SPEAK ENGLISH.

Way to jump on the Celine Dion train at the peak of her popularity, there, St-Hubert. Did they just get around to translating Titanic into French-Canadian?

From some person in the comments, I get that the translation of this commercial into a real language is:




The woman customer: "Excuse me Miss, has someone ever told you..."
Waitress: ..."that I look like Céline? Yes I've been told this many times before; I'm beginning to think it's true. I think it's coz of my hair; maybe my smile; it's true I have the same smile. Anyway it's not because of my voice. Between you and me, if I was the real Céline, I wouldn't be at St-Hubert".

Céline (at next table): "You could be surprised!!"





HA HA HA! It's Celine Dion, the queen mother of all that Bad Adult Contemporary genre! She's at that restaurant.

I will admit, it took me reading through the comments to figure out that the waitress isn't Celine (I'll call her that from now on, we're on a first-name basis, after all). So good casting there, at least. You fooled me, the ignorant young American male who has studied Celine's man-ish features no more than 7 times in my life. Nice work!

Let's say, for argument's sake, that I'm a French Canadian citizen. Qu'est-ce que c'est! And let's say, for further argument's sake, that I have some money, (Monopoly-looking Canada dollars) and I want to spend it on a meal, not on some cystic fibrosis charity like that pompous bitch Celine did. I turn on the CBC, and this commercial comes on. First thing I'll probably think is "Guh, why don't they just speak English!" After that, I hear the Celine doppelganger waitress say that "yes, I'm so vain and extra transparent, and if I were famous, well then I would probably tell this place to go f--k off!" Great advertising.

I really wish Celine would have stood up and yelled "There is hair in my potatoes! I am far too rich to be at this awful dump of a restaurant!" and then as she storms out, "Your hair is awful and you have a hideous smile!" I sure wouldn't be making fun of the commercial if that was how it ended.

Yes, Celine. I would be surprised to see you there. I would be surprised to see you anywhere outside of your damp cave high up in the mountains wherein you feed upon children and kittens for sustenance while you crank out more revolting music. Color me shocked.

I Don't Like You Anymore, Carlsberg

I'm posting this video with the fundamental premise that I am both a) an American, and b) a fan of Carlsberg lager. I'm not saying that it's all that great of a beer, because it's really not; it tastes extra super bitter like you'd expect a Danish beer to taste, and even the most seasoned of beer drinkers will make that "guhhh" face after the first few sips. It holds an extra significance in my heart because for the month and a half I spent in the United Kingdom a few years ago, all those gross bitter British beers served at luke-room-temperature cost at least four pounds each, but Carlsberg was sold to us poor ass college kids at the ludicrous price of 50 pence a pint. Long story short, all of the adventures I had in the city of Oxford were in some way related to that beer. Not to mention, their ad campaign is "Carlsberg: Probably the best lager in the world." I guess their research wasn't thorough enough to make a definitive statement. Makes me laugh every time. I am a fan.

Or, I was, until I found this commercial buried 7 pages into YouTube's results for "beer commercial." Seeing a beer commercial is one situation that those of us in the Bud Light/Miller Lite target market are well-prepared for: there's the setup, some cheesy thing with guys sitting around. You wait through it, because it's obvious that in a few moments, the punchline or gag or awkward moment is going to come (think "I just had these rubber floors installed," or "Magic Fridge), and heavy laughing will ensue. It's the classic beer commercial formula, been used for hundreds of years.

Then one comes along like this, where it's cheesy and unrealistic (good so far), some awkward situation arises (getting warmer), and then the main character goes right on through it with a winning smile, and THE COMMERCIAL ENDS. It totally throws off your whole week. I think I'm going to have to go open a beer just to remember what it is I like about it. *opens beer* Ahhh, that's right, I remember now.

Oh, sure, I could take the easy way out here and make fun of Europeans for being super gay (in a non-joking way). But that would be too easy. Cause of course you know if I went down the street to Generic American Sports Bar #4, picked up a glass of Bud Light, and started singing "Love of my liiiife, you've hurt me...", I'd get through at most that first line before someone would yell "SHUT UP, FAGGOT!" and I'd get punched in the nose. It's how America works, you see. But when you think about it, that's how it works everywhere. You go into a bar in south London and try the same thing and the result would be identical, except someone would yell "SHUT UP YA WANKA" before you get punched in the nose.

