freecreditreport.com has done a pretty good job with their glut of commercials with those dudes who play pop music about the lead singer (and apparently his bandmates as well) and his not-so-good financial decisions. Except for this commercial here which is about his wife's bad credit rating. This is the first song I saw (I think it was the first one they did. I'm not sure) and it wasn't until awhile ago that I realized that the singer is so shook up about his wife's bad credit that he wished he never married her. So ladies, make sure the man you marry either knows a little bit about you and financial history, which assuming your marriage wasn't the result of some misguided decision making while exploring fabulous Las Vegas you have probably spent some time with your beau and would have probably covered the whole sharing of finances thing during the engagement. This apparently didn't happen with the couple in question. Good thing that he is dealing with the regret by being passive-aggressive and singing a song about his woe while his wife is doing housework all around him. You really picked a winner there lady! Maybe the wife is deaf and thats a way for him to actually deal with it privately without annoying anyone. Frankly, I'd like to imagine that I could deal with all of my marital stresses by being able to get two other guys to help me sing about what would piss me off about my wife. Next, when we consider the arc of the story that these songs string together (and you can watch them all on youtube if you please) then he is being a hypocrite for lambasting his wife's bad credit when all the rest of the songs are about his bad credit. Maybe the tendency to reach for the credit cards was contagious and he then felt compelled to make bad financial decisions later in life and is now paying his debts by becoming the bard of a website that doesn't actually help you with your credit rating, but rather just lets you know if you suck or not.
"Baby I love you, but you and your low score have got to go"
Monday, August 24, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Chef Boyardee is good (for you)
Now, I don't have children but I do have parents. And I'm sure there are plenty of things they have and would like to keep secret. They have had, or have perfectly valid reasons to hide things from me. Most of the time when I found out a secret it wasn't that mom and dad were going to surprise me with a secret half-birthday trip to disney world but rather something that sucked. Like Santa not being real. Or that "Adult" sleepovers were a lot different from the ones I had. So now if I figure out that if my parents have a secret I work as hard as I can to not find out. Secrets really are the very essence of Adulthood. Children blurt out things all the time because they can't see how words and knowledge can hurt, everything they take in they believe to be beneficial as good parents stress that knowledge is power. Unfortunately that is true but kids don't know the corollary that power hurts even those who wield it.
Now since my parents wanted the best for me and that included keeping secrets that would harm my perfectly innocent world-view they knew that in order to keep a secret one of the first steps would be to not put information on the table that would reveal the secret on the kitchen table while I'm eating dinner. Seriously.
Now, I don't have children but I do have parents. And I'm sure there are plenty of things they have and would like to keep secret. They have had, or have perfectly valid reasons to hide things from me. Most of the time when I found out a secret it wasn't that mom and dad were going to surprise me with a secret half-birthday trip to disney world but rather something that sucked. Like Santa not being real. Or that "Adult" sleepovers were a lot different from the ones I had. So now if I figure out that if my parents have a secret I work as hard as I can to not find out. Secrets really are the very essence of Adulthood. Children blurt out things all the time because they can't see how words and knowledge can hurt, everything they take in they believe to be beneficial as good parents stress that knowledge is power. Unfortunately that is true but kids don't know the corollary that power hurts even those who wield it.
Now since my parents wanted the best for me and that included keeping secrets that would harm my perfectly innocent world-view they knew that in order to keep a secret one of the first steps would be to not put information on the table that would reveal the secret on the kitchen table while I'm eating dinner. Seriously.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
What your "Fun" says about you
Latest I've seen in D&B's "Fun" Campaign.
