Advertising: Cheers & Jeers

• Jeers to AT&T for their Pepe Le Pew commercial showing him being pursued by the female cat. He's always the one pursuing her! (Okay, maybe not always.)
  
• Jeers to H&R Block for a series of ads showing shlubs bragging "I've got people". (Thus breaking my #1 rule for ads: never show unattractive people using your product.) This sauna one is the worst, because we have to look at the fat bald guy wearing only a towel. (It also really annoys me that I recognize him from somewhere - another commercial?)
  
• Jeers to Budweiser for being Budweiser.
  
• Jeers to CareerBuilder.com for their annoyingly repetitious ad from Superbowl XLIII.
  
• Jeers to Pizza Hut for their series of "hidden camera" spots where "ordinary people" (aka unemployed actors) are amazed that the crap they just ate came from Pizza Hut. (These ads are better backwards because you get to see the patrons spitting out the food.) The ad I hate most is where Chef Elisabeth has her hipster friends try "The Natural". It's her hand motions that annoy me most. Folgers were doing this back in the '70s.
  

Music: Country Lyrics

Do you ever see or hear something so strange that it makes you think that either the world has gone crazy or you have? I had that sensation when I saw the TV ad for Snuggies. Truly a WTF moment. (And now I just saw the Slanket video.)

Driving home tonight, I heard "Mental Revenge", as performed by Waylon Jennings. Something about the lyrics struck me as just a little off. "So all in all, if the curtain should fall, Lord, I hope that it falls on you." That's stupid but funny, I suppose. "Well, I hope that the train from Caribou, Maine, runs over your new love affair. You walk the floor from door to door, and pull out your peroxide hair." Bitter! And then the chorus: "I will have sweet, sweet, sweet mental revenge. I will have sweet, sweet, sweet mental revenge." I'm not sure what "mental revenge" is. How does it differ from non-mental revenge? I think it was just my frame of mind, but at the time, this song struck me as completely nuts.

Shouldn't be surprised by the repetition of "sweet" considering the song was written by stammering Mel Tillis.

That song was immediately followed by Randy Houser's "Anything Goes", and that has great lyrics (written by Brice Long and John Wiggins). "Anything goes when everything's gone." It represents what I like best about country music - clever yet meaningful wordplay.

Advertising: Office Depot, Burger King

Mr. B agrees that Office Depot's "Helping Hand" commercial is (a) creepy, and (b) a ripoff of Staples "Easy Button".
So do the internets.

Jay Leno did a risqué takeoff.

You can hack the real Easy Button.

I'm the only one who thinks the Burger King Whopper Jr. commercial has rent boy overtones ("You can't sell yourself for a buck").