{"id":1790,"date":"2012-01-23T14:15:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T20:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:08","slug":"ad-nauseum-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/ad-nauseum-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ad Nauseum Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to tread carefully here because if it weren\u2019t for television commercials I probably wouldn\u2019t have had a career<\/p>\n

\"pig\"but if I see that helmet-wearing pig tearing down a zip line screaming wheeeee one more time, my eyes will roll back and I\u2019ll go into convulsions sort of like that woman who claimed hearing the voice of South Dakota\u2019s own Mary Hart on TV caused her to have epileptic seizures. The first time Maxwell (yes..the little piggy has a name) appeared in a Geico ad, \u00a0he was a student getting a ride home from school \u00a0and driving everybody in the van nuts by hollering weeee weeee weeee out the window. \u00a0Ha, ha. Clever. \u00a0A take-off on the poem that has delighted little barefoot children for years. I get it. But there\u2019s a fine line between novelty and aggravation and whether he\u2019s in a car or suspended from a wire, that little oinker creeps me out. What made the ad even more annoying for me was not being able to understand those two words Maxwell says as he passes a fellow zip liner. After a little Google research, he’s apparently saying \u201cPure adrenalin.\u201d\u00a0Wheee.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0I didn\u2019t used to mind the Geico gecko but even this green little pitchman with the cockney accent is wearing mighty thin.<\/p>\n

And speaking of insurance company overkill, I think the gal who plays Flo on the Progressive ads is very good but, again, constant repetition of the same commercials just rubs me the wrong way like a starchy stiff collar chafing my neck.<\/p>\n

\"mayhem\"Oh, and what was Allstate thinking when they created that Mayhem character? Here, let\u2019s see if we can scare viewers into buying Allstate insurance with a zombie-like guy in a suit who is immune\u00a0 to injury while causing\u00a0 people to crash their vehicles and have life-threatening accidents.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all doing it; trying to save us money on insurance through ads that, I guess, are supposed to be humorous. Oh, yeah..can\u2019t stop laughing when that Farmer\u2019s insurance guy uses a flame thrower to ignite a big ball of lint or when an old NASA space capsule comes crashing through the roof\u00a0 onto a giant Jack-In-The-Box. Even my own insurance company sees fit to spend hundreds of millions to run irritating ads like the ones that feature a guy who keeps wrecking his car and calling State Farm for help even though he’d recently \u00a0dropped his coverage for something cheaper. \u00a0Or the 3 a.m. phone conversation the husband is having with his State Farm agent that sounds like he’s talking to his mistress which arouses the suspicions of his wife.<\/p>\n

So Lund, if you can\u2019t stand those commercials..why not switch channels,after all, the remote is always within reach. It\u2019s true, I have worn out several remotes but it seems that even competing networks take their commercial breaks at the exact same time so there\u2019s no escape. \u00a0When we\u2019re home I record most everything on the DVR so I can zap through the ads faster than a screaming pig on a zip line.<\/p>\n

To be fair, there have been a few TV commercials past and present that I never grew tired of.<\/p>\n

\"Old

Old Home filler up and keep on truckin' cafe<\/p><\/div>\n

Remember C.W. McCall and Mavis \u201cOld Home\u201d ads? We\u2019d see them every night, of course, during the Keloland 10 O\u2019clock weather which was sponsored by Metz Baking Company. It was always a big deal when a new spot came out featuring the dog-eyed truck\u00a0driver and gum-chomping waitress..not to mention the catchy lyrics, narration \u00a0and music from the brilliant mind of Bill Fries an Omaha ad agency executive who came up with the characters and also wrote the song \u201cConvoy\u201d which stayed atop both the country and pop charts for six weeks in 1975 .<\/p>\n

Oh, and who can forget the deliciously funny commercials by the late Jim Varney who became a national phenomena with his bumbling rubber-faced character Ernest P. Worrell.<\/p>\n

\"Lewis

Lewis Stores hired Varney for an ad campaign<\/p><\/div>\n

The site of him mugging the camera talking to his pal, Vern, about various products, then getting his fingers smashed by a falling window or being shocked by a TV set with a shorrrrrrt in it, never failed to break me up. \u00a0<\/p>\n

More recently, those commercials featuring the E-Trade baby always bring a smile as did the Geico spot featuring Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln in which she asks her husband for his \u201chonest\u201d opinion on whether or not the dress she had on made her butt look big and he was forced to answer truthfully bringing priceless reactions.<\/p>\n

Okay, maybe I do watch a lot of commercials. I know I\u2019m looking forward to the Super Bowl not only to see if New York can work its magic on New England again but to observe all those mega-million dollar advertisements. I can\u2019t wait to see how the Budweiser Clydesdales will try tug at the heartstrings this year or the humorous ways Doritos has come up with to peddle tortilla chips or to find out<\/p>\n

\"Danica:

Danica: Racy in more ways than one<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0how brazenly GoDaddy.com will attempt to sell web site domains by exposing the diminutive bosoms of it\u2019s spokesperson, race car driver, Danica Patrick.<\/p>\n

The only problem with Super Bowl Sunday is finding time away from the TV to go grab some of the food and beverage products advertised or relieve oneself of what\u2019s already been consumed..which, now that I\u2019ve just turned another year older, is a requirement that occurs with even more frequency. Knowwaddamean Vern?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to tread carefully here because if it weren\u2019t for television commercials I probably wouldn\u2019t have had a career but if I see that helmet-wearing pig tearing down a zip line screaming wheeeee one more time, my eyes will roll back and I\u2019ll go into convulsions sort of like that woman who claimed hearing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lund-at-large","category-60","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11739,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions\/11739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}