Musings of a Country Squirrel in Tinseltown

So it’s been a while for me– on many levels. I speak of working on my comics, and for that matter even posting here in the blog. Ah, but that changes today. And tomorrow. Why you ask? Because there’s going to be a new Planet X comic tomorrow just in time for that ridiculous tripe they call a Transformers movie. I knew the contempt and loathing would eventually boil by the time it arrived, so really, this comes as no big shock to me.

Oh, hey, secondly, NeoSquirrel Productions is on Twitter now! Just go to twitter.com and enter /neosquirrel after it. And I promise you, you will not be subjected to updates on what I’m eating or where I’m shopping.

…that much. But rest assured, when I do, there’s going to be humor mixed in with it. Because Nachos are nature’s comedy food.

Anyways, check back tomorrow for more comic comedy goodness.

Until then, keep watching the skies! Those asteroids will come for us all eventually.

Let’s face it: if you like football, you’re still miffed your team didn’t make it in to the big game.
But you have to admit that for the second year in a row there was no shortage of drama… unlike Superbowl 41 when my beloved Bears were just put in the corner and told to be quiet early on.
Oh Walter Payton, we need you more now than ever… *looks to the sky*

Anyways, with all this actual good game playing, there’s still the matter of the commercials for everyone else, the real reason we all sit down together with a drink in one hand and a plate full of cholesterol in the other.

This year’s batch had more hits than misses, and actually incorporated the product’s usage into the spots for a change. Far too often you laugh, but then you forget who was selling what to you– and that ultimately is a catastrophic failure. Take for example E*Trade’s new talking baby spots (which as I said last year about them, really, really need to stop this tired trend- they’re just plain creepy)– the kid in his webcam barely even gets out the product he’s praising before his geriatric golfing partner in one spot or his baby buddy in the other keeps distracting him from doing it.

Speaking of tired, GoDaddy’s game for titillating and shocking has gone the way of the dodo– it’s like they’re not even trying anymore. Then again I find their angles for this anyways absolutely juvenile to begin with, so maybe it’s a good thing. (Disclaimer: NeoSquirrel.com is hosted by GoDaddy.com– look, they have fast customer service and answers to most problems I have, so I can’t knock ‘em for being a lousy company, just bad ideas for pitching.)

So let’s break down the categories to simplify the whole gamut: Movies and Entertainment, Food and Drink, and Everything Else.

Let’s start with my most anticipated:
Movies and Entertainment.

I’ve always loved that trailers for movies are shown for films six months down the road to whet my appetite, although this year I’m more than a little disappointed at the offerings.

First off, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has for over a year now left us Generation X kids rolling our eyes at the very fact that the entire Joe team is dressed identically in the film, whereas the animated series had every member, Cobra and Joes alike with their own distinct look, always making it easy to identify who they were. Now only the enigmatic ninja Snake Eyes and his white-clad doppelgänger Storm Shadow with a rare exception are the only instantly recognizable characters. Where was Destro and his shiny chrome dome? Impressive that they brought down the Eiffel Tower, but if the movie is relying on ninjamatics, it’s going to fail in the hearts of the generation that knows it so well… and make box office from the rest that don’t.

On a quick bitter note, Michael Bay is still going to ruin my greatest childhood memory for the second time in a row with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The robots are still way too big in the frame, they move entirely too fast to understand what they’re doing, and there are still way too many parts in their faces. I made it very clear to my colleagues watching that I hoped the Decepticon that once again pinned Shia LeBeouf’s character to the ground would draw and quarter him right there on the spot, but alas it’s only rated PG-13 and at worst he’ll get a scratch. A very large note to Mr. Spielberg and Paramount: WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HUMANS. GIVE US ROBOTS, DAMNIT! Oh, and design them so we can actually see mouths move and not think we’re on some sort of acid trip watching them with the 5 billion moving parts in the mouth.

Unsurprisingly Disney/Pixar promoted Up, but offered only a new small clip at the end of the trailer that’s been available for months. I always thought it clever they used a seamless montage of the previous Pixar films, but at the same time I always thought– are they insecure that they think we’ve already forgotten about the previous films? (We haven’t guys, promise.)
Paramount released an all-new trailer for Star Trek, apparently going the XXX route by showing the EXTREEEME SKYDIVING of Captain Kirk and Company to save the universe. While we’re on the topic of Mountain Dew mentality, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker return to their roots that truly made them stars (well, more like just Vin, but…) with the fourth (and hopefully final) incarnation of The Fast and the Furious franchise, only they couldn’t come up with a clever name for it and simply dropped “The” out of the entire title.
Nice to see Michelle Rodriguez representin’ for the ladies once more– I wish she’d get her own action film, really. Angels and Demons will once again likely upset the religious right, no matter how much Tom Hanks hair you throw at them, Year One looks promising with Jack Black and “George” Michael Sera for Python-esque historical humor, and Land of the Lost goes the Brady Bunch route by mocking the source material using Will Ferrell. Rounding out the trailers was the gimmicky 3D spot for Monsters Vs. Aliens– nothing new, but fun in three dimensions.

