NFL Sunday Ticket to Nowhere

Two kids in the suburbs are doing that retro suburban thing, selling lemonade.  They've got the adorable handmade sign and the pitcher of lemonade and they are ready to spend some quality time with eachother, outside, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Nope.  That's not going to happen.  Because Mom, who was still in bed from an evening of heavy drinking after yet another disasterous Match.com hookup, has finally risen, showered, and noticed that it's 12:30* and the pregame show for the Raiders/Cowboys is seconds away from starting.

Mom's super-lonely and can't bear the thought of watching a game by herself while her kids are outside doing non-football stuff, so she runs out and sells their entire lemonade supply to their first customer, pouring it into some weird novelty plastic cup that came out of nowhere to provide the punchline for the commercial (seriously, what the heck is that?  It's even too big to be available at 7-11 for $1.49.)

And then we see Mom and the two kids having a great time cheering on either the Raiders or the Cowboys from the couch.  Yeah, this is MUCH better than being outside on a beautiful day- but still not as good as watching the game at Hooter's, where you can get a basket of buffalo wings and don't have to settle for popcorn.

*Assuming that these people are rooting for the local team, this suburb is in either the Oakland or Dallas metro areas.  Either way, 12:30 local time works for the pregame show of a game starting at 4:05 EST.  It could be a three or four PM local time start, too, but that would mean mom was so blasted from the night before that she didn't get up until mid-afternoon, and those kids have been outside all day without selling any lemonade.  I don't know, I can't figure out anything that's not on the Eastern Seaboard.

Good luck next Saturday night, Mom.

More Future of Awesome with Xfinity

I get that this is supposed to be showing how effortless and seamless moving with your Xfinity connection can be, and that's the reason this "family" remains on the couch staring at their electronic addiction delivery systems throughout the entire ad. 

The problem I have with it is that all ads for Xfinity, other cable systems, cellphones, etc are exactly like this- everyone in the "family" is just engrossed in watching something on a flat screen while a narrator is waxing poetic about "connectivity" while ocassionally throwing in a line about bringing families closer, etc.  I don't get how anyone could equate people enjoying their personal electronic cocoons with doing things "together" and "staying connected."  There's really no reason why these people are sitting on the same couch or are even in the same room- since the whole point is that everyone gets to do whatever they want with those devices any time they want, why not just show them in different rooms, or even in different places outside the house?

Oh right, I keep forgetting- because Xfinity, etc. doesn't want to give anyone the notion that all this "connectivity" actually creates distance between "family" members.  Nope, check out how happy mom and dad and sister and brother are as they "share" "quality time" "together."  They are having fun "together," see?  This is really pro-family!  Really!  This is keeping them closer!  Honest!

I do wish this ad were five seconds longer, so we could see how much enthusiasm the kids had for the "house decorating shows" Dad asked his Best Friend to start streaming.  I think that might have brought an end to all this physical togetherness.  The next scene would likely feature Brother playing a video game in his room while Sister chatted with non-family acquaintances in hers, Mom watching a movie on her phone while Dad found himself alone with his Home Decoration Show.  All with big zombie smiles on their faces because Yay Xfinity and Yay Togetherness.

Steve Cutts hold up a mirror. Are we willing to look into it?

We need someone to spend whatever it takes to show this as a Superbowl Commercial.  People need to see this.

Of course, even if we could raise the money to air it, it would not get aired- because it would certainly outrage the sensibilities of the drug dealers (cell phone companies) who are perfectly free to spend hundreds of millions on ads encouraging us to feed our addiction to the Glowing Box In Our Hands- and to become more and more isolated from society, more and more lonely, and more and more dependent on those phones to feel "connected."

I'm doing my part by sharing it on this site.  Please, pass it on.

League of Legends in their Own Mind

So a couple of couch potato dweebs are playing a video game and are really turned on by the awesome virtual weapons they can pretend to branish as they pretend to conquer something while sitting on their asses in their mom's basement.

Including in their pathetic fantasy world is the ocassional appearance of a Female of the Human Species, who is there to drop some suggestive reference to a "slumber party" which is hot enough to convince males that this game is almost like actually going out and meeting people- including scary girls- while also being nowhere near as threatening and dangerous as actually....going out and meeting people, including scary girls.

