Scratch Offs: The gift you hope never starts giving

Many years ago, Norm MacDonald in a stand-up routine pointed out that giving scratch off tickets as presents makes zero sense because there are only two possible outcomes, both of them really bad:

A.  They don't pay out, in which case the recipient remembers that you gave them expensive pieces of cardboard as an expression of friendship/appreciation.  In other words, you gave them....nothing.

B.  They pay out, in which case the gift-giver spends the rest of their life with the knowledge that they held financial security- maybe even luxury- in their hands for a few minutes, and just...gave it away....to the kid who shovels the walk, or the mailman, or your kids' teacher....whoever it was, you didn't mean to give them a $10 million dollar Christmas present now, did you? Not when you're worried about paying for your kids' college (the guy who got the scratch-off ticket? He's not worried about that, or anything else.)

In short, you want the recipient to appreciate the gift, but ultimately, you don't want it to amount to much of anything.  Heck, even a $50 or $100 payout is probably a lot more than you wanted to just give anyone not directly related to you (and frankly, I wouldn't want someone directly related to me to cash in that big at my expense.)

Punt all these idiots into a galaxy far, far away

So this kid is watching a Rise of Skywalker trailer on his phone in a dark room (f--king up his future vision, not that I give a damn) and decides that he needs a dog that reminds him of Chewbacca, a character that has almost no role in the new movies other than to be barked at by Rey and do her bidding.

His dad says no.  In keeping with what is expected of kids in commercials, this brat proceeds to harass his father- even to the point of hijacking the television using tech that same dad provided him- until dad breaks and agrees that he'd rather deal with the hassle of a dog than the hassle of a whiny little begging creep who is not going to stop.

So they go to get the dog, but it's too late- someone else has already adopted it.  I'm going to ignore the fact that dogs like this don't actually show up at shelters- anything that looks even moderately exotic is going to be living at a breeder or fancy pet store and is going to come with an equally fancy price tag.  Because this is TV, not reality.

When I first saw this ad, I thought that they had succeeded in adopting the dog, only to have the kid notice another animal he suddenly Couldn't Live Without and would now start whining to dad about adopting/buying.  At least I was wrong about that.  But this kid's elastic emotions annoy me almost as much as his obsession with a thoroughly craptacular series of films that almost make the prequels look good.  What if that dog doesn't look like a Star Wars character next year?  It's just a puppy- puppies turn into dogs, you petulant little rodent.  And what if that dog wants attention while you're playing with your stupid phone?  Who wins that little contest?

Microsoft Holiday ad that, naturally, the YouTubers think is just precious

It's so adorable that this little girl

1.  Takes an expensive, delicate piece of hardware out into the snow when she sees reindeer in the yard, and

2.  Proceeds to be an overbearingly entitled little brat when she learns that she can, indeed, talk to the reindeer.  Seriously, she doesn't even ask the reindeer if they wouldn't mind answering a few questions.  She just launches into "Ok, I have a lot of questions" and it's off to the races.  She doesn't stop to listen to answers, she doesn't attempt a conversation- it's just "I'm important, I want answers, you aren't important, you are to give me answers" in the most typical nasty-kid voice imaginable.

I just want this girl to ask if their horns are sharp, so they can give her a demonstration.  Ugh what a brat.

Geico just gets dumber and dumber

I see that since being handed a Super Bowl Ring by the refs in his final season in the NFL, Jerome Bettis has kept himself busy cheating in flag football (stiff arms are illegal.)  How nice.

Meanwhile, I'd take a skinny 16-year old over a middle-aged Jerome Bettis in a flag football game.  There's zero reason why it would be at all difficult to strip a flag from a lumbering old man (which makes me wonder why the defender is trying to tackle him, as if he doesn't know this is flag football and there's supposed to be tackling or something) unless this is just like the Super Bowl and Bettis can just do whatever he wants.

Oh, and check out the YouTube comments- even worse than usual.  Either a lot of people are willing to brown nose Geico for nickles these days, or glue-sniffing has become the national pastime because these posts....oh god are they embarrassing.

Peloton: The Gift that keeps on giving.....something.....

On December 25, 2018 a certain TrophyWife received a not-at-all-subtle reminder that

1.  Her value in the home is 100 percent dependent on keeping that youthful figure, and
2.  Her husband would rather her not be going out to those spinning classes anymore because he heard that there are other guys there, not to mention all those Woke Women....

She got this reminder by coming down the stairs of the ridiculous palatial suburban estate she sold her soul for and found that HubbyMaster had purchased a Peloton bike for....um, for her, of course.

With an extremely anxious look on her face which just screams "oh god I get it, I know what this means, I've got maybe a year to get my act together and achieve 0% body fat or I'm going to be out of the street," TrophyWife launches what will be a daily routine that will certainly be starting at 6 AM at the latest because no way is she going to be cutting back on her MommyWife duties just because she's been given a chance to salvage her situation.  That kid still needs to be fed and deposited at school, HubbyMaster's breakfast and coffee must be ready when he comes downstairs, etc.  This doesn't replace anything, lady.  This is in ADDITION.  And it's for your own good, IF you know what I mean.

