Even though football season is over in Chicago – and DAMN YOU, Minnesota, you stupid purple bastards – we’re still seeing plenty of commercials for those of you lucky enough to have teams in the playoffs.  Such commercials boast folks gathering at apartments and houses in team jerseys, partying it up with friends while they cheer their teams to victory.  Throughout the football season, there’s been a plethora of suggestions of how to really make it a party, with various food chains and beer manufacturers all trying to trick us into believing that their product is the key ingredient missing from our gatherings; that our snack and drink selection is simply incomplete if we neglect to serve their particular brand of foodstuffs.

Now, as someone who spent most of the season camped out in my living room, watching games with the same three men, two of whom would eat pretty much anything that was put out as long as I waited until most of the booze was consumed and the other being my husband, who won’t eat anything I cook and thus has learned to fend for himself, I’m hardly considering myself some sort of party goddess.  Were they to ask what to bring to my house on football Sunday, the most likely response from me would be something along the lines of, “Bring your own beer and oh, if you don’t mind bringing a roll of toilet paper so I don’t have to go the store, that’d be great.”  Sure, sometimes I’d make chili or wings, but it was just as likely that I’d bring a bag of Tostitos out for everyone to share straight from the bag.

That being said – some of these commercials trying to encourage us to buy a particular product are just batfuck ridiculous.  Here’s the best.  (Or worst, depending on perspective.)

The KFC Party Bucket

While there’s certainly nothing intrinsically wrong with KFC – I mean, who doesn’t like fried chicken? – has anyone else noticed in this commercial that there is approximately seven pieces of chicken for about 20 people?   Unless your goal is to get your guests as drunk as monkeys due to lack of food or hope to host some sort of “Last Wing Standing” competition between the people you’ve invited to your home, you should probably offer them more than one chicken part per every three guests.  And the thing that really makes me nuts about this particular commercial is that the guy that brings it is such a damn hero, like, Oh, thank God we don’t have to eat cheese and crackers – WHICH THERE’S PLENTY OF – and now can arm wrestle for an ounce of chicken to gnaw off the bone.

Taco Bell Party Pack

No.  No, do not think outside the bun.  And if you insist on thinking outside the bun, think fucking pizza.  Because tacos?  Are not party/appetitizer/public food.  Taco Bell, like White Castles, should be consumed in the privacy of your own home, in shame, as God intended.  You bring a boxful of horsemeat tacos and a bag of hot sauce packets to a party, the only way you’re getting invited back is if you offer to fumigate the bathroom and the air out the house the next day.

The Bud Light Six Pack

Yeah, I know that’s not a six pack.  I’m simply demonstrating that in the time it took for you to look at that picture, this is what is left of said six pack, assuming you have more than three people at your “party.”  While it’s perfectly acceptable to show up at a party with a six pack for yourself, provided you aren’t planning on drinking seventeen, this one is more aimed at that Bud Light commercial that shows a refrigerator with about 10 beers and a half bottle of ketchup in the fridge and then pans to about 40 people enjoying said beverage.  Rule number one of any party where your guests are planning on consuming alcoholic beverages – Do. Not. Run. Out. Of. Booze.  Having ten Bud Light caliber beers for a gathering that is supposed to last for more than forty minutes and includes more than two people  is simply not acceptable.  Plan accordingly.

Again, please understand I realize I can hardly throw stones from my Miller Lite-and-potato-chip-laden apartment.  Martha Stewart would simply keel over from sheer horror should she ever step foot in here as I’m yelling, “Hey, bring that bag of popcorn on your way back, wouldya?” in the middle of a game.  But if I happen to be invited someplace else, you can bet your ass I’m showing up with some sort of homemade dip or appetizer in a nice dish that will be much better received than a plastic bag of fucking tacos.

So I’m asking you, advertising gurus, to please be more realistic in your depictions going forward.  If there’s forty people at a party, do not dare to have someone walk in with one bucket of chicken.  Because if the party you’re advertising is actually happening, the guests have had half a beer, a taco filled with grade D meat and something that probably used to be cheese, and some time to realize they should have gone elsewhere, and they are probably angry.  I’d hate for the guy with the chicken parts to get hurt.