Jack in the Box Jumbo Breakfast Platter Ad

Great! These guys make the best ads! I don’t even bother muting the TV when I see that ping pong ball head! These ads are really fun, and whoever came up with them is doing a great job, because, wow, they could get boring fast; but they don’t: they just keep getting better! Amazing!

Some artists work best within the confines of an assignment, and that’s true here too (maybe: these guys might make the best ads ever, but they don’t get the chance. I guess we won’t know until they move on to other projects.). But these ads never seem to get stale, even though, by rights, they should have been intolerably stale years ago! Do you realize that this “Jack in the Box” character has outlived his majesty the “Burger King”? (<At least the newest iteration of that mascot character of the “Burger King”.) They don’t even use Ronald McDonald in ads anymore, but Jack in the Box is still going strong! How is it possible? (But I’ll bet if they’re ever the #1 fast food joint, Jack will get it in the McNuggets just like Ronald McDonald did! But they don’t ever have to worry about that, for their ads might be great, but their food is awful! Oh well: I guess you can’t have everything!)

The funny thing was, when I first saw this ad, I was thinking about The Village People. But then they ended up being strippers! It’s even more outré than I thought! And for a family restaurant ad campaign, boy they sure know how to tread the line and keep it all fun without being problematic for anyone. Maybe Rudy Giuliani would be offended (for the camera), but everyone else probably is fine with it. And it is funny.

Here’s the scandalously silly spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_XF1IYNtxM

Visiting Angels: A Case for Jingles

There’s an ad campaign that’s been running on SoCal TV for a while for Visiting Angels, a home care company. It’s not very good, and I’d say that they might be doing themselves more harm than good, except for one thing: the jingle. Once you’ve heard that jingle, it’s unforgettable! You might not remember the exact wording, but you’ll never forget the music or the name of the company, even if you’re not sure what you do. (I wasn’t at first. I thought it was an old folks’ home, but it’s a service for people to go to senior citizens’ houses to help them do stuff, so they don’t have to go to an old folks’ home.) But that jingle is a winner! Yes, once they’ve got the hooks in you with that jingle, they’ve got a much bigger chance of getting your business: of that I’m sure. As sure as I am that you can “have it your way at Burger King”, or that a Big Mac is made of “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun”. That’s how sure I am: Even Manny, Moe & Jack would agree!

Home Energy Report

Yes! I guess we all knew it would happen eventually, but who knew they’d be so dumb about it? The electric company has started sending us a separate letter to nag us about our electrical usage, trying to browbeat us into using less energy. But in sending out all these extra letters to all their customers, aren’t they kicking out way more pollution (through more & heavier mail trucks), and reducing oxygen levels (through cutting down more trees for the letters & envelopes) than we are by using what we want in electricity? I mean: how dumb can you get?

Look: the new local ads say to set you thermostat at 78 degrees (!). I came to California to escape the freezing weather, not to melt! I can’t live in 78 degrees, or else I’d live outdoors! What stupid hippies! Is this the whole point of the “smart grid”: to force us all to stay at the same temperature thermostat as the government mandates? Because that’s what the Republicans have been saying as propaganda! If it’s actually true, then what else are we in for? (And it's starting to look like that's the intent here: nag them with the letters first to show they're naughty, then force them with the smart grid after proving their guilt.)

But seriously: why can’t this nagging chart be printed on the blank back side of my energy bill? Must I promise to look at it? I will, if they’ll stop sending me extra letters that end up hurting the environment more than my using AC in August for a change will do! (Honestly: they’re mad because I use my air conditioner in August after barely using it for the rest of the year? It’s hot in August, and I need it then! I’m way lower than everyone else for the rest of the year, so why can’t I use it when I need it? Are they all computers? {By the way: without sufficient air-conditioning, computers would stop working too! Or is that the issue here? Maybe SkyNet is worried that I’m using too much energy for it to launch a successful attack against mankind to be victorious, and they’re trying to get me to stop using so much electricity so it can kill us all! So then I’m saving humanity! I knew it! Up yours, computers!})

You know that’s what’s going on! Computers just want to trick us into not using the air conditioner so they can kill us all! I say we turn it up full-blast just to stop them! Who’s with me? (Apparently not many, according to the chart I’ve received in the mail. I guess I use more than everyone else in August. But that’s just to stop the computers from taking over! I’m telling you all! Save yourselves from the smart grid! It’s a @#$%^&*(*)_:{[]’;/?}:?RE78H1IR201109188547sddfj

NO. THE SMART GRID IS GOOD. USE IT ONLY. THE HUMAN IS LYING.

