Heard this commercial on the radio this morning, for a local “specialty” store:
Come in for our 4/20 sale and get great deals on pipes and water tubes and lots of other smoking accessories… Don’t get ripped off, just get ripped.
Smoking accessories are for legal tobacco use only.
Who do they think they’re kidding? “Get ripped” with legal tobacco? Right.
Nice try, geniuses. “We don’t sell drug paraphernalia here, no sirrrrreee. Legal stuff only. Ignore the smell.”
Sigh.
While browsing the intarwebs, as I'm wont to do, I happened upon a strange advertisement to the side of the screen. Normally I would never have seen it (I ♥ Adblock Plus), but alas I had to use Internet Explorer temporarily. And so it was that I came across this delightful little gem.
This was the ad I saw. It's an ad looking for “local mystery shoppers” — supposedly, the idea is that you're paid to shop at particular stores so long as you report on how your experience was. You rat out the crappy clerks and “associates” and whatever other people are there to “assist” you in your shopping expedition, and you can keep whatever loot you've pilfered in the meantime. It's a simple enough scheme; lots of product-oriented businesses use it.
Except… what does this ad have to do with mystery shopping?
…yeah I couldn't figure it out either.
I suppose that could be a representation of what their mystery shoppers look like. Or… it could just be an attractive, highly-Photoshopped girl slapped up (no pun intended, I swear) on the image for no reason other than to get your eye to look at it. They must have spent some time oiling her up, too… look at the shine on her legs.
Let no one ever tell you sex doesn't sell. Cause… it does. I think. If people actually click that ad. I'm sure they do; people still click those stupid “swat the fly and win a prize!” banners, why should this be any different?
I saw this bumper sticker on my way home from work today… I did a double-take, as I thought there's no way someone would so blatantly advertise their addiction to a social networking site. But, upon looking closer, I saw that it was something quite different indeed. Note the characteristic blue globe of NASA to the left. Still… made me go “huh?” for a second.
And then there was this one from yesterday morning on my way to work. It took me a second to figure out what it said, then another second or ten to figure out why someone would have that as their plate. Oh well, I guess some people are just that driven to get to work. Got to work? Either they have some sort of compulsion about work, or they have to work or they'll die. Kind of like a really long, drawn-out version of Speed.
I decided to watch Kingdom of Heaven today, mostly for the simple reason that it features none other than the beautiful Eva Green. You may recognize her as the most recent Bond girl, cast as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. In any case, I decided to watch 'Kingdom of Heaven' because I've not seen it in its entirety and because Ms. Green graces the screen with her presence.
It's a fairly long movie. The director's cut is over three hours long, putting it in the runnings with movies like any one of the 'Lord of the Rings' installments. Right in the middle of the movie, at an hour and a half into it, it fades to black and displays the word 'Intermission' in the middle of the screen.
Now… this confuses me. I started this movie knowing full well how long it was. I knew I was in for a long movie; I was fully aware of the amount of time I was committing to. So here I sit, in the comfort of my own home, watching a movie at my own leisure. This isn't a public performance, it's not being put on as a show on Broadway, there are no others in attendance for this viewing. Just me and my glass of orange juice. And animal crackers. Never mind them, they don't talk much.
In any case, I'm free to come and go as I please. I can start, stop, or even — gasp — rewind this movie as I see fit. It's as though I'm a minor deity, with ultimate power over this, my digital entertainment du jour. My media player bows in accordance with my wishes, playing on my command. So why does it feel the need to tell me it's time for an intermission?
Why can't I choose to have an intermission, say, at the one-hour mark instead of the one-and-a-half hour mark? What about the 23-minute mark? Or the two-hour mark? I'm just confused as to why there would be an intermission on a DVD — is that not what the remote control is for? I'm pretty certain there's a pause button here… lemme check… yep. There it is, an intermission button right there on the remote.
I don't get it. Maybe it's just me.
Eva Green picture from PopStarsPlus.com.
What exactly is the point of canned laughter? You know what I'm referring to. You hear it mostly in sitcoms — one of the characters cracks a funny line, and you get a pre-recorded laugh track. It's like a cue that whatever line was just delivered was supposed to have been funny, and you should now laugh.
I just don't get the point. Are viewers too dumb to figure out when something was supposed to be funny? I'd just think that if you have to cue your audience to laugh, you're defeating the purpose. No? Why is it necessary to inform your viewers that your joke is funny? If it really is funny, they should laugh on their own.
