Get me outta here!

My goal in this post is to mention 10 companies or products.

"Help! Help!, I just want to go home!" I screamed.

"It never ends, ever. It just repeats and repeats, with each time being more and more blatant!"

That's pretty much how it went down. I was lost in the woods this last weekend and I couldn't get out. Everywhere I turned it looked the same, and there were always these crudely assembled stick figures and rocks and plies of leaves that would show up all the time. I urinated myself.

Ya see, the woods I was lost in was All-Star Weekend, and the endless stream of crap was the 592,934 advertisements. They were everywhere. Our guy Dwight had a Sprite logo on his jersey during the dunk contest. Rashard had a Footlocker patch on his. Everything was brought to you in part by something else. T-Mobile sells phones. PlayStation, video games. There were billboards and entire sides of skyscrapers devoted to pushing products.

Even those fortunate enough to have DVR couldn't avoid it. Our lovely image of the day is Dwight sitting on a Sprite cube of some sort. McDonald's. During every timeout, or after every player did something they were given a Gatorade. Mmm, thirst quenching.

And I find it disturbing to see Mr. Charles Barkley doing T-Mobile adds with Dwayne Wade and our D12. It is chilling that our society (advertisers) decided that it is a worse crime to take in a bit of weed like Michael Phelps than to carelessly drive around town drunk. After all, there were only 16,885 alcohol-related fatalities in 2005, which accounts for 39 percent of all traffic deaths. But, hey, whatever, buy another phone. Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post put it best.

Anywho, back to advertisements. Haier. Now I am not so naive enough to think that this past weekend didn't cost the NBA a few bucks to put on, and that the advertisements obviously go towards helping to pay for such shanaggans. But still, at what point does it stop being complimentary and start being shoved down your throat?

Look no further than our Dwight Howard. Last year's All-Star weekend undoubtedly put him on the map. He went from being a damn good basketball player to a marketing jewel. That Superman cape has got to be worth a hundred million dollars. I don't blame Dwight, or Adidas, or Nike, or any other company or person. I blame the Leviathan (nice word, huh?) that was created and has taken over practically everything. This is a good film.

And finally, this post also serves in part to announce that we here at TPASTBM are selling ad space to finance this operation. We need money. Ohh, and State Farm and Cialis.