the Jardiance commercials will not be stopped

please just finish mowing the lawn, guys

There is a new Jardiance song.

That’s not true. I mean, it’s kind of true. It’s the same song they used in the first two commercials but now it’s being performed by a man, which is notable because they swapped out ladies between the first two commercials while keeping the exact same version of the song. Like, sung by the same performer. Which means at least one of the two ladies was just lip-syncing. I’m going to stop the discussion about the first two commercials here. I already yelled about them a lot — some would say too much, but those people should mind their business — at my old job.

That’s not true, either. I am going to keep talking about them, if only to point out once again that there were two versions of the first commercial, one where the medication was explained by a mailman and one where it was explained by a man at a fruit stand, both of whom were played by the same actor, which raises the possibility that postal workers in the Jardiance universe are paid so poorly they have to sell fruit on the weekends while everyone else around them frolics and sings during the workday. He should be furious.

Anyway, here’s the new commercial.

These new Jardiance singers appear to be employees at a landscaping company. They’re all running around trimming hedges and painting fences and stuff. This time, the medication is explained via monologue by this lady…

… who appears to be one of the employees at the landscaping company. As with the mailman and fruit salesman, it is not immediately clear what qualifications she has to tell people about prescription medication. The only way this works is if it is her house they are working on and she is a scientist or doctor who specializes in diabetes and has hired a landscaping company to freshen up her property. I will admit this is a possibility.

But let’s still call it a long shot, just based on the thing where she appears to be familiar enough with the landscaping operation to know all their choreography.

This brings up an important point.

Let’s say you hire a landscaping company to work on your yard to get ready for spring. Maybe someone recommended them to you or maybe you found them after a quick search online. They show up with all their tools and get to work and you go inside to tidy up a bit as part of your own spring cleaning. You’re in an upstairs bedroom changing the sheets…

… and you hear something outside…

… and you look out the window…

… and you see the entire landscaping crew you hired dancing in a circle and doing coordinated little snaps in your yard.

Think about how you would handle that.

It would be super weird, right?

Okay, now think about this…

Let’s say you are a prospective home buyer. A real estate agent wants to show you a house she’s pretty excited about: in your price range, good schools, short commute to work, hitting all your bullseyes. The neighborhood looks cute, too. You’re starting to wonder if this might be the one.

She turns onto the street and is creeping along and telling you all about the nearby restaurants and parks but then…

… as you drive by the house next to the one she wants to show you…

… the dream house…

… you see this happening in the front yard.

“What the hell is that?” you ask.

The real estate agent sighs.

“They do that sometimes,” she says.

You pause, a moment of deep thought as you attempt to figure out why a dozen people in this otherwise quiet neighborhood are doing aggressive thrusts and arm twirls toward the street while singing an upbeat song about pills.

“I think this might not be the right house for me.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, already plugging a new address into her GPS.

STUFF I TYPED

— I introduced a new Friday edition of this newsletter last week called The Five Spot where I run through my five favorite things from the week. This first one was free for everyone but going forward it’s gonna be an exclusive for paid subscribers only. (Sunday newsletter remains free.) Most of you are aware of this but the, uh, hundreds of you who subscribed on Saturday after noted gentleman and college football expert Steven Godfrey featured this sucker on Substack Reads are sure welcome to check it out, too. 

— We have an important update to a thing I wrote a few weeks ago. Remember the story about a bunch of idiots with Hotmail accounts trying to steal Graceland with forged documents? Well, it took a twist. Raise your hand if you had “the idiots with Hotmail accounts who later claimed to be a group of Nigerian scammers might have actually been a single career con artist and grandmother from Branson, Missouri.” Put your hand down, liar. And go read the report from NBC News, which will make your jaw drop about six or eight times.

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— this blog from Defector about Barry Petchesky and his lost keys had me so invested that I wouldn’t have noticed if a hawk swooped through my living room as I was reading

— an incredible feature about the woman who created both Miss Piggy and my beloved Phillie Phanatic

— it’s pretty funny that Tubi is winning the streaming wars even though its competitors sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into their fledgling platforms 

— great piece from Howard Beck about NBA legend Jerry West, who passed away last week

— thrilled to see Rhea Seehorn thrive as always

— this standup set by Dan Licata starts out weird and gets progressively weirder and more deranged as it goes on and I enjoyed it a bunch

— t-shirts are too heavy and it’s The Bear’s fault

— elephants call each other by name, apparently 

— the man who was banned for life from The Sphere for smoking a bong at a Phish show has had the aforementioned lifetime ban rescinded 

— watching the Phillies is fun because you might hear John Kruk go on a rant about a cartoon character in the ninth inning

— try to read this post without yelling “I POOPED AT THE SEANCE” out loud

— “Texas library must reinstate books with ‘butts and farts,’ court says”

— “Mechanic builds record-breaking 50mph wheelbarrow”

— $500k jewelry heist with Roman sewer getaway (Roman Sewer, good fake name) (so is Roman “Sewer” Getaway)

— apparently John Mulaney’s favorite bit from Everybody’s in LA had to be cut for mural-related copyright reasons

— Henry Winkler is a sweetheart

— my promise to you: if one billion people sign up for a paid subscription I will buy Paramount and force them to put Reacher in a Star Trek movie (again, I mean the character Reacher, not the actor who plays him)

— I started watching Extraordinary on the advice of my friend Stacey and it is completely insane and a total blast and gave me this screencap, which also sums up the relationship most people have with their local sports franchises

Okay, that’s enough for this week. Please subscribe and share and do not dance in my lawn.