Ads

Two ads I've actually seen in the last day:

1. A TV commercial for Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. The ad shows how you can use it to create a green bean casserole with canned onion rings on top. This dish, which is the first one everyone mentions when they mention Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, is so outdated, so reviled, so something one's mother made that you now resent her for making you eat and making you have been one of those cliched, suburban, 50's Americans, on the ad they say of this dish, "Helps you make all the Holiday Favorites" and they place the casserole dish by a window to cool and the ad shows a pine tree branch breaking in the window to steal some. Seriously. Green bean casserole with canned onion rings on top, made using Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.

2. The second one's even better. It is nearly deer hunting season, but still. For Krieger Jewellers. It came in a packet of coupons addressed to "Resident", mostly pizza and carpet cleaning places. But this one. The first heading (in gold on a sky-blue background) says, "Buy This For Her," and there's a photo of a diamond ring. Then beneath it there's another headline in the same type that says, "Get This For You, FREE!" What do you get? A Benelli Super Black Eagle II, 12 gauge, 3 1/2 foot. In Wisconsin grassland camouflage pattern. Yes, that's right, a hunting rifle. Buy your wife a diamond ring, get a hunting rifle for yourself, free.

Really, seriously.