After a year of brutal workouts in which an already beautiful, slim young woman transforms into a....beautiful, slim woman who is one year older, she gets to sit down on the couch with HubbyMaster to evaluate the results.  The verdict is in:  She's postponed dismissal for another year, anyway.  And all it took was 365 exhausting sessions chained to that bike, being barked at by a total stranger on the screen whose audience consisted of hundreds if not thousands of other TrophyWives of the One Percent.

See you next year, lady....maybe.  Oh, and here's your 2019 Christmas Present:  An appointment for Botox treatments.  Got to keep one step ahead of the babysitter at all times.

This Fire TV commercial explains a lot, actually

When I was very young, James Bond villains (and lets be honest from the very start- the guy in this ad is an obvious parody of an old-fashioned James Bond villain) did really cool things like press buttons to coolly execute people just because they could.  Then when I got older, the Bond villains kind of went off the rails and focused on killing millions of people with nuclear missiles or cyanide-dispersing satellites or some such silliness.  Then they became a real mixed bag of characters with extremely limited goals or world-changing ambitions, but most of them were kind of stupid and it was hard to imagine them pushing those buttons and causing people to vaporize or fall into a pool of piranha or whatever.

For all the time I was growing up, James Bond films could be counted on to be released every other summer, pretty much like clockwork, too.  Their quality wasn't dependable- the first one I saw in the theaters was The Spy Who Loved Me in the summer of 1977, and I thought that was great.  Most of the Moore films that followed afterwards were pretty awful.   Dalton's films were great, Brosnan's were below average (and Die Another Day was downright 1980s Moore-level crap.)   None of the villains in any of these films were particularly memorable.  But they were there, every other year.

The Bond film series has pretty much reached a dead end in the last decade, as Bond fans die out and the next generation just can't get invested in the character because the films are so few and far between.  Bond 25, No Time To Die, will be released in April, 2020- almost five full years since the last installment.  Think about it:  Sean Connery starred in six Bond films in nine years (1962-1971.)  Roger Moore starred in seven films in 12 years (1973-1985,) Dalton two in three years (1987-89,) and Brosnan four in seven years (1995-2002.)  No Time To Die will be Daniel Craig's fifth Bond film since Casino Royale was released in 2006-- that's five Bond films in FOURTEEN YEARS.  Way to kill interest in a franchise, people!

Ok, back to connecting all of this to an Amazon Fire Commercial:  The "villain" in this ad isn't plotting to start World War III, rob Fort Knox, or nuke or poison the planet.  Hell, he isn't even trying to make a hundred million dollars in a drug deal or get exclusive broadcasting rights to China (yes, both of those are actual James Bond villain motivations.)  He just wants to watch TV.  That's what Evil Villains do in the year 2019.  They watch TV.  You know, like all of use who AREN'T evil villains.  So why are they interesting?  They aren't. They are worthy of nothing but ridicule.  They aren't fun, they aren't entertaining, and most important, they really don't remind anyone under the age of fifty or so of a certain film franchise that is in the process of being murdered by its' inheritors.  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if most people watching this ad thought of Austin Powers before James Bond.  Sad.

Thanks to Xfinity, I now know I've been wrong about E.T. for 37 years....

So when I saw this movie as a kid,* I just assumed that somewhere out there is an original cut which features a scene immediately following the last one in which Elliot, his family and friends, and all of the scientists who witness E.T. fly off into space are immediately executed by the government and buried in a landfill surrounded by "Dangerous Toxic Chemicals, Do Not Enter" signs.  His house is condemned as a biological hazard as the word is spread that Elliot and his family were the carriers of some exotic, highly infectious disease which caused their quick death and evaporation of their bodies along necessitating the leveling of their home and the total destruction of every trace of their existence. 

According to this commercial, I was completely wrong in my premise.  Turns out that Elliot and Friends were simply forced to sign a myriad of documents agreeing to stay silent about what happened over the course of three days in the autumn of 1982 with a very subtle warning that it's not at all hard to be Disappeared if they ever step out of line.  Elliot grew up to be an adult and got married and had kids, which is about as much proof as anyone would ever need that he never mentioned the little Alien who lived in his bedroom and who he once dressed up and took trick or treating on Halloween to anyone, and certainly not to any girls.  He got over the trauma of being threatened with a brutal death at the hands of The Establishment so well that he managed to become a perfectly ordinary, perfectly boring Suburban Dad with 2.5 kids and an SUV.

Thanks for the clarification, Xfinity- though I suspect that I'm actually right about the Deleted Scene, and test audiences just thought it was kind of a downer way to end a family film, and Spielberg got cold feet and agreed to the last-minute edit.

*Ok, I was 18.  That's still a kid.  Shut Up.