After an extended absence, I'm back. I'm sure you were reeling with loss as a result of my absence. Truth be told, I had no computer at home and a lack of a computer makes blogging rather difficult.
You know what else is difficult? Rebuilding your life after a disaster. We've seen it all too often on the news, people trying to regain some semblance of normalcy after losing everything. Then some companies try to pander to that.
Don't get me wrong, as a DirecTV customer myself I see the benefit of referring friends and getting a discount. But really? The best she could do for a friend who's life was turned upside down by the tornado is get her a discount? What, was she not around to kick her when she was down?
I know you're all reeling right now, but you know what would totally help? Our Total Choice package!
DirecTV has made some interesting comparisons before between acts of humanitarian and philanthropic generosity and offering up a chance to save a couple of bucks on television service so people can watch awful reality shows.
Again, don't get me wrong, I watch as much, if not more, television than the next guy. Just not reality shows unless it involves cooking. But everyone do me a favor, if my home is ever destroyed by some natural disaster, please do me a favor and make sure my family has a roof over my head and has some food before we make sure Kaylee can watch Spongebob again. That's way down on the priority list. Third or fourth. Third probably.
Imagine a world where Girl Scout cookies are made from real girl scouts, and ginger ale was made from real ginger.
Not THIS type of ginger. Although that does solve some problems in the world...
Canada Dry has made the latter the truth. Their ginger ale is made from real ginger! Great...who cares. I mean, seriously, who likes ginger ale?
Well, Canada Dry has taken a page from the pharmaceutical companies as they attempt to invent a market for their product. Think about it, the med companies do it all the time. Seriously, there is no way we'd survive as a species let alone be at the top of the food chain if at least half of us were so messed up that we truly needed prescription meds to keep us going. Anyway, this blog isn't about the stupidity of pharmaceutical ads...I've already covered that. This is about Canada Dry.
You may have seen the ad. It premiered several months ago, and they recently brought it back during the Holiday season, because apparently the "working up a sweat in the field" thing they have going on on the ad rings true during the holiday season. Watch.
The ad starts with a group of people who do not look like any farm worker I see out here working the many fields of the San Joaquin valley harvesting, of all things, ginger. As they work, one farmer yanks on a plant and out pops a bottle of ginger ale. Then another yanks out a vending machine full of the stuff. I'll even refrain from commenting on the silliness of pulling out cans and a vending machine. The stupidest thing of this ad is the assertion that nothing hits the spot when you're hot, sweaty and thirsty, as a nice can of ginger ale.
Really?
This baby just tried ginger ale for the first time.
For some reason, when I've worked up a truly vicious thirst making fun of commercials, ginger ale doesn't come to mind as something to quench that thirst. I guess I can't begrudge them for trying to expand past the normal market: mixed drinks and old people who remember prohibition when they drank ginger ale.
Somehow, I just don't see it catching on when there supermarket shelves filled with drinks, healthy and unhealthy, that quench your thirst without tasting like ass.
I am no doubt the first to tell you it's Christmas time and as such, we will be bombarded by a ceaseless parade of advertisements meant to play on our love of the season and spending unsustainable amounts of money to make sure the Christmas spirit of crippling debt is left alive.
What, too cynical?
Some commercials have been around for so long they play not just on our need to get the best gadget for Christmas, but also our sense of nostalgia. Enter Campbell's Soup.
I used to love that commercial, because seeing it I knew it was Christmas time. When I was a bit older, I love it because I knew it meant it was winter time, and when you live in the desert like I did, winter time means you can now touch your car door handle without needing skin grafts afterward.
But now, I realize this commercial displays not only a level of creepiness, but of some questionable parenting at best.
First off, let's look at the opening scene.
I recognize that this commercial was filmed some time ago...so long ago they probably actually used film. But it wasn't produced so long ago that letting your kid play outside unattended was necessarily considered great parenting. Especially in a fricking blizzard.
But I don't think the kid was playing in the snow...I think he was left outside to serve as his parents' outdoor decoration. He was just standing there, covered in snow, until he apparently received a union-mandated soup break.
Then things just get weird. Not that a walking snowman outside of the Frosty cartoon isn't weird. But take a look at this:
I'll concede that the poor kid standing out there for hours could end up covered in snow and resemble a snowman. But, how the hell did his arms turn to sticks? Apparently his parents aren't just shitty, there is some sort of fairytale evil stepmom and warlock thing going on.
But by the power of Campbells condensed soup, the spell is lifted (or the snow melts, if you take it at face value, you poor fool) and we see....AAAH! A GINGER!
