Best and Worst Commercials

Being stuck inside for the better part of the past 2 years due to COVID concerns, I’ve seen a lot of great commercials on the TV and on social media and I’ve seen my fair share of terrible ones.

Here is a brief list of some good ones and some terrible ones. It’s in no specific order, and I’ll try to explain why I like or detest them. If you have any to add, please do!

Like: Any commercial for Tide Cold. These commercials with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ice-T, and a combination of laundry / cold / ice related players like Vanilla Ice, Mark Messier and Falcons QB Matty Ice, are absolutely hilarious! The most recent one with Gordon Ramsey which ends with Stone Cold yelling, “That guy needs to chill out!!” is so good! I get quiet for these commercials.

Like: Any Skip the Dishes commercial with Jon Hamm. Watching him promote the brand (which I use and love) while pretending to be a Canadian makes for very funny commercials.

Like: Uber Eats commercial with Elton John and Lil Nas X is hilarious! It took me a few times of watching it to catch all the little funny bits.

Dislike: KFC “Chicken Rich” commercials. The jingle doesn’t match the commercial, it’s terrible and it doesn’t make me want to eat KFC at all… It doesn’t make sense that fried chicken and chicken rich are a good combination, which is why it’s not. I had to pause it after grabbing the link.

Dislike: Intuit TurboTax Free “Dance Workout” commercial. It’s terrible. You know they say any publicity is good publicity? It’s not true. This commercial, which has a fitness instructor in short shorts saying “free” over and over again while leading a class doesn’t make you think of a tax product, but makes you wonder why Intuit would make another terrible commercial. I had to ask friends, and they all wondered why the commercial led you to believe that someone was going to come free from the instructors shorts, and nothing else. It’s super-cringy. Shame.

Dislike: The BMO commercial about the couple who are out for dinner and the menu is in German and the female comments that she stopped taking the German lessons because the free trial ended. The BMO guy who tells her that she’s paying now is fantastic! I think he’s great and I really enjoy him in the commercials. He’s really awesome as their spokesperson! But what gets me, is that when she finds out she’s still paying she says something in German, which sounds like she’s saying “fuck me!” I had to watch that commercial quite a few times before I realized it wasn’t what she was saying, but regardless… It’s in poor taste. The rest of the commercial is great, and I see they’ve added subtitles now, but still… UGH.

Like: There is a commercial that I’ve seen recently about a family who have a massive hole in their kitchen. I’m not yet sure what the commercial is about, but I like that as they’re staring in the hole, the female says something like, “my cat is in there” and then you hear “meow”, and a second later the male says something like, “and it has my keys”… I just find that last little commentary to be very clever and quite hilarious! I think it’s for one of those non-dairy coffee creamers…

Like: One last one while I remember is a commercial for I believe, Chevy Silverado, and it involves a cat named Walter. This cat loves the winter, and seeing the cat outside partaking in all winter activities is hilarious, especially the scene where a guy is buried in snow, and the cat starts to dig him out. The guys looks at the cat and says, that’s amazing, and the guy who owns the car and the cat says, yeah… that’s the 2022 Chevy Silverado, and he proceeds to discuss the car. Then the guy says, no, the cat! The cat owner says something like, what? you’ve never seen a cat before… It’s clever, it’s funny and it’s cute. Well done!

What’s on your list?

September in Canada

September in Canada is unlike any other month. School starts, people return from vacations, the Canadian National Exhibition comes to an end, and the weather… Oy, the weather.

Two days ago, the temperature was 20 degrees Celsius and people went nuts. You would have thought it was -20 degrees.

“Summer is over”.

“It’s going to be a very long and very cold winter”.

Those were just some of the comments being fired around social media and in the news.

Then yesterday… Yikes. It was 29 degrees with a humidex making it feel like it was 38 degrees.

Sweat.

As I walked along the TIFF route, all I saw was tank tops, shorts and lots of hot, sweaty people.

And then there is today… 15 degrees in the morning with an expected high of 20 degrees to be reached later this afternoon.

It’s down right confusing. Not the weather. It’s always been like that in September. What’s confusing is what to wear!

I happen to be typing this while sitting in a Starbucks location awaiting a client. I’m clearly not the only person confused by the weather.

Waiting for their orders are 5 people;

1. A girl in short shorts and a t-shirt
2. A guy in khakis, wearing a dress shirt with a sweater-vest over it
3. A woman with a long-sleeve shirt, pants and a toque
4. (and 5) 2 men, both in shorts, but one is wearing a jacket and the other is not.

That’s quite the range!

Worth noting, however, is that every single one of those orders was for a hot drink.

That’s September in Canada, eh?

It’s All My Fault!

It’s all my fault.

Not the fault of the many who removed their snow tires, or put away their shovels, but my fault that it’s snowing in Toronto on April 4th.

And for that, I’m sorry.

You see we have family just south of the border in The United States of Donald Trump, and for what seems like the past couple of weeks, that area has been pounded by snow.

