The Superbowl Ads Were All Terrible This Year

So, I don’t know how many of you watched the Superbowl yesterday.  I can’t seem to find any news stories anywhere about the ratings this year, which is odd, because the news loves having that free little story to print out, even if the numbers are exactly as expected and not remarkable in any way.  But I guess what with the sad news of John Murtha being cut down at the tender age of 77 and Sarah Palin’s tragic learning disability, we just don’t have time to print such fluff.

For those of you who couldn’t muster up the energy/courage/chutzpah to actually watch the thing, you probably heard that the Saints won and that Peyton Manning cried like a tiny baby with a huge neck, and you honestly didn’t miss a whole lot by not watching it.  What you did miss were the supposedly “good” commercials that aired in tandem with the game, provided that “in tandem” has been redefined to mean “was the overwhelming majority of the broadcast”.

Well, YouTube was kind enough to put the commercials up here, and they are all awful.  Almost every single one is either vaguely misogynistic, openly and proudly misogynistic, plays off of literally medieval concepts of grotesquery, or relies on wacky “whoa! ninjas!!” schoolyard randomness to convince us that the gigantic monolith and myriads of middlemen firms involved in the process of creating these really understand us.  And then there’s those absolutely intolerable chicken ads that sound like a joke a three-year-old writes (“And then…THE CHICKEN SCREAMS! Hahaha…”).

Underneath it all, there’s an odd cynicism to it all, none of which I can exactly blame on anything.  The obvious choice would be to blame it on the economy and unemployment; the acerbic rhetoric being likened to the sneers the crewmates trade on a sinking ship, but that seems too simple and ignores other factors.  I think the truth is that America is getting angrier and angrier, but doesn’t entirely know why.  It’s not the rage of the Bush II years, it’s more introspective, even schizophrenic.  It’s an ennui.  Oh, shit.  It just might be a malaise.

Actually, it is probably completely me and I am once again projecting my own personal issues onto an entire zeitgeist, as I so often do.  Still doesn’t change the fact that these ads were certified stinkers this year.

Here’s something new, give your best answer as to why we are still fascinated with Superbowl ads.  If you have a better choice than is on here, leave it in the comments.

Weekend Video Jamboree – 2/6/10

I’ve eaten nothing but Indian food and donuts today.  Here’s some videos.

Our Turn Now

What happens once you take away school prayer?  Inter-racial kissing. And sweet sweet keytar beats.

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Pug Goes Digging

I can’t believe that a time existed when I didn’t have immediate access to videos like these.  Watching these is basically all I do, at all.

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This Is The Unveiling

Oh My God Look At This Dude And His Ridiculous Family

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Guy In Background of News Thing

You’ve probably seen this, but for those of you who haven’t, it’s well worth it for the little coy peak back the guy does at the end.

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Ginger Kid Funk Soul Remix

I wouldn’t make fun of this kid to his face, but, man, going to the internet to dramatically complain about a five-year-old South Park episode is just asking for it.  And making inexplicable shrill noises throughout is just asking for someone to turn it into a jam of some kind.

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Good night!  I’m going to eat a cake now!

My OSCAR (TM) (R) (C) Predictions

I gotta tell ya, this is pretty great.

Unless you are literally a dead person, you have likely heard of the Oscar nominations that just came out last week.  Now, if you’re anything like me, the moment the new year rolls around, you just start chomping at the bit to hear what entirely uncontroversial and borderline offensive picks “the Academy” is able to agree on in their scholarly and collegiate wisdom from their ivory tower while they aren’t busy training all their cadets.

So who’s going to win?  More importantly, who does some unemployed bearded man in Berkeley think is going to win?  That is what we’re going to solve today with my Predictions for The Oscars in Twenty Ten All Right!!  A word of warning: I saw almost none of these movies.

The Internet In Brief 2/4/10

Things on the blog seem to be picking up again. I’ve been busy lately but you should all know I’ve been thinking of you, too.

IRL News – 2/3/10

• LOL.

