Month: October 2019

Some commercials are annoying. Some are outright embarrassments to anyone who has even attempted to act. Some — JSM — are both.

Television ads for certain products, especially for medicines or so-called biologics, make you wonder who skimmed off the production budget, because there’s no way the client got their money’s worth.

Let’s start with the commercial for Jardiance that features a band director just a little too into marching onto the field with her high schoolers. Hips sway, arms swing, she’s totally in control. We’re to believe her Type 2 diabetes is under control as well.

The commercial’s director decided a ground-level shot of the band would make the ad more interesting, and in most circumstances that would be true. But the shot captures the band marching onto the field, and John Philip Sousa must be turning over in his grave at how out of step these kids are.

The band director may be On It — per the slogan — but if her diabetes is being managed as well as the band’s routines, well….

Next is the “aww-ahh-ee-ahh” band for Humira, whose singer battles a serious intestinal disorder. It seems an odd career choice for someone whose condition is not yet being treated.

But let’s not discriminate. Musicians do get sick like the rest of us. It’s just that the whole storyboard and script for this travesty would be preposterous if no one in the band were debilitated.

In the alleged recording studio, the musicians are too close together, their mics are not properly filtered — the singer’s microphone definitely would pick up the drumming — and the keyboardist can’t see the rest of the band, until she is shocked and dismayed that the vocalist is heading for the loo.

And what band takes the stage without their singer unless she’s supposed to bounce out at a dramatic point in the song? Just standing around in front of a crowd?? Stage managers and crew would never let that happen, even if the band was naive enough to try.

Both of these ads are embarrassing because somebody convinced the suits somewhere that TV-watchers in America have no idea what goes on at high schools or at concerts.

The ads that drip into the Annoying Bucket usually involve clichéd characters, especially ones who appear in a continuing series — a continuing saga, if you will — and whose character development is cringe-worthy.

Progressive Insurance has Jamie. Liberty Mutual Insurance has Doug.

Ugh.

Here’s my overarching point:

Hard-working actors can and do use commercials as springboards into steadier gigs, especially actors whose recurring characters have some humanity to them.

Melanie Paxson (zillions of commercials, especially FiberOne), Milana Vayntrub (Lily of AT&T) and Morgan Smith (the red-haired Wendy’s salad spokeswoman) come to mind. I’m sure you recognize them. They’ve made the leap.

Commercial actors such as these get 60, 30 or even 15 seconds at a time to let their character skills be known and shown. When the character is ridiculous — I still feel sad for the Big Lots! human exclamation point woman — when the character is a joke, then whoever portrays Liberty-Bibberty Struggling Actor will remain just that.

Actors already struggle too much.

The range blew up the other night.

Well, not the entire range. Just one heating coil on the 20-ish-year-old GE freestanding stove.

It went kerblooey.

And then some.

From where I was sitting in the living room, kerblooey was more gerRANnerrrrazzZAPPP, with a light show that put the Grucci Brothers to shame.

After the excitement and a cooling-off period, the coil, from one of the two small burners, had a crater near its center, not big enough for the Eagle to land in but enough like Tranquility Base to commemorate Apollo 11.

Fortunately, no injuries to humans or felines, though there was a massive adrenaline rush. Nothing burned, although the flare-up blew the electrical cable off the end of the coil, knocked the connection bracket off the underside of the stove top, and welded the connector screw to the opening where the drip pan sits.

The service tech was nonplussed as, two days later, he assessed the damage. Something must have spilled, he said; that’s how these things short out and go up like that.

I wasn’t going to argue with him, even though that was not what we recall happening. This wasn’t spilled napalm; this was The Nader Effect.

Fifty-four years after Ralph Nader outed Planned Obsolescence in “Unsafe at Any Speed,” Andrea and I are swimming in a maelstrom of repairs and replacements.

Our phones are paid off. So the batteries don’t hold a charge as long as they used to.

New tires for me this week. New tires for Andrea last quarter.

New storm door two weeks ago.

And now, new stove.

Repairs to ol’ Bombs Bursting in Air would have equaled — if not exceeded — the cost of an exact replacement now on sale (it’s still called Columbus Day in New Jersey). So we buy instead of fix.

Folks who know us know we are crazy for maintenance. Oil changes on time. Wash and wax when the road salt sticks. Balance and rotate.

Our cars last 200K.

So it’s a doggone sin that Planned Obsolescence interrupts our rhythm, let alone our finances.

Now, I will concede that going-on-two-decades is a good run for any appliance, especially one that handles temperature extremes and the clang-banging of pots and pans.

But, still.

Planned Obsolescence? Must our disposable-consumer-goods economy, with tariffs slapped on so, so many items made in China or elsewhere, be the only model? Do we have to buy cheap?

I miss owning shoes whose soles could be mended, because what passes for shoes today wear out just when I get the leather on the uppers as soft as butter and as shiny as a mill pond, and I have to toss them and start breaking in new ones.

I still have — and often use — the hammer and Crescent wrench that hung from my backstage tool belt as a collegiate theater tech.

I still have — and occasionally wear — the scarf my Mom gave me in fourth grade, in the last century!

And even folks who are tortured by frequent software updates (where is 19H2, Microsoft?) will concede that the apps or OSes are better afterward.

So instead of Planned Obsolescence, instead of The Nader Effect, let’s transition to The Deacon’s Masterpiece. 

Oh, Shay, can you see?

P.S. — I’m not that deacon.

By mid-August, I begin to sense the changes. Always have.

The sun, especially the afternoon sun, is ever so slightly more orange. Just enough to affect the corner of my eye, but it’s there.

Of course, the daylight getting shorter (we all say “the day is getting shorter,” but it’s still 24 hours) is noticeable, especially as the dusk’s earlier arrival accelerates toward the equinox, just over a week ago.

Three days ago, this was early morning in Long Branch, New Jersey:

And while I appreciate my Vermont friends’ appreciation of the changing seasons, a la the stand of Jersey trees pictured atop this post and the many IGs and FBs from New England …

I

Just

Ain’t

Ready.

I want the scene to be more Long Branch than Long Trail.

With a h/t to Al Sleet, tonight it’s gonna be dark, continuing mostly dark and seasonably 60-degrees-ish, but tomorrow (Oct. 2, 2019) the temperature and the Jersey Shore humidity are gunning for the record.

90°F, 32°C.

One more lick of the July lollipop before the 14-day forecast says 65°F high, 55°F low pretty much every day.

My friends in Great Falls, Montana, of course, get the Rocky Mountain roller-coaster ride of 75° one day, followed by a two-day blizzard and an indefinite cold snap. So what’s in reality a gradual change of seasons around here is no cause to whine.

But full disclosure: I get SAD — that’s seasonal affective disorder, not all caps for emphasis — and just as a parent can tell when a tot is about to go from a mild whimper to a full-belly howl, I can tell in August that my season is ending, once again too short. The September flurry of restarted activities — and no matter how long it’s been since you had kids in school, you must conform to the school-year schedule because the rest of the world does — the September flurry is but a minor distraction.

This year, it seems, the leaves are changing, peaking, browning and tumbling more quickly, more abruptly than in years past. I have no empirical evidence; I just sort of know.

Head up to the Northeast Kingdom, O leaf-peepers of 2019. Enjoy the late-arriving fall in Vermont, a place I love.

Nonetheless, I’ll cling to green in 2019 in the Garden State as long as I can.