My Brother and I would like to announce that it's on like Donkey Kong

The Oreo Double Stuff Racing League is pretty stupid as far as marketing schemes go, but this commercial is fairly excellent.

Monsters Wanted

Theladders.com is a job search site for the movers and the shakers. "The premium job site created exclusively for $100k+ talent looking for $100k+ jobs," their website says. I saw their latest commercial, the one above, while at the gym tonight. 

The first thing that struck me is the absolute tone-deafness of the ad. It's a fantastic metaphor for the current financial mess, which certainly wasn't created by little monsters like me, but by the big monsters, those making much greater than $100k salaries. It's an extra little twist of the knife that the area destroyed is not full of skyscrapers, but instead it's a modest-looking part of a city, with relatively short buildings. It reminded me a lot of Sixth Ave and Fourth St in New York City, just west of Washington Square. This neighborhood has lots of apartments, a little theater, some great restaurants, eclectic shops, and happens to be right near NYU, one of the victims of the Madoff disaster. While I haven't had the privilege of walking those streets in quite some time, I imagine that neighborhood has been hit hard by the current mess. 

On further review, though, I don't think the target market would be turned off by this ad. The peons, like me, and the masters of the universe, like Madoff, are not the targets of this ad. The target is the little monsters, each of whom thinks he's ready to be a big monster. 

Here's to you, Brandon Stokley!

If you pay attention to the NFL, you’ve probably seen the highlight. If you haven’t, I’ve included a clip that has it. Brandon Marshall had a glove that was half-black and half-white (or maybe it was red, white, and blue), and he wanted to put it on, and (I guess) re-enact the Black Power salute from the 1968 Olympics, only this time with an “Ebony and Ivory” flavor. Brandon Marshall wanted to celebrate the election of Barack Obama and the coming together of different races to elect him. Or something. I know all this because he was interviewed at least fifty times in the last 24 hours.

I suppose it’s good that he wanted to make an end zone celebration about something bigger than the game of football, rather than about making himself bigger than the game of football. I tend to think that most end zone celebrations are pretty silly, but I don’t think that the league should police them the way they do. They don’t impede the flow of the game, and some of them are just classic (Chris Johnson with the Bongos, T.O. with the Sharpie, Chad Johnson proposing marriage).

But whatever we think of them, the No Fun League takes a dim view of them and has begun to penalize them. Marshall’s confused metaphor would almost certainly have drawn a fine and, more importantly, a 15 yard penalty on the kick off in a game they led by only 4 inside the two-minute warning.

Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about in the first place. Marshall’s celebration never happened, because Brandon Stokely ran over and stopped him (skip to the 30-second mark). I’m sure it was a friendly, if terse, conversation, and Marshall has definitely been expressed his gratitude to Stokely in the 53 interviews I have seen. 

Here’s to you, Brandon Stokley. We need more veterans keeping rookies from doing stupid stuff. 

Have you seen this s#@*?

Discovery Channel now has a show called "Time Warp" that airs right before Mythbusters. The guy has a high-speed camera and films, mostly, collisions. Tonight we flipped it on in time to see him filming water droplets under different colors of light. The other night, we watched them shoot arrows through beer cans and balloons. In the clip below, skip ahead to the 3-minute mark and watch what happens when some sucka steels you in yo grill. 

Now I ask you: was any other show more obviously designed for people with lots of marijuana and high definition television? Sans any chemical inducements and on a stone age television set, we've been transfixed by a bulldog shaking off water, a glass breaking due to bass vibrations, and airbags low speed automobile crashes. There should really be a warning label on this show. 

Did You?

On my way to vote, I met the Shepherd family. As they walked to the elementary school, our local polling place, Mr. Shepherd ran ahead of the group to take pictures of his wife, his sister, and his four daughters as they went to vote. Out in front of the school, I held their camera and took a picture for the Shepherds as the smiled and gave me seven thumbs up. 

This morning, they sat down with the sample ballots they got in the mail, and decided as a family how the three adults should vote on each question; they then walked to the polls together so that Mr. Shepherd could record the moment, the first time they were able to vote for a man who shared the same color skin. 

While I had no doubts that this is a historic election, it was brought home to me personally as I saw the smiles on those faces in the viewfinder of Mr. Shepherd's camera. 

Fox Has Liberal Bias?

I saw this earlier today. Now I see that it's dated June of 2007, but still:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/general_current_events/media/americans_see_liberal_media_bias_on_tv_news

The point I want to touch on here comes from the third paragraph: 

There is one major exception to the belief that media outlets have a liberal bias—Fox News. Thirty-one percent (31%) of Americans say it has a bias that favors conservatives while 15% say it has a liberal bias.

A liberal bias? What kind of right wing wackadoo must you be to look at Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and say to yourself: "Faggot, pinko-commie pieces a shit. Probably going to hug a tree and do some yoga after this." Is there anyone standing to the right of you, or are you the end of the line?

Indellible Image of the Week

At the gym, four fat guys, obviously buddies, in a row on the recumbent bikes, eyes glued to the Biggest Loser.