The Sports Curmudgeon®

With the NFL Playoffs about to begin, that means the Super Bowl is only a month away – - and that means new advertising campaigns for lots of companies that will buy time on the pre-game programming and during the game. Those new campaigns cannot come soon enough for me because there are some mighty annoying ads on TV these days – - I have been keeping a list. You know, it really is amazing how the TV folks have found a way to sneak a football game in amongst all of those commercials.

For years, Miller beer used the same Holiday Season ad. It showed a one-horse open sleigh making its way down a lane to a house with lights on it. The problem is that the camera was placed in the driver’s seat of the sleigh so all you did was to stare at a horse’s ass for the duration of the ad; it made me certain that veterinary proctology was not my calling in life. Finally, they put that one out to pasture so to speak – - and they replaced it with something even more annoying. We now have to watch a bunch of smiling goofs clinking Miller Lite glasses thereby creating the tune Let It Snow! After the third time I saw it, I wished every one of the folks clinking those damned glasses would die of cirrhosis of the liver.

How about the goofball who goes into the Taco Bell and will not place his order with the attractive young woman at the counter but would rather place it with another attractive young woman who is working in the back. He thinks he is getting a special deal on an 89-cent burrito guaranteed to give him gas for at least 6 hours. What a jamoke! Oh, by the way, have you ever gone into a fast-food joint and found two women working there who looked as attractive as the two in that ad? I can tell you that where I live most of the women working in fast-food emporia look like the losers in an axe fight.

Taco Bell is a serial annoyer this time around. A couple of months ago, they were touting the “Black Taco” and they asked why you would pay more than 89 cents for that concoction.

Memo to Taco Bell: Here are two reasons why…

1. I really do not want to have to “make a run for the border” if you get my drift.

2. Maybe I would want to buy something that was actually – - you know – - edible.

The same company that owns Taco Bell also owns KFC; so, you should not be totally surprised to see some KFC stuff on my list. At one point, KFC was trying to say that 60 million people ate their new “grilled chicken”. How could they possibly know that? Well, one way might be that they had sold 60 million portions of that stuff and they figured no one would be stupid enough to order it twice. Ergo…

The entire message for the “grilled chicken” part of the KFC menu is that it is “healthy”. Compared to chicken cooked in a pressure cooker full of oil, it is not all that hard to come up with a “healthy alternative” – - but that is not the point here. In the midst of getting folks to consider the “unfried side” of KFC, the company also launched a test marketing of something they called the “Double Down”. The “Double Down” is a sandwich without the bread; the two outside layers are KFC Original Recipe breast filets and the center of the sandwich is two kinds of cheese, bacon and “The Colonel’s Special Sauce”. Let me say unequivocally that I do not want to know what is in “The Colonel’s Special Sauce” for the simple reason that he has been dead for nigh onto three decades here.

The “Double Down” has a caloric content of 1700 calories and it also comes as a “combo meal” with potato wedges and a soda, which would bring that calorie count well over 2000. I got to listen to pitches for that bad boy juxtaposed with calls to come in and try the new “healthy” stuff on the socially conscious KFC menu. Yeah, right…!

Dr. Pepper continues to advise me to drink it slow. Well, I think I am in compliance with their wishes because the last time I had even a sip of that swill was in the mid-1980s. Is that slow enough?

I love those General Motors ads that tell me to compare cars and may the best car win. Sounds great except… Back in the 1970s, GM had a market share right around 50%; today, it has a market share closer to 20% than 10%. What that means is that the buying public has been comparing cars for the past 35 years, and the best cars won. GM didn’t make them…

GMC trucks supposedly are “built to exceed the highest standards”. How is that possible?

You have to have seen the ad where the GMC truck goes to a mudhole and pulls a Toyota and a Dodge truck out of the muck and mire. Looks great until you watch closely and see that the chains used to do the towing go limp during the “great pull out”. How can you tow something with a limp chain unless those other trucks are moving on their own?

One of the latest ads for Viagra is particularly annoying. You know the one I mean; it is the one where the guy is walking down the street to go and see his doctor and he carries on a running conversation with his reflection in store window-fronts along the way. His reflection wants him to talk to the doctor about “their” erectile dysfunction problem. Might I suggest that the guy needs to have a discussion with his doctor about his raging delusions and his conversations with imaginary friends far more than he needs to have a conversation with his doctor about his dysfunctional Johnson?

There are Blackberry ads out there with The Beatles song, All You Need Is Love going in the background while the screen is filled with images that have exactly nothing whatsoever to do with phones/web enabled devices/techno-geek items. That ad has no meaning at all but I have to admit that it is a lot better than seeing a Cialis ad with The Beatles singing A Hard Day’s Night in the background as a couple holds hands in those twin bathtubs in the woods somewhere. Even worse, would be The Beatles song, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road as background music for an erectile dysfunction product.

One of the jewelry stores tells us that you need to keep your heart open so that love can find its way in. Some woman designed jewelry to that “theme” because of something her mother told her sometime in the past. Great. Hey, Mom; if you keep your heart open, the blood will flow out – - and then you will die. Deal with it.

Speaking of jewelry reminds me of the really annoying – - and insulting – - ads for those companies that want you to send your unwanted gold to them. If I had a bunch of gold lying around and really needed money, what would make me want to put it all in an envelope and mail it to people I do not know with the confidence that they will give me a fair reading of the weight of the gold and a fair price for the gold?

Oh, here is a Quick Quiz:

Which “Jared” is more annoying?

A. Jared the “former fatty” who still does Subway ads.

B. Jared the Galleria of Jewelry.

Remember gagging your self with a spoon is not an option here…

When one watches one of those “Hi, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” ads, you might actually get the idea that Mac has more of a market share in the personal computer business than 15%. It does not.

Those Southwest Airlines guys who love your bags and see them along their way – - sometimes on the same airplane that you are on – - are scary. One of them says, “Bags are my life.” Do you really want to fly on an airline that will not only hire but will also brag about the fact that they have hired and retained clinically insane folks? Imagine if the pilot on your flight felt that “Trees are my life.”

The last ad that is annoying to the max is not a TV ad; it is an Internet ad – - one of those things that show up on the sidebar of a website that you may be visiting. It is for some kind of colon cleanser – - something I tend not to think about very frequently when I am at my keyboard. The ad boasts in large type that this particular product was the “#1 Colon Cleanser in 2009”. Maybe it’s just me, but given what a colon cleanser is supposed to do, wouldn’t I want to have the brand that was #2? Just asking…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…