Maybe the parents weren't evil, he was sentenced to snowman for his crimes of being a ginger. And looks what happens when he's released from his icy cell:
Yeah, you see a smiling kid. I see someone who just ate a bowl of Chicken Noodle and Soul Soup. That's right, the little sucker just took someone's soul and made it in to a rich, savory broth. Cambell's Soup is worse than Soylent Green...it's PEOPLE.....'s souls.
So if you're like me and live in the Fresno and Bakersfield broadcast areas you've been privileged to see this gem of an ad. Constantly. In-effing-cessantly. Ad nauseum...pun intended.Seriously, it's generally played at least twice every commercial break it's in. Even if I was interested in the product, that would just turn me the hell off.
First off, let me stress that's the second version of the ad. The initial ad said "The I-99, it's your time." That's great, I was wondering when our time was. The only problem is, the 99 isn't an Interstate; it's a US Highway. A minor difference, but when you're hyping that you're doing a big thing for an area, something like the major highway is something you may want to get right.
They've since edited the "I" out of the spot, which only makes me focus more on the other issues.
Issues like this guy...he is just WAY too excited about a Doritos taco shell
He's turned on by cheese-dust covered fingers. Sadly, not even in the top 100 of weird shit you'll find online. And somehow I get the impression he's doing a version of the old "cut a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket" trick.
Anyway, I'll overlook all the lame jokes and bad puns; Lord knows I make enough of those myself (see first paragraph) but the one thing that just makes me shake my head is at the very end. He talks about the taco and confirms that no, this isn't a dream of another way to make your digestive tract loathe you even more, "This is Really Happening!"
Last year, also-ran automaker Kia came out with a new car, the Soul, and a new commercial showing head bobbing hamsters driving the compact conveyance. Since then the hamsters have been rapping and now, dancing in the most addicting freaking ad I have seen.
Hamsters!
I honestly can't help myself, I can not stop watching this damn commercial. The annoying music drills into my brain and lays eggs or something like one of those zombie mold things.
It opens up like the beginning of some video game that, honestly, I would totally play. Some massive laser firing robots are doing battle with Master Chief clones in the remains of a great city somewhere that Hamsters have taken bipedal human form as if it were some sort of furry pet version of Planet of the Apes.
Wait....are they hamsters or guinea pigs? Not sure, but either way, Richard Gere loves this commercial too.
Anyway, just as one of the Master Chiefs (Masters Chief? ooh...grammar jokes) is about to meet its untimely death at the hands of the Super Death Robot thing, when the three hamsters roll up in their Kia Soul.
Hamsters!
The battle is immediately interrupted as the fighting factions are distracted by the rhythmic moves of the dancing Hamsters. Peace ensues, not to mention a space Marine/robot thing showing off some good moves.
Coming in 2012: Street Dance 2115
Seriously though, I haven't seen a robot fighter thing move his pelvis like that since I was killed by some 12 year old punk playing Halo online and he teabagged my dead character. I then promptly canceled my Xbox Live account. Effing kids...
Hamsters, dammit!
So the sci-fi fighting force dance on as the hamsters drive out of town. Do they keep dancing in the pets' absence, or does the fighting resume. Who knows for sure, but the skies did seem a bit brighter as they left. Maybe we can learn something from these rhythmic rodents ...maybe we don't have to fight, but can solve our problems by getting down to catchy music performed by douche bags. All I know is, I feel better after watching the commercial.
Before I go in to this, I will say that I absolutely love this commercial. But that doesn't mean there aren't some things that we can't address. (Translation: make fun of)
I'm assuming you've seen the ad. Some parents dragged their little boy to a piano recital, because everyone knows that's the place to take a hyperactive demographic. The commercial opens up to shitty parenting as we look for the answer to the question: "It's 7 o'clock, do you know where your child is?
Oh I'm sorry, I was too busy being self centered to keep an eye on him. You?
We're further exposed to their horrible parenting skills when the kid goes where he's not supposed to. I'm not saying I was a perfect kid, Lord knows I was incapable of shutting the hell up. (Big shock, I know.) But I would NOT have gone somewhere I was obviously not supposed to go. This kid apparently wanders like the big guy from Cadence.
I wonder if there are any Legos in there . . .
