We interrupt this program to bring you these important commercials....

Maybe I tend to read too much into things, but I’m well aware that advertisers will target their commercials to a certain audience segment and that they work in conjunction with programmers at the local and national level to make sure that their ads are shown at certain times during certain shows. Thanks to the miracle of TiVO and other DVR devices, most of us just record shows and fast-forward through the commercials.

Being that I’m on vacation this week, I started to really check out what commercials were on at what times, because I’ve noticed in the past that shows like Maury and Jerry Springer (guilty pleasures I engage in every couple months) generate the sort of commercials that paint a rather grim picture of the average viewer.

They must think that the average viewer of their show is broke, has bad credit, is undereducated, in failing health, and is looking for a way to sue somebody and get a settlement. As evidence, I checked out the commercials this morning: in the space of two hours I saw multiple ads for adult education (tech-schools and courses in the medical field, and a massage therapist school), an ad to get your invention patented, ads for tax debt relief and for credit counseling, two different ads for low-cost self-paid health insurance, multiple ads for minimum-coverage cheap car insurance, ads for diabetic testing supplies and home breathing-aid supplies, cheap no-credit used cars, the Scooter Store ad, and just a couple ads for actual products you can buy in a store, like Airwick air freshener, Playtex tampons, and Prefer-On scar remover. By far, though, the main brunt of the ads were from the ambulance-chasers. There were nearly a dozen ads for personal injury lawyers. All the local names were there: Akim Anastapoulo (The Strong Arm), a stay safe holiday message from Clekis Law Firm, one out of the blue from a firm I’d never heard of (Howell & Christmas), a few from everyone’s favorite local guy Bill Green (The Heavy Hitter), and a barrage bombardment from the Joye Law Firm. Reese Joye was everywhere; I mean there was a Joye ad on every commercial break.

There isn't a single human being in greater Charleston who doesn't know who this dude is...

Later on, for fun, I checked a commercial block during One Life To Live while I was channel surfing. Ads were seemingly geared towards Mom, who must do all the shopping for the family, I guess. Tylenol PM, Liquid Plumber, Loreal hair color, 1-800-Flowers, Crest Whitening, Wal-Mart, Joye Law Firm’s ad for suing a nursing home, the massage therapy school again, Dixie Furniture(Dixie’ll do it, ‘cause Dixie don’t care!), Folger’s, Totino’s Pizza Rolls, Build a Bear Workshop, Colgate Total Advanced Whitening, some drug called Abilify to treat your depression (it’s not recommended for dementia, by the way), M&M’s, Sears, Pilsbury Crescent Rolls (mmm, I’m making some tonight), Disney DVD’s on sale, and Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicine.

I was scared of what I might find over on MTV. Bounty paper towels…that was a surprise. An ad for Zoo York sneakers with talking roaches, a pretty cool recruiting ad for the Army, a couple cell phone ads, some video game you play with your butt, Axe Body Wash (guaranteed to get you laid it seems), the Academy of Art, a WWE wrestling video game, a couple commercials for upcoming movies, Progressive insurance, and a bevy of ads for crappy faux-reality shows on MTV.

But what about The Military Channel? That’s where I usually hang out. What commercials are geared towards me, I wonder? Vonage, so I can make international calls, the USO, which is a very worthy cause, DirectBuy for getting the things I need to build my new home, the Rosetta Stone software to teach me other languages, the Playstation 3 movie downloader so I can do more with the system than waste time playing games, Gravity Defyer dress shoes, and a laundry list of ads for other shows on sister networks owned by the Discovery Channel.


For $549.00, you too can learn Irish Gaelic!!!

In the afternoon, the second round of Maury/Springer was the same as before but added a George Sink personal injury lawyer ad, and one for Enzyte.

I shudder to think about the commercials on the Playboy Channel…do they even have commercials on there?

It's Crumbelievable....

It’s always sad to see your favorite songs from your teen years get whored out to advertise crappy products in commercials. It’s just a weak-assed attempt by ad makers pandering to my generation of now-grownup alternative/new-wave music fans and use our sacred icons to pry the money from our wallets. Couldn’t they just get Barry Manilow to write a shitty jingle, like he did for Dr. Pepper?

These are in contrast to songs that actually became popular after they were in commercials, notably the Mitsubishi commercials that made pop songs out of "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas and "Breathe" by Telepopmusik. I'd never heard of either song prior to the commercials.

A few years ago I was appalled that Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” was being used in a GAP ad. I thought Mode would never sell out, and then it occurred to me that DM doesn’t own that song; Vince Clarke does. He wrote it and owns it, so it was his right to make money off it. Sad that he used it in such a shitty way, advertising crap clothes on underfed children. In 2004 the song again was used, to sell the Hyundai Accent, though I never saw that ad. Earlier this year, the song was also used in commercials and trailers for the mediocre Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore film “Music and Lyrics”, but the song appears NOWHERE in the movie. It was merely bait. I’m not against my favorite music artists having songs in movies, not at all. But to just be used as bait? That’s sad.

Robert Smith of The Cure allowed “I Dig You” (a track done under the name Cult Hero) to be used by Monster.com, but I seem to have missed that one too, and in order to get support for their Connect The Dots box set, he allowed HP to use “Pictures of You” in an ad about photo editing. I almost choked on my tongue when the Basement Jaxx started selling Pringles tater chips with "Where's Your Head At?"

U2 whored out the song “Vertigo” for the Apple iPod and the U2 special iPod.. Back in the late 90’s, Mazda butchered the classic song by The Nails, “88 Lines about 44 Women”, to sell cars. The Ramones let Nissan, AT&T, and Diet Pepsi use “Blitzkrieg Bop”. Devo was desperate enough to let Swiffer kill “Whip It”. Noted Christian darlings Sixpence None the Richer amusingly let their cover of The La’s song “There She Goes” be used to sell birth control pills. Wendy’s ruined the classic Violent Femmes track “Blister In the Sun” (as well as using Benny Benassi’s thumping club hit “Satisfaction”). Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life is all over the place, most notably selling Caribbean cruises (and Fords in the UK). Also in the UK, Iggy’s song “The Passenger” was used to sell Toyotas and Fiats. Now his song "Punkrocker" is selling Cadillacs, too.

The The sold freakin’ M&M’s with “This Is The Day”, a song that has nothing to do with candy and everything to do with getting your shit together. Cell phones were sold by Goldfrapp's "Ooh La La" and the Psychedelic Furs classic "Pretty In Pink". New Order let “Blue Monday” be used in the UK to sell Mars bars and Sunkist, and recently must have been hard up for cash I guess, because in the span of the last couple weeks they had “Age of Consent” selling AT&T, and when I heard “Bizarre Love Triangle” selling Reese’s peanut butter cups I was almost apoplectic..

And, sadly, the classic “I Melt With You”, the only legitimate hit by Modern English, has been used everywhere, hawking everything from Burger King to the GMC Acadia and T-Mobile (as a cover version by a shitty French band), to Taco Bell Cheesy Beef Melts. The song has been sold as a cover version to dozens of people.

But perhaps the cheesiest and most soul-crushing use of a classic alternative-ish song from my younger days was when Kraft turned EMF’s club anthem “Unbelieveable” into the melting-cheese crapfest that became…get this…I shit you not…CRUMBELIEVABLE. Kill me now, please. I beseech thee.