Things I Hate: Dane Cook

Every year, the baseball playoffs give me an amazing opportunity to get really, really sick of a few commercials. The entire playoffs are apparently only allowed two or three commercials, played over and over and over and over until your head starts to bleed. This year, the pain reaches a new, exciting level with heaping helpings of Dane Cook. He stars in a bunch of ads showing during the playoffs that try to get you excited about watching the playoffs. (Aren't the playoffs themselves supposed to do that? And moreover, isn't that sort of like McDonald's putting ads inside their own hamburgers? We don't really need to be told to buy the product, guys -- we already bought it.)

Basically, the ads feature him shouting a bunch of cliches about how "Dude, there is only one October!" and gesticulating frantically as clips from previous years play around him. Even if I weren't already watching the playoffs, Dane Cook is not exactly inspiring me to do so. Vince Lombardi he ain't. His demeanor is more one of a frat buddy trying to get you "psyched" to go to a kegger across town. Maybe I'm pretentious, but I like to think of the baseball playoffs as more than a chance to get blitzed and shout "woo!"

Of course, they got Dane Cook because he's popular with the young men. Let's be clear here: Young men do not, and have not ever, known what the hell they're talking about. Dane Cook is not funny and never has been. He's a spazzy frat boy at best. He's the "Don't tase me, bro!" guy without the self-righteousness. (Which doesn't leave much.) I've seen his stand-up -- it's a lot of "Dude, you know when you get really hammered and take home a really ugly girl? We've all been there, right?" No, Mr. Cook, I actually haven't been there. But thanks for bringing up the fact that even what you would find regrettable and beneath your standards would have been a dream come true for me when I was a sad, lovelorn college student.

But anyway, he doesn't do stand-up in the ads, so I suppose I should be thankful for that. But still, it's only going to get more and more grating as the playoffs progress. Last year's most-repeated ad was heaven by comparison -- it was the ad for Chevy (or Ford, or GM, I can never tell the difference) which featured John Cougar Mellencamp singing "Generic John Cougar Mellencamp Song #67578565," which I can only assume was created by loading all of his previous songs on a computer, shaking it vigorously, and then pouring the result onto a tape recorder. You know the one; Ford (or Chevy or GM) still plays it at every opportunity. "The dream is great, and so is America ... We lift dirty things into trucks all day, workin' dumb and hard ... Let the voice of freedom shine out of our big, fat, overfed mouths ... this is our country! (And by "our" I mean GM/Ford/Chevy and other massive multinational conglomerates!) From the East Coast! To the West Coast! To Indiana, where I'm from, cuz I'm just an ordinary hard-workin' American, just like me and you .. see, look, I'm wearin' jeans and everything, and talkin' all down-home ..."

Anyway. The point is that advertisers are shitting bricks over Tivo's ad-skipping capabilities -- well, they deserve it for making crappy ads like this and playing them ad nauseam. (Is that really the point? Well, yes it is, as of now.) And the other point is that Dane Cook needs to die horribly. Maybe he could be tased to death.