What is this I don't even: Part 4

As my wife has pointed out many times to me over the last three years, I am becoming a bitter old man. In truth, I long for the day when I can shuffle around my retirement home, complaining about every damn thing, remembering the good ol' days, and being as surly as can be. In the meantime, I'll reserve my complaints to things that are genuinely terrible. And friends, we are in the midst of two completely terrible ad campaigns.

First, we have the Frobinson Framily. Sprint Corporation, in their continued efforts to stay relevant in the cellular market, is promoting their "framily plan", which allows anyone to start new plans or combine their existing ones into a single extended plan. It operates much like a typical family plan, only the participants can live at different addresses and receive and pay bills separately. That, in and of itself, is a solid idea. It provides savings for the customer while also encouraging groups of friends to switch to Sprint. What is absolutely not a solid idea is the way it's presented through their TV ads:



wat

I'm really struggling to understand what the intent of the ad is. It's not funny. It's not referential. It's not clever. It's just flat-out puzzling. Why is the patriarch a hamster? Why does that girl have animated birds constantly flying around her? And if the entire point of the plan is that they're billed separately, why are they all living together? It gets worse when we meet Gor-Don:



So mom and emo-basement-dweller are talking about goth-basement-dweller and he's creepily standing over their shoulders listening to them. Yes, this clearly makes me want to sign up for a new cell phone plan. Judy Greer deserves better. They even forked over the money for Kevin Durant to appear in another bit, for reasons undetermined. Maybe I'm just missing the point. Maybe there is something hidden beneath the surface that ties the whole ad campaign together. But for the life of me, I can't find it.

But oh, the state of commercials gets better, and by better I mean much worse. DirecTV is almost always ahead of the curve in their ongoing war with the cable and FIOS industries and other satellite providers. They've paid the NFL truckloads of money to retain the exclusive rights to Sunday Ticket. They were one of the first to realize the appeal of TiVo and digital video recorders, and offer them with their service subscription. Now their latest hook is servicing multiple televisions without the need for boxes or cables in every room. Sounds great, huh? Let's introduce America to the wireless TV with a little nightmare fuel:



Ad exec: "Cable boxes have wires and marionettes have wires so let's go with that! People love some good old-fashioned marionette humor!"

Board room: *stunned silence*

Ad exec: "Well do you fuckers have any better ideas?"

Board room: *tumbleweed rolls by*

Considering this guy is having his friend over to watch TV, wouldn't the friend know that the wife is a fucking puppet? And that's not just me cursing, they have a son and she also has a father, so that's three generations of marionettes that are sentient and able to reproduce. Terrifying, and I never even saw the Child's Play movies. But how are things in the bedroom, you might ask (if you were a sociopath)? Well, doll-fuckers, DirecTV has an answer for you:



Didn't anyone in the design and production of these commercials stand up and say, "You know what? Maybe we shouldn't depict a grown man in a sexual relationship with a life-size wooden doll." Seriously, these ads just make my skin crawl.

What is this I don't even

What is this I don't even: Part 3

The Washington Capitals 2011-12 season is over. It's a bummer, sure, but I still love my team. When out shopping with my fiancée on Sunday, I took advantage of some good Memorial Day weekend sales. I even bought a brand new Caps hat to wear to Nationals games, so people don't give me shit about my Cubs hats.

When it comes to baseball apparel, Cubs or GTFO. Luckily the Caps and Nats both rock the red.

Since I had so much fun buying a lot of shit for pretty cheap, I thought I might apply that strategy to online retailers, specifically, Shop.NHL.com. And heavens to Betsy, was I wrong to even think that. The NHL's online store is one of the worst offenders when it comes to taking Walmart-quality clothing, slapping a logo or two on it, and charging quadruple its value. But I wanted something specific -- the official players' sweatshirt. Naturally, my navigation went to Washington Capitals >> Mens >> Sweatshirts. Not only was I disappointed to see the sweatshirt was not there, but I was horrified by what was listed instead.

First of all, there are 38 men's sweatshirts available for purchase. Exactly one of them is under $40. This:

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Two of them are over $100. For a sweatshirt. Look, I don't care if Mitchell wove the fabric and Ness stitched it together, no sweatshirt is worth $100. Twenty of them are between the $54 and $70 range. This is fucking ridiculous, Shop.NHL.com. But wait, it gets better.

Doing a Google search of "capitals players sweatshirts" I found what I was looking for, on the Dick's Sporting Goods online store. Unfortunately, they only had it for one player, Alex Ovechkin. Also, it's only available in home red, and not road white or Winter Classic off-white. Not that I wouldn't want Ovie's home sweatshirt, but options are always a good thing. Then I noticed that Dick's had it listed not under "Men's" but "Player Apparel." So I thought Shop.NHL.com might have pulled the same trick. Sure enough, they did, as this section is entirely composed of shirseys and two -- yes, only two -- hoodies. The first is the official Ovie one I found at Dick's, for the exact same price ($65.) The other is a faded navy and red abortion of a sweatshirt, labeled as "old time hockey" for some unknown reason (I'm guessing it's the laces on the neckline) for $110. No options. No customization. Just something you can find off the rack at Dick's, priced at around double of what it should be.

According to the NHL's official store, this is not categorized as a sweatshirt.

So here is this product I want to buy. I might even pay $40 for it. But it is hard to find on the website, it's only available for one player, there are no customization options or alternate colors, and it's way too expensive. It's bullshit like this that keeps people from buying quality, attractive clothing to support their team. Guess I'll just wait for MoonJersey to get it in stock.

What is this I don't even

What is this I don't even: Part 2

Let me get one thing out of the way right now. I like Zooey Deschanel. I think she's cute, a decent singer, and a fine actress. Like many people, I first saw her in Almost Famous and her performance really stuck with me. It's not hard to appear beautiful and talented when the other female lead is Kate Hudson, but I digress.

Zooey is enjoying a nice run of success, stealing hipsters' hearts in (500) Days of Summer and doubling down on her indie cred in Our Idiot Brother. She's even branching out to charm baby boomers by appearing on network television in New Girl. But more often than not, America is seeing her in a commercial for the Apple iPhone 4S:



Great job, Apple. You managed to take one of the most appealing young actresses on Earth and turn her into a helpless buffoon. Look, we all have days where we'd rather not put on real shoes or clean up after ourselves. But is this the demographic you're after? Lazy rich people? Oh wait, it's an Apple commercial, so the answer is obviously yes. Not only is the commercial played ad nauseam, but the first line couldn't be more annoying. "IS THAAAAT RAAAIIN?" Every time I hear it, I want to kick a puppy in the throat.

What is this I don't even

What is this I don't even: Part 1

What the fuck is this haircut, and why is it suddenly everywhere on television?

What is this I don't even