Guyism » Seinfeld

Quoting Seinfeld? That's a firin'

Chris Spags — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:11:36 +0000

The antics of Jerry Seinfeld and company amuse millions of people to this day. Unfortunately, quote the show too vigorously as a means of coming on to a married gal, like Iowa man John Preston, and you might find yourself fired.

A Cedar Falls man who repeated a gag from the “Seinfeld” show while at work has been fired for sexual harassment.
It’s the second case of an Iowan being fired for harassment stemming from an episode of the popular comedy series.
In the most recent case, John Preston and several of his co-workers at the Brain Injury Association of Iowa attended an outdoor retreat in July 2008. During the event, one of the female workers told her colleagues that whenever she or her husband sneezed, the other would respond by saying, “You are so good looking.”
A week after the retreat, Preston allegedly sent the female worker who initiated the joke a series of e-mails in which he reiterated that she was good looking.
The woman complained to her superiors, and Preston was cautioned about such comments. A few weeks later, Preston allegedly stopped the woman in a hallway at work and massaged her shoulders while speaking to her. That generated another complaint, and early this year Preston confronted the woman at a work-related event.
The case is similar to the 2004 firing of Ronald Knight, who worked as a manager at the Fareway grocery store in Shenandoah. Knight allegedly told a female subordinate that he had heard she was drunk and running naked through the streets the previous night. He also implied that her forgetfulness was due to lack of sex, and he telephoned her at home and asked what she was wearing.
Knight claimed that he was simply repeating comments heard on a “Seinfeld” show and that the remarks were made in jest. He was denied unemployment benefits.

Um, yeah, so I’m pretty sure that I missed the episode that this article references in regards to the 2004 firing of Ronald Knight. While I appreciate Knight’s efforts in blaming someone other than himself for being an idiot, I feel like an episode in which a female ran around naked and was then told by George that it was due to her lack of sex as he called her, panting into the phone and touching himself, would probably have been seared into my memory.

As for Mr. Preston, you might be able to blame the “You are so good looking” cracks on an episode of Seinfeld and an inside joke. But once you start massaging shoulders and confronting people about not sleeping with you, you’ve pretty much left joke territory. And entered the strategy I typically use for courtship. Nothing gets the panties dropping faster than a little poorly timed, unwanted massage and confrontation. It’s like my life is a Jackie Collins novel.

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The Seinfeld porno sure looks like it, uh, exists

Chris Spags — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:45:21 +0000

You know what I’m always looking for in my pornography? Extended scenes of poorly written parody. Good thing we have the heroes at New Sensations making films like this, a porn parody of Seinfeld cleverly titled “Seinfeld: A XXX Parody.”

Would it f’ing kill a porn company, with all of their money, to hire a inexperienced but talented young comedy writer instead of just churning this crap out written by some guy in a Persian club shirt and a hairy chest? I mean look, I’m not saying I’d be so proud of my work writing a porn parody of Seinfeld, but for the right amount of money, I have no doubt that I could turn out a script with 2 hours of romantic lovemaking between Susan’s father and John Cheever set to some Gregorian chants. Or something funny. Perhaps both, assuming someone slipped on a banana peel before the sodomy begins.

[additional NSFW pics of the film can be seen here]

The 7 most awful Super Bowl ads ever

Chris Spags — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:07:21 +0000

Making a good Super Bowl commercial is hard. It takes months, if not years, of planning and research to make people remember your company’s ad. Conversely, 30 seconds of awfulness can make people remember you too, but for all the wrong reasons. Here are 7 ads which definitely fall into the latter category.

Christopher Reeve walking
Nuveen Investments, 2000

In 2000, paralyzed former Superman star Christopher Reeve “appeared” in this commercial. The message was that in the future, a whole lot of crazy crap is going to happen. Including, apparently, Christopher Reeve’s head being grafted to the body of a giant.

The goal of the commercial was to touch the hearts of Americans everywhere. Instead, everyone just kind of went, “Uh, that was creepy” and awkwardly took a bite out of their chicken wings. Oh also no one had any clue what Nuveen Investments did either because the commercial was really vague and almost made Nuveen Investments seem like an evil corporation from the future. Probably like the one that made Robocop.