Dave & Buster's has started this ad campaign using your "Fun" which is a little mini-you that looks like you and follows you around and talks to much. Kind of like a child or younger sibling except that this commercial shows that they are apparently allowed to drink, albeit in mini-mugs(and then get mini-drunk but refuse to get in a mini-taxi and try driving home in their mini-minicar and mini-kill someone innocent, how long will we let Dave and Busters promote their campaign of death?). Anyway, watching the commercial that I posted above got me thinking about how far I can stretch out the idea of having your "Fun" becoming a dis-embodied piece of you. If the date goes really well and the guy ends up staying with the girl that night what do their respective Funs do? Are they contractually (is their a contract? Is your Fun born with you? You see where I'm taking this) obligated to participate in the same manner as their counterparts? What if the relationship takes off does that mean the Funs are stuck together? Can one couple break up and the other stay together? What sort of Freudian analysis is there when you break up but your Funs stay together? I think it'd be worse with the opposite since your Fun obviously sees that it doesn't work with the other person and is probably sitting around wondering why you're still fooling with the other person. What if your therapist's Fun gives your Fun a different diagnosis.
On to the commercial at hand though. The thing I noticed is that when the guy comes to the door and the girl opens up its clear that she was preparing to not have fun. But she wasn't going to bring her fun because she assumed the guy wasn't going to bring his Fun, and they'd do something lame like go to a movie on their first date. I hope I never meet this girl and subsequently want to date her. If I was that dude that would send a huge flare for me about how this relationship might pan out. I'd play it cool and then drop something like this on her, "hey so remember when you thought I'd be so lame that you even told your fun to go ahead and stay home tonight?" and then I then I get up and leave and make her pick up the tab. I'm a charmer though so I don't know if that would work for everyone.
So lesson learned, always bring your Fun along because you never know when the next guy you date actually isn't insufferably lame and knows what to do to have a good time. As long as a good time to both you and him is basically an adult Chuck E. Cheese where you don't even get to gamble.
Dave & Buster's has started this ad campaign using your "Fun" which is a little mini-you that looks like you and follows you around and talks to much. Kind of like a child or younger sibling except that this commercial shows that they are apparently allowed to drink, albeit in mini-mugs(and then get mini-drunk but refuse to get in a mini-taxi and try driving home in their mini-minicar and mini-kill someone innocent, how long will we let Dave and Busters promote their campaign of death?). Anyway, watching the commercial that I posted above got me thinking about how far I can stretch out the idea of having your "Fun" becoming a dis-embodied piece of you. If the date goes really well and the guy ends up staying with the girl that night what do their respective Funs do? Are they contractually (is their a contract? Is your Fun born with you? You see where I'm taking this) obligated to participate in the same manner as their counterparts? What if the relationship takes off does that mean the Funs are stuck together? Can one couple break up and the other stay together? What sort of Freudian analysis is there when you break up but your Funs stay together? I think it'd be worse with the opposite since your Fun obviously sees that it doesn't work with the other person and is probably sitting around wondering why you're still fooling with the other person. What if your therapist's Fun gives your Fun a different diagnosis.
On to the commercial at hand though. The thing I noticed is that when the guy comes to the door and the girl opens up its clear that she was preparing to not have fun. But she wasn't going to bring her fun because she assumed the guy wasn't going to bring his Fun, and they'd do something lame like go to a movie on their first date. I hope I never meet this girl and subsequently want to date her. If I was that dude that would send a huge flare for me about how this relationship might pan out. I'd play it cool and then drop something like this on her, "hey so remember when you thought I'd be so lame that you even told your fun to go ahead and stay home tonight?" and then I then I get up and leave and make her pick up the tab. I'm a charmer though so I don't know if that would work for everyone.
So lesson learned, always bring your Fun along because you never know when the next guy you date actually isn't insufferably lame and knows what to do to have a good time. As long as a good time to both you and him is basically an adult Chuck E. Cheese where you don't even get to gamble.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Toilet Paper for Dogs
I thought this ad was surely about dog food at first,
But instead of dog food it is apparently an ad for doggy toilet paper. At least that's what I actually thought for about five seconds after I first saw this commercial. Turns out that Cottonelle is still making toilet paper for humans only. Sorry dogs of the world you'll just have to be content with wiping your butts across the carpet and somehow convincing human "masters" to pick up your poop and carry it around in a bag.
