Sports star sitting on a vast couch in the middle of a vast living room in what I assume is a vast suburban estate musing "life would sure be easier if...." Yeah, very relatable, State Farm.
Caitlin Clark wishes her sport could be easier. Here's the thing, though: Clark recently signed a four-year contract in the WNBA which will pay her an average of $78,000 per year. That's not a typo- she'll make seventy-eight thousand dollars a year playing in the WNBA. So whose massive house is she sitting in?
Well, unless it's just a sound stage, the answer is probably: Hers. You see, less than three-tenths of one percent of Clark's money actually comes from playing basketball. She has also signed an eight-year deal with Nike Shoes that will "earn" her $28 million over that period, and collects royalties for a signature Wilson basketball. In all, she makes an estimated $12-14 million PER YEAR and is set for life if she never plays another game. Her WNBA gig pays her just slightly more than I make teaching High School, but like most people, I need to pay all my expenses working one full-time job. This woman's "profession" opened up the doors to all those other opportunities, but it's a completely incidental line item in her current revenue stream. It would make a lot more sense if we saw her wishing that doing commercials was easier. It wouldn't be any more relatable, but it would make more sense.
The part that gets me about this ad for $6 pancake deals is the "every day" line. I get it- they just mean that the deal is available every day. They don't expect you to show up every day for pancakes, hash browns, side meats and butter, butter and more butter. But it IS 2025 after all- there are many, many people out there who hit Starbucks for coffee milkshakes every morning and Taco Bell every lunch break and whatever is a Special on Uber Eats for dinner, so now I kind of wonder- does IHOP want this to be an every day thing? I mean, it's a day's worth of calories for six dollars....
...a nightmare world/Twilight Zone Episode where everyone in a surface-level-upscale suburban community has filled their McMansions with IKEA and Dollar Store-Quality junk, probably because they spent all their money on more house than they can afford and the Lexus they are paying on at $999 a month, $3499 down, for the next seven years.
I can totally see this being a trend. After all, the neighbors see that flashy Entertainment Center/Overcompensation On Wheels sitting in your driveway. They rarely see what kind of furniture you have; they sure don't have time to inspect it beyond the superficial glance. If the lamp turns on, if the sofa doesn't collapse, if the coffee table can handle the load of your coffee cup without creaking- well, it must be excellent quality because come on, if you could swing that Lexus you'd spare no expense inside the house, right? The neighbors aren't going to detect the particleboard and they aren't going to lift the lamps and realize that for all their solid appearance their weight suggests thin plastic rather than ceramic. In short, the facade will probably hold up as long as they never look too closely- and as long as they stay fixated on that Lexus.
The other option is to buy a practical, 10-year old car and modest quality furniture on Facebook Marketplace (that's what I did, because I'm smart and I'm not out to impress anyone; good thing, too.) I mean, when the Lexus gets repossessed, or the neighbors over for cocktails (is that something people still do?) finally do notice that your house is furnished with fiberboard and Aaron's Selloff -level junk electronics- when the gild is finally peeled off- where will your reputation built on a house of cards be then?
I get that there's supposed to be a double meaning to "gut feeling" here- like, eating this ultra-produced garbage is supposed to be good for your gut while at the same time encouraging you to go with your spontaneous notion of doing something fun. Because I'm a curmudgeon, I have a few issues with this message:
1. There's nothing about this stuff that is good for your gut. It's Diabetes in a Bowl and should not be consumed by anyone who is more interested in their long-term health than their short-term satisfaction. Not a good choice for anyone who cares more about what's in their food than how pretty it looks in a bowl of milk (which no one should be drinking after the age of 6 or so anyway.)
2. The "gut feeling" that leads to a romp in the bouncy castle is called a "sugar rush" and yeah I guess it's a better way to use that quick energy spike than just continuing to sit on your ass watching that middle-aged pouch above your belt get bigger, but what do you do in ten minutes when the crash ends and you're hungry again (in many cases, hungrier than before you consumed that bowl of worthless carbohydrates and dairy your body hasn't needed since you were an infant?) Oh right, I know- either eat more sugar to keep that feeling going (but sugar isn't an addictive drug, so don't you dare suggest otherwise) or take a nap, at which time your body will store the unused energy as adipose tissue. Either way, you lose.
3. A couple of eggs and a piece of fruit (NOT JUICE) would have given you more energy and it would have lasted much longer, besides leaving you satiated for hours, not minutes. But it doesn't look or taste like candy so it's a hard pass, I guess. Again, though- sugar's not addictive. 🙄
If the Baptists and Calvinists are right, I will find this film playing in an endless loop in the Afterlife. I will be like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, being forced to consume this painful dreck as payment for all of my sins in this life.
How much do I hate this film? Let me count the ways....
