Masterpass shows how much Joe Montana likes money

I guess I'm supposed to know who the woman is in this commercial too, but I don't and I'm perfectly ok if no one wants to enlighten me.  It's Kat something, I know that.  Don't care.

The point of this movie is that the target audience is composed of mouth-breathers who are likely to forget the product being sold unless it's hammered into their skulls repeatedly over the course of thirty seconds but who really like anything that involves using their phones.  I doubt that there's any sensible reason for Joe Montana, who hasn't thrown a football professionally in 23 years (yes, that makes me feel very old) and is therefore pretty much an unperson for that target audience, to be here.  But whatever- hey everybody look, here's an old guy who played in the NFL a quarter of a century ago but can still be triggered to throw fragile decorations across the room by repeating a word!  Funny, right?  Right?

Oh by the way, before all this BS with Montana and Kat Whoever, we see a young woman totally flummoxed at witnessing the customer in front of her use her phone to pay for something.  Holy crap Mastercard, I grew up with phones attached to the walls by cords and I get the concept of paying bills with them by flashing the screen over a card reader.  We're supposed to buy the idea that some Millenial is astonished by this sorcery?  Seriously?

And one more thing- would the woman using "Masterpass" really respond to "what is that?" with "Masterpass?"  Not "I'm using my phone to pay my bill?"  Are people now programmed to provide free advertising to strangers?  That's almost as dumb as the Doddering Old Money-Grubbing Quarterback with One Less Ring than Tom Brady making a fool of himself crap that follows.  Almost.

Amazon Prime's mastery of laziness, incompetence, cluelessness....and a bonus dig at the U.S. Postal "Service"

Or "one week in the life...."

Exactly one week ago, I ordered something on Amazon Prime.  It "arrived" on Tuesday....somewhere.  The delivery guy put it on a porch and took a picture of the box on the porch and sent it to me, which was great except I did not recognize the porch.  Which means that rather than bring the package to the residence of the person who actually ordered it the delivery guy, apparently tired of driving around with said package, decided to randomly drop it off at a random porch somewhere.  And then take a photo of it and send it to me- "look, here's that stuff you ordered.  Try to guess where I left it.  It's kind of a game!"

On Thursday I spent thirty minutes maneuvering through Amazon's maze of circular "orders" options until finally coming across a chat opportunity.  Within a few minutes the problem was resolved in the form of an apology and promise of a replacement for the lost item.  To make it more likely I actually received the item, I asked Amazon to send it to my place of work, where there's pretty much always someone to sign for it and which is not likely to be mistaken for a random porch somewhere.

Well, today I check my Amazon Orders page and find that the package has been "Delivered"--- to the school--- which is closed---- because it's SATURDAY.  Did the driver, finding a closed, empty building, just leave the package by the door and move on?  Don't know for sure- I haven't received a photograph.  I can't go to the school to check for my package, and I'm hoping that the "delivered" notice actually means "attempted delivery," but I guess I'll find out on Monday.

Meanwhile, a few minutes ago I got home from the store to find an "Unsuccessful Delivery" notice from the Post Office for ANOTHER order I made on Amazon this week.  This one was brought by the US Postal "Service," which has this bizarre habit of randomly deciding that certain packages must be signed for while others can be just left by the door.  Since I can't get to the Post Office during the times it's open I'm probably not going to be able to secure this package, either.

Isn't ordering stuff magical, kids?

This IS the 21st Century, right?

So this ad wasn't produced by Chrome?

If I missed something, please let me know what it was, because all I get from this ad is "Firefox sucked because it was too slow, but we fixed it and now it's not as slow anymore."  And to let us know how slow Firefox was, we are shown a girl attempting to drag a refrigerator down the street with her bike.

I have to admit, I don't see "man our product was a piece of junk" ads very often.  But again, maybe I'm missing something?

Extremely faint praise for Surface Laptop!

 

Well, I guess Rich Woods is just trying to be honest here, but this is a pretty damning "advertisement" for Surface Laptop, isn't it?

I mean, you can't describe it as "fast" or "easy to use" or "innovative" or "reliable?" You've got "sexy" and nothing else?  It could be as functional as a paperweight and be described as "sexy."  Are laptops just cars now?  All about the looks?  Nobody gives a damn if they actually work, as long as they let you show well to total strangers as you sit in Starbucks?

When I buy a computer, I don't look for a machine I want to stare at or date.  Rich Woods does?  Maybe you could keep your personal issues out of your reviews, Mr. Woods?

What the hell?

NFL Sunday Night Football v. College Gameday- Which is the Greatest Moment since the Big Bang?