But the question I would really like to ask is if a dog really the best mascot for advertising the fancy life they promise with the use of their toilet paper? I mean, I just pointed out how dogs have it made but they have it made because their usually so blissfully unaware and full of life (read: happily dumb) that anything makes them happy. This commercial however makes it look like it'd even be hard for Leona Helmsley's dog to keep up with this dog's lifestyle. Again, dogs are happy but uncomplicated. That's why they're so popular. The voice-over talks about how Cottonelle is the product you want "when you demand the very best". The great thing about dogs is that they don't really demand anything and they gladly accept what you give them. I think I would have not asked these questions about the commercial if they chose a cat but I think cottonelle was being diplomatic in trying not to make their commercial more ammunition in the great "Cat People vs. Dog People" wars.
Regardless, this commercial is just another chapter in a long series of commercials that feature animals selling a product that is definitely humans only. There's no real connection between puppies (or bears) and toilet paper and uses soft and pleasant (again, bears are neither soft nor particularly pleasant though I like considering the subversive element Charmin takes with their bears asking the question "Do you use Charmin?" and hoping the bears will answer: "Don't I poop in the woods?" layers-within-layers, those people at Charmin are geniuses) so Cottonelle is hoping that you'll make a connection that they're toilet paper is fluffy and soft and will make your butt feel better and cleaner just as if you wiped your butt with a puppy.
But instead of dog food it is apparently an ad for doggy toilet paper. At least that's what I actually thought for about five seconds after I first saw this commercial. Turns out that Cottonelle is still making toilet paper for humans only. Sorry dogs of the world you'll just have to be content with wiping your butts across the carpet and somehow convincing human "masters" to pick up your poop and carry it around in a bag.
But the question I would really like to ask is if a dog really the best mascot for advertising the fancy life they promise with the use of their toilet paper? I mean, I just pointed out how dogs have it made but they have it made because their usually so blissfully unaware and full of life (read: happily dumb) that anything makes them happy. This commercial however makes it look like it'd even be hard for Leona Helmsley's dog to keep up with this dog's lifestyle. Again, dogs are happy but uncomplicated. That's why they're so popular. The voice-over talks about how Cottonelle is the product you want "when you demand the very best". The great thing about dogs is that they don't really demand anything and they gladly accept what you give them. I think I would have not asked these questions about the commercial if they chose a cat but I think cottonelle was being diplomatic in trying not to make their commercial more ammunition in the great "Cat People vs. Dog People" wars.
Regardless, this commercial is just another chapter in a long series of commercials that feature animals selling a product that is definitely humans only. There's no real connection between puppies (or bears) and toilet paper and uses soft and pleasant (again, bears are neither soft nor particularly pleasant though I like considering the subversive element Charmin takes with their bears asking the question "Do you use Charmin?" and hoping the bears will answer: "Don't I poop in the woods?" layers-within-layers, those people at Charmin are geniuses) so Cottonelle is hoping that you'll make a connection that they're toilet paper is fluffy and soft and will make your butt feel better and cleaner just as if you wiped your butt with a puppy.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Travel Channel is trying to kill us
Bite Me - Travel Channel's new show.
Alright so this is more about the show than anything about the commercial but sometimes I feel like its my moral and ethical obligation to ask the question; What the hell is Travel Channel thinking? Maybe they're just trying to make up for the fact that their channel is really just a thinly veiled advertisement for all the places they go. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch the Travel Channel, but seriously they should try doing away with the commercials they have and get the places they feature to just underwrite the shows.
That said, I don't see how they thought this was a good idea. The show is basically ennumerating reasons for me to not to go to these places. The example above is basically saying "Want to die? Come to Vietnam!" So, basically the same sort of idea when recruiting for the Vietnam War.
I like to think that whoever came up with the idea for this show thought to themselves "well I'm sure there are a lot of smart people looking for a show like Jackass that caters to their higher intellectual standard and that Steve Irwin guy sure got a lot of respect after he died so lets see if we can make this work for Mike Leahy, he is a doctor after all."
Now watch this show become a wild success and force other networks to have their stars endure torture from Mother Nature ("This week on AC360: "Snakes biting Anderson Cooper" will he survive?) and I'll admit that Travel Channel somehow made the correct call on this one. Until then I'm pretty sure I'll focus on the positives on my eventual trip to Australia, you know, the place where dying of "Natural Causes" involves something poisonous stabbing you in the heart.
