Taking a break with commercials

Recently, I’ve discovered some TV ads on YouTube.com for studying English. There’s one where a young and new member of the German coastguard receives a distress call from a British ship. “Mayday, mayday,” the British ship calls out, “We’re sinking. We’re sinking!” The German then goes, “Hello. This is the German coastguard. What are you sinking (thinking) about?”

With Typhoon Frank making its way to Manila in the weekend, I stayed put in my neighborhood on Saturday, stepping outside only to meet up with my siblings for a quick dinner with my niece Keona in the area. I had planned to meet up with friends and then watch a late night movie, but the rain wouldn’t have any of that. Instead, I was afforded some R&R with family, the noisy clatter of rain on our roof notwithstanding.

As Keona slept, my sister and I stayed in my bed, watched The Reaping on cable television, and tried putting make- up on our faces. Late into the night, when my sister decided to go to bed, I dug out an Akira Kurosawa DVD collection a friend lent me and chose Seven Samurai. It was still as good as I remembered—but I was hankering for some fast-paced stuff that required minimal effort, not a film to be savored—and with subtitles to boot!

When the electricity went out for a few minutes a quarter into the second DVD, I took it as a cue to postpone the mini-Kurosawa filmfest and do something more mindless but equally satisfying. Happily, the Internet was working. So I left Rikishi to his tantrum (after being asked why he wasn’t married yet), and went online as soon as the electricity came back.

I’ve written about my guilty pleasures online: chatting, Facebook, YouTube, blog surfing, and watching some television series episodes. There’s one thing I also do on YouTube: I watch TV commercials, sometimes tagged “funny,” sometimes tagged “banned.”

Recently, I’ve discovered some TV ads for studying English. There’s one where a young and new member of the German coastguard receives a distress call from a British ship. “Mayday, mayday,” the British ship calls out, “We’re sinking. We’re sinking!” The German then goes, “Hello. This is the German coastguard. What are you sinking (thinking) about?”

Another one of my “study English” favorites is a banned ad. A non-English-speaking family of four, with fifty-something Mom and Dad looking all proper and conservative, is getting ready for a drive. The two children get settled in the back, Dad switches on the radio, and a hip-hop song starts playing. They drive away, swaying to the beat. The catch: the lyrics goes, “I want to f**k you in the a**.”

The best ones, I’ve discovered, are the TV ads for contraceptives—condoms, specifically. The ads push their “intimate” products with naughty humor, instead of showing the expected lustful scenarios. One particular ad caught me by surprise, because I wasn’t sure where it was taking me the first time I saw it. A thirtyish, scruffy but attractive man is taking his young son, maybe five or six years old, grocery shopping. The boy picks up a pack of candies and throws it into the shopping cart. A power struggle ensues, with the dad putting the pack back on the shelf, and the boy putting it back in the cart. After a couple of rounds of this, the boy throws a gigantic tantrum, screaming “I want those sweeties!” (in French), screeching for the whole supermarket to hear, and running up and down the aisle and knocking other products from the shelves, before finally throwing himself on the ground—still screeching. While shocked people are looking at him, the man looks visibly embarrassed, and the words “Use condoms.” appear onscreen.

There’s more where they came from, under the username bannedcommercials, or just simply type “commercials” on the search bar. I have to warn you it can be addicting. I swear, some of the commercials are better than most sitcoms I’ve seen.

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