Time for a commercial break
This past week, before the bogus "Pelosi's Plane" foofooraw and then Anna Nicole Smith's death, the Furor Of The Day was the Snickers commercial that aired during the Superbowl last Sunday. I just happened to see it, because I was at a Superbowl party, and thus was actually watching the tee-vee at the time.
(Usually I couldn't care less about the Superbowl, or sports in general. But sometimes I will have it on at home, just to watch the commercials. I was watching during the Infamous Nipple Episode, but I'd dozed off halfway through the performance and thus missed the whole thing. When I woke up, everything was in an uproar, but no one was actually saying what the problem actually was, so it wasn't until the 10:00 news that night that I finally found out what had gotten everyone's panties in a frist.)
Anyway, I saw the candy commercial in question, and I actually thought it was pretty funny. I took it as being a poke at Typical American Beerguy insecurity, and not any sort of homophobic slam. However, I read later that there were a couple of alternate versions on the Snickers website, and those did cross the line. One version had Superbowl football players sneering and reacting in disgust at the "kiss," another version had the "manly acts" become one guy hitting the second in the stomach with a large automotive wrench, followed by the second guy slamming the first's head with the car hood. Okay, Snickers, those do cross the line into bigotry. Sorry, dudes. (But I still think the first version was funny.)
But this year's crop of commercials was better than usual; most times there are just one or two gems, and the rest are duds or overdone "should have stopped at the first draft" epic-wannabes.
Bud Light was by far the winner in the "Consistently Funny" category; I don't think there was a truly bad one in the batch, or at least none that I saw. (Note: the names are mostly my own, not the "official" ones.)
Scary Hitchhikers
The Auctioneer Wedding-Officiator
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Face Slap is new "fist bump"
Sierra Mist had some good ones, too:
The Beard Combover
Karate Class
CareerBuilder.com had one commercial that made me laugh:
Office Jungle
as did FedEx:
Not What It Seems By the Name
But I think my favorite Superbowl commercial was the one for Emerald Nuts, where Robert Goulet traipses through everyone's cubicles, trashing their paperwork and equipment as they are dozing off in late-afternoon low-blood-sugar office comas:
Robert Goulet trashes office
However.... As I was browsing through the various Superbowl XLI commercials that were loaded on YouTube, I discovered this little gem from a previous year (I'm not sure which year), that I just had to save. This, I think, is one of my Favorite Commercials Of All Time. (I just wish this computer had sound, so I could hear what's going on... but even as a purely visual thing it's great.)
Cat-tle Drive -- aka "Herding Cats"
There was one commercial, though, that was far more disturbing than the Snickers supposedly was -- the one for GM where an assembly-line robot was fired from the line for making a mistake, and then faces a series of progressively worse jobs until it finally throws itself off a bridge in despair. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to find the whole thing more than disquieting. But rather than deconstruct it myself, I will defer to plaidder who did a much better job of it than I would have.
(Usually I couldn't care less about the Superbowl, or sports in general. But sometimes I will have it on at home, just to watch the commercials. I was watching during the Infamous Nipple Episode, but I'd dozed off halfway through the performance and thus missed the whole thing. When I woke up, everything was in an uproar, but no one was actually saying what the problem actually was, so it wasn't until the 10:00 news that night that I finally found out what had gotten everyone's panties in a frist.)
Anyway, I saw the candy commercial in question, and I actually thought it was pretty funny. I took it as being a poke at Typical American Beerguy insecurity, and not any sort of homophobic slam. However, I read later that there were a couple of alternate versions on the Snickers website, and those did cross the line. One version had Superbowl football players sneering and reacting in disgust at the "kiss," another version had the "manly acts" become one guy hitting the second in the stomach with a large automotive wrench, followed by the second guy slamming the first's head with the car hood. Okay, Snickers, those do cross the line into bigotry. Sorry, dudes. (But I still think the first version was funny.)
But this year's crop of commercials was better than usual; most times there are just one or two gems, and the rest are duds or overdone "should have stopped at the first draft" epic-wannabes.
Bud Light was by far the winner in the "Consistently Funny" category; I don't think there was a truly bad one in the batch, or at least none that I saw. (Note: the names are mostly my own, not the "official" ones.)
Scary Hitchhikers
The Auctioneer Wedding-Officiator
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Face Slap is new "fist bump"
Sierra Mist had some good ones, too:
The Beard Combover
Karate Class
CareerBuilder.com had one commercial that made me laugh:
Office Jungle
as did FedEx:
Not What It Seems By the Name
But I think my favorite Superbowl commercial was the one for Emerald Nuts, where Robert Goulet traipses through everyone's cubicles, trashing their paperwork and equipment as they are dozing off in late-afternoon low-blood-sugar office comas:
Robert Goulet trashes office
However.... As I was browsing through the various Superbowl XLI commercials that were loaded on YouTube, I discovered this little gem from a previous year (I'm not sure which year), that I just had to save. This, I think, is one of my Favorite Commercials Of All Time. (I just wish this computer had sound, so I could hear what's going on... but even as a purely visual thing it's great.)
Cat-tle Drive -- aka "Herding Cats"
There was one commercial, though, that was far more disturbing than the Snickers supposedly was -- the one for GM where an assembly-line robot was fired from the line for making a mistake, and then faces a series of progressively worse jobs until it finally throws itself off a bridge in despair. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to find the whole thing more than disquieting. But rather than deconstruct it myself, I will defer to plaidder who did a much better job of it than I would have.