Chicago - A message from the station manager

What I Watched Last Night

By Pat Bataillon

I am through with all the pompous commercials I have been seeing as of late. I wrote about “Macrimination” recently, and that was just the beginning of this new onslaught of unbearable advertising. I still don’t get those new Lexus commercials, and all those commercials with that Verizon ass really need to go. And what’s the deal with those jewelry outfits, Jared and Kay?


I will spare you the bulk of a regurgitated Macrimination essay and just say the “coolness” of Macs have now made me embarrassed to speak highly of mine. I really do enjoy my computer and I do think that it is much better than my previous PC. I do not, however, want to be associated with arrogant unshaven pricks who think that their feces smells like the fields of tulips in Holland.
I hope you’ve seen those new Lexus commercials out there for the holidays. You know, the ones where where two neighbors come out and look at a Lexus with a ribbon on it. They compare notes with special regard to their respective wish lists and then reluctantly depart from one another. Then the commercial pans to a shot of multiple SUVs inside a store. I still think I am missing something. A lot of unanswered questions here. Who got the Lexus? Who deserved it and why? Did they both get one? Is one supposed to be jealous of the other?
Then there’s that squirrelly Verizon guy. His too-good-for-every-other-cellular-phone-provider grimace really gets under my skin. Verizon has the best network in the nation and Cingular has the fewest dropped calls and so and so has this and that. Yet, none of the cell phone providers have customer service that is worth a damn. The only cell phone provider commercials that deserve a pompous ass as a spokesperson are the ones that are actually good. Therefore, there shall be none.
At least the Verizon guy has stopped saying, “Can you here me now?” That simple phrase has ruined so many moments for me on my cell phone. I could easily say “Can you here me now?” when I walk out of an elevator or emerge from a tunnel, but now I have to come up with alternate sayings like, “You there?” and “Am I coming through?” Seems like a small inconvenience, but how annoying is it that a commercial has forced me to alter my conversation pattern?
As far as the jeweler commercials are concerned, I think that getting a woman jewelry from any place is just as exciting as getting it from Jared or Kay. The “He went to Jared” thing just needs to stop. I have a brother named Jared and this can only be problematic for our relationship. Now I know how he felt during
the “It’s Pat” days of Saturday Night Live.
I’ll admit that “Every kiss begins with Kay” is clever, but enough is enough. How about: “Kay Jewelers: we put the K in knock-off.”
So let’s just try to get through the holidays commercial-free. It’s what Jesus would want us to do.

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Posted on December 5, 2006