Introducing the Hopeless Homeowner Series

Recently we bought a house.  It's a suburban split-level home, about fifty-five years old (so, it's about half the age of the average resident of the street where we reside).  Though it's a nice home, things in it break often.  As they break and as we - people way too young and way too under-prepared for this massive moneypit to maintain - attempt to fix them, the "Hopeless Homeowner" series of blog posts will chronicle these attempts with levity, humor, and hopefully some halfway decent advice.

Chapter 1: The Horror of Moving

We were well aware that this was the last move we could conduct this way.  After we had settled here for a number of years and decided to move, we would have to hire professional movers to move into our second home; we'd have too much stuff by then, and we'd be older then, and our friends would be less willing to lift our boxes in exchange for pizza and beer that we haven't paid for yet.

But at present, we could do things the old-fashioned way and rent ourselves a U-Haul truck.  This was a sixteen-footer, which meant that we could move everything in a maximum of two trips.  The price was reasonable and it had an automatic transmission, so we felt we were good to go.  Now, there was no chance in hell that I was ever going to drive this thing - I'd heard horror stories from my Dad, from back in the day when U-Haul trucks were on a stick shift, and if the current set up were any more user friendly than it was back then, I was not about to find out for sure. 

My fiancee, luckily, was willing to drive this vehicular monstrosity.  She made it from the rental place to our apartment just fine, but even she will admit that the first trip from the apartment to the new home was harrowing.  I felt it was horrific - the truck was difficult to steady when loaded to the gills, and it had such a wide girth (giggity) that it was challenging to keep it within one lane of a multi-lane highway. 

At one point, we hopped the curb on Route 18 in New Brunswick and had difficulty finding pavement again.  The drive between our old apartment and our new home is kind of challenging, even by New Jersey standards, and even when driving a regular passenger car.  There are multiple left exits, a traffic circle, lots of right-hand merges, and many curves.  Also, New Jersey drivers are not particularly well known for their compassion or empathy when it comes to being around slow-moving vehicles; this is a cramped and dense place, and people like to get where they are going fast.  There is little of the thrill of the open road in the Garden State, and when it comes to not traveling the speed limit, the weak are indeed killed and eaten here. 

It almost goes without saying that the U-Haul truck we had rented and loaded with over 3,000 pounds of our personal belongings was not agile enough for most of our neighboring drivers' standards. After parking the truck at the new house, she told me that it reminded her of the drunk driving simulator glasses that schools provide to students.

Since then, I've seen many rental trucks on the highway in our daily travels.  I've seen many cars on the road do things like pass these rental trucks on the right hand side or honk at them to get them to move faster, and this is a really terrible thing to do.  The only qualification to rent one of these trucks is a valid drivers' license, and many of the people driving them have never navigated the road in something even half as unwieldy before in their lives.  So combine the average driver's level of incompetence with a ten-times-more challenging vehicle to drive, and the moral of the story is - if you see a U-Haul on the road, give it a wide berth and an even wider dose of patience.

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My best friends know that I don't handle Moving Day well.  They tell me this all the time, and that's why they're best friends.  Those 1-2 days surrounding a move are terrible, though - you feel pressured by the clock as you count down the last 48 hours before the move starts, and you also feel as if you're regressing backwards in time.  Items that were once creature comforts in your old home (like soap, or toilet paper) become challenging items to find.  For a brief while, you're a traveler without a home, you're a vagabond and you'd gladly give your soul (assuming these exist) to be settled down someplace.

After you move, it's the reverse, upward climb to the modern days.  The first night in your new home, before the boxes and the clothing are unpacked, before all but the barest essentials are set up, you're happy to have a toothbrush, an operable toilet bowl, and a mattress on the floor upon which to fall unconscious.  By the second night, you've left the Dark Ages (at least) and through a day of pure hard work, you've set up the basics - utensils, the refrigerator, the next few days' worth of clothing, and you're now sleeping on an actual bed.  By the third or fourth night, you've ordered a few appliances and if you're lucky, Cable Claus might stop by with a stocking filled with TV and high-speed Internet.  You've possibly gone on a grocery shopping trip and you're no longer eating leftover pizza and sub sandwiches from Moving Day.

As we've ascended from the prehistoric times of Night 1 to the practically modern times that we live in now, I've become easier to get along with.  I've learned recently that some people call migraine headaches "vacation headaches" because they sometimes occur as a function of too much anticipation leading up to the vacation itself - once vacations starts, all of that anticipation is released at once, and the end result is the headache.  I don't get these headaches, but I do get really stressed out right after something major and life-changing happens, and that's what happened with the move.  Also, that's what happened with the sunglasses - I'll tell that story later.

We're 16 days in - I'm etching tiny marks in the cinderblock walls of the basement like Andy Dufresne, counting the days until my release to a 55+ active adult community - and by now we've unpacked most of our boxes.  The living room floor, which was once a chaotic staging area for sixteen different home improvement projects, has nothing but a few boxes of DVD's and all of my tools.  (Hey, this is the last time in my adult life that I'll be able to keep my tools so centrally located in the house, so you bet your ass that I am milking this for all it is worth.)

Most days, with considerable help and patience from others, I am able to complete at least one homeowner task.  Generally these have been simple chores, owing mostly to the fact that we bought a nice house that was practically "move-in ready" (to borrow the realtor parlance).  I've been able to mow the lawn twice, we've pulled weeds and bought new plants that we're trying valiantly not to kill.  I've installed a towel rack (more complicated than you'd think when drilling into tile), replaced a thermosensor in our oven, started pipe leaks, blown fuses, thrown my sunglasses against a cinderblock wall (consequently breaking them) and generally have started to come to terms with the fact that (a) I currently don't know what I'm doing around here, for the most part; (b) most new homeowners are in the same boat that I am in; and (c) that I'll soon learn how resourceful I am.

Assuming that anyone out there is interested, as I make my way down the path of home ownership I'll periodically post here with updates (and pictures, where relevant) on our progress with the home.  I'll generally save this for projects that have either an interesting genesis or an interesting execution, since I'm no Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor and as a result, no one wants to hear boring home improvement stories from me.

That being said, I'll be sure to post if/when I injure myself or engage in a particularly colorful application of the word "Fuck" while completing said projects.

Buying a First Home (Update #2): Waiting to Close

I noticed that I last posted on the process of buying our first house on March 4.  It's now April 30, and several weeks - and more than one false start - later, we're still in our apartment, waiting another week or two to close on our new home.

Sometimes, it's good for me to write while angry; anger (for me, at least) leads to focus, focus leads to humor and what I consider to be quality writing.  It's reasonable to say that I'm more than a bit angry that our progress on buying this house has taken so long.  But it's the kind of anger where it's difficult to get up and write about it - it's dull and depressing and it makes me want to go outside, smoke a cigar, and listen to Coldplay.

That said, I should probably explain a bit more.  For instance, for an approximately sixteen hour period that occurred two weeks ago, we were under the impression that we would have already closed on the house and had our keys in hand.  This was ripped away (due to a myriad of excuses, none of which are likely to be true and none of which matter) by a quick phone call, while I was helping my mom garden at her house.  I got pissed off when I heard the news - like, really pissed off - and then I just started working on shit, because nothing beats physical labor when I'm pissed off.  My mom's front lawn looks better now, thanks in no small part to a hyper-Type A, anger-filled landscaper.

Here's what's gone down since you were last updated:

Step 5: Applying for a mortgage

This could be a post of its own, but I'll condense it here just to provide the highlights. 

The good news for people who are interested in buying a home in 2011 is that, for those with good credit and stable employment histories, interest rates for mortgages are historically low.  We chose what's known as a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, which means that we pay a fixed amount each month over thirty years.  We want to stay in this home for a good long time, and if you believe that inflation is going to skyrocket over the next ten years like I do, the payments should bite less and less over the years.  (As an aside, there are other mortgage types available, such as adjustable rate mortgages, where the interest rate on your loan stays constant for a certain number of years and then varies somewhat after that.  These aren't often sold anymore because evil variants of the adjustable rate mortgage [or ARM] are [mistakenly, in my opinion] considered responsible for the housing meltdown that led to the 2008 recession.  Holding ARMs responsible for the recession is like holding a specific type of bullet responsible for a rash of shootings, which is a shame because for people who don't want to stay in their home for more than five-to-seven years, they make a lot of sense due to the base interest rate being lower than the 30-year fixed interest rate.  Anyway, back to the post.)

