As the fair month of November slips quietly away, I look with a bit of dread on the rapidly-approaching holiday season. I know there will be lots of parties and dinners and gatherings to attend, and it will be very nice to spend time with all the wonderful people in my life, but a little bit of me is already starting to cringe at the orgy of greed and consumerism which is already rushing towards us.
Yesterday there was a story on the local news about some pathetic idiot who is camped out in front of a Best Buy store or something here, in anticipation of being the first one in the store when Black Friday hits. That would be four days later. Apparently this sad schmuck has nothing better to do than waste four days of his life on the opportunity to drop a bunch of money on some electronic gifts for his niece and nephew, which will probably be forgotten in a month or two. I'm not sure which is worse, this fool squatting on the doorstep of corporate America or the local news idiots publicizing him like he's some kind of retail warrior or something.
This year it seems more apparent than ever that Thanksgiving is becoming an afterthought, a secondary holiday whose main purpose is to mark the beginning of the REAL holiday - the start of the Xmas shopping season. This month I've heard more about Black Friday than about Thanksgiving itself, and that is really sad. Thanksgiving is the biggest secular holiday and the one with the most meaning. What could be more fitting and proper than to be thankful for all the good things in your life and to draw your friends and loved ones near to you and celebrate being together? Sharing a good meal, a glass or two of wine, and good conversation is to me a gift that no store-purchased bauble could match. And yet, people seem to be very willing to eschew the good things in life for the pursuit of the biggest bargain, or the lowest prices.
A lot of people will wage their assault on the local shopping mall with all the grim precision and painstaking detail of a major military operation. It is so unseemly and undignified to be such money-grubbing, shopping-crazed automatons - robots pre-programmed by a lifetime of carefully-honed and targeted commercials to go out and shop on command. The more money you spend, the more you love someone; that seems to be the take-away from all this. In the single-minded pursuit of this end, so much of what makes life worthwhile seems to drop away and get left behind in the glitter and the dust.
So this year, I'm going to do what I have been doing for the past 5 or 6 years - reject all the buy-or-die hysteria, push back on the annoying, intrusive and hyperactive sales pitches, and instead concentrate on the real reason we celebrate the season - the friendship of people we love and with whom we share more than just a parking space in a shopping center lot, the coming winter solstice, and soon afterward a new year and a new springtime, and another year full of promise and opportunity, sadness and joy, and more wonderful people and rabbits gracing my life and touching my heart.
Showing posts with label commercials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commercials. Show all posts
Monday, November 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Boycott Christmas 2011
It's that time again, time for my annual anti-Christmas screed. Just can't get through the holidays without one. I did my annual torture session this afternoon, venturing out to the local post office to get holiday stamps. It was packed to the gills, as it always seems to be this time of year no matter when you get there. There are six service windows at the post office, and I've never seen more than two of them in use at any one time. It's really kind of amazing how unprepared people are when they show up at the post office. They bring some stuff they want to mail someone, buy one of those flat rate boxes, and bring everything up to the counter and expect the postal employee to pack it, tape it up, put the label on it, stamp it a couple of times with some ink stampers and then send it on its way. While observing all this I have to amuse myself in order not to get completely psychotic, so I imagine they're stamping rude stuff all over the package. Like "Eat Shit," "Bite Me," or "Christmas Crap." That should give Grandma pause when the package is delivered.
So after that ordeal was over I had to start decorating the outside of the house, so I went to the garage and dragged out the Big Box Full Of Holiday Joy. This is the 16th December that I have lived in my home, and you'd think I would have this decorating thing pretty well down by now. But Martha Stewart I am not. I do have the outside of the light boxes marked as to which lights go where and how the plugs get connected together without causing the fusebox to ignite in a major conflagration. There are several cacti growing in the front of my house, and this year has been a banner year for them (who could have known that plants will "grow" if you "water" them regularly?). They have grown like crazy and have stretched their fishhook-laden arms wide and far in many directions, which makes hanging the lights a bit dicey. I know that if I slipped off the small ladder I use and fell on one of them, my Christmas would be over in about two seconds.
