A Quaint Kohl's Black Friday Commercial

If you're under ten years old, you probably don't remember when Black Friday started on.....Friday.  That is, the Friday morning after Thanksgiving.  At around, say, 9 AM or so. 

And if you're under six years old you probably don't remember Black Friday starting at Midnight on Thankgiving, as this woman is singing about.  After a day of cooking, cleaning, hosting, and being with friends and family, she's wide awake, fresh, and first in line to get into Kohl's to take advantage of all the awesome sales that are regularly available from On The Brink of Bankruptcy Kohl's on the internet every single minute of every single day.  Because it's fun to be in a parking lot at midnight, I guess.

And of course nowadays there's no real start to Black Friday anymore- Kohls opens it's doors at 5PM on Thanksgiving, which I guess gives lunatic shopaholics more than enough time with that family and those friends, Hey It's Been Fun but there's money to be spent so Bye Everybody I'm off to the anachronistic mall to get stuff I could get online but It's Just Not the Same There's Something to be said for Tradition After All.  And I guess 5 PM gives all those workers enough time with their families as well- I mean, sure, a 5 PM opening probably means that most of them have to be at the store by 3 PM to set up, but heck how much time does it take to say you're thankful and eat and chat with loved ones?  There are consumers to be catered to, after all.

I think I'll look around for a Prager U video explaining to me how Black Friday is a celebration of Capitalism which means it's a Celebration of America which means it's an Affirmation of G-d's Existance, because this whole Black Friday thing is really getting me down.  Well, have the happiest Thankgiving possible anyway, people, for however long it lasts.

Second-by-Second Breakdown of this Best Western Commercial

Yes, I'm doing whatever I can do avoid writing a review sheet, writing a test, or revising my report card comments.  I might even clean my bathroom and vacuum after I finish this.

.01 Seconds- why does this woman look like she's just conquered a Best Western Hotel?  Holy crap, I understand and admire being proud of your job, but it's a freaking Best Western.  And you don't own the freaking place, you just work there!  WT Serious F???

..02- And now she looks into a bag and acts like it contains a million-dollar check from Publisher's Clearing House which will free her from the drudgery of a life that requires her to stay at Best Western Hotels,

.03 - but it turns out that it's just a free night stay, which causes her to spin into a dance of joy WTF IS GOING ON HERE??

.05- now she's eating her craptacular Continental Breakfast and being interrupted by an impossibly thrilled-to-death drone employee who just lives to ask her if he wants more freaking orange juice.  Good lord, woman, it's a Continental Breakfast.  If the guest wants more OJ, she can get the hell up and get it herself.  If you want to go around offering it that's fine, but please stop shoving your face into people who are just trying to eat to ask if they want their glass refilled.

:07- I work out at the local YMCA four times a week.  I am long past the thrill of walking on a treadmill.  This crazy woman acts as if it is the greatest moment of her life- or, at least, the greatest moment of her life since that time she won a free night at Best Western.

The final six seconds of this crappy nub of an ad is that way-too-familiar perky narrator squeaking about how superamazingawesome it is to get double rewards points because it results in even more nights at America's Favorite Bland Chain Hotel.  Yay.

Time to clean that bathroom.

Kelly Ripa gives us more reasons to hate Ancestry.com

So finding out you are 24% Italian increases the likelihood that you'll become an insufferable navel-gazing douchenozzle twat roughly 100%?  That your odds of being bearable around actual human beings drops roughly 75%?  Can someone explain to me how this commercial "sells" Ancestry.com as anything more than an opportunity to become more impossibly self-absorbed than you already are?

"Want to never, ever be invited to parties again?  Want people to scream in terror at your approach?  Get your results at Ancestry.com!"

Oh, by the way, here's Kelly Ripa's complete genetic breakdown, hacked from Wikileaks:

24% Italian

22% All My Children

54% Botox*

*I'm sorry, but this woman is 48 years old.  She does not look like this in real life.  The reason why she's constantly smiling in this ad  is because her face is permanently frozen in that position.  I don't think she is physically capable of blinking at this point. 

Discover Card doesn't want our opinion of this bit of soft racism

I'm not at all surprised that comments are blocked on YouTube for this ad.  Almost 60% of those who have responded with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down have rendered a negative verdict on it, and I suspect that a significant number of those thumbs-up are robo-generated.  I have no evidence for this, just a faint level of faith in my fellow humans.

This woman....I mean, jesus.  I know that she's probably just getting started in her acting career and is hoping that just maybe this will be the start of something bigger somewhere down the road, but....I'm sorry.  There is such a thing as a price too high to pay, lady.  When the director of this ugly little nub of awful told you to start shimmying while chanting "I got my mon-ey!" you really should have just given him a dirty look and walked away.  You should have just said "no, this just isn't worth it, I'm sorry."