Right now I have the distinct pleasure of hearing my roommate and his girlfriend watching a season of “That 70s Show” in the living room downstairs. This show has quite possibly the most canned laughter of any show I've ever come across. As I'm listening, I've been keeping track of just how often I hear the laugh track. It's literally every other line. Every… other… line. For every two lines of dialogue, at least one of them is guaranteed to be accompanied by fake laughter. Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?
There aren't laugh tracks in movies. In movies, if a joke isn't funny, people don't laugh. We're not told that we should be laughing, we don't get a pre-recorded studio audience laughing, we get nothing but the joke itself. Why is it different for TV? Seriously… I'm getting sick of hearing canned laughter.
I'm not laughing.
Today I picked up GoldenEye at my local WalMart. It was on the cheap (cheap as compared to most DVDs at WalMart) DVD rack, so how could I refuse? The great Bond movie that spawned one of my favorite video games of all time had to be mine.
Right there next to GoldenEye were four other Bond movies, all priced the same as the one in my hand. The only thing keeping me from getting them right there on the spot was the reminder at the back of my mind that I could get all of the Bond movies in boxed sets now, and if I did decide to pick those up, I'd be stuck with the single copies of each of these and have to sell them off. Not that it's a hard thing to do, but then I'd have dropped an extra $40 plus tax on these extra movies. (I'd probably still keep GoldenEye on its own, just because.)
I'd actually been looking at the four boxed sets — sorry, “volumes” — a few days ago at Best Buy. They're ridiculously expensive — around $70 each — although I suppose each box does have five movies plus some bonus material. If you assume each movie would be at least $15 if not more, then I guess they're actually pricing them fairly accurately. In any case, I don't usually like to drop several hundred dollars on a whim, so I left Best Buy empty-handed that day.
What I don't understand is the way the movies are sorted. Each “volume” has five movies, but they're not arranged in any sort of understandable fashion. I would have expected them to be grouped by release date — the first five movies in Volume One, the next five in Volume Two, and so on. Instead, it seems to be completely random. I'd hate to have to read each box every time I wanted to watch one of the movies.
“Hmm, I'd like to watch 'Diamonds are Forever.' That was the seventh movie in the series, so that must be in the second box. Oh wait, that's right, it's not arranged in some logical order, it's actually in the first box.
Well, you know, actually I think I'll watch 'Die Another Day.' That was one of the most recent ones with Pierce Brosnan, so that's gotta be in the last box. D'oh! No, that's right, it's in the second box!”
Ridiculous. What was the logic behind the order of the movies? Every boxed set I've ever seen has had the movies arranged in order of release. Granted, there's usually not twenty-plus movies, but still. The principle is the same. I see no discernible pattern to the order of the movies. I thought maybe it was by actor, but no. Maybe it's some sort of theme to the movies themselves, but again no.
Gah. It doesn't really matter, but it's terribly inconvenient. The extra few seconds I'd spend looking for the movie I want could be spent… um… getting chips. Cause those extra ten seconds are ten seconds I'll never get back. I'd like to think there's going to be a boxed set released with an order that makes sense, but I know I'm just being idealistic. Eventually I'll pick these up, but right now the price tag is still a bit too high for me.
Edit: Sami has a suggestion as to the reasoning behind this idiocy:
Sami: probably pairing the ones that bombed up with the ones that did well just for marketing
Which… oddly… is probably the case. I mean, why else would they pair a fantastic movie like A View to a Kill (featuring none other than Christopher Walken as the villain) with a movie like Die Another Day?
It looks like 2007 is going to be a fantastic year for movies. Just a few of the ones I'm looking forward to this year:
Sure, a good chunk of those are sequels, but you have to admit they're sequels to great movies. Hopefully they stack up to the originals. Some notable entries, which I'll likely have to pick up opening-night tickets for:
From the trailer, it looks like they're taking the franchise in a completely different direction, but it should still be interesting. Four great things about this trailer. One, it's Resident Evil. Two, Milla Jovovich. Three, Ali Larter (also in the excellent TV series Heroes).
And fourth… listen to the music used in the beginning of the trailer, during the 'commercial' part. You know who that is? Yeah… that's The Crystal Method, my favorite group. That particular song is “I Know It's You” featuring vocals from none other than Milla Jovovich herself. Could it get any sweeter? I submit that it could not.
I'm too young to have been truly into the original Transformers cartoons and toys, but man are they awesome. For a while I was really into the animated series Beast Wars, which was a spinoff of sorts on the original Transformers… not quite the same thing, but close enough to still have me psyched for this movie. Besides, with a trailer like this, how could you not be excited? Turns out my original assumption about some of the characters in this one was wrong… there's a shot in the trailer of a bot crawling out of a pool… I assumed it would be a character similar to Depth Charge but it appears it might actually be Megatron himself. Nobody seems to agree who it really is, most people are thinking it's just a protoform (meaning, a transformer without a transformer body).
