So I'll be off to score Advanced Placement exams for the 16th straight year (well, I've scored them for 16 years, but for reasons I don't care to get into I did it online for two straight years a while back. 2020 and 2021 to be exact. You'll figure it out.)
And this year we have a new city as our host. From 2008 through 2016 we were in Louisville Kentucky, then in 2017 we were in Tampa, then back to Louisville, for one year, then Tampa again, then online scoring, then Tampa again, and now Kansas City. I've never been to KC but I'll be arriving pretty early on Saturday morning and hope to catch a few of the sites, maybe take a trip to the Truman Library (the World War I museum is staying open late for us on Wednesday so I will cross that off the list later.) A Royals game is a possibility next Friday, we'll see.
My hotel is a full mile from the convention center where I'll be working from 8 to 5 for seven straight days, giving every essay that shows up on my laptop a fair and honest read to the best of my ability. So it will be easier than ever to get my steps in, and I expect to complete the annual "Lazy Marathon" in record time this year...
See you when I get back- until then, enjoy the archives and click a few ads if you want to contribute! I should get SOME benefit out of commercials, after all!
There are crossovers, and there are crossovers....we've seen the Lorax used to sell Denny's (or was it IHOP? I don't actually remember, even though I made a post about it at the time.) Star Wars used to sell some other truck. Deadpool used to sell Slurpees. And so it goes.
Then there is this ad, featuring the characters from a cute little movie that turned into a megahit way back in 2010 with a heartwarming little story that parents and kids could both appreciate. Remember those innocent days, before Illumination decided to take the minion characters and turn them into the most god-awful obnoxious franchise since Ever? We've had something like six movies which have become more and more minion-centered as they've regressed, including one that was simply entitled "Minions" and was entirely about, well, you know.
I don't want to see any more of these movies (I saw the first two. Thought the first one was sweet. Thought the second one was totally unnecessary and dumb. And now I'm done, because I value my brain cells.) I don't want to see them at the theater, and I sure as hell don't want to see them on my TV witlessly pitching Volkswagen as if Gru doesn't already have a very cool, three-story high car with a rocket propulsion system (see, I can still remember the first movie.) Just...stop this. Please.
Hey look the good people at Morgan Collectible Garbage have located another 3,485 of those Amazingly Rare sort-of-silver coins that have some silver which they've been telling us are practically non-existent and are willing to part with them for only about three times what they are actually worth, plus shipping and handling. What a steal.*
Let's look at a cheesy "guard" opening the gate to a cheesy "vault" filled with what look like money bags from an episode of the old Superman show while the narrator says something about the U.S. Government and the confiscation and destruction of more silver than has ever existed in nature in order to con silly old people into parting with actual money for these trinkets. Now let's look at a few graphs showing the rising value of silver because that's totally not a non-sequitur considering that there's almost no silver in these silver dollars.
Let's wrap up by pointing out that you get a really cool display case with each coin that will look great on the bookshelf when your adult kids come over, see it, roll their eyes and start that old argument about how you really need to sign those Power of Attorney papers before you donate your 401(k) to Peter Popoff or Donald Trump or whoever is trying to convince you that Bored Ape NFTs are a great investment opportunity.
I know that all of these Not Available in Stores product commercials have to show people being incredibly inconvenienced by entirely trivial situations- after all, if we actually NEEDED any of this stuff, it would have been invented decades ago-but there's something positively delightful about seeing people having what looks like seizures caused by needing to hold a paper plate overloaded with food. Seriously, is this a problem that anyone considers so serious that they'd rather walk around with a plate of food impaled by a bottle? You still need to stop eating if you want to take a drink (I really wanted to see at least one kid dump that food all over himself when he forgot that his bottle was holding the plate and he just titled the whole thing toward his mouth.)
But hey, it made some old guy's tailgating experience the greatest ever, so there is that. Let's toast the Amazing Dumbness that is the Go Plate. Just don't forget to take the thing off the bottle first.