The holiday season got an early start this year, and I was treated to my first Christmas TV commercial the day after Halloween. It was some jewelry store flogging tacky, overpriced baubles and they did a full-on Santa-and-the-Reindeer push. I looked at that and then I looked outside at the 98-degree sunshine and I thought to myself, this is going to be a long season. The commercials which continue to baffle me are the ones for the luxury car dealers, like Lexus and Mercedes. They encourage us to come to their showrooms and purchase a very expensive car for that certain-someone as a gift. Really? Giving a car as a present? That is so far off my gift-giving radar it's like science fiction to me. People actually do that? I think it's a ploy to keep the Gigantic Red Bow manufacturers in business.
But of course, it doesn't have to be so. As in past years, I choose not to participate in the hoopla, the blind greed, the crass materialism, and all the phony hokum that is part-and-parcel to the holiday season these days. I've reduced greatly the amount of time I waste parked in front of the TV, and what I do watch I choose with a lot more care, leaning toward HBO and Showtime, the commercial-free networks. I avoid like the plague the local Phoenix channels, which are pathetically, laughingly provincial in their deliberate lack of anything resembling sophistication. I guess I was spoiled after living in Washington DC and San Francisco for almost 15 years and watching the world-class television coverage of their local stations. Phoenix television is incredibly amateurish in nature, and much more suited to a medium-sized television market somewhere in the lower Midwest, instead of the sixth largest metropolitan area in the nation.
But, I digress. I'm really enjoying my time reading lots more books on my e-reader, writing my stories and my blog, spending time with my friends and my bunnies, and just relaxing at home dressed in my flannels and staying warm and cozy while an early December cold snap has the desert locked in an unfamiliar but refreshingly chilly grip.
While I would certainly never presume to tell anyone how to celebrate the holidays, I always recommend to my friends to say no to the hysterical consumerism of this season. Things always get off to a big bang with the loathsome, execrable pseudo-holiday "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, followed by "Cyber Monday" and "Green Tuesday." I'm sure in the near future they'll be coming up with other shopping themes for the rest of the week following Thanksgiving.
To that end, I ask my friends not to buy me any kind of gift this year. I have far too much stuff as it is, certainly everything I need and most of what I want. I suggest they send their money to their favorite charity (and mine is Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue), or spend it on themselves, their pets or someone who could really use it. But as I get older I realize the gift that is truly important to me and imparts a lasting feeling of gratitude, is spending time with my chosen family here in Phoenix. Whether it's sharing a meal, or a coffee at Starbucks, or just a long conversation on the phone, these types of things are the most gratifying and the most memorable to me. I've certainly forgotten whatever gifts I got five years ago, but I remember the times I've spent with people I love, and the warm friendship and camaraderie shared. That, to me, is the true spirit of the holiday.
Oh, and yes, it just wouldn't be the holiday season without the religious nuts whining and moaning about people using the term "holiday" or "Xmas" instead of "Christmas." Well guess what, Xians? Not everyone in this country celebrates Xmas. People of the Jewish faith celebrate Hanukkah, African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa, Wiccans celebrate the Solstice, etc. But, with their usual narrow-minded selfishness and their unhealthy preoccupation with ramming their beliefs and delusions down everyone's throats 24/7, the Xians rail on and on about "their" holiday and how everyone is corrupting and ignoring it. As far as I'm concerned, they can have their holiday back with all the greed and avarice and single-minded obsession with buying and receiving crap. It makes so much more sense to celebrate the solstice, which is much more inclusive of everyone and really, that was the way things used to be before the Xians stole the pagan celebration for their own nefarious purposes.
Because as with our lives in general, it doesn't matter what you give or get, or how much junk you have when you die; what really matters is how you spend the time that you have.