NBC had the only television spots, using a popular internet acronym “LMAO” to describe people in hsysterics losing their posteriors over their comedy shows, and a pair of brilliant Heroes spots, one with a football theme that was amusing (even mocking their year one theme of “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”), and a second utilizing a music video of the Monday lineup of shows of the casts singing. Fangirls everywhere are swooning.

Next up, Food and Drink.

One thing you can always rely on is the big two colas to bring their A-Game when it comes to promoting. Pop stars, sports stars, movie stars, wild ideas, amazing graphics, brilliant concepts, and this year did not disappoint.

Coke took a radical approach with a parody of their legendary “Mean Joe Green” spot which has a kid (who incidentally is a dead ringer for the original) asking injured Pittsburgh Steelers hairball–er, player Troy Polamalu if he’d like his Coke Zero, only to have original Coke reps come in and put an end to this commercial, resulting in one of them tackled and Polamalu ripping the exec’s shirt off to toss to the kid. Pepsi volleyed back in the comedy violence department with their calorie-free cola for men, Pepsi Max, having numerous fellows injured with 2×4’s, golf clubs to the face, ceiling overhangs and electrocution.

The new trend though with the main brands is “Hey, we’re in a recession, we’re all losing our jobs–put down the gun and have a drink to chill out.” Coke used the imagery that we’re all becoming too involved with our handheld devices that we’re becoming disconnected in the end (and apparently turning into video game avatars), and Pepsi had one of the best spots of the night with “Pepsuber”, using Saturday Night Live“’s “MacGruber”–the recurring parody of MacGyver– with the real MacGyver–Richard Dean Anderson– making a cameo. It worked on so many levels– popular comedy bit, original source material, mocking spokespeople, and, well, explosions, all within one (very expensive) minute. This also marks the second time in two years that Anderson has been involved with the character’s history in Superbowl spots, the first being with an unspoken homage to having supplies on hand for Mastercard last year. Hopefully this trend will continue– one can never have enough MacGyver.

Coke wins the artistic medal of the night with their “Heist” spot, having a ladybug conducting the pilfering of a Coke bottle from a sleeping fella with the help of other insect, all set to the tune of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” composition, ending with the spectacular imagery of a group of butterflies disbanding as they complete the ruse of the shape of a decoy bottle of the now-missing drink. Interesting fact– apparently you can use a Rhino Beetle to crack a lid off a bottle.

Budweiser put out not one, not two but three spots of their iconic Clydesdale horses, all very charming in their own right– one involving a cross-country chance for romance, one involving their foreign ancestry, and a clever one of the horse playing fetch with a large tree branch to outdo the Budweiser dalmatian. Their more trendy Bud Light Lime was uneventful, with a man in a magical dome of sunshine and wonder that changed the world around him to summer as he walked with drink in hand. I thought it was illegal to walk with liquor unbagged in public. Honestly, I’m sick of these “oh so cool, rough-around the edges” pretty people drinking alcohol you know no one that looked that pretty would dare be caught dead with holding in their hand.
At least with the hard liquor I can hate the models that think they’re so cool for drinking expensive liquor, because I know they could afford it and would actually be drinking it when they’re not doing lines of coke.
Bud Light always brings the funny, opening with a Bud Light marketing meeting with a junior exec being thrown out of the conference window–chair and all– after suggesting cutting budget costs by not bringing the drink to the meetings. Another involved air drawings of trees to illustrate it’s “drinkability”, resulting in a wincing ski crash into picnic tables. The best however came with The Tonight Show host-elect Conan O’Brien being talked into doing a foreign commercial for the drink, which churns out memories of SNL’s “Shprockets”, only the commercial ends up in Times Square, fans mocking him on the street for it. Clever fans will notice the agent is H. Jon Benjamin, voice of soccer coach John McGuirk in the brilliant-yet-cancelled Home Movies and frequent contributor to Conan’s skits.
Heineken is using John Turturro to pitch their beer, but it still seems an odd fit.

