Month: February 2018

Welcome all. As in previous years, I will be watching the Super Bowl starting at 6 PM and will comment on the commercials. I might also comment on the game if it starts getting interesting, but we’ll see. Kath and I really don’t have a stake in this game: We don’t like either team. If a jet crash landed on them, we’d be fine with that. As for the half time show, I still think Justin Timberlake will have Janet Jackson as a guest. We will see.

6:00–Could someone tell me who the hëll is singing?

6:04–Insurance? Really?! Great commercial until I saw what it was for

6:07–The Eagles are hungry and not just for a cheese steak. Okay, that’s funny.

6:11–Kraft: Un, no, please don’t.
US Bank: Aww, the doggie got nice place to live.
Merdes Benz–Okay that was funny.

6:13–Pizza Hut: I just saw Terrell Owens bowling on ESPN just a few hours ago. He’s not bad, although inconsistent.

6:22–McDONALDS: Guilty admission: I love the grand Big Macs. They remind me of how Macs seemed to me when I was a kid. I have to swing by McDonalds this week if those are back.

6:28–JURASSIC WORLD sequel. I am so freaking there. I have a real softness for those films, even though half of them suck.

5:42–TOYOTA–Wow. That’s one of the best car commercials I’ve ever seen.
VERIZON–I now have a new greatest fear: having robots laughing at me and saying I’m an idiot.

6:45–SOLO. Wow, and that was just the teaser trailer. Full trailer tomorrow. I’ll be there.
TURKISH AIRLINES: Eh. Still don’t care to fly to Turkey.
RISE: Well I’m not sure what that’s about, but if it’s from the producers of “Hamilton,” I’m definitely going to check it out.

6:53–M&Ms: Okay that was the greatest M&M commercial I’ve ever seen. I’ve never realized how much Danny DeVito looks like an M&M.

7:00–RAM: I hate this “full story stuff.” Can’t a commercial just be thirty or sixty seconds and that’s that?
WENDY: Now THAT was funny. Conflating McD’s with a historical disaster. It was a stretch but somehow it worked.

7:03=–CASTLE ROCK: Well, obviously if it’s a Stephen King project, I’m in.
NBC: All right, all right, I’ll watch the Olympics! Enough already!

7:09–DORITOS AND MOUNTAIN DEW: I’m not remotely sure what the hëll I just saw: Morgan Freeman and Peter Dinklage lip synching to promote snack food. Okay.
SKYSCRAPER: If this movie were made twenty years ago, it would have starred Bruce Willis.

7:16–BUD LIGHT: I don’t drink so I’m not remotely interested in Bud Light, but that was certainly a seriously overproduced commercial. You could have made a whole indy film with the commercial’s budget.
MISSIOIN IMPOSSIBLE: Tom Cruise attempts to make up for “The Mummy.” He’s got a long way to go for that.

7:20–ROCKET MORTGAGE: So he was the anger translator, but actually he was a life translator.
AVOCADOS: I have no idea what just happened.
THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX: Just when you thought it had been milked to death, now it’s on Netflix. Jesus.

7:25–DIET COKE: How in God’s name was that supposed to encourage you to drink Diet Coke?
TIDE: Now THAT was funny.
WEATHER TECH: Wonder if the company owners are Trump supporters.

7:32–PRINGLES: I feel sorry for Kevin. As for me, I don’t understand the obsession with giving chips flavor. Can’t they just have them taste like chips.
ULTRA: Captain America the extra. Cute.

7:44–SQUARESPACE: Was that Keanu Reeves in a commercial?
RAM: Seriously? You use an MLK speech to sell your car? That is pretty freaking stupid. Plus almost everyone in the commercial was white. Jesus.

7:55–DUNDEE: I’ve been wondering what the hëll that fake trailer flowing around on Youtube was. Worth it for the quick cameo of Paul Hogan.
PERSIL: TV dude should have been British. Then the commercial would have worked.
GOOD GIRLS: I thought that was a movie. It’s a TV series? Not sure about that.

8:04–Wow. That was a hëll of a play.

8:11–YELLOW TAIL WINE: EH.

8:17–TOYOTA: GREAT commercial, but seriously: How could you not have them all walk into a bar?

8:18: PEPSI. Still prefer Coke.

8:35: My computer decided to screw around with me and it’s taken a few minutes to sort it out.

8:36: THE VOICE. Cute commercial. Still have no interest in the show.
OPTIMUM; You lost me Starz, you jáçkáššëš.

8:47–LEXUS: Ðámņ, I am so sick of car commercials that have nothing to do with the films. It’s not as bad as the Star Wars one, but still.
BUDWEISER: VERY nice, Budweiser. Very nice. Granted, it’s better if you don’t boast about something you did that was positive, but on the other hand, I guess you can blow your own horn if you want.

9:00–WRANGLER: Now THAT was a great use of a car in a movie. Top notch.
WESTWORLD: I have GOT to catch up with that series.