So after that ordeal was over I had to start decorating the outside of the house, so I went to the garage and dragged out the Big Box Full Of Holiday Joy. This is the 16th December that I have lived in my home, and you'd think I would have this decorating thing pretty well down by now. But Martha Stewart I am not. I do have the outside of the light boxes marked as to which lights go where and how the plugs get connected together without causing the fusebox to ignite in a major conflagration. There are several cacti growing in the front of my house, and this year has been a banner year for them (who could have known that plants will "grow" if you "water" them regularly?). They have grown like crazy and have stretched their fishhook-laden arms wide and far in many directions, which makes hanging the lights a bit dicey. I know that if I slipped off the small ladder I use and fell on one of them, my Christmas would be over in about two seconds.
The holiday season got an early start this year, and I was treated to my first Christmas TV commercial the day after Halloween. It was some jewelry store flogging tacky, overpriced baubles and they did a full-on Santa-and-the-Reindeer push. I looked at that and then I looked outside at the 98-degree sunshine and I thought to myself, this is going to be a long season. The commercials which continue to baffle me are the ones for the luxury car dealers, like Lexus and Mercedes. They encourage us to come to their showrooms and purchase a very expensive car for that certain-someone as a gift. Really? Giving a car as a present? That is so far off my gift-giving radar it's like science fiction to me. People actually do that? I think it's a ploy to keep the Gigantic Red Bow manufacturers in business.
But of course, it doesn't have to be so. As in past years, I choose not to participate in the hoopla, the blind greed, the crass materialism, and all the phony hokum that is part-and-parcel to the holiday season these days. I've reduced greatly the amount of time I waste parked in front of the TV, and what I do watch I choose with a lot more care, leaning toward HBO and Showtime, the commercial-free networks. I avoid like the plague the local Phoenix channels, which are pathetically, laughingly provincial in their deliberate lack of anything resembling sophistication. I guess I was spoiled after living in Washington DC and San Francisco for almost 15 years and watching the world-class television coverage of their local stations. Phoenix television is incredibly amateurish in nature, and much more suited to a medium-sized television market somewhere in the lower Midwest, instead of the sixth largest metropolitan area in the nation.
But, I digress. I'm really enjoying my time reading lots more books on my e-reader, writing my stories and my blog, spending time with my friends and my bunnies, and just relaxing at home dressed in my flannels and staying warm and cozy while an early December cold snap has the desert locked in an unfamiliar but refreshingly chilly grip.
While I would certainly never presume to tell anyone how to celebrate the holidays, I always recommend to my friends to say no to the hysterical consumerism of this season. Things always get off to a big bang with the loathsome, execrable pseudo-holiday "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, followed by "Cyber Monday" and "Green Tuesday." I'm sure in the near future they'll be coming up with other shopping themes for the rest of the week following Thanksgiving.
To that end, I ask my friends not to buy me any kind of gift this year. I have far too much stuff as it is, certainly everything I need and most of what I want. I suggest they send their money to their favorite charity (and mine is Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue), or spend it on themselves, their pets or someone who could really use it. But as I get older I realize the gift that is truly important to me and imparts a lasting feeling of gratitude, is spending time with my chosen family here in Phoenix. Whether it's sharing a meal, or a coffee at Starbucks, or just a long conversation on the phone, these types of things are the most gratifying and the most memorable to me. I've certainly forgotten whatever gifts I got five years ago, but I remember the times I've spent with people I love, and the warm friendship and camaraderie shared. That, to me, is the true spirit of the holiday.
Oh, and yes, it just wouldn't be the holiday season without the religious nuts whining and moaning about people using the term "holiday" or "Xmas" instead of "Christmas." Well guess what, Xians? Not everyone in this country celebrates Xmas. People of the Jewish faith celebrate Hanukkah, African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa, Wiccans celebrate the Solstice, etc. But, with their usual narrow-minded selfishness and their unhealthy preoccupation with ramming their beliefs and delusions down everyone's throats 24/7, the Xians rail on and on about "their" holiday and how everyone is corrupting and ignoring it. As far as I'm concerned, they can have their holiday back with all the greed and avarice and single-minded obsession with buying and receiving crap. It makes so much more sense to celebrate the solstice, which is much more inclusive of everyone and really, that was the way things used to be before the Xians stole the pagan celebration for their own nefarious purposes.
