“Opulence…I has it.” Have you seen this commercial for DirecTV? If not, then let me sketch it out for you. You see this freaky Russian guy, obviously part of the Russian mafia, wearing a real smarmy gold sweater, walking through his house (which is adorned with paintings, marble, chandeliers & all kinds of expensive items,) past bodyguards & a pack of dogs playing poker. He is, of course, flanked by chicks wearing fur coats and Rolexes, holding golden busts of himself that he selects “the best” from, because…he likes the best. He’s even eating golden grapes. Golden grapes? Jeeze, you’d never catch The Rat Pack eating golden grapes. Anyway, he also likes “savings the money,” so when he takes his golden TV remote off of the stack of gold bars one of the groupies is holding and turns on his TV, he tells us when he gets a good deal he “jumps in it.” Then comes the worst part of the commercial. He looks over, leans down, and gets a kiss from his…tiny, miniature giraffe. Are you kidding me? A tiny, cute as a button, iddy-bitty giraffe…sitting on a little, comfy pillow? Now, I like DirecTV as much as the next guy but this is ridiculous!!! A tiny giraffe? A tiny giraffe dispensing kisses on demand? I just can’t put up with this. I mean, come on, DirecTV, this just isn’t fair!!! Do you know that the first time that ad aired Google received more than 20 million search requests for “How can I get a miniature giraffe?”* And, yes, I was one of those poor schleps trying to find out if I could buy a tiny, cute, miniature giraffe for my wife. Of, course, to my disappointment, I found out that giraffes do not come in tiny, cute sizes. They apparently only come in one size…monstrosity size. And they’re not cute. They’re slobbering, lumbering freaks of nature…unless they’re tiny…but they don’t come in tiny! You know what else? There are still people out there that think we have zoos for dinosaurs. And why do people think we have real dinosaurs running around, opening doors & figuring out patrol patterns & tiny giraffes just waiting to give you a kiss? It’s the movies. Movies nowadays seem to rely on just one thing to attract audiences…super dooper special effects. Don’t get me wrong here; I like special effects as much as the next guy. I mean, there’s really nothing like seeing a group of people running from a pack of zombies…they get cornered in a dead end alley…the zombies begin closing in, eye balls hanging out of their sockets, arms bitten off & cool stuff like that…shuffling closer & closer…until…yeah, until that “one guy” that everyone was making fun of at the beginning of the movie for “preparing” for just this moment, pulls out a 12 gauge and begins exploding zombie heads like they’re cans of Sherman-Williams best “fire engine” red! BLAM! Oh yeah, who wants in the bunker now, assholes? I tell you what, if there’s a doctor with a nice set of jugs among the survivors, I think we’ve narrowed it down a bit. Anyway, that is nothing like what you’ve got to process at the movies today. There’s so much stuff flying around when two gigantic robots start fighting that you really don’t know where the good monster stops and where the bad monster begins. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard some baffled kid, after the big fight scene, mutter to his parents “dad, did Optimus-floptimus win or did Gargantuus-giganticus win?”** Here’s something that you may not know: Do you know the real reason Star Wars Episodes I through III sucked? No, it’s not because of that annoying “Me-sa Jar-Jar Binks” guy, the devil-child, or the fact that if Obi-wan really “loved him like a brother” he would’ve lightsabered Anakin through the head to put him out of his misery when he was laying on that bed of molten lava…instead of leaving him there smoldering & screaming in agony. “Oh, but I will take this lightsaber that you’ve left laying on the ground in order to patch up a hole in the plot of Episode IV.” Really? So, the real reason those “prequels” sucked is because the space fight scenes were as crowded as a trainload of Pakistanis fleeing from the righteous bombardment of our glorious air force (Allies? C’mon!) There were just too many fighters, too many laser blasts, too many little robots scuttling around cutting too many holes in too many parts of the spaceships they’re flying. Ummm, why don’t the robots just cut a hole in the canopy? Simple…because it would only have taken one special effect. Face it, special effects guys are showoffs. I can imagine some of them sitting around in a meeting eating skittles: “Hey, I heard that ‘Transfloppers XII’ has a scene with 983 different robot parts flying through 347 degrees…in 3D. Lucas says we have to beat that by 20% on our next production.” Jeeze, special effects guys. C’mon, everyone knows they don’t make robots with more than 350 parts total. So anyway, now they’re making movies with realistic, cute, little animals and cool dinosaurs to grab our attention. I tell you, it just isn’t fair. How do you tell your kids that dinosaurs are extinct when they say “but daddy, I just saw them on TV and can I get one of the cute, little green ones for my birthday?” So thanks a lot, special effects guys, for making the jobs of parents that much more difficult. Oh, and there’s one last thing I have to correct that “opulence” guy on. He may “like the best,” but the best “bust” on that commercial wasn’t made of gold. Harrumph…
* This fact is not necessarily supported by actual data.
** Never actually heard in public.
No comments:
Post a Comment