Awesome Video Of The Day

Who Knew That Canadians Make The Sweetest PSAs EVER?

Usually when I pick out a video to post for my Nooner, I’ll watch it over and over and over again, picking out every possible nuance that could possibly be used to comedic effect. I scour each and every frame for subtle facial expressions, looking for a glimpse beneath the surface, trying to figure out what it MEANS. Then I make a dick joke and go play video games.

Today is different, though, because I refuse to watch this video more than the half dozen times I just did. It’s pretty grim, but it’s also a highly effective PSA: the next time I’m a hot, upwardly-mobile, about-to-be-married Canadian chick carrying an enormous pot of boiling hot water, I’m going to be very careful.

Maybe our Canadian readers can clear something up for me: Are you guys constantly slipping on grease and suffering third-degree burns up there? Is this such a problem in Canada that it actually requires its own PSA? Here in the States we have PSAs for stuff like meth and teen pregnancy and domestic violence and stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one addressing the importance of CLEANING UP AFTER YOURSELF. Do you guys live in some sort of utopian wonderland where the biggest problem you have to worry about is slipping and falling? Does universal health care make everyone totally reckless or something? What’s going on up there?!

Also: How’s hockey going? No, really. I’m not making a joke here - I actually want to know. Please tell me how hockey’s going.

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Awesome Video Of The Day

Orangina Ad: Furry, French & Naughty

I’m going to try not to make a predictable, stereotypical joke about French people here, but it’s gonna be tough. Seriously - what the hell kind of commercial is this? You’ve got some weird bear getting ready to go at it with a smoking hot bikini-clad doe, and all these zebras are shooting off Orangina cannons all over some slutty-looking octopus, and then the sexy panda’s top falls off and you’re like, “Wait… WHAT?! SLOW DOWN!” Unless you’re French, in which case you’re probably used to companies using implied interspecial anthropormorphic sex to sell orange soda.

Can you imagine if this aired on American television during the Super Bowl? There would be rioting in the streets, but the rioting would be all slow and strangely erotic because everyone would be too horny and confused to riot properly, their minds clouded with weird fantasies about sexy pandas and exotic new brands of soda. What I’m saying is that I think it could be a hit, although I might suggest the following tweaks to prepare this spot for American primetime:

Replace Orangina with Diet Pepsi

Replace music with “My Humps” or maybe that one song about the girl’s “milkshake” (but change the lyrics to be about orange soda instead of milkshakes)

Throw pants on all the animals

Bear farts at the end

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Awesome Video Of The Day

The Anti-Gym

I’m not sure why a gym with a commercial like this would call itself the “Anti-Gym.” I always thought gyms were SUPPOSED to convince people that nobody will love them if they’re fat. What makes this one so special? I mean, I understand that it probably isn’t standard practice for a personal trainer to burst into your home, break your refrigerator and smear a plateful of chocolate cake all over your favorite purple shirt, but does that really make this an “Anti-Gym”? Sounds like a “Regular Gym” that’s staffed by sociopaths.

According to its website, The Anti-Gym is “Denver’s only health and vanity lifestyle boutique,” which is slightly more impressive than being the #1 sushi bar in Fargo, North Dakota. They consider themselves “a revolutionary alternative to ineffective and obsolete health clubs, personal trainers, and crash diets.” Finally there’s a gym that will verbally abuse me until I’m so full of self-loathing that I need to either get on the treadmill or blow my brains out! Someone came up with a system that ACTUALLY WORKS!

Say what you will about this commercial, but you have to admit it: When it comes to using a foghorn for comedic effect, this pretty much sets the gold standard.

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For future reference, if someone at a party ever offers you meth, the ONLY proper response is to scream “NO,” hit them in the face with a lamp, start running, and never ever stop.

Why? Because meth is the scariest fucking thing that’s ever been unleashed on mankind. And quite honestly, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS. All I know about it is that the state of Montana put together one of the most effective ad campaigns I’ve ever seen to convince me to fear it.

In honor of Halloween, and in order of the level of horror they impart, I proudly present the eight most Requiem for a Dream-like and a subtextual analysis of each.

8. “Friends”

Subtext: Taking meth destroys all sense of responsibility, and will dissolve all meaningful friendships you currently enjoy.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: Taking meth makes you an extremely cautious, alert driver.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If at the end the shot widened to reveal that the girl’s friends left her at a Shakey’s Pizza.

7. “Boyfriend”

Subtext: If you take meth, you will sleep with faceless middle-aged men at the behest of your enterprising boyfriend.
Less Obvious, Positive Subtext: If you take meth, you’ll get laid.
Simple Addition that Would Make the Video Hilarious: If instead of consoling his girlfriend with a stroke on the arm, the young man offered her the rest of a Diet Root Beer he’d been drinking.

More horror after the jump.
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I’ll bet you think those Army ads that show young cadets zooming over impoverished nations in choppers and earning a degree at the same time are aggressive propaganda. And you probably think that game the Army made is just a cheap way for the military to suck in the bottom ten percent of High School graduates. Well, let me ask you this: If the armed forces weren’t so adept at roping in our youth, where the hell would we get our troop surges from? Huh, smart guy?!

Why do I bring this up? Well, turns out the British analogue to our CIA is now posting recruitment ads in the virtual world. Yes, the GCHQ, a government intelligence “organisation” (fucking Brits) has begun to advertise on digital billboards inside of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

Admittedly, ads recruiting web-savvy grad students to play spy is a far cry from the Army, but it’s only a matter of time before we’re seeing ads like these in…well, Far Cry. And from there, I’m expecting WoW servers to be overwhelmed with virtual recruiters within a few weeks.

