The Buick Enclave: America's Favorite Money Vampire

 

With its sleek styling and eye-catching extras like Driver and Google Assist, built-in GPS, heated seats, steering wheel, seatbelts, dash, glove compartment and sun visors (probably, why not) as well as screens everywhere you look, the Buick Enclave will impress your friends every minute it is in your driveway and not at the Dealership getting something else fixed- in other words, roughly three weekends a month. 

With a base model (stripped down, including NONE of the things mentioned in the above paragraph) price of only $45,890 you don't need to be among the One Percent to "own" one of these ridiculous, overengineered beauties.  You just need $4999 due at signing and convenient monthly payments of $679 a month for sixty months,*  assuming you qualify for the low low advertised APR...which would make you among the One Percent.  

Otherwise, we can get you into this Wannabee LookAtMeMobile for that $679 a month, we'll just stretch it out over 72 months, don't worry it looks exactly the same in your driveway, there's no way your neighbors will know.  Your mechanic might eventually notice that he's been working on the same obnoxious piece of Foolish Vanity like clockwork for seven years but who cares what he thinks, he probably drives a Toyota or something else Sensible, the Loser. 

With only five active recalls and minor, barely-worth-mentioning common complaints such as engine cooling issues, engine electrical issues, squeaking or grinding brakes, and the minor, expected-in-all-models early transmission rebuild or replace, this Buick will be the gem of your neighborhood.  And on those occasions when you actually have it out on the road, those screens are a great distraction from a heater that doesn't heat and AC that doesn't cool.  

Remember, in Buick commercials Buick owners are always asking "where's the Buick?" or saying "let's take the Buick?" because when you own a Buick you are constantly reminded it's a Buick.  I mean, the name is right there on top of the work order and the monthly payment.  

*by the way, you can easily find ten-year old versions of this model for as low as $7300 on the used car market.  Makes you think about little thing called Depreciation, doesn't it?  If not, let me quickly break it down for you:  If you bought this Buick new in 2015 for $26000 and paid it off in $360.99 per month installments over the course of six years, in 2021 you'd own a car that four years later would be worth $7300.  If that sounds like a good deal to you, then paying $499 a month for six years for a 2025 model instead of $7300 for the 2015 probably sounds good too.**  So go for it.  I'm just glad you don't handle my money.

**And I'm not even going to mention the difference in insurance rates when comparing a 2015 Buick to the 2025 model.  I think I've made my point.

Remember Hydroxycut? Well, you don't have to. It's still around.

 

Full disclosure: I have no idea who Heidi Montag is.  I guess she's some kind of "influencer?"  But who the hell isn't?  I don't care.

This stuff has been around FOREVER (at least twenty years.)  The company that developed it went bankrupt back in 2005 and the formula* and brand name was purchased by another entity which continues to make ads featuring people celebrating their weight loss with Hydroxycut.  This stuff is available in the supplement aisle of a lot of stores, dangerously close to actual medications backed up by actual clinical studies.  So even if you never see any of these commercials you might be convinced that this is a weight loss drug approved by doctors and just blonde girls in bikinis with zero credentials.

*the formula is olives, mint, and coffee.  There's a "non-stimulating" version that doesn't have any coffee.  There are no other "active ingredients" in this Basically a Placebo.  Which is the most positive thing I can say about it- at least, it doesn't seem capable of doing any harm except to your bank account.  But if you really want to lose weight, why would you waste time with this nonsense?   

Probably a quick comment on this Indeed Commercial

 

Or, more accurately, a few quick comments:

1.  You can tell that this is a fairly old commercial where we have a woman thinking that she's going to effortlessly jump from one high-paying job to another.  Thing is, it's from 2021, and the United States was just starting to come out of the pandemic and the job market was even worse than it is now.  And why is nobody here wearing a mask?

2.  Like all Indeed Commercials, the disgruntled worker or unemployed person at the center of the narrative thinks that an invitation to interview = a job.  Last time I checked, interviews did not come with any pay at all.  If I was paid for every interview for a teaching position I had in the early 1990s, I could have retired without ever starting an actual teaching career.  That would have been nice, actually.

