This Week in Rage – 11/16/13

This Week in Rage – 11/16/13

This Week in Rage, a blog about the top three things that pissed me off this week:

 

Beer Commercials: A few weeks ago I was complaining about how daytime TV ads used to say how you how you could work in a doctors world or get your trucking license in under 8 days and now they’re all for structured settlements and asbestos related class action lawsuits.  Basically the message changed from “get a job” to “just go to the mailbox in your Hoveround and pick up your check.”

Well another bad sign of the times are beer commercials.  Every beer ad when I was growing up showed a bunch of guys walking into the bar covered in grime and wearing hardhats after clocking out for the day.  The voice over would say, “You worked hard all day, now it’s time to reach for some ice cold Rocky Mountain refreshment.”  They’d take a pull off it and have a nice “aaahhh”.  Now every beer commercial is a multi-ethnic rooftop party full of 23-year olds with DJ Jazzy Jew spinning the tunes.  No one did anything that day except try to get laid.  You used to earn your beer.  Not anymore.  A voice over saying “You read the Huffington Post on your Kindle and watched a bi-racial couple make out on a rooftop. Its time to reach for some ice cold Rocky Mountain refreshment” doesn’t quite work does it?  The guys who would knock off work and hit the bar for Miller Time after placing girders are gone, it’s all skinny guys in scarves and pork-pie hats who look like Justin Timberlake drinking 64 calorie “ultra” beers.  No wonder every bridge is falling down.

 

If It Steers, It Clears: I did a function for the North Hollywood Police Department the other day and I was sitting next to our new mayor, Eric Garcetti.  When it came time to address the room and do my speech, I directed some at him.  I said “Mr. Mayor, this whole thing with the ‘if it steers it clears’ campaign in other cities but not ours.  L.A. has the worst traffic yet every other state and municipality seems to have the signs that say if you get in a fender bender you should pull to the side and not slow down traffic.  What’s up?”  He gave the incredibly unsatisfying answer,  “hmm, that’s a good idea.”  Why have you never heard of this?  They do this in Boseman Montana.  The only time they have traffic is if a cow breaks through a fence and all two cars in town have to slow down.

Then afterwards the head of the California Highway Patrol came up to me and made it worse by saying “you know that is a law.”  What?!  It’s a law that no one knows about because you assholes are too busy putting “click it or ticket” on those digital signs.  How about we get this campaign out to all the braindead folks that are out there clogging up traffic with their fender benders and enforce that law?

 

Blockbuster Closing: I’m not superstitious, I don’t pray to the great magnet in the sky, but when you don’t have a porn section in your video store you get what’s coming to you.  It’s just bad ju-ju.  Blockbuster would still be here today if they had porn on the shelves.  It’s bad karma.  Or arma or handma, if you catch my meaning.

This made me miss the Ma and Pa porn section. Remember the little local video store that had the porn section shoehorned into the corner?  The entire place was 900 square feet so they took a 4×4 corner and hung western doors, beads or a shower curtain around it, like the worlds worst – or best – voting booth.  There used to be just one coffee table book I wanted to see produced in my life.  It was and idea I had called Dade County Black Prom – 1977-1983.  Imagine the majesty of those pictures.  Timeless.  But now I’m adding a second.  I want to see Early ‘80s Ma and Pa Video Store Porn Corners hit the Barnes and Nobel coffee table book section.  Maybe we can get it out in time for Christmas.  Let’s get on this people!

 

-Adam