Another look at this Ethos Life Commercial

 

The commenters on this ad get it right, especially the one that suggests the guy should NOT drink that coffee before checking it for arsenic.  I'd go one better and have a mechanic come over to check the breaks on his car, too, because this woman is a Black Widow in the making.

Her "horrible dream" doesn't involve being left without a husband and her child being left without a dad.  It's them being left without enough money to maintain the lifestyle he provides.  It was a "nightmare" because dad's unbelievable selfishness in getting himself killed in a car accident before signing up for life insurance left her actually having to go back into the work force to pay for all the stuff he currently pays for.  Did she wake up upset about losing her husband?  No, she woke up upset about the sudden upending of her financial situation. 

Fortunately, Dad is pretty clueless and not really listening- or has become numb or really good at filtering what his scheming, gold-digging, Machiavellian wife says to him, and quickly buys into the idea that he should buy a lot of life insurance.*  Why a relatively young, apparently healthy man would buy from a company that offers insurance without any medical examination I can't explain; it's pretty much the same as a person with an 800 credit score, money in the bank and credit cards getting his tv and furniture from Rent-A-Center, but whatever.  Dad now knows that his wife will sleep peacefully at night, knowing that if he's in a terrible accident- the brakes fail, or he falls down a well with no witnesses around, or he mistakes mysteriously tasteless rat poison for creamer, there are so many ways a person can Accidentally Die which do not violate the conditions of a life insurance policy, after all- his wife and kid can continue to live in that big house and drive the Lexus SUV he got them for Christmas last year and not worry about bills.  If they need physical labor done around the house, Ralph the neighbor across the way whose wife died in a tragic taco-eating accident last year is always available to help out, he's so friendly and nice and come to think of it, he works for Ethos Life man it's a small world. 

Hyundai's stupid "Getaway" Commercials

 

If you find yourself driving away from a dealership in a new car worried that you've somehow pulled a fast one on that dealership that will get you in trouble with the law, I have some news for you:

1.  The salesman played you like a fiddle and you haven't read the fine print.

2.  You are an absolute moron who probably thinks that scratch off tickets and online gambling are good, affordable fun.

3.  (closely associated with #1,) you have no idea how much you paid compared to how much that Rapidly Depreciating non-Asset is actually worth.

4.  The most charitable thing I can say about you is that you are an actor in a Hyundai Commercial and you are being paid to pretend to be ridiculously enthusiastic about your purchase of a freaking Hyundai.

And if you AREN'T an actor in a Hyundai Commercial, well....I really don't know what else to tell you except, no, you have not Beaten the House at the dealership.  Knowing nothing about the "deal" you made, I know with absolute certainty that you paid too much, not too little, and the dealership is not wondering how on Earth you got the better of them because that did not happen and has never happened in the history of Anything.  You don't have to hide out anywhere.  Nobody is coming after you.  That won't happen until you fail to make payments at some point in the next 72 months of the contract and the repo man is hunting for that Hyundai at the behest of the dealership or the bank.  THEN you'll be needing the use of your mom's garage to hide it.  Moron.

Colonial Penn Death Insurance: The Scam that Keeps on Scamming

 

"Hi, I'm Alex Trebek, and I wasn't satisfied with being a world-famous multi-millionaire cultural icon as a Senior Citizen.  I decided to adopt the philosophy 'there's no such thing as enough money' and decided to sign on with Colonial Penn to scam Senior Citizens afraid of burdening their loved ones with burial costs into parting with some of their fixed income and buy nonsense garbage 'life insurance.'"

Now that Trebek is dead, his grift has been taken over by other aging celebrities who are trusted faces to the television-addicted, mostly lower-middle-class Over-65 crowd.  These cretins show up hundreds of times a day in cheap commercials mainly broadcast during the daylight hours when only Seniors and small children are watching to stoke the fires of anxiety among the elderly who for some reason are concerned about what happens when they die and the kids who never visit get stuck with a bill.  Maybe they are afraid that their ridiculously expensive, selfish burial requests won't be honored and the kids will cremate them or the very most pay for a less-pompous Memorial to their Mediocre Lives than the elderly person asked for, as if it matters one tinker's damn what the stone above the corpse box looks like.  

So the elderly person who regularly complains that their Social Security payments are too low decides to splurge on $9.95 a month to buy Colonial Penn Life Insurance.  This will teach the kids to stop complaining about the weekly scratch-off purchase, as it's an even worse investment than the lottery.  $9.95 buys one "Unit" of insurance, which if purchased at the age of 50 (and NOBODY buys Colonial Penn life insurance at the age of fifty, come on) will pay off a whopping $1600 when the idiot passes away.  Just about covering the cost of the cold cuts, soft drinks and coffee served at the Wake.

Maybe.  That's assuming that Colonial Penn even pays out before the funeral and burial.  Chances are excellent that you'll still be filling out forms and calling automated voice menus long after grandma has been placed under her Very Disappointing Dead Person Buried Here Sign Made out of Stone. If the beneficiaries followed instructions, that tiny amount of money will HELP pay the bills still coming in for the Opposite of Birthday Party.  If the beneficiaries had more common sense than consideration for the wishes of a person who is no longer here to complain and literally has no way of knowing or caring what became of their (hopefully mostly harvested) organs, the check from Colonial Penn makes a significant dent in the debt accrued by the passing of the insured. 

