It's that time of year again- I'm off to Louisville!

Regular readers of this blog- and those who know me personally- are already aware that every year I spend the first week of June in Louisville, Kentucky with 1200 other history teachers from all over the United States, grading Advanced Placement US History Exams within the spacious confines of the Kentucky Convention Center.

It's just about my favorite week of the year- a week I get to spend in a wonderful little city with great museums, hiking trails, and a AAA baseball team which for four straight days while I'm in town will be playing the Durham Bulls.  All this comes after 8 hours per day of grading essays, of course- but the factory whistle blows at 5 PM and then it's time to hit the town.   And when I'm ready to turn in, it's in a luxury hotel where they treat you like royalty.

Because I really, really like Louisville, I'm not going to trash this commercial too harshly.  It's kind of a cute take-off on those Viagra ads we all know and love so very much.  Louisville is so fun, with it's views of the Ohio River and the opportunity to eat dinner on a real Steamboat and the Muhammad Ali Cultural Center and the Louisville Bats Museum and an awesome fossil bed hidden right over the bridge in Indiana, you may experience "over excitement" and unfamiliar feelings of contentment and something that you used to recognize as "happiness."  In other words, being in Louisville is like having sex- I get it.  Like I said, I really enjoy my week in Louisville.  But this is overselling it just a tad.

I would like to point out one unintentionally funny part of this commercial, where the narrator suggests that potential visitors ask their doctors if their hearts are strong enough for Louisville.  Considering the staple foods I see at the convention center*-- biscuits with sausage gravy, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, etc.- this is actually a pretty good idea.  And considering that the average Louisville resident seems to be about fifty pounds overweight, it's advice not taken by the locals.

So that's as close as I'm going to come to knocking this wonderful little city.   The only reason I even used this ad for a blog post was to remind my regular readers that I'll be away for awhile, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to post until I return on June 8-- depends on the internet connection in the Computer Lab in the basement of the Convention Center.  I'll give it a shot, though.  If it doesn't work out, see you in a week!

*the first year I graded APs, I gained 4 lbs in six days.  For the past few years I've taken the Vegetarian option each meal which, along with a lot of walking and using the hotel gym, has really helped.   :>)

The best part is when Megan asks the phone out for a date

Well, these two are obviously meant for each other, aren't they?

The guy is sitting by himself (excuse me- not by himself, but with his best friend, a Nokia phone with all the bells and whistles phones simply MUST come with these days if they want to be purchased by twentysomething dickwads obsessed with technology.)  Pretty girl sits down beside him, and the guy's thought process kicks in- "Woah, Megan Alert."

Instead of acknowledging Megan right away, Dickwad naturally decides he'll "draw her in" by showing off his phone, starting with it's "curve."  What the hell- really?  Then he'll "casually" move on to video, so Megan can see that he's "got lots of friends."  I find this part especially funny- it's important that Megan know that even though this rude Dweeb is being a rude Dweeb with his phone, that doesn't mean that he isn't aware of this thing called Actual Human Friends.  Just in case Megan is the kind of woman who likes that in a guy.  It's strictly optional.

"Hey, what kind of phone is that?" asks Megan, and your reaction to the guy's "Oh, Megan, when did you get here?" probably depends on your age.  If you are over, say, 35, you probably think it's not very believable that the guy could pull off pretending to be so absorbed with his phone that he would not notice Pretty Megan sitting next to him, drooling over said phone.  If you are under 35, you probably think he'll get away with it, because you know plenty of techno-creeps who become so fixated by their stupid glowing devices that it's amazing they aren't run over by buses on a daily basis ( amazing, and a great pity, too.)   Since these people both look like they belong to the younger set, chances are he's not going to have any problem pulling off the "oh hey Megan, I was so busy watching myself white water rafting with some of my Many Cool Friends that I didn't notice you there."  Personally, I'd take this as a bit of an insult, and a window into the mind of this dope that reveals nothing good.  But if Megan is as With It as this guy is, it's entirely possible she sees this as just par for the course.

So all the best, Zombie Dweeb and Potential Carbon-Based Life Form Girlfriend.  Looking forward to seeing you in all my favorite restaurants, ostensibly on a date but actually just carrying out an agreement to be in the same place as you look at your phones.  Weirdos.

