I'm Watching Too Many Commercials Lately

We've been watching the NCAA tournament for more than a week now. If you're like me, you are watching more commercials than you usually do, because you're not using the DVR as much with the live basketball. Flipping between games is fine, but more often than not we find that games are at commercial at the same time.

Given this dynamic, I've been keeping a mental list of the most annoying commercials shown ad nauseum during the tournament. I'm sure you all will have other thoughts.

5. I don't have a daughter, but if I did, I'd sure as hell hope that she wouldn't be like Maggie, the little girl from the Howie Long/Chevy commercial. "I'm a big girl." Oh yeah, Maggie? Are ya? Sit your ass in that SUV and close the door. Hopefully Chevy has engineered some good soundproofing into that particular vehicle.

4. Spaghetti Jimmy. The Capital One commercials are getting hideous (unless it involves Vikings), and this one is the worst of the bunch. I don't even really want to talk about this one. Garbage.

3. Buffalo Wild Wings has the commercial where the restaurant patrons want the basketball game between Boston and New York to never end. Really? Seriously? More than wanting your team to win, you just want the game to go on in perpetuity? In the commercial, right after "New York" ties the game with Boston, some assclown wearing a "Boston" jersey says that he wishes the game would never end. "Send it into overtime! Yeah!" OK Boston cockgobbler. If your team has the ball at the end of the game with the shot clock off, the absolute worst case scenario (unless your team can't inbound the ball because, say, your guy pulls a Lazar and steps over the end line) is that the game is going to overtime. But since we're in stupid commercialland, the good folks at Buffalo Wild Wings have the power to send this particular game into overtime, with the full backing of the Boston fans, mind you, by causing the Boston guy to miss a wide open, game-winning layup at the end of the game, with Boston fans cheering their hearts out. Just dumb.


2. The Burger King midget farmer commercial. I have seen this commercial at least twenty times, and I still can't decide whether it is serious or not. Do farmers know about a hearty breakfast? Perhaps. But what about wee farmers? Do they know about hearty breakfasts, or do they just know about hearty breakfasts for wee folk? "They're small but they work hard" says the small farmer. OK. I'm not looking for a hard-working breakfast. Just one that doesn't have me thinking about gnawing my arm off by 10:30. Will the BK midget farmer breakfast meet this criteria? Unclear.

1. CBS 58 news, "Just 10 Minutes of Your Day." This jingle will be in my head until I die. And I hate CBS 58 for it. Hate them. I don't watch local news, and if I did, I'd never consider watching CBS, but this cements it for me. I'll never watch the evening news on CBS 58. Ever. I'm not sure if this commercial is limited to the Milwaukee area, or if every market with a CBS affiliate has to suffer through its own version of this horrid commercial. I truly hope all of you outside of Milwaukee don't know what I'm talking about with respect to this particular commercial.

What commercials am I enjoying? The Bud Light ones aren't bad. "That's why I don't ride a bike."

Finally, an observation about the actual tournament. Does anyone else think it is stupid that the Sweet 16/Elite 8 games in Arizona are held in the Cardinals NFL stadium? I guess I can understand using a giant stadium for the Final 4, but using these stadiums at this level just makes it look like there are 10,000 people in the place. I don't know what the attendance figures have been at Glendale, but give these players some atmosphere for goodness sake. Use a basketball stadium.