I read it ,more as Gracie critiquing an ad as if it were a show. Maybe they’re watching something they recorded and Baldo insists on sitting through the commercials for some reason. OTOH, for all that she’s usually depicted as super smart, Gracie is occasionally shown as being extremely stupid for her age.
Young children have virtually no aversion to advertising, probably because the ads are just as colorful and entertaining as the animated dreck that they are watching.
Maybe she’s mirroring Baldo’s behavior when she’s watching her favorite programs?
” OTOH, for all that she’s usually depicted as super smart, Gracie is occasionally shown as being extremely stupid for her age.”
Not stupid, ignorant. The difference is, ignorance can be corrected with knowledge, but stupid is forever.
Here’s an ad that would blow the kid’s mind – first date meeting to divorce terms in 30 seconds over dinner, the theme being you don’t actually have to do relationships, or anything else, all at once.
In this case it is an ad for TV Licensing in the UK, and telling you you don’t have to pay it annually in one lump, you can do it weekly (£3 a week), quarterly or monthly, as Oscar-winner Olivia Colman says.
You need a license to watch TV, any TV even non-BBC, whether on a television, phone or laptop, and the funds pay for three main UK national BBC channels plus a few others (eg BBC Parliament and BBC News), six regional ones (eg Scotland), 12 local area channels, and a host of national and local radio stations.
I like Olivier’s interpretation.
And narmitaj reminds me that there was a series of coffee commercials that made Anthony Head well known where a couple meet, fall in love and get married, helped along by coffee.
That is a very unsettling commercial.
Once upon a time, when we had a ‘tv room’ (a/k/a Hubby’s office) with a tv in it, I would do exactly what Gracie is doing (not out of MY stupidity, but of the program’s stupidity). Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), Hubby and I no longer watch tv together. He watches on his computer or phone (which makes me ask: WHY, as televisions have gotten ginormous, do people watch on their phones, which have become miniscule?) (And why is ‘ginormous’ accepted by spellcheck, whilst ‘tv’ and ‘miniscule’ are not?)
Like this? . . .
And why is ‘ginormous’ accepted by spellcheck, whilst ‘tv’ and ‘miniscule’ are not?
If you had TV and minuscule there it shouldn’t.
I guess your spellcheck is looking for uppercase in TV, and for a first -u- in minuscule.
Hat tip to Brian-in-Satellite for quicker response! I notice neither of us tried to answer the part of the question about ‘ginormous’.
Also @narmitaj thanks for that clip, and for mentioning the Olivia Colman voiceover — I likely would have said “That voice is so familiar!” but not been able to identify her.
@DemetriosX, hey yes, I remember those, but in the American version where it was Taster’s Choice. And do you recall the brief moment before Bruce Willis became famous in “Moonlighting” and we all were thinking of him as the guy in the Seagram’s Wine Cooler ads?
@Mitch: I do not. The only wine cooler ads I remember are Bartles & Jaymes. I have a vague feeling that there were other ads that tried the narrative thing, but none come to mind.
TV minuscule . . . well, dang! You’re right – thanks! (I might be a pedant, but I’m always willing to learn.)
> Bartles & Jaymes
Or, as known in the Southwest: “Dos Okies”
I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends. “Who’s this now? What happened to the guy in the car? Are we still in the same city? Is he going to give the drink to the guy who brought the pizza two minutes ago? Why isn’t Sheldon around?”
“I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends.”
. . . who will quickly become former friends . . .
ginormous is in several dictionaries I checked. It supposedly originated as British military slang in the 1940s.
“’I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends.’
. . . who will quickly become former friends .”
If you have the sort of friends who’ll stop being friends because you talk over the commercials, you might be better off with different friends. . .
“Ginormous” really seemed poised to catch on a few years back, but apparently prove to be just a short-lived trendy word.
Mitch – I never thought of Willis as having been in anything before Moonlighting. I figured that my old high school creative writing class comrade, Glenn Caron, had discovered him.
