With this commercial, 30 Seconds of Hell kick-starts our continuing “Tall as a Damn Mountain” series, wherein we cull commercials with the tallest people in all the land.
Part one of our series features another clever commercial from ESPN’s Sportscenter. This commercial features former-NBA Allstar, Gheorghe Muresan, a 7′ 7” center who played for the Washington Bullets in the ’90s. He is really tall. Gheorghe is such an erudite — a damn tall erudite — that he starred in My Giant (1998) with co-star, Billy Crystal.
In a white-collar office setting, we observe colossal hulking Gheorghe Muresan as dances. This may sound like a TALL TALE; however, this did happen, this really happened, in real life, this is not a tall tale, it’s tall entertainment, a tall pleasure every dance-step of the way.
I like to think of the creative board meetings, the pre-productions phases of this project that prefaced. I imagine the creative team being like, “Hey, what we got, whose got a pitch, hurry up, I’m not listening.” Soon after, someone meek stands up and says, “I colored-penciled storyboards with Gheorghe Muresan dancing in the office.” The creative director, whilst smoking a cigar, turns and says, “Colored pencil? Oh brother, not more colored pencils. Kid, are you shitting me?” The meek man replies, “24 piece Crayola. Sharpened as a Native American arrow head.” The cigar-ed boss replies, “Kid, you’re promoted, I’m so sick of all these schmucks drawing with those garbage brands Rose Art and Color Busters.” Cigar boss turns to Belinda, the secretary, “Get Gheorghe Muresan’s agent on the phone, pronto, or YOU’RE FIRED.”
Before I wrote this digressing review, I thought of transcribing the entire commercial — then I realized that would be a waste of time, for I’m watching CNBC right now, and American Greed is on. My point is this: take your money out of banks and stuff it under your mattress, pay attention to the simple dialogue in this commercial, and enjoy yourself whilst Gheorghe Muresan dances.
After writing this, I now realize that most of Gheorghe’s fame and success in the public eye has focused only on his height, and despite the title of this post, this post is about the joy Gheorghe spreads. It’s not all about his height, it’s about what’s inside of his tall body, and inside of his tall body is a big, warm heart.
Rating: 30 Seconds of Heaven
Sky-tops Gheorghe Muresan greets us at the door with a sky-high welcome
“Credit card, you got it.” — Macaulay Culkin, as Kevin, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).
Credit card, you got it. Credit Cards: can’t live with ‘em and you can’t shoot ‘em. Card Credits: our nation is in debt. Dear credit cards, in the 1990s, you bought so many damn speed boats and jet-skis for people, and someday you will be burned at the stake like a witch, and hanged, like Bernie Madoff, in town square.
Discover Card, on the other hand, seems to be the ‘indie’ credit card (does urban outfitters have a credit card special savings signup? Umm, don’t know, don’t care) and this commercial with the faux hair band is pretty clever.
The commercial runs like a VH1 Behind the Music documentary, a show I have always admired, and it certainly packs a punch within its 30 seconds. This commercial is effective, and glory glory hallelujah, it’s watchable.
We hear the band’s story, starting from the glory-days — lil red corvette, cover of Rolling Stone, giant credit card, jacuzzi-limo — and travel in time, to the future, with our 30 Seconds of Hell helicopter landing on the inevitable 30 Seconds of Hell helicopter landing pad, where we exit the helicopter, and walk to an ending where one of the dudes from Danger Kitty works a hot dog stand.
The commercial is much like the teachings of an Aesop Fable, teaching us: be frugal with your money and stop buying jacuzzi-tubs, plush spa robes, summer homes in Maine, and a three-fleet of shreddin’ jet-skis, colored hot green, electric pink, and outrageous orange, respectively.
Their slogan is clever: “For the slightly smarter consumer.” Here we have a credit card company telling the consumer to, and I am paraphrasing, ‘cool your jets on the spending.’
Okay, I think we all agree that these commercials for The General auto insurance are ugly. Distractingly ugly. The General himself has a rasping voice, is three-feet-tall, has a wilting white mustache, and wears his helmet so low that you cannot see his eyes. He seems like a stereotypical general, but what are the origins of this zany stereotype?
The best part of this spot is the CGI sky diving. If this was live-action sky-diving, this 30 second spot might receive a 30 Seconds of Heaven rating, but it’s CGI, everything in this campaign is CGI, and The General drives a hummer.
Why would anyone trust a company with commercial like this?
By the way, I was looking for the general commercial where the general delivers the proof-of-insurance in a pizza box, but to no avail.
