Yakult Loves Its Insides

This Yakult ad with a digestive system puppet is the friggin' weirdest ad ever.  Ever.

Amazing John Lewis Ad

I love great ads.  Sometimes they're like a movie, or a poem, like this John Lewis ad.  Nothing to say, except, please watch.

Microsoft's Crystal Seems To Be Brain Dead

Here's the video and here's what she's really saying:

"I'm Crystal. Not long ago I had a thought, right in the back of my head. And it hurt. Because I'm brain dead and that's why I use Windows 7."



This is why Microsoft needs to fire everyone in their marketing department.  Now.

Gap Holiday Kids Ad

Every year there's always one Christmas ad that's really fun. This year, my vote goes to the Gap kids ad. Vibrant, sassy, fun. So much better than the adult version (really dead in comparison). Go, kids!



Merry Christmas, everyone!

Verizon Droid Ad

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?
YOUR AD DOLLARS GOING TO WASTE.

The Evil of Banality

This commercial for Baskin-Robbins is so evil. Within seconds, the song bores into your brain and takes complete control. You don't have a chance, your brain frantically dancing to the demonic chant "ice cream and cake, ice cream and cake...". Evil. And brilliant.

Pride of Pyongyang

Some tales are just too strange to be true. Like how about the one where a mad North Korean dictator sends his minions to a small town in England and has them dismantle a brewery brick by brick so they can rebuild it in Pyongyang. Why? Because he's a mad dictator? And just what do you do after you've rebuilt the brewery and Thunderbirds are go? You make a commercial, of course.

Someone really has to make a movie about this. In the meanwhile, here's the commercial in all its cheesy, post famine glory.




Of course, I've never had the pleasure of watching North Korean TV, but somehow I never figured they'd have commercials. Which begs the question of who these ads are aimed at? Peoria? Because most North Koreans don't even own a TV. I mean, if they had money, they'd buy food. And are all their commercials like this, mind-control in psychedelic mode? Listen to those voices, echoing into the depth of your subconscious: aren't you dying for a beer now?

North Korea. On the one hand, they have nuclear weapons. On the other hand, now they have beer. I'm not sure which is more scary.

Here's a link to the BBC story, which is delivered with an earnestly straight face. I love how the Germans are involved. Well, if you're going to do beer, might as well go to the best.

Nouvelle Vague

I'm talking about the French band. Their music is everywhere. In movies, ads, TV shows, runways, and yet, not too many people know who they are. Nouvelle Vague music is even featured in Korean dramas ("(This Is Not a) Love Song" is the anthem for Soulmate).

Maybe because Nouvelle Vague remakes old songs like "Dance With Me" and "Too Drunk to Fuck". Maybe because their music is so laid back that they merge seamlessly with whatever they're paired with. Maybe because their covers are more mood than music so it goes directly into the subconscious. I don't know. But I do love their covers: "I Melt With You", "Making Plans For Nigel", "Human Fly"...

nouvelle vague ....dance with me .... from bande a part

Cooking Japanese Like Morimoto

On the topic of TV ads, I thought I'd also comment on one of the funniest TV ads I've ever seen. It's for a TV show called Iron Chef and it's zany, clever, and soooo fun. The ad is basically a reduced essence of Iron Chef, a weird Japanese cooking competition, with bits and pieces of the show chopped up into a frenetic music video. The featured song is "Cooking Japanese", an adaptation of the Vapors's song "Turning Japanese". The show and song are satirized in the best way possible, and it also humorously captures the cultural confusion and bewilderment of anyone not Japanese. The song is so catchy, I find myself singing it at odd times of the day: "I'm cooking Japanese, I think I'm cooking Japanese like Morimoto..."

BTW, the original "Turning Japanese" is a love song, which I was astonished to find out. Ironically, it works better as a love song in "Cooking Japanese" because the narrator of the spoof is obviously besotted with the show. I like both songs, the original and the spoof. The lyrics of the original have a total post-modern disregard for coherence, which is great. Oh — the rumor that "turning Japanese" is an euphemism for masturbation is false. In case you wondered... ;)

Samsung/AT&T Thumbs Ad

This is one of the grossest TV ads I've ever seen. Ranking high on the Uncanny Valley, watching the heads on the moving thumbs makes me want to throw up. The ad is especially bad when seen on HDTV. I think it has something to do with the fact that the heads cannot move independent of the thumbs, yet the eyes are moving around and the mouths are yakking and all of a sudden it's like the unveiling of a terrible Eastern European science experiment and you're confronted with a dog's head on a cat's body and the dog head is talking to you. It just ain't right.

HDTV Is Scaring Me

HDTV is not kind to women. At least not to women with heavy plastic surgery. The living dead on HDTV suddenly become the ghoulish dead. If I were the women of Hollywood, I'd get together and form a Middleman conspiracy to kill HDTV. Or lure Max Factor back from the dead and have him reformulate all his make-up because something has to be done. You women are scaring me.

You know what else doesn't work on HDTV? Commercial food. Like Wienerschnitzel's chili dogs, which look like they're covered in shit from a dog that ate all your Ex-Lax -- isn't that taking "truth in advertising" a little too literally? Their chili dog isn't that bad. And why does everything at Olive Garden look like it was nuked from a packet (maybe it is). Campbell's soups look cold and congealed, El Pollo Loco chicken looks like plastic, and everything from Lean Cuisine looks like airline food. And I'm talking cattle class.

Of course, my big fear is that to the rest of America, this stuff does look good enough to eat. And what does that say for the American diet?

Oh — the one food product that does translate well is hamburgers. I guess glistening fat always looks good.

So what's the connection between insecure actresses who get too much plastic surgery and food pumped full of additives? I'll leave that for you guys to answer in the comments!

HDTV is going to be one tough learning curve.