On the edible side, Doritos grabbed guy’s attention with it’s super-crunch abilities to rip women’s clothes off, break ATM’s and turning police into tiny monkeys. Their other spot involved various uses for snowglobes-turned-crystal balls like breaking vending machines and looting, and tossing into your boss’s groin– a shockingly funny spot. Taco Bell wins the “hey, that was funny–no wait, that was creepy” award with their “Overrated” spot as a handsome fella calls the girl he got her number from only seconds later, offers her instant dinner and has his parents arrive to meet her.
Cheetos once again has a more refined Chester Cheetah hallucination convincing a bothered victim to turn the tables on a Rodeo Drive chatty Kaathi on her cell phone by using them as bait around her feet to lure pigeons. I like their mentality.
Denny’s new campaign takes aim at competitors dressing up breakfast in fruits and eccentricities by interrupting a mob meeting with whipped cream on a faceful of pancakes, and also giving everyone in America a free breakfast this Tuesday morning– I wonder how long the lines will be in lower-income class locations.

Finally, it’s barely worth mentioning, but Sobe also did a 3D spot involving the cast of Monsters Vs. Aliens, NFL stars dancing like Warren Sapp and those oh-so-creepy grinning evil lizards. Seriously Sobe– Life Water tastes nasty, it’s got as much sugar as a can of Coke and you’re freaking out little kids everywhere. Stop it. Just… stop.

Finally, we come to Everything Else.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll minimize this to the standouts and ignore the genuinely flat and boring spots.

A disturbing sign of the times I noticed is how there was a complete absence of American car commercials– I guess that’s a good thing, seeing as how they’re in the welfare line for the government. Hyundai bragged about being car of the year, Audi used Jason Statham to travel through time to show how the competition can’t handle the road in a car chase (even including a bit of the Transporter at the end), and Toyota with their life-size Hot Wheels Tower of Flame to demonstrate pulling power.

The job sites are still at war, with Monster.com with a surprisingly funny shot of a moose head in a boss’s office– only the rest of it’s sitting on a drone’s desk. I was dreading the possible image of the animal’s tail lifting as the sad sack sat underneath its posterior. Careerbuilder had a a love-it-or-annoyed-by-it spot involving “B-I-N-G-O”-like repetition with a host of reasons that if you suffer from symptoms like screaming in your car or crying at the bust stop before arriving at work, your co-workers call you “dummy”, dream of punching small animals (like koalas), or sit next to hairy skinny men who wear nothing but speedos, you probably should come to their site.

Universal Studios Orlando offered free tickets to the first 100,000 customers who visit the site all while appealing to the viewer’s inner child about always wanting to be a hero. Kinda tugged at the heartstrings– and if I’m not mistaken, probably used a real father/son team to illustrate the point.

In the “Look who’s back from being washed-up” category, Ed McMahon and M.C. Hammer pitched for Cash4gold.com making bank off of prized possessions like gold toilets, hip replacements, sledge hammers, those famous gold lamé parachute pants and even a medallion of MC wearing a gold medallion. I find it a remarkable thing in the past few years that if you’re a has-been or a joke in the industry, all you have to do is make fun of yourself to actually bring yourself up from it. Not a bad idea at all.

An odd candidate for a commercial, Pedigree pushed their Adopt-A-Dog program by showing the downside of owning unique pets like warthogs and rhinos. Personally, I like the ostrich named Buddy.

G.E. continued to push wind power re-using last year’s European birthday party wind-in-a-jar spot and a new CG spot with a metallic scarecrow dancing on power transformers to “If I Only Had a Brain”. Both new and old continue to have charming qualities. Given the audience, I’m surprised more lobbying wasn’t done for other energy, unlike the President Obama inauguration night which had nothing but.

Bridgestone had another great pair of clever spots, using Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head in one, and a pair of astronauts cruising the moon, only to find their car on blocks after alien hoodlums pilfer the wheels while they’re off collecting moon rocks to the tune of House of Pain’s “Jump Around”.

Teleflora.com mocked boxed-flower deliveries by having half-dead, surly flowers insulting an office worker about her personal life and why she got them from her latest date. Moment by moment, the diatribe gets more and more uncomfortable and all the more funny, with a great short stinger of a joke at the end. William Shatner returned to promote his Priceline.com, with a great jab at his dialect with a customer repeating his trademark inflection back from an earpiece being coached what to say.

Finally, how could it be the Superbowl without at least one commercial featuring chimpanzees? I think it’s a law that they must be included every year or the game can’t be played. Castrol Oil saved the world with their “Grease Monkeys” spot, alluding that if you buy it, they will come… and fix your car.
And crown you their leader.

Hail to the King, baby.

Naturally, I was one of millions of people who looked forward to this day, when Barack Obama, formerly community organizer, formerly U.S. Junior Senator, finally became United States President Obama.

But apparently I’m not the only one who agrees. I checked out my hometown newspaper online, the Chicago Sun Times to see what their front page looked like.

