Commercials - #11

Only highlighting a couple commercials this time around, though it's all about quality, not quantity. Can I get an "Amen"?


Jitterbug
To preface, I don't necessarily have a problem with this service, but rather the inherent stupidity of its Luddite target market. It's a cellular phone, with an accompany service, both of which are intended to appeal to the old timers who can't "figger out these gosh-darned, blasted buttons and blips and bloops" on normal cell phones. As for the phone itself, the buttons are huge, as if meant for infants in a playpen. Handy buttonin' for those shaky, poop-encrusted fingers, I tell ye! Cue the old man voice :

"No hat wearin' skateboardin' punk is gonna have a cell phone nicer than this one! To hell with ya rapscallions, ya miscreants, ya ruffians, with yer pacman and Dan Fogelberg! I got me a cell phone too! Nuts to you! I can send one of those text messages anytime I wanna...and another thingzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Ok, we're back. Another feature of this dumbed-down phone is its screen, featuring insanely HUGE letters and numbers. Great for them old timers and their bifocals. I can only imagine how insanely loud the ringer and speaker must be for this phone, it's got to be NASA loud.
These things I've yet to investigate, and fortunately I'm not old enough to need such features.
As for the service, it's basically advertising the company's ability to coddle their leathery, raisin-mouthed clientele. These poor bastards working in the customer service department. The commercial shows, for example, a service representative confirming that yes indeed, he can add a new contact to the customer's phone. Huh? C'mon, Gramma Myrtle, there's a god damned "Contacts" option, press that with your Mixmaster finger, then after that 20 minute battle, you'll see an "add new contact" option. All phones have something similar. It's like a three step process! You're so decrepit, you have to call someone to have them add the new number? What a sorry old buzzard. Plus, if they can't manage the "add new contact" process on their own, how are they going to have the wherewithal to find the customer service phone number, and dare I say, figure out how to dial that tricky phone? The Jitterbug reps probably have to dictate verbal messages and turn them into text messages too. Now that would be a fun job, assuming it was time to get fired. Example:

Say Gramma Myrtle calls and wants to dictate a text message to the nefarious customer service rep, Simon Barsinister. Myrtle asks Simon to send the following text message to great-great-great-great grandson Barry...

"Merry Christmas, honey. Thank you for the happy card!"
...at which point, Simon the nefarious costumer service rep decides to translate it to:
"Barry, kiss my ass, sonny. Fuck you, I crapped in your yard!"

Sure, Simon gets fired, but oh the pranks. The whole hand-holding service makes me wonder how many more of such services are out there. A company for helping Gramps program one of those dag-blasted video tapin' machines? I can imagine the extent of the stupid questions the Jitterbug reps must get from the extra senile:

"Can you find me the Lawrence Welk Show?"
"Will you come over and help me clean the mess in my trunks?"
"I'm lonely."
"It feels like I'm sitting on my apple pie. But I don't remember making one...did I make a doopsy?"
"Can you help me find my way out of this voting booth?"
"Where are my butterscotch candies?"

Shamwow
Ok, this pin head is starting to get on my nerves. He wears a futile, apparently decorative, headset while on camera, as if he's hawking his product at an contextually inappropriate trade show. The guy just looks creepy anyway. That said, this latest miracle product is supposedly the latest great reusable cloth, meant to clean up monstrous amounts of spilled liquid, and to soak up five million times its own weight in whatever urine or other noxious spills might plague the consumer. A quick clean up, and it lasts forever! I've seen mixed reviews about its functionality, but that isn't necessarily for me to decide, as I won't deign to order this and be sucked into that "buy an extra one, and just pay processing and handling" scam. What bothers me most, from this type A barker, is that he says "It's made by the Germans, so you know it must be good." Great, now we're selling out the Germans. Sounds eerily familiar to my rant about Heat Surge recently (which drew a response from the company itself). The Germans...so it must be good? The Germans tried to wipe out a race of people, plus they took on the entire planet in a war...they must be good! Germans are good at a couple things; beer and cars, and I'm not even sure about the latter.



Billy Mays (sigh, again)
I was amused by this page about Mister Mays. The only props I'll give him is that he recently parodied himself for an ESPN commercial. The spot featured him loudly, as usual, extolling the virtues of ESPN360.COM for its web-based broadcasts of otherwise unviewable sporting events. He says something like "Look! The sports come through this little wire!" Fair enough.