Here We Go Now

2008, Just Great So Far

• I have averred in the past there should be a law prohibiting any car dealership owner from producing and/or participating in his own television commercials. My thinking was this would absolutely protect the interests of society as a whole, as the best laws do. In retrospect, that may have been a little harsh on my part. Of course, all locally produced dealership commercials are goofy to one degree or another, and the vast majority of them are downright annoying. But there is one currently running locally that I actually look forward to. In this one, instead of some moron jumping up and down and screaming about saving you money, the tone is low-key and the commercial is set up as a series of testimonials from supposed actual customers. There is a young woman who says her car is so "accomodating", her friends can even sit in it and stuff. Also a guy who says he wouldn't buy his parts anywhere else (????). But my favorite is a grandmotherly-looking woman who looks sternly into the camera and says, "The service at (so-and-so) Honda is better than you can get anywhere else in these United States." These United States? I love that line to a ridiculous degree, and look for opportunities to work it into everyday conversation as often as possible.

• I fear the days of the great (or greatly quirky/weird) infomercials are over. These "sponsored programs", which dominate really late night TV, have grown increasingly homogenized and indistinct over the years. More and more we are seeing them hosted by entertainers whose careers have apparently gone into steep decline, and less and less by entertaining oddballs and weirdos and nobodies. By the way, if I ever just decide I don't care what happens to me anymore, one of the first things I am going to do is get an assault rifle and go after whoever is responsible for the Extenze commercials, the ones touting a product that is supposed to magically grow "that certain male body part" to humongous size, causing everyone involved to become ridiculously happy with the results. Anyway, there is one extended commercial running now I actually kind of enjoy, something about a super chamois cloth which should replace paper towel usage ("which you are going to spend $20-$30 a month on, anyway," the host says. . . Huh? Who the fuck spends $30 a month on paper towels?). The super chamois absorbs 100 times its weight in liquid, something like that, plus you can wash it in the washing machine! The host of this commercial is engagingly odd, and anway I don't know how I have gone this long without owning a really big chamois cloth. Super chamois it is, then; if I order right now, they'll throw a second super chamois in at no additional cost.

• There are too many post-season college football bowl games anymore, and they are too hard to keep up with. Now we not only have the Mieneke something bowl and the O'Rielly Auto Parts bowl, but a whole group of these second-rate games are now lumped together now under the banner of the Capital One Bowl Series. Leaving out the fact that I fucking hate Capital One - they recently bought out the bank I had my accounts with, and customer service went from decent to exceptionally poor literally overnight - do we really need another tier of advertising for these mostly meaningless games? Add to that the big traditional bowl games aren't even played on New Years Day anymore, and you know what? I don't care, I have lost interest. I'm tuning in to the Law And Order: Criminal Intent marathon instead.