Steve Martin plays the father of a spoiled rotten horror of a daughter who is pulverized by all around him for daring to object to her plans for a monstrously expensive ceremony that would have made the Romanovs blush in their heyday. Diane Keaton plays Diane Keaton, with the same hairstyle and lack of emotional range she showed in every film the appeared in for the better part of three decades, constantly assaulting us with a smile that would make any sane person want to smash her face in with an ice pick.
Martin is condemned by his daughter and wife for daring to even suggest that maybe, just maybe, $250 per plate is a ridiculous expense for what is essentially an afterparty for people who donated a day of their lives to watch people get married. He gets eyerolls and sighs from the people who will NOT be contributing a single dime to the expenses, especially when he suggests that the event planner and his assistant not be included on the guest list. BTW, $250 in 1991 is $661 today.
Unable to get any sympathy- or even the courtesy of a fair hearing- from his family, and being the most disgusting Simp I've ever seen on film, Martin's character goes off to the local grocery store, tears hot dog buns out of their packages because he "only needs" 12 buns to go with his pack of 12 hot dogs, and verbally assaults the minimum-wage workers who question his actions. This guy can't stand up to his ridiculous wife and daughter but he'll blow off steam to customer service people who don't live in huge mansions and don't have to worry about financing over-the-top weddings because they'll never have the bank account to even consider them. He gets arrested and is put into a jail cell, because that's definitely how the the police would handle petty vandalism/theft committed by a rich middle-aged white man in 1991.
When his wife shows up to bail him out, she makes him listen to a lecture first about how "we can afford this wedding" because they don't go to Europe and they don't have fancy cars. Time to apply the ice pick again. Lady, your husband is the only reasonable person in this entire film. It's not about being able to afford this over-the-top spectacle. It's about looking at a situation like a freaking adult and not bending over backwards to accommodate a spoiled, starry-eyed little girl and her enabler hey-it's-not-MY-money mother.
To top it all off, at the end of the film the bride and groom depart the ceremony without even saying goodbye to the Dad who ultimately caved in on every demand and dumped his wallet onto the table so his little girl could be Princess for a Day. I know she comes back and there's a happy ending (though, to my mind, the only happy here is that it Ends*) but long before that happens I don't care anymore because I'm sick of one of my favorite comedians being kicked around by the people who see him as a walking ATM and are annoyed that he opens his mouth to speak when he should just be writing checks. Just, gross.
And I never even got to discuss Martin Short's portrayal of what 1990s audiences figured a gay wedding planner (he's gay because he's male; we all know straight men can't be wedding planners, that would be Gay) would look like. So yeah, it's even slightly worse than I described.
*There's a sequel in which both wife and daughter are pregnant at the same time, which leads to more massive draining of Dad's bank account because Of Course It Does. Even Martin Short is back for some reason. I've never seen it and I never will- unless the endless loop movie in hell is a Double Feature.
"She started college last week, and already she's homesick..."
Well, yeah. Generally being homesick is an initial emotion when you go away to school or anywhere else for the first time. It tends to wear off after a while. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to point out that this girl is "already" homesick. This is still very new for her.
To alleviate homesickness, she wonders how she might make her* dorm room more "homey." So she asks Google and gets a bunch of great ideas on how to get into heavy credit card debt quickly rather than just giving herself time to get the f--k over it. Before you know it, she's got the place tripped out in what Google's AI has decided is Southwestern motif. How much did this cost? Who cares? Everyone keeps talking about how great the job market is for college graduates plus I hear there's this loan forgiveness program so no worries, right?
*Is that her roommate walking in at the end? Was she consulted before all this new stuff was ordered? Is she into Southwestern Decor? Or is this just a case of "hey, if you didn't want the place you live in completely redecorated without your input, you shouldn't have gone away for the weekend, especially when you know your roommate is a self-absorbed homebody?"
When I first saw this ad, without sound, I thought that one guy had walked in on a second guy attempting to provide emergency aid for a third guy suffering a heart attack. When I watched it to the end, I realized that it was for some toasted cheese, carbohydrate-and-fat-wrap. In other words, while I was wrong in my initial impression, I wasn't really THAT far off the mark. The guy on the floor might not be suffering a heart attack in this commercial, but let's be serious. If he really eats like this, it's only a matter of time.
And BTW, what the freaking hell is this house? Am I supposed to know who these people are? Are they famous sports figures, or actors, or even (gag) "influencers?" Never mind, don't care. If this is truly a slice of THEIR lives, they are not long for this world anyway. No point in getting to know them.
