Now's As Good A Time As Any

Rolling Rock beer used an ad strategy I’ve never seen before. They aired ads before the Super Bowl suggesting that they were going to air an ad during the Super Bowl (while not mentioning the Super Bowl by name). Then they actually didn’t air an ad during the Super Bowl, but rather followed up with ads alleging that they had aired an ad during the Super Bowl (or, as they put it, “on Sunday”). Think how many non-Super Bowl ads they could air alleging that they aired a Super Bowl ad for the same price that an actual Super Bowl ad would have cost!

All the commercials this year so far that have Santa Claus in them portray him as washed up and irrelevant, completely overwhelmed by commercialism–in a word, impotent.

I love that caveman in the airport Geico commercial. It’s sublime.

I also quite like the Volvo commercial with the little girl telling the weird story. That’s totally what I was like at that age.

Lost and South Park season premieres!!!

Why did he sing before he did his cooking? What was he trying to tell us?

Try to spot me in this video. Hint: it’s not too freaking difficult.

I can’t believe the episode ended less than half an hour ago! It seems like a lifetime! So much to think about…that’s the kind of TV I like.

You guys are making a really good show! I think that’s actually the first one I watched on first broadcast from start to finish (as opposed to reading summaries or watching on the web). Suspense, thrills, weird stuff, high emotion…I just hope people don’t start saying “Oh, but it’s tooooo complicated! I don’t geeeet it!” and they stop watching and it gets cancelled like Twin Peaks before they can resolve all the mysteries.

In other news, my GRE class tonight laughed at some of my jokes! YES! I love making people laugh!

Because of sweeps, TV has an incentive to put on all their best and most interesting shows at the same time, all against one another. If all ratings were measured accurately year-round, then the incentive would be to try to provide programming that will be highly watched every day of the year!

I saw that Aleve ad with Leonard Nimoy, and it gave me a great idea for making money from all those aging baby-boomers out there…Star Trek-themed nursing home!

I would love it if Frank Oz would write a book about his relationship with Jim Henson. We often think of the characters as so real that there isn’t anyone operating them, but when you think about it, Frank and Jim played several close pairs of characters: not only Kermit and Miss Piggy, but also Kermit and Fozzie, not to mention Bert and Ernie. They also collaborated on the Swedish Chef: Jim was the head and voice, Frank was the hands. They were two parts of the same guy! We have hours and hours of film and video developing the relationship between the characters, but we don’t (or I don’t) know anything about what the professional/performing partnership was like.

I don’t know what kind of recurring dreams you have, but I keep seeing scenes from the second season of the Muppet Show on DVD.

It’s been a while since I’ve cheered at my TV at the end of an episode of South Park (but it’s certainly happened a few times).

A tragic figure of mythical proportions. He deserves to have a very sad song written about him or maybe an arthouse biopic.

I finally got to meet five-time Jeopardy! champion Bob Verini (also known as Executive Director for National Academics, Kaplan Test Prep)! I was the only teacher to show up, so the two of us went over to Starbucks and talked shop for half an hour or so. It was very cool.