Aside from the broad implications of in-game advertising—Master Chief chews Bubblicious? Who knew?!—I am sad to say I find one fundamental flaw in the logic behind this strategy, at least from the point of view of the armed forces. Namely, it assumes that gamers are the type of people who should be running long distances carrying live weapons.

Just because S3nator_B33r can consistently snipe people in the head at a hundred yards in Call of Duty 2, that doesn’t mean he can do the same in real life. In fact, all it really means is he is a spawn-camping dick. I also can’t shake the image of an Army recruit, after his first kill in Iraq, running over to a dead insurgent to squat repeatedly above his head. Your shields won’t withstand their rockets, frat boy.

The lesson here? The next time someone in a video game asks you to “undertake a valiant quest to safeguard the liberty of all peoples in this land,” just make sure you don’t sign anything. In the meantime, let us all rejoice at the thought that yet another sphere of our existence is about to be invaded by product placement and obnoxious ads.

I’m just hoping the industry’s got enough juice in it to resist succumbing completely. If not, look forward to rooting through your WWII-era pack to pull out a ration of delicious Chicken McNuggets or equipping your Red Mage with a staff of ReMax.

Dear Geico,

Throughout the years, we here at CRACKED have all been big supporters of your innovative advertising campaigns. Yes, the celebrity endorsements for real people ones were kind of tiresome, but at least Mini-me got a job out of it; life always seems so hard for him. And while the whole Geico/Gecko thing can only be pushed so far, you certainly made up for it with your Tiny House spot, easily one of the funniest commercials on TV since that guy ate a spicy meatball.

A fellow blogger has already discussed the Cavemen debacle, but hey, a commercial funny enough to be made into a shitty sitcom is still pretty good compared to most car insurance ads, which tend to feature poorly-animated superheroes, men in cowboy hats, or way too many taglines: “Now would be a good time to have accident forgiveness. That’s Allstate’s stand. Are you in good hands? We’re a car insurance company. You should peruse our offers for comprehensive collision insurance. Car insurance, that is. Allstate. Wacka-cha!”

But we must take issue with your latest ad campaign, which features Behind the Music-like sequences and co-opts classic television characters in a cheap attempt at arousing nostalgic love in the hearts of lonely Gen-Xers. Example below:

Get off of CRACKED’S turf, Geico! That’s our gimmick, and if you don’t cut it out pretty damn quick, you may wake up one morning to find a charming British amphibian’s head in your bed.

Sincerely,

Michael “Hey, remember the Snorks?” Swaim

Look, I’m no prude. I have a scheduled lovemaking session with my fiancée on the first of every month, and let me tell you: it gets pretty festive. But I feel I’ve got to draw some scrupulous attention to the ads for American Apparel I’ve been seeing everywhere.

I first saw an ad on the back of a magazine at a family get-together at my father’s house, and immediately assumed he was a child pornographer. After a very awkward ten-minute discussion and a bowl of spilled guacamole, it was explained to me that this:

was in fact an ad for a clothing store and not for a rainbow of underaged sex slaves as I had assumed. Since then, I’ve seen a number of these ads pop up, usually on the backs of magazines. This has proved problematic, as I am a functioning illiterate and spend my time at the doctor’s office or in line at the grocery store perusing magazine backs.

Suffice to say, the healthy erection I achieved after leering at this ad for twenty minutes didn’t help my attempt to persuade the checkout girl to give me a double coupon discount on a single coupon basket of mango slices.

If I could read or write—which, again, I cannot—I would have probably put it together that the word “tights” refers not only to leggings, but also to the woman’s vagina, and blown a load right there in aisle five.

These ads are dangerous, and they’re getting worse. I spotted these two smoldering on the rack at a local newsstand:

On the left, although you can’t read it (welcome to my world!) is text encouraging you to Google the model, Lauren Phoenix, billed as an actress and director. Can you guess what kind of actress/director Lauren Phoenix is? I’ll give you a hint: her name is Lauren Phoenix.

A Wikipedia search for the lass will reveal that she is indeed a rising Canadian porn star, and in fact has been awarded XRCO’s no doubt prestigious “Orgasmic Analist” award two years running.

And dear God! If my deciphering of the unintelligible scribbles on the right is accurate, this disease is spreading to our friends in Japan! Not only do I fear for their men, I also have to wonder what kind of mind is approached with the idea “we should advertise the fact that we are opening a branch of our clothing retailer in the Land of the Rising Sun” and responds forthwith with “what girl that works here can we get naked?”

That’s right! The models featured in American Apparel ads, according to text on the models section of their website, are primarily workers at the American Apparel factory! What kind of magical place is this where everyone is half-naked, attractive, and willing to be photographed with a single spotlight on grainy film a la’ 1970’s snuff films? What powerhouse of masculinity put this thing together?

The answers are Los Angeles, home of Pink’s hot dog stand and other sexually suggestive products, and Dov Charney, AKA this guy:

Gotta love the 70’s ’stache. Explains a lot, primarily this article accusing him of rampant sexual harassment and fraternization with his employees. But despite controversy and scandal, Mr. Charney is standing strong, refusing to back down from his hyper-sexualized advertising style. In fact, perusing the AA website one can unearth unpublished gems like these ones:

And of course this lovely ensemble:

Mmm, yeah, hot. God I’d love to fuck me some of—ARE THOSE LITTLE KIDS?! STOP IT DOV CHARNEY! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

To find out way more than you’d ever care to know about the sleazemonger Dov Charney and his filthy, filthy business, check out this exhaustive knowmore.org business profile of AA. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some adult education classes at the learning annex to attend.