Because as with our lives in general, it doesn't matter what you give or get, or how much junk you have when you die; what really matters is how you spend the time that you have.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Commercials That Suck
Commercials are the fleas and ticks of our modern media-drenched life. They can be mere annoyances or they can be evil, bloodsucking soul-stealers. Commercials are how your life slips away from you undetected and as a result one day you wake up and see your father staring back at you in the mirror and you wonder WTF happened to my youth? The vast majority of commercials are complete, utter wastes of time. I have no interest at all in whatever product or service they are shilling and never will. Sitting through them is dead time, 30-second segments of my life squandered that I will never get back. And that's plain wrong.
Necessary evil, you say? They pay the bills? Maybe. The occasional commercial I could deal with. But when they come in packs of eight or more in a row, a tedious torrent of banality disgorging from your television into your living room, well, I have a little problem with that. Often repeating themselves in the same short span of time, their spawn-of-Satan creators apparently regard us as a bunch of idiots who need to have their tiresome message mercilessly drilled into our heads like some kind of cerebral root canal.
Most television commercials are just boring, stupid and lame. But there are some commercials that rise above mere mediocrity and reach toxic levels of mind-numbing, stupefying awfulness. These are commercials that not only clumsily attempt to sell some crappy product but also, intentionally or not, end up killing your mind and spirit and make you feel like you have been assaulted by some media zombie that just sucked your brain out through your eyes. And that is not an acceptable thing to do, just to sell some high-calorie sandwich or laundry detergent.
Here, then, is my list of Commercials That Suck, from least to most offensive. Five masterpieces of awful that crush your spirit and stink up the air. I rated them 1 (very low) to 5 (very high) on these attributes: General Ickiness, Level of Obnoxiousness, and Creep Factor, which is when either implicit or explicit sexual connotations are thrown in just to make everything a little more loathsome. Because you can never have too much loathsome when it comes to commercials. These are not local commercials, which are so invariably, deeply inane and stupid they don't even deserve mentioning. These ads are for national products and services shown in prime time or late night, on either over-the-air networks or cable/satellite.
5. Jared Jewelers: Every Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day it's the same damned thing. A bunch of hoity-toity people are in a restaurant or something and someone's administrative assistant starts waving her hand in everyone's face showing off her ring. With a smarmy, dead-headed smile she intones, "He went to Jared's!" Then everyone in the restaurant has to knowingly say to each other with a winky-winky nudge-nudge, "He went to Jared's!" Even total strangers have to crane their necks 180 degrees around and say that. It is annoyingly repeated over and over again like some kind of mantra, which if said often enough will impart some cachet of quality to a tacky, overpriced bauble that was probably cobbled together in a sweat shop in the Philippines. Bitch, please.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 1
Total Score: 7
4. Alltel Wireless: There are a whole raft of annoying cell phone commercials starring some blonde him-bo named "Chad" and how cool and with-it he is compared to the quartet of pathetic geeks representing other cell phone providers. The commercials are stupid and bad enough, but their obnoxiousness is immeasurably compounded by the hyperaggressive saturation ad campaign which airs these ads literally hundreds of times an hour on ever single available channel. In the weeks before AND after Christmas you could not get away from them for one single second. They've since dumped the Four Geekmen of the Apocalypse but "Chad" is still around navigating us through the moron-filled expanses of cell-phone hell. Needless to say I will never patronize Alltel, solely on the basis of these appalling ads, and I hope no one else does.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 2
Total Score: 9
3. Just For Men Hair Color: Most of these "get rid of some of the gray" ads are pretty vapid and lame, as if having gray hair is that big a deal or a problem. They are more boring than offensive, but there is one commercial that is really bad. It shows what appears to be a single dad with two tween daughters, who barge in and say to him solemnly, "Dad, we think it's time..." and shove a bottle of hair coloring in his face, adding, "We think you would be a great catch for someone." First of all, why are those two preteen daughters so obsessed with their dad's sex life? How did they figure out that graying hair = never get laid? Secondly, any guy who takes romantic advice from a ten-year-old deserves to never get laid. Inexplicably, the guy listens to his daughters and the next scene has him at dinner with less gray hair and a hot babe, taking a cell phone picture of the two of them to send to his girls. And the girls cackle gleefully when they see the photo, like, "Gee, once Dad starts getting some on a regular basis he'll be in a good mood and we can do or have anything we want." "Wheeee! X-box, here we come!" Sad, pathetic and downright icky.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 4
