Toyota Jan Presents Holiday Nightmare Fuel

When is this woman's fifteen minutes of career as Toyota's Stupid Spokeschoad going to be over already?  I mean, Toyota isn't going to pull a Progressive on us and keep this woman on contract until she looks like a fat, pale old vampire, are they? 

I was looking for the ad where Jan is descending a staircase in front of a wall festooned with about 200 framed photos, 99 percent of which are....Toyotas....before we find ourselves in the Toyota showroom, suggesting that Jan actually lives above the shop that is the love of her life.  Haven't found that one yet, but man it's weird. 

Anyway, Toyota thinks that we want to see NINE Jans singing to use for a few seconds, probably because Toyota has long since stopped caring to find out what we really want, which is for Jan to just go away already.  Oh, and I'm guessing Toyota thinks that this will remind us of The Brady Bunch,* which will tweak some nostalgia impulse and....make us want to go out and buy a Japanese car?  Huh?

*One commenter was indeed reminded of The Brady Bunch when he saw this ad.  And felt compelled to let us know for Reasons.  So congratulations, Toyota, you managed to accomplish...umm, something.

Another Ancestry.com rant

I guess the only reason why anyone would be interested in visiting The Phillipines or eating Spanish food or experimenting with Lithuanian cooking would be if they discovered that they can trace their ancestry back to these places?

Let's cut to the chase, shall we?  It's time to be painfully blunt about all of this DNA test nonsense.  They aren't about learning more about your background or appreciating the hidden diversity of the population.  They are about further indulging the navel-gazing Upper Middle Class with a new toy they can purchase with the money that seems to be forever burning a whole in it's pocket.

Just look at the people in these ads.  They aren't all white, but they ARE all obviously well-off financially and they all carry this obnoxious level of smug piety while absolutely oozing liberal suburban "values."  They all adore everyone and "don't see" color or sexual differences and loudly condemn racism every chance they get, slapping "We Love Our Muslim Neighbors" on their front yards (which almost universally exist in neighborhoods with zero Muslim neighbors.)  They are way, way above the concepts of bigotry and intolerance.

And yet, they are also obsessed with their own bloodlines and convinced that DNA is Destiny.  How else can we explain the fact that they not only went through the effort to send a vial of spit to Utah along with $59, $99 or whatever (as if the amount matters to these people) but also instantly respond to the results by seeking out cheap, surface-level ways to advertise their newfound "roots?"  Kelly Ripa reacts to discovering that she's 24% Italian by spitting out catchphrases in that language as the cameraman and her loving cultists follow her around a bakery.  The nobodies in this ad simply MUST visit the Home of their Ancestors or at the very least learn to cook some of the stuff they had to eat before they escaped to America (if I find out that I'm 24% Mississippian, does that mean I should learn how to prepare chicken-fried steak with greens fried in lard, or can I just visit The Golden Corrall after church every Sunday?) 

So you tell me- how does "embracing diversity and recognizing that we are all part of a rich tapestry of cultures" jibe with "I need to find out what percentage Lithuanian I am so I can adopt a new diet and jet off on a vacation to visit places that have no actual meaning to me but which I intend to look at teary-eyed and wistfully for the camera?"  How does any of this "you are what your blood says you are" get us any closer to breaking down tribalism?  Seems to me that as these kits get cheaper and more and more of us learn exactly what percentage Albanian Orthodox we are, the level of race-and-origin obsession is just going to become deeper and more dividing. 

But hey, at least these bored, pretentious, bloodine-obsessed twits have something to talk about at the next dinner party beyond the next farmer's market and how Tolerant they are.

"God Friended Me." He's right behind Justin Bieber in Twitter followers, too

As usual, G-d as portrayed by television producers has all the time in the world to f--k around with Upper Middle Class people in highly advanced Western societies.  Now he's on Facebook, suggesting that G-d hasn't been keeping up with social media trends lately.  If he was better informed, he'd know that Facebook is kind of old school and he'd be doing his communicating through Twitter or SnapChat, not Facebook, which is so Your Mother's Social Media.

Meanwhile, that kid sitting by a river in Kenya waiting for the worm that is boring a hole through his eye to leave him blind before he reaches his teen years- well, sorry, kid, but G-d is too busy contacting pretty people in the Upper 10% tax bracket to help you out right now.  Too busy making friend suggestions to those people, too.  Maybe if you got yourself an iPhone and Verizon you'd rate a little assistance.  Sucks to be you, but that's how G-d rolls.

According to American television producers, of course.

Discover the Courage to ask for what everyone else has already

So I guess the guy in this ad is visiting from the year 1980, because he feels like he has to psych himself up in order to work up the courage to call Discover and

1.  Apply for a card, and

2.  Demand that there be no annual fee attached to that card.

And of course he's going to end up looking like a total idiot because it's 2018 and the only credit cards that carry annual fees are those Platinum things which also give you free sky miles and allegedly awesome hotel deals and a free ride through security at airports and the opportunity to sit in a plush easy chair in some airport bar rather than along the dregs in those uncomfortable plastic seats at the gate where you have to deal with listening to everybody else's "personal device" and scramble for space at the phone charging station.

Not to mention that he's trying to get a DISCOVER card, the favorite card of first-year college students with maybe $500 to their names and no credit history- in 1982.  Holy crap, I bet this guy spends the entire weekend chanting "you can do it you can do it you can do it" before heading off to Starbucks and asking for extra foam on his caramel latte.

'Tis the season to be brutal to your pets, according to Walmart

Because nothing says "Christmas" like torturing your house pet by making it wear stupid crap which makes it hot and will probably end up injuring it's paws by slipping all over your hardwood floor.  Whatever, it's hysterical and great for "sharing," so it's all good, right?

Before the holidays are over, this dog will respond to the doorbell ringing by whimpering, wetting all over the place and hiding under the bed, because by then it will associate every ring with a new horror that's going to be wrapped around it's already suffering, cringing body.

Oh, but the YouTube Gang just adores this ad.  Check out the comments- one of them is "What is this song?"  No kidding.  Never mind that the name of the song is the only part of the song we actually hear.  Someone has to ask that question in every YouTube comment section, and this one will be no exception.  And as for the other comments- well, let's just say that there are a lot of stupid people out there.  Stupid people willing to share their stupid on YouTube.

Revisiting this Vector ad for a moment....

I still can't believe that this Vector thing is for real and I could actually buy one if I wanted something for my apartment that never shut up for one moment but instead chirped, trilled, whistled and beeped nonstop until I finally crushed it by repeatingly stepping on it while wearing steel-toed boots (while it beeped and shrieked for mercy, no doubt.)

I don't get it.  How desperately lonely do you need to be to want an electronic device that just kept reminding you that it existed all the time?  I'm not there yet.

I can so relate to this VRBO ad*

Because like pretty much everybody else I know, when it rains for a few days in a row I just go to the internet, find a beach vacation, and away I go.  On a beach vacation.  Because I "haven't seen the sun in days."

Because like everyone else I know, I don't work for a living or have any actual responsibilities of any kind.  The only reason I stay in any one place for more than a very limited amount of time is if the weather stays nice.  When it turns nasty, I give it a couple of days to clear up, but if it doesn't, well, it's off on another beach vacation.

You know, like pretty much everybody else.

*37,000,000 views?  Yeah, right.  More like a gigantic salute to the power of bots and their ability to generate a fake audience.  If anywhere near 37 million people actually watched this garbage (which has about a dozen replies and a massive 128 thumbs-ups) it was because it keeps showing up in front of things they DO want to watch.  You know, like Prager U with 99 percent less obnoxiousness.