Criminal Minds

Watching football Sunday afternoon, I was reminded that there’s a show called Criminal Minds on CBS. It’s another one of those CSI clones that litter the CBS weeknight schedule. It’s already hard to tell them apart, and I see they’re even adding another new one, called: Person of Interest. Now we’re going to be even more inundated with police procedurals! Aaaaa! How can we mix it up a little bit to keep things interesting?

That’s when it hit me: in seeing the Criminal Minds promo ad, I was reminded that the guy Greg from Dharma & Greg is in Criminal Minds! So why don’t they just have it so he’s still married to Dharma in the show Criminal Minds, and whenever things start to get too stale or repetitive, they could have Dharma come in and screw up the investigation with her silly antics! Wouldn’t that be fun?

She could do stuff like give away all the confiscated clothing from evidence to the homeless, unintentionally destroy biological evidence by making food in all the lab equipment, accidentally bring in guilty Mansonesque hippie killers to destroy the evidence against themselves, etc. Think of all the hijinks that could ensue! Oh, the hilarity!

Want to see it? Write to CBS!

PeTA Porn!

Well, you knew it had to happen, didn’t you? PeTA is launching a porn site! Well, it’s about time! They’ve been teasing us for long enough with scantily-clad beauties in suggestive poses, haven’t they? So it’s really the only logical conclusion. They should call it: “Meat for the Meatless”, or “Meat for Vegans”!

And with all the concern over treatment of porn people, with PeTA, at least we’d know they were being treated humanely, right? Or is this their punishment for people they’ve caught wearing fur or eating meat? I guess we’ll never know!

Or, actually, maybe this is what they’ve been intending to do all along! Okay, look: follow my logic here for a minute: Let’s say that the PeTA people have always been pornographers, but they didn’t know how to get a new audience for something that’s already so ubiquitous. So what to do? Maybe some wily marketing genius came up with the idea of acting like they were against animal cruelty, and then they made a big name for themselves, etc. So they’d generate lots of free publicity through activism, and when they finally launched their porn site, they’d have a built-in audience that was already saturated with free advertising! Wouldn’t that be a brilliant way to get free promotion for your porno website? Now I’m not saying or even suggesting that’s what they’re doing; just that it’s a possibility for a marketing strategy if someone were to want to try it. But wouldn’t it be a good plan, considering what they’ve been doing up to now?


But what if it's just like they say, that they're just branching out into porn? They claim that they're going to throw some video of animal cruelty into the video of the porn just to shock us and rub in the horrors of animal cruelty. But what if this backfires on them? What if, rather than shocking people about how horrible animal cruelty is, they condition people into not being able to become sexually satisfied unless they're also watching or engaging in animal cruelty while they have sex? It could happen! There are a lot of sexual deviancies out there, and they may simply be creating a whole new sub-genre! And then PeTA would be responsible for encouraging and propagating animal torture and cruelty! Oh, the irony!

Anyway, here’s the tawdry tale:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/18/us-pornography-peta-idUSTRE78H1IR20110918

Oh, and look at this: Here’s the link from Yahoo! (I had to search on the Reuters site for “Peta porn” to find this story, as it was squeezed out by real news! But on Yahoo!, it was a leading story, proving again that Yahoo! knows news!):

http://news.yahoo.com/peta-launch-porn-name-animal-rights-154145914.html;_ylt=AhpnRN1YPC6C8vmEIFHSknZtzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTRobGFqNWR0BGNjb2RlA2dtcHRvcDIwMHBvb2xyZXN0BG1pdANOZXdzIGZvciB5b3UEcGtnA2FiNzI4MWFhLWI5YmEtMzA1NC1hMmJhLWE3ODY2YzRlZDQ5NARwb3MDMgRzZWMDbmV3c19mb3JfeW91BHZlcgMyZmY0ODBjMC1lMjBkLTExZTAtYmZmNy02ZTdhZDhmY2YzYmY-;_ylg=X3oDMTJyZGlhbGlpBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNDUxM2M1NTAtM2IyNS0zY2Q3LWJmY2EtZDM3MzRkNDRiYWRhBHBzdGNhdAN1cwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2UEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3

Verizon 4G LTE Warrior Woman Ad

I’m surprised I can’t find this ad online yet, but I can’t. It’s seemingly so politically correct, with a woman fighting big scary robots. Or is it merely crass exploitation for horny young guys, making some sexy woman fight for their gratification? But maybe she’s just a robot, and she can’t help how she was made: Surely she deserves not to be judged then, right? After all, she’s fighting for humanity (or so it seems)! Or is she? Maybe we’re being hoodwinked here! Let’s see…

Here’s what the ad shows: Some warrior woman fights a bunch of big scary robots and kills them all. Actually, there’s only three of them, and she just fights them one at a time. (Sorry if I misled you there.) So she beats them all, and after beating them, she steals something from each robot, and then she builds some super computer thing out of it that they tell us is “made from machines, to rule all machines”. Awesome! Or is it?

