Principal Financial Group "Dream Car" really hits home for me

So here we've got a retired-at-55 grandpa ready to spend a chunk of his investments on a ridiculous ego boost in the form of a stupid sports car.  Because there aren't any grandchildren who maybe need help with college, or any charities, and his wife isn't interested in taking ANOTHER cruise or trip to Europe, I guess.  Nope, Grandpa has found his dream car and it's his money and if you think this is a heartwarming story designed to pull at the heartstrings, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

His ne'er-do-well son shows up with a granddaughter in tow and dumps a gigantic wet blanket on Grandpa's plans-- Son "needs" to take a new job far, far away and Granddaughter needs to finish her senior year at college, so.....it sure would be great if Grandpa and Grandma agreed to let her stay with them.

No pressure, though....take your time in making this "decision," grandpa.  Meanwhile, granddaughter is sitting right there, to remind you that her college career depends on that decision.  If you say no it's totally on you, NOT her dad.  So what's it going to be, grandpa?

Grandpa naturally takes in granddaughter, stepping into the role that his son is eager to abandon.  Which seems to mean that the Dream Car is off.   Why?  We'll get back to that.

This is starting to get uncomfortably familiar, and I'm starting to get triggered by the whole thing.  I'm moving on.

Grandpa bonds with daughter in the few seconds of this ad which is actually really enjoyable to watch.  Granddaughter isn't being demanding- we don't see her sneaking boyfriends into the house, or smoking pot without sharing, or throwing parties in the living room.  In other words, we don't see her acting like an entitled douchenozzle like, for instance, her Dad.  And grandpa seems to actually like having her around.  It's hard to imagine grandpa dumping his granddaughter on a relative the moment she becomes inconvenient.

And at the end, Grandpa visits his Principal Financial Group money man and works out a way to buy granddaughter her own car.  And now I'm really ticked, because....

....If Grandpa was ready to buy a $40,000 sports car before Granddaughter shows up, but now needs to move things around with his retirement portfolio to pull off the purchase of a much more modest car for his granddaughter, I have to believe that granddaughter arrived at his doorstep with no financial support from Dad.  Dad didn't just leave his daughter with grandma and grandpa-- he also left them with all the bills that go along with taking care of daughter.  I heard Dad ask if Daughter could stay with Grandpa and Grandma- I didn't hear him ask them to take on the entire financial burden of raising her for the next year.

 Did I forget to call Dad an entitled douchenozzle?  No?  Well, then let me add grifter to that description.  Dad thinks that parents who can afford to pay the bills of their children ought to do just that because....well, because it's much more convenient that way, and being responsible and paying your own way is lame, and suggesting that you should do so is being toxic.

So granddaughter was a year away from graduating, but Dad has this opportunity out of state, so it's only Right and Natural that Grandpa and Grandma step in and pick up the slack.  They've got the money, after all.  They don't need Dad's.  And they are happy to do it.

Maybe they are.  But here's a little "toxic" reality check, Dad:  every dime you spend on yourself while your parents are dipping into their retirement fund to pay for your daughter is THEFT.  Every latte.  Every beer after work.  Every weekend with the guys or with the wife.  Every.  Single. Time. You buy something for yourself, you are stealing from your parents.  Because no matter how much grandpa and grandma love that granddaughter, no matter how "happy" they are to provide for her, nothing can change the fact that they are using money they worked hard for and are spending it not on themselves and their own responsibilities, but on you and Yours.

Ok, I'm done being triggered now.  I'm going to go back to reading the YouTube comments about how heartwarming and sweet this all is, and wondering if Dad gets over his serious bout of Entitlement and starts sending some cash to Grandpa and Grandma for doing the job HE SIGNED UP FOR.

Truly Pointless Passat Commercial

"Have you ever wondered what the motorcade driver drives when she's not in a motorcade?"

No.  Not ever.  Not even once.  Has anyone else ever wondered that?  I really have to doubt it.

