<rant>
I have worked in the music industry all of my life and, consequently, have spent some time watching late night television. Once in a while, when I am between Netflix shows, or when the moon is in the seventh house, I will turn to regular television in my search for something to watch. The other night, at 3:30 AM, the AMC Network was playing a movie that sounded like it might be okay. Yes, AMC, the channel that plays the same three “tooth whitening,” “wrinkle paste” and “boner medication” commercials, over and over and over, until you are ready to hurl the remote, your stained teeth and your friggin’ wooden leg at the television.
I think they must be monitoring viewer tolerance levels now. Just as you reach the point where you are going to take a dental drill to your eyeballs, they throw in an ad for a machine that cleans your CPAP mask for you. You know, that mask thing that makes people with sleep apnea look like they should be in Star Wars. If they are feeling particularly merciful, they may give you 30 seconds of phone sex commercial in order to distract you from where you were trying to tie that rope…
Anyway, it occurred to me that, unsurprisingly, I have a few things to say to some of the people involved: (cue music…)
To the AMC Network – You don’t have a lot of respect for the people watching your channel, do you? According to your demographics team, the people watching late at night are shriveled up, hideous, dirty-toothed, apnea-riddled, sexual deviants, that are so incredibly stupid that it requires you to whack them on the head with something, over and over, until they can finally slide their gnarled stumps into their pockets to get their credit cards out. You guys were never allowed out after dark, were you? I mean, it really says more about your lack of understanding of the world than it does about anyone that accidentally tunes in to your channel in a vain attempt to dampen the noise from their day. The night is not filled with misshapen monsters. There are a lot of really wonderful, intelligent people, working in all sorts of industries, that just happen to have a different schedule to the one you and your vicar have. If those three companies were the only ones willing to pay to run their commercials on your shitty network at that time of day, leave the empty slots empty, with maybe a nice picture, or some Beatles tunes or whale noises or something, and then take a long, hard look at why that is.
To the marketing genius that came up with texting ‘bang’ to ‘696969’ to take advantage of the discount on boner medication, and that company’s board of directors that collectively said, “Yeah. That’s the one.” to that ad – Did any of your friends get what you did there, or are they all as tastelessly stupid as you are?
To the wrinkle paste company – We can SEE that you are just troweling paste into the wrinkles. It doesn’t matter what colour you paint it, or how still the models keep their faces. Also, please take all of the profit from the paste that you do sell, you know, to those three people that are going to fall for this shit, and hire a better cinematographer. Hell, there is probably a really good one awake right now. Good grief…
To the people that are using phone sex lines – WTF??? 1982 called and they want you to stop.
And in the very unlikely case that I am wrong, to all of the shriveled up, dirty-toothed, apnea-riddled, sexual deviants that are watching AMC late at night – What in the hell is your sleep-deprived, nasty-mouthed, Quasimodo-meets-Darth-Vader-looking ass going to do with a bigger, better boner anyway? Please stop buying stuff from these companies and go to bed. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.
Damn.
Please stop.
</rant>