• In the wake of the Single Exciting Thing that came out of Obama’s State of the Union, military muckety-mucks are “reviewing” how they could possibly go about implementing such a dramatically different protocol.  WHAT NEEDS REVIEWING.  EITHER YOU DON’T LET GAYS IN THE MILITARY OR YOU DO MY BRAIN
  

• Hahaha, this is literally the worst campaign advertisement I have ever seen, and that includes the “the rat is back!!” crap from the Georgia.  California gubernatorial politics are the worst in the world, I’m saying it right here.

• The Dutch are only just now making bestiality illegal.  So, good for them, I guess?

• I keep seeing this news story pop up everywhere, despite the fact that it’s results are really more “yeah, this works IF you only do this” and it says that abstinence-til-marriage programs are still utterly worthless anyway.  Oh, well.  Science Journalism.

I Buried Peter Orszag

Spartacus: Hurf and Durf

INT – CHEAP DUNGEON SET FROM LIFE OF BRIAN, DAY

SPARTACUS sits on a plank in the SLAVE’S QUARTERS of the arena, contemplating his mortality BARECHESTEDLY.  He thinks of HIS WIFE and misses her A WHOLE BUNCH.  Suddenly, ANNOYING BROTHER FROM THE MUMMY walks into frame menacingly.  He is Spartacus’ owner and he is going to use Spartacus to his advantage in a way which isn’t really clear no matter how many times they try to clunkily explain it.

ANNOYING MUMMY BROTHER

“All right Spartacus, are you ready to go into the fake-looking greenscreen arena and fight…for your life?“

Spartacus PONDERS for a moment.  He seemingly has nothing left in his life to fight for, and yet he still presses forward.  Whoa, he seems to think, this is an entirely original concept; utterly groundbreaking for this or any other genre. He is CORRECT.

SPARTACUS

“Listen, guy from The Mummy, because I’m only going to say this once per episode.  My name isn’t Spartacus, and I’m only doing this because I think I will be able to get my wife back by doing it for some reason.”

There is a tense PAUSE.

ANNOYING MUMMY BROTHER

“Okay, whatever.”

A SWEET guitar lick plays.

The Internet in Brief – 2/2/10

Bringin’ out this old chestnut.  This is a certified renaissance of the Sqlog, yessiree.

• Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson came out of his hidey-hole to give an interview where he says exactly three things.  I wonder if he felt himself getting stronger when JD Salinger died.

• In the department of video games, it looks like 2010 is going to be just as unoriginal and creatively underwhelming as 2009.  Out of the 16 games on here, like, 3 of them aren’t sequels and one of those is Dante’s Inferno. Great Job, video games.

• Did you know that you can watch all of Twin Peaks on CBS.com?  Did you know!?!  It’s Twin Peaks for Christ’s sake.  Why does no one care about this but me?

• Kate Beaton, one of my favorite web comic people, did some hourlies.  Hourlies are a very common thing for web comic artists to do, they basically just draw a picture every hour for a day to act as a kind of microdiary.  Well, Kate Beaton did some, and here they are.

• Speaking of web comics, here is a web comic written by a five year old and drawn by that five year old’s 29 year old brother.  Web Comics.

• Arrested Development with a laugh track is genuinely depressing.

Have a great day!!

My Spec Script: The Wire Season 18

As you might imagine, this particular bit of tomfoolery wouldn’t fly in the magazine, since we have a Wire-related thing in it already. But hell, I wrote it, it’s not going anywhere, you might as well chuckle at it. FYI: I haven’t seen the end of the series yet, so I only named three characters in case the rest might be dead. If one of the three is in fact dead, for the love of God don’t tell me about it.

Scenes From The Wire Season 18

As David Simon’s hard-hitting drama nears the end of its second decade, the series shifts its setting to the next failing institution of Baltimore, Maryland: health inspection.

Issue 19-4 Is Go!

Hey, if you failed to pick up a copy of our grandiloquent new issue last week, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news: we hate you. Why would you forsake us like that? The good news is, you can still read it, either by coming to our meetings and begging for a copy, or by reading a pdf on this here website. Get to it!

GAZE UPON THE HILARITY