Okay, no big deal, about what I expected. But then you look at the weather…

Apparently even Mother Nature marked today on her calendar.

To pinpoint where robotics grabbed my attention for the first time is truly a puzzlement. The obvious answer would be to say in the early 80’s when the Transformers overtook my childhood, but it may even have been some robotic arm in a science lab I saw on some educational program– nothing more than an arm with two joints mounted to a pedestal, and a simple claw that could spin and turn to grab test tubes from a rack. I do know that in 1986 Johnny 5 from Short Circuit pretty much solidified my love for it from that point on.

And then came Wall•E.

Wall•E, short for Wast Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class– the titular lonely soul (or robot) is the last of his kind on Earth, 700 years after it’s been abandoned, entirely buried under waste of all shapes and sizes– and he continues to chug away, doing his duty, compacting the endless waste piled up into cubes inside his chest and then neatly stacking them, one after another, day in, day out, with nothing but a small cockroach for a pet and an old musical on an archaic VHS tape to keep him entertained.

And then company arrives. An unmanned ship from parts unknown lands, and drops off an incredibly advanced, streamlined hovering robot named Eve. Clearly, technology has advanced quite a bit since Wall•E’s time. In her search for something, the hero of the tale just simply wants companionship from her, despite the fact she initially shoots first and doesn’t ask questions later. He eventually begins to win over the dedicated servant, and a symbiosis begins to develop between them. It’s only when he amuses her back in his home base with his knick knacks that he’s collected over the years that he presents her with the very thing she’s been looking for– and then everything changes. She goes into a lockdown mode, devoid of personality, and Wall•E, confused at this watches over her day after day. Only after her ship comes back to retrieve her does he hitch a ride on the ship, determined to stay by her side.

The adventure continues onboard the Axiom, a Noah’s ark of sorts where the human population has become so utterly complacent, they never have to leave their hoverloungers. Morbidly obese, oblivious to anything not two feet in front of their faces, people simply have to snap their fingers to satisfy their needs, be it shade or another Slurpee. Eventually Eve’s prize comes to the attention of the ship’s captain, and following protocol, begins the process to return to Earth– but not everyone– or everything wants to. The battle for mankind’s future ensues, and Wall•E, oblivious to 99% of this, just ends up in the middle of it all because of that silly little thing called love.

The idea goes in animation that if you get the eyes selling the personality of the character, you’re halfway home at grabbing your audience. What’s ironic is that it isn’t just one set, but two entirely different pairs (and physical forms) that will forever yank on your heartstrings and never let go. Wall•E has his practical, goggle-like eyes that with a simple bend of binocular-shaped sockets can go from excited to pitiful in one clean motion. Eve, with her digital LED grid, runs a gamut of emotions from suspicious to angry to giddy. It would be a complete guess, but there’s likey no more than 100-200 lines uttered in the entire movie. Everything the robots do– from Wall•E’s turtle-like retraction into his body when frightened to faceless malfunctioning vacuum droids sneezing, to even a a shade umbrella droid opening and closing to express joy is all done in a manner than the silent film era relied on just as much with real-life actors. Wall•E himself channels the very spirit of Buster Keaton’s best everyman characters just looking for a little love and redemption.

The message of Academy Award-winning director Andrew Stanton’s (Finding Nemo) film– or rather messages are more than universal in this day and age– global-scale waste, obesity, mass-consumerism, dedication to duty and of course, love are never heavy-handed, especially in the case of the aforementioned first two, compared to say the beat-it-into-your-head eco-message that Happy Feet blindsided audiences with or spotlight-pointing at the fast food industry in Super-Size Me’s documentary. The movie seeks to entertain you first, and have you take notice of the world surrounding the characters second– letting the viewer absorb the plight of mankind–past or present– slowly. Everyone at some point will find a moment or ten to become attached to Wall•E, Eve, or a host of other small characters in the film (M-O, or “Moe”, the little foreign contaminant droid that sweeps up after Wall•E’s treads track dirt in everywhere is a wonderfully expressive robot on one wheel at only about a foot high).

A testament to the unstoppable storytelling and visual perfection that each and every subsequent Pixar Studio film has been released, it would be a great disservice to anyone and everyone who watches movies to miss Wall•E. 93 minutes from the opening scene, the audience was applauding in unison for a tiny janitor with big round soulful lenses that could change the world.

The only irony of the entire film is the entire plethora of Wall•E merchandise that expectedly lines store shelves now in the shadow of the film, with all sorts of boxes and twist ties and labels that inevitably will end up in yet another landfill.

…I just hang on to mine to put my robots back when I end up moving.

