taking it one step further

I watch too much TV. Recently, I saw three TV commercials in a row that each made me think:

1. The first one showed people in a fancy-looking restaurant enjoying their pasta dinners and smiling at each other. Then the chef says something like, "I didn't cook any of this, Straw Hat delivered it!" And everyone is so surprised and even happier, and we find out that Straw Hat now has pasta for sale. Wonderful.

They made it look like it was a real restaurant. Wouldn't you be thrilled if you went out for pasta, made foodie comments about how delightful the fettuccine was, and then found out it was made in 25 pound batches - heated from frozen in a Straw Hat Micro-Magic Machine by a teenager who kicked a dead squirrel for two blocks on the way to work.

2. The one with the 21-year-old guys singing about how they hate working at the seafood restaurant, but have no choice because they didn't get their credit report from freecreditreportdotcom.

First, it insults people who work in those places and do a great job. Second, they seem to be marketing toward irresponsible twentysomethings. Those guys know they have lousy credit. If anything, the message is: Don't check your credit report. Then if you are turned down for a job or a loan that you weren't qualified for anyway, you can whine about how you didn't get it because of those gosh-darned credit reporting agencies. So if they aren't going to sell anything, why oh why do we have to sit through the commercial.
(By the way, you can get a free credit report every six months at annualcreditreport.com - a legitimate site where the big three credit reporting agencies are forced by law to provide free reports without making you sign up for some automatically renewing ripoff. Just don't sign up for any of the extras.)

3. An Ocean Spray commercial with those two guys standing waist high in the bog talking about cranberry juice.

The spazzy younger guy who is always bouncing from one foot to the other doesn't bother me too much. Sure he is drinking a lot of cranberry juice, but as long as he keeps hopping I'm not worried about the fact that his body is hidden from the waist down by water topped with a cranberry camouflage. It's the old grumpy guy who bugs me. He must drink plenty of the stuff, and never looks anxious. Even after bogging it for hours, although grumpy, he looks relaxed - or should I say relieved.

Since I just realized that none of this is funny, I'm glad that last commercial reminds me of this video on YouTube - funny, but rated PG.

If you can't see the Youtube screen, try this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdymtyXt8Y