100% Insulting Hot Dog Commercial

There's nothing funnier than a commercial narrated (and clearly written) by a woman which has the subject "Men: they are so Stupid and Weird, aren't they?"

In this one- I think it's # 467, 224 in the Dumb Men Being Dumb File- three intensely bored-looking guys are standing around a grill having a "conversation" about whether or not some Major League baseball player won the batting title in 1936 or 1938, or something (how many times do you want me to watch this crap?  Close enough!)  They aren't looking at each other or anything else in particular- just staring into space, as if they are just a little uncomfortable to be there, but not so uncomfortable that they are willing to sit down and spend time with Wifey and the Kids.  They sure don't look like they are having anything but a really lousy, pointless, sad, Suburban-ritual afternoon which drives them to do nothing short of re-evaluating their entire lives.

Sidebar:  I actually think that is what is going through the minds of these guys as they carry on their non-conversation concerning a baseball player who has been retired for seventy years:  Each one is conducting personal inventory, retracing his steps to discover how he got to this moment, where he's spending a perfectly nice Memorial Day standing around someone's backyard adding greasy hot dogs to his already expanding waistband, unable to come up with anything of even the slightest bit of substance to say, compelled to needle the Next Door Neighbor With Exactly The Same Life He Has with gradeschool-level teasing.  Remember that Memorial Day Weekend  when you and your girlfriend threw a cooler filled with wine and cheese and took off for the coast for 72 hours of sun, surf and sex?   If you can't, it's probably for the best.

Anyway, the tagline for this ad is something like "you can't understand men," and I suppose that if men were anything like the fat wax mannequins in Dad Clothes in this commercial, it would make perfect sense.  What is really confusing is the "100% happy" line which follows.  Do you see anyone being even 1% happy here?

Hey Dodge: Your Hypocrisy is Showing!

Dodge has produced and televised approximately 1200 commercials for its "Caravan" minivan model in the past three years.

1199 of those commercials have been disgustingly sugar-laden homages to breeding- the joys of having lots and lots of kids so you can justify spending forty grand or so on a freaking bus, complete with fold-out table, DVD and a sound system better than the one you've got in your actual house.  1199 commercials featuring grinning young idiots who seem thrilled to death that they've managed to produce smaller versions of themselves and are now in the process of sacrificing every waking moment to the needs of the noisy little terrors- needs which include vehicles which can seat all of them and, in the future, several of their equally messy and attention-sucking little friends.   1199 commercials devoted to convincing the viewing public that being a Normal American means popping out spawn and strapping them into a Suburban Blandmobile and taking them...well, wherever these people are always taking them.

1199 commercials telling us that the pinnacle of life is reached when you Settle- when one of you puts on a chunk of rock and changes her name, and the other sticks his pretty little trophy into a house with a fence and a yard and one of these things taking up most of the driveway. 

1199 commercials practically begging us to be Real Americans and get married, have kids, live in the suburbs and drive around in something that takes up two spaces and always seems to be featuring Finding Nemo on the screen in the back.

And one commercial which suggests, obliquely, that nawwwww you are actually better off not having kids, because they are noisy attention-vampires and all the other things I just bitterly ranted about for three paragraphs.    Hey Dodge, who do you think you're kidding?  Without people willing to produce children, you're out of business.  And did you really think we were going to forget about those other 1199 commercials?

Kit Kat: So little content, so much Hate

The ad agency hired to peddle Kit Kats doesn't think that words are necessary to describe the product.  And I find myself at a loss for words to describe how much I loathe these disgusting dollops of minimalism.

I think I'll just have to be satisfied with explaining how very, very much I'd like to see the people responsible for this noisy pile of Stupid coated with low-grade milk chocolate and buried up to their necks next to a nest of fire ants.   It's not so much that I hate the exaggerated ripping and snapping and crunching, not to mention the repulsive "MMMM" sounds.  What really bugs the hell out of me is that you just KNOW the people who "wrote" this swill think that they are Awesomely Clever and Immensely Proud of the final "product."

How do you know this?  Well, maybe it's because this is somewhere around the 40th version of the same commercial.  The only thing that changes is the setting and the faces of the people involved in this crime against the viewing public.