Meet the official Holiday Inn transsexual
Holiday Inn, 1997

The gist of this commercial was that being a man getting a sex change was basically what Holiday Inn was doing to their hotels. Why this would make you want to stay there, no one was really sure, but if it’s good enough for Seinfeld’s Kenny Banya, it’s good enough for me.

The commercial was universally disliked and even resulted in some boycotts from various gay/transsexual/transgender groups. Probably not even for the hurtful depiction of their people, but rather for the tremendous slap in the face of being compared to a Holiday Inn.

White guys hunt down Kenyan, give him shoes
Just for Feet, 1999

There are few situations in which white men hunting down a black guy is going to make for a nicely received ad. This ad falls in line with that bold theorem on my part.

No embeddable clips so watch the commercial here

The premise if you’re too lazy to click: A Kenyan guy is walking around, being barefoot and Kenyan when some white guys in a Hummer drug him, capture him, then put sneakers on him. Eventually, he gets up all wobbly and runs, trying to free himself from these strange objects on his feet. The ad was so poorly received that it got a feature story on how bad it was on Salon.com, got the ad agency behind it sued (Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency in question, would countersue for Just for Feet’s ineptitude), and had a hand in Just for Feet’s bankruptcy later that year. So yeah, that turned out well.

Lemmings
Apple, 1985

In 1984, Apple had what some have called the most amazing commercial ever with their cleverly titled ad “1984”, a name with no one has ever been able to decipher the meaning of. Amidst pressure to possibly match that ad, they came up with another artistic bizarre ad that, well, sucked. Hard.

The commercial was so poorly reviewed that Apple stayed away from Super Bowl ads until 1999. And to make the indignities suffered to viewers worse, this is the one Apple commercial that has a bunch of people dying gruesome deaths, yet Justin Long and his smug Mac-loving face are nowhere to be found. Bastards.

Salesgenie.com and their racist panda bears
Salesgenie.com, 2008

After a 2007 Super Bowl ad universally rated as the worst one of the year, Salesgenie.com came back determined to make more awful ads that would stick with viewers for being so awful. Seriously, they even distributed a press release about it. Well they can wipe their hands thusly because this certainly proved to be a job well done.

It may shock you to learn that this ad never ran again amidst protests from Asian groups for A) Being racist and B) Finding a way to make pandas seem utterly annoying (do you know how hard that is? Look at this guy!). Also I fail to see how pandas could be running a profitable business, particularly when it’s a business selling furniture made of their favorite food. I’d find myself wholly incapable of selling Hamburger Chairs so it wouldn’t be fair to expect more from my cartoon pandas.

Spuds McKenzie plays hockey
Bud Light, 1988

I may be all alone in this sentiment, but I find Spuds McKenzie to be a douchebag. He’s a cool dog that gets all the chicks…whatever. But even if you love Spuds, this commercial of him playing hockey doesn’t make a whole lot of sense during the Super Bowl.

Also Bud Light is lucky PETA didn’t have a whole lot of political power back then, otherwise they would have certainly been boycotted. Dogs being forced to play hockey, drink beer, and get intimate with women? That’s got to be inhumane. At least the hockey part.

Fred Astaire dances with vacuums
Dirt Devil, 1997

I don’t think this was the first in the tacky “Dead Guy Sells Product” type of ads, but it was definitely one of the earlier ones. And what better way to honor probably the only masculine dancer ever than by putting a vacuum in his hands.

Note: The actual commercial can be viewed here (not embeddable). Or you could watch this and imagine him with a vacuum. Either way.

The commercial itself was cool in the sense that, hey, Fred Astaire is vacuuming but he’s been dead for ten years without the powers of voodoo or zombification. But it was probably less cool in the fact that Fred Astaire was notoriously protective of his image, to the point that he never allowed anyone to recreate his life for film, famously saying “However much they offer me – and offers come in all the time – I shall not sell,” including a clause in his will indicating as much. But vacuuming isn’t a recreation of his life so basically…in your face, famous dead guy!

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If you like awful ads, check out The 7 Most Completely Bizarre McDonald’s Commercials and The 9 Most Disturbingly Misogynistic Old Print Ads. Did I miss any even crappier Super Bowl commercials? Let me know in the comments below.