The bad news is that it's becoming increasingly difficult these days to actually get approved for a mortgage (again, due to the housing meltdown of 2007 and onward).  Credit requirements have skyrocketed and you need to document a metric ton of information in order to get approved.  My fiancee and I had to provide three years of tax returns, multiple pay stubs, and bank statements showing more or less our entire cash flow for the past twelve months.  The person or persons investigating our mortgage application (these fine folks are known as underwriters) must have been former detectives from "The Wire," because even that wasn't enough for them to approve us as-is.

As but one example, my paycheck spells my first name slightly differently than my mortgage application (which uses my full, legal name).  This came up as a red flag on our application.  As a result, I had to provide a "Name Affidavit," which is a signed and notarized letter confirming that both names belong to the same person.  I now officially have an alias, an a/k/a if you will, which is awesome if I ever were to commit a felony or three.

As another example, my address on my paycheck is still listed as my mother's house, because I've been too lazy over the past two years to ask my boss to  change it.  Even though the paycheck year-end amount matches my income tax return, bam!  Another red flag.  To correct this one, I had to provide a "Letter of Explanation" which details the facts, states that I am very deeply sorry for the misinformation, and promises to change the address on my paystub as soon as I move.  Seriously, it was like writing a directive on the chalkboard 100 times, a la Bart Simpson.

Another interesting tidbit about the mortgage application process is that mortgage brokers are pretty shady people.  They are purely salespeople, in the sense that their job is to get you to fill out the application - once that's done, you're systematically shuffled off to another person (a loan processor) whose job it is to get you approved (or, more often these days, to explain why you were denied).  As salespeople, they are genetically engineered to (a) never provide a straight answer and (b) assume that they always have the best product.

Being the master negotiator that I am, I worked five brokers against each other, thought I made an apples-to-apples comparison, and even now I am not 100 percent convinced that we obtained the lowest interest rate possible.  That said, our closing costs are quite low (they can vary a great deal across different lenders) and perhaps even more important, we had an easy time getting approved for our mortgage.

(In case you were super curious, another issue that is currently plaguing the home buying process for many individuals is that homes don't appraise high enough anymore.  In order for a bank to approve your mortgage, the house needs to independently appraise at a value equal to or higher than what you offered in your contract.  Due to an odd quirk and an awesome house, we offered to pay a few thousand dollars higher than list price for the home we are buying.  As a result, we were on pins and needles for a few days waiting for the appraised value of the house, because there was at least some chance that the house would be valuated at a lower price than what we paid.  This didn't happen to us, but apparently it happens sometimes to others.)

The mortgage application process takes only about eleven business days, in which you'll be asked to provide lots of additional documentation (see above) and engage in lots of back and forth with the loan processor.  Ours was very responsive and very nice, thankfully, and the mortgage application process, which had cost us a considerable number of sleepless nights in anticipation, turned out to be not so bad in practice.

Step 6: Inspect Your New Home

At the same time as your mortgage is being processed, you should also schedule an inspection of your new home.  Some homeowners who are particularly handy individuals like to go in themselves and inspect.  I am not a handy individual (as you may have guessed), so we hired this out to a very nice man named Al.

Al spent two hours with us walking through the new house, inspecting each nook and cranny (inside and out), taking photographs and detailed notes where appropriate, in order to prepare a fairly detailed report for us.  This report is a cool thing to view, because it more or less tells you everything that is right and everything that is wrong about the house you're about to purchase.

The house we're buying has a 20+ year old central air conditioning unit, a 28 year old boiler and a 23 year old hot water heater.  Without going out on too much of a limb, I'm willing to wager anyone who wants to wager with me, at any odds they'll lay me, that these items will all need to be replaced within the next five years.  There was also some amateur electrical and gas pipe work in the basement that needed to be fixed before we buy the house.  These are fairly minor flaws in an otherwise rosy picture - the home has "good bones," it's well-sealed, has a newer roof and windows, and there were no obvious signs of decline or decay.

(So that's what people mean when they tell you that home ownership is a money pit; replacing those three items I just mentioned is going to cost us at least six thousand dollars over the next five years.  That's on top of our mortgage payment and property taxes (the property taxes alone are almost seven thousand dollars a year)). 

Step 7: Get Homeowners Insurance

There's not a ton to say here, but I do have a couple of minor points:

• Quality homeowners' insurance can be quite inexpensive, assuming you purchase it from the same company that handles your automobile insurance.  The discount for having multiple insurance products from the same insurer is significant, though it may only appear on one of the two policies.
• Most homeowners choose to make what's known as a "PITI" mortgage payment.  This is an acronym; it stands for Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance.  It means that you're paying each month, in one lump sum, your mortgage payment (principal and interest), your property taxes, and your homeowners' insurance.  For some people, this is a nice thing to do because buying a home is insanely complicated and it helps to only have one bill to pay at the end of the month, for everything.

Step 8 (is great!): Closing on your Home

In theory, a closing is where you go to your attorney's office, sign tons of documents confirming that the house is indeed yours and that you're going to pay your bills on time for the next one-third of your life span, receive your new keys and drive away.

In practice, it's a mythical, Dark Tower-like place that can only be reached by accomplishing dozens of preliminary tasks and by somehow convincing a half-dozen people with ulterior motives to confirm a date and time and to actually attend.  That's my vision of the closing, because it hasn't happened yet for us.

I imagine when it does it'll be fairly anti-climactic, but for now, the closing is on a serious pedestal.  We're convinced that we're Charlie Brown running to kick the football, and that somehow, mere hours before the closing, Lucy is going to lift the football and we're going to whiff.  Lucy, in this case, represents the people we're buying a house from... or the people they're buying their new home from... or the attorneys... or some nameless schmo at the title search company that broke his ankle playing softball, missed a week of work, and consequently didn't process our paperwork on time for the closing.  Lucy can be anyone, and it's going to take a bunch of luck to get this right, and to get this done "on time" (whatever that means).

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I wrote a bunch of detailed, technical stuff above, and I want to conclude by mentioning that this is all just my opinion.  I'm a market researcher, not a mortgage or financial consultant, and for all I know, some of the things that I wrote above are undeniably false.  Just, um, covering my legal bases here. :-)

Once we're on the other side of this, and once we're home, I'll post again about the process in retrospect.  I'll be in a better mood then.

Grading Recent Commercials, Part IV: The Technology Edition

It's late March, and it's snowing in New Jersey.  This makes absolutely zero sense, so let's use "Chewbacca Theory" logic and rate a few commercials (some of which also make absolutely zero sense).

I've been thinking a lot about logic flaws lately, because I've been reading David Brooks' The Social Animal (review to come in a later blog post) and he makes some pretty excellent points about how each of us views the world in a fairly biased way.  As a marketing person, I believe that to the extent that a company has a structure, it also has a "personality," and these too can be fundamentally biased.

For instance, every company *thinks* they know who their customers are.  I recall being on a conference call with a client once (I never name names, but this client is very well-known and sells products that could be used by every American adult) to present research findings, and at one point toward the end of the presentation, the most senior-ranking client on the call said something along the lines of "Well, I guess it's just the psychology of the blue-collar American male" as a one-line summation of the research.

My personal dislike of one-liners and one-pagers aside, there's a larger problem with the above comment.  As an American male who is not blue-collar, but comes from a blue-collar town, and a blue-collar family, and knows lots of blue-collar people, I feel there is no single psychology of the blue-collar American male.

Most of the guys I know - regardless of the color of their collar - believe that Miller Lite commercials are stupid, for instance.  They may not think about them as much as I do (I, after all, write blog posts analyzing TV commercials), and it may not impact their purchasing decision as much, but they've at least given it enough thought to make the logical and accurate conclusion that they are fucking stupid.

I guarantee you Miller and Budweiser think they understand the psychology of the blue-collar American male (it only consists of boobs, jokes with xenophobic or sexist undertones, and sports), but they'd be wrong.  I blame buckets for this.

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Companies too often like to put their customers into buckets, which is a terrible idea for two reasons.  One, when you put people into buckets, because of the type of analysis you conduct to make this happen, you invariably leave some people out.  Segmenting your market is a concession; it basically says, "We don't care to lose customers, as long as we identify most of them."  This is bad, but it's not as bad as the other reason, which is that it's a lazy methodology.

