Just Kidding

     After I finished with yesterday’s blog entry, I was immediately disappointed. I didn’t know why at the time, but after looking it over again today a few glaring problems need to be addressed.

1. I actually do watch commercials. I am often too lazy, or not near enough to the remote control to change the channel, and do see commercials all the time. Yet for some reason yesterday I got off on this strange tangent and acted like I’m above watching commercials or something. Not so. I am easily proved pretentious by noting that I make several different references to specific commercials, and clearly know them well enough to complain. (Although that Burger King Commercial has to go, I don’t regret that.)

2.  There are commercials I like. For example:

     A. The Wendy’s commercial where the guy eats the really hot sandwich and starts to breath fire everywhere. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

     B. That old Quizno’s commercial where the really strange rat-monkey puppets sing that “We Love The Subs” song. (An aside: The guy that made up the creatures for that commercial has a website with all these really funny videos. http://www.rathergood.com/ The original video for the rat-monkey thing is called, ‘We Like The Moon’ and is hilarious.) These are only a couple of examples.

3.  There are commercials that do, in fact, make me go and buy things. The Quizno’s commercial made me start to like Quizno’s. I am highly attracted to new advances in air freshener delivery devices, i.e. plugins, and magical spraying leaves, etc… This is just the start.

4.  I am wrong in placing all the blame at the foot of ad executives. Many probably are honest, and anyway the people themselves must exercise good reasoning and consumer skills. While ad executives do pray on media illiteracy, its existence is not completely their fault. People have to be discerning. Ad firms are kind of evil though, besides.

5.  There are many points in the article that I didn’t even make. Like how I hate that they use cool songs to advertise for banks and car companies, partly because of the sneaky appeal to my tastes, and partly because I know that I am old enough to be in the target market. And how I don’t like commercials that start out like movie trailers, then turn into car commercials.

     So as you can see, I need to put more thought into my entries, lest I get that bad, my-rant-didn’t-make-any-sence-and-made-me-look-like-pretentious-self-richeous-prick taste in my mouth.

Thank you for your time, and I will try to be clearer in the future.

    
    And now, in partnership with acclaimed humor magazine Silly Little Trouser Monkees, (Place your ads for Issue 23 Now!) Brain Pan brings you: A Rambling rant about Commercials. This is the newest in a continuing series of topics covered in a unique cross-blog discussion format.
 So go to the bathroom, grab a cup of joe, and sit back, cause this one's LONG AND BORING.
    

     Commercials suck. They just do. They belong in the things-I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-but-for-whatever-reason-am-forced-to category along with dental appointments, legal communication, and registering for Selective Service, (Which you totally have to do if you are male, over eighteen, and a citizen of the United States. For more information, or to register online, please visit, http://www.sss.gov .
     I realize that commercials are necessary. Any smarmy ad executive or toothy grinned Republican will tell you, all excitedly and at great length, about how commercials pay for all the free programming you receive via TV, and how without out commercials you would have to pay for every channel, HBO style, and anyway what’s wrong with giant corporations trying to make a few honest bucks, what are you some kind of damn communist?!!?!? They don’t mention anything about cable, but whatever, you try to talk to those people.
     The point is I understand all that. What I do not understand is WHY THEY BOTHER. They are wasting their time. Commercials, as a rule, never actually sell me anything. There are three exemptions to this rule:

1. Pizza. If I see a pizza commercial I almost always want pizza. It’s pathological. I think it’s because I always kind of want pizza, and the commercial just reminds me of that fact. I will often see a pizza commercial, get the desire for pizza, then order some from a place totally different from the one that aired said commercial. It just happens.

2. Movies. I like movies, and am always excited to see the new trailers. I don’t count this, but am not sure why. It should probably count, but it just doesn't seem the same as a regular commercial.

3. TV promos. It’s just like movies trailers except that I don’t like TV as much, so it happens less.

     Other than those examples, all commercials can ever hope to accomplish is to manage not to irritate me. Nothing makes me want a cell phone less that seeing a commercial for one. Ipods are cool, but stupid computer generated silhouettes dancing around to bad pop music make me never want to buy one. The less I notice your ad, the better off you are. Darius Rucker in a cowboy hat does not make me want Burger King. It just makes me want to eat at home.
     The reason I don’t buy anything based on commercial advertisement is this: A company will never, ever, tell you if a product sucks, even if they know it does. They will just hire an ad firm to make it seem better than it is. Ad companies make their living making you feel inadequate so that they can sell you worthless crap you don’t need. They will draw on their vast research into the buying habits and demographics of the products intended target market, and then will, based on that demographical and cultural information, craft some clever con that glides over the products shortcomings, and sells the product to you directly.
     I don’t like being manipulated because of what age group I belong to. It’s sneaky and disingenuous. If I need something I WILL KNOW, and I will GO AND BUY IT. Ad companies are the abscessed boil on the neck of humanity, and if you lance them they only become sticky, and more infected. If they were honest, and just focused on whatever the merits of the particular product were, sans all the deceitful crap, it would be better. I don’t like the idea that every time a TV show breaks for commercial I have to try to dodge one charlatan and snake oil salesmen after another, until Arrested Development comes back on. It’s bogus.
     So most of the time I just ignore Commercials, or change the channel, or do whatever I can do to block them out. And I don’t think I’m alone. I believe most people flip around during the commercial breaks, and that thought makes me happy.

AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON COMMERCIALS AT THE MOVIES.

    I am off tomorrow for the break, but I will leave you with this:

    Talk Show Joke Of The Day

You know we have problems with elections in this country when American Idol can't even get it right.

Homework: Count how many times a joke like this is used over the weekend. A few i'll bet. I've heard it myself three times and I don't even watch late night.

     I have just come back from having spent four days and five fabulous nights in the pampered confines of the Renton Motel Six in Renton, Idaho attending the First Annual Irrelevant Blogger’s Convention. It was, in my opinion, a wild and overwhelming success. We made many a wit filled and socially relevant observation. Nobody paid any attention, not that we noticed. A rousing speech by Danny Pintauro (Jonathan Bower from TV’s Who’s The Boss) entitled, ‘It’s Better For Me That Nobody Knows Who The Fuck I Am’, exalted the joys of toiling in virtual obscurity, and left us all electrified. Little Caesars catered. All in all a very valuable trip.

     Then I arrived home and found a new topic from Mody of Silly Little Trouser Monkees, about Commercials. I will have a follow up tomorrow.

     Robert Blake got off. Huh. And I was sure he was guilty. Shows you what I know. I was suprised like I was invoved with the trial in some way. I read maybe two articles about it, and I felt like some kind of expert on the case. He's still crazy as hell though. So there's that.

     A friend tipped me off to a really funny website. It offers up PROOF, that Superman is a dick. Tons of proof. You don't have to be a comic book fan, (though I am, as anyone who knows me can probably attest),  to find this site, really, really, funny.

SuperDickery

     I heard this thing on the radio today about blogs and their impact on journalism. This person, whose name I don’t remember, maintained that blogs (including this one I presume) deal in the dissemination of information, and are thus journalism. He implied that because of this, blog ‘journalists’ should be held to similar standards of ethics that regular journalists are pledged to respect.
     That may be. I can see where integrity and honor, adherence to the truth, and fundamental ideological balance, would and should be applied to some of the more seriously intentioned would-be reporters. However, I also believe in the reader’s responsibility to not be a shmuck, to be a little selective, and to try to think about who in the hell is writing what they are reading, but whatever. 
     That’s not my point.
     So, just to be clear, here is a little transparency:

     I am totally full of crap. If I ever talk about anything news-like, then I will always site an actual news story from some actual news agency. And it will be someone reputable, like CNN or something. The things I say are my opinion, and poorly researched opinion at that. If you, the reader, choose to believe anything I say without first checking the facts yourself, then don’t blame me if you sound like an ass. You have no idea who I am. I could be a 7-year-old boy with a low IQ an unnatural obsession with Pokemon, (I am not) or a sixty five year old retired tilt-a-whirl operator with a drinking problem who hides scotch in the toilet tank and who voted for David Duke, (also not true). I could be anybody. So take anything I might say with a giant, lick sized, grain of salt.
     And I might say anything.

     George W. Bush is a Douche Bag.

     See.
  
     So just keep that in mind. I am not the news. I am some asshole who is just trying to be funny, and who has an unhealthy interest in current events. Just so we’re straight.

    Thought for the weekend:

    Most of the things you will do this weekend you will totaly forget about in a week or so, and it will be like those things never happened. Even if you write every thing you do down, you will still forget about it, and whenever you read whatever you wrote you will only remember those things you wrote down. So it wll be like your life as fiction. Try to make it interesting, so you won't get bored.

This weird Bill Cosby thing won't go away. I at first brought it to you thinking it was going to be like a one, maybe two day story. Now for some reason the media is after his buisness like he is Brittany Spears. But I, ACE REPORTER BENJAMIN PHILLIPS, will keep stealing these stories from other more reputable sources until the whole thing reaches some kind of end.
SO TODAY FROM WENN:

Cosby Civil Case Filed

The Canadian woman who accused comedian Bill Cosby of drugging and molesting her, has filed a civil lawsuit against the comedian. The 31-year-old, who failed in her attempt to bring criminal charges against Cosby last month, filed a civil suit in Pennsylvania Tuesday. The woman, who lives in Ontario, Canada, initially reported the alleged incident in January to local police, claiming Cosby gave her some medication that made her feel dizzy and then fondled her at his home near Philadelphia in January, 2004. Cosby, 67, insists all the accusations are untrue.