So, which is superior at providing over-the-top, redefining excessive glitz, hammer-to-the-head Oh Please Be Convinced That This Is The Most Exciting Thing In The Freaking Universe crank up the volume commercialism?  ESPN's College Football Gameday or NBC's Sunday Night Football?

ESPN's features the musical--um, "stylings?" of something named Lzzy Hale (seriously?) screaming her ass off before transitioning to three hours of the musings of recent NFL washouts and ancient fossils drooling over college-aged men (Lee Corso is eighty-two freaking years old.  He's been ranting about these young men on television for thirty freaking years, never mind that the last of his brain cells died out at least tweny years ago.  It should be downright ILLEGAL for him to crowd-surf.  Enough already.)

NBC's features the downright embarressing pomping of Carrie Underwood introducing whatever matchup happens to be the last of the day as if it's the freaking Second Coming.  I've never managed to get through either of these cringe-worthy eardrum-assaulting celebrations of excess without slamming down the mute button- and they are almost worse with the sound down.

Only one of them can be the Most Significant Event in Human History since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Commandments.  So which is it?

Kind of makes you wonder where football in general is going- if it's still "America's Game" and dominant in the ratings, why all this fake glitz and glam?  Do I detect the slightest hint of desperation here?

There are no heroes in this NFL Shop Commercial

At least the family is being honest toward the boyfriend- they all love another team to the point that they insist on wearing THEIR jerseys to the dinner table but will not tolerate his.  So they are openly jerks who take their sports waaaayyy too seriously.  He should know this before he gets too involved with this Nowhere Near Worth It girlfriend.

But there's nothing admirable about the guy, either.  When told that he "can't" wear his jersey at the dinner table, he responds by wearing something far more obnoxious than a simple jersey.  I can get him refusing to pretend not to be a Raiders fan to avoid "conflicts" with the stupid family.  But to respond to "don't wear that" by revealing a blinking-light Raiders sweatshirt is just way too close to giving the middle finger to the other people at the table.  You don't look proud of your team, buddy- you look stupid and childishly confrontational.  And then you sit there and make little faces like you're trying to quietly pass a stone or really would like to say something if you could work up the nerve, but you can't.  Nope- you're just going to sit there and be a passive-aggressive douchenozzle. 

So everyone in this commercial is kind of a jackass.  Nothing new to see here.

The Ultimate in Manipulative Tripe from Volkswagen

(A Little Trivia: This song was the one my graduating class picked for departing ceremonies when it was time to leave Spaulding High School in June, 1982.  The ONLY reason we wanted chose this song was so that we could sing the "I get high with a little help from my friends" part, which we were forbidden to do but did anyway.)

All of the self-indulgent wankers in this ad really wanted to be at that Civil Rights/Out of Vietnam rally, but there was this cool outdoor rock concert on a farm in Upstate New York so hey, priorities.

And when the music stopped, all the males in this ad went on to become hedge fund managers or government employees with massive pensions.  A few of them went into teaching public school in New York and took a retirement bailout offer from the state at the age of 55.  They've spent the last 25 years touring Europe every fifteen minutes.

The female flower children in this ad went on to earn their MRS degree and now all live in the suburbs of Washington DC or Baltimore or NYC where they raised their 2.5 kids and did all the white bread conformist crap they cursed their parents for doing but justified it by shopping at organic farmers markets and Whole Foods.

Every single person in this ad did extremely well by discarding the "values" of their youth for the siren song of Capitalism and totally sold out way before they reached the age of 30.  If they saw someone stuck in the mud today, they might whip out their phones and call AAA, but only after tweeting the oh-so-hilarious situation to all their friends and posting it to YouTube first.

So when they were young they enjoyed free love, cheap and safe marijuana, practically-free college, a soaring stock market and all the benefits a strong labor movement had to offer.  Now they sit in their pretentious Tudor suburban palaces dreaming of the Lexus they hope their significant other picks up for them in this year's December to Remember promotion.  They all put Bernie Sanders yard signs up last fall and then voted for Trump.  And none of them ever, EVER gave a flying damn about anyone but themselves, I don't care WHAT the song says.

BTW, one of the YouTube commentators who clearly is no more than thirty years old posted that he really wants a VW van now.  I suggested that he could simulate the experience of owning a vintage VW van by tearing out the back seats and removing the seat belts and heating system of an SUV.  To make the experience even more genuine I might have added that he should rig the engine so that it fails to turn over at least fifty percent of the time when the key is turned.  No one who has ever owned one of those rusty, unreliable, uncomfortable and unsafe crapbuckets would fantasize about possessing one now, except to use as target practice.  With these over-indulged losers packed inside.