Scene and heard

I wrote about this commercial last February, by which time I was already sick of it. Today, I watched Fox Soccer Channel for several hours. I swear to you, every fucking commercial break, this came on! Can IDT be sued for harassment?

To briefly recap, this commercial features a dreadful bobbing-head blonde with a phony English accent that makes me cringe every time. Also featured is a clairvoyant Indian woman who is faking an Indian accent badly. She is calling her mother from her son’s soccer match to tell her about the goal her son has just scored. Amazingly, she has anticipated this and starts speaking moments after the goal has been scored, while the other parents are still cheering. Poor kid! He scores, all the other parents are cheering and his Mum is on the fucking phone! Sorry for swearing twice in the same entry, but this commercial really pisses me off!

Just so that you know, the cost of 2 cents a minute and a “low” 49 cent connection charge compares highly unfavourably with the VIP communications rate of 4 cents per minute and no connection charge. Unless, that is, your phone call lasts 25 minutes or more. But I’ll wager not too many international calls made on a cell phone last even near 25 minutes.

I turned from FSC to a program I had recorded from Sundance and from there to Ovation, and on both was assaulted by another of my least favourite commercials, The New York Times Weekender, which has been playing since time immemorial and I first bitched about in the same blog entry as the IDT one last February. I wrote something more detailed and sarcastic - a tongue-in-cheek nightmare scenario - in September as they were then playing it every morning on BBC America.

My way of avoiding these when watching live remains that I put the TV on pause for a while and then play catch-up the next time the commercial comes on. But still, by the 15th or 20th time of doing this, it really gets old and annoying.