Vehix.com-- the one where the kids are whining “Mom is looking at USED STATION WAGONS! I don’t want to be picked up from school in a USED STATION WAGON!” If my kid ever said this, I’d reply “Guess you’ll be walking then.”
The commercials for that new Dennis Miller show. They seem to show them incessantly during West Wing reruns on Bravo. The best joke they could come up with is “On CNBC. Or in Mexico, YesNBYes!”? That is so painfully unfunny. The other commercial also had a terribly unfunny joke, along with what we are supposed to beleive is some crew member laughing at it. Oh please.
Having been home during the day recently, I was able to revisit mid-day TV land commercials. I forgot just how bad they are. I’ve noticed three different type of commercials:
Personal Injury - This makes sense because there is a chance that someone home during the day is doing so because of a recent accident. Still annoying.
Quick Cash - Don’t have any money??? Come get a loan against your next paycheck. We won’t bother to mention the 400% interest rate we charge.
Some obscure vocational school - “I always wanted to be a doctor and now I am living part of that dream. After only 10 weeks of training at blah blah college, I work in a doctor’s office!!” If being trained to take someone’s pulse and stick a thermometer in their mouth fulfills your childhood dreams of being a doctor, more power to you. While to me that’s about the same as thinking your Pinto is a Lamborghini, whatever makes you happy.
I can’t believe we’re this far in and nobody’s mentioned the “reality” commercials. Like Hardee’s black and white “confessional” commercials which consist solely of jackasses talking about how much they hate Hardee’s for a few minutes. Sometimes in these, the guy ends up saying, “So I went to Hardee’s even though they suck, and it was good.” Not always. Sometimes they just say Hardee’s sucks.
Ad Exec #1: Nobody eats Hardee’s food. We need to find a way to connect with the customers more.
Ad Exec #2: Hmm. Well, everybody hates their food, right? Let’s make commercials about people who hate their food!!
#1: Brilliant!
(Pitch idea to Hardee’s)
Hardee’s man: Commercials about our food sucking? Brilliant! Then the people can say how they were proven wrong about it, right?
#'s 1 and 2: Proven… wrong???
Also the commercials with people reading letters to DirecTV where they just happen to capture banter with the crew. It makes me so happy that Danny DeVito cares what best boy grip #2 thinks about his reading of an actual letter from an actual DirecTV customer.
I love the one with John Goodman of these, just because Goodman has this loud, somewhat annoying, but not really annoying to me, way of reading the letter. I especially love the way he says (and gives a little salute before saying) the name of the man who wrote the letter. (There really is a Jimmy Jablonski, by the way. It’s a real letter. He recently wrote in to TV Guide. And yes, his wife does have a horse. Its name? Peyton-of course!)
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Or Gary Coleman.