3.  I can't help wonder if this woman's "I'm actively seeking a job at another company while drawing a paycheck from my current company" attitude might be one reason why she keeps getting turned down for a promotion.  Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy?  Maybe the guy who got the job ISN'T constantly updating his resume on Indeed and Monster and LinkedIn and actually oh,  I don't know, just EARNING HIS PAYCHECK?

4.  I also can't help wonder if this woman has ever just come out and told the Suits who run her company that if she doesn't get a promotion, she's going to walk.  If you are really valuable to your employer, this can actually be a pretty effective way of getting what you want.  Standing there with a tight thin fake smile and tearing-up eyes before checking your phone for an exit ramp might not be.  Just a thought.  Four thoughts, as it turns out. 

Debt Consolidation Loans are getting weirder by the day

 

 I have never in my life been as excited about anything as Kevin is about shifting debt from one creditor to another.  If this clown is going to dance on the street at the news that he's been approved for yet another debt consolidation loan which allows him to put off being an adult about his money issues for a few more years, I can't even imagine how he'd react to actually being financially stable.  

The Ford F-150 is a huge serving of Cope

 

As I've always suspected, the vast majority of these trucks are not being used for any of the purposes shown in the ads.  Almost NOBODY is using these trucks to haul tools and bags of 'Merican Stuff, tow, or crash through sand dunes and forests for "fun."  Instead, they are being used to haul groceries home from Costco and children to and from soccer practice; in other words, they are just SUVs designed to look like those vehicles blue-collar people used to own for work. 

For some reason, people living in suburbs want to project an image of rugged individualism and adventure.  They want their neighbors to think that they have hobbies that require the hauling of tools and materials and enjoy the Great Outdoors and need a $70,000 truck to Just Live Their Lives, so they need a truck with an average monthly payment of $700* over the course of 72 months and can afford the inflated maintenance and insurance that comes along with these ridiculous ornaments to conspicuous consumption.  An SUV might convince the guy across the street that you have money, but it won't sell him on the idea that an actual virile American Man lives in your house.   You need a truck for that, even if you never use it for any of the tasks you saw in the commercial because after all, it looks like that stuff creates dents and scratches and those don't show well either even though they would be evidence that you actually use your truck to do all that rugged and fun stuff.  See the problem here?

Back in the 1960s, a lot of young people gave societal expectations the middle finger by purchasing Volkswagen Bugs and Vans- cheap, ugly vessels that got them from Point A to Point B and told the world that their owners weren't buying in to Consumerism.  I think that the current version of Minimalism is people who ride bikes** to work or drive beaters (I own a 2-door 2011 Honda Civic.)  But YouTube is overflowing with horror stories of mostly young people being buried by car payments (at high interest rates) because they signed up for new cars that cost more than my entire college career with monthly notes higher than my rent.  All to show well for their neighbors and friends.  It's scary and dumb and more than a little entertaining (sorry) but it shows how desperate so many people are to project Economic Success while sabotaging their ability to attain it. 

*Trucks are the most popular Lease vehicles in the United States.  You think anyone is going to lease a truck and then plow it through the forest or toss anything heavier than a case of Diet Coke in the back of it?  Yeah, sure Jan.

**I'm referring to the people who ride bikes that DON'T cost $5k.  People who spend more for their bikes than I spent for my Civic are just flexing in a different way. 

Coors Light and Wedding Ceremonies; what could go wrong?

 

So maybe the bride and groom wouldn't really appreciate the ceremony being interrupted by two members of the wedding party suddenly handing out cans of beer, no matter how much the gesture was appreciated by the guests who decided not to wear hats or use umbrellas despite the fact that this particular event is taking place under a blazing sun and it's heavily implied that it is very very hot out.  Maybe they'd rather NOT have the exchange of vows interrupted by the spray of shaken beer or have their moment (or, to be more honest, HER moment) contest for attention by the guzzling of watered-down beer.

Maybe if the bride and groom wanted the guests drinking beer during the ceremony, they would have planned a much more laid-back event including a touch football game afterwards, as one of my older brothers almost fifty years ago.  They wouldn't have set up this cliche'd nonsense outdoors in a place with no shade in the middle of the summer with guests wearing full suits and dresses desperate for the whole painful thing to just Be Over Already.

