Commercial Reviews

Watching videos on hulu frequently will make it so that you see the same few commercials over and over again. Recently there has been a video for Verizon that has been showing up a lot.



At first I thought it was sort of funny they used the Big Red song and didn't pay much attention to the rest of it. But every time I see it it bums me out more and more. So the first lady is getting a sculpture made of her and she's checking her phone while she's just sitting there. That is totally fine, sitting around being a model for someone is probably goddamn boring as shit. Plus, the dude sculpting her is wearing a lab coat. Not a smock, a damn lab coat. I sort of wonder if he isn't her doctor and he's going through his artist phase, which would explain why, at the end of the commercial, the finished work looks like it was made by a nine year old. Still, this seems like a good use for an internet phone, killing time while your doctor sculpts you because he said he could score you some Vicodin if you did.

Then it goes to a campground. And what is probably a father who is trying, idiotically, to entertain his three children, who are way more interested in looking at porn on their phone than watching their dad do his Frankenstein impression for the millionth time. Really I don't have a problem with it, except for that I can't shake this idea that it is probably racist. Maybe I'm just racist, so I assume that any time a black person is on TV there is some sort of agenda behind it. But the way he's moving, I just sort of think that his Frankenstein impression includes the phrase "yessa' Masta!" at some point. This might not be correct.

When it goes to the bell boy, though, I start to get pissed. Here is a dude that is supposed to be working and instead he is reading the latest Dave Barry article online, as he looks like such a nerd I can't imagine that he finds anything funny that has been written in the last ten years. Some fat tourist in the background is holding a sign that says "tour," and if I knew how to do a screen capture from youtube I could show you the look on his face if you pause it at 0:11. He seems to be saying "oh, you crazy kids. Fucking assholes with no work ethic. Oh well, I'm gonna get drunk in the hotel bar and hit on my buddies wife in a completely moronic and creepy way." That extra should get his own show, he really knows how to emote with a single expression. Or I read way too much into shit to further my own elaborate agenda. Both of those things might be correct.

The thing that really pisses me off comes right after that. "You'll watch youtube on a horse." Seriously, that may work within the rhyming context of the song but that is possibly the proof I have been searching for that our society is completely unredeemable. I would like to walk you through what that dude must have been thinking, if I may: "my new girlfriend is totally hot, and she thinks I'm a classic romantic. I am going to prove how romantic I can be. I am going to rent a horse, get it to a beach, and then we are going to ride it to a romantic ocean side restaurant where we will drink expensive wine and dine on exotic foods. After that, I will take her back to a beach side hotel room and we will make sweet, sweet love. But aside from that last part where I get to fuck her, that is going to be totally boring. So I'm gonna bring my phone and watch Bill O'Reilly flip out until we get to the boning."

Frankly, though, its the lyrics the song goes out on that really bug me. "Download stupid stuff much better." They say that. They know that getting on the internet on your phone while you are doing social activities is retarded. Every where I go I find people fucking around on the internet on their phones. "I'm at a bar with my friends. Better check my facebook to see if any of my friends have made any status updates!" The mentality seems to be that nothing in the world is as good as fucking around on the internet. I'm of the opinion that people who update their status via a cell phone are way too hooked into social media as it is. But it is one thing to text a message to a blog that says "I am totally drunk and I want to make out with everyone" and quite another thing to be able to sit in a pub and read that status update. It is as though, for some people, it isn't okay to do things. You have to record that you are doing things. I'm not opposed to the internet, but to me phones that allow you to connect to the internet should be treated as flasks. You take a little nip when you need to and you keep it hidden the rest of the time. Chugging down the whole thing and then refilling it over and over and over again seems to indicate that you might have a problem.

The funny thing is that I have a Verizon Envy. It's a great phone for calling and texting and it doesn't call random people when it is in my pocket. It has a good camera on it and the speaker phone is very clear. People don't even know I have them on speaker most of the time. And, yes, it gets on the internet like a pro. I only use the internet on there, though, to check directions or to get other pertinent info, like movie times. Its a handy tool that I could totally live without. Isn't it enough, America, that you can carry something around in your pocket that allows you to call anywhere in the goddamn world? Do you really need to use it to say "no one here is as interesting as my cow in farmville."