Before the parents decide if they should get up and look for their lost little ankle-biter or pick out swatches to turn his room back in to a study, they hear the unmistakable staccato of a little boy making expensive piano keys all sticky, since kids are dirty. That's right, the kid is pecking at the keys like our grandparents type, barely playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Or the alphabet tune...but since the kid couldn't read the sign saying stay the hell out, I'm guessing its the former versus the latter. So the parents think, Uh-oh, now we'll surely be embarrassed! It can't get any worse than this, can it?
Hey, I was gonna play some piano, but who wants to watch me punt a kid instead?
But instead of holding the kid up by the scruff of the neck and asking "Who's is this? He's going in the lost and found!" the piano player joins in with the kid and performs a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle that makes the kid a little star. (See what I did there? ) This is actually really cool, and hopefully the kid about which this commercial is based did venture off in to a career in music. After finding better parents, of course.
This commercial is just like anything else form Hollywood; we rarely see the negative repercussions of noble or heroic acts. This commercial is no different, as it cuts out before we get to see one which parent lost the game of Rock Paper Scissors and had to go pick up their kid.
onetwothree NOT IT!
We could take it to another step and show the kid later on, a musician himself. He cold point to his parents in the audience and say "My career in music, and my fame, are all thanks to my parents, and their inability to keep track of one kid!
Thanks, Son.
So we'll just assume that everything ended well. The parents didn't later leave him home when going on vacation resulting in the little blond kid foiling robbers with ridiculous hi-jinks, and he went on to a great career in music.
In closing...I just wanted to say SCREW YOU to these guys for making me cry every time this commercial comes on television:
It's not connected, I know. But it needed to be said. *Grabs a kleenex*
In this day and age of the Internet, we're more connected via social media and what not, but somehow fail to make meaningful connections. Thanks to that, we have an ever growing number of online dating services promising to hook you up through some sort of online chicanery...I mean match-making. And they're everywhere. I'm not kidding, since I've written this, I've seen ads for three different dating sites...and four pizza delivery companies. Apparently I fit in to a viewing demographic of hungry, lonely losers.
Forever alone pizza...never has a meme been more appropriate in food form.
Remember when we used to go to a bar or nightclub to meet a mate? Me neither, I'm married to the girl I went out with in high school. But I'm told that's how it was done. Now we log on to sites like facebook to get poked, and there's just something wrong with that. Add in that impersonal approach to dating, and we have examples of what's wrong with our society.
There's e-Harmony, which talks about some ridiculous number of traits that they put in to some sort of mathematical formula to find you the perfect match. Because that's what was missing in the institution of marriage, scientifically formulated equations. Nothing says I love you like a theorem. Pythagoras was HOT!
E-Harmony's guy looks like his graphing calculator was his first love.
But the worst offender is the latest example of our materialism and nature shallower than a kiddie pool in the Sahara: Zoosk. The first commercial I saw for Zoosk had a woman and her three friends drooling like Pavlovian dogs over some male models zoosk shows to be their dating fodder.
First off, what horrible labeling. Serious romance? Just because you have enough candles to warrant a visit from the fire marshal doesn't make it romantic. You're looking to get shtupped. (Is that the correct spelling? I don't know Yiddish, and I didn't want to say "fucked". Ooops...) That's fine, I don't agree with the whole men can screw anyone and it's fine and a woman who does it is a whore double standard. It takes two to tango. But call it like it is princess.
Second, we constantly hear about the magazine images of women being too skinny making women do stupid ass shit to be that horrifically skinny First off, who likes these sticks? If men liked twigs, then why isn't that what you see in porn? Not that I've ever seen one.... But what about the reverse? Where's the outrage over men having to look like 'roided up meatheads to be worth dating?
The latest ad though is even dumber, which I found rather surprising considering how lowly the bar was set.
I really hope one of the people standing outside that office after their less than subtle romp in the paper tray (huh huh...talk about a paper jam) is from HR to fire their freshly-tapped asses. But judging from the reactions, I'm guessing they work for Voyeur Incporporated. You've got a dorky looking guy saying "Aloha" in a "funny" way. Aloha? Really? I guess the commercial's stupidity is evidence enough of a lack of writing staff, but they couldn't come up with anything funnier than aloha? Here, I'll pitch three lines off the top of my head better than aloha.
1) That's one way of filling an opening.
2) Well that's one way of making copies.
3) The intern program has never been the same since we brought in Clinton.
So the girl who apparently had the office romance comes back from the cut scene and says she'll "Stick to Zoosk for dating." Right...sorry you kinky little minx, but I somehow doubt sticking to Zoosk will prevent your inner exhibitionist coming rearing it's ugly head. You'll just do it at places other than work.