Instead, you agreed to put on a five-second minstrel show and behaved like a braying jackass in front of millions of people who, as it turns out, probably never want to see your face or hear your voice in anything ever, ever again.  I hope it was worth it. I kind of doubt that it was.

The Mysterious, Sad World of GreenDot

I get what Green Dot cards are- they are a way for people whose credit rating is in the toilet so they can't get a standard VISA card from a standard bank to carry money around using plastic anyway.  They are for people whose finances are such a mess- or so meagre- that they can't go down to the nearest bank and open a basic savings or checking account and get a debit card.  They are for people who lack identification or the most rudimentary knowledge of how banks work.  They are for the people who live on the margins of the economy, and they for sure don't include this screeching nutcase making blood money by singing of the joys of using buggy, unpredictable plastic cards to electronically store cash in between trips to the Dollar Tree.

But I really hate the fact that these cards are being promoted as a PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE to those "big banks" which are probably not an option to the target audience.  This woman sings about the joy of avoiding "bank fees"- but Green Dot cards come with fees that are actually higher than some credit cards, and MUCH higher that Debit Cards (because Debit Cards typically come with NO fees.)  Read the fine print and check how much you'll pay for the "convenience" of having your paycheck direct-deposited on to one of these things if you don't believe me.

She suggests that using big banks is a royal pain, but when you have a dispute over a purchase or an account balance, which would you rather deal with- an automated phone bank featuring an endless loop of recorded "options" followed (if you're lucky) by a conversation with someone who barely speaks or understands English and who is sitting in an Indian boiler room, or that awful big bank down the street which has actual people you can discuss your problems with face to face?  Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.

And what I hate most of all is that these things are just another element in the sub-economy that includes Dollar Stores, Rent A Center and CashStop "services."  Just another industry aimed at the most vulnerable, being sold as some wonderful innovation that "spares" it's audience the "hassle" of conveniences and protections the rest of us enjoy.  Really disturbing, and very sad.

Hyundai Kona joins the male-bashing parade...

This guy is married to an astronaut. She's got a PhD in Engineering and another in Mathematics, and she beat out more than 5000 applicants to land this extremely delicate job on an orbiting space station which might just make scientific history.   He's a stupid shlub who can't remember where he put the keys to their crappy little compact car, so he has to keep bugging her to unlock it from space using her SmartPhone. 

She does this, grudgingly, wondering why on Earth (no pun intended) she's a brilliant, talented scientist who settled for a worthless loser who can't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight and can't keep stop losing his car keys. 

And don't even get me started on how the signal from her phone even reaches that car from space.  I'm not at all sure that this is possible, whether the phone is using terrestrial cell towers or satellites to transfer that signal.  Or how Inept Moron  Married to an Astronaut (oh, the power of that MRS Degree!) can talk to someone in space using a cellphone while my calls from Barre to Orange- 5 miles apart- fail to connect or get dropped regularly. 

And I'm not even going to bother to mention that other commercials for this ugly little car do little more than advertise it as a place to charge your cellphone and check your social media, like an uncomfortable, cramped version of your freaking living room.  No time for any of that when the real message is the old familiar one- women are beautiful, brilliant and ultra-competent beings who inexplicity but with numbing regularity hook up with stupid, clumsy, barely-functional males of the same species Because Reasons. 

Duracell and Santa Claus: The Annual Mugging Begins

Ugh, we are still weeks away from Thanksgiving and we are already being ssaulted by commercials featuring "Santa Claus" and his reliance on some stupid product?  That's not very promising. When I was a kid, Santa Claus sold razors and Coca-Cola.  Now he sells everything from batteries to luxury automobiles.  And when I was a kid, the commercials whoring out Santa Claus didn't start until we were digging into the turkey sandwiches.  Now we're lucky if they are held in storage until after Halloween.

And oh, by the way, why are the people in this ad using objects that look like they belong in commercials from the 1980s?  Everything here looks clunky and totally retro.  Maybe because this is an ad for batteries that aren't the shape of matchbooks or the size of dimes- you know, the thinks most kids think about when they imagine "batteries" these days?

Oh, and one more thing- how the hell could this woman find the gall to blame Santa Claus for her inability to look up before she walks into the Christmas tree?  I mean, seriously, WTF?  "Oh look, I crashed into the tree and it's all your fault because you used crummy batteries in this plastic piece of crap and I was struggling with it and was totally distracted?"  Would that really fly with anybody?