Ford F-150: Taking a Man Step to Gay Town

by Pistols at Dawn of save your generation

As discussed yesterday (I could link to it, or you could scroll down, hero), Howie Long and Chevy are here to chew gum and kick ass, and they're all out of chewing gum.



In the second Howie Long Chevy ad that shows that these particular ad execs still have a fourth grade view of male sexuality and gender roles, the masculine Mr. Long is at the lumber yard, loading a palette jack's worth of Large, Heavy Bags Of Concrete into his Silverado.

Next to him, a Prancing Sissy in a Ford F-150 (the "F" stands for "Loves to Fellate Dudes") is using his truck's "Man Step" to get out of the bed of his truck, in which he has tied down a comically oversized wooden birdfeeder. Sure, no person I know would ever think of the lumberyard as a perfect place to buy a birdfeeder, but that's because everyone I know hates birds and hopes they all starve to death. Especially ospreys.

While attempting to get down out of his truck, F-150 Man (who initially misses the step, since all men who aren't Howie Long are incapable of even walking without incident) moves in a manner that indicates he either has a hernia or has just had a week's worth of nonstop vigorous gay sex with a team of incredibly endowed male elephants. A few steps into his "lady penguin on her period" walk, Howie roguishly informs him that he's left his "uh, man step" down. The man then fixes this problem while facially throwing a bitch fit worthy of Bette Davis' or Joan Crawford's finest work.

All in all, the Chevy Silverado ad strategy is clear: trucks that have features that the Silverado doesn't are for clumsy homosexuals. Hence, if you buy those trucks, you are a clumsy homosexual. Lastly, the Chevrolet company hates homosexuals, and finds their lifestyle and mannerisms something worth spending millions of dollars mocking in a national ad campaign.

I can't imagine why American car companies are in trouble.

Mac Attack

by The Guvner from Psycho Secretary

You know what ads make me consider hostage taking? The ads featuring the Mac guy and the PC guy. I know they're old hat now but still, they piss me off to a nuclear extent with their holier than thou attitude and the condescending manner of a political campaign.

You know the ones, right? The ones where a young, slightly dorky "I am a computer genius in a way you'll never comprehend" type of guy stands there, smug in his knowledge that he's cool because hey, he uses a Mac, while the chubby, bespectacled, super-straight guy in a bad suit runs around like a constipated chicken with its head cut off trying to cover up the many deficiencies of using a PC, often while doing "hilariously" embarrassing things or wearing a stupid costume. Throughout all this mayhem the Mac guy condescendingly watches him, bemused, while smirking and looking sideways at the camera in a Jimmy Fallonesque manner that makes you want to punch his lights out with a sledgehammer.Sometimes he is accompanied by a supermodel or a hot techy chick because she's hot you know and hot chicks dig the Mac guys while guys who use PCs have to make do with a dude in a dress:



Well I hate those effing commercials. I resent their message. Everyone knows that Mac users are elitist knob-heads who like to lord over us mortal PC users with their superiority complexes. Mac users are next to Godliness, people. That's why they only make up a mere morsel of computer users. Nothing that lofty and supreme can be the majority. If the majority of computer users switched to Macs, Mac freaks would explode with indignant impatience and start proclaiming their love of Linux-only operating systems. There is nothing you can do on a Mac these days you can't do on a PC, except maybe gloat a lot about your Godlike superiority while hurling cyber darts at Bill Gates' head.

Funny thing is, I had nothing against Macs until these stupid ads appeared, so job well done, guys. You made me always want to buy a PC.

If Apple really wanted to raise their fanbase and appeal to a wider audience, maybe cutting out the smug, condescending attitude might be a start. And maybe they could you know... sort out iTunes so it didn't fuck up everything you try to do, ever if, heaven forbid, you change computers/programs/mp3 players. And maybe keep their iPods in a realm of reality where you don't need a magnifying glass to find them. They really don't need to be the size of a postage stamp, guys, truly, we eat our veggies, we can lift those bulldozer sized 1st Generation models just fine.

Deer Park: Allegedly Good Water, Unquestionably Bad Slogan

by Pistols At Dawn from Save Your Generation

The other night, I was treating myself to some store-bought water, because I live in the fast lane, and I grabbed some Deer Park out of its home in the convenience store fridge.

I can't say the name "Deer Park" was what sold me, since most people who talk about deer are hunters, and those people are nuts enough to pay money to other people for deer urine, which they then douse themselves with to throw the deer off their scent. Why you would pay money for a urine bath when Taco Bell has meals for under $5 makes little sense to me, but then again, I'm not R. Kelly.

Also, who has the worse end of that transaction - the guy buying deer urine to wear like cologne, or the guy collecting and bottling deer urine for distribution?

I suppose all this effort might make sense if venison were the best-tasting meat ever, but it's gamy, stringy, and other words ending in "y" that indicate crappiness. I've eaten some gross things in my life - after all, I've been to England and the Miami Subs chain dotting South Florida like a plague (a dysentery-causing plague) - and I'd gladly eat shepherd's pie 1,000 times before I'd ever eat venison again.

In fact, the only meat I've eaten that I liked less is turtle, because that stuff's comically chewy. Turtle is like meat gum, and it's every bit as gross as that sounds.

Aside from apparently having a great deal of negative feelings about deer, I also didn't buy the water because of its slogan, which is: "That's Good Water!"

For some reason, Deer Park registered this incredibly generic phrase, which is sort of like the fat, ugly, religious girl in high school loudly proclaiming how proud she is of her virginity: you don't have to protect it, darlin', because no one was going to take it anyway. People only take things that are of value.

I understand that it's nigh impossible to come up with a phrase that will sell us on water. Except for desert dwellers or most Iraqi villages, we're all very familiar with potable water. You can't use the ad man's usual tricks, like, "Now with more water flavor!" or "Improved recipe!"

But if you paid an ad company to come up with "That's Good Water!" you are the dumbest company in the history of recorded time. Taking thirty seconds to brainstorm this for you, I would have come up with: "Mmm...water!", "The watery-est water in town," "More water than you can shake a stick at," and "That's not urine-y at all!" and all of those are better.

And to prove that to you, Deer Park, I would have registered the phrase, "Those Are Good Slogans!" for my work, and you'd know I was your kind of people: dumb, lazy, and terrible at selling products.