Am I supposed to know who this woman is?  Her name is promoted in the title.  Several YouTube posters mention her.  She's called an Actress in the description.  So she's not a motorcade driver.  She's an actress in a stupid commercial which starts with a stupid question nobody asks.

So I guess the idea we're supposed to get out of this is that

1.  Motorcade drivers are daydreaming, bored-out-of-their minds robots who really, really hate driving motorcades (hmmm, kind of makes you wonder why you chose "motorcade driver" as a career....

2.  When they aren't at their Job from Hell, Motorcade drivers love to drive....their Volkswagen Passats.

3.  Amanda Klein is someone we're supposed to recognize, trust, and associate with Volkswagen.

Well, thanks, Volkswagen.  Where do I go to get that thirty seconds of my life back?

Walmart and Capital One: Stupidly Ever After

So the young couple in this ad is smart enough to be able to afford a typical television suburban palace, but not smart enough to realize that you can't leave a new puppy unattended in that palace unless you put it in a fricking crate.  Even I'm aware of this very simple fact, and I don't own a dog OR a suburban palace.

They don't get much brighter as the commercial continues, either:  they buy one of those stupid pet/child gates which will only keep the puppy from doing damage in every other room except the one he's stuck in.  Is the puppy going to be kept in a room free of everything but his own toys?  Well, maybe- it's a suburban palace, after all.

Anyway, this stupid couple is so freaking delighted with their new living toy- almost as delighted as they are to be heading off to Walmart to use their credit card every few hours.  When they are home, they are shocked to learn that not only does the new mammal they brought home in lieu of a child chew up furniture when they aren't around, but it doesn't even know how to use a toilet and is not super-responsive to reactions like "no no no no no!" coming from its human owners.  So it destroys furniture, messes on the carpet, requires significant expenditures, doesn't respond to commands....why do I want one of these things again?

Oh, right- because I live in the suburbs and I'm supposed to.  Well as I've posted previously, there's a whole bunch of other things I'm supposed to do that I'm still ignoring- like be married, have kids, buy one of these suburban palaces, and stand around on the front lawn wearing a bathrobe with a cup of coffee in my hand.  Just call me a rebel, but I don't get the attraction of any of this.

Hallmark Movie-level Subaru Commercial

So this woman's puppy runs away from his home and ends up at a neighbor's farm, where the neighbor does the sensible thing- points at it and tells it to "go home," as if the dog has a brain larger than a walnut and is going to understand instruction.  The dog is wearing a collar and a license- two items which mark the absolute limit of responsibility that it's owner is willing to take on- but the farmer guy never looks at them, and I really don't blame him.  That dog is a stranger that could bite if one gets too close.

Eventually, the woman shows up in her Subaru, collects her dog, and tells the farmer guy "sorry, this won't happen again."  This strongly implies that she's going to keep a close eye on that dog, maybe keep it on a leash when it's outdoors, you know, common sense stuff that maybe one dog owner in a hundred bothers to do because they are the ones who remember that it's THEIR dog and not anyone else's responsibility.  In a Hallmark Movie, this would be the beginning of a really dumb romance arc between the neighbor woman and the lonely, cynical, beaten-down-by-life farmer neighbor, but unfortunately we don't go there.

Turns out this woman has absolutely no intention of training her dog or keeping track of it at all, as it repeatedly runs away to the farm, which we now see is within eyesight of its home.  Irresponsible, rude dog owner woman now knows exactly where the dog is every time it vanishes, and because she's not all that into exercise (maybe this explains the dogs' perpetual desire to leave- it's never taken on walks?) she repeatedly drives her Subaru the 800 yards to the farmhouse to pick up her dog.

In the end, the old farmer guy has grown Very old and so has the dog, and the woman recognizes that "her" dog has built up a powerful connection with the old farmer guy.  She also presumes that Old Farmer Guy appreciates the constant visits from the old dog (and the regular "gifts" the old dog has left on his farm over the years) so he'll really enjoy it if she continues to bring it over now that it's old and can't move around much anymore.  I suspect that she's just dropping the dog off for some free pet-sitting, and she'll be heading to town in that Subaru See ya Later Old Man.