But it's a beer commercial! You can't knock it for being socially unrealistic on so many different levels, because that's just how the joke is set up! They're clearly sitting at a lounge somewhere, four guys having a brewski and laughing about something. That's another thing I don't get. When a show or movie or what have you cuts to a group of people listening to one guy tell a story, they always cut in right at the punchline; it's always like "and then I said, '____!'" and from everyone's reaction, it is THE FUNNIEST THING THEY HAVE HEARD EVER. I saw something recently where one of the over-reaction laughs to the lame punchline was a spit-take. I have news for you: NO ONE EVER DOES A SPIT-TAKE IN REAL LIFE. This is a terrible film device that needs to be taken out of serious attempts at real-life depictions. Anyways, that punchline-cues-over-zealous-laffs bit is retarded and needs to be removed.

I guess the funny part of this commercial is supposed to be when the waitress comes and takes the bottle and he works "bring it back" into the song. Three possibilities here, none of them make sense: a) it's a partly-full bottle and the waitress comes and takes if for no apparent reason, in which case most people would work "Hey bitch, the hell you think you're going with my beer?" into the song; b) it's an empty bottle, and the waitress is taking it to clean up the table, because it's her job, in which case, he has no reason to ask for the bottle back, UM EXCUSE ME THAT IS A SOUVENIR I WOULD LIKE TO HANG ONTO FROM THIS FAIRY TALE LOUNGE WE'RE IN; or c) She is in fact not a waitress, or anyone they know at all, and she has decided that while this homo is deep in song, she can slip in and score a free bottle of beer. None of those make any sense whatsoever (nor does the fact that there are bottles everywhere even though they're clearly pouring Carlsberg from the tap at the bar). Maybe it's her beer, and she left it there, and he decided it's mine now, finders keepers. She seems far too nonchalantly okay with returning it to him for that to be a possibility, though.

But in the end, in walks the girlfriend, who looks an awful lot like Lisa Cuddy from House, comes in to bitch out her boyfriend (who looks a whole lot like Top Gear host Richard Hammond) for singing a love song to a goddamn beer, and then he says "Dahling," finishes the song with a winning smile, and it's over. Carlsberg: Probably the lamest beer in the world.

This commercial gives me ulcers.

Okay, whatever, Levi's. Whatever you say.

Here's a fun commercial. 30 seconds of unadulterated retarded nonsense. Not even remotely aimed at any reasonable target demographic. What, super hot girls who wear bikinis, living in Suburbia? Where are these girls? But more importantly, the girls aren't wearing the jeans. The jeans are being worn by the dreamy 20-something ice cream man (believable) who is selling them ice cream? But also playing guitar?

People have probably ranted about this plenty in the past, but I think there will have been enough bitching when advertising companies knock it the F off: the ads! They're completely irrelevant to the product! Here's an ad for jeans. What do you think of when you think jeans? How about comfort? People seem to be interested in their jeans being relatively comfortable. So naturally, Levi's makes a commercial depicting someone wearing jeans in the least comfortable situation possible, the middle of the goddamn summer. The only more uncomfortable time to wear jeans is when it's snowing, and you're skiing, and you fall down. Or maybe if you were wearing jeans in the summer, and you tried to ski down a hill and you fell over and rolled head over heels all the way down the hill, skinning your knee and ripping your expensive jeans. Nice work, Levi's.

Or what about fashion? You might have super comfortable jeans, but then you realize you're a guy and you're wearing mom jeans, leading you to finally understand why everyone is always laughing all the time. They're laughing at you, jackass.

So fashion. If i'm not mistaken, Levi's is insisting here that their jeans are SO FASHIONABLE that girls, hot girls, will come from miles around to hear your shitty version of Yankee Doodle that you're, for no apparent reason, broadcasting out of your ice cream truck. Maybe a few token dudes will show up, too. Because you're sexy, man. You've got those jeans, and the Popsicles, and the girls will lick the popsicles in an overly seductive and horny-stripper kind of way, because Levi's = fashion.

And what is that at the end? The jeans this ad is hawking are called 501 JEANS WITH ANTI-FIT. Without even doing research on what this even means, I find myself rather automatically posing this question: who in their right goddamn mind would buy a pair of jeans with an added feature called "anti-fit?" Who sees this ad, and thinks "I should go down to Macy's and buy these jeans, because they're going to anti-fit me, or in other words, they're going to be the wrong size, always."

The only redeeming quality of this commercial is that I have a guitar, and I could find those ill-fitting jeans, and I could probably put some money together or hijack an ice cream truck from the dreamy 20-something ice cream man in my neighborhood (still totally believable), and then I'd have girls totally all over me. Or, OR! I could wear the jeans I have already, and not look like a douchebag, and retain my dignity! Oh, what will I choose?!

