JOHN OSTRANDER: Scattershot – TV Spots
When I and Mary, my sweetie, sit around doing the couch potato thing, it’s always best to head for the commercial free stuff because it’s guaranteed that a high percentage of the commercials are going to offend her to the point of a rant. Not that the rants aren’t entertaining but I have to keep reminding her, “It isn’t supposed to make sense; it’s trying to sell something.” Or “It doesn’t work for you because you’re not the target audience.”
Generally, I try to let the commercials just wash over me without really registering them but every so often some do. On rare occasion, such as with the Mac/PC commercials, it’s because I genuinely enjoy them. More often, something sticks like tar in my mind because either a) it is incomparably stupid and/or b) my brain, warped by years of pop culture, does something with it the makers of the commercial never intended. Such as our first scattershot target.
LUNESTRA. It’s a prescription sleep aid and, in the commercial, restless people in their beds at night are visited by a luminescent green luna moths after which they close their eyes. The ad-makers, of course, want us to interpret this as Lunestra bringing gentle, natural sleep. Given the moths’ glowing green nature, however, I’ve become convinced it’s stealing their souls and that the people shown are dying. To Mary’s vast amusement (and my own) I’ve taken to screaming at the TV when these commercials come on as if it were a horror film. “LOOK OUT! IT’S STEALING YOUR SOUUUUUULLLL! FOR GOD’S SAKE – WAKE UP! OH NO! IT GOT THAT WOMAN, TOO! CAN NOTHING STOP IT?!?” Try it the next time you see the commercial; great fun.
THE CLONE OF ORVILLE REDENBACHER. When Orville Redenbacher first brought out his own line of popcorn decades ago, he also made himself the company spokesman, always telling us his popcorn was better than these others yadda yadda yadda “. . . or my name isn’t Orville Redenbacher.” Well, Orville was no spring chicken when this all started and eventually died. Recently, they brought back some of the old commercials and that was all right. Kind of a nice retro feel; I thought they worked nicely. That evolved, however, so that they got somebody made up to look like him with a make-up job that makes him look more like a Disney animatronic. And they use the same tag – “. . . or my name isn’t Orville Redenbacher.” It isn’t. We know it isn’t. This Orville has an embalmed look that makes him really creepy.
THE BURGER KING. The only creepier company spokesman on TV right now is the Burger King. You’ve seen him. Human body and an oversized plastic head that seems modeled after a young Henry VIII. The effect is like one of these licensed characters you see walking in a parade or in a theme park. Then they put him into situations that frankly make my flesh crawl. One of the commercials for BK’s breakfast line-up had a guy waking up in the morning and the Burger King was there in bed with him. The tag was “Have breakfast with the King.” The only thing I could think of was, “Dude, I don’t care how much you drank last night or how late their late night window is open, this is just wrong.” Not because the BK might be gay; it’s because he’s not human. Note to commercial makers: I don’t buy products where the commercials creep me out. (more…)
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Back when my ex-husband and I were first getting heavily involved in online comics fandom and attending lots of conventions, there weren’t a lot of women con-goers, so we all tended to stand out a bit and more or less gravitate towards one another. As I recall there weren’t a lot of “booth babes” in those days, so the women con-goers consisted mostly of either readers (what we would call “fangirls” today but which term hadn’t even come into vogue by that point) or comics creators’ spouses, with the very occasional industry pro like Colleen Doran and Maggie Thompson and Heidi MacDonald.
Step-sister site 