“I’m going to get my hands on your data.” Chck, plicka, keyboard-chck chk, blk chica chica. Whence that onomatopoeia? One word: yourkompacpresariokomputerkeyboard or wordprocessor unit from the early ’90s. “I’m going to get into your system.”
Once upon a time beofore the monumental cgi of the awe-inspiring film Titanic, a movie that made me cry in the 5th grade, Leonardo Decaprio gave an honest effort to inform ambivilant white-collared workers of the importance of computer safety. Soon after, James Cameron, mastermind director of Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2 : Judgement Day (1994), had a dangerous run-in with a flanneled computer hacker (marrymeleo!!!). Honestly, this problem stemmed from the fact that Cameron named his password ‘corvette,’ due to the fact that 99.99% of the time he was day-dreamin’ of riding in a candy-apple corvette. He would wake up in the morning: candy apple corvette. Before nighty-night: candy apple corvette.
29 seconds in, we hear an insightful testimony from an insightful asian man whom tells us, “someone got my password (much like Camron, the password was [little-red] corvette, a password derived from the subconscious of our world).” “Soon after, some flanneled dude [sic] has the audacity to walk in with a yellow toolbox and ask my smoking-hot red-blazered sexy-secretary [sic] something stupid, but smart.” The secrety confirms this occurrence: “He had a special toolbox.”
This public service announcement spurred an epiphany within meee-self: every night, I see strangers digging through my dumpster — now I know they are looking for my top secret 4″ floppy discs. Those are those plastic things capable of storin’ 7.11kb of data, and sometimes I even store my MS paint artwork on there — my illustrations of important things. No worries, though. I can turn back time. Yeah, baby, belly that.
“Usually when you think hackers, you think [super] computers, and the data stored in those computers.” adds an unknown but authoritative guy, “sometimes the hackers try to get the data in our heads.”
The truth is out there.
2:20 in, a wild sighting of Delaney Driscoll, a supporting actress that starred in Alexander Payne’s Election (1999). Wow, is this really true?
The following still-image sequence features impeccable use of the diagonal yellow-to-blue graphic gradient. This gradient was created in MS-Paint, version 2.0. This is teamed with impeccable use of beveled borders on the title captions.
So team, what have we learned? Many things, one being the importance of cause-and-effect. Be safe with your computer passwords and floppy discs; that, and take your time, everything is perfectly fine, and have fun whilst at work. Both men and women at work.
You took too much, man, you took too much, too much. There is a song that sums up this review:
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Dear diary, hi again, this is your friend Bi-Bi, and after my daddy bought me baby rollerblade we went to Tahiti, and Bi-Bi and baby rollerblade went rollerblading with mommy. When did many super-fun things.
(1) Went rollerblading. check √
(2) Drank fruit punch. check √
(3) Bi-Bi played with rollerblade baby. check √
(4) Daddy bought Bi-Bi a new doggie. check √
(5) Bi-Bi eat ice cream. check √
(6) Bi-Bi spend money. check √
(7) Bi-Bi throw a hissy when mommy fight with daddy. check √
(8) Bi-Bi throw frisbee with rollerblade baby. check √
(9) Bi-Bi get hungry and go pee-pee. check √
(10) Doggie go pee-pee in hotel room a me hidey. check √
(11) Mommy and daddy take Bi-Bi and rollerblade baby to believe-it-or-not museum owned by Ripley’s. check √
Hi, I’m here to talk to you about money. Look at me — I’m walking around a beautfiul desert landscape, talking about making money, and tell you that, “the American dream is gone and it ain’t coming back.” During shooting breaks, the production team drank fruit punch and ate edible panties — over 10 boxes of edible panties —boy, our dogs were tired after that day of shooting.
Luckily, we had some nice and dandy unpaid commerical actors providing testimonies regarding our unscucessful scheme program that since has folded. Footage of these unpaid commerical actors gave us something to cut away to, because I (i’m in the cowboy hat) cut my shooting schedule short — frankly, I ate too many gosh darn edible panties. Then our unpaid production assistants and our unpaid interns ran to the store to buy more edibile panties. What were they thinking? More edible panties? Those damn unpaid interns and production assistants should know better; they know I can’t stop eating edible panties.
Get a load of this: after production ended, my unpaid producer hauls in this box filled with receipts to me, receipts from the unpaid interns and production assistants, askin’ I be reimbersin’ for their takin’ kindly to my edible panty-fixin’-hankerin’. Now I’m a straight shooter and I tell ‘em how it tis: “You’re unpaid! Christ, you knew you’re going to be unpaid at the darn time you signed your unpaid contract. Were you expecting a for-hire opportunity after production? Don’t make me laugh. Christ, I ain’t ‘embersing you for the edible panties. I don’t care what you do on your tax returns. Cook the books or something. Write it off as a gift! Leave me alone, I want to play with my toys in my office.”
