Patrick’s Rants

Jack in the Box’s sirloin burger ad shows us the corporate boardroom at Jack in the Box, where Jack is talking about their new burgers and how they cook the seasonings right into the meat. He then pulls down a diagram saying,

“For those of you not from Texas, here’s where the sirloin comes from.”

One of the other guys, then speaks up,

“Some of our competitors sell Angus burgers. Can you point to the Angus area.”

Jack looks at the diagram for a moment, then back at the guy and says,

“I’d rather not.”

Now Jack in the Box has been sued by CKE (Carl Karcher Enterprises) which owns Car’s Jr. and Hardee’s over the “confusion” between angus and anus, but the judge just wasn’t buying the injunction request.

It’s a good thing too. I mean BK has their Dr. Angus who promotes eating the angus burgers and they didn’t sue. Saturday Night Live has Colonel Angus and they didn’t sue. I mean, if you’re going to promote your Angus expect someone to poke fun at it from time to time.

A new commercial alerted me to an advertising campaign by CIT (http://www.cit.com) that states

“It’s Time Potential Became a Line on a Balance Sheet”

Have we learned nothing, nothing! from Enron?

The Sonic Guys are sitting in the car talking about the goodness of Sonic root beer floats when the moocher says, “the only way they could make these better is if they were free.”

Driver responds, “Actually, they are giving them away June 7th, eight PM to midnight.” At which point he gets a face full of spewed root beer float.

“What?” Yes, it appears to be true. Free root beer floats tomorrow night from 8PM to midnight.

Check out the Free Root Beer Float press release from Sonic

There are some commercials running on the TV that make me sick. No, I’m not talking about the one for the “Aussie Makeover“; it’s for bariatric surgery. The announcer boldly (stupidly) calls people who can’t lose weight on their own “heroes” for getting staples and lap bands. The truth of this is that they still have to put down the fudgecicles, fried chicken and corn dogs. There is nothing heroic about needing or getting help when it comes to health or anything else. Would they call them heroes if they asked for a ride? Oh look, there’s a hitchhiker - what a hero!

Frankly calling people heroes when they’ve done nothing heroic at all diminishes that title for people who are real heroes. Without getting too far afield, let’s talk about 9/11. Some people called the employees who went to work heroes. Hell, what’s heroic about eating a donut and hanging out by the water cooler talking about last night’s Apprentice? Nothing. The heroes were the ones who went into burning, crumbling buildings to try to save lives. Let’s not call someone a hero unless they did something for real, Okay?

The breakfast toaster thingy that Sonic has that has gravy poured over it is just the thing for our Sonic Guys - at least one of them. After realizing that he no longer has to clean up the left over gravy on his plate he proclaims that he has been freed. I never thought about “sopping it up with a biscuit” as chaining me down, but the sandwich sounds pretty good.

You’ve seen this commercial, there’s a man sitting in his chair watching TV. They’re reading the lottery numbers. His wife is in the kitchen cleaning. Suddenly he starts yelping, “whoa! Whoa!” His wife gets really excited, runs into the living room yelping and whoaing with him, thinking they’ve won the lottery. He tells her that smells clean. Lysol.

No man gets that excited about the smell of Lysol or any other cleaner - no straight man anyway. Maybe that’s what Lysol is trying to tell us: sluggish men sitting in the easy chair are so excited about the clean smell of Lysol that they start whooping and whoaing over the smell.

Whatever.

In the latest Sonic commercials the guy in the passenger seat asks the driver to order two coney dogs. The driver orders two cheese burgers instead drawing the ire of his passenger seat buddy. He then tells him to order something different which results in an erroneous order for tots. We now find out that the driver is similar to the quarterback - and he chose to call an “audible”¹

As an aside, the “Sonic Loser Guys” don’t actually have their seatbelts on in this commercial. Their seatbelts are wrapped around the back of their seats - you may have to look closely at their shoulders to see it - and they have a different strap draped over their shoulders as if that was the seatbelt.

1. Play called on the field at the last second, even changing the play called by the coach

I don’t normally take pot shots at former employers, but this this time I have to comment on a possibly misleading advertising campaign. The company that uses a big green block as their logo (no not the one that rotates the colored block)

This is a company that really can’t seem decide what it wants to be portrayed and tries “rebranding” itself over and over. The company? H&R Block. They used to be “The Income Tax People”. Simple, to the point - and most importantly - understandable. This year their tagline is “You’ve got people.”

I’ll set it up for you. Commercial 1) Man standing in his driveway talking to the postman. He says that he finally got his W-2 in the mail so he can get his taxes done. He then asks the postman if he has his W-2 mailed to him or if he can just pick up his W-2 at the Post Office. The postman replies that he doesn’t need his W-2 because, “I’ve got people”¹. Now, I’m an Enrolled Agent (hey just ’cause I don’t spend a ton of time doing taxes… ;)) and here’s where the commercial breaks down. First, the commercial isn’t completely clear - yeah they have the disclosure that you really receive an advance that they call Instant Money Advance (think payday loan) in the fine print, but people really don’t pay that much attention to the fine print at the bottom of commercials. Yes, you really do need your W-2 to file your income tax return, final paystubs aren’t adequate until mid to late Feburary. So an advance means multiple trips to your “people”.

Commercial 2) Man working on his taxes and his wife walks in saying they got an Audit Letter. She sarcastically says, “what do the people who did our return say? Oh that’s right, we used a box. What does the box say?” She holds the box up to her ear as if listening for something in the box. He asks what the box says. “Nothing, it’s just a box.” Implying that the audit assistance provided by H&R Block² is more than what it really is and that other “people” don’t provide similar services.

1. “You’ve got people”, or “I’ve got people”, sounds sleazy at best. Kinda like Tony Soprano, “I know a guy”, or “I got some people could take care a ‘dat ‘problem’ for you.”
2. H&R Block “audit assistance” is limited to sending someone with you to tell the IRS how your return was prepared. Not neccessarily to speak on your behalf or defend you.

Arrrrrrggggggg…..
The loser couple is back promoting the new Sonic Smoothie. Unfortunately the wimpy guy can’t bring himself to call it a smoothie and retardedly keeps saying, “love me a ruffie.” Too bad we can’t see how the script spells it, cause according to dictionary.com a roughie is a mean joke. And if it’s spelled, roughy, then it’s a fish. So what is he really drinking through that straw?

This guy is a worse loser that George Costanza, who we actually could like.

Arrrrrrggggggg…..
The loser couple is back promoting the new Sonic Smoothie. Unfortunately the wimpy guy can’t bring himself to call it a smoothie and retardedly keeps saying, “love me a ruffie.” Too bad we can’t see how the script spells it, cause according to dictionary.com a roughie is a mean joke. And if it’s spelled, roughy, then it’s a fish. So what is he really drinking through that straw?

This guy is a worse loser that George Costanza, who we actually could like.