This is because any decision the company makes after deciding to this is going to be biased toward the segments, which are themselves flawed.  Let's say you're a company, and you know you have four segments.  (You further know that you classify people into one of these four groups based on their responses to a series of attitudinal questions combined with a factor analysis, but this may be a bit too technical.)

Some people are very clearly in a segment; this is the easy stuff.  Many other people are defined as being in a particular segment, but based on their responses (and their underlying attitudes), they're very close to being in some other segment - it's like they're technically in New Jersey, but they're very close to being in Pennsylvania.  They might call "doing the wash" "doing the warsh," if you know what I mean.  But because of the limitations of your analysis, you are going to classify them as being in Segment 1 (let's say), and market to them as if they are Segment 1, but you'll be really inaccurate (on average) in doing this.

I'm not convinced that companies take the time to understand these caveats, and as a result I think that many companies treat flimsy research like it's sacrosanct.  And that's partly the reason why many companies make shitty commercials - they don't know who they are talking to, and they assume the people they are talking to are different than they really are.

On that note, let's get to the commercials...

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Commercial #1: Because Everyone Relates to Lazy, Rich Retards

I'm going to be quite cruel to DirecTV here, but later I'll be nicer (I promise).

This commercial bombs, primarily because it is obnoxious and not at all funny.  DirecTV may think that people are going to pay attention to ten seconds of yelling and screaming and whooping, but in reality, they're going to listen to it once, get annoyed, and then put the commercial on mute and resolve themselves never to buy DirecTV.  This commercial may be memorable, but it's not memorable in a good way.  You don't want to piss off your customers.

Being obnoxious and unfunny itself is not a death sentence for a commercial, but add a complete lack of being relate-able to the mixture and you're finished.  I can understand setting a commercial for items that are luxurious in nature in a mansion - in fact, it's the best place to set a commercial if you only care about selling your product to wealthy people.  But satellite TV is a middle-class product, and I'm convinced that below the surface, most of the people who watch this commercial tune out because they don't feel it applies to them.

This may require a leap of faith on your end, but there's research to support this point for certain.  People have a very good sense of who they are and how they stand in the world, and they are going to tune out to this commercial because it's set in an opulent setting. 

So, if DirecTV is looking for increased sales from wealthy people who are also stupid, congratulations on willing the Callahan Auto Parts account.  Otherwise, it fails completely.

Grade: F

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Commercial #2: I Am Epic Win

Now let me take a right turn and explain to you how the very same company could use a very similar framework and end up with a much better commercial.  It's called humor and execution.

The above commercial is the second in a series involving a hilariously-rich Russian dude with a pet miniature giraffe.  (The first one, if you recall, begins with the grammatically incorrect yet memorable line: "Opulence. I has it.")  This commercial is better for the following reasons:

• It's actually funny.  I know, I know, this is just my opinion, and other people might completely disagree.  But I believe that some people are naturally inclined toward having a quality sense of humor in general, and I further believe I am one of those people.  This commercial is actually funny; between the muscle-bound guy on the left and the pygmy giraffe working out alongside the woman on the right, it's hard not to chuckle at all this.
• The giraffe.  Clearly the giraffe tested well, because they show it again in this commercial - and even more prominently than in the first.  The first scene with the giraffe is so short you might miss it; but you'll see the second one, because it's so weird, and then you'll want to watch the commercial again to figure out what it all means. 
• It has a clear and simple message that is easy to remember (especially with Charlie Sheen in the news).  DirecTV = winning.  Don Draper would appreciate such a simple message.

The commercial isn't without flaws; the Russian accent on the main dude is way too thick (even if you're familiar with thick Russian accents, it takes a few views to understand it).  Some people might also complain that it's too "busy," visually speaking - I think there's some merit to that as well, but I also think it's part of the commercial's intent.

Grade: B

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Commercial #3: Sprint's Wireless Service is for Assholes

Earlier, I mentioned that every company has a "personality."  What I mean by this is that it's possible if you pay close enough attention to make fairly accurate statements like "Wow, I bet the management team for that company are all huge douchebags" (e.g., Cablevision) or "Holy shit, what a bunch of fucking hipster shillers" (e.g., Apple).

Relatedly, it always baffles me why a commercial would ever show someone using their product and being a huge dick at the same time.  Are you trying to sell your product to massive dicks?  Have all the decent people already gone to your competitor?  And most importantly, why didn't anyone at the company take the time to vet this and say "Wait.  We are trying to sell a decent product to decent people.  This doesn't accomplish this at all."

The one memorable aspect of the above commercial is that the doctor is being a huge, insensitive dick to the football player.  This is a bad idea in general because, as I just mentioned, you don't want people to associate your product with assholery.  More specifically, you're selling a smart phone here, and most people who do not own a smart phone are worried about becoming huge insensitive dicks who only pay attention to their smart phone.  (That's more or less why they haven't bought a smart phone yet.)  Maybe if you convinced them that by buying a smart phone, they would be able to do things better, and then they'd actually buy one.  But that's clearly not the case in this commercial.

This brings me to the most general point of my post.  There are very few psychological truths, but one that I feel actually exists is that everyone - regardless of whether they are a saint or a serial killer - wants to believe that they're a good person.  If a commercial makes a genuine connection to this, then people start to pay attention.  And every commercial that takes the opposite tack, by showing insensitivity or meanness to others, is less successful than it could be.  So Sprint fails.

Grade: D

Buying a First Home, An Update: Not Knowing About Things

See that picture, to the right?  In about two months, that's gonna be my kitchen.  When I wake up on a Sunday morning craving a Western omelet, I am going to make a Western omelet on that stove.  When I need to wash dishes, I'll wash dishes in that sink; when I make meat loaf, it'll be in that oven; and when I want to have a cold beer after a hard day's work, I'll grab one out of that stainless steel fridge*, sit in one of those chairs* on that center island, and sip it slowly.

*NOTE: The stainless steel fridge and chairs are not included in sale.

Earlier this week, our home buying finished attorney review, which essentially means that - barring a rare, unforeseen circumstance - we'll be able to move into our first "adult" home some time around mid-May.  Of course, when I use terms like "rare" and "unforeseen," I don't quite know what I'm talking about, because I am a first-time home buyer, and my role is to get f**ked over completely unawares to how, why, and with what instrument.

As far as I can tell, here are the steps in the home buying process (h/t to The Oatmeal for graphical analogy):

Step 1: Decide to buy a home.
 
This could be motivated by a number of reasons, be they financial, emotional, or some combination of the two. For us, we were tired of apartment living because (a) we wanted "our own" space; (b) we didn't want to be transient and shiftless any more; and (c) we were tired of having a washer and dryer in our kitchen. (No, seriously, we have a washer and dryer in our kitchen in our current apartment.)

So in this phase, you align yourself with a realtor and look at houses.  Some realtors tell you that you only need to look at a small number of houses; thankfully, ours let us look at about thirty-five of them before we found "the one."  Perhaps this was just a function of the buyer's market, or perhaps she found our quirkiness endearing, but regardless, we did find "the one" - eventually.  It took two months.

Step 2: Create a short list, call in reinforcements... err, your parents.

Our "the one" was a throw in.  We had an original short list, and when you have a short list, you should look for a second opinion.  We brought in our parents that weekend, and we threw "the one" onto our list of houses to look at at the very last minute, because it just came on the market and the pictures looked cool.

After a rather up-and-down experience with our original short list, we walked into "the one" and we immediately flipped out.  No, actually, our parents flipped out.  At one point, my mother was gushing so effusively about the home (the owners were still there) that I had to take her aside and say "Mom, you might be costing us a lot of money right now!".

This was on a Saturday, and it was our first look.  We came back the very next day, and the next day after that, we met at our realtor's office and made an offer.

Step 3: Make an offer.

If you've ever seen one of those HGTV "First-time Homebuyer" shows (and, sadly, I have), you think that making an offer on a house is a dramatic process.  You'd think that you make your offer, your realtor leaves the room and calls the selling realtor, and within thirty minutes or maybe an hour you'd have a deal.  And for all I know, back in 2006 when real estate was a hot commodity, it was indeed a process just like this.

