There will be no lead-in today. It's Friday, and I want to get right to the point. So, here we go...
I fucking loathe the New York State Smoker's Quit Line ads. The creative agency who designed these horror shows should be dragged into the street and stoned to death. I would rather watch the lady who had her face ripped off by a chimpanzee eat Honey Nut Cheerios on a 24 hour video loop than stare at these goddamn things, they are that fucking awful.
Every evening, after spending nine hours having my pride and self-worth beaten and raped by corporate shitheads, I get on a subway packed with foul-smelling douchebags. While standing ass to face with 587 lb giant with breath that smells like a mix between kitty litter and vanilla pudding, my only solace is to read the stupid ads on the subway, and pretend the guy staring from across the car at me isn't palming a grenade, or worse, himself. Sometimes the ads are great. Sometimes it's an advertisement for a new book by some hack thriller writer, complete with hokey imagery and quotes from dorks who write for Christian Style magazines. Sometimes it's an ad for a storage place in Brooklyn with half-naked girls. Sometimes it's an ad for the bible or some shit. Sometimes the ads are in Spanish, and I use my limited grasp on the language to completely butcher what they say: Bring your Mom and your Ice Cream to our lawyers for the tornado - Wow, what the fuck does THAT mean? But recently there have been ads featuring photos taken during surgery, with the New York Smokers Quit Line tagged on them. I don't know what the picture is actually of - a lung, a heart, a throat - but it's clearly a fucking human's insides. It is the worst fucking thing I've ever seen. I would rather stare at photos of Cuban refugees with compound fractures, or rotted deer carcasses piled up on the side of I-95, or the ads for the feet corn, and I FUCKING HATE FEET. But seriously, I would rather look at anything else besides the fucking inside of a throat.
As a former chain-smoker, I get what they're trying to do. I get that they're trying to scare people into quitting. But you know what? IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK. Showing me pictures of a fucking dead lung or a rotted throat does not make ANYONE want to stop smoking. Those ads with the lady who had her entire body amputated? They only make me change the channel, taking my eyes away from other advertisers. How about the fucking guy cleaning the hole in his neck? DISGUSTING. If I was another advertiser, I would tell the fucking YES Network to keep my fucking commercial as far away as possible from these fucking things.
What really bothers me is New York State advertisement standards okays these ads. A commercial with a girl dancing around in a bikini, shaking her ass, maybe juggling cantaloupes and singing "Oye Como Va"? NO WAY, WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN, SAVE THE CHILDREN! IT'S NOT LIKE THEY HAVE ACCESS TO THE INTERNET AND A PORTAL TO UNLIMITED PORNOGRAPHY AT THEIR FINGERTIPS OR ANYTHING! But an open heart spitting blood and shit everywhere and a byline that reads, "Your mom is going to die tonight if she doesn't quit"? That's acceptable, let's post that on every 2 train and also air a commercial of it between every fucking inning so people watching the game will lose their appetites and want to go fucking puke in the sink.
I think what makes me most mad is that I know there is some douchebag executive out there who thought it was a clever idea, "It will save lives, dammit!" But it's not clever. It's the equivalent of airing crime-scene photos of murder victims to stop serial killers from killing - so far beyond anyone's reach, it's incomprehensible and a waste of time. If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to buy the New York Smoker's Quit Line. First and foremost, I'm going to create better trivia questions for YES and not allow Fat-Head Michael Kay to answer them before viewers, and then I'm going to create my own commercials with photos of this kid I went to college with who's finger-webbing was yellow and who's breath smelled like a menthol corpse. That right there was enough to make me contemplate quitting, I didn't need surgery photos. Until then, SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM.
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