Regarding the Calvin strip, intelligence and common sense are two different things, and there’s no correlation between them. My cousin’s the smartest person I know, but nobody was surprised when “Oh, I’ve always wanted to ride a motorcycle, can I borrow yours?” ended with a broken arm.
Or was that the broken leg?
I guess I can tell one on myself as regards motorcycles and intelligence not equalling common sense. In 1971 I went off to graduate school at the U of Arizona, and since Tucson is pretty flat and spread out, I decided buying a motorcycle to get around on was a Good Idea (even though I’d never operated one, and only once or twice briefly ridden on one behind someone who was driving it).
So I bussed down to a miles-away used-motorcycle establishment, found a beat-up looking one I could afford, bought it and only THEN asked one of the guys there if he could show me how to operate it. Which, amused and probably disgusted, he did. I set out and managed to make it back to where I was living, but, being inept at this sort of mechanical skill (in spite of being a graduate student and thus presumably intelligent in the ‘book larnin’ ” side), I had a terrible time with it dying on me at intersections and generally scaring the hell out of me. When I got home I realized this had been a Big Mistake, and called the seller to ask if I could sell it back. Proably still amused and disgusted, he agreed, though I’d lose on the license and transfer fees. I got back on, somehow managed to pant and hump and skid my way to the suburban shop, got most of my money back, took a bus home, and went out looking for a nice safe single-speed bicycle. I’ve never been on a motorcycle since.
@ “ginormous” – In the movie “Monsters vs. Aliens” (2009), after Susan is turned into a 50-foot monster, the government agency changes her name to “Ginormica”. I think the gag would have been even better if they had changed the first “i” to a “y”.
Intelligence and sense – definitely do not go hand in hand.
If actual information is needed about something Robert asks me. (Latest thing is to read and explain why the battery separator in our RV shuts off one set of batteries when one set of batteries falls below 12.something volts and why it comes on when it over 13.something volts when it seemed to him it should be the other way around – so I read the instructions and explained.
On the other hand, so many general life things make no sense to me as I think of them on a different level than they should be thought of and he understands that and people and explains same to me.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I read it ,more as Gracie critiquing an ad as if it were a show. Maybe they’re watching something they recorded and Baldo insists on sitting through the commercials for some reason. OTOH, for all that she’s usually depicted as super smart, Gracie is occasionally shown as being extremely stupid for her age.
Young children have virtually no aversion to advertising, probably because the ads are just as colorful and entertaining as the animated dreck that they are watching.
Maybe she’s mirroring Baldo’s behavior when she’s watching her favorite programs?
” OTOH, for all that she’s usually depicted as super smart, Gracie is occasionally shown as being extremely stupid for her age.”
Not stupid, ignorant. The difference is, ignorance can be corrected with knowledge, but stupid is forever.
Here’s an ad that would blow the kid’s mind – first date meeting to divorce terms in 30 seconds over dinner, the theme being you don’t actually have to do relationships, or anything else, all at once.
In this case it is an ad for TV Licensing in the UK, and telling you you don’t have to pay it annually in one lump, you can do it weekly (£3 a week), quarterly or monthly, as Oscar-winner Olivia Colman says.
You need a license to watch TV, any TV even non-BBC, whether on a television, phone or laptop, and the funds pay for three main UK national BBC channels plus a few others (eg BBC Parliament and BBC News), six regional ones (eg Scotland), 12 local area channels, and a host of national and local radio stations.
I like Olivier’s interpretation.
And narmitaj reminds me that there was a series of coffee commercials that made Anthony Head well known where a couple meet, fall in love and get married, helped along by coffee.
That is a very unsettling commercial.
Once upon a time, when we had a ‘tv room’ (a/k/a Hubby’s office) with a tv in it, I would do exactly what Gracie is doing (not out of MY stupidity, but of the program’s stupidity). Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), Hubby and I no longer watch tv together. He watches on his computer or phone (which makes me ask: WHY, as televisions have gotten ginormous, do people watch on their phones, which have become miniscule?) (And why is ‘ginormous’ accepted by spellcheck, whilst ‘tv’ and ‘miniscule’ are not?)
Like this? . . .