But if your experience was anything like ours, it was the most anticlimactic thing ever.  You'll sign a shit-ton of paperwork - all of which will eventually get amended, revised, or completely canceled - you'll leave, and you'll wait.  In our case, we waited about a week for our contract to be accepted.  Our sellers took their time (for good reason, actually), and were honest (we believe) throughout the entire process.  You need to have that trust, and to obtain that trust, you need a realtor who's willing to ask the tough questions.  Thankfully, ours was/remains very tough.

Step 4: Offer accepted (conditionally); time to bring in the lawyers and learn why everyone hates attorneys.

Once our offer was signed, it goes into attorney review.  In New Jersey, that's a mandated time period consisting of at least three business days (ours took ten) where your lawyer and the seller's lawyer work out the minutia and negotiate in order to facilitate what, in theory, should be a fairly seamless transaction.

I'll admit here that although I am not a lawyer, I find the law quite fascinating and I saw this as a unique opportunity to understand an aspect of the law I had never been exposed to.  I ended up so disillusioned with the very idea of real estate law that I never want to work with an attorney again, under any set of circumstances, ever.  And, we're two months ahead of closing.  Woohoo!

Here's what you can expect from your attorney:

• You'll hear one price, and then be charged another, and the second price will be higher.  (In fact, this is fairly common around all aspects of real estate; we learned a valuable, $100 lesson here - ALWAYS get an estimate in writing ahead of time.)
• Responses to your queries that serve his/her best interests in getting the deal done; not your best interests as the client.  The lesson here: always ask for the documentation supporting their decision.  You may find that you don't agree with their conclusion, at which point you should speak up.
• No straight answers (which is related to the bullet point immediately above).  In grad school, you learn to respond to things as succinctly and directly as possible.  At times, I am too direct.  But had I gone to law school instead, I would have learned to be evasive and to use such ambiguous, non-committal language that no real conclusion could be drawn from the words I chose.  It really upsets me that this skill is considered two times (at least) more valuable by the economic marketplace, vs. my own.  Mine is more challenging!

Next Steps: Applying for a mortgage; home inspection.

We haven't done these yet, but this is what's next.  Soon, we'll learn what it's like to be screwed over by a lending institution, which should be fun.

Realize that I'm not yet jaded about owning a home; simply the process involved in buying one.  I can't wait to sit on my patio, smoke a cigar and drink a beer on the night that I move in.  Having said that, it's an exhausting amount of back and forth, and what I think we didn't realize when we got started was just how much effort it takes to keep all of these vendors talking to one another.  Combining this with wedding planning, it's a lot.  But we'll pull through.

Updates to come in the weeks ahead...

Grading Recent Commercials, Part III: The Potpourri Edition

We put a bid on a house last week and it was accepted earlier today.  We're in attorney review, and the next blog post will tell more about how all that jazz works out.  For now, let's blow off some steam by grading some more recent TV commercials.

As always, commercials are ranked on a standard grading scale, from A+ to F, where A+ is Ivan Drago and F is Tommy Gunn.

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Commercial #1: Why So Woman-Focused?


Sometimes, I look at a commercial and think: this is such a good idea in general, why do you make me not want to use your product so much?  This is true for commercials for most chocolate bars, TV dinners, and products used for cleaning the house, where I watch the commercial and wonder fuck the heck the advertising agency (no, most likely the client) was thinking.

I'll be honest: I am a manly man, and I love chocolate bars.  I occasionally eat TV dinners (even, gasp, "diet" ones), and I get my ass up early every Saturday morning and clean the apartment because I like to clean.  (No, I do not wear French maid costumes while doing so.)

So whenever someone (whether it's Dove chocolate or Bud Light) markets a product toward one gender only, I generally assume that they're okay with not doubling their sales.  We've become a society that despises both "girl talk" and "bro talk."  There's a way to get your product sold without catering to only men or only women, and if you're smart enough, you'll find it.  No matter what, the end consumer is smart enough to know when they're not being spoken to.  And this brings me to Angie's List.

Angie's List is a subscription service that exists in a number of metropolitan areas, which allows users to view and contribute to comments and rankings regarding local services, such as contractors, plumbers, housekeepers, etc.  It's like TripAdvisor, but because you're paying for the service one might reasonably assume that the comments are vetted and are of higher, more objective quality.

FWIW, I think Angie's List is a fantastic idea.  As but one example, there's this new generation of first-time homebuyers (and I am one of them) who are used to going on the Internet in order not only to find answers, but we also have the expectation that, among several answers, we should be able to determine which answer is "best".  Where past generations would typically ask family or neighbors for a plumber recommendation, we would rather determine which plumber in town gets the most positive five-star ratings.  We are the most empirical generation ever, and Angie's List speaks to this need by providing the raw data.

I've watched several of the Angie's List commercials (one is above), and all - except one - is clearly not only designed for women, but is overtly and (I feel) offensively designed for women.  The one above has a female narrator who hired a housekeeper who whistles an annoying tune, but is so good at her job that it's okay.  After she's done speaking, there's another narrator voice (again a woman) who pitches the service.  Oh, and everything at the end of the commercial is pink.  And almost every other Angie's List commercial is like this.

So I'm just going to say this, and move on to the next commercial.  Angie's List is not a tampon.  It is an excellent idea with mainstream appeal and many men would pay for it if it didn't make them feel like they were picking out window treatments.  Men need plumbers, too.

Grade: F, for Feminist, because that's clearly what I am.

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Commercial #2: Smart People Like Animals, Stupid People LOOOOOOOVE Them

If you're like me and you don't deal drugs in East Baltimore, you also don't pre-pay for your cell phone.  You probably sign a contract with your cell phone provider and upgrade your phone for free every couple of years.  This is because you have a credit history - not a good credit history, but any kind of credit history at all.  I suppose lots of people do like to use burners, though, and RadioShack indeed has an ad for that.

In the below ad, nothing important is said.  It's just a male bulldog and a female cat, talking about stupid stuff.  You shouldn't click on the link to the video below, unless you want to lose brain cells.  It's hard to understand how anyone could possibly pay attention to this for more than a few seconds, but I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and tell you what the commercial has going for it:

• The characters use Southern accents, which makes sense because the South has 31% of the money that the North has and burner phones are cheap.
• It features quirky animation, which at least grabs your peripheral attention.
• The conversation, while complete nonsense, is vaguely sexual, which is peripherally attractive to some people.
• It has dogs and cats, which OMG are sooooo cutttteeeeeee...

Obviously, I hate this commercial.  But I imagine that, like Sarah Palin, it's effective for the people it's supposed to be effective for (if this makes sense).  I'd personally rather have a two-year contract, but I also don't have to worry about Detective McNulty, so bully for me.

Grade: F

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Commercial #3: What Detroit Got Right

I often critique car commercials, both because cars are awesome and because cars are super-expensive, which necessarily makes the art of selling them more important than would be selling, say, a set of Tupperware or something.  Over the past decade, no car-maker (domestic or foreign) has faced a tougher road than Chrysler. Their line of passenger cars and minivans has been notable only for its design flaws, poor quality, and lackluster look.  Compared with the other "Big Three" automakers - Ford and GM - Chrysler has certainly been behind the pack leaders for quite a while.  So I, like you, was astounded to see the following commercial during this month's Super Bowl, and as a result I have to analyze it a bit.  Below is the extended, two-minute version, which you can't find on TV anymore:

What I love about this commercial is the following:

1. The dialogue: Somehow the voiceover work for what I think is a luxury car commercial sounded edgy, brash, and blue-collar, and all the while matched the essence of the commercial - namely, that Detroit (and its cars) are resurgent, and we should all buy one.  Usually if you strip away just the wording of a luxury car commercial and repeat it to yourself out loud, you'll sound like the douchiest douche that ever douched.  Not in this case.  The lyrics (and yes, this commercial had lyrics) told a story, accentuated by the phrase "to hell and back," which worked better than 99.99% of any of the curse words I ever used, and effectively communicated what the Chrysler 200 stands for.
2. The voiceover artist:  A 59-year-old gruff-looking freelance voiceover artist from Michigan was the voice you heard in this commercial.  He sounded perfect; he sounded like Detroit.  He sounded like the kind of guy who's spent every Friday night following his Cutty Sark with an unironically-consumed PBR.  He sounds like he belongs to an autoworkers union and actually works hard.  He sounds old and wrecked by cigarettes and angry, and (here I'm conjecturing a bit) that's how we should feel when we think about Detroit and the sad stories it contains. 
3. The car: Black was a good choice for the color.  It looks sleek.  I'll wait for Consumer Reports to recommend it first.
4. The cinematography: We needed to physically see Detroit in this commercial, and this commercial managed to capture a city in two minutes in the same way that David Simon captured Baltimore in "The Wire."  Gritty, tough as nails, sad but defiant.  Short snippets worked way better than a smaller number of longer shots would have.  It was like being taken for a ride.
5. Eminem, and specifically the strategic use of his 2002 hit "Lose Yourself" juxtaposed with a gospel choir: Holy shit, that was really cool.  The "Lose Yourself" beat alone is often enough to prompt riots.  The gospel remix, particularly in the empty worndown theater, had spectacular dramatic effect.  Not thrilled with the last ten seconds of the commercial - Eminem doesn't sound like he's from Detroit - but that's a minor quibble.

