Fortuitous ad timing and placement for Toyota on CNN.com.
2016′s Top Commentator on World’s Dumbest
Bieber actually makes me nostalgic for the days when Canada sent us Anne Murray.
Also, isn’t one of the N’s in CNN supposed to stand for “News”?
Asthma is the least of the woman’s problems in this commercial. Before she sees her doctor or visits asthma.com, she should leave her whiny, self-absorbed, unsupportive husband, quit her job and tell her sister or friend or whoever that is to eat balls. She’s surrounded by nasty, boorish hags and wankers. Even her little daughter is a guilt-peddling esteem leech.
Seriously, the husband could not be a bigger dick. “Your debilitating, potentially deadly asthma attack that jarred you from sleep as you clutched your chest and choked in terror to draw air into the constricted airways of your lungs WOKE ME UP AGAIN! Now what are you making for breakfast?”
And the husband and sister double team the woman when says she likes to get outside. “Unless it’s ‘too cold,'” the husband says with disdainful air quotes. “Like the last three weekends!” sister-bitch chimes in. Hey, sorry I didn’t feel like going to the Chili Cook-Off because I couldn’t reliably fill my lungs with air! And you are so right to doubt my determination that the air was cold enough to exacerbate my condition. That’s exactly the type of thing I like to lie about so this affliction that I did not choose can trap me like a prisoner in my own home! You still read me like a book after all these years!
And are we so cynical that we assume children have no empathy for their own parents? A five-year-old hates it when her mom is sick. Little kids will invent shit to make their parents feel better. “Mom, I found this pine cone with magic medicine in it. You can’t see the medicine, but if you just hold the pine cone, you’ll be able to breath again. God said so.”
Instead, this redrum-hallway shame pug makes sure mommy knows the full extent of her joyless, disappointing childhood.
Then her boss shows up to helpfully remind her that “You missed the meeting this week AGAIN!” You know, I manage people in my job. If someone came to me and said, “Hey, I’m having a really bad time today and would prefer not to sit through a meeting and self-consciously suck on my inhaler in a room full of my colleagues,” I’d certainly understand. I can’t imagine saying anything besides, “Take care of yourself, hope you feel better. It’s just a meeting, I’ll catch you up later.”
The kicker is the closer. “I don’t use my rescue inhaler a lot.” Sister-bitch: “It depends on what you mean by, ‘a lot.'” Hmm, I don’t know, how about every time I can’t breathe because of this asthma that I wish more than anything I didn’t have? Is that a lot? How often am I inconveniencing you by drawing breath?
Isn’t there a better way to extol the virtues of asthma treatments without portraying sufferers as a dreadful burden on the people around them?
There are two things I need you to help me find:
(1) In the early 1980s, there was a TV public service announcement by the Department of Labor that educated viewers about their minimum wage entitlements. I know this one existed; I recall the song, a punchy, uplifting soundtrack for a 30 second inspirational montage of happy people celebrating minimum wage employment. Some sample lyrics:
“Three-ten, three-ten an hour is federal minimum wage / For most jobs your hired to do / You’ve got three-ten coming to you”
The spot ended with a flourish: A race runner joyously broke through the finish tape, victorious in his quest for stifling poverty. As he pumped his fist with unbridled delight, the song punctuated our shared exhilaration: “You’ve got three-ten . . . YEAH! coming to you.”
I have searched online to no avail, and even my friends with encyclopedic pop culture knowledge don’t remember it. It would comfort me if someone acknowledged remembering it. It would thrill me to the point of Kelly Ripaesque giddiness if someone has or can point to a clip.
(2) In the sixth grade (1982), we had to watch a drug scare film in science class. I recall a scene with a young man, maybe 20 or so, who had suffered a psychotic break after taking PCP. Institutionalized, he was dancing atop his bed singing “Shadow Dancing,” apparently now under the delusion that he was Andy Gibb. I laughed aloud and the teacher asked me if I thought something was funny. I replied, “Are you watching the same thing I am?” Then she made me leave the classroom.
Now, I challenge my own memory of this incident. First of all, you’d think a school anti-drug filmstrip with PCP Andy Gibb singing “Shadow Dancing” would’ve found its way to the Internet by now. Google comes up empty, at least for me.