But I don't know if this is worse than most of the other TV Commercial Weddings I've seen in the past few years, with everyone on their iPhones instead of paying attention to the two people ruining a perfectly lovely afternoon for dozens of people who would rather be doing pretty much anything than watching them pledge to temporarily live together and file jointly.

This Pizza Hut Campaign Launch is even worse than most

 

So I'm guessing that this clown, chosen after weeks or even months of screen tests with thousands of aspiring "actors" in the LA area, will be featured in a series of ads for very cheap-yet-overpriced carbohydrates in which he offers boxes of grease to random strangers just trying to live their lives.  Like the two guys playing basketball in this ad; who asked this obnoxious jerk to interrupt their exercise with blood-sugar spiking, inflammatory crap?

I know Pizza Hut won't listen to this, but I'm going to say it anyway:  Sometimes a stumble is a good reason to stop and rethink your journey.  This is very dumb and very pointless and your pizza is not worth eating and hopefully nobody who engages in regular exercise would sabotage their efforts at good health by consuming warmed-over poison-in-a-red-and-white-box just because a creep they don't know offered to to them off the street.  I don't want to knock anyone's hustle, but this is bad even for you.  

1st Advantage is to borrow from Peter to pay Paul

 

Gee, I can't imagine how this woman built up a big credit card balance- she seems to spend her money very sensibly, and really seems to be living within her means.  

In all seriousness, though- she took out a debt consolidation loan to pay off her credit cards, and now she's off doing this indoor skydiving thing, which according to a quick Google search generally runs between $50 and $80 for two one-minute sessions.  In other words, she went right back to being stupid with money.  Her VISA card had a zero balance from the time it took her to complete the debt consolidation loan to the time she could book two minutes of indoor skydiving which she calls "more important things" than the interest rate on her credit card which she is back to using. 

I understand that there's a certain personality that is on some level "addicted" to debt.  These are people who can't bear to have zero or low debt and who respond to diminishing totals on the credit card statements with impulse buying.  Paying down debt is such an established part of their routine that they feel kind of lost when there's no balance to stress over.  Maybe this woman is one of that type.  Or maybe she's like 99 percent of people with high credit card balances and is just incapable of managing her credit like a rational adult, or like 100 percent of people in debt consolidation commercials who act as if they won the lottery when they take out a loan to pay off another loan.  Either way, this is both stupid and weird. 

A few questions for State Farm after viewing one of it's moronic Batman/Bateman Commercials

 

1.  So someone in Corporate really thought Batman/Bateman was clever enough to be turned into a series of ads, huh?  Well, after the results of last November I guess I can't blame them- we are an exceptionally stupid country that likes to breathe out of its mouth, so....

2.  Glad to see Jake from State Farm doing anything that isn't stalking Pat Mahomes, I guess.  I have no idea why he's actually in this ad- he has nothing to do in it- but come to think of it, he has nothing to do in any of these ads except give us that smarmy smirk and not sell insurance.

3.  Who in State Farm thought that it would be a good idea to reference what is not only universally considered the worst Batman film of all time but acknowledged as perhaps the worst SUPERHERO movie of all time and one of the Worst Movies of All Time PERIOD?  Nobody in their right mind wants to be reminded of The One With Poison Ivy.   Is this about making us miss Pat Mahomes, or what?

Who are you going reference next, State Farm?  Howard the Duck?  

Audi's Four Rings of Despair "Legacy"

 

These are among the most expensive LookAtMeMobiles on the market, despite having terrible ratings when it comes to regular upkeep.  There's a reason why they are such popular lease vehicles; you can generally expect 2-3 years of problem-free driving before the thing starts to fall out from under you and becomes more intimate with your local repair shop than with the driveway you liked to show it off from. 

Basically, Audi presents a legacy of gaudy cars and gaudier ads littered with buzzphrases like "state of the art technology" and, most hilariously, "quattro all-wheel drive" ("quattro" means "four." You're telling us that this car has four-wheel drive.  "Quattro all-wheel" is just cringey redundancy on a whole new scale.  What else does it have?  Post-Viewing Rear-view mirrors?  Locking Security Doors?  Global Positioning GPS Location Finder View Screens?)