Wow-wee. Production was something else. My dogs were killin’ after production.
This commercial is low fidelity — no excuses — this kid is speaking martian.
Some say, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, that Nerf was a government subsidiary with a mission to mint condition the minds of children for an oncoming intergalactic war with “unknown and unseen ‘invaders.’”
After many botched theories, the U.S. Government concluded that Nerf Corporation would move forward by, “just selling toys, packaged in radical and booger-ish boxes, with GPS tracking chips implanted”; notwithstanding, this video speaks martian, in plain broken english.
Like, um, like, somebody call the dork police, and the fashion police, because this spot is so totally 30 seconds of dork-alert-5000.
This commercial is a recipe for a dork-disaster: 1) the commercial is driven by a kids’ bop rendition of the “Bly Gotta Feelin’ kick-start-party-song by the Black Eyed Peas. 2) the opening line of the song is, “Didn’t know, couldn’t see, what was around the corner for me. Let’s go!” 3) the kids bop vocalist is dressed in autotune, and this is a textbook example of a creative team shamelessly jumping on the ephemeral autotune bandwagon.
4) The commercial flagrantly targets caricatured demographics — only those who can afford a weber, of course — which, in this case, is the widowed, prim and proper, affluent grey panther; the wholesome African-American male who lives in the suburbs and is happy; the lonesome librarian who lives by herself and has fun by herself; and the jolly bearded gas station attendant (he’s the lil shocker). This blogger will omit the rest of the dorks, because I respect you, and because this dork-ball video-mash subsequently welters into an unsightly meatball — hot and ready to be charred on the ole’ web grill.
However, I do appreciate the female backing vocals, 0:26 in, when we hear a passionate, “Come on — yeah!”
Rating:30 Seconds of hot-and-ready propane gasy hell
Sometimes you need to take a break from television commercial reviews, simply because you are overwhelmed by how much you love to be sick by television.
Official Synopsis from the Ad Agency: What do you get when you combine a classic hit, unforgettable choreography and first-rate comedic talent? You get Turn the Tub Around, a multi-faceted musical campaign for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® that showcases fresh butter taste the healthier way. The campaign stars the multi-talented Emmy® and SAG-award winning actress Megan Mullally and features song and dance videos choreographed by Tyce Diorio.
This is one of those appalling commercials that, when it appears on t.v., will melt your ears off like candle wax. Boy, it sure did butcher that Gloria Estefan song.
Let us take time to acknowledge Tyce Diorio’s masterful choreography. A spin-ful duet-ing tangle. Watch this spot five plus times and you might start appreciating the choreography.
We may be breaking our rules here; however, this is one dandy television infomercial. This guy is frivolous:
He wears a white buttoned all the way to the tippy-top!
His maniacal laugh.
16 seconds in, we hear him fall off his car whilst off-screen. (Whilst, whilst, whilst, whilst).
“Insert finger here.” Later on, “Insert two fingers here.”
No one in their right mind would have such zest whilst selling clam earrings, earrings made from the same metal material as those crumby, made-in-China rings you buy from the gumball machine for 50¢.
Whilst talking to a guy off-screen, he begins his ventriloquist lip-syncing act. Riotous!
Oh, but how I love the lavender picture-in-picture that frames he whilst the close-up of the clam earrings hang on screen. This spring, oh have I longed, and whilst longing, I have looked for thee, and now I have found the ne plus ultra picture-in-picture infomercial where a frivolous guy deals clam shell earrings at DOOR BUSTER prices.
The ultimate highlight of this spot is when the riotous guy demonstrates a ‘how to: insert earrings into your ear.’ I love this guy … come to think, I wouldn’t mind being an infomercial dude who sells clam shell earrings. As a matter of fact, I would probably model myself after this guy. Wow, this guy is really great. I hope he reads this. I wonder how many earrings he sold that day. Thousands.
Well, it’s Super Bowl XXXXXXXXVVVVIIIII, which means it’s prime time for shitty commercials; it’s also prime time for corporations to spend absurd amounts of money solely to project a humanistic image, a witty image, an empathetic image, or some sort of image that will win Americans over enough to buy/support their product.
