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With the dawn of football season barely a week away, we are entering a time when I will be watching a lot of sports events. Sports events tend to have different commercials than other shows because they are geared at men and the NFL has to get in all its "official" sponsors. This means that every given Sunday I will probably see the same set of commercials over and over again until I pretty much want to throw up, tear my ears off, gouge out my eyes, douse myself in gasoline and light myself on fire. In that order. Sound a little extreme? I don't think so. And its made even worse when the people I'm with like to point out all the commercials that I hate. They sit there and they "oh Scott look! Its your favorite commercial!" Assholes. I'd like to amend my previous statement. First, I want to stab them all in the eye with a fork (I generally have one because I'm generally eating while watching football) then throw up, tear my ears off, gouge out my eyes, douse myself and those bastards in gasoline and then set them and myself on fire. At least I get to take someone out with me!

One of the commercials that really enrages me is pretty much every commercial from Bridgestone tires. You're advertising tires! Why do you have hip hop and ball room dancing! That doesn't make any fucking sense. How does some asshole going "the wheel goes round and round" for 30 seconds help you sell tires? Answer me that! I understand that they want to reach out to a broader audience and thus they are using hip hop to do so but seriously. Is this really a product that needs to reach out to a broader audience? You idiots sell fucking tires! And how about the one with ballroom dancing or the one with salsa dancing? Does anybody see people dancing and go "wow, great form. You know what I bet they could really sell? Tires. Yeah. Tires." They spin in a damn circle while someone goes "the wheel goes round." And another thing. What the hell kind of a slogan is "the wheel goes round." What else is it going to do? Square? The wheel goes parallelagram? I fucking hate Bridgestone.

Another marketing campaign that isn't necessarily tied to football season but that I have to hate on is John Basedow. Now, I generally don't have a problem with fitness commercials. They are usually okay with me. But for some reason everything about John Basedow pisses me off. Maybe its because they call him "fitness celebrity John Basedow." I know we love celebrities in this country, but do we really need to add "fitness celebrity" to the mix? I feel like if you have to qualify what kind of celebrity you are, you don't deserve to be a celebrity and actually probably are not a celebrity. I also hate the little song they made up for the commercials. "Fitness made simple!" It just annoys me. And then when he stands there not even really looking human and going "in just 10 minutes a day, you can eventually look like me!" I have to sit there and wonder how many days I would need. 1000? 10,000? Do I need to be as old as Methusala in order to look like John Basedow? Why can't he just go away?

But then we come to the grand daddy of them all. The one series of commercials that every football fan knows all too well. We all know the words to it. We know how its starts. When we go to sleep we can sometimes still hear it. You all know who I'm talking about. John Assclown Mellencamp. Thats right. Chevy and "This is Our Country." Sweet Sassy Malassy do I hate those commercials. The imagery they try and use is sometimes so weird and stupid that you sit there in awe of the genetic reject that came up with the marketing campaign. Now I'm sure that other sports fans, other than football fans, have to endure this craptastic bit of advertising, but really, I don't care. I have to listen to that same fucking song, the same stanza, the same series of guitar notes, at least 10 times a game. I'm willing to say upwards of 15 times a game. And I like to watch football. Now I know what some of you are saying. Why not put it on mute? Because when you put most TVs on mute, then it goes to closed captioning. And then the words are scrolling across my screen. Its like John Mellencamp is reaching out and fucking my TV with his textbar cock. I don't want to put my TV through that 12pt font rape. How about you change the channel, I hear you asking? Because, I'm probably going to change the channel to another football game where I will probably find... you guessed it!... John Mellencamp and Chevy! How about you just turn the TV off and go out and enjoy the day? If I could, I would shoot whoever suggested that. Seriously, fuck you. Now, I've heard that the reason why I have to endure the Herculean trial of listening to John Mellencamp that much is because its from his then-new album and he couldn't get it on the radio. So he sold it to Chevy and as part of his contract required that it played just so many times during any given time block. If this is true, I am even more enraged. If this song wasn't good enough to be on country fucking radio, then why is it on national TV? Was Chevy so desperate for someone to hawk their wares that they decided to reach down and find someone with an annoying song? Seriously, I remember those Ford commercials that some American Idol dude did. You know the one. The guy who looked like he was 40. Anyways in the commercial he's just alone on a stage looking like he's having a seizure and singing about Ford. Honestly, those commercials were less painful than John Mellencamp's catterwalling. I am telling you all now, that I will never purchase a Chevy product, ever. And if I ever get the chance to be a part of a focus group and they ask me "why do you hate Chevy" I'll just look at him and say "John Mellencamp." And that will be enough for me.

Because this is my fucking country.

Cheers.