P.S. The new Pixar short prelude, “Presto” is also an incredible feat of visual tomfoolery that harkens the spirit of the zaniest Tex Avery shorts, pitting a snooty magician who won’t give his rabbit assistant a carrot– and the tables are turned thanks to two magic hats that act as a portal to one another.
We really need to get back to good old-fashioned piano-dropping comedy in cartoons.

It’s going to be Wall•E and Presto as a two-punch Best Animated Film and Best Animated Short, respectively, come 2009 at the Kodak Theater.

I wake up for a number of reasons. Drinking a healthy amount of water or another like it some time before bed usually ends up being the most common reason.
I’m also rudely awakened commonly by my roommate’s ruckus when she goes to work, sliding her closet door open in her office, just opposite my bedroom wall–or as she leaves, heavily closing the front door behind her. There’s an added bonus on Tuesdays when the neighbor’s gardeners show up exactly five minutes later, guaranteeing that even a catnap is no longer even a viable option.

But the one thing I despise more than anything, the single most annoying way of being woken up is ludicrousness. Like today. I wanted to sleep until close to noon today, having stayed up until almost 4 am. But no. Through the myriad of dreams, amongst them morphing or somehow transitioning from one to another, my brain somehow came up with the idea of Michael Jackson: The Musical Biography. All I can remember of it was that I was sitting down with friends (friends in dreams usually are composites of real friends– I don’t know why I don’t dream of real friends with me), reading a paper at an independent coffee house in New York City when one of them mentioned it. I immediately let out a yelp of disdain, not believing a word of it. They grabbed a section of my paper laying on the iced glass table, flipped open to the arts, and folded the paper in front of me, the ad for the Jackson tale of woe set to music as large as life in black and white.

And then I woke up.
I guess I really didn’t want to even fathom the number that had the actor portraying him onstage dancing with dozens of children during the court battle number, or an entire five minutes of song devoted to the hyperbaric chamber. I’m still debating though whether they’d use an actor in costume or a real chimp for Bubbles.

In retrospect though, I bet the piece with his hair lighting on fire during the cola ad filming would have been a marvelous spectacle of a tune with fireworks and lights.

I can only assume that the dream came about however from a combination of things in recent days– I had given my diatribe for my distaste in musicals in recent days after a friend had linked me to a musical number, a parody of West Side Story transmogrified into the Writer’s Guild strike. Compound that with my starting to view Slings and Arrows, the Canadian TV dramedy involving the chicanery of backstage theater, and you probably end up with how I got to the pop star’s story.

Sort of. Then, as I type this, I wonder how I really ended up with Jackson as the focal point in my head. While I did appreciate his music during the height of his career (83’s Thriller for example– my grade school class had actually made an afternoon of it watching the mini-movie)– but I have an extreme distaste for the man and his alleged behavior since then.

But then I broke it down again. I remembered that I had the other day glanced at my review of the Superbowl ads where lizards had re-enacted the dance number from Thriller, and had briefly heard the tune at the end of an NPR piece just last week on some vague connection to politics.

So there it is. How the nightmare came to be, answered. Who says you can’t analyze your dreams correctly? I guess I’m just impressionable in my REM state.
I need to start watching more Sandra Bullock movies if that’s the case.

Today, I did something I had never done in my life. I held up a sign. Not just any sign– a Writer’s Guild of America strike sign.

Generally, I find myself on neutral ground on a lot of things, especially when it comes to politics. But I guess seeing as how I’m now part of the entertainment industry (the lifelong ambition I have sought since a wee lad), it’s something that indubitably can affect me down the road someday, and although I may not be a film/tv writer just yet, seeing the actual numbers of sales vs. residuals doesn’t take a calculator to add up the difference in fairness. And I decided to lend a hand in support.
Although I can’t claim to be an expert on matters of picket lines, I will say that this one was actually rather fun, even for getting up early on my hiatus break. Okay, truth be told, I hit my snooze button three times. I thought about it as I lay there in bed– “Do I want to do this?” I’ve been so good on neutrality, I could probably make a career of it, if it weren’t some etheral morality. Still, what the heck was I going to do otherwise? Sleep? Maybe have a bowl of cereal while watching the Soup I recorded from last week?

No. I believed in the cause, and I also wanted to show my support with a friend. It was most assuredly a pleasant experience. I met a number of writers on hand (especially a few involved with Fox’s 24, which of course I tried not to geek out over– I am a professional journalist after all), shook a few hands, had a cup of coffee, and realized that I had to keep moving if my legs weren’t to stiffen up. The motorists for the most part showed support tapping their horns as they flew by; one gentleman took the effort to stick his arm out the window and give a thumbs-up. I guess we’re all getting a little tired of reality television.