Snow.

I know, crazy, eh?

Since it is my long-lasting belief that most Americans believe that north of the boarder Canada is always covered in snow, I mockingly sent a Facebook message to said relatives telling them that they needed to move to Toronto, not the Southern US because it was plus 8 here and we hadn’t seen snow in quite a while.

I mean really…

Spring weather in Toronto.

Snow in the US…

In April.

 

Clearly Trump saw my message and commended Mother Nature to sick light snow flakes on the City along with 90 km/h winds.

 

Heck… I’ll take the little bit of snow and I’m okay that Americans generally think we live in igloos in exchange for not having to arm our school teachers with guns, and not electing incompetent leaders…

Wait.

Disregard the leader comment, and let’s stick with no guns!

Brrrrrr.

OMG. A dead Raccoon… Or was it a Duck… Or maybe a…

During this long Passover break, we sent our boys to an outdoor camp north of the city for 3 days, and of course it was the three coldest days of the spring.  Being my typical children, Stewie brought his hat and mittens, while Linus brought neither and boy, was Linus cold!  He was so cold that he could not take more than 2 turns at the archery course.  Poor kid.

But after 2 days there, I finally found out something of interest when hanging out with Stewie last night in bed for a few minutes after the three of us watched a couple of innings of the Toronto Blue Jays home opener. (They wanted to see Grampa who was at the game.  lol).

The conversation went like this;

Stewie: “Oh! Next summer I want to go back to this camp!”

Me: “Great, why?  You really liking it?”

Stewie: “Yeah!  Today we saw

Raccoon – with skin and still alive

a dead raccoon, and if we go back next year, then I’ll get to see the raccoons skeleton!”

Me: “Errr, okay.  We can see skeletons at the Museum, if you would like.”

Stewie: “I know.  But I want to see this raccoon… or maybe it was a duck…”

Me: “You couldn’t tell what it was???”

Stewie: “Not really… We thought it was a raccoon.  Our teacher told us that, but some people thought it was a duck.  The other teacher said that too.  But then someone said it was a moose.  And can you believe that someone actually thought it was an elephant… They’re so silly.”

Me: “Was that your brother who said it was an elephant?”

Stewie – smiling.  “No, but your right.  If anyone was going to be silly about that, it probably would have been Linus.  But it was a small child who said that.  Linus thought it was a raccoon.”

Of course…

Mitzvah (Good Deed) Day 2011

This past Sunday, May 16th was Mitzvah Day (Good deed in Hebrew) at my son’s school.  So instead of taking him to see the Toronto Rock win the National Lacrosse League Champion’s Cup with a 8-7 win over the Washington Stealth, I took him and his younger brother to his school (next year it will be their school) so we could help the community and to help others not as fortunate as we are.

In cold, pouring rain, we arrived and helped the few soggy adults outside dig, plant and cover the newly dug garden in the front of the school with sunflower seeds.  If 1/5th of them take root there are going to be 50 plants.  🙂  My boys did a fabulous job in this rain and with all the mud – planting, raking and clearing.  It didn’t matter that it was freezing or that it was raining or that there was mud up to their knees, they knew we had to get those seeds into the ground and get them deep enough to cover so the animals can’t dig them up and eat them.  The boys were focussed and yes they tried every single outdoor tool.  It was funny.  I think all those years of having our own garden and getting the kids to help out finally payed off.

After that, we went inside to dry off and warm up and decorated some gift bags for the underprivileged.  These bags were then filled with toys and taken to a shelter.  Once all the bags were decorated and the toys all gone, we moved to a different station and we decorated some Canadian flags which went into backpacks stuffed full of school supplies headed for Kenya. 

After that, we were looking for more to do so we sauntered into the school’s kitchen to watch them put the finishing touches on the decorations on the brown bags filled with sandwiches heading to a homeless shelter.  The kids were also putting notes into the bags. 

The birthday / get well soon card station was packed full of kids decorating cards so we moved back to the backpack station to assist in the transportation of these items to a truck.

One our way out of the school, I found my kids pounding back freezies.  Stewie said he had 10 of them , Linus 4.  I think 3 each might be a more realistic intake. 

So in the cold and rain we agreed that a nice warm bagel would be the best fit for two hungry boys who pitched in for their community.  So off we walked towards the bagel house.  Problem was, we passed the parking lot of the school and there were 2 adults washing a car.  The boys REALLY wanted to help wash that car, so the organizer gave them sponges filled with soap and off they went, cleaning the entire car.  No totally drenched, we walked on to St. Urbains.

Once at St. Urbains, I was happy that the chocolate chip bagels we all gone, so the kids instead received a whole wheat sesame seed bagel which they happily chomped the entire way home.

A good end to a fun morning.

Helping others is a big deal and I want to encourage my kids to give back to the community.  Thankfully the school set this up and my wife suggested it was a better idea to take him here instead of to the lacrosse game.  Time well spent.