And why is ‘ginormous’ accepted by spellcheck, whilst ‘tv’ and ‘miniscule’ are not?
If you had TV and minuscule there it shouldn’t.
I guess your spellcheck is looking for uppercase in TV, and for a first -u- in minuscule.
Hat tip to Brian-in-Satellite for quicker response! I notice neither of us tried to answer the part of the question about ‘ginormous’.
Also @narmitaj thanks for that clip, and for mentioning the Olivia Colman voiceover — I likely would have said “That voice is so familiar!” but not been able to identify her.
@DemetriosX, hey yes, I remember those, but in the American version where it was Taster’s Choice. And do you recall the brief moment before Bruce Willis became famous in “Moonlighting” and we all were thinking of him as the guy in the Seagram’s Wine Cooler ads?
@Mitch: I do not. The only wine cooler ads I remember are Bartles & Jaymes. I have a vague feeling that there were other ads that tried the narrative thing, but none come to mind.
TV minuscule . . . well, dang! You’re right – thanks! (I might be a pedant, but I’m always willing to learn.)
> Bartles & Jaymes
Or, as known in the Southwest: “Dos Okies”
I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends. “Who’s this now? What happened to the guy in the car? Are we still in the same city? Is he going to give the drink to the guy who brought the pizza two minutes ago? Why isn’t Sheldon around?”
“I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends.”
. . . who will quickly become former friends . . .
ginormous is in several dictionaries I checked. It supposedly originated as British military slang in the 1940s.
“’I’m going to start doing that when I’m watching TV with friends.’
. . . who will quickly become former friends .”
If you have the sort of friends who’ll stop being friends because you talk over the commercials, you might be better off with different friends. . .
“Ginormous” really seemed poised to catch on a few years back, but apparently prove to be just a short-lived trendy word.
Mitch – I never thought of Willis as having been in anything before Moonlighting. I figured that my old high school creative writing class comrade, Glenn Caron, had discovered him.
Regarding the Calvin strip, intelligence and common sense are two different things, and there’s no correlation between them. My cousin’s the smartest person I know, but nobody was surprised when “Oh, I’ve always wanted to ride a motorcycle, can I borrow yours?” ended with a broken arm.
Or was that the broken leg?
I guess I can tell one on myself as regards motorcycles and intelligence not equalling common sense. In 1971 I went off to graduate school at the U of Arizona, and since Tucson is pretty flat and spread out, I decided buying a motorcycle to get around on was a Good Idea (even though I’d never operated one, and only once or twice briefly ridden on one behind someone who was driving it).
So I bussed down to a miles-away used-motorcycle establishment, found a beat-up looking one I could afford, bought it and only THEN asked one of the guys there if he could show me how to operate it. Which, amused and probably disgusted, he did. I set out and managed to make it back to where I was living, but, being inept at this sort of mechanical skill (in spite of being a graduate student and thus presumably intelligent in the ‘book larnin’ ” side), I had a terrible time with it dying on me at intersections and generally scaring the hell out of me. When I got home I realized this had been a Big Mistake, and called the seller to ask if I could sell it back. Proably still amused and disgusted, he agreed, though I’d lose on the license and transfer fees. I got back on, somehow managed to pant and hump and skid my way to the suburban shop, got most of my money back, took a bus home, and went out looking for a nice safe single-speed bicycle. I’ve never been on a motorcycle since.
@ “ginormous” – In the movie “Monsters vs. Aliens” (2009), after Susan is turned into a 50-foot monster, the government agency changes her name to “Ginormica”. I think the gag would have been even better if they had changed the first “i” to a “y”.
Intelligence and sense – definitely do not go hand in hand.
If actual information is needed about something Robert asks me. (Latest thing is to read and explain why the battery separator in our RV shuts off one set of batteries when one set of batteries falls below 12.something volts and why it comes on when it over 13.something volts when it seemed to him it should be the other way around – so I read the instructions and explained.
On the other hand, so many general life things make no sense to me as I think of them on a different level than they should be thought of and he understands that and people and explains same to me.