{"id":217,"date":"2011-07-27T22:57:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T22:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucebramson.com\/2011\/07\/27\/tv-commercials-at-m-y-o-b-2\/"},"modified":"2011-07-27T22:57:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T22:57:00","slug":"tv-commercials-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"TV Commercials"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 6, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m beginning to wonder if I\u2019ll live long enough to finish this blog! In the narrative, I\u2019m only out of high school, still confused about my role in relation to others, and not particularly sure what I might want to do in life. The narrative will continue, but on this page I want to discuss some contemporary items.<\/p>\n

\/rant mode on\/<\/p>\n

ADVERTISEMENTS ON THE TELLY<\/strong><\/p>\n

I watch a lot of TV. More properly, I sleep a lot in front of the TV. I have seen the first ten or fifteen minutes of hundreds of programs, but fall asleep during the first spate of commercials, largely because I turn off the sound, tune out\u00a0 the subject, and nod off.<\/p>\n

It amazes me to think there are thousands of people working in the advertising industry who sit around all day and come up this stuff! How can they live with themselves? What I see on cable (never watch regular TV) is so blatantly stupid and stultifying, its hard to imagine anyone can be so unimaginative as to think it up. Do they really think I am so stupid I would fall for any of their blandishments?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a few of the worst currently on cable:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Nutrisystem, which spends five minutes trying to make me believe I can lose weight like the guys shown, while displaying a \u201cresults not typical\u201d flag. So, if the results aren\u2019t typical, why are they saying they ARE typical? \u201cThree months of complete meals\u201d, while noting that we have to \u201cadd-in grocery and produce items\u201d? Then the meals are NOT complete. It is all a bunch of lies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 L\u2019Oreal \u201cRegenerist\u201d creme, $7.00 for an ounce bottle with ingredients worth a quarter at most (the bottle probably costs more than the contents). The comely lass in the ad is young and has a naturally flawless appearance for which she was selected. The inference is that using this crap will make someone look as nice as she does. Are there folks out there who fall for this? Can they be that stupid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Capital One Credit Cards.\u00a0 Producing these ads, with dozens of actors, sets, stupid \u201cplots\u201d with the \u201cWhat\u2019s in your Wallet\u201d punch-line must cost a fortune. They could afford to charge several percent less to the cardholders if they did not spend all this money on stupid ads like these. And, what\u2019s in MY wallet is MY business! I can assure you there is no card from CapOne.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Geico ads, with that stupid anthropomorphized gecko with a fake accent. I guess Warren Buffet can afford to saturate the radio and TV waves with this crap, but he could charge even less for the insurance if he\u2019d spend less on these dumb ads. I even got a junk-mail offer from GEICO, which I sent back with a note: \u201cComing soon to an internet near you: Sick_of_GEICO_ads.com\u201d. Somebody has to do it!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Auto Insurance ads in general, now all promising to \u201csave XX percent by switching to Bumfuck Insurance Company.\u201d So, with a half-dozen switches, I could get my insurance down to zero? Not bloody likely!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 All Ads for women\u2019s hair products. My stomach turns every time I see these, not because I am queer and could care less about most women or their hair, but because I know there are millions of women in the world who are lucky if they have even a scrap of soap with which to wash their hair, most likely in sewage. Imagine how much good the enormous sums spent on useless hair preparations in \u201cdeveloped\u201d countries could do if spent in less developed countries.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Automobile ads, especially the \u201ccash-back\u201d come-on. Do people really let themselves get hooked on that gimmick? It\u2019s a loan added to the price of the car!<\/strong> The interest rate is exorbitant!\u00a0 Or, the \u201czero interest\u201d lie. Read the fine print: \u201c$1.66 per hundred dollars financed\u201d is 1.66 percent, which is NOT zero!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 ALL ads, with the \u201cfine print\u201d buried at the bottom of the screen, in non-contrasting lettering, and there for so short a time NO ONE can possibly read it!<\/p>\n

\/rant mode off\/<\/p>\n

I could go on like this, but you get the idea: advertisements are utterly wasted on me, and I suspect they are wasted on almost everyone. Time, effort and money down the drain!<\/p>\n

ITS A LOT OF<\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, there have been a few adverts I like: the FedEx ad (below) with the cavemen was funny, but ran for only\u00a0 a short time. [On the other hand, the cavemen GEICO ads are beyond stupid!] The home warehouse ad was entertaining as well.\u00a0 There are lots of ads from over-seas that show europeans to be more discerning and clever at writing ads, and willing to be a bit risque at times. (My favorite is this Hyundai ad. \u00a0We see these on award programs for \u201cbest ads\u201d, but we never see the ads themselves on OUR TeeVees.<\/p>\n

There was ONE ad that induced me to buy a product. Very clever, but again it ran only a short while. The ad itself was perhaps 20 seconds in duration, but really packed a punch. The scene was a typical kitchen, with an empty table in the foreground. John Houseman walked on camera with a bottle of something clutched his hand: he plopped the bottle down vigorously on the table, looked into the camera with his wonderful scowl, and said \u201cUse Puritan Oil!!!\u201d\u00a0 I was so intimidated I actually did buy a bottle: it was around for years, since I rarely cook with oil. But I loved that ad. Only three words\u2014imagine that! [A much longer ad for Puritan Oil with Houseman in his inimitable style can be seen here<\/strong>.]<\/p>\n

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS<\/strong><\/p>\n

More appalling than anything else, for me, is this: NONE of the perpetrators who have gotten us into this mess has yet gone to JAIL: my sense is that none will.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine is fond of an old aphorism (I\u2019ve no idea where it originated): \u201cA fish rots from the head\u201d. With George the titular head of our government, things went to pieces right down through government and the private sector as well. Dubya was never held accountable for anything he did, and everyone took that as their cue to do whatever they liked\u2014no one would care. For the most part no one did!<\/strong> Now it comes to light that the SEC had been warned about Bernie Madoff<\/strong> ten years ago. Nothing was done. Many people foresaw the business downturn, especially those watching the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. Nothing was done. Many people warned Detroit to build better cars. Nothing was done. There was NO ACCOUNTABILITY.<\/p>\n

Now, with nearly every system in the country breaking down and falling apart the Republicans still WANT TO DO NOTHING! There are even \u201cconservative Democrats\u201d who WANT TO DO NOTHING!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m beginning to wonder of anyone can ever set things right! President Obama has the right ideas for the most part, but obstructionists used to the old way of doing things in Washington are unwilling to work with him.<\/p>\n

The current issue of The Nation<\/strong><\/em> (America\u2019s oldest news magazine) has a fine article by Jonathan Schell (not his usual one-page piece, but a full-blown article) describing in detail how all the forces came together to get us into this fix. I have not finished the piece yet, so don\u2019t know if he has a prescription for putting \u201cHumpty-Dumpty back together again\u201d.<\/p>\n

TROMPE \u2013 L\u2019\u0152IL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Judging by my perusal of numerous gay blogs, the current \u201cideal man\u201d seems to be a twenty-something (where something = \u00b12) fellow with six-pak abs. Now I read that many of these \u201cchiseled abdominals\u201d are painted on! Ain\u2019 nuthin\u2019 sacred?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coming soon: I go to College. Stay tuned\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 6, 2009 I\u2019m beginning to wonder if I\u2019ll live long enough to finish this blog! In the narrative, I\u2019m only out of high school, still confused about my role in relation to others, and not particularly sure what I might want to do in life. The narrative will continue, but on this page I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}