Worst Ads of the Year. So Far.

Days ago I promised a quick analysis of what sucks in TV commercials. I finally put something together yesterday whilst replying to a question posed over at the new AdRants messageboard. So I'm cheating by publishing it twice in two different places. Deal.

Anyway, back to bad TV spots. This topic begins and ends with two campaigns running in Southern California right now. The first is for Six Flags Magic Mountain. There's a few different spots running, but they all go like this: some young people are engaged in a stereotypically boring summer activity such as sitting around in their front yard listening to music or caddying at their local whites-only country club. All of a sudden a sort of magical mystery tour school bus pulls up and out pops a freakish looking tuxedoed old man who breaks into a bizarre spastic dance routine set to a wildly outdated techno club anthem. The old guy is creepy looking, plain and simple. He looks like a turtle. See for yourself at sixflags.com. Nevertheless, the kids can't believe their good fortune and hop onto the bus with him no questions asked. Minutes later we see them having the time of their lives as they ride the rollercoaster with the turtleman. It's one of the very, very few TV spots that actually makes me change the channel when it comes on. It's literally a red-alert, find the remote at all costs situation when I hear that music on the television. Just awful.

The second offender is El Pollo Loco. This summer they've decided to introduce us to a gentleman known simply as "El Caliente: Master of the El Pollo Loco Flame." He sounds like some sort of Zorro superhero, but in the spot all he does is wear a puffy shirt and grill pieces of chicken to mouth-watering perfection. He also wields a barbecue utensil as if it's a foil and swishes his hair. The punchline is several shots of apparently average, un-Caliente men trying to emulate their idol but failing miserably, one guy even catching fire during the process. Speaking of fire: the spots end with this tagline: "Taste the Fire!" Taste fire? No thanks, I'll just meet you at Jack in the Box.

Stewart on MSNBC

I was passively watching the coverage of the convention tonight when all of a sudden Jon Stewart was front and center. Now, it had gradually sunk in with me that Stewart was moving to the inside of the beltway- but tonight I'm finally seeing what everyone else already has: this guy is no longer a silly talk show host, but an official pundit; a Washington insider. He wasn't brought on MSNBC tonight to season the broadcast with a couple of one-liners, he was on there talking about the draft, talking about the independent voter's perception of a political convention, and brilliantly taking shots at both parties: Al Gore for constantly recycling 2000 "stolen election" jokes, and the Republicans for foolishly attacking the wives of the candidates. His Daily Show is light years ahead of where Kilbourne's was, and at this point Stewart clearly knows it. Two years ago he'd have been sitting with Brokaw and Russert cracking self-depricating jokes about how funny it was that people sort of took him seriously. Not tonight. Tonight he kept pace with those two without breaking a sweat and he wasn't even wearing a tie. Have you seen his show lately? Seen the guests? Richard Clarke. Ted Koppel. Hillary Clinton. Jimmy Carter. He even had the guy who runs Al-Jazeera on there. And these days if you're not a political player, but some celebrity who's publicist managed to get you on the show, well you better read a newspaper before you come on because I've seen him just demolish dolts like Jennifer Love Hewitt on live television as punishment for their willful ignorance. He's like Dennis Miller except he's packing the credibility that comes with winning a Peabody Award and booking A-list politicos. Forget the usual late-night guys. It's getting to the point where if you want to run for a major political office in this country you'd better secure an appearance on Stewart's show, regardless of what he thinks of you. Maybe we've already gotten there. And how about Clinton tonight? If it weren't for term limits that guy would be enjoying and FDR-like run right now. He had the whole Fleet Center wondering if they could write him in. I'm in heaven with all this coverage and analysis; it's the Superbowl of American democracy.

Brewhaha

In celebration of today's terrific bench-clearing incident between the Red Sox and the Yankees, allow me to present you with the definitive work on basebrawls, care of ESPN's The Sports Guy. Click here. Also, Sportscenter has begun airing regular NFL preseason coverage. And I just launched this year's fantasy league. Now if HBO would just bring back Hard Knocks, I could offically get into NFL mode.

Banned Securities Analyst Makes Good

This week the editors over at Slate decided they'd like to run a piece about Wall Street. Something written in plain English that would give the layperson some useful tips for participating in the nation's investment marketplace. In their own words: "a guide to Wall Street". Who do they ask to write the article? Henry Blodget, who promises to teach me some things I won't learn from my broker, according to the article's title. The article gets off to a rocky start though, when in the first sentence Blodget discloses that he's no longer allowed to work on Wall Street, mainly because of a minor incident in which he lied about securities forcasts and behaved otherwise unethically while working as a managing director at Merrill Lynch. Check out this friendly press release from the Securites and Exchange commission. I guess if I'm open-minded about the whole thing I'd have to admit that being banned for life from the SEC, NYSE, and NASD doesn't necessarily mean you're unqualified to publish sound financial advice, but still...bit of an odd choice. Anyway there's a full disclosure of what happened to him linked in the article, and as it turns out he seems to be providing some honest, useful information. Especially for someone like me, who has no real portfolio to speak of. Check 'er out.

