USAA Bank: Unafraid to follow the New Predictable

Wait a minute, I'm confused!  Which is to say, I can't quite believe what I'm seeing here!

As near as I can tell (and again, I'm sure I must be mistaken,) this commercial features a young couple making a friendly bet on a game of mini-golf.  That part I actually have no problem believing.  I'm sure this happens.  But what happens next is totally bizarre- the GUY LOSES THE BET TO THE GIRL.

I mean, seriously, really?  A girl besting a guy in an American TV commercial in the year 2019?  If that's what really happened here, what's next?  Snow in January?  Fireworks in July?  I dare not guess!

More Questions for Aaron Rodgers and State Farm

1.  Who the hell has a "favorite State Farm Agent?"  Who has a "favorite" insurance agent at all?

2.  What kind of horrifying crapshow is the life of Aaron Rodgers if he "takes his favorite State Farm agent wherever he goes?"  Man, if you have to bring your insurance agent along with you everywhere, you probably should be locked up as a chronic danger to society.

3.  Rodgers is also constantly checking his policy on his State Farm App in these commercials- another huge red flag.  Good lord man, what the hell are you doing that requires you to constantly check on the status of your freaking insurance?

4.  When are Packers fans going to get sick of every season featuring endless Aaron Rodgers Insurance Ads but no Aaron Rodgers in the Superbowl?  Seriously, guys- priorities.  Is Rodgers insured against consistent failure in the playoffs?  I'm sure he doesn't know offhand.  Time to check that App for the 300th time today!

5.  There's a "Subscribe" button for State Farm Insurance Commercials.  Who the hell would subscribe to be notified whenever another one of these steaming piles of dumb is released on youtube?  As if being beaten over the head with them all weekend during every football game isn't enough?

Another Awful Indeed Ad

Hmmm...just a thought:  Maybe if this kid with stupid greasy hair wasn't just sitting or laying around his parents' house with a stupid blank zombie look on his face, his parents wouldn't have jumped to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that he was being an unmotivated sponge.  Maybe they wouldn't have been so frustrated if he had been oh, I don't know, doing his own laundry or vacuuming or just TALKING TO THE PARENTS WHO WERE PROVIDING HIM WITH A PLACE TO STAY, MEALS, AND LAUNDRY SERVICE instead of acting as if moving back into your bedroom meant that you also got to revert to being a helpless child who needed caring for again.

Based on the way this commercial ends, I guess the parents are supposed to feel super-guilty for ever doubting that their stupid little spawn was actively looking for work by staring at his phone.  Like they owe him an apology for being irritated that their adult son was being totally uncommunicative about his job-hunting strategy.  Like they should have just ASSUMED that he was working really, really hard to land that position that would allow him to go back to being a functioning adult. 

But when you really think about it, um, No.  This creep is being an ungrateful little ass toward his parents.  He spends the entire commercial behaving like a guy who thinks his parents should be able to read his f--ng mind and somehow just KNOW he's working really hard to get the hell out of there (and ignore the silence, that stupid blank look frozen to his face, and that awful greasy hair.)  Also, he doesn't get a job at the end- just invites to attend interviews.  I know from experience that interviews don't pay the bills.  Hold off on that apology, parents.  And for chrissakes, stop doing this jagoff's laundry for him. 

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?