So, in general, I loved this commercial.

In cinema, when I think of how music can interplay with cinematography and dialogue, I always think of Scorcese.  The scene from "Goodfellas" where you see how the crew got killed one at a time, to the tune of the piano coda to Clapton's "Layla," is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  It's both jarring and beautiful, it outlines death in all its brutality, and the music blends with the camerawork to create a coherent experience.  It's the scene in the movie that people talk about the most, and with good reason.

I realize that we're talking about a commercial here.  It's obviously derivative to the type of feel and musical juxtaposition that Scorcese (and others) have been using for the past twenty years, and it's also impossible to provide much of the same context in a commercial's timeframe (even if the commercial clocks in at over two minutes).  But it gets an A for effort, for being memorable, and for being extremely well thought-out.

Grade: A

Buying a First Home: Tackling the Biggest, Semi-Dumbest Expense Ever

I'm gonna buy this place is what I said,
blame it upon a rush of blood to the head...

The floods is threatenin'
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away 

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The woman and I are in the market to buy our first house.  We're not buying one of those rinky-dinky RV's, nor are we buying a mere double-wide trailer.  No, sir.  We're pushing all of our chips into the middle and buying a full-blown, brick-and-mortar, suburban New Jersey single family home.

Since we started looking in earnest a couple of months ago, we've entered more strangers' homes than in our entire lives combined before this point.  We've opened cupboards and medicine cabinets, inspected toilets and furnaces (this was mainly me), and had the incredible experience of spending a few quiet minutes contemplating what our future lives would look like in each of these houses.  On the other hand, we've also walked into houses where the current owners were not only home, but actively showering.  We've been duped by houses that back to major highways (this is a major no-no), we've walked through vacant lots and knee-high drifts of snow to enter houses that repulse us, and been so tired of the process that we've decided to take an entire week off from discussing house-hunting and have witnessed each house we've seen fall into a blurry haze where it's impossible to tell one from the other.  (Oh wait, that was the past two weeks.)

In case you weren't aware, buying a home is super serious.  If you buy a car and it stinks, you probably have lemon laws on your side and even if those fail you, you're only out a (relatively) small amount of money.  Additionally, someone else might think your car stinks less than you do and purchase it from you, thus cutting your losses a bit.  If you buy a home and it turns out that any of the following is true:

• The sofa in the living room was hiding a giant hole leading to the basement;
• The above-ground pool leaks incessantly and will cost thousands of dollars to replace;
• The neighbors are knife-wielding psychos, or even worse, from Staten Island;
• The bathroom walls and doors are paper thin and everyone in the house gets to hear everything that goes on in there;
• Your basement is infested with house centipedes (or, as I like to call them, "Hellbugs")
• The previous owners were involved in a ghastly murder-suicide incident and haunt the house, constantly throwing pots and pans around the kitchen in the middle of the night and drawing in blood on your walls...

Well, sorry, bub.  You better hire yourself a damn good contractor or exorcist or something, because you have just made a terrible decision with a four hundred thousand dollar price tag attached to it.  And don't worry about the price, because you'll be spending the next thirty years paying it off.  (As a morbid aside, I only have an 88% chance of living another thirty years, which - at my most pessimistic moments - is an oddly comforting thought.)

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It says home is where your heart is
But what a shame
Cause everyone's heart doesn't beat the same
It's beatin' out of time

This is not to say that I'm not super excited about buying a home: I am.  Buying a home is lots of fun, if you are the kind of person who likes to pore over reams of data (again, I am).  Comparing and contrasting homes (or trying and failing to do this; see below) is fun; budgeting is fun; going to open houses is fun; and - although we haven't negotiated a price yet - negotiating prices is (for me) always fun.  I guess you could say that trying to figure out the whole puzzle is fun, because - either through choice or competence level - no one in the industry is equipped enough to tell you everything.

You can work with a realtor, but they don't know a whole lot about mortgages.  Mortgage brokers know a lot about mortgages, but don't know a lot about the law.  Real estate attorneys are supposed to operate with your best interest in mind, but may be in cahoots with the realtors and the mortgage brokers.  The Internet is a goddamned minefield of inaccurate information when it comes to buying a house - some of the information is so outdated (i.e., greater than three years old) that it might as well be tailored to a completely different planet.

I shall call this planet Earth: 2006, or Bubbletopia.

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Open doors so I walk inside
Close my eyes, find my place to hide
And I shake as I take it in
Let the show begin


I'm too young to remember 2006, but - from what I understand from stories told to me by my parents and real estate agents - it was a glorious time when every American felt rich and consequently needed to "upgrade" their primary residence.  Thanks in part to permissive lending policies and lack of regulatory control/taking a deep breath by, well, anyone, everyone who wanted to buy a house was able to, even if they could not afford it.  Hell, even if they had no income, they could buy a house, as long as they were willing to lie through their teeth about having an income.

I do have one relatively fuzzy memory of 2006.  I had recently inherited a smallish sum of money from a relative who passed away, and my dad and I had considered taking some (actually, almost all) of this money and putting it as a down payment on a townhouse.  The conventional wisdom at the time was that housing was a fantastic investment, that homes were guaranteed to steadily increase in value, and the only reason we put the plan on hold was my decision to begin graduate school in Boston in the fall of 2007.  Had we gone ahead and done this, we could have been easily approved for a home that I would have bought at the very apex of the modern era's most insidious housing boom, and I would be crying into my Spaghetti-O's right now in a home I would both (a) hate and (b) be unable to sell.

What is there prohibiting us from making the same, terrible decision in 2011?  I suppose we can be comforted by the fact that the Great Recession of 2008 has ended, and the US economy at long last appears to be improving.  Both of our jobs are secure, and home prices have fallen so far over the past four years that it's reasonable to say that what we can buy at $400k is - historically speaking - a great value.

But the market forces that influence why a house costs what it does are so damned variable.  If you buy a Honda Civic, like I did a few years back, you pay a price that is easily comparable to the Toyota Corolla, the Hyundai Elantra, and other equivalent models.  It's actually quite easy - especially when buying your second car - to compare these models against your priorities and make an informed decision about which is "best."

When attaching a value or a price tag to a home, however, you hear vague terms like "updated kitchen" and "great school system" and "not in a flood plain."  That updated kitchen is great, but how do I know the contractor who put it together wasn't baked out of his mind when doing so?  I love the idea of a great school system, but what happens when the current superintendent retires and is replaced by the former superintendent from someplace horrible, like Middletown or Camden or something?  And "not in a flood plain" means that there's a statistical improbability - not an impossibility - that the house will flood.  When the Great Hurricane of 2029 absolutely tears up the entire Jersey Shore and turns everything within 50 miles of an ocean, river, or other meaningful body of water into a freaking Duck Boat tour, you go ahead and complain to your insurance company, because you, my friend, are boned.

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Take that look of worry, mine is an ordinary life
Working when it's daylight and sleeping when it's night
I have no far horizons, I don't wish upon no star
They don't think that I listen, ah but I know who they are

I am the kind of person who likes to manage risk, and who prides himself on his ability to master risk intuitively.  As a result, the prospect of buying a house scares the living shit out of me sometimes.

You have every right in the world to tell me to shut the fuck up.