I can't help but wonder why this woman, once she realized where her dog was always running away to, didn't once just walk over to the farm to get her dog.  She tells us at the end that she's "logged a lot of miles" over the year in that Subaru-- jesus lady the farm is RIGHT THERE YOU CAN SEE IT FROM YOUR HOUSE.  There's no indication that this woman has mobility issues.  But again, we never see her giving this dog any exercise at all either.  So I think the take-away from this cloying little mess of an ad is that one day this woman bought a puppy that she proceeded to completely ignore until it ran away from utter boredom, requiring her to recapture it and return it home in her Subaru.  The dog spent its entire life longing to live at the farm with the old man who at least was outside regularly doing things the dog could watch and follow along with, not at all like this horrible woman who just wanted another piece of furniture which needed to be fed and tagged.  But the dog was constantly thwarted in its goal of living an active life for more than a few minutes at a time until it was finally too old to run around, at which point its wicked owner actually DROVE it to the precious farm so it could sit with the old farmer guy he should have been living with all along.

Just for fun, here's a vintage Nationwide Insurance Commercial!

1.  I don't have any kids, so I never got to experience the joys of "take your child to work day."  I always imagined that it meant showing your offspring what mommy or daddy do for a living.  I didn't think it meant "bring your child to your place of work and then totally ignore them while they attempt to murder customers."  The boy in this ad is totally unsupervised as he launches tiny missiles, potentially lethal rolls of quarters, etc. at the hapless guy in the drive-thru while his mommy....is having a 20-minute coffee break with the entire staff of the bank, I guess.

2.  I HAVE owned a car before, and I'm pretty sure that if I was in a bank drive-thru and it became clear that someone in the bank was trying to murder me by launching sharp or blunt objects at me at high speed, I would at least move that car ten feet to get out of the Kill Zone.  This guy just gets on his phone and calls his insurance agent while keeping his face right next to what has obviously become a gun nozzle.  It's pretty impressive that his skull isn't crushed, but if I were his insurance agent I'd ask him why he just sat there and allowed his car to take all this abuse instead of...well, like I suggested, depressing the gas pedal and moving ten feet forward.  Nationwide may be on your side, but I think Nationwide would also like its customers to show just a LITTLE common sense.  Just a LITTLE. 

Geico Double Feature

Maybe this woman is just being super-shallow-- I mean, she decides she doesn't like this guy and doesn't want to get to know him the moment she realizes that his profile pic is nothing like the way he looks in real life.  Of course, he doesn't help by launching into a series of obvious lies which confirm her suspicion that he's a deceitful creep, so maybe she's just being smart.



If you're one of those people who enjoy these "sequels," I don't want to know why, and I want nothing to with you or your sad little non-life.  I mean, beyond simply asking "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Another Good2Go Insurance Ad, finally featuring a white woman with kids!

"Cheap tuna baked item AGAIN?"

"I'm broke!  I spent all my money on actual, functional, legitimate car insurance!"

"Who are you talking too, mommy?  And really?  You're broke?  Where's dad?  Where's the child support?  Can't we get benefits from those nice people who must be helping you pay for this house?"

"Just eat your tuna whatever."

Three Days Later:

"Wow, steak?  Did you get a better job, Mommy?  Or did you get benefits?"

"Nope!  I just dumped that expensive, actual, functional, legitimate car insurance and got cut-rate, barely-legal car insurance from Good2Go!  And now we can afford steak!  It's all about priorities, kids!"

"Um, Mommy?  We can go back to eating tuna.  That's better for us than steak anyway.  We'd rather be covered in case you have another accident."

"Shut up and eat your steak, Mommy's having a night out and needs to feed you and stick you in front of the TV before she goes.  Now that I can drive AND have some pocket money, Mommy's finally going to live a little."

"Mommy?  Can we please just go back to walking everywhere?"