the land of Golden Corral and Cici's Endless Pizza and Frosted Fried Dough and Supersized Sodas and Taco Bell's Fourth Meal Campaign,* after all.

*https://travelingmedicineshow.wordpress.com/2007/02/15/fourth-meal-the-ad-campaign-between-irresponsible-and-pure-evil/

Darn you M&M Mars, I hate you for making me do this....

Ok, do schools really ask new kids to stand up in front of the class and introduce themselves?  I've been a teacher for 22 years and I've never once requested that any new student put themselves in the spotlight like this...I'm pretty sure this is kind of a no-no, and that in real life it's much more common for new kids to be matched up with two or three "old-timers" in their classes who guide them through the classes and help acclimate them to their new surroundings...right?  I mean, nobody really does this Leave It To Beaver-level awkward stuff, do they?

Oh, who the hell am I kidding.  That's all I got.  This is actually a very sweet commercial with a very nice message and in fact doesn't annoy me in the slightest.  It doesn't even bother me that they use a Depression-era Spiritual for background music, because it works here.  I guess if Mars is going to make a commercial for this candy bar every thirty or forty years, it ought to do a quality job of it, and they do with this effort.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis (all half-dozen of you, from the looks of the counter) knows that I really don't throw out a lot of praise for commercials.  That would make me like that idiot who decided to start posting "What's Great About..." reviews for movies on YouTube (who the hell wants to watch that crap?)  But I've got to admit, this is a good ad.   There.  I said it.

I won't make a habit of this, I promise.