Seriously. I really can’t think of anything I like less, anything that sucks the joy of living right out of me, than commercials. They just suck. Every time you sit through a commercial break you lose three-five minutes that you will never, ever get back again. And for what? So that some awful catchphrase will lodge in your brain, taking up valuable synapse space. Why should I know the exact pitch at which that guy says “can you hear me now? Good!”? I don’t need to. I don’t want to. And yet I could practically tell you what that miserable douchebag’s shoe size is, I’ve seen those godawful commercials so many times.
Then there are the various genres of commercial that are forced through our eyeballs every ten minutes or so. My least favorite (and there are so, so many types vying for that title) are the Generation X ones. Forget that they’re demographically about a decade too late. Someone decided that all twentysomething guys enjoy sitting someplace, usually in pairs, eating junk food, dressed in the kind of “slacker-hip” way that nobody actually dresses in, and either making goofy noises and giggling about it or just staring off into space like they’re on the nod. Do you know anyone like that? At all? No, you don’t–because they do not exist. They exist only in movies featuring Seth Green, which is where commercials get their information.
Then there are the “Isn’t it funny when animals bite people in the nuts?” commercials. The answer is, “No, it isn’t really funny when animals bite people in the nuts,” but thanks to that dumb fucking scene in that dumb fucking movie There’s Something About Mary where, when they’re not busy making fun of the mentally retarded or throwing jism all over the place, Ben Stiller wrestles with a dog, we now have to endure countless commercials the sole “punchline” of which is a dog or a squirrel or a ferret biting someone’s dingus. GodDAMNit but that’s so stupid. (Both the GenX and Animals Attack genres can be seen as subgenres of the All Men Are Drooling Idiots Who Only Think About Tits and Sports and Are Just Generally Really Dumb and Have No Clue About Anything and Are Also Probably Fat and Balding and Married to Hot Smart Soccer Moms ubergenre, which also, it must be added, sucks so long and hard.)
Commecials are also loud, like REALLY loud. They actually raise the volume level during the commercial breaks so no matter how hard you try you can’t tune them out. I know this doesn’t seem necessarily considering how inherently loud and obnoxious all commercials are, but that’s just it: they’re making them extra obnoxious. Most of them also have about a billion edits per minute, because none of us are believed to have attention spans anymore, a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of commercials if ever there was one. Visually and soncially, they are designed to irritate the bloody bejesus out of you, is what I’m saying.
There are some good commercials: SportsCenter commercials (ironic, considering that most of the world’s worst commercials are aimed at what is perceived as the SportsCenter demographic), anything in which someone is severely hurt and STAYS DOWN (this is key–getting hurt and then getting back up is NEVER FUNNY), commercials with cute doggies, the Capital One commercials with the vikings and medieval warriors and Yetis and whatnot, and this commercial from about six years ago in which Johnny Cash sang about Taco Bell. But all other commercials are timesucking lifesucking wastes of everything, and I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Anytime I watch something on my brother-in-laws TiVo, or watch a television show on DVD with the commercials cut out, or tape something and fastforward through the commercials when I watch it later, I think to myself, “Please, commercials of the world, eat my rosy Irish ass.“