In the long run, the much better option is to just stick $10 a month into a regular interest-bearing account every month and skip the Colonial Penn Middlemen.  If you do this at the age of 60 and live to the age of 81 like the average American Woman (and these commercials heavily target women,) you'll have over $2500 to leave to the person you designate to handle your funeral (you know, the child you like the least.) If you opt for cremation like a sensible person, and I'll really take your "I don't want to be a burden" claims seriously. 

Tampa Bay, Webull and a Very Sad Commercial full of Cope

 

1.  There are only two possible reasons why Webull would be the Official Financial Advisors (or something, I'm not watching this again) of the Tampa Bay Rays.  First, Webull could be too small to attract sponsorship from a good ballclub. Second, all of the other teams already get financial advice from companies people outside the Tampa area have actually heard of.

2.  There's an ad running during Rays games showing every big moment celebrated by the team in it's 27-year existence.  It's about 20 seconds long.

One more vacation before the Back to School Blues set in....

 

I suppose a "classic" American Boardwalk must include the following ingredients:  At least several dozen places to get ice cream, pizza, French fries, and hot dogs, at least one arcade which includes video came consuls from the 1980s, at least a dozen places to buy trademark-violating custom-print t-shirts,* and at least at least a dozen or so tiny convenience stores selling candy, chips, soda, cigarettes and beach toys, chairs and umbrellas at ridiculous markups.  It's also important that the "classic" American Boardwalk include at least several restaurants and bars featuring outdoor patio seating and a karaoke-quality steel drum band (dealing out daily doses of Margaritaville and Sweet Caroline.)

Hampton Beach has all this stuff in spades, so yeah it qualifies as a Classic American Boardwalk.  And for maybe the 40th summer in a row it's where I'll be the last week of July, so no updates here until next weekend.  Enjoy the archives and please, if it's not too much trouble, click on an ad from time to time!

*If it's a Presidential Election Year, the t-shirt shops are dominated by Conservative/Republican crap; since 2016, appealing heavily to the MAGA cult crowd.  New Hampshire may be a (barely) blue state, but the clientele at Hampton Beach is largely redneck and predominately Stupid.  Still like the beach, though. 

Connect-4 Blast from the Past and a Self-Serving Announcement!

 

The narrator keeps saying "checkers."  Except for the checkers-like pieces, playing this game is nothing like playing checkers.  It's Tic Tac Toe.  

"Pretty sneaky sis" after having to have sis's win explained to him doesn't give me much hope for the future for this boy.  I hope he turned out ok, but jeeeeeeeeessssh kid.....

Today this blog went past the 4 million view mark.  Only took fifteen and a half years!

This McDonald's "Blind Date" commercial aged like fine milk

 

1.  I suppose it's conceivable that way back in the halcyon days of 2007 it was still considered an ok idea for a girl to have a guy she doesn't know show up at her front door to take her on a blind date instead of meeting him in a public place with transportation to and from that public place arranged in advance, but I kind of doubt it.  Maybe it helps that both the guy and the girl in this ad (and the video quality) suggests that the guy and girl are living in the 1980s, but YouTube tells me this is from 2007.  Maybe it was just posted in 2007 and the commercial actually dates to the 1980s?  It certainly has that vibe.  In any case, this is a bad idea in the 1980s, 2000s and today.  Don't do this, lady.

2.  The guy immediately lays down the law- he's not spending any more than ($30 if this is set in 2007, $15 if it's set in the 1980s) on this date, and if this girl can't deal, she should just close the door on his face right now.  I'm 100 percent in favor of her closing the door on his face right now, because in either fifty or 17 years unless he grows some confidence and has that chip surgically removed from his shoulder he's not going to be showing up at the doors of unfamiliar girls unless all the girls he actually knows already have restraining orders against him, and he's going to be spending most of his evenings on Alpha Male Incel forums complaining about Chad.  

3.  The girl is totally charmed by this guy's "I'm broke, I know you don't respect me so I'm just letting you know I'm not spending money on you so if that's not something you can deal with just let me know so I can run home and complain about You Modern Women on the Socials" speech and would love to go out for a cheeseburger, soda and movie, never mind that her date has just let her know that he has the self-esteem of a goldfish and thinks that because she has female body parts she's a gold-digging grifter Like The Rest of ThemTM.  So she's even more desperate than he is?  At least respond with "ok that's fine, and I'm letting you know straight out that I am NOT letting you in my pants tonight and it has nothing to do with the car you drive or the amount of money you spend on me.  It's got to do with the fact that this is a first date but more, that you've already revealed yourself to be a woman-hating creep.  And I'm sorry I was dumb enough to arrange for you to meet me at my address, and I'll be driving myself to McDonald's and then the movie and then home to change my phone number."