AT&T joins in the never-ending Celebrity Spokeschoad Parade

Every once in a while, I'm reminded of how lucky I am to have been born at a certain time in the past century, watch very little television, listen to very little contemporary music, and am therefore more or less immune to these "wow, look at this Currently Popular Celebrity Doing Very Mundane Things Right Out Here In the Open" commercials.

Whoever Gordon Ramsay is, I wouldn't bat an eye if he handed me a free food sample at the Giant up the road from my house, just like I wouldn't bat an eye if Taylor Swift handed me my coffee at Starbucks because seriously, who the f--k are either of these people?  Well, of course, they are Celebrities who are supposed to Know Stuff by virtue of being Famous for doing things that have nothing to do with what they are currently trying to sell me on the TV.

And while we're at it, I'd love to tell Samuel L Jackson where he can stick that Capital One Card.  If he ever shows up around my Credit Union, I'll be sure to do it- assuming I recognize him.

Tide + NFL = Another Celebration of Dumb

Remember back in February when this was just a cute re-occurring concept for a series of Superbowl ads, and not something that you were being battered with every few minutes, hour after hour, for committing the crime of wanting to watch football?

Anyone remember the last time an ad agency came up with a clever concept and just viewers kind of enjoy it as a nice, inventive little surprise instead of responding with a knee-jerk "oh, you liked that? Well here it is again, 400 times over, until you want to blow your brains out whenever you see it pop up on your screen" series of Here We Go Again commercials?  I seriously can't.  In my lifetime, clever concepts on tv get beaten to death, then the bones get beaten, then the dust gets beaten, and then the dust gets buried for a year or two....and then the horse is resurrected to get beaten all over again for Nostalgia's Sake. 

Given the history, I suspect we'll be seeing this "What Night is Laundry Night" bit go on for quite some time.  Peyton Manning will keep showing up to bleat nonsense about Official NFL Declarations concerning when I'm supposed to do my laundry (think Peyton Manning has ever done laundry in his entire life?  Think he knows where the washing machine is in any of his houses? Me neither) and the drooling YouTube monkeys will gulp it down and claim to want more when they aren't begging to know where they can download the background music.  Other NFL "legends" will join in, until this Tide Ad campaign has had more official spokeschoads than KFC has had fake Colonels.  Eventually it will dissolve into a wall of white noise for even the OMG I LOVE THIS AD glue-sniffers and disappear from the airwaves, though I imagine that'll be 2024 at the earliest.  Then it will rise from the dead like Paul from Sprint to remind us the Good Old Days when we thought we liked this noxious, steaming little cowpie of an ad campaign.

Oh, and Peyton?  You showed up in every other commercial while you were still an active player.  Nobody misses you, because nobody's been given a chance to miss you.  I'd like that chance, please.

Questions, Indeed!

1.  So this woman was actively searching for another position while employed by her current company....maybe if she had been a little more focused on her job instead of searching for a better one, she would have been considered valuable enough to earn a promotion?

2.  This looks like a pretty serious company- this woman better hope she doesn't have some kind of non-competition agreement which prevents her from going to work for that place that wants to arrange an interview?

3.  This woman sure looks confident that she's going to get a job that she's just now learned about.  Was she just as confident when she joined this firm that she'd be getting regular advancement in exchange for hard work (I'm assuming that when she isn't looking for opportunities to quit, she works hard?)  If she does get the job over the six-foot-two white guy also being interviewed, is she going to keep floating her resume out there every time someone else gets promoted over her?

As long as they don't miss their appointment with the National Razor, I'm fine with this

I bet you let yourself get fixated on the fact that two people who are supposed to be in "FRANCE 1780" are interrupted in their discussion of carriage prices by a guy with a Circa 2019 SUV.  And yes, that's really really stupid.  But it's not the brain-dead insulting part of this ad.

That comes closer to the end, when the SUV-owning jackass yells across the square that he got a GREAT PRICE and, when challenged for evidence, waves his phone and yells "IT LITERALLY SAYS, GREAT PRICE!"  Ah, ok, why didn't you say so?  The App on your phone says Great Price, MUST be a great price otherwise how could the ad get away with saying so?