Let’s see how many ‘fucking awesome’ Bud Light commercials will run; let’s see how many Dorito commercials there will be; let’s see how many celebrity-endorsed Pepsi advertisements will run (if Pepsi still has money); and, of course, how many cock-blocking, blue-ball-inducing GoDaddy.com commercials — the commercials that reliably feature Danica Patrick in some sort of lesbian erotic situation, where sexy babes rip off their clothes, only to be cut off with text that says something to the extent of “see the rest of this sexy ad by visiting godaddy.com” — sure, they imply that Danica will dike it out with some bi-curious nympho, but do these brauds ever put out? No way Jose, they’re waaay prude. If you happen to visit godaddy.com to watch the rest of the commercial, this indicates that you’re way too horny.
Moving on, do you hate commercials; do you hate how loud they are and the psychosis they induce? Do you hate commercials enough to blog about them? If so, comment below, and in 15 words or less, explain why you hate commercials enough to blog about them. Be sure to include your primary email address and we will contact you via email asking for a short writing sample.
*This post was written by Chris Tucker, 30 Seconds of Hell guest blogger and star of the Rush Hour trilogy.
Hey! Did you know you that you just a skeleton under all that stupid skin your body wear? Nah? Well, I’m gonna rip your skin off by playin’ a nasty ass highlight reel of the mother f**king Sega Genesis games — games like Helicopter®, Wolf®, Sports®, Football®, Sports®, and motha f**king LING LING®.
Hey! Sega CD is meritorious because it introduced the compact disc into the sphere of gaming; it initiated the epoch of the compact disc; without Sega CD, God neva wouldda created the Sega Saturn — God’s gift to women — Sega Saturn was the best system in the history of the world, because it gave us Virtual Cop 1 and Virtual Cop 2, enough said, you ask your Grandmama, she know, and I’m out!
Now it time for you to geta damn spatula and you just go now a scrape your lil cat fluffy off your bunk-ass walls nah. And you know you betta white wash them walls clean now.
Do you understand the words that are coming-outta-my-mouth?
L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of Scientology — he was either a compulsive liar — or he tapped in to the deepest darkest secrets of the Universe.
Hubbard claims he became the protege of a revered Native American shaman at the early age of four. This may have fueled his fire to write 1,084 fiction works, one of which he was awarded the faux IG Nobel Prize — a prize that is awarded to works that “first make people laugh, and then make them think” — the prize is then presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater.
What, exactly, does Scientology say about space aliens? Well, according to OT III (Operating Thetan level 3), L. Ron Hubbard writes:
… 75 million years ago, the head of the Galactic Federation, made up of 76 planets, was a being named Xenu. Faced with an overpopulation problem, he brought beings to this planet, blew them up with hydrogen bombs, and packaged them. Their spirits now infest our bodies: he says “One’s body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.” Scientologists at this level try to rid themselves of these thetans (spirits) by helping each one to remember the painful experiences of being blown up like that.
I must state that I have no understanding of this ‘Galactic Federation’; it recalls TV shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica; I wonder if this book advertisement played during commercial breaks of the aforementioned. Also, I have not read the “Operating Thetan Level 3″, I pulled the above citation from scientology-lies.com, and judging by the domain name, this has a high probability of being bias.
Now, I’m not writing to brief you on the beliefs of Scientology, nor the ‘parasitic’ aliens that have infested our bodies, I’m writing to highlight how shitty this commercial is — and my review is in the title.
Rating: 30 Seconds of Truth?
End Note: I do admire how this commercial is a book advertisement. When is the last time you saw a book commercial that wasn’t a get-rich-quick infomercial?
I hope you’re not hungry, because this is yet another jumbo meal deal from the McDonald’s Corporation (the other meal deal can be found here). Dikembe Mutombo — the NBA’s most notorious finger-wagging, shot-blocking king — endorsed this jumbo deal 20, 30, possibly 100 years ago. Seemingly since television has existed, McDonald’s has affixed this notion that NBA superstars, e.g., Dikembe ‘Jumbo’ Mutombo, eat a large plate of the double quarter-pounder, or depending on the decade, the triple cheese, before they hit the court for that championship game. This long-standing link is upheld by way of basketball superstars — Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Bob Cousy, Dwight Howard, Trooper Washington, Tiny Archibald, Goo Kennedy, Kirby Boobiblatz, Detlef Schrempf, Dom DeLuise, — wow … wait … eight minutes ago the associated press reported that NBA superstar LeBron James reaches multiyear deal to shill for McDonald’s.
Part one of our series features another clever commercial from ESPN’s Sportscenter. This commercial features former-NBA Allstar, Gheorghe Muresan, a 7′ 7” center who played for the Washington Bullets in the ’90s. He is really tall. Gheorghe is such an erudite — a damn tall erudite — that he starred in My Giant (1998) with co-star, Billy Crystal.