9:03–STINGER: I’m indifferent about the car, but Steve Tyler came to my daughter Shana’s college graduation. We have a picture of her hugging him.

9:12–AVENGERS. This movie is going to ROCK.
T-MOBILE. “Some people may see your differences and be threatened by them.” The problem is when one of them is running the country.
JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR: Yeah, we’ll be watching.

9:22–Did anybody outside of the New York try-state area see that great “Dirty Dancing” commercial with Eli Manning and Odell Beckham?

9:26–MONSTER; Huh?
ULTRA: Eh. Seemed like a lot of similar commercials that were done better.
GROUPON: Cute.

9:38–ALEXA: That almost makes me want to go get an Alexa.

9:46–COKE: Since I can’t really drink Coke, there isn’t one for me.
UNIVERSAL: Remind me never to go on vacation wity Peyton Manning.]

9:52–HYUNDAI: Yet another company doing something nice and then getting press about it, but what can you do?

10:06==STELLER ARTOIS: Help us do good by buying our product.
TIDE–The Tide commercials haven’t been at all offensive. This evening, that’s a good thing to say about them.

10:15–God, this is an exciting game.

10:15–Please don’t let this get into overtime.

10:16–Thank you and good night.

It is pretty impressive that in a week where you would think all focus would have been on the State of the Union address, Trump and his cronies have actually managed to distract from it by attempting to delegitimize the people who may well bring Trump down.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: If the GOP had had this mindset back in the 1970s, Nixon would have finished his second term with no problem.

Imagine if Nixon had adopted Trump’s tactics from the very beginning. Dismissing the Washington Post or the New York Times as failing and fake news. Finding whatever dirt he could on Senator Sam Ervin to prove that the investigations were illegitimate and part of a long-time grudge against Nixon. The Supreme Court ordered him to turn over the tapes, the existence of which John Dean revealed in testimony. Nixon would have just continued to deny the tapes ever existed and then immediately burned them. Easy peasy.

But it’s 40+ decades since that time, and both the GOP and the presidency have devolved into something that the 1970s version would never have recognized.

1). STATE OF THE UNIOM. Trump’s address was pretty much what every non-Trump lover expected it to be. A string of lies and exaggerations, with the Democrats reacting in pretty much the exact same way that the GOP acted when Obama would give the same speech. Except for omitting his favorite two word phrase, Fake News, from the speech, he lived down to expectations. He made a sideswipe at Football. He repeatedly applauded himself. He stood there and claimed that his and Congress’ job was to serve the people even though he is a self-absorbed, egotistical narcissist. He declared “Americans are dreamers” in the same way that white supremacists declare “white lives matter,” attempting to undercut a movement by broadening it so that it becomes irrelevant. And he reiterated his attempt to hold Dreamers hostage by forcing Congress to cough up $25 billion to build his idiotic wall…a project that the majority of Americans polled don’t want.

And afterwards, the rating-obsessed Trump declared that his speech, watched by 46 million people, was the most viewed speech in history. No. Obama had more. Clinton had more. But the fact that the Nielsen company flat out stated that this was a lie will likely not prevent him from saying it in the future. Because for Trump, the truth doesn’t exist; only his opinion and self-aggrandizing words matter.

2). THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INSTIGATORS. One almost has to admire the obscene lengths that Trump’s GOP is willing to go to to protect him. While the 1970s GOP was aware that Nixon was up to no good and was willing to hold him to the high standard of the office, the 21st Century GOP is willing to fall in line and do whatever is necessary to keep him in office. I suppose the one I’m most contemptuous of is Ted Cruz, considering Trump insulted his wife and accused his father of being involved in the JFK assassination.

And so Cruz et al are overseeing the release of a memo that ostensibly “proves” that the FBI have it out for Trump. It’s an obvious technique: They know that Trump is going to be proven to have been involved with Russia, and so are trying to show that anything they come up with can be easily dismissed. The reasoning is that if the source is tainted, then so is everything they could present. Both the FBI and the Justice Department have stated that the memo contained falsehoods and distortions, but that’s not stopping Trump’s people. Because they are aware that both the average American citizen and pretty much all of Trump’s supporters don’t care about much of anything except headlines. If they are told that the FBI and the Justice Department are out to get Trump, that is absolutely all they will care about. They won’t read beyond that to learn that the memo proves nothing. They won’t care when proof of Trump’s actions is presented because they will dismiss it as manufactured by people who have a reason to bring him down. No one ever questioned the motives of those pursuing Watergate; today’s mindset would have made the entire confrontation a case of “Who do you believe?” with the assumption of innocence being given to the president.

Part of me looks at the 1950s and the government-led search for Communists that destroyed so many lives, and I take satisfaction in how far we’ve come since those days. I also look at how far we’ve come from Watergate, and take no satisfaction in it at all.

PAD