And the two people who overpaid on their...um carriages- quickly concede the "point."  Because as I mentioned earlier, they've been given Absolute Proof the other guy got a great price 'cause it Says Right There on his Phone.

Ok, done.  Bring on Robespierre and start the clean-up job on these twits please.  Because the Revolution can't succeed as long as France is burdened by this level of mouth-breathing gullibility, can it?

More Awesome Parenting from Kraft!

Got a little brat in your ridiculous palatial suburban mansion who won't eat her veggies?  Don't model healthy eating, that's too hard.  Don't make her eat her vegetables- that just creates disharmony in the household (and, as I learned in a song featured in the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there's nothing more important than peace and quiet in the household.)

Here's a better idea- just give the kid something she'll eat with a big smile on her face, because Big Smiles and Contentment is what it's all about.  If that means tossing the veggies into the garbage and letting her eat macaroni saturated with fatty orange goo, well, fine.  Eventually she'll like that fatty orange goo so much you might even get away with pouring it on her veggies and getting your Little Angel to eat them, too!

Then you all can sit in your ridiculous glowing-clean dining room and give each other huge satisfied grins, as if anyone but that awful picky brat actually accomplished something of value. The little girl here certainly DID learn a valuable lesson- throw a fit, raise mommy's stress level- and she'll fold faster than Superman on laundry day.*  Dad?  Well, dad just wants a quiet house.  He couldn't give a damn what his daughter eats or how his wife deals with daughter's little tantrums, as long as it's all done by the time he walks into his Castle expecting a decent dinner.  He's not particularly thrilled that TrophyWife is serving him Kraft Crap In A Box as well, but we often get less than what we pay for.

*Seinfeld reference

I still don't hate these people as much as Lexus owners, sorry Buick!*

I'd like all these spoiled brats to go die in fires, preferably after being in horrible accidents in their cars- oh, excuse me, I mean in their Buicks.  Can they do that?

At the very least, I wish the guy who forgot to lock his car (I'm not playing this game) already had it stolen or vandalized, as it's clearly been hours since he left it (seriously, he's somewhere off the coast, and his car (f--k you, Buick) is parked ostentatiously on the top level of some parking garage at an airport?  Maybe not even in the same country?  WTF?)

And the woman who tells Alexa to start the car- umm, may I ask why?  It doesn't look like it's cold outside.  Or warm.  So what's the point of starting it before you get out there?  Afraid your carbon footprint isn't large enough, lady?  Or is it just another case of "I'm doing this because I can and I want you to know I can?"

Either way, I'd refer you back to my first request.

*We are approximately six weeks away from December to Remember Lexus ads.  Sorry.

Taco Bell's latest offering to America's Insatiable Stupid Food Hole

In the sick, perverted fantasy world of Taco Bell, thousands of people stand in line like lemmings who've been told that their destination is a store selling the newest iPhone to buy whatever greasy piece of faux-Mexican food trash they deign to serve up this week.

As if this commercial wasn't dumb enough on it's face- and it is (I mean, seriously- how many hours are these people standing in line to purchase a taco dusted with cheese?  It's CHEESE, people- not gold.  Not the newest iPhones!  CHEESE!  And pretty much exactly the same kind of cheese you wipe on your pants after eating a bag of Doritos!  Seriously, people!)  we have the spectacle of a woman commenting on what she just waited on line for, purchased, and is now eating as she walks out the door (I actually find this rather believable.  Anyone dumb enough waste a day they'll never get back to buy a handful of greasy meat wrapped in a giant Dorito is certainly dumb enough to express amazement over the concept seconds after the purchase.)



Here's what I don't get, though:  Why is the product featured in this SNL ad from six years ago not on the menu at Taco Bell yet?  I mean, Taco Bell is owned by Kentucky Fried Chicken, the people who brought us the Sandwich with deep-fried chicken in the place of bread.  Surely they can figure out the physics of a taco-pizza-crepe-pancake combo.  I'd stand in line for that!*

*not really