That’s not to say though that the strike doesn’t have it’s detractors. I heard stories of people using other fingers on their hands to express how they felt to the demonstrators, others shaking their heads as they watched the crowds march across the intersection, and even using expletives to really get it off their chest.

Will I have ultimately made a difference by being there? No, not me alone per se– but there is strength in numbers, and there were at least 60-100 others there by the time I left at noon, ready to carry on the message. And hey, I didn’t get a parking ticket for being an hour over the limit, exercised my American rights, and got a little sun in the process.

Yep. A good day that will hopefully have an even better result. Freedom of speech isn’t so scary after all, I guess.

Don’t kid yourself: you thought the Giants were going to get steamrolled too. We all wanted them to win, but logic was already on our minds, and when you’re going up against an 18-0 team, well…

Thank goodness we were all wrong. I’m actually surprised that no one tried to blame Tom Brady’s supermodel girlfriend in attendance for losing the game like Dallas fans have Jessica “I Barely Have a Career” Simpson for Tony Romo not getting his head in the game (twice). Or maybe it was the 652 shots of Peyton Manning looking down on his little brother that turned the fates in New York’s favor. Yeah, hi Fox Sports? Just to let you know, FYI: Peyton’s not playing today. Kindly turn your attention back to Eli, thanks.

That being said, being a devoted, lifelong Chicago Bears fan, I have to say that was one exciting 4th quarter for two teams I couldn’t give a Superbowl Shuffle about. How Manning (ELI, not Peyton, just to re-clarify) literally slipped through the fingers of an otherwise guaranteed sack, potentially ending any hope of New York scoring, but instead tossing a rope of a 44 yard pass (and a hell of a catch by David Tyree that would make any chiropractor wince watching), ensuring a first down, nearly half the field, and setting up the game-winning touchdown a few plays later. I like to call it “The Great Escape”. Seeing the underdog (Giants) come out on top is parallel to that preppy kid (Patriots) you knew in high school– so perfect, smooth, seemed to do everything right, and had the attention of all the others– and you wanted to pound the stuffing out of them for it; mess up that divine little life they had. Well, score one for the little guy.

But as we all know, the game is secondary only to what really matters: the one time the world can and does tolerate those most hated of moments: commercials. For millions of dollars, advertisers put their best (and in some cases worst) foot forward, garnering for our attention.
This year, forget the Pepsi challenge–the battle of enhanced water drinks was on. The usual suspects were in attendance, a bevy of animals, and some bizarre, and misplaced targeted audiences were in the mix as well- and we’re not just talking about peanuts. But we’ll get to that Planter’s ad in due time.


First off, Budweiser and dietary alternative Bud Light were on hand with no competition to be seen. Maybe there was an exclusivity contract with Fox they worked out for it. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any wine or designer hard liquor ads featuring pretty people you want to sock in the face for thinking they rule the universe because of their looks as they laugh and drink.
But I digress.
Hank the Clydesdale goes Rocky Balboa, with the Bud Dalmatian standing in as Mickey, minus his gruff fire-and-brimstone coaching. Always a winner, Budweiser always manages to appeal to everyone with their trademark animal, and still managing to avoid reminding us it’s a beer ad.
On the other side of the coin, Bud Light, with their wacky sense of humor, promised the ability to fly and breathe fire.
That would be a cat nearly singed near the floor in the picture. It’s only funny when the animals are nearly injured, after all.


Speaking of brushes with Death, Bridgestone ran two similar commercials– the first of which has a squirrel (and we do love squirrels here at NeoSquirrel.com after all) dashing into the road to retrieve a nut, only to find himself in the path of a ton of car bearing down on it.

Naturally, he does what most of us would do– scream– as does every other animal in the vicinity, including the Olive Oyl-looking woman in the passenger seat. Fortunately, Bridgestone’s surefire grippedness veers around, leaving him unharmed.

The second ad decides to go to the surreal, and puts another Bridgestone-equipped car on the road at night, steering clear of a deer, and then around Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons in succession–
the latter of which actually found the driver punching it just before sparing his life. We’ve all thought about it– I guess they did too.




Pepsi has in true form resorted to pop music celebrities, and this year was no different. Justin Timberlake managed to get himself on the Superbowl, and the only piece of wardrobe lost this time around was a shoe from a soccer fan as he’s dragged invisibly all over the landscape.
I personally enjoyed watching him getting the crap knocked out of him, but he also takes the “Self-Effacing & Sense of Humor About It” award from last year’s winner, Kevin Federline. And let’s face it– no matter how childish it is, anyone getting injured in the groin for the sake of comedy is always gold.