No, it certainly isn't. None of this. And none of it distracts from the fact that Uber Eats is an environment-wrecking, exploitative horror show of a business which abuses it's drivers, generates massive waste in paper, plastic and fossil fuel usage, and (no pun intended) feeds America's obesity epidemic by encouraging even LESS movement while also contributing to skyrocketing credit card debt with usury-level markups (it's never been easier to sit on your overfed ass and spend money you don't have on junk food you don't need- just open that app, swipe your finger across the screen, and in the blink of an eye you're down another $30 minimum for a meal that would cost half as much if you had picked it up on the way home from work.)
In my experience, only local dealerships make ads promoting used cars. But this ad isn't created by a local dealership; it was actually produced and paid for by Stellantis (a name you will not hear mentioned in any Jeep ad because car owners in the know associate Stellantis with quality as nutrition experts associate Taco Bell with healthy.)
This ad features several Jeep products that have been discontinued by the manufacturer, before the company became a billion-dollar hot potato. Jeep was originally an AMC product but was then purchased by Chrysler, which eventually dumped it on Stellantis. Today only one model is produced at the old plant in Toledo, Ohio. The others are made in- you guessed it- China.
The current Jeep Stellantis product allegedly being pitched in this ad in between cuts of older automobiles of much higher quality is not a Jeep at all, but an SUV. Which begs the question- if you are in the market for an SUV, why on Earth would you buy one from THIS company? On the other hand, actual Jeeps produced earlier in this century are available from used car lots for a fraction of the cost of this hideous, unreliable monstrosity trying to catch a free ride on the back of its predecessors.
Here are my two favorite comments concerning this ad, courtesy of YouTube:
"Comes with a Check Engine Light and a Backorder on Parts."
"Conclusions: 1) the Jeep became and SUV, and 2) hold on to your old models, as they will rise in value."
Bottom Line: The "Jeep" name may still Influence people to buy a pile of Chinese Crap that will be in the shop more often than their driveways, but that's nothing to be proud of because the current crop of vehicles being vomited out of Asia are buggy, badly-built money pits being pitched using nostalgia bait and nothing more. And don't forget- they are made by Stellantis and nobody thinks Stellantis is a reliable car maker.
1. It's pretty juvenile. I mean, do adults really need to be told that if they max out their credit cards, they make themselves poor credit risks and therefore lower their credit scores? Maybe the damage done by getting rid of their longest credit line is less mainstream knowledge, but come on.
2. While providing good (albeit very basic, No Duh) advice, it also feeds the audience a poisoned pill mixed in with the nutritious stuff- No, it is NOT a good idea to sign up for and use several credit cards instead of just one. That's actually really stupid, because it can lead to people masking their debt by spreading it over several different sources. It's also hypocritical, because this company- like every other credit-issuing company- will be quick to offer opportunities to consolidate debt into one card, as long as it's theirs.
3. In the end, there's only one reason to use credit cards beyond emergency situations, and that's to earn rewards points. I understand that rewards points are actually bad for people who don't hold credit cards because they raise prices for everyone while providing benefits for members only. I just don't care, because I'm a cardholder and especially because I'm a Boomer and everyone knows Boomers are all done caring about people who are not Them. Truth hurts.
"Is this self-parody, or are they really being serious here?"
I mean, the only thing we're missing in this repurposed Reagan '84 ad is someone eating a hot dog with one hand and apple pie with the other. This is not Everyday Commercial Cringe. It's what Skynet would create if asked to create Cringe. It's Cringe on an Epic Level.
Nobody in the comment section* thinks that this is a good ad. The only thing anyone wants to know is- is this for real? Is RAM trying to make us laugh, or making fun of us. or what?
*there's actually one person here who claims to love this ad "and America." But it has to be a bot. It just has to.
Quick Boomer Tip: Avoid companies that use words like "Patriot" or "Liberty" or "Freedom" in their names. Those are cheap marketing ploys designed to tweak a very smooth part of the brain that should never, ever be used in making purchasing decisions.
The "4Patriots" solar generator - proudly made in China, perhaps even in the same factory that makes Trump Watches and MAGA caps- has a ton of terrible reviews describing it as cheaply-made, unreliable, and overpriced. So it's not really "4Patriots"- it's for really shallow people who measure patriotism based on how many American flags they display and how many times they voted for a convicted felon/cult leader/Russian asset carnival barker. You know, people who are already in the dark in every other respect so won't mind being let down by a piece-of-junk-garbage generator if it's called "4Patriot." Just tell them they're owning the Libs.
I don't know what these two jackass multimillionaires are pretending to joke about, nor do I care. All that matters to me is that they are doing it in service of an addictive app that ruins marriages, finances, friendships, and lives. With great big smiles on their faces.
Because there's no such thing as Enough Money, I guess.
The actual content of this ad? Who cares? I don't gamble. The people I respect most in the world could not convince me to gamble. These guys are so far from the people I respect most in the world, they aren't even in the same universe. And they sure didn't gain any points when they decided to make this crap.