Obnoxiousness: 3
Creep Factor: 4
Total Score: 11
2. Trojan Fingertip Massager: Picture it: two younger with-it chicks are in a library leafing through a magazine when they come across an ad for a Trojan Female Fingertip Massager and begin chortling and snickering about how awesome it is. Behind them is a much older, matronly woman, who can hear them and look over their shoulders and seems to be getting a little grossed out at the concept. One of the younger women whispers something in the ear of the other, presumably some ungodly activity you can do with the massager, and the other says that's something that can "save a relationship." I consider myself reasonably sophisticated but have no idea what she whispered and I so DO NOT want to find out. The ad then switches to a look at the actual massager, and I have to admit at this point my brain went into lockdown mode to avoid any further damage. I do not remember much until the end of the commercial where the two young women are wondering if you can order this thing online and Aunt Hagatha behind them pipes up and says, "Of course you can get it online, that's where I got mine!!!" The two women look at each other all embarrassed and grossed out, to which I enthusiastically add EWWW!! OMG!! I SO did not need to know ANY of this! And no, I didn't see this on some porn channel, it was on A&E.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 5
Total Score: 14
1. Erectile Dysfunction Medications/Male Enhancement: There's just so much going on here I don't even know where to start. Let's do the ED drugs first. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra - yeah, you know who you are. Viagra with the bunch of good ol' boys sitting around a broken-down roadhouse with their musical instruments singing its praises. Those insipid couples in the Cialis commercials with the matching outdoor bathtubs. And I can't remember what's going on with Levitra but I'm sure it's no better. All these normal-looking guys having earnest conversations with several million of their closest friends (actually, total strangers - us!) about their erectile problems. Dudes, seriously: if you're having a problem getting Mr. Winkie to stand up and say howdy, try having that earnest conversation with your urologist, NOT US! Keep it to yourselves, we don't want to know. Side note: I wonder if the actors in these commercials are ever recognized on the street for their "work" with people coming up and asking them, "Are the guy with the flat tire?" or "What's up, Mr. Softie?" The worst one is with the black couple where the male has popped his little blue Ticket to Paradise and is starting to get amorous with the little woman, when DING DONG, it's the doorbell and one of their grown kids shows up with a gaggle of grandchildren. The couple look at each other like, "Oh well!" and welcome the kids inside. Not only does the man lose his big chance for sexy time, but he has to hang around a bunch of children for four hours with an erection. The Creep Factor is kind of off the scale with that one, and personally it makes me want to call Child Protective Services on the lot of them. As for "male enhancement", which invariably has to do with size, blah blah blah, there's this crap called Enzyte which is some compost of weird herbs and industrial waste that is supposed to "enhance the male member". Yeah, I'm so sure that will work. But the commercials for Enzyte are truly awful, terrible and loathsome. They are set in some kind of hallucinatory netherworld of 1950's-era Leave-It-To-Beaver bad fashion and furniture, starring this grinning idiot named "Bob" and all these horrible creepy Stepford-wife types. There are many variants of these Enzyte commercials and there is not one single good thing to be said about any of them. They are all repulsive and appalling and everyone connected with them needs to suffer a very public, painful death. They are truly the worst of the worst.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 5 (only because it doesn't go any higher)
Total Score: 15 (and that's being conservative)
Honorable mention goes to the Subway sandwiches ads and their spokesgeek/former dirigible Jared, who is one cheap wig and a bad make-up job away from being a really ugly drag queen. And now that we've found out that Subway workers spew all sorts of bodily wastes and fluids all over the sandwiches they make just to have fun, how many more reasons do we need to avoid Subway?