Alright so this is more about the show than anything about the commercial but sometimes I feel like its my moral and ethical obligation to ask the question; What the hell is Travel Channel thinking? Maybe they're just trying to make up for the fact that their channel is really just a thinly veiled advertisement for all the places they go. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch the Travel Channel, but seriously they should try doing away with the commercials they have and get the places they feature to just underwrite the shows.
That said, I don't see how they thought this was a good idea. The show is basically ennumerating reasons for me to not to go to these places. The example above is basically saying "Want to die? Come to Vietnam!" So, basically the same sort of idea when recruiting for the Vietnam War.
I like to think that whoever came up with the idea for this show thought to themselves "well I'm sure there are a lot of smart people looking for a show like Jackass that caters to their higher intellectual standard and that Steve Irwin guy sure got a lot of respect after he died so lets see if we can make this work for Mike Leahy, he is a doctor after all."
Now watch this show become a wild success and force other networks to have their stars endure torture from Mother Nature ("This week on AC360: "Snakes biting Anderson Cooper" will he survive?) and I'll admit that Travel Channel somehow made the correct call on this one. Until then I'm pretty sure I'll focus on the positives on my eventual trip to Australia, you know, the place where dying of "Natural Causes" involves something poisonous stabbing you in the heart.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
KFC facepalm.
Kentucky Grilled Chicken -
I kind of hate to jump on the "Hate KFC for reasons beyond the quality of their food" bandwagon, not to mention all the stereotypical assumptions I could make about Fried Chicken which be among the lowest hanging fruit I could grab and is just simply over done (or I could try to push a conspiracy theory that claims KFC is trying to make black men sterile) but its not my job to talk about KFC, its my job (hobby actually) to talk about KFC's commercials. I want you to notice the type of people they use in this ad and then play the "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other" game with regards to who is not being stereotyped. I'll give you a hint: it's not the two Asian guys who are dressed up in eastern styled robes who yell random accented English words while making vague karate moves while holding a bucket of chicken.
Seriously, everyone else in the commercial is dressed like a typical American (Middle-class) with a typical American accent (read: non-descript) and act as normal as you can be when presented with ten pieces of grilled meat in a bucket despite the fact that our whole lives we've been conditioned to accept that any meat that comes in a bucket must by nature, be fried. KFC I think I can speak for all of us when I say, our minds are blown at your bold proposal of putting un-fried meats in a bucket. I'm sure the Colonel is rolling in his grave.
But seriously, did you have to dress the Asian guys up to get across your point that you have changed your chicken? You seem to have the general conventions for the aesthetics of a commercial like this (taking an established product, then adding something new, and giving it out to "test" reactions) laid down. You have cute, diverse kids and a couple who I assume are married or at least very committed to one another in some way. You even have two sets of twins to register that "OMG! Their twins and its so cute when they say the same thing at the same time because their twins and thats what twins are supposed to do on TV!" synapse in the brain that has been firing ever since we've been deciding if the movie The Parent Trap isn't that far-fetched after all.
The best part about this whole thing is not that KFC somehow has gotten away with slipping in one of the most blatant race caricatures this side of the Frito Bandito, but rather that the commercial is telling you to "Unthink". Presumably you're supposed to be unthinking about how your chicken is prepared but that point is never really made explicitly. Though, "Unthink" does however kind of makes sense when I consider how much unthinking KFC's ad team must have done to have created this commercial.
I kind of hate to jump on the "Hate KFC for reasons beyond the quality of their food" bandwagon, not to mention all the stereotypical assumptions I could make about Fried Chicken which be among the lowest hanging fruit I could grab and is just simply over done (or I could try to push a conspiracy theory that claims KFC is trying to make black men sterile) but its not my job to talk about KFC, its my job (hobby actually) to talk about KFC's commercials. I want you to notice the type of people they use in this ad and then play the "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other" game with regards to who is not being stereotyped. I'll give you a hint: it's not the two Asian guys who are dressed up in eastern styled robes who yell random accented English words while making vague karate moves while holding a bucket of chicken.