Secondly, my memory seems to have made me an impossibly clever and quick-witted 11-year-old.
But the details of the film seem unusually specific for my mind to have simply invented over the years, and I’ve been recounting some version of this incident for as long as I can remember. So I cling to hope that this cautionary educational gem did indeed exist. Please, someone out there, deliver me this humble Christmas wish.
Surely, someone among the double-digit daily readership here at ContainsEggs can help solve these mysteries.
UPDATE 2/3: An exciting breakthrough! It looks like someone else remembers the school drug-scare film, and that perhaps my memory failed me on the particular song. This person recalls the PCP kid singing Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” which in retrospect seems more appropriate for an angel dust overdose. But the other details were the same. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081121144317AAblDO9
We went to the Arts Festival at Piedmont Park in Atlanta this past weekend. The heavy, stifling summer swelter has finally relented to cool sunny skies and crisp fresh air—a perfect day to join our city neighbors in celebration of staggeringly shitty art.
It’s safe to say we don’t know real art from our assholes (although many in the local art community do regard my asshole as a work of special consideration). That said, we are certain no actual art was disturbed in the hosting of this festival.
It’s no small feat to host an arts festival of this size without a single discernible work of actual art. Hundred of booths lined miles of park paths, with artisans peddling their creations. The day’s biggest draw was in the park just outside the entrance of the official festival, where a street performer held the crowd captive playing drums on plastic buckets. We nicknamed him Neil Dirt.
The festival-sanctioned art delivered standard outdoor event fare. We enjoyed watching white suburban liberals peruse the ethnic art, conspicuously enriching their cultural appreciation by nodding thoughtfully at pieces they would never actually bring into their homes. Some stared pensively, allowing these diverse perspectives to evoke rich new personal and intellectual horizons. (The most honest ones realized that the art evoked memories of watching Good Times reruns on TBS as a kid, but they kept it to themselves.)
There were also photographers, jewelry makers (who probably acquitted themselves the most successfully), folk artists working with license plates, and some shimmery lacquered Japanese fish painters. (The art was shimmery and lacquered, not the painters, much to our disappointment.)
The dominant festival trend, however, was the Bored Housewife Collections. At some point between the ages of 43 and 55, many married women seem find their artistic “gift.” With Oprah and chardonnay as their muse, they put oil or pastel to canvas to express all the beauty, passion and feelings they’ve repressed during 20 years of PTA meetings, carpools, soccer games and thoroughly unsatisfying marital sex.
The ones with big dreams and disposable income end up here, some surely realizing a return of at least $0.24 for every dollar they spend on materials, transportation and booth rental. We wish we had taken more pictures, but we think you can visualize: Lots of stiff, static two-dimensional still-life portraits, often of flowers, wine glasses and bottles, or loaves of French bread, with no sense of dimension, depth, light or perspective. Or worse, “abstract” works, crafted at the hands of carefree spirits buoyed by Bikram and Xanax who refuse to let the rules of society, art or good taste confine them. “I love to work in color,” we imagine them saying at parties.
Actually, we don’t have to imagine, because they say things like this:
“I recently re-visited Pearl S. Buck’s book ‘The Good Earth’. It totally made me paint in a quiet, filmy kind of way… almost as if with vapor. This series grew out of that feeling I got while listening to the book on tape.”
We only snapped one picture at the festival, but we think it’s representative of the genre:
Is that champagne cigarette bird art? Well turn it up, man!
And in case you think we unfairly selected one work from this artist out of context:
She calls this collection "Where's the Fuck is the Pharmacist's Number?"
We were amused that someone found containseggs today by searching the term “cocaine travel guide.” We were equally amused that we’re only the sixth link in a Google search for “cocaine travel guide.” Perhaps this travel trend is more popular than we realized. Life and satire seem to stick pretty closely together.
$154 per gram Norway? No way! I'll take my travel dollars and my coke habit to Luxembourg
We’re also pleased to see that, despite Greece’s debt woes and volatile economy, the Greek cocaine market still commands a stable $104 per gram. No hyperinflation, just hyperinhalation.
Finally, we see that The Economist provided a print-ready cocaine price list for European travelers, with even more countries listed, as its Daily Chart a few days back. Just remember, it’s twice the vacation if you never sleep.
containseggs 