After the Break

I slept late this morning, and now I'm all wired. And bored. The Tofu Muchacha is slumbering peacefully, having earned a solid rest after a day of running (10 miles!) and rehearsal. I accidentally deleted "Ultimate Recipe Showdown" before I watched it. The Cardinals/Brewers game is quietly in hand. I'm bored.

As I waited through the commercials, a couple of them struck me, so I've decided to write a short post about some of my issues with the growing weirdness of television advertising.

Screaming. Two of Three commercials featured men screaming. Staples is currently running these crazy ads where this idiotic business man is standing in the aisle of the store and just absolutely insanely shouts "WOW!! That's a low price!". Then he repeats this several more times as he sees all of the low prices the store offers. It's utterly ridiculous. The other screaming man commercial features George Takei. 'Nuff said.

How is having a man scream like a crazy person suddenly something that would make me think your product is good? I've been blown away by some low prices in my time (though, to be fair, never at Staples), and I've never felt the urge to scream like Howard Dean at a Prince concert.

Sand. I don't understand what it is about the beach that 1) makes people suddenly feel sexy like in those Cialis commercials or 2) makes ladies feel like their period is going better like in just about every tampon commercial. Sand isn't sexy. In fact, I am struggling to think of more than two or three things LESS sexy than sand. It gets in your crevices. It's used to grind things down. That really is all you should know about sand before determining you don't want it incorporated into your love making. And yet... Cialis will have you believe that when you take their magical pill you'll want to be transported right down onto the closest sandy beach for your middle-aged love making. I really enjoyed the Kotex commercial where the girl was all sarcastic about how the first thing she wants to do during her period is run around on the beach. At least they're aware of how stupid most tampon commercials can be.

Shame. Did you know that Infinity is currently running an ad campaign for one of their cars that brags the interior has silver dust polished into the wood. SILVER DUST. Like, first of all... how is this even remotely reasonable? Not to rip off a David Cross bit, but THIS is why most of the world hates us. Our fancy cars aren't fancy enough. We have to rub precious metals into the wood grain. Does it make our car run better? Does it conserve fuel? Does it smell like springtime? No. It's just a completely retarded thing. It's rare that I'm offended by oppulence (I mean... I work for a private jet company.) This isn't in the league of the 300,000 dollar watch that doesn't tell time, but it does make me think of it.

While I'm on the subject... Is it just accepted at this point that functionality is no longer the primary selling point in a product. I'm pretty convinced that something doesn't even have to work at all if it looks cool or has diamonds buried in it, or it smells like poppies or whatever. Moen wants you to buy their faucets because they look nice. Volkswagen wants you to buy their cars because they no longer look like toasters. Of course, Honda wants you to buy their cars because they DO look like toasters, so I don't know what to think.

The one thing I'm absolutely positive about is they don't even have to talk about how well their products work. This is amazing to me.

I've managed to blog myself into sleepiness. I leave you with one final thought...

DVRs are wonderful things.

This blog brought to you by the new Nike Air Muchachos
Oh yes. Those are real.