Oh, and I'd also like to ad that as Incredibly, Massively, Bag of Rocks Dumb this all is, it would at least be bearable if it wasn't showing up on my television during Every. Single. Commercial Break.  But it is.  Which means that the background noise I have on while I'm typing away at exams and papers in my den is forever being interrupted with Rip, Snap, Crunch and MMM MMM MMM.  As it is, I once again find myself really, really wanting to hurt someone.  Loudly.

What dad SHOULD have told you

Here's another car commercial which I guess is supposed to be a cute and cloying slice of life, but which leaves cold, cynical jerks like me inspired to type things which would NOT win kudos for the advertising team which was paid real money to write this dreck.

The cutesy is supposed to be delivered with the "clever" cutaways of Father and Son exhibiting the same nervous ticks and mannerisms as they drive their cars.  They both scratch the backs of their necks.  They both drink beverages as they drive.  They both tap their fingers against the steering wheel. Wow, it's like they are mentally linked, like E.T. and that stupid Eliot kid.  Except- who doesn't do all this stuff? 

"My dad told me to get a Subaru.  But I'm nothing like him."  Hey, calm down, buddy.  Advice from Dad doesn't normally mean that he's trying to treat you like a clone of himself.  This isn't exactly like the father in Dead Poet's Society obsessively insisting that his son become a doctor until that son finally kills himself.  Throttle down the angst, ok?  Nobody thinks that you are like your dad, even though you end up basically doing what he said, and even choosing the same color (which is supposed to be the visual punchline, but isn't.)

At the ad's conclusion we learn that, indeed, this guy is nothing like his father.  His father, after all, managed to purchase a substantial house in the suburbs with a huge driveway.  The son?  He still lives with his Dad.  Nope, they aren't alike at all.

Maybe Dad's advice to Son should have been "learn the bus and train schedules until you've earned enough money to buy a car AND pay rent in your own damned apartment."  That's what I would have told him.  But like I said at the beginning, I'm just a cold and cynical jerk, after all.

"Brand New" being a very relative term here

Groan.  Where to start.

Ok, first off- hey TBS, guess what?  When comedy shows are actually, genuinely funny, we don't need to be served up the tagline "Very Funny" with every commercial for the Very Funny Comedy Show.  In fact, "Very Funny" sounds more like a desperate "no, really, you'll like this one, we promise, it's not like the others we said and continue to say are 'Very Funny.'  This time we mean it!"  We viewers are really good at deciding what is Very Funny and what isn't- which explains why TBS's ratings are consistently in the toilet, and why you don't hear much about the Very Funny Frank Caliendo show anymore.

In fact, if any of the tripe you shovel into your prime time slots were at All Funny, let alone Very Funny, they would have been picked up by one of the real networks- ABC, CBS, NBC or (sort of) FOX.   Don't believe me?  Well, check out all those comedies you run during the day.  See what they all have in common?  That's right- they are all major network comedies which have gone into Syndication.  (You didn't mean for us to think that you were responsible for Friends, Seinfeld or Family Guy, did you?)

Here's another tip- there's nothing new or funny or fresh about a comedy featuring four scruffy guys and their women issues.*  How on Earth anyone thinks that they can get away with rewarming the same old dreck and calling it new is just beyond me.  It's pretty obvious that TBS's "new" venture will include all the stale, rehashed Men Are Sex-Obsessed Pigs Who Have No Idea What 'Sensitivity Training' Means jokes we've seen a thousand times on a thousand other sitcoms, none of which qualifies as Very Funny, either.

I'll wrap this up with a few more Sledgehammers of Truth for you, TBS.  Conan O'Brien is not funny.  George Lopez is pretty much the opposite of funny.  And "comedies" featuring sassy black kids and their sassy black mothers and their clueless, bumbling black fathers have never been funny.  EVER.

I'm sorry I had to break the news to you, and maybe I was a bit abrupt, but consider this intervention an act of love.  By someone who really hates your crappy, rerun-dependent channel.

*who mysteriously manage to meet and date gorgeous, 100 percent available models working as waitresses, secretaries etc. every. Single. Week.  Because every sitcom is a peek into the fantasy world of male "comedy" writers.