Abe Vigota is not fucking amused.
For the first time in a while the two teams in the big game were number one seeds, and as far as I’m concerned, for the second year in a row the vast majority of civilized America didn’t care at all about who won. What we do care about is getting more stuff. And how do we learn about stuff so we can get it after the game? Commercials, that’s how! So, lets recap some of my favorite commercials, and also a few that I completely disprove of (I got your back Abe).
So, one popular theme that seemed to be prevalent this year is cartoonish violence. More than ever advertisers are showing that simply by showing the viewer something that is stupidly funny for 30 seconds and affixing their clients logo to the end of it that you will buy their product. Its sad really, and some of the commercials were just bizarre and kind of cruel. However, one that I found particularly funny was the VW punch-buggy commercial. VW has the serendipitous honor of having a stupidly violent name attached to their brand, so its OK for them to have a spot pretty much focused on people hitting people. On top of that, we’ve got a little Stevie-Wonder-is-blind humor and that never gets old. Throw in Brian Fellows for good measure and you’ve got yourself some good television.
The Superbowl is also a huge platform for movies and TV shows to advertise. There were two huge trailers and a few forgettable ones this year. Specifically, the trailer for the HBO Miniseries The Pacific, which is a spinoff of Band of Brothers has been pretty quiet during its long and expensive production. We got to see a peak last night and it doesn’t look like its going to disappoint.
There were a slew of car commercials, as is expected every year. One of my personal favorites was Kia’s robots spot, depicting a group of life-sized toys going all out in Vegas Hangover style. I won’t ruin the ending, but it has just enough sentimentality to be fun and not too much to be cheesy.
Dodge also threw in for a minute long spot hearkening back to Burger King’s Manthem campaign a year ago. I cant decide if this commercial is so manly its kind of insulting, but the Charger is a pretty cool car, and I have nothing bad to say about anything that Dexter voices.
And now, on to the black sheep. These people shelled out millions of dollars to talk to people who either didn’t want to listen, or are completely confused/insulted or possibly the worst: indifferent about their ad.
First Failure: I do not for the life of me get why companies like Intel advertise? I cant even bring myself to watch this spot again because I remember just being perplexed.
Second Failure: Charles Barkley should go away. I have no idea why he is still incessantly featured on TV, especially in a spot that makes him ramble on incoherently about tacos. I just…I don’t know. Moving on…
Third Failure: What the fuck snikers. I know the advertising industry makes mistakes, but handing over the most important advertising slots in the history of the fucking universe to the spots you fielded this year was the superbowl of suck. Case in point, why, why, why am I relating Betty White and Abe Vigota to your candy bar? Have you ran out of similarly unrelated basketball personalities who’s names easily lend themselves to your stupid puns? Abe Fucking Vigota, really? Hasn’t the man done enough to earn our respect? He almost single handedly dismantled the Corleone family for god’s sake, and you have him getting tackled by some everyman jagoff. Score one for Milky Way, idiots.
Oh, and “Puxatony Palomolu” might be the worst fucking combination of two proper names in the history of the world. God help us all (till next year).
All of you fastest sperms out there, this is our first, and hopefully not last, exploratory article into a self proclaimed popular culture icon. I know what you’re thinking but do not fear. This is not about Tiger Woods. Speaking of, what’s the difference between Santa and Tiger? About 15 Hos. Moving on….This piece is written about a man that not many know how to feel about. Loved by some, hated by the same some, and obnoxious to most, Charles Barkley has made it clear that he will never shut up and we might as well get used to it.
Someone with Photoshop hates you Charles!
Charles Barkley is a guy I never really liked. I never really hated him either. The most logical place to start the discussion him is his college experience. At first glance, he’s exactly what you’d want out of a player. Averaged nearly a double double his entire three year career, All SEC selectee, strong finisher, shot over 60% from the floor, and the list goes on. He brought some excitement to Auburn fans and they ended up retiring his number. In fact, since college athletes aren’t given a big enough platform to run their mouths extensively, he was a pretty popular guy. The only real knock people had of him is that he struggled with a weight problem. I, along with many, find it unacceptable for supposedly premiere athletes to be lazy enough to get fat. However, after stage one of his life, he’s comes out strong in my book.
On to the NBA. Barkley joined a team that was good enough to get to the Eastern Conference Finals where they lost to the Boston Celtics. Under Moses Malone’s tutelage, the Round Mound was able to shed a few pounds and not look like a lost Van Gundy brother. He scored a lot, grabbed a lot of boards, and made some All Star teams. He also spit on a little girl during overtime of a game. While this is not necessarily out of the ordinary in the slimebox called Philadelphia that he played in, the rest of the country found it pretty terrible. Charles later listened to his agent and gave the loogie faced girl some basketball tickets, which he got for free, to see him play.