"Have you ever had legs? How about feet? Then you need this product to deal with those problems." Ok then.
"The movement provided by the Legxersize moves the stagnant blood from your feet back to your heart..." and that's a good thing? I want stagnant blood in my heart? Why?
If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, sitting on a couch, sitting on a chair- in short, not using those legs and feet which are the focus of this ridiculous non-exercise exercise device, I guess it's a good idea to try to keep those feet and legs moving just a little bit to prevent clotting. But all you really need is a tennis ball in a shoebox- just roll the ball around with your foot as you sit. There, I just saved you however much money this dumb piece of junk costs. Even the shipping is free. You're welcome.
So the whole Law and Order tie-in is NOT a desperate cash-grab by two minor celebrities who see their careers coming to a swift end. It's a way of making a super-clever point about it being a "crime" to pay for car repairs because you didn't listen to Vivica Fox and Tracy Marrow and buy the non-insurance the pitch in their ads. Got it.
And how exactly does the whole CarShield business model make it such a reprehensible scam? Let us count the ways:
1. The ads manipulate language to tell the listeners what CarShield wants them to hear but not what CarShield does NOT want them to hear but which covers their butt legally. We hear over and over again how "covered repairs will be covered" and buyers of CarShield "will never pay for covered repairs again." Well, no duh. But thousands of people will ignore the word "covered" and just hear "repairs" and "never pay." And if viewers of limited means aren't already anxious enough,
2. The ads play on the economic insecurity of their audience. Every time you turn the key, you might hear a strange noise that means that you are about to spend $$$$ you don't have on the thing that you need to get you to your job and make money and pay the bills. Every time you go out on the road, you run the risk of sustaining damage to your car that you can't pay for and that's the ball game, your whole life has been turned upside down and you are basically screwed. So here are a bunch of people with first names and single initials for last names to tell you how much they "saved" by getting CarShield. Which leads us to...
3. CarShield never tells us the price of their "service," because they don't want viewers to factor that in to the risk of having to pay for a car repair. A "basic" CarShield contract will run you $100 a month. You can get "gold"-level coverage for $140 a month. Remember, this is for a WARRANTY. It is not INSURANCE, which you still have to pay for separately, hopefully from a company that is not run by con artists like CarShield. So let's pretend that there really is a guy out there who had a $2K car repair actually covered by his CarShield Warranty. He certainly had the "gold" membership. But if he paid the premiums on that policy for more than fifteen months, that warranty cost him more than the repair would have. $140 a month placed in a bank account for fifteen months would have netted him a $100 surplus after paying for that repair out of pocket. Oh, but what if he needed the repair after SIX months? Well, that still would only save him $1160, not $2k. But this is all a moot point, because....
4. CarShield's thirty-page warranty agreement- which I'm guessing nobody reads- is chock-full of legalese which explains to the customer why they shouldn't even bother calling when they want to file a claim (I've heard stories from people who can't get anyone on the line for "24/7" towing service, or if they can, are told to pay out of pocket and "file for a refund.") CarShield is very good at using phrases like "engine repair" while excluding specific parts which are needed to effect engine repair. It's the reason why many mechanics refuse to accept CarShield (and why CarShield is actually BANNED in some states, like California.) It's deceptive but legal because it's right there in paragraph 4 of page 22 Sorry You Didn't Read It Sorry No Refunds.
Look, extended warranties- which is what CarShield, HomeShield, etc. etc. offer- are all scams. Every one of them. This is just maybe the very worst because it doesn't target homeowners who probably have a bit of financial leeway because after all they own a house. I'm quite certain that the vast majority of customers drawn in by these disgusting ads are renters, minimum-wage workers, single parents and elderly people on fixed incomes. They can't afford your non-product, CarShield. Stop taking advantage of loopholes in our ridiculously lax Truth in Advertising Laws. Or just keep paving that road to hell, where if there IS a god you'll be joined by Big Gambling when your time comes.