Seriously, everyone else in the commercial is dressed like a typical American (Middle-class) with a typical American accent (read: non-descript) and act as normal as you can be when presented with ten pieces of grilled meat in a bucket despite the fact that our whole lives we've been conditioned to accept that any meat that comes in a bucket must by nature, be fried. KFC I think I can speak for all of us when I say, our minds are blown at your bold proposal of putting un-fried meats in a bucket. I'm sure the Colonel is rolling in his grave.
But seriously, did you have to dress the Asian guys up to get across your point that you have changed your chicken? You seem to have the general conventions for the aesthetics of a commercial like this (taking an established product, then adding something new, and giving it out to "test" reactions) laid down. You have cute, diverse kids and a couple who I assume are married or at least very committed to one another in some way. You even have two sets of twins to register that "OMG! Their twins and its so cute when they say the same thing at the same time because their twins and thats what twins are supposed to do on TV!" synapse in the brain that has been firing ever since we've been deciding if the movie The Parent Trap isn't that far-fetched after all.
The best part about this whole thing is not that KFC somehow has gotten away with slipping in one of the most blatant race caricatures this side of the Frito Bandito, but rather that the commercial is telling you to "Unthink". Presumably you're supposed to be unthinking about how your chicken is prepared but that point is never really made explicitly. Though, "Unthink" does however kind of makes sense when I consider how much unthinking KFC's ad team must have done to have created this commercial.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Bing.com - A search engine for people who can type but can't read
Bing.com - Microsoft's new search engine
Ah the internet, an invention that is capable of granting freedom and enslaving us in captivity. We can potentially learn anything but yet this overabundance of information can also cripple us with information overload. Bing.com understands our dilemma. How often have I been looking up information about breakfast foods and accidentally typed in a word like "club" after "breakfast" and spent hours mistakenly looking at pictures of Emilio Estevez thinking it was bacon the whole time. Its not that I don't think Bing.com is a competent search engine (the two times I've used it I've gotten the exact same results as Google) its just that I have faith in the average consumer to know the difference between Plasma in blood and plasma TVs and have the ability to type that difference into a search engine. Add to the fact that I only sometimes completely derail a conversation to talk about something is rather due to the fact that I rarely listen to other people and not because I read Wikipedia too much and somehow ended up on an article about Disney Princesses when I started on Bowie Knives.
The people at Bing.com are making the (admittedly sometimes correct) assumption that people who use search engines are incapable of taking time to read what they typed and make sure that they are using specific language about what it is their searching and rather just type in random word associations hoping that they'll somehow remember what it was they were looking for in the first place. Almost like how TV news pundits frame their arguments a lot of times. It seems then that Bing.com isn't actually promising to provide smart people with a better search engine but rather curb dumb people's chances to do something moronic. Bing.com isn't trying to make your life easier they're trying to prevent you from hurting yourself too badly.
Ah the internet, an invention that is capable of granting freedom and enslaving us in captivity. We can potentially learn anything but yet this overabundance of information can also cripple us with information overload. Bing.com understands our dilemma. How often have I been looking up information about breakfast foods and accidentally typed in a word like "club" after "breakfast" and spent hours mistakenly looking at pictures of Emilio Estevez thinking it was bacon the whole time. Its not that I don't think Bing.com is a competent search engine (the two times I've used it I've gotten the exact same results as Google) its just that I have faith in the average consumer to know the difference between Plasma in blood and plasma TVs and have the ability to type that difference into a search engine. Add to the fact that I only sometimes completely derail a conversation to talk about something is rather due to the fact that I rarely listen to other people and not because I read Wikipedia too much and somehow ended up on an article about Disney Princesses when I started on Bowie Knives.
The people at Bing.com are making the (admittedly sometimes correct) assumption that people who use search engines are incapable of taking time to read what they typed and make sure that they are using specific language about what it is their searching and rather just type in random word associations hoping that they'll somehow remember what it was they were looking for in the first place. Almost like how TV news pundits frame their arguments a lot of times. It seems then that Bing.com isn't actually promising to provide smart people with a better search engine but rather curb dumb people's chances to do something moronic. Bing.com isn't trying to make your life easier they're trying to prevent you from hurting yourself too badly.
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