The Empire Strikes Out

You know what I hate? Commercials that ask questions. “What would you pay for this?” Listen, asshole, I didn’t sit down on the couch and turn on the TV so I could engage in witty repartee. Just get to the fucking point and tell me how much the decorative Abe Vigoda corn cob holders cost already! Jesus.

Do you remember Abe Vigoda? Of course you don’t, because you’re not 100 years old like I am. But if I’m 100, then Abe Vigoda is at least twice that age, and getting older at an ever accelerating rate. It’s as if he fucked up a Dorian Gray kinda deal and there’s a painting of an increasingly younger Abe Vigoda gathering dust in his attic. This is what Abe Vigoda looked like in the 70’s:

You can just imagine what he looks like today. He’s so old that he no longer needs to use toilet paper, just a whisk broom. Dude’s old, is what I’m saying. (If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that I swiped that image from abevigoda.com, which prominently displays Abe Vigoda’s status on the front page. Currently it reads, “Abe Vigoda is alive”. Seriously.)

Anyway, here are those Abe Vigoda corn cob holders of which I spoke:

How much would you pay for these? But wait, there’s more! Act now and I’ll throw in a Linda Lavin tampon cozy absolutely free of charge!

Holy shitballs, what a tangent. Anyway, back to commercials that ask you questions. I want to talk to you about this commercial, right here (click to play):

Look, pal, I don’t know how they do things in Upper Jerkistan, but here in the states we prefer our commercials to be crushingly obvious. None of this hifalutin’ thinking bullshit. Here, this is what you should be modeling your commercials after:

But since you asked, no I have not wondered what my ancestors in medieval times ate for lunch. I know what they ate for lunch. They ate rotting meat contaminated with diseased carrion feces. This is because, intelligence-wise, my ancestors were stone cold fucking retards. Everyone was back then. That’s why they called it the Dark Ages, and not the Super-Awesome Neato-Keen Ages. The fact is that they were too busy lopping each other’s heads off for not agreeing on which magical sky-being to sacrifice their children to, to sit down and come up with basic rules of culinary hygiene such as, “Don’t shit in the drinking water,” or “Do not serve dinner off of the chest of a plague victim”.

Oh, your chef adopted this diet to contemporary stomachs, huh? Well, I sincerely hope that’s pidgin English for “threw it in the goddamn dumpster and served you a Slim Jim instead” because if not, then no fucking thank you. I will take my meals with a side order of not eating straight from a sewer, thank you very much.

I mean, did you even look at this commercial before you aired it? That lump of something that looked like beef fucking talked! I don’t know if it’s Restaurateur Rule #1 or not, but I’m pretty sure that “Don’t portray the food as capable of getting into an argument with the diners” should be pretty fucking high on that list.

Still, I gotta be honest: I’ve never eaten there, and for all I know it’s the best tasting food in the world and instead of inducing death by cholera, actually has wildly curative properties. I mean, stranger things have happened. I once heard of a guy who ate at Arby’s and then lived to the ripe old age of 32. I just have a hard time believing in the quality of a restaurant’s food when their commercial contains the words “screaming birds”. My guess is that the birds should probably be dead before you shove them into the oven.

This bird was apparently incinerated while dancing the macarena.

But again, I might be wrong. Troy might be the Mt. Everest of fine cuisine. So if you happen to own Troy and would like to comp a meal for me, I would be willing to fly all the way to Staten Island and give your establishment a try. I’ll bring my buddy Abe Vigoda with me. You serve corn, right?