The ad for this game ends with one of the males (I am not going to call them men) yelling "We're Gonna Win!" Well, yeah, it's a game, so someone's going to win-- the game.  Life?  Well, you aren't going to win at that until you're willing to put down the game controller, get off that couch, and go the f--k outside and interact with your fellow humans.  I suggest you take it slow, and start by bringing a phone with you to stare at.  Eye contact is not for beginners.  Baby steps.

T-Mobile Offer not Available in all areas, clearly

Tomorrow I'll be ending my summer vacation in Vermont and heading back to Maryland for Year 24 of my High School History teaching career.  As far as T-Mobile is concerned, that means I'll be ending my stay in No Man's Land and returning to Civilization.

My T-Mobile plan provides virtually no service here, and on the rare ocassions I can connect, T-Mobile counts it against my "roaming" allowance.  Yep, here in Vermont I am "roaming," as if I was in Europe or on Safari.  But most of the time, I'm just not connected at all.  When I try to use my contacts, I'm told they are "Not Registered with Network."  I can usually check my text messages, but I'm rarely allowed to reply.  For most of the summer I had a weak connection with my parents' WiFi but in the last few days I've received regular "Authentication Errors" and it doesn't matter how many times I type in the password, it's "Incorrect"- never mind that it's the same one I use to access the WiFi from my laptop.

Barre is the second-largest city in Vermont- but while I'm shopping for my parents I can't make or receive calls to find out if they need to add anything to the shopping list.  Once I noted that I had a missed call from home and had to ask to use the land line at the grocery store to call home (good luck finding a payphone in 2018.)

(By the way, feel free to check out T Mobile's Nationwide Coverage map online- according to it, my service should be every bit as good in Vermont as it is in Suburban Maryland.  Which means- the map is a joke. Pretty, but a joke.)

Tomorrow I'll be back in Maryland and my T-Mobile phone will work just fine, I'm sure.  But I can't help wondering why a company which advertises itself as the Best Way to Stay Connected to Family can't get it's act together in certain areas of the United States.  I'll be contacting them to ask why this is when I have some free time- and I'm in Maryland, and I can make a phone call that doesn't include a "Call May Drop" warning even when it DOES connect.

What White People Do for Fun, According to LL Bean....

The only thing more pathetic than the people racing their canoes in this ad are the people cheering them on from the shore.  I mean, at least the people in the canoes are actually doing something- even if it is really stupid.  The people on the shore are--- just watching.  What the hell.

Wait, you know what?  There are people even MORE pathetic in this ad.  They are the ones on the shore upriver, who found themselves shouting and cheering as the boaters LEFT the campsite.  They don't even get to see the result of the race (which I can't imagine caring about anyway, but whatever.)

At least they are wearing life jackets, but still....this is pretty stupid.  And very, very white.

Chevy's Real People, Not Actors series finally reaches the bottom of the barrel. I think.

In this ad, four chunky dumb-as-rocks jackass Chevy truck owners have been talked into parking side by side next to a warehouse with no windows in the hopes of being featured in a commercial if they gush hard enough over whatever bland piece of crap Chevrolet is trying to sell in this ad.

And it's a good thing that they parked absolutely perfectly- and got their cars thoroughly detailed and waxed before this totally spontaneous visit to the warehouse to have a conversation with a by-now very well known Chevy spokeschoad, because they have to show well when the door opens and it's revealed that the kind of truck they'd really want is exactly the kind of truck they currently have.  Nice wake-up call to any of these drooling morons who thought that maybe if they described a Chevy truck to the Eurotrash dicktard with the cameraman with enough enthusiasm they might get a new truck as payment and not just five seconds of screen time on a stupid commercial.

Nonplussed by the news that they already own the truck of their dreams and they won't be driving home with an upgrade today, the trained monkeys respond on cue in the usual manner, bleating "wow it's a dynasty" and "I'm so proud," like their ability to sign their names to contracts which locked them into years of payments was some kind of accomplishment that puts them into a special category of people breathing rarified air.  Holy cripes, people- "dynasty?' "Proud?"  Are you f--ing kidding me?

In the end, we have yet another group of Not Real People Just Soulless Zombie Sellouts eager to kiss Chevy butt on tv if it means they get to have a camera in their face for a moment, because 1.  That's enough to establish your own IMdB page and 2.  Shame is for losers.