Losing sight of a good idea.

I think this is a very clever concept. The idea that this woman's sight is so bad that she gets into a police car instead of a taxi is incredibly clever. The problem is that once she gets in she's all mush mouth. What the hell is she saying after "521 West Erie"? It would have been stronger if she just gave a clear address and let it go at that. But she adds that garbled bit of unnecessary directions that I can't quite make out, which ruins, for me, a very funny spot.


Note: I got my glasses at Sears by the way and think they suck. They had a phony guarantee which was no damn good when my prescription sunglasses developed some kind of strange mottling. Not only would Sears not honor their guarantee. They came up with several fallacious reasons as to why it didn't apply and presented them with a very nasty attitude.

Where's the pep in this "talk"?

I don't get this commercial at all. Where is this woman? Does she work in a supermarket? What kind of supermarket has a corridor of empty freezers and what is she doing? Plus, if she's not an enlisted soldier, what the hell does this military character have to do with the spot. Halls labels this, "A pep talk in every drop". But how is this a pep talk, which is a talk designed to entail enthusiasm and determination. This is a scolding designed to create fear and obedience. Hall's Cough Drops is a very good product. It certainly deserve a more intelligent campaign than this meaningless nonsense. Also, were there any other commercials in this illogical series because I couldn't find any?

A sinking Kayak.

Is it me? This commercial makes no sense at all. It isn't even worth discussing.

Sole survivors?

This has got to be one of the creepiest and most illogical commercials of the year. I must be dense, but I can't draw a line from being rescued from a bus crash to saving on Priceline. Also if this family was saved does that mean that other passengers died? It seems to me that agencies in a desire to be edgier and edgier just get further and further from the message. Based on this commercial, I expect to see a commercial in which a terrorist bombs a grocery store so that a survivor with his arm blown off can tell us how he managed, with the other arm, to escape with his liter of Coke.

Yeeoooowww!!!!!

Nobody likes pain. I think men are more cowardly about pain than women. I know I am. The goods news is, unless you're hit by a runaway truck or in the path of a stray bullet or some other accident, you can avoid pain. Dentists are pretty painless these days. Most employers don't whip you if you screw up. Minor ailments are not all that painful. But there is one pain I dread. Several friends have experienced it and said it's excruciating. It's being tested for prostate cancer. Now I don't even know the details because I never want to know. What I do know is that it is totally unnecessary. I see no reason why men can't be sedated for this test just as they are for colonoscopies. And why can't they? Because they don't insist. They go lamb-like into these tests because the doctor tells them they must—after all it doesn't hurt the tester. I don't know who reads this, but I hope that whatever men do, when the time comes, will refuse to have a prostate test without sedation. Refuse. Say no. There is no reason in today's world that any medical test for man or women should be excruciating unless it's being doing without sedation for the doctor's convenience. Screw that. I know the day will soon come when this test is indicated and I, for one, will not do it without some wonderful drug putting me to sleep through the whole dreadful ordeal.

AT&T Commercial - "Stunts"

In its continued attempt to be "edgy" AT&T does pretty creepy commercials. This is one of the creepiest. This mother in attempt to enjoy her five minutes of borrowed fame, after belittling her son, subtly encourages him to perform stunts which are more dangerous and may even kill him. But as she says, it will "make your dad and me proud." Not only is this commercial sick, but I don't understand how it relates to "Now everyone's up to speed." Up to speed on what? Wasting your day watching viral videos?

P.S. I don't really even understand what she's saying. What does she mean, "and only three lights"?

Oh, no. Not again!

I think this is a very clever commercial, except for one thing: scoring it with the incredibly cliched Strauss opus "Thus (or Also) Spoke Zarathustra", which has been wildly overused since 2001, A Space Odyssey. I can't imagine how any agency could come up with a spot this clever and then not score it with music that is more imaginative and original than something used in a hundred hack commercials.

To eat eggs for dinner, do I have to dress like a hen?