Yes, I do watch too much television, and I am ashamed. I don't HAVE to watch horrible commercials, yet here I am. Hello, my name is Steve, and I am an addict. I'd tell you more except it's time for 24.
Necessary evil, you say? They pay the bills? Maybe. The occasional commercial I could deal with. But when they come in packs of eight or more in a row, a tedious torrent of banality disgorging from your television into your living room, well, I have a little problem with that. Often repeating themselves in the same short span of time, their spawn-of-Satan creators apparently regard us as a bunch of idiots who need to have their tiresome message mercilessly drilled into our heads like some kind of cerebral root canal.
Most television commercials are just boring, stupid and lame. But there are some commercials that rise above mere mediocrity and reach toxic levels of mind-numbing, stupefying awfulness. These are commercials that not only clumsily attempt to sell some crappy product but also, intentionally or not, end up killing your mind and spirit and make you feel like you have been assaulted by some media zombie that just sucked your brain out through your eyes. And that is not an acceptable thing to do, just to sell some high-calorie sandwich or laundry detergent.
Here, then, is my list of Commercials That Suck, from least to most offensive. Five masterpieces of awful that crush your spirit and stink up the air. I rated them 1 (very low) to 5 (very high) on these attributes: General Ickiness, Level of Obnoxiousness, and Creep Factor, which is when either implicit or explicit sexual connotations are thrown in just to make everything a little more loathsome. Because you can never have too much loathsome when it comes to commercials. These are not local commercials, which are so invariably, deeply inane and stupid they don't even deserve mentioning. These ads are for national products and services shown in prime time or late night, on either over-the-air networks or cable/satellite.
5. Jared Jewelers: Every Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day it's the same damned thing. A bunch of hoity-toity people are in a restaurant or something and someone's administrative assistant starts waving her hand in everyone's face showing off her ring. With a smarmy, dead-headed smile she intones, "He went to Jared's!" Then everyone in the restaurant has to knowingly say to each other with a winky-winky nudge-nudge, "He went to Jared's!" Even total strangers have to crane their necks 180 degrees around and say that. It is annoyingly repeated over and over again like some kind of mantra, which if said often enough will impart some cachet of quality to a tacky, overpriced bauble that was probably cobbled together in a sweat shop in the Philippines. Bitch, please.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 1
Total Score: 7
4. Alltel Wireless: There are a whole raft of annoying cell phone commercials starring some blonde him-bo named "Chad" and how cool and with-it he is compared to the quartet of pathetic geeks representing other cell phone providers. The commercials are stupid and bad enough, but their obnoxiousness is immeasurably compounded by the hyperaggressive saturation ad campaign which airs these ads literally hundreds of times an hour on ever single available channel. In the weeks before AND after Christmas you could not get away from them for one single second. They've since dumped the Four Geekmen of the Apocalypse but "Chad" is still around navigating us through the moron-filled expanses of cell-phone hell. Needless to say I will never patronize Alltel, solely on the basis of these appalling ads, and I hope no one else does.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 2
Total Score: 9
3. Just For Men Hair Color: Most of these "get rid of some of the gray" ads are pretty vapid and lame, as if having gray hair is that big a deal or a problem. They are more boring than offensive, but there is one commercial that is really bad. It shows what appears to be a single dad with two tween daughters, who barge in and say to him solemnly, "Dad, we think it's time..." and shove a bottle of hair coloring in his face, adding, "We think you would be a great catch for someone." First of all, why are those two preteen daughters so obsessed with their dad's sex life? How did they figure out that graying hair = never get laid? Secondly, any guy who takes romantic advice from a ten-year-old deserves to never get laid. Inexplicably, the guy listens to his daughters and the next scene has him at dinner with less gray hair and a hot babe, taking a cell phone picture of the two of them to send to his girls. And the girls cackle gleefully when they see the photo, like, "Gee, once Dad starts getting some on a regular basis he'll be in a good mood and we can do or have anything we want." "Wheeee! X-box, here we come!" Sad, pathetic and downright icky.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 4