But as with every major life decision, many calculated risks need to be taken in order to pull this off.  First-time homebuyers will find themselves poring over many different types of minutia - IRS regulations, mortgage yield spreads, and budget calculators - if and only if they are smart about the decision.  And the magnitude of dollars involved in a home purchase is a really unique thing.  For instance, at some point over the next few months, I will walk into a room carrying a dark leather briefcase with several stacks of hundred dollar bills inside.  (I already know which briefcase I'll carry, and I am contractually obligated to wear a suit and dark sunglasses while I do this.)  After taking out a single Benjamin and lighting a cigar with it (because, at this point, why the hell not?), I shall sign over the money to the bank and they will consequently trust us with a mortgage worth more than both of our combined net worths.  (Do banks send hitmen?)

So that's my "home buying overview."  Depending on how interesting this is to other people, I'll periodically update over the next four months with our progress toward the ultimate goal: a two-story beer bong at the Housewarming Party.

I just hope it turns out better than the last Housewarming Party, where I consumed many questionable substances and threw up in the sink at 3 AM.  And I'll let the blog-reading public define "better..."

Don't be Silly, Adrian Peterson: Grading Recent Commercials (Part 2)

Since the post I wrote about two weeks ago cutting apart some TV commercials was well-received, let's move on to a new set of snark.  Again, all commercials are graded using a standard rating scale, where A+ is "The Godfather, Part II" and F is "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes."

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Commercial #1: The One Commercial That Gets the "Smarmy Dude, Hot Chick" Trope Right

If you are like me, you watch tons of football.  In fact, I watch so much football that (a) sometimes I spend the equivalent of a workday sitting on the couch watching football, and (b) sometimes I watch football games where I know nothing about the teams at play.  Division 3 football, high school football, you name it, I'll watch it.

(I'm writing this during the BCS Championship game, though, because I hate both the University of Oregon and Auburn University with equally fiery passions.  The University of Oregon is douchey, in bed with Nike, has annoying uniforms and a not-deserving-of-pretense pretentious fan base.  The school barely cracks the top 100 in the nation academically, and you'd think it's fucking Yale if you listen to its students enough.  Auburn is a bunch of backwoodsy, incestuous assholes who have no academic standards, love Sarah Palin and have a quarterback straight out of a terrible '80's movie about cheating in sports.  Both of these teams, and all of their respective fans, can choke on the same Chicken McNugget.)

At least in professional football, most of the commercials are really, really stupid.  The NFL assumes that a big part of its fan base consists of Neanderthal males, and appeases this demographic by presenting lots of commercials for domestic light beer products that are designed to state man's superiority to woman (usually using third-grade humor to make the point).  I hate these commercials because they're not subtle and they actively lead the people with money in their pockets toward hating the product being sold, but that's not my point here.

My point is that the NFL itself, who probably knows more about the commercials being shown during its games than anyone else, has turned this system on its head with a quirky and extremely funny commercial for its NFL Mobile product.  I submit for your approval the following:

A few things to note about this commercial:

1. The dude is extremely smarmy and the girl is extremely good looking.  This is a trope, it happens a bunch in commercials; the goal here is to attract the attention of loser-like, ugly dudes, by instilling a brief millisecond of hope that they, too, might score a babe one day.  (Sorry, ain't happening.)
2. There's actually a plot to this commercial; girl walks into the water.  Dude checks NFL highlights.  Girl (Adrian Peterson) walks out of the water and Peterson - who must have a FANTASTIC sense of humor because he allows himself to be made fun of often in commercials - putting a towel around his helmet, speaks in a girl's voice, "You're imagining me as Adrian Peterson again, aren't you?"  Cut to the punch line of the entire commercial, guffaw guffaw, the end.

I remembered this commercial - and what it was for - immediately, because it does so many things that are both unexpected and also demands a great deal of attention on the behalf of the viewer to comprehend.  Extra props for manipulating the shallow, sexist tropes that dominate the media marketplace for commercials shown during football games.  Kudos for NFL Mobile for a commercial that scores a touchdown.

Grade: A-

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Commercial #2: Mayhem, Like Me

If you watched "Oz" back in the day, you know character actor Dean Winters as the completely awesome Ryan O'Reily, the lead character on the show.  He's also been in a bunch of other stuff, including a recurring role on "30 Rock," but you most likely only know him as "Mayhem," the real-life manifestation of problems that can occur while driving.

In the above commercial, he represents one of the worst drivers in the world - the emotionally compromised teenage girl.  Several things are hilarious and effective about this commercial: the deadpan "OMG", the pink Dodge Durango with matching sunglasses, and the obviousness that - holy shit - there are a lot of terrible drivers out there and maybe you do need effective insurance to protect yourself.

This is the type of ad campaign that must have taken a great deal of patience (as well as balls, when you think about it) to pull off.  It, like the earlier commercial for NFL Mobile, requires an active viewer to get the point.  It essentially bets on the weirdness and comic quality being enough to draw people in, and to understand what the commercial is trying to sell.  It's a big swing, but it works, and it's resulted in one of the most memorable ad campaigns in recent memory.  The above video is, in my opinion, the funniest one of the lot.

Grade: A-

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Commercial #3: Where Smarmy DOESN'T Sell (a/k/a The Power of Likability)

Where Allstate hit a home run with its most recent ad campaign, one of its major competitors - State Farm - hit a dribbler down the third base line.  There might be people, somewhere in the United States, who actively like the following commercial, but I haven't met any of them yet.  (And yes, I've had many conversations with people about these commercials, and they ALL hate them.  Watch the below commercial at your own risk.)

The skinny of this commercial is as follows: douchebag pitchman walks into a cafe and talks about how great State Farm insurance is.  Holds the door for someone on the way in - that must have really sold Middle Fuckin' America, right there.  Speaks a couple of incredibly false statistics (e.g., "Discounts up to 40%"... yeah, right) as the camera nonsensically pans around the cafe while workers... do their jobs?  Not sure what the point of this pan-around is.  Camera cuts back to douchebag pitchman who spouts some more drivel about State Farm, all the while with very soft and boring music playing in the background.  Fade to red.

So, this commercial is extremely problematic.  First, the pitchman is completely ineffective.  He's too slight, too tenor, too... girly to get the job done.  He's not convincing, and insurance is such a saturated marketplace that false discounts aren't enough to get people to switch - they might get people to get a quote from State Farm, but once they see that the stated discounts are lies, and they are lies, they won't switch.  Anyway, where Allstate has Pedro Cerrano/President Palmer and Ryan O'Reily pitching ads, State Farm has My Big Fat Greek Pitchman (I would have also accepted the homeless man's Steve Perry from Journey).  So there's an epic fail right there.

Second, what's with the hokey nature of this commercial?  It seems corny and contrived.  The cafe setting doesn't make sense, and the pan-around doesn't do anything to help firm the message (if anything, it detracts from it).  Other commercials from the same ad campaign show the pitchman in front of a newsstand.  These settings all have something in common: they have NOTHING to do with insurance.

State Farm has clearly forgotten the cardinal rule of selling insurance products: the products themselves are so ugly, and people think so little about insurance in their day-to-day lives in the first place, that you've got to get really creative in order to sell them.  These commercials fail to accomplish this.

Grade: F

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Commercial #4: Selling Ford Cars to Girls

I'm going to take off my misogynist hat for a minute here and attempt to be objective.  Such a high percentage of car commercials are tailored to men (have you seen that Dodge Challenger ad with George Washington, the one that says in a voice over: "Here are two things that America got right: cars, and freedom"?  Holy smokes, that one might as well be sponsored by the goddamn Tea Party).  Additionally, Ford was in such a perilous market position just a couple short years ago, I feel that having a series of TV spots that are specifically designed for women is extremely unique, extremely daring, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being extremely effective.

What I think Ford did, at a very high level, is the following: they realized that they would never beat Honda or Toyota in perceived quality (although, paradoxically, in some instances they have rivaled them recently in actual quality).  So they teamed with Microsoft to add some really cool multimedia features to the cars, and decided to focus their marketing efforts on the "Car is a Cool Toy" market.  Good call here - that's exactly how my generation thinks, for the most part.

This, I think, leads naturally to an ad campaign that's more or less designed to get women to go alone into Ford dealerships to buy cars.  (You might disagree with the basic premise of my argument, but before you fly off the deep end, remember this: if a commercial for Grands biscuits shows a black family sitting around a table eating said biscuits - and this is an actual example from a recent commercial - it is a commercial targeted toward the black demographic.  It's not racist - it is racialist, I would argue, and there is a difference - and commercials are allowed to target genders, races, etc.  In the quest for the almighty dollar, many baseline rules of American society do not apply.)

