Works Every Time

This may have been the last mass market malt liquor TV commercial ever produced. If so, they definitely saved the best for last. It was easily my favorite commercial for a few years.

Of course, you can't talk about malt liquor TV commercials without mentioning Coldcock.

Double Fantasy

As you may have heard, KFC was recently test marketing the Double Down, a bun-less chicken sandwich. Apparently, Americans still have too much dignity to eat bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of boneless friend chicken, because I haven't seen any Double Down related advertising in several months. I recently saw a commercial for a very similar menu item called the Doublicious, which appears to be the same ingredients that were included in the Double Down (boneless fried chicken, bacon, and cheese) served on a sweet Hawaiian bun. The only Doublicious sighting I could find (other than the commercial that I saw) comes from Nebraska. Does this mean that the Doublicious is a retooled Double Down that is once again being test marketed in Omaha and Providence? It's hard to say, since with the exception of the aforementioned post, the Internet is blissfully unaware of the Doublicious right now. One thing is for sure - if this concoction sounds appetizing to you, you might want to get to a participating KFC before time runs out.

Double Trouble

I've seen this commercial for KFC's latest menu item a few times so I assumed that it was taking American by storm. I learned today that this new culinary creation is currently being test marketed in Providence and Omaha, so I'm one of the lucky few able to experience the deliciousness of the Double Down, which is ostensibly a bacon and cheese sandwich with a bun made out of boneless pieces of fried chicken. For the record, I have yet to try one and have no plans to do so. My lack of interest may lead directly to the Double Down not testing well enough to merit a nationwide release, but it's a chance I'm willing take.

Normally, this is where I would go into full snark mode, but after The AV Club called it "the Reichstag fire of health care reform", I don't think there's anything else that can be said. I hope that I have an opportunity to use that analogy somewhere else, though. But is the Double Down really that bad? The concept seems a little dated. The bun-less sandwich sounds like something straight out of the Atkins craze of a few years back. The bacon seems forced, and I feel like the current incarnation of the add bacon to everything craze is starting to fizzle out. Other than that, I don't see how this is much different than other items on the menus of America's fast food restaurants. Don't get me wrong, the Double Down is kind of disgusting and definitely not something you should eat on a regular basis if you care about your health, but it isn't a new low in the field of culinary arts.

Case in point, last night I dined on some deep-friend clam-infused dough balls. Clam cakes, as they're usually known in these parts, are a Southeastern New England institution and a staple of seaside seafood shacks. Clam cakes have a better name than the Double Down and a simplicity that makes the Double Down look even more thrown together by comparison, but are they really all that different? If clam cakes can be considered a classic comfort food cherished across generations, can the Double Down really be considered a harbinger of the end of the times?

Restaurants need to innovate in order to attract customers. For fast food restaurants, that means either offering more calories per dollar than their competitors or combining a limited set of ingredients in new ways. Most innovations across the food service industry will be forgotten as quickly as they appear. A select few will become part of humanity's culinary lexicon for a few years, a few generations, or, if they're really good, forever. I'm not predicting that every greasy spoon will someday serve a version of the Double Down, I'm just saying that the difference between a beloved culinary institution and an affront to good taste on a plate is smaller than we think.

Heavy Hitters

I've been a fan of personal injury attorney's commercials for as long as I've been familiar with the genre. It pleases me to no end that there is apparently a production agency that has used the same slogan and jingle for different law firms in the Providence and Upstate New York markets. Here's one of the commercials for Syracuse's own heavy hitters Alexander & Catalano, and here's a commercial from Providence's Heavy Hitter, Rob Levine.

Streakhouse, Please

While I rarely dine at fast food restaurants, I do have a soft spot in my heart for their advertisements. This recent Burger King spot is one of my current favorites.





I love the idea of someone who wants a steakhouse burger so badly that he'll gladly wreck his own car and the car in front of him in the line at the drive through just to get his burger a little bit faster. I also love how he didn't bother to actually place an order; he just pulled up to the window and pushed out the car that was already there. Even if this was socially acceptable behavior, it wouldn't have helped him get his steakhouse burger any faster since you still have to actually order your meal before you can pick it up at the drive through window. Finally, the way he politely says "steakhouse, please" with a demented smile on his face once he pushes the other car out of the way is priceless. After completely flaunting the most basic rules of driving and drive through etiquette, he calmly places his order in a completely matter-of-fact way that would lead one to believe that he does this kind of thing every day.