Mach3 Power: Death Machine

AJ4A is not in the business of personal hygiene product reviews, but since I am somewhat of a razor aficionado and because I nearly decapitated myself this morning I'll make a brief statement about Gillette's new Mach 3 Power razor. Now, if you're into advertising like I am, you're probably aware that there's nothing more hilarious in American consumerism right now than the razor wars. In the old days you'd buy a shaving razor which contained, surprisingly, a razor blade in it. Somewhere along the line they added the comfort strip, but for the most part, razors were just razors. Then Gillette broke the mold with the Sensor, adding another razor blade to their cartridges and instantly conning the American public into thinking "the more razor blades touching my face at the same time, the better". But even at that early stage of the evolution, some were already mocking the razor blade space race. My dad told me that Saturday Night Live was doing fake commercials featuring ridiculous razors that had 3 or even 4 blades. Ah the absurdity. You pretty much know where it went from there. Each year came the new models as Schick and Gillette battled for the hearts and minds of America's men. Although Schick never really threatened to take over the lead, I'll admit that my buddy Josh and I did make the switch to Schick in college when they came out with the diamond cutter. I don't remember its real name, but Schick came out with this piece of hardware, we thought it was a joke, but its razor blades were coated in carbon. You know, diamond. So we called it the diamond cutter after wrestler Diamond Dallas Paige's finishing move and, well, it turns out they weren't joking. Our sallow young faces were not ready for the diamond cutter, and after a couple of days of looking I'd been shaving with a dinner knife, I was back on the wagon with Gillette. Aside from the Mach3 Turbo and the Mach3 Champion edition (somebody got drunk before a Gillette meeting and suggested they paint the Mach 3 handle red and call it the "Champion Edition"-you should have seen the commercials, and yes of course I bought one) nobody really made any significant developments in R&D until this year. Yes Schick came out with the Quattro (4 blades), but all that did was establish the point of diminishing marginal returns when it came to number of razors people will tolerate in their shaver. Three blades: The Best a Man Can Get. Four blades: You Cannot Be Serious. So that was the Quattro. Which brings me up to today. The Power. It seemed like we were embarking on a glorious new era. "Of course!" I thought. "This is the next evolution, how could it have taken this long to be discovered?" Just reading Gillette's web page made me want to leave work early. All kinds of new "power" rhetoric: "power strokes", "powerglide blades", "micro-power"- even a power green handle design. It looked like the thing ran on weapons-grade plutonium. Then there was this link on the site for awe-struck consumers like myself: "How to Use the M3 Power". How to use? I have to take a class just to operate it? I'd better just buy the razor.

Now that I've wasted the whole column just on background, I'll cut to the chase with the review. Here's the thing about the M3 Power: It's a regular Mach3 razor that vibrates back and forth. The website says that the M3 Power sends pulses to your face, causing the hair to stand up on end so that it's shaved closer without irritating. A nice idea, and it works terrifically in the commercial, but as it turns out, when you hook up three razor blades to a motor so that they're moving back and forth in a saw-like motion, then drag them across your skin repeatedly, you end up bleeding. I'm sorry, but the thing just doesn't work. That's the review. It kicks your ass for the 3 minutes you're shaving, then kicks your ass for the rest of the day as you fume about having spent $18 on a torture-device razor instead of Baja Fresh and three gallons of gas. And it doesn't even shave closer than the old razor with less strokes, like they promise. Advertising owns me, thank you Gillette.

AJ4A gets famous. Again.

It's always nice to get a look from a cooler site than mine. AJ4A featured in today's Defamer. Cool.

Archives Work!

Hey guess what, I've finally got my archive links working, so go ahead and click the links on the left to read all the boring shit I wrote earlier in the life of AJ4A. Also, Yahoo just announced their 2004 Fantasy Football League, so start getting that nag you're dating used to the idea of not seeing you on Sundays. Coming up this week: my picks for the two worst TV ad campaigns of the first half of 2004.

A Celebrity Came to the Show I was at. Am I Screwed?

Went to see the ol' Metric at Spaceland on Friday, minus all of the band members except Emily Haines. She was just about to come out and do her solo set on the piano when I noticed Christina Ricci, Adam Goldberg and some friends milling about the place. No big deal, except now I'm forced to consider whether or not I can still like this happening band now that celebrities are infiltrating my local indie scene. Of course I just noticed today that Metric is the download of the week on iTunes so I guess they're now more well-known than the outfit I used to see at the Silverlake Lounge. And besides I'm sure there's celebrities into every band I've ever seen so that's not really the issue here. It's that they were physically at the same show as me. Now, I'm not someone who despises celebrities or indulges in the schadenfreude of their foibles, in fact I admit to being a fan of those two in particular, but for some reason I find it a distraction. It's not their fault, it's just that one minute you're hanging out at Spaceland feeling good about your hip as hell underground existence, then all of a sudden you recognize someone and just like that you're now feeling like some tawdry starfucker hanging around the shadows of Skybar hoping to get a peak at a castmember from the Real World. Time for a new favorite band.