Well ! The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone (8:04 a.m., September 22, 2026), Halloween is only a month and a half away–getcher candy NOW–can Christmas be far behind? Not if you pay attention to the advertising on the tube. Speaking of which…. Is everyone as sick and tired of the political advertising as I am? The obvious lies are overtaking the merely suggestive falsehoods about who voted for what and when, who made money on things when they shouldn’t have, who’s taking credit (or blame) for stuff that they had nothing to do with. Anyone paying attention to the political scene can spot this garbage but some folks don’t keep up and may be suckered into buying even the most outrageous claims of who did what and to whom.
And its;s not just politics making claims that are unfathomable. Sometimes I’m not really sure what products are being promoted.. The dude with the emu is problematic sometimes but there are a few amusing situations, like when the guy wants the tennis ball and snatches it from the wing of the emu or when he serves into the next-side court and just yells, “My bad!”–twice.
The guy who keeps going on about “young home-owners becoming their parents” is annoying, if nothing else; sometimes the people he’s making fun of are just being pleasant. The “media influencer” scene kinda gets me because the people asking questions about the situations make more sense than “media influencers” in the first place. I do like the one where the “young homeowner” is talking to to the cabbie/Uber driver, who isn’t responding at all ,then says. “Nice talking to you.”
Commercials with too much dancing and whirling about don’t seem to have much to say about the actual product (The one referencing “diarrhea” by rubbing their backsides may be an exception); the gal in the green dress being danced around and the business scene where the office people are pirouetting around their desks come to mind. All of the dangerous driving doesn’t move me toward their products either.
Probably my favorite ad is the one with the little blonde girl in miniature gladiator mode, with a single spear in a colosseum when the giant monster breaks from a gate across the arena, roaring, snarling, terrifying, heading for the child. She appears frightened but resolute, throws down her spear, as the watching crowd gasps. She raises her hand, palm covered in blue pigment and charges at the fearsome monster, and slaps it on the side of its brutal face, whereupon it collapses and dies, as the crowd(including her parents) looks on. She then goes to a side wall where a bell hangs from a rope and she rings it.
The scene then becomes one in a hospital setting where a recovered child cancer patient is celebrating the end of what was , undoubtedly, a long and hard course of treatment. As a metaphor, it wins a first prize. I might even consider buying the sponsor’s product.