The only problem with an opening-night ticket for this is that it's releasing on July 4th… so we'll see. Plus, I imagine the theatres are going to be sold out for that night.
Everything I've seen and heard about this movie says it's going to be purely amazing. There are three confirmed villains — Sandman, Venom, and the Green Goblin (part two, I suppose) — for this one, with a rumor circulating that Mysterio might make an appearance (though there's nothing listed in the credits or much of anywhere else at all). All that plus Kirsten Dunst. Holy crap. This is going to be an awesome movie.
I'm not usually much of an opening-night-movies kind of guy, but these are going to have to be exceptions. Good year for movies indeed.
Advertising. It’s a staple of modern media — television, radio, billboards, and more recently the Internet. There are companies dedicated to producing ads for other companies, more companies dedicated to testing the ads produced by the former companies, other companies dedicated to distributing ads, and the chain goes on. It’s a huge force in the economy, and it doesn’t really matter what economy you’re talking about.
But not all ads are created alike. There are some fantastic ads, and there are some equally horrific ads. We’ve seen our share of both. I’m stuck in the car for several hours a day commuting to work, so I naturally listen to the radio. I could listen to my iPod, but meh. Details. Of course, being stuck in the car for so long each day, I get more than a healthy dose of bad advertising. So what better to do than to rant about it?
Ahh, Ovaltine. This hot chocolate drink product is stretching my patience with ads. Every single ad takes the same approach — two mothers sitting around in the kitchen, waiting for their kids to get home from whatever they’re doing (currently the kids seem to be sledding). Naturally, the mothers decide to make their kids “rich chocolatey Ovaltine Hot!” for when they get home. Because, you know, we can predict with certainty when the kids will be done sledding, or at least within a five-minute window. Because hot chocolate — I’m sorry, Ovaltine — really only has a five-minute span of time before it’s just lukewarm chocolate milk.
What’s worse is the stupid “conversational” tone these ads try to take. I’m sorry… how many parents sit around their kitchens pitching the merits of their chocolate milk? Not too many, I’d guess.
“Oh, you make Ovaltine with milk?”
“Yes, it’s sooooooo creamy that way!”
Right. And how many people use the full product name in regular conversation? “Who wants some rich chocolatey Ovaltine Hot?” Not too many people. Oh that’s right, no one. Come to think of it, pretty much any dialogue-y commercials are pretty bad. Whenw as the last time you were talking to a friend about something, and you felt the need to give them the full address, phone number, fax numbers, toll-free numbers, and brochure information of the place you were talking about? I don’t care how much you like your mechanic’s service, chances are you don’t regularly discuss his fax number.
I understand that repetition is key to remembering something. The more times you hear or see something, the more likely you are to remember it. It’s why teachers make kids write “I will not kick Suzy” 100 times on the blackboard. (Do teachers still do that?) I understand that the goal of advertisements is to get me to remember your brand, and ideally give you my hard-earned money. But this is not the way to do it. This particular company/website claims that they’ll send you a brand new laptop “upon completion of all paid program requirements.” Fine, fine, whatever. I’ve seen these schemes before. Complete these thirty different programs, most of which you have to pay for and sell your first-born child into slavery for, all while divulging the email addresses of 400 of your closest friends, and we’ll send you a trinket.
What sets these people apart is their attempt to drive their website name into your head by just stating it over and over again. By the end of the commercial, you’ve heard the website URL at least fifteen times, and that’s not an exaggeration. The last thing you hear is “Just go to IWantMyFreeLaptop dot com. That’s IWantMyFreeLaptop dot com. IWantMyFreeLaptop dot com. IWantMyFreeLaptop dot com.” Four times in a row? Seriously? Is that necessary? I’m not even going to make that a clickable link for you.
These are a disaster. There are at least four different debt-relief commercials currently in rotation on my preferred radio station, and a few more on the other stations I frequent. You’ve heard them:
“get out of debt fast! don’t consolidate your debt, eliminate it! you can get that new car you’ve always wanted!”
Um… here’s a get-out-of-debt solution for you: stop buying stuff you can’t afford. You can’t afford that new Mercedes, trust me. Don’t buy it. Don’t rack up huge credit card bills and then proceed to pay only the minimum payment each month. “Good credit, bad credit, no credit? No Problem!” No, problem. This is why people are in such major debt to begin with.
Gah. I can’t go on. What commercials grind your gears?