The battle of nutrition water is on, apparently.


In Sobe’s new Life Water promo, Naomi Campbell performs Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance with an army of lizards, while Shaq for Vitamin Water rides his horse to victory around a racetrack. For my money, I’ll take the Shaq spot– a giant of a man, practically dwarfing his horse, smacking around tiny jockeys is far more entertaining than some worn-out 80’s dance number with reptiles.

Starting out in the gross category, but ultimately redeeming itself was E-Trade’s “Talking Baby Investor” spots. The first has the cute little cherub talking about his wise investing, but ultimately spits up his formula. Not the best thing to see when you’ve got a plate full of snacks and creamy dip.
Fortunately, the follow-up spot has him hiring a clown from the money he’s made, but realizes that perhaps it wasn’t the best decision he’s made in the end.
Talking babies have been around since Bruce Willis’s voice came flying out of Kirstie Alley’s onscreen womb– but can we please stop this trend once and for all?

Now if you think that’s bad, Salesgenie.com came up with not one, but two ridiculously offensive ads. Both animated, an Indian sales rep is cornered by his boss to increase his sales or he’s fired. The sales rep mentions he has seven children, and in a voice that only the Simpson’s Quik-E-Mart manager Apu would love, manages to work out his problems and save the day.


Even more obvious was the follow-up spot, using ear-pluging awful Vietnamese-like accents for panda bears also trying to increase sales for their bamboo furniture store. Accents are one thing– but talking in broken English to one another (and misspelled signs like “Sofaz” in a stereotypical Asian type font, usually reserved for bad kung-fu DVD boxes) only adds to the unbearable (no pun intended) nature of the spots. I wouldn’t be surprised in the coming days if there’s a backlash from Asian contingent watchdog groups for their ridiculousness and insensitivity.



Missing the mark on what they were pitching, Claritin used their NASCAR driver Carl Edwards to tell you not to use non-prescription allergy medicine willy-nilly without reading the label, as they can make you drowsy. But hey! Use Claritin instead! And don’t look at the label!
Oh wait, it took me two additional viewings to notice that he said it was “non-drowsy”, because his oxymoronic statement left me throwing up my hands, leaving me to ignore the clarification seconds later as I was pondering his riddle.
Tide had a stain stick they were pitching, as a potential job hunter is shouted out by the blemish on his white dress shirt which his interviewer can’t take his eyes off of. You’d think the stain was a Vegas stripper he stared at it so hard. Then again, I’m not interested in cleaning my clothes, unless some putz spills his chicken wings on my Payton jersey (that’s Payton, as in Walter, not the aw-shucks QB of Indianapolis).

GMC, using a soft-spoken narrator laying philosophical theories on you as a naked illustrated man– likely representing Atlas– pushes a boulder five times his size up an invisible hill. After you wake up from your 30 second nap, you realize that it was a commercial for a hybrid car. I thought it was United being all artsy again– which, interestingly, no airlines advertised during the game.

The worst of all though is the aforementioned Planters, following the daily routine of a decidedly unattractive woman, complete with unibrow, facial moles and hideous teeth, attracting the eyes of all male passerby.



The joke is that she smells like peanuts, because she drags them across her body, causing it to act like an aphrodisiac.
Two things wrong with this ad:
1. I need remind Planters that people are eating while watching these spots. No one wants (or believes it’s possible) to see a blantantly-designed repulsive individual slathering themselves in salty, fattening peanuts while the viewers stuffing their craw full of cocktail sausages and dips.
2. Peanuts on anyone’s breath: not the least bit attractive.

Fox Sports, in tandem with their replacement for 24 being absent, had a female Terminator android from their Chronicles of Sarah Connor replacement show break through the graphics at the commercial bumps and occasionally do battle with the Fox football robot.
Ultimately, she defeats it, but is then approached by a couple of his buddies, but finds no conclusion. I haven’t seen an audience riveted with a continuing commercial series throughout the game since the early days of Bud Bowl, which, in all honesty can’t hold a candle to battling machines.

Honorable mention to Cars.com with their “Witch Doctor” ad, which doesn’t quite seem to gel with the idea that threatening car dealer salesmen by shrinking their heads will get you the price you want, but had a pretty impressive costume to him.

Finally, we reach the best (and incidentally most lighthearted) spots of all.

Pixar/Disney rolled out a new tease trailer for Wall•E, the upcoming CG film, as Woody and Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story pair of films are sitting watching TV with a giant bowl of popcorn (since when do toys have the ability to eat human food?) as they discuss the new addition to the Pixar family.

