COMMERCIALS SUCK!!

by Lois Kobb

I hate commercials. The people responsible for the crap that passes for advertisements must think we're all a bunch of brain-dead sea monkeys with the intellectual capacity of chalk. A few examples to prove my point:

There was one ad in which a little kid goes all over the house, marking on the furniture with his crayons. His mom, proving that parents in Commercial Land are the most retarded creatures in the galaxy, smiles serenely as she follows him around with a can of some furniture polish--Pledge or Sludge or Spooge or whatever-the-fuck it is--cleaning up the mess he makes. What the hell??? If that were my kid, I'd beat him with a stick, then give HIM the cleaning supplies and force him to thoroughly scrub every square inch of the entire house. He'd never use his budding Picasso skills on anything but paper by the time I got through with his sorry ass. I hate ads like these, which portray children as rotten little carpet pigs that get away with any damn thing just because some TV ad executive thinks its cute. Well, it isn't cute, it's annoying. Bratty kids are a nuisance in real life--why glorify them in commercials?

I hate any ads that bastardize popular songs for the sake of utilizing a few lyrics. Applebee's restaurant chain is using Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" in their commercial for some kind of grilled garbage that probably tastes like all the other garbage on their crap menu. A car company was using Smashmouth's "Walking on the Sun" for the part that goes, "So don't delay, act now, supplies are running out..." It's so lame when they do this, because the songs have NOTHING to do with what's being advertised and everyone soon gets sick of hearing them a hundred times a week.

In another commercial, two crows are standing outside a plate glass window, discussing (in Brooklyn accents!) the glories of Windex Wipes--this apparently being common bird knowledge. The woman of the house grins in that dopey, insipid way that housewives always do in Commercial Land, as she lovingly cleans a stainless steel teakettle that's ALREADY clean and shiny! Her whole damn house looks clean and shiny. She's so anal-retentive that every molecule of every surface has been Windexed to perfection. This ad targets two things that I hate: smartass talking animals; and people who are so fucking lazy that they can't be bothered with paper towels and a bottle of cleaning fluid, but must have them combined into one overpriced, gimmicky product that's a big waste of space on the store shelves. Morons.

There's a toilet paper ad that shows people's butts. That's all it is, just scenes of people doing stuff and the camera focuses on their rear ends while the voice-over brags about how great this TP is at wiping the shit out of your ass crack, although not in quite those same words. Do we need this? Do we really NEED to be told that Sphincterelle bathroom tissue won't promote skid marks on your underpants? We already know what the product is for; why draw attention to the obvious? This commercial annoys the piss out of me every time I see it. If you're leaving that much "residue" after you wipe, then you have way more problems than a toilet paper can deal with.

That Dell guy, Stoner Steve--he was kind of amusing when the commercials first came out, but now he's just another adtard whom I want to see shot. He's too old to be doing the hip teenager act. Kill him off already and be done with it. And while we're at it, let's do away with Carrot Top, who is THE most annoying person in the world. He's not funny--never was, never will be. He's an ignoramus who should be locked in a cage full of rabid monkeys. Who decided that he should be the spokescreature for a phone company? What the fuck were they thinking? And who decided to revive Alf, that horrid muppet entity from the 80s sitcom? He's not funny, either, just stupid. Who, besides those of us in our 30s, even remembers him? Who cares about him? Nobody, that's who.

Then there's the one where....ahh, screw it. I could go on for pages about all the stupid shit they put on TV, thinking it will make people want to buy those lame products that end up breaking or not being as good as you expected or else get shoved to the back of the closet, forgotten along with the Salad Shooter and the Thigh Master. Suffice to say that 99% of commercials on TV completely suck, and if you disagree it's because you suck, too. I'm right and you're all wrong and the sooner you accept that, the happier I'll be.