3 Little Things We've Had Enough Of

No introduction necessary, let's just get to it:

#1. "Radioactive"

There's a song every summer that becomes "that song that would be okay if it wasn't played eleventybillion times". Before this it was "Call Me Maybe", before that it was LMFAO, Katy Perry, and to be honest we're probably all still recovering from the Summer of The Black Eyed Peas. It's just a given that the defining song of each summer will be played at every Sonic Drive-in and 14-year-old girl's birthday party nation-wide. This year's worse. This year is worse because whoever is the acting agent for the soon to be forgotten band "Imagine Dragons" is going above and beyond what their paycheck requires, and has successfully placed the song "Radioactive" absolutely everywhere. 

Why, if it isn't Lebron James! Fancy him appearing in an article titled 

"Things We've Had Enough Of"!

Are you a sports fan? Hey look it's Lebron James listening to "Radioactive" in his new headphones commercial! And here's a promotional bit for the Pittsburg Penguins and the NHL playoffs! Are you for some reason still watching Syfy's "Defiance" series and have a burning desire to play the cruddy spin-off video game? Here's a commercial for it backed by what must be your most favorite new song in the whole wide world forever! It's everywhere. It's in trailers for cop shows and crappy movies. It's on talk shows. It's in video game commercials. "Radioactive" and its unholy mix of phony dubstep and indie-infused computer-generated wuss-rock is played so often that you actually start to savor the rare minutes of your day that aren't entirely saturated by it. If you're an up-and-coming Orwellian dictator, your best career move would be to hire Imagine Dragons' agent and put him in charge of your entire brainwashing division. 

#2. Cop Shows

Just so we're clear, "Person of Interest" is not a cop show, it's just awesome.

Pretty much the only cop show most of us are ever gonna need is Fox's "Cops" (who doesn't watch the "Ho Ho Ho Special" every year for Christmas Eve? No? Guess that's just a Mind Grenades office tradition then....). But if for some reason crime is your thing, you've had an entire decade to choose from a variety of shows that all basically boil down to the same premise. Some stand out from the pack, like the show "Bones", which stars Angel from "Buffy" and the other Deschanel sister. This show is to cop shows what "House" is to hospital shows: entertaining, engaging, and actually worth watching because they bring something new to the table. 

In House's case, that something is Olivia Wilde.

But somehow we're ten years into this cop show obsession and it's still trying not to go away. We've got three versions of CSI, two versions each of NCIS and Criminal Minds, Law and Order, SVU, Prime Suspect, Blue Bloods, Body of Proof, Castle, The Mentalist, In Plain Sight, Without A Trace, Southland, Numbers, and Cold Case-- and those are just the ones we took the time to dig up. Assuming that we're missing a couple, plus the fact that we didn't even include the wave of lawyer shows in existence...that is just too many shows about crime. Better go where the money is and make one more, USA Network!

USA Network, where a bunch of undercover agents from different agencies living together is a totally great idea.

We do need some cop shows; there's obviously a market for it. But instead of fizzling out and dying properly, the old cop shows just keep spawning spin-offs and multiplying. The universe doesn't need 32 seasons of CSI in its various forms; honestly there isn't a single show we would ever consider watching 32 seasons of. 

1969-Present, in case you were wondering. 

#3. "I Ate The Bones" And Other Awful Commercials

There are entire big powerful organizations who dedicate an enormous amount of time and effort to making sure when a product hits the shelves, the maximum amount of people possible throw money at it. There are some ad campaigns universally accepted as "wicked awesome" like the e-trade baby and certain Allstate commercials. Most others, you pretty much agree to endure in order to get back to your program. 

Then there are commercials that have the absolute opposite effect intended. You know what KFC's "I ate the bones" commercials make us want to spend our money on? Freaking Olive Garden. That's how awful they are. And what marketing geniuses told J G Wentworth that viewers totally love when commercials shout at them obnoxiously from the television screen and upset the family dog? Listen up marketing research people, I'm about to save you a buttload of work for free-- If your commercial has people yelling, or crying babies, or life-like sounding doorbells, or phones ringing: scrap it now, quit your job as a marketer, and start doing something else you might actually be good at.




-L