[NOTE: I can't find a Youtube link to any of these commercials, which means that I fail at blogging.  I wrote all of the above before searching because usually, I can find what I am looking for.  But you know the commercials I'm talking about: Mike Rowe of Discovery's "Dirty Jobs" alongside a typically-attractive woman, he talks her through the Ford car of note in VERY shallow fashion, and then she decides she doesn't want to drive her Camry or Civic any more.  To me, they're pretty terrible because they don't go into any detail about the car - but I'm a details kind of guy.  I could see these commercials working very well for the people whom they are intended for.]

Anyway, as I mentioned in a previous post about commercials, everyone thinks they're an expert when it comes to cars.  More than half the battle in getting someone to switch brands is to just get them to think differently about the product itself.  These Ford ads succeed in that you stop thinking about your car as a means of transportation, and start thinking, "Hey, this is cool, this is fun!"

And the female focus (no pun intended) is probably a really good idea, too.  Women must feel maligned in the super-macho car market - I've noticed anecdotally that so many car commercials are tailored toward men, and most of the ones tailored toward women are pedantic and assume women are stupid, which is no fair - and (in my male opinion), these Ford commercials don't do that as much as others do.  Whether this translates to more sales for Ford is an open question, but certainly something to keep an eye on.

Grade: C+

Look at this F**king Hyundai: Fred Grades Recent Commercials

I watch a lot of TV, and maybe it's because of what I do for a living, maybe it's my deep-down love of "Mad Men," maybe it's something else entirely, but I watch the commercials intently as well.  Usually I do so with a metric ton of snark, because everyone in advertising seems to think they're Don Draper these days when really they're Ted Chaough.  (That's very much an inside joke.)  So I figured I'd bring some of that snark over to this blog-space by rating a few TV commercials and explaining why.

All advertisements are graded using a standard grading scheme, where "A+" is the greatest advertisement ever (never seen it) and "F" is Volkswagen's 1997 "Da Da Da" campaign.

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Advertisement #1: Look at This Fucking Hipster meets Straightforward Korean Engineering

You've definitely seen this commercial during the holiday season; two scarf-wearing, uncleansed hipsters straight out of Park Slope shilling for - you guessed it - Hyundai.  Specifically, in the two commercials I've seen so far, the Hyundai Sonata (a stylish and highly-rated, if somewhat unassuming, $20,000 family sedan) and the Hyundai Genesis Sedan (an upscale, $35,000+ luxury sedan that gets 25 highway mpg and therefore would NEVER be driven by a hipster).

What I don't get about these commercials is the following: virtually nobody likes hipsters.  They're douchey, smelly, pretentious without meaning or purpose, and are unified solely by their complete absence of social grace. (Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: ::exasperated smarmy sigh:: Don't worry, it's some number you've never heard of.)

Most people dislike most car brands as well (if Grandpa was an Oldsmobile man, by definition he wasn't a Ford man or a Chevy man), but sometimes a well-made car commercial can shift this pattern and effectively shift some of the market toward a brand.  Given this possibility, why put hipsters, whom nobody likes, into your car commercial, when you're trying to get people to purchase your car brand?

Look, I will concede that it is borderline acceptable to put hipsters in a car commercial if you're trying to market a car that hipsters would actually consider driving.  (This puts aside the obvious notion that, after spending all their money on organic kale, indie-rock CD's, and locally-sourced vegan tofu, most hipsters are flat broke, but still.)  A Honda Fit commercial featuring hipsters, for instance, would get a far higher grade than this campaign. 

This commercial misses the fundamental point that hipsters don't want family sedans or luxury sedans - they aren't GREEN enough - and those people who would purchase family sedans or luxury sedans don't want to watch a dude with an unkempt beard ring goddamn tambourines.  Thus, these commercials are terrible.  I smite you, Hyundai (although I do like the Genesis sedan).

Grade: D

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Advertisement #2: Can a Bank Be (Legitimately) Metal?

In my never-ending search for authenticity, I'm often extremely surprised at how many commercials fail at simply doing what they were intended to do.  It's like the ad executive or the client (yeah, probably the client) for most companies ends up deciding upon a commercial that attempts to make six different statements - and executes each of them poorly - rather than something that quickly and effectively makes one solid statement and plain sticks with it.

Over the past couple of years, Ally Bank has caught a reasonable amount of flak (entirely from parents of small children, who seem eternally incapable of putting their hormonal changes into context and remembering that kids don't matter to people who don't have kids) for a series of ultra-realistic commercials that involved an adult actor stealing from small children as a metaphor for what other banks do to their customers.  Supposedly the commercials were not even scripted, so the looks on these children's faces when their ice cream was taken from them was indeed real, which resulted in tons of pissed off parents who couldn't bear to see little Madison get her heart broken!  (I always chuckled at these commercials, because I hate kids and feel they should learn about endless disappointment.)

To paraphrase the governor of Pennsylvania, we've become a nation of wussies.  As a result, I appreciate Ally Bank's authenticity, which thankfully hasn't wavered in their latest daring ad campaign.  In it, a metal band wails upon things that they hate (seriously, the first five seconds of this commercial are some of the funniest I've ever seen in a TV commercial), and then ad lib into "But I really love my bank!"  And then hilarity ensues from there.

The best thing about this ad (in my opinion) is that - taking "metal" to its literal, counter-cultural definition - this commercial is legitimately metal.  In the same way that it was metal to love George W. Bush in 2004, it's metal to love your bank in 2010.  This commercial is not for everyone (I could see my parents - and yours - putting the TV on mute whenever it comes on), but for its target audience, it's extremely memorable.  So kudos, Ally Bank, for creating an advertisement that actually does what it intends to do.  However, your savings rates are piss poor, so I will not use you.

Grade: B+

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Advertisement #3: Short but Sweet (Really Sweet...)

Just to prove I have a heart, I've also become a big fan of AT&T's new Samsung Focus cell phone spot.  Only 15 seconds in length, it describes the product, shows the product at work in a way that should make it very clear to the end user how it works and how it can improve their life, and then cuts away to an extremely... well, cute pink cyclops alien that bats its eye and picks a flower.

My fiancee liked this ad so much that she said she wanted a stuffed pink cyclops alien for Christmas.  (This is the same woman who got me a stuffed yeast for Christmas because I've recently started brewing my own beer ... so, yeah.)  I searched the Internet for a while but couldn't find anyone selling a stuffed replica of an alien creature from a cell phone commercial.  But hey, at least I tried!

I think what this commercial proves is that cute will always have the capacity to sell (if, again, it's authentic).  Like any social interaction, a commercial has about ten seconds to bring what we in the research business like to call "emotional rapport" - that immediate sense of, hey, this person/commercial/widget is actually kind of OK and I really want to pay more attention to it.  It's not syrupy, it's actually more informative than anything, and as such it gets the job done.

However, I will stick with Verizon.

Grade: B

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 Advertisement #4: Why I Hate Luxury Car Brands, Especially Lexus

Holy crap... I mean, look.  I get that luxury car brands ONLY exist insofar as they can convince people with disposable income (and just as many people without disposable income) to splurge tens of thousands of extra dollars (compared with a non-luxury car) on what is essentially a means of getting from Point A to Point B.  As a result of this, these brands need to justify their value by essentially appealing to prospective buyers' vanity - that is, you NEED this $40,000 car because you DESERVE the best/you need to SHOW everyone how wealthy you are/you MUST compensate for your small penis/yadda yadda, etc.  

(As you may have already guessed by the tenor of the previous paragraph, I intend to drive my base-model Honda Civic to the ground, on sheer principle.)

However, each holiday season, Lexus seems to push the envelope on this principle to the brink of committing brand seppuku.  This year,  their pitch line on several TV spots has been: "Let's be honest; no one ever wished for a smaller holiday gift."  To disprove this claim, below I've attempted to create a list of perfectly reasonable holiday gifts that are smaller than a Lexus RX350 (curb weight 4,178 lbs):

• Diamond jewelry
• A fruitcake
• A charitable gift in the recipient's behalf
• A Shake Weight
• An iPad
• Scotch of the Month club
• A stuffed microbe
• A mature adult Holstein cattle (~1,000 lb)

Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a second, I understand that the commercial's pitch line is not intended to be taken seriously.  Commercial pitch lines, in general, are not (in a literal sense) serious.  But when Taco Bell tells you to "Think outside the bun," it's OK that it's whimsical and flip because Taco Bell sells $1 tacos.  When you're selling a $40,000 car, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard of seriousness, and Lexus' entire holiday ad campaign completely fails to meet this standard. 

