We watch... so you don't have to.
Too Much Weird Stuff
The people who make TV comercials confuse and disturb me. Take the folks behind the long running Carl's Jr. campaign, for example. What makes them believe that they can entice me into purchasing a delicious flame-broiled burger by showing me hairy truckers dribbling barbeque sauce down their stubbly chins? To my mind, that's the sort of imagery that should be hidden away in a dark corner of a web site somewhere, accessible for a nominal $5.99 charge on your major credit card; not thrust unceremoniously upon you during a Full House rerun. At any rate, it doesn't make me want to eat. The polar opposite, in fact.
My most recent source of bemusement is the series of AM/PM Mini Mart spots with which I am frequently bombared while watching the San Diego Padres lose. The ads seem to suggest that one of the primary draws of AM/PM -- coming in just after the scabby, yellow hamburgers and perpetually broken Icee machines -- is the host of colorful characters that frequent their many locations.
Come on in to an AM/PM near you, they beckon. If you do, you just might get the chance to:
- Be schooled on nerd etymology by some dork in a jeans jacket.
- Have a deranged bag lady jump up and cling to your chest like a baby gibbon because she approves of your soda selection.
- Watch a shrimpy guy with a speech impediment demonstrate the perils of venereal disease using a corn dog and a bag full of mustard. Oh, he calls it a "condiment cozy", but I know the standard, Army-issue Thai hooker lecture when I see it.
It's not that such freakish examples of the species don't exist. Likewise, it's not unusual to run across several of them at a convenience store at any given moment. I'm just not sure how calling attention to that fact is supposed make me want to run out and buy a Slim Jim.
Still, you have to give them points for their refreshing honesty. And I must admit that I'm looking forward to future ads so that I can see some of the other pals that I've met at AM/PM over the years, such as:
- The haggard man with the hollow eyes who just stands at the magazine rack and stares at the discretely covered Hustlers. Doesn't leaf through them. Doesn't even pick them up. Just stares and stares. And smells like feet.
- The kid with some foul bacterial infection that causes mucus to ooze from his very pores, who dips his snot-encrusted mitt directly into the nacho cheese vat while his clueless fat Mom loads up her chili dog.
- The friendly fellow who insists on explaining to you the fundamental differences between Screaming Yellow Zonkers and Fiddle Faddle, even though you're there to buy Hostess Donette Gems. You don't think he works there or anything, but he's there every time you go. Every time. Oh, and he also smells like feet.
- The asshole Russian clerk who would not sell me a twelver of Bud Light even though his own damned watch clearly showed that it was only 1:58 AM!