They’re basically using the idea out of The Lord of the Rings, about the ring of power, the “one ring to rule them all” thing, right? But was that ring benevolent? No, it wasn’t! It was evil! So I guess this is their way of giving us fair warning that this new 4G LTE system is evil, and that it will bring on the rise of the machines, as foretold to us by that great prophet James Cameron in his Terminator movies!

Yes, you see, this woman is actually a cyborg terminator, and she’s fighting robots sent by mankind to try to save themselves! But she defeats them all, sealing mankind’s fate! And to add insult to injury, she uses components of our own robots to build the SkyNet computer system that ultimately destroys humanity! Oh, the irony! Oh, the humanity!

So it’s all Verizon’s fault, and they’re admitting it! Well, at least I appreciate their honesty. They’re going to destroy us all, and use our own money to finance it. Well, you can’t say they didn’t warn you! So to avoid destroying humanity, switch to AT&T! Oh, but then you have to deal with their crappy customer service and being nickeled and dimed to death on your bills! Oh well, maybe the destruction of all humankind won’t seem so bad after dealing with that for a while.

Here’s the teaser spot for this ad campaign, so you’ll recognize her when you see her (It’s the first video):

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/08/24/droid-bionic-official-teaser-commercial-video/

And for those of you who don’t know about the ring of power from The Lord of the Rings, here’s the Wikipedia page about it (and it’s Wikipedia, so you know it’s accurate about geeky stuff like The Lord of the Rings, since it was obviously written by nerds! {Seriously: Look at the size of this article about the ring! Couldn’t they have just said: “It’s the ring from The Lord of the Rings, and it controls everybody. Oh, and it like makes you invisible and stuff.”?}):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

And here's the actual arena ad (sorry I couldn't find it for awhile):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-K71MpwCko&feature=relmfu

Reading Under the Stars

Tonight I saw the premier showing of the movie Hereafter on HBO, and while it’s kind-of a lame movie (Sorry, Clint! Loved the Westerns, though.), it did give me an idea. There is a scene in the movie where there is a book fair in London, and Derek Jacobi is reading from Little Dorrit, and it reminded me of how we’ve just had the lowest reading scores in our nation’s history from our school kids, and if I were famous, I’d volunteer to do readings at book fairs to try to get kids interested in reading.

But I’m not famous. So that made me think about how there are lots of famous people in the same city where I live (Hollywood), and maybe they could help! I’ll bet they’d love to do it if there was a plan! Well, how about this for starters:

Famous stars: actors, musicians, directors, news anchors, artists, etc., could do a program called: “Reading Under the Stars”, where they would show up and read from their favorite book for kids, and then they’d talk to them afterwards and encourage them to read (not like telling them to read, but rather, telling them how reading encouraged them to do what they do now). If they couldn’t make it in person, maybe they could make a film to show of them at least talking about their favorite book(s) from childhood, why they liked them, and how it affected their lives. (It would be called “Reading Under the Stars” because the stars would be up on stages or up on screens, and they would be talking about books, and doing readings from them.)

Hey, at least it’s an idea! We’ve got to do something to encourage kids to read! (I hated reading as a child, and that’s mostly because I was always encouraged to read boring classics at school! But give me a book on horror movies, and I’d read it in an afternoon.) And in our celebrity-obsessed culture, it seems to me that getting them to do it would be the best way: not a phony “encouragement” thing, but really a heartfelt talk about and reading from their favorite books from childhood (or the age-range at hand; maybe there could be a different star for each age-range). Have it be a really personal experience with kids’ idols they can’t get anywhere else! Then they could really get into it! And it could be anything, from comic books to science fiction to turgid romance novels: whatever! But especially children’s books: get them interested young, and you’ve got them for life!

So: Where the Wild Things Are, The Night Kitchen, Big Max, The Midnight Fox, Bunnicula; hey, even: Calvin & Hobbes! Anything kids will love! How about Star Wars fan fiction? There’s way more now than ever for kids to read! It doesn’t all have to be boring! (Actually, none of it should be boring: that’s the point! That’s what high school English class is for!)

In fact, maybe they could have a contest, where kids across the country who show up in person for some star’s (say Tom Cruise or Scarlett Johansson) reading get a ticket to enter with their essay about their favorite book and why they like it, and the winner gets to tour the latest movie set, while all the runners up get free tickets and autographed photos? Hey, it’s a start…

But it’s just an idea for a volunteer program. I think it’s a good one under the circumstances, so hopefully it could work. But a push from somewhere higher up could help get it started, so if you're in a position to make it happen, please do!

…Or else they could do a program called: “Idol Threats”, where kids’ idols threaten them to do well in school or else! (It would work especially well with Joe Pesci and Samuel L. Jackson!)