As if playing in Philly wasn’t enough to get him despised by most of the country, Charles never shied away from cameras. He was picked up by Phoenix in 1992 and, along with Danny “Shitbird” Ainge, made it to the finals. Barkley famously told Michael Jordan that it was destiny that the Suns would win. They lost and I am confident that it was because God hates assholes. The next year, Barkley decided that he was tired of being followed by cameras (but not the millions of dollars he made because of it) and stated that athletes are not role models. Dumbass Dan Quayle backed him. Most people saw it as the cop out that it was.
In 1996 he moved to the Rockets with Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. He still couldn’t win a ’ship. However, his time in the league is equally remembered for a few other incidents as well. On court fights with Shaq, Oak, and Laimbeer (among others), off court assaults of random men after games, and terrible gambling issues, make Barkley an easy guy to hate. Hell, if he wasn’t an NBA player the guy would be in jail 5 times over.
After he retired he took his trash to the networks. He became the least intelligent color commentator (you’re welcome Joe Buck) in the history of commentary on TNT. The stuff that would come out of his mouth was/is atrocious. He wouldn’t disagree.
He is also known as the worst golfer ever. His swing is painful to watch. He hit a fan in the head with his awful shank. I don’t know what else to say about that one. He doesn’t have a job and still can’t find time to not look like a moron on the golf course.
Most of my dismay at the existence of this fatass comes from a few issues. 1) He wrote a book and I, like an idiot, read it. I wish it was possible to sue for time. To quote Billy Madison “what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” 2) He’s on TV. All the time. I don’t mind the fact that there are morons in the world. I usually just ignore them or shove them down stairs. Charlie-poo however is shoved down everyone’s throat. TNT, Dwayne Wade commercials, Dwight Howard commercials… fuck you Charles. You were a good player but MJ was better and he only bothers us with Hanes commercials. 3) Snickers. Why did Snickers make the “get dunked on by Patrick Chewing” commercials when there was a fatter, dumber, more washed up player that they could have used? If it was Barkley making an ass out of himself in those commercials I might have given him a pass.
At the end of the day, the way I will remember Charles is as the worst dressed man on TV. The guy looks like Stevie Wonder, Bryant Gumble, and 1986 got in a fight and they all lost. Hawaiian shirts, synthetic turtlenecks, ill fitting 5 button suits, and more olive tones than a vineyard. This guy can’t dress. He can’t speak. He could play. Charles, you get a 3 out of 10 on my scale.*
*1 being genocide and 10 being a blow job while wearing new socks.
So, lets imagine that your name is Mike Rafone, and you live in a town where peoples names are also innanimate objects, or even actions, but whatever they are, they usually aren’t normal people names….
Fuck it, this is a random list of a bunch of semi-realistic names that are also things.
1 Jen Oreous
2 Ray Zorburn
3 Janet Ore
4 Reid Enwright
5 Luke Wharm
6 Dan Jerous
7 Miles Tugo
8 Chris Tollball
9 Rick O’Shea
10 Jacques Strapp
11 Jim Nasium
12 Juan Tedmore
13 Nick Ellendime
14 Cy Bohrg
15 Dan Dilyion
16 Chris Mastry
17 Reid Astorie
18 Guss Tuvwind
19 Rob Yurbank
20 Sol Tanpeper
21 Justin Case
22 Mike Hunt
23 Pattie O’Furniture
24 Ryan O’Plasty
25 Ben Yornee
If you don’t get any of them on the first try, then think about it for a minute. These are the best ones. If you still don’t get it, wait until the next 25.
Listen… they even contribute about as much to the headphone market as P. Diddy does to music! That’s real attention to detail.
The ever useless Puff Daddy Puffy P. Diddy His Almighty Didd-ness Diddy, who believes that he is so important that the public should be forced to learn his name multiple times throughout his “career” (for lack of a better word), is releasing his own line of headphones. UGH. The sad thing is that he will make money and even garner praise from this venture. All it takes in order for this to happen is a set of cheap plastic phones that pump out so much bass that the listener can’t tell if his Zune’s playing Tupac, Biggie or Deep Blue Something (Note: This is how Lil’ Did claims to have ended the East Coast/West Coast rap war). El Didderino is known for slapping his name on everything from vodka, to clothing, to car rims. All of which I’m sure he has no vested interest in beyond expanding his fortune.
