Jim's Super Bowl commercial roundup.......

[poltr1]

Like most men here in the US, I watched the Big Game last night. I wasn't rooting for either team, so once again, the main reason was to watch the commercials. I rate them on a 0-5 scale:

• 5 is ROTFL / "Holy Sh--!" / a commercial that's remembered for years
  (Examples: Apple "1984", EDS "Cat Herding")
  
• 4 is LOL / "Whoa!" / a commercial that's remembered the next day
  (Examples: Budweiser "Bud Bowl" series, monster.com "Kids")
  
• 3 is chuckle / "Cool!" / a clever commercial
  (Examples: Most Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi commercials)
  
• 2 is no reaction / "OK" / Typical Super Bowl commercial
  (Examples: Schick, Gillette, Master Lock "Bullet through the padlock")
  
• 1 is bored / "Ho-hum" / I've seen it before
  (Examples: Ads for the NFL or other network programs)
  
• 0 is offended / "WTF?"
  

There weren't any 5s this year. Three commercials rated a 4: Budweiser "Fergus the Dog", Budweiser "Sleigh Ride", and H&R Block "Willie Nelson Advice Doll". (Halfway through the commercial, I remembered that Willie was being pursured by the IRS for tax evasion several years ago.) Yeah, those two Bud commercials seemed sophmoroic and juvenile in retrospect, but they made me laugh out loud. The Budweiser "Clydesdale Donkey", Pepsi's "Bears", and Staples "Supply Clerk" commercials rated a high 3. One rated a 0: the AOL "Top Speed - Wheelchair", where a souped-up wheelchair takes off upward instead of forward.

Read the USA Today article about the Super Bowl ads.

And here are their Ad Meter stats.


And at halftime, Justin Timberlake gets nasty with Miss Jackson. I didn't pay close attention to the halftime show. It wasn't until this morning that I heard what happened.

I think I'm more offended by the ensuing outrage than the showing of a female breast on network TV. The US has this absolutely puritanic view about human bodies, that the "naughty bits" are supposed to be covered up. In some European countries, I understand that it's not taboo to show breasts. As for the NFL, they condone scantily-clad cheerleaders in skin-tight or revealing outfits (think Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders), but nothing too revealing. It's like a bizarre doublee standard. What's even worse is that it's OK to show people getting killed or beaten up, but not OK to show the source of mother's milk au naturel.

What's next? Will all the Venus DeMilo statues in this country get camisoles placed on them, and boxers (or briefs) put on all the Michaelangelo's David statues? Geez! Whatever happen to the human body being an art form?


Oh yeah....Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow again today. No big surprise. I still think groundhogs are cute and cuddly, but I wouldn't want them as pets. I'm surprised he hasn't bitten his handlers yet for rousing him out of a nice winter's hibernation.

Comments

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Phil doesn't hibernate. She lives in the public library in a warm habitat with the rest of her family year round. Yes, she. Phil's a girl. The females are more docile. At oh-ghod hundred in the morning, she's taken in a box to Gobbler's Knob and stuffed in a concrete burrow that's shaped like a giant tree-stump. And if she did bite her handler, he'd barely notice. He's only wearing a heavy coat and big mittens because of the cold you see, not because Phil might ever bite. :D
-- Dagonell