The #1 Reason to Take Public Transportation

Filed under a taste for tv, fun times on the subway

In NYC, when you want car service, you usually stand at a streetcorner with your arm in the air and engage in physical warfare with anyone who attempts to steal your yellow cab. It’s certainly convenient to be able to step out the door and into a cab, but try to find one when your flight is actually on time or when you have fifteen minutes to make it to your dinner reservation and suddenly every cab in the city is off duty.

There are two main companies providing call-ahead car service: Dial 7 and Carmel. Dial 7 came out with this commercial featuring a way-too-friendly driver years ago:

And Carmel thought, “My, what a classy ad. Let’s strike back with this really creepy one in which these pathetic women replace male companionship with a car”:

People talked about it. People balked at it. But we all eventually moved on. And so they released this one next:

I tend to fast-forward through commercials on my DVR, so I hadn’t really seen this one when my boyfriend made me stop on it one day. “Watch the guy in the black tie,” he said. “Did they purposely hire the worst lip-syncers in the world for this?”

Read the exciting conclusion here!, and then tell me about your awful local commercials.

8 Comments

  1. bluzdude says:

    Be careful; you may end up standing next to Bad Lip-Syncer Boy on the bus one day.

    I wonder if, when he speaks, it looks like one of those badly dubbed martial arts movies.

    A few years ago, there was a commercial for either a car dealership or a legal firm, but it featured a 6’9″, 330 pound Baltimore Raven lineman dancing (badly) with a group of other dancers, who he of course towered over.

    The whole dancing thing was completely out of place for the commercial… like they ran out of message and just needed to kill the last 10 seconds.

  2. Jessica R. says:

    We have awful local car commercials too, but Southerners are way too religious to support anything with 666 in it. That company wouldn’t last a week before the devil dashed them down.

  3. Gena says:

    The Roll’n Roaster commercial here is pretty bad, have you seen it? It looks like they took a commercial from the early 80s, stuck a website address on it, then said “There, good enough.”

  4. Christy says:

    Okay, so when’s Lucky 5 coming out. Call 555-5555.

    (Only to be replaced by 444-4444, 333-3333, 222-2222, and the inevitable 111-1111)

    If I were 777-7777 I’d want 666-6666 to burn in hell.

  5. This is my favorite local commercial of all time. Obviously. Just TRY to stop singing that song.

    In the South, we do it up right.

    • katie ett says:

      WAIT. This is actually local to you? When I went to the Cape last year with my friends Mike and Ash, they sang one of this guy’s songs THE ENTIRE TIME. I’m tempted to say “literally the entire time”. Because it was that often.

  6. With all the 6’s maybe tie-dude was speaking in tongues.