Obnoxiousness: 3
Creep Factor: 4
Total Score: 11
2. Trojan Fingertip Massager: Picture it: two younger with-it chicks are in a library leafing through a magazine when they come across an ad for a Trojan Female Fingertip Massager and begin chortling and snickering about how awesome it is. Behind them is a much older, matronly woman, who can hear them and look over their shoulders and seems to be getting a little grossed out at the concept. One of the younger women whispers something in the ear of the other, presumably some ungodly activity you can do with the massager, and the other says that's something that can "save a relationship." I consider myself reasonably sophisticated but have no idea what she whispered and I so DO NOT want to find out. The ad then switches to a look at the actual massager, and I have to admit at this point my brain went into lockdown mode to avoid any further damage. I do not remember much until the end of the commercial where the two young women are wondering if you can order this thing online and Aunt Hagatha behind them pipes up and says, "Of course you can get it online, that's where I got mine!!!" The two women look at each other all embarrassed and grossed out, to which I enthusiastically add EWWW!! OMG!! I SO did not need to know ANY of this! And no, I didn't see this on some porn channel, it was on A&E.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 5
Total Score: 14
1. Erectile Dysfunction Medications/Male Enhancement: There's just so much going on here I don't even know where to start. Let's do the ED drugs first. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra - yeah, you know who you are. Viagra with the bunch of good ol' boys sitting around a broken-down roadhouse with their musical instruments singing its praises. Those insipid couples in the Cialis commercials with the matching outdoor bathtubs. And I can't remember what's going on with Levitra but I'm sure it's no better. All these normal-looking guys having earnest conversations with several million of their closest friends (actually, total strangers - us!) about their erectile problems. Dudes, seriously: if you're having a problem getting Mr. Winkie to stand up and say howdy, try having that earnest conversation with your urologist, NOT US! Keep it to yourselves, we don't want to know. Side note: I wonder if the actors in these commercials are ever recognized on the street for their "work" with people coming up and asking them, "Are the guy with the flat tire?" or "What's up, Mr. Softie?" The worst one is with the black couple where the male has popped his little blue Ticket to Paradise and is starting to get amorous with the little woman, when DING DONG, it's the doorbell and one of their grown kids shows up with a gaggle of grandchildren. The couple look at each other like, "Oh well!" and welcome the kids inside. Not only does the man lose his big chance for sexy time, but he has to hang around a bunch of children for four hours with an erection. The Creep Factor is kind of off the scale with that one, and personally it makes me want to call Child Protective Services on the lot of them. As for "male enhancement", which invariably has to do with size, blah blah blah, there's this crap called Enzyte which is some compost of weird herbs and industrial waste that is supposed to "enhance the male member". Yeah, I'm so sure that will work. But the commercials for Enzyte are truly awful, terrible and loathsome. They are set in some kind of hallucinatory netherworld of 1950's-era Leave-It-To-Beaver bad fashion and furniture, starring this grinning idiot named "Bob" and all these horrible creepy Stepford-wife types. There are many variants of these Enzyte commercials and there is not one single good thing to be said about any of them. They are all repulsive and appalling and everyone connected with them needs to suffer a very public, painful death. They are truly the worst of the worst.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 5 (only because it doesn't go any higher)
Total Score: 15 (and that's being conservative)
Honorable mention goes to the Subway sandwiches ads and their spokesgeek/former dirigible Jared, who is one cheap wig and a bad make-up job away from being a really ugly drag queen. And now that we've found out that Subway workers spew all sorts of bodily wastes and fluids all over the sandwiches they make just to have fun, how many more reasons do we need to avoid Subway?
Yes, I do watch too much television, and I am ashamed. I don't HAVE to watch horrible commercials, yet here I am. Hello, my name is Steve, and I am an addict. I'd tell you more except it's time for 24.
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