I miss Jared

“Chips and a drink?”
“No thanks, just the sandwich.”
“That will be $7.85.”
“Shouldn’t that be $5.00?”

“No, this is a premium footlong, it’s not $5.00.”

“Interesting."

Now I know I am no marketing expert, but something seems a little off here. When I use to pitch design concepts to clients we would highlight the most important parts of the designs. I can never remember a meeting where I said ‘every plant we used is an evergreen’ when clearly 25% of the plan contained non evergreen trees. Maybe if I just make the statement often and loud enough they won’t realize that oak trees are deciduous, and the daisies will not bloom all winter, but then in tiny little letters at the bottom write ‘I have no idea what plants are in this plan and what they might look like in the winter’. People aren’t this dumb to think this would be a good idea…or are they?

Apparently an ass ton of people of at Subway are this dumb. They have decided to come up with an ad campaign that screams at us how ANY (ANY) footlong is $5.00. Which ones? ANYONE! Any, it is a really confusing word to some, so I have to assume they were just given some bad information on the definition of ‘any’. To most of the English speaking world, this would mean that no matter what footlong sandwich you order at a Subway, it will cost you $5.00. To Subway, ‘any’ means a select group that is defined in individual stores.

So I applaud you Subway for trying to single handedly trying to reinvent the English language one bad ad campaign at a time. Bring back Jared.

My First Movie Reivew

I am going to attempt to write this from memory alone, no internet help here, going back some 15 years.

As a kid one of my favorite movies was the cinematic torture device known as Lionheart starring Jean Claude VanDam. TBS fueled my obsession by playing the movie as if somehow a nonstop repetition would magically cure cancer (yet to be proven, or tested in a clinical lab). The point being, I have seen the movie a ton of times, but it has been 15 years. Until Sunday, or so it would seem. For some reason I received a copy of Fighting starring Channing Tatum from Blockbuster and in a hangover induced romp decided it was time to watch. The movie seemed oddly familiar to the point I thought I might have already seen it, and somewhere in the back of my mind I kept waiting for a commercial break telling me when the next episode of Home Improvement (edit, thanks Owen) was coming on. Strange.


It was about half way through the movie that it hit me, “this is the EXACT same movie as Lionheart”! I hate to ruin the movie for you, but here are the points of the movie that are exactly the same:

1. White guy scrappy fighter with sketchy background

2. Fighter comes to the big city to find a hobbled black guy to be his bookie

3. Bookie was going to be the best fighter ever but blew out his knee 10 years ago

4. Bookie looks like he could have been beat up by a homeless man

5. Bookie has to strike a deal with the people that use to back him and now are trying to set him up for failure…he then wins a huge sum of money over them in the end.

6. Fighter falls for an unfortunate women with money and child care issues.

7. Fighter fights a foreign guy in a warehouse/ basement

8. Fighter fights a guy twice his size

9. Fighter is supposed to ‘throw’ the final fight against a ‘professional’ but wins in the end

10. The movie sucks

I just hope that in 15 years from now some poor guy is waxing poetically about how he used to watch this great movie Fighting on TBS that now Will Smith’s kid has ruined with a remake.

Don't do it yourself checkout line...

The self checkout line


I used to love the self checkout line at the grocery store. I had three strict rules that I would use to evaluate whether I should use the self check out, or if I should stand in line for a ‘professional’. One, can all of my groceries fit into the two bags hanging right next to the scanner? Two, do I have alcohol that would require the assistance of a store employee to check my ID? Third, do I have any produce? The point being was to avoid any interaction with a store employee and also avoid having the machine yelling at me about placing items back into the bag. As it turns out it is a pretty good system, the problem is that NO ONE has adopted this or any other logic based system to determine if they should be in self check out, or a sanitarium.

So I have developed a few simple questions that everyone should answer to determine if you should be in self check out. If you answer yes to any of these questions get out of line immediately.
1. Am I over 50 years old?
2. Do I have produce or alcohol? I really don’t want to watch you try and figure out if you have navel oranges or valencia oranges. Are green peppers under “p” for peppers or “G” for green?
3. Is this my first time?
4. Do I wear reading glasses?
5. Do I belong to the group of people who have never sent a ‘text’ to someone? (if you cannot figure out a simple cell phone text, this machine/ processes is way too complicated for you.)
6. Am I going to be using coupons today?

These rules should rule out about 75% of the customers at any given time, which I think is still allowing too many people through, but it is a great start.