And of course the comment section is filled with comments like "this commercial made me cry" and "best commercial ever" and "I can't wait to sign up for seven years of payments of $1500 a month for the next Audi," etc.  Because bots are a thing and people are really, really dumb.  Dumb enough to buy Audis, even.  

Crowning the King of Depreciation Nation

 

I love reading the comments on this piece of garbage, even though I assume that 90 percent of them are from bots or paid endorsers making a nickel a post.  Of all the SUVs out there, none depreciate in value faster than the Rav 4, and the only way I can think of making this a bigger money pit is by producing a Hybrid Plug-In Model.  

Ok, maybe if it was a straight EV it might be worse.  Either way, you had BETTER like your Toyota RAV 4 because there was a reason the dealership pops champaign whenever one drives off the lot; these things are ridiculously overpriced credit busters that will leave you underwater faster than Jack Dawson after dropping Rose on top of that raft.  Here's a tip:  If you really like these things (and there's no accounting for taste, after all,) lease it and keep the mileage low enough to trade in without penalty when the term expires.  That will give you three years  to develop some sense and maybe even some of that taste I just said there's no accounting for.  I mean, come on- these SUVs are not only marked up to the freaking moon, they are ugly as hell.  It's not a Subaru Solterra- it costs more- and it's not a Nissan Cube (nothing is more painful on the eyes than a car that says "aerodynamics isn't a thing") but it's still an eyesore capable of dropping property values.  If you get one, at least try to keep peace in the neighborhood and keep it in the garage during daylight hours.

This SPAM Commercial is another canary in the coal mine....

 

In case you didn't know, sales of SPAM rise whenever the economy is doing poorly.   They are economic indicators like the spread of Dollar Stores and Pawn Shops.  And when you see actual commercials for SPAM you know that Hormel has its finger on the pulse of the American psyche; we are in trouble, and we know we are in trouble.  Time to stock up on processed pig meat product that can sit on the shelf for years as we fight off roving bands of laid-off tech workers or zombies, or laid-off zombie tech workers.

In the meantime, "served with a side of friends" sounds uber-creepy to me.  Did the guys who came up with the ad campaign for Nutrific write this?

Earnin lets us know: We are in big, big trouble

 

After watching this ad, I feel kind of guilty for ragging on Klarna and AfterPay.  I mean, those are terrible "services" that just encourage people to overspend and pretend that they have more money than they actually have.  But Apps like Earnin aren't terrible.  They are downright scary.

I mean, come on.  If you find yourself getting excited about the opportunity to "get paid" (take out a payday loan, get a cash advance, however you want to call it) every day, your economic situation is so precarious that I really hope that's a comfy, roomy car you have because it's probably where you're going to be living in the near future.  Does Walmart still allow overnight parking?

I'm not trying to be mean here, but Oh My Dog are in trouble if you are in constant need of your paycheck days before it's due to hit your bank account.  I don't know if Earnin is better or worse than using a credit card as a bridge to that next payday, and I wonder if it- like Klarna and AfterPay- has as its target audience people who don't HAVE credit cards.  I don't even know how to find out.  I just know that this is really sad.  Unless of course the reason why you find yourself running short of funds is because you're addicted to Uber Eats and Starbucks in which case you can go to the devil in your own way and I have no pity on you.  

The Woman in this Safelite Auto Glass Commercial...

 

The way she reacts to a crack in her windshield makes me worry about how she might deal with a real crisis.  What would she do if her transmission broke down?  Or, beyond car problems which will always pop up, how about an illness in her family?  Being laid off from her job?  A partner saying goodbye and filing for separation or divorce?  Does she go postal and start shooting up the neighborhood?  Does she throw trash cans through plate glass windows?  Does she start a Tiktok account to share her trauma with the universe?

Simply put, I think it's pretty clear that this woman is not ready to Adult quite yet.  I don't want to be in the car behind her when her Check Engine light goes on if she gets this unhinged over a cracked windshield.  Heck, I don't want to be in the same neighborhood when she sees that the Oil Life is down to 20 percent or that the tire pressure is slightly below optimal.  This woman makes crystal look like Tungsten.  I'm legitimately worried about her.  