Wall•E, the boxy little android worker comes across a shop-vac, and, thinking it’s a robot like him, begins to prod at it, only to eventually turn it on, get it stuck to him, and accidentally sucks up a little bug that he apparently befriends from previous trailers; in a panic he tries to free the bug, only to cause a backfire and eventual explosion of the vacuum. Once the bug skitters off, free from harm, Wall•E himself tries to leave, only to realize he’s tracking dust everywhere, and tries to literally cover his tracks to little avail.
There can be little doubt that this will be a bonafide hit for Pixar, and the first time a lead character of their feature films lacks an ability (or need) to really speak fluently, but rather through his body language and expressions. I for one was already dead-set on lining up the first day to see this–all the more now with each new scrap of the little cyber-Buster Keaton that I get to view.

It is my considered opinion that Coca-Cola devotes an entire wing in their headquarters to creating the most cute, tug-at-your-heartstrings ads possible–they’ve been doing it since the 1930’s with their legendary Santa print advertisements and as of late use CG polar bears to do the pitching now–but having Macy’s Day-like giant balloons of the animated Underdog and Fox’s Stewie Griffin from Family Guy going for a giant balloon Coke is pure genius as they bounce off off high-rises, scrambling in a slow-motion air ballet for the coveted drink, only to watch it land in the deservedly innocent arms of an inflated Charlie Brown. Finally, something goes right for the blockhead.
It begs the question though: did Coke get a discounted ad deal for featuring one of Fox’s show characters so prominently?

What are your thoughts on the commercials, or for that matter the game? Let’s hear ‘em!

slash•fic: (n.)
1. Genre of fanfiction involving pairing two male or female characters together; characters are commonly shown with a slash inbetween names in a printed summary of the story
2. untrue stories about Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash

I have quite a few friends who are so deep into writing/reading slash†fic that it’s nigh-impossible sometimes to read their blogs. It’s one thing that they write about tv shows with male leads who have more than just getting the job done and going home after it’s over (more like going home with each other if they have anything to say about it), but it’s even reached out to band members, literary works with child wizards, and your biology teacher and gym coach from 8th grade.

Normally I’d think why on earth they spend so much time writing stories about never-in-a-million-year hookups… and then I realize how many times I thought of Franka Potente making out with Sandra Bullock. Or Natalie Portman. Or any combination thereof– and then shutting the hell up for being a hypocrite.

You know what I hated as a kid most of all around this time of year, and even still today?

Back to School commercials.

I’d get out of school sometime around June 4th, give or take a few days based on snowfall growing up in Chicago (I think we were allowed up to a work week’s worth before they would start tacking on days to the school year). And then,

FREEDOM!

Ah, glorious. To run through the fields looking for bugs, getting dirty, watching Get Smart, I Love Lucy, The Munsters during lunchtime at home (Mom didn’t approve of that last show for some odd reason however– didn’t stop me from watching it since she was off at work when I was old enough to stay home myself)– riding bikes, being in little league baseball, getting soft serve ice cream afterwards on a cool, cricket-serenaded night, the bugs flittering around the halogens and street lights…

But then, WHAM! Middle of July, and already the department stores start tossing the ads on TV, and in the Sunday paper.

Hello? I thought I had until the end of August, warden! Let me enjoy the time I have before you incarcerate me for another nine months, huh?

I didn’t dread going back to school… I just hated being reminded of it. If it were up to me, advertising wouldn’t start until the 2nd day of August–that way it doesn’t feel like a countdown ending on July 31st with August 1st being the day of doom. It’d be like how stores sell things at $3.99– you think it’s three bucks, but it’s really four. That’d be more than enough time for parents (okay, moms) to get to the store and start checking off all those supplies. I actually enjoyed as a little kid going to get a new backpack or a fresh box of crayons, and yes, the coolest-looking pencils I could find to sketch in the back of my notebooks with. I wanted my Trapper Keeper too– but I didn’t need 64 pockets with reinforced binders and whatnot, I just wanted something to hold my folders (and a color that didn’t look like a girl’s. Ewwwww).

Anyways, you poor kids, I salute you. Enjoy these fleeting days before they toss you back in. Go skin some knees, make some memories.
Summer.
Ain’t it grand when you’re young?

You know what’s great? Starting another new comic strip.
In addition to 24: The Comic Strip now in it’s second year of production, I present to you Planet X, an original comic from the vaults of 2003, with all new parts, jokes, and even better line art.
It’s pop culture humor, and frankly, I can’t stop mocking it. “Reality” T.V., third-rate superhero movies, anime invasions, and Michael Bey not understanding what a Transformer looks like, it just begs for this kind of point-and-laugh humor. Be sure to check it out here, or better yet, bookmark the link.

New comics on Wednesday, just like any good comic book shop would have.