As a result, these commercials have become parodies unto themselves.  (In searching Youtube for "Lexus holiday commercial," I found more Lexus ad spoofs than actual commercials.)  It would not surprise me at all to see Lexus lose ground this holiday season to other luxury brands - Lexus (and its parent company, Toyota) haven't exactly had a banner year in 2010.  If it happens in 2010, expect them to lose ground to Acura, whose "Season of Reason" holiday ad campaign, I feel, elegantly toed the line between "this is a luxury purchase" and "this is nonetheless a perfectly reasonable purchase," doing an excellent job of capturing the current American zeitgeist of purchasing luxury items, where possible, and where practical.

Grade: F------- (Not Edible for Human Consumption)

Political Centrism Will Work. Partisans of all Kinds Are Idiots.

(DISCLAIMER #1: I almost never write about politics, and I think this is with good reason.  When having a conversation about politics with someone, it helps to make it clear exactly WHAT it is you are talking about, and from what frame of reference it is you speak - otherwise, two otherwise intelligent people end up having completely different conversations with each other and pissing each other off.  In the format of a blog post, if something gets lost in translation, it is entirely my fault.  This makes writing about politics risky; however, given what's been in the news lately, and the reactions that folks have had to said news, I think that "the benefits outweigh the risks."  Keep in mind that possible side effects of this blog post include: nodding silently, realizing I am far more eloquent than you originally anticipated, realizing I am a complete idiot, and never wishing to speak to me or read what I've written again.  All are rare.)

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I was one of the more intelligent kids in my high school days.  I wasn't a fantastic student, but I was good enough, and I ended up attending Rutgers (a better-than-average state school) as an undergraduate student. 

For the first three years of college, I worked a work-study job as a front desk attendant at the college gym.  Starting in junior year, a weird thing started to happen: I started to see people I went to high school with, specifically people whose academic abilities in high school I thought should have prohibited them from ever attending any four-year university (let alone a decent one like Rutgers) check in at the gym's front desk as students.

I could have had any number of reactions to this, but the reaction I chose was fairly pragmatic; I realized that (a) these high school classmates, whom I had rashly written off as idiots while in high school, were late bloomers, and likely had a completely valid type of intelligence that I couldn't myself understand because it wasn't my type of intelligence; and (b) more generally speaking, different people can take radically different paths toward the same ideal, or the same solution, and each path can be equally valid.

Taking this analogy one step further, I've come to the conclusion that my worldview (and yours, by the way) is fundamentally skewed toward the biases that have been ingrained in me (and you) since the age of about two.  This doesn't make me stupid; however, if I were to completely ignore this fact, and go about my adult business assuming that - for whatever reason - my worldview is "more correct" than yours, or "more correct" than some huge group of individuals who share a conceptual grouping (e.g., people of a particular race or people of a particular political persuasion)... well, I think that would make me stupid.

I think that most rational adults get this fact, and 95% of the time they implement it wisely.  People who have obtained even modest success in academia/business have undoubtedly encountered many situations where they have been struck by their own narrow-mindedness.  With time, they learn to adapt their actions, almost as if they are "scaffolding" against their own limitations.

But not when it comes to politics.  No, when it comes to politics - just like when it comes to operating a motor vehicle - everyone acts like a goddamned expert.  Even worse, perhaps due to the daunting scope of the problems that politics are supposed to solve, everyone seems to think that the solutions to these problems are obvious.  (As examples, "we just need to cut taxes across the board," or "we need to spend more on governmental services".)  Further, people seem to generally think that politicians of one political party have the "correct" solution, while the plurality of individuals who affiliate with the other party are completely "incorrect" (to be polite).

(If you disagree with the above statement, then you disagree with the basic premise of my argument so there's really no point in reading any further.)

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(DISCLAIMER #2, THE DISCLAIMER WHERE I DO A VERY POOR JOB OF EXPLAINING MY OWN POLITICAL BELIEFS: I am a registered Democrat, and when I vote, about 80% of the time I vote for Democrats.  (The other 20% of the time, I vote Republican.)  I find that this is the case mainly because I align myself with Democrats on social issues that are "must-haves" for me, and also as an athiest, I shudder at the forced values of the modern Republican party.  However, compared with the rest of my immediate family (who happens to skew very much to the left), I have some political views that can be described as conservative.  For instance, I don't believe in many gun control laws - I believe that people should be allowed to arm themselves to the teeth, if they feel like it, to the extent that they abide by the law.  Also, when President Obama compromised with Congress yesterday to pass a bill that included a payroll tax cut, I was so excited that I woke up my fiancee from a nap to tell her that we were likely, as a household, to gain an extra $3,XXX in take home income in 2011.  So I like lower taxes, too.)


To provide a (really terrible) illustration, below is a figure from a completely unscientific "Politics Test" from an online dating site (it's what popped up first when I Google searched "politics test"; leave me alone) called OKcupid.com.  I don't trust it at all, especially since one of the attributes I was asked to rate my agreement with was: "It should be legal for two consenting adults to challenge each other to a duel and fight a Death Match." - my answer on a 4-point scale from "Completely Disagree" to "Completely Agree" was "Agree," by the way - but nonetheless, here it is.  I am a centrist.  Make of this what you will.

Figure 1: I am socially liberal and economically moderate.

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So, getting back to me exposing a rather striking flaw in how most otherwise intelligent adults view the world. 

I don't know about you, but I don't vote for a candidate (especially for President) because I want them to follow an agenda that I agree with.  This is not to say that I don't care about their agenda - I do.  I vote for them because, after making a calculated judgment regarding not only the agenda they represent but also their intellect, psychological disposition, and overall readiness to assume office, my opinion is that they are the most competent choice to move the country forward in a reasonable direction.

This is why, when I hear the President getting so much crap from people on the left regarding selling out his ideals/his "vision"/his progressive agenda, it only takes me about 0.6 seconds to call bullshit.  Last month, Americans voted overwhelmingly in a way that indicates strongly that a progressive-left agenda is not currently viable for this country.  The truth is in the data, and the data - collected in aggregate, with 100 million-plus data points - does not typically lie.

Does this mean that the President needs to become a Republican?  Of course not, and strategically speaking, it makes a great deal of sense for him to point out the reasons why Republican leadership in Congress is presenting "suboptimal solutions" wherever possible over the next two years - politics is essentially a game of marketing, and the President will get re-elected in 2012 if he markets himself as being better than Republicans.  (By the by, I hope he pulls it off: I like the President, I want to see him get re-elected because I think he's a smart dude.)

However, it has become clear to me over the past two years of paying really careful attention that a divided government is itself an optimal solution, in the sense that it allows both parties to carry real weight in passing forth legislation.  I further believe that disagreeing with the previous statement is essentially saying the following: [DEMOCRATS/REPUBLICANS] are more correct than [OTHER PARTY], due to some developmental/dispositional/philosophical attribute(s) that no one has ever been able to determine but I know it exists because I don't think deeply about serious issues and I eat my own poop.  And this, well, I'm sorry, but this makes you an idiot.

Why can't it be that you agree with one political party more than another party, for reasons that you are able to explain rationally, but still have respect for the other party?  Why all the name-calling and generalization?  (More fundamentally, why do we only have two political parties in this country?  Err... that's a topic for a completely different blog post.)

As someone interested in how people behave in groups, I am fascinated by these questions, as I think they provide some really useful insight into how our minds work.  I don't know any of the solutions - I recommend John W. Dean's 2007 book Conservatives Without Conscience, specifically the chapter(s) regarding the study of authoritarian behavior as it relates to modern conservatism, as a useful point of reference for those who are interested - but I imagine insights can be constructed.

For now, I think it would really help America if liberals adopted a wait-and-see attitude and allowed the President to shift naturally toward the middle, because - if you believe, as I do, that everyone is at least "a little correct" - the best way forward is probably somewhere in the middle.  And conservatives, since you're pretty happy right now, if you could go ahead and explain these whole Jesus and family values obsessions to me, I'd really appreciate it, because I don't really get either of these things.  Thanks.