Call it the Chevy Equinox VS (Virtue-Signaler,) because really- where's the upside for these things?

 

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can wake up every morning to a full charge."

And with a car with an internal combustion engine, you can wake up every morning with a full tank of gas as long as you got it filled the night before.  And you didn't have to have a charging station installed in your driveway (how much does THAT cost?) 

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can get X amount of miles per charge."

And with a car with an internal combustion engine, you can get X amount of miles per tank.  And there's no searching for a gas station- they are still everywhere, and they'll continue to be everywhere.  And it will take literally seconds to get your car filled with petrol at any of those gas stations.  You won't need to consult Maps or Wayz or Whatever for the closest compatible charging station.  

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can take....um....take your kids places."

Do I even have to bother?  You can do the exact same thing with a gas-powered automobile without any of the concern over having a charging station, finding a charging station, glitches that seem to pop up more and more often with EVs, etc. etc. ETC.

"The new Chevy Equinox.  It's an EV not built by a company owned by a Fascist Lunatic."

Ok, you got me there.

Burger King's version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is weird

 

 

"Eating like a King" at BK is like "shopping like a billionaire" at TEMU.  As if members of a royal family are going to be chowing down on greasy, nutrition-deficient, high-fat, high-sugar, overpriced crap at the American Sludge Factory not called "McDonald's."  But if you think that Jamie Foxx gets hyped over FanDuel, Shaq loves shopping at TEMU but appreciates the opportunity to stretch out his payments using Klarna, and Vivica Fox and Danica Patrick are super-pumped over the money they saved at CarShield, I guess you'll believe that King Charles is celebrating his successful cancer treatments with a $5 meal deal he picked up with his BK App and a quick run to the local drive-thru.  My eyes are rolling out of my head. 

Shaq picks up some more blood money, this time with a Buy Now, Pay Later "service"

 

Why the hell is Shaquille O'Neal pitching a Buy Now Pay Later service?  Did his contract with Gold Bond Medicated Lotion end?  Has The General Insurance stopped calling?  Is he really this addicted to quick money available to famous people willing to pitch ANYTHING?  Does he have too much "integrity" to whore for CarShield or Fake Medicare "add on" insurance?

All that being said- there are a lot of "Buy Now Pay Later is Ruining Finances" and "AfterPay, Klarna and other BNPL plans will destroy your life" stories out there.  As a proper curmudgeon, I have just one reply to that:  Claiming that Buy Now, Pay Later destroyed your finances is like saying that the bowl of candy in the breakroom destroyed your diet.   Nobody makes you click that option, you ridiculous, financially illiterate idiots.  

Remember when Mike Tyson wasn't a meme?

 

Heck, if you're a boomer, you probably even remember when "meme" wasn't a meme. 

But being a big professional boxing fan for more than forty years now (I actually got see a boxing card live about 25 years ago, that was a very cool experience) this boomer has no problem remembering when Mike Tyson was one of those athletes whose fame transcended the sport he participated in.  When he was every bit as recognizable as Manning, Mahomes, and Ohtani are today.  When you think about the current state of boxing- with circus acts like Jake Paul taking up as much or even more media space as any of the actual champions (I bet more people can recognize Paul, who has yet to fight an actual boxer who isn't a joke or elderly,* than can recognize Alexander Usyk, the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world,) it's pretty remarkable that there was a time when the face of the heavyweight champion was almost universally known and when films about a heavyweight champion regularly dominated the box office.  How times have changed.

And how the mighty have fallen.  In the mid-1980s, Mike Tyson was making fun, lighthearted commercials for Pepsi.  In the mid-2020s, he's pitching something called "Dr. Squatch" in commercials that can only be made weirder if you watch them without sound (which I did, on big screens at my gym.  I had no idea what I was looking at, except that Mike Tyson was acting like he's acted at least since Lennox Lewis made him look like a bald punching bag back at the dawn of this century- a clown, or a cartoon character, or both. 

*Paul's last joke opponent?  Mike Tyson.  Of course.