Screw you, Levi's.

Dove is Way More Pious Than Thou

Alright, I'll get things started here with some solid, solid mysoginism, because that's truely what brings us together in this world, right? Right? Ugh.

The commercial starts out with a fairly :( looking lady who's come into a studio to be transformed from her apparently hideous self into a decidedly less hideous-looking billboard model. One neato little timelapse later and Dumpy Mc Drab Queen is a stunning model. Because don't you get it, stupid? Girls (and sure, some guys maybe) drive past that billboard and think OMG I wish I could look like that girl, but I never will, because my mom and dad were both fat, acne-ridden Neanderthals, ugh I'm gonna go eat some Ben&Jerry's and watch Gossip Girls. Look, Dove, we all get it. You're trying to make people feel better about themselves. But let's look a little deeper.

This commercial is hawking a decidedly vague-sounding campaign, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. Woof. To quote comedian David Cross, that's like "waging a war on jealousy." It's so vague that you literally cannot win, though you also can literally not lose. Smart move, Dove. I looked into what this campaign does, and it turns out they have workshops and stories online and pictures and shit that convince girls that they're actually pretty and not Dumpy Mc Drab Queens, like some asshole bloggers might say they are.

Then I looked a little deeper than that. Dove's parent company, Unilever, is s a huge European conglomerate that owns a number of well known brands, from personal care ones like Dove and Lever 2000, to food and drink companies like Hellman's, Lipton, Breyer's, Klondike, and Ben&Jerry's. What was that last one?

So the shallow, beauty-centric ads that plaster the mainstream media today make girls depressed and they all go eat Ben&Jerry's (cha-ching!). But now Dove is trying to convince girls that they are beautiful just they way they are! You don't have to starve yourselves anymore! Go have that bowl of Ben&Jerry's you've been craving! (cha-ching!)

What have we learned from this commercial? From a male's point of view, I'm getting that you don't have to be super stunning to look like those girls in the commercials and magazines and billboards. Feel like your Facebook photo album isn't very flattering? You just take that picture of you and Jessie and Sarah from the Wreck the Deck party at generic fraternity #1, you know, the one where your right eye is kinda closed and you have a stain from where you spilled a Red Headed Slut shot all over yourself while trying to sing along to "Summer of '69", and you send that picture to a guy with Photoshop, and bippity-boppity-bacon! You'll be on the August cover of Redbook.

Send money to Dove. They'll make things all better.

Oh Hai!

Listen, you guys.

Imagine yourself in this situation: you're sitting on your couch with a friend or three, drinking a Diet 7up and watching midday cable TV. The rerun of Home Improvement you're watching goes to a commercial break. Since you are a cheap bastard, you don't have a DVR, so you're about to have a serious dilemma on your hands. The remote is missing! Shit! The dog must have taken it. The commercials are starting, and you have to watch them, every minute of them. Empire insists you call 800-588-2300 and get some cheap carpet for your ugly apartment. Wilford Brimley is telling you that you might qualify for a thing from Liberty Medical, provided you have di-uh-bee-tus and are on Medicare. Fox News at 6 tonight is featuring a half hour of all the people that died yesterday. The worst part of all of this is that YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT. Sure, you could go to the kitchen and eat some Ritz crackers until you hear Tim Taylor grunting again, but you have friends over, and you don't have enough crackers to go around. You watch the commercials, you make fun of them with your friends, and this social experience makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside.

But wait!

The invention and subsequent reduction in cost of the Digital Video Recorder is single-handedly leading to the destruction of this cute little scenario. Now you can watch your stupid rerun episodes of Just Shoot Me and Frasier, and when it hits the commercials, bah-coo bah-COO BAH-COO you zip right through them, and you thank TiVo for saving you from the drivel that modern television calls The 30-second Advertisement.

You might think this is a good thing, cause you hate commercials. They suck. They suck hard. And you're right, they do suck. But for every 10 to 15 thousand abominable attempts at entertaining ads, there is one, maybe two that are good. Don't worry, they're not what this blog is about. We're about the 10 to 15 thousand terrible ones, and pointing out just how terrible they are. Seriously, people spent money, REAL MONEY on these ads. The air time, the cameras, the staff, the writers (WRITERS! Someone sat down and WROTE these things!). These companies are getting away with it, because everyone is fast-forwarding through them without a moment's notice. Well, no more! We're here to show you just what you've been missing. Enjoy, you guys.