If this isn't the stupidest campaign on television, it certainly comes close.Here we have have the attractive, lonely woman in her apartment with a full box of Crunchy Nut cereal sitting in the living room. She, like everyone in this campaign, is so dense she's not aware that people have been eating cereal for dinner for ages. So naturally, like all these vacuous nitwits, she has to find a reason to eat the cereal she so craves after spending the enormous amount of money that Kellogg's charges for this boxed air. So she determines that if it's morning in China, she can enjoy her Crunchy Nut cereal. Fortunately she happens to have a very costly dragon outfit in her apartment and for some reason wishes to eat her cereal dressed in this cumbersome costume. Unfortunately despite all the props of this costly commercial, nobody could come up a piece of music that's remotely Chinese.

A little bit of both.

Needless to say I was thrilled when I learned that one of my short plays was chosen to be among six presented at a local theater. I was even more pleased when I learned it had been selected from more than 300 entries, nationwide. This same play had been chosen for another festival a few years back and this year was presented on a national radio program, badly directed and acted. Still I am always optimistic so I planned to go to the opening of three night's performances and asked two of my favorite couples to join my partner and I. Before the event the producer e-mailed asking for some cuts in the play to make it shorter. Not being a control freak I allowed her to make what cuts she felt were needed. When she sent them highlighted in yellow, I was surprised they were less cuts than neurotic word changes. But I really didn't mind. So the night came. My friends and I had a delicious and convivial dinner and headed over to the theater, or what I imagined would be a theater. It was actually a black box room with chairs on both sides of a stage area which was hard to see from the last row since the floor was flat. While there was a good crowd, there was little else. No real props, no curtain, no sense of presentation. And sad to say five of the six plays were incredibly mediocre though well-enough acted by the cast of six. It was nearly impossible to imagine that they had been chosen from 8 submissions, much less 300. After the intermission, it was time for my play. Since I had never seen or heard it performed well, I was delighted with the two actor's interpretation. Until the middle. This play has a Gift of the Magi Twist essential to its impact. But the two actors apparently dropped that section in error and raced directly to the climax. It was a pity because until then it was the only play I think the audience truly enjoyed, arrogant as that sounds. After the show, and one more truly rotten play, the producer apologized only after I confronted her and encouraged me to return the next night to see the entire play. I chose not to. The actors never said a word to me which I found discourteous since I bought six people to this dull evening and put $40.00 in the donation jar. Nobody has bothered to call me to tell me if any subsequent performances fared any better. Hmmm. I wonder.

"But most of all I remember Mama."

When I was a child one of the first tv series I loved was Mama. This half-hour family drama was based on Kathryn Forbes best-seller Mama's Bank Account. Sadly, since it was kinescoped, there are very few episodes left for anyone to see. But I remember clearly the ensemble acting of Peggy Wood, Judson Laire, Dick Van Patten, Rosemary Rice and Robin Morgan. Later I saw the 1948 movie starring Irene Dunne. A beautifully realized depiction of the book, or so I thought. Recently I purchased the book again since I recall how much I loved it when I read it decades ago. And I did like it all over again. But I was surprised at how bad my memory was. Many scenes that were in the movie were not in the book. Surprisingly some of the very best scenes. As I read this small (145 page) novel again, I gained new respect for the screenwriter or perhaps John Van Druten who wrote the 1944 play. While the book had many powerful elements in it, they were not fully realized until it was dramatized. The original title Mama's Bank Account refers to the Steiner family bank account that was never to be touched except for an emergency which never came. When one of the daughters Katrin sells a story, she encourages her mother to deposit the money into the account only to learn there never was an account. It was fiction created b the parents so that the children would never be worried. But in the book this is revealed almost immediately. And in the play and film, it is he climatic scene and far stronger. Why am I telling you this? Because I love the book Mama's Bank Account, I love the movie I Remember Mama, and between 1949 and 1956, I loved the tv series Mama. And if you have an ounce of sentimentality in you, I encourage you to see the movie, which is a rare and superb example of one of the few films that is far, far better than the book. And the book is damn good.

Just one of millions.