Shilling For Dollars

I've been seeing these Hyundai commercials a lot recently. In an effort to make buying a new car look like a shrewd financial move, Hyundai has recruited three authors of personal finance books to appear in commercial spots and dispense nuggets of financial wisdom along with a hearty side of condescension. I don't see how these commercials help Hyundai or the authors. These guys may all be best selling authors, but they aren't bringing any star power to Hyundai. In each spot, the writers have to be introduced by the customer blurting out an utterly ridiculous line, such as "Adam Smith? Best selling author of The Money Game?" in order for the viewers to know who they are. The writers may drum up some extra sales for their books by appearing on TV, but they are doing so at the cost of turning themselves into shills for Hyundai. The conflict of interest doesn't rise to the level of a Ford ad campaign I saw a few years ago that featured an automotive writer whose name I forget gushing over the new Ford Freestar, but I think it's still a conflict of interest. Cars are one of the biggest purchases that people make and nearly every personal finance book that I've read has spent some time discussing common financial mistakes that people make when buying cars and how to avoid them. As if all of this wasn't enough, the authors come off like a bunch of know-it-all jerks in these commercials. Adam Smith's "Which one of us is a Rhodes Scholar" retort is especially nauseating. If you're like me and found it a little bit too suspicious that there's a financial writer named Adam Smith, I can save you a trip to Wikipedia by confirming that it is a pseudonym. His real name is George Goodman.

Red Bullshit

One thing I've seen a lot of while traveling abroad but never in the US is television screens on subway trains. I'm sure we'll eventually get them over here, but I'm in no hurry. I haven't minded them on my travels since it's always neat to notice the little differences between your home country and the place you are visiting and, more importantly, I've never been exposed to public transit broadcasting in an English-speaking country, so I couldn't really understand what was being said on TV anyway.

That being said, most public transit programming is commercials, so it's not that hard to understand. While riding the KCR in Hong Kong last November, we saw the following Red Bull commercial.



A few weeks ago, we saw the same commercial on American television. The US version features a different ending, as you can see here.



Michelle and I immediately noticed this difference. I assumed it was yet another example of American reactionary puritanism - bodily functions are sinful and evil but violence is ok. After reading the YouTube comments (hardly an authoritative source, I know), it sounds like Red Bull may have retooled the commercial between when we viewed it on the train in Hong Kong and on our couch in the US.

This is Our Country?

The Football Outsiders know a lot about football, but they probably know even more about the annoying things that people who enjoy football have put up with in order to watch football. I was browsing through the notes in this week's installment of Audibles at the Line when the following comment about Chevy's latest ad campaign, running in heavy rotation during all televised American sporting events, caught my eye:

“Not only does that ad not make me want to buy a Chevy, it makes me want to join Al Qaeda.”

I couldn't agree more. The old "Like a Rock" campaign was insufferable, of course, but at least it didn't feature John Cougar Mellencamp and his cornpone paeans to folk wisdom and knee-jerk patriotism. I loathe John Cougar and his entire songbook. I even refuse to refer to him by his nom de plume John Mellencamp. You can't just add the word 'Cougar' to your name and then remove it once you become a commercial success. As you can see, my distaste for him is deep-seeded and highly irrational.

Setting aside my reservations about the music and the musician, the commercial itself is borderline insulting. It's full of stock footage celebrating at worst the banality of life in America and at worst, some of the darkest days in our history. Ok, so there are a couple of perfunctory clips of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, who are certainly spinning in their graves over being included in this travesty. After that, it's all downhill. There is some footage of kids at the sock hop, followed by the Vietnam War, anti-Vietnam War protests, probably a clip from Woodstock for good measure, Nixon resigning, some other crappy moments in American history, and New Orleans under six feet of water. What are future installments (and you know there are going to be future installments) of this series of commercials going to show? Lee Harvey Oswald? The Manson Family? Jimmy Carter? Have Americans gotten so stupid that they feel nostalgia for any even that happened more then 30 years ago, regardless of whether or not it was good?

If this campaign runs as long as their "Like a Rock" campaign, I'm going to have to seriously consider whether or not I want to remain a sports fan.