I don't think anything is nuttier in our society today than Republican Christians. It's an oxymoron. In the Bible, Jesus taught us to love your neighbor, give up your wealth, feed the hungry, aid the sick, be a good Samaritan, judge not lest ye be judged, turn the other cheek, and all kinds of other admonitions that Republicans completely ignore. Yet they still proclaim themselves Christians and sit sanctimoniously in their pews planning their next attack on President Obama or reviewing their fury on any hungry family dependent on food stamps. How they can possibly believe that Christ would approve of their selfish and greedy behavior? I think Jesus on meeting pathetic frauds as Tony Perkins would be as offended as if he met King Herod. Perkins like so many other faux Christians has no interest at all in sacrifice, charity, patriotism and buying one less thousand dollar suit so that he can help some starving family. His program is hate. Hate for gays, hate for Muslims, hate for anyone who doesn't buy into his uptight, and probably closeted, morality. There are things you can be sure of in the world today. Couch potatoes can't be Olympic stars. Illiterates can't be proofreaders. And Republicans cant all be Christians.

The girl who had it all.

I was never a Whitney Houston fan. It's not my kind of music. In fact hearing her version, any version of, "I Will Always Love You"makes me cringe. I never saw The Bodyguard or the remake of The Preacher's Wife.But I assume she was good in both. Yet, without having any knowledge of her, I feel very sad. I cannot understand why someone so beautiful, so talented, so successful, so universally admired and loved could have treated herself so shabbily and ended up dead at 48. From what I have read she had a glorious early career, filled with nothing but successes and awards. Not knowing much about Whitney, I don't know a thing about this Bobby Brown, but it seems like it was a turning point or maybe not. But you would think by now that celebrities have enough evidence of how destructive drugs are to success. Yet we keep hearing these horror stories of beautiful, talented people turned into unattractive mediocrities after embracing the kind of highs that you would imagine they could get from wealth, fame and adulation alone. This may not have been a Richard Corey event, but it amounts to the same thing.

The *69 Scam

There was a time when, if you received a call from an unknown person, you could dial *69 and find out the number. You can still do that--sort of. But the new trick seems to be to say it so fast and in such an illogical manner than unless you can write it down in record speed, you won't know what it is. Of course you could try again when they repeat it. But they don't repeat it. Now why is that? Because they want you to pay an extra charge to have them connect you. Just another one of the many scams and deceptions that make up life in the 21st Century.

"Hey, yuk, yuk, did you see..."

Every year at this time friends and acquaintances ask me if I'm exciting about the upcoming Super Bowl commercials. This always surprises me because I thought everybody knew that I detest advertising. Not as much as I loathe football, of course, but I have no interest in these supposedly brilliant commercials which are usual corny, chauvinistic, and scatological. Several of them usually depend on talking animals or nerdy guys who cannot get a date with the busty blonde who's always portrayed as dumb or the gorgeous brunette who is usually shown as smart (except in beer commericlas where everybody is stupid). Hmmmm. Many will of course depend on comic violence or good friends betraying each other. I usually find them, like most commercials, weak concepts backed by tons of money and adored by utterly unsophisticated people. Unfortunately I will have to hear them described to me by people I hardly know who often find their own descriptions chokingly funny. Not only are the commercials annoying, but this gives the incredibly lazy news media another major opportunity t o ignore real news so they can cover a non-story with almost the identical words they said last year and the year before and the year before. I am sure I will get sadistic satisfaction at some point reviewing one or more of these advertising gems. I included a Budweiser visual because their commercials are usually the most lowbrow, the most talked-about, and the least intelligent.

I notice that the ever-lazy news media are bitching because Newt Gingrich didn't call to congratulate Mitt Romney on his victory in the Florida election. Are they nuts? Do they really think that Gingrich should be charming to the man who has attacked and vilified him for weeks? Sometimes I think that the network news bureaus don't do any thinking at all. They just parrot the easiest theme available. Right now they are moronically discussing the Florida voting from every conceivable angle. This isn't news, it's blather. It's the kind of meaningless crap they are capable of discussing while more complicated issues are dismissed and forgotten. Which is why we Americans are so uneducated about world affairs, geography, history, economics, our own language, and almost anything else that truly advanced countries think is important. Right now I am going to turn on the television to the morning news program and let you know what world-shaking event they are discussing. Hold on. I'm back. It seems that what they regard as the most important subject of the moment is whether Julianne Moore is convincing as Sarah Palin. Good god!