His in-ear version of the unnecessarily popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones will cost around $150 of your hard-earned money and contribute to the further degradation of quality in music reproduction. But, hey, it’s a small price to pay to look cool. Since you will inevitably ignore my warnings and give this idiot your money, here is a link to more information. Notice how there are no actual specs included- not that anyone would bother reading them anyway. Oh, but there are pretty pictures!
If you happen to be one of the few who actually care about what your music sounds like, read on for some of my suggested alternatives (WARNING: none of these headphones include Sean John carrying cases)… read more…
Now, lets not forget about 2009, a pretty good year for movies. We had Pulp Fiction meets Nazi Zombies, Jack Sparrow playing John Dillinger, and well, now that I think about it last year wasn’t that great. Since I’m such an optimist lets take a look at 5 projects we can be hopeful about in 2010.
Shutter Island
You blinked, background extra guard guy.
Scorsese, that name is enough to make anything good. I remember when I saw some of his earlier movements into other genres (namely, those that aren’t gangster movies) like the biopics Raging Bull and The Aviator. I originally hated them, but the more I watch them the better they get. Here we have a fantastical dark mystery/thriller. Along with what seems to be a pretty good story, a startling trailer, and Scorsese’s amazing talent for making Leonardo Dicaprio bearable, this could be one of the greats of 2010. And god damn, I can’t get enough of these inexplicable Boston accents.
The Crazies
How can you pass this up. I usually don’t watch the trailers to these horror thriller movies, but there’s something really sinister about a movie in which the normal, nice people become truly evil homicidal maniacs. Other good point: it’s not like they’re just trapped with no outside contact from the world like in most horror movies. The army comes and they’re still fucked! Oh shit! That’s entertainment right there.
The A-Team
Check out the Mr. T one's Mohawk.
I never really watched an entire episode of the A-Team, just the introduction and assorted clips shown on VH1 countdown shows. The concept of a team of wrongfully convicted but highly trained soldiers on the run solvin’ problems gets me excited. It’s simple, it’s to the point, it has Mr. T. What more could you ask for with a story? Now, even though Mr. T’s character is played by somebody else I still hope that this version will take out some (but not too much) of the quirky weirdness of the TV show and make it a real action movie with a little bit of self-referential humor. Or it could turn out like GI Joe. Just Sayin’. read more…
Now get off your lazy, still drunk ass, remove the lampshade from your head and make something of this new decade. This is a list of new years resolutions that we here at Read it Dammit have decided to impose on the population of the world in order to rectify some of the major flaws of the last decade. Think of this as the “2010 Commandments”, they are not optional, they are law.
1. Terrorism
Don’t do it. Isn’t it getting a little old now guys? I mean, your parents were doing this, shouldn’t it be considered old-fashioned and out of style? Stop being whatever your parents tell you to be; break free and be your own person! Or at least adapt to the changing times and hit us where it really hurts.
2. Thin facial hair
Since when did this become the cool thing to do? Last I checked, the manliness of facial hair was directly related to the thickness. It is not stylish, it is not attractive to real women, it’s a blatant slap in the face to all that is man and it must be stopped. read more…
This year was fairly uneventful in the world of new music, especially compared to the offerings of ‘07 and ‘08. But luckily for us music lovers, that means that those bands that released albums in the last two or three years are due for their next releases in the coming months. In anticipation of this I have compiled a list of albums that get my dick hard just thinking about their unexplored splendor. Enjoy.
Yeasayer – Odd Blood
Yeasayer’s All Hour Cymbals came out of nowhere in 2007, bending genres and becoming incredibly popular with those in the know. The tell tail sign that they’d really hit it big came when Entourage decided to use their track “Sunrise” in the closing credits of one of their episodes. So after being thoroughly pimped by Vinny Chase and co. the band began its rise to mainstream success. They’ve worked the festival circuit hard over the past two years and are now ready to follow up their masterpiece debut. Odd Blood is scheduled for a February 9th release and its first single, “Ambling Alp”, was released in November. If this song is anything like the rest of the album then we are in for a face-melting, psychedelic treat, and the recently released album artwork definitely backs that claim.
Check out Ambling Alp’s fittingly trippy and NSFW (lots of naked people) music video:
Spoon – Transference
I can’t stop praising the awesome-ness of Spoon. They have taken up the torch that The Strokes dropped so abruptly in 2006. Though, many people were not as impressed with 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as I was. It may have been a slight departure from the sound of their masterpiece predecessor Gimme Fiction, but it still possessed the swagger and confidence present in the rest of Spoon’s catalog. They could put out an album that sounded like a combination of Jet and Maroon 5 and I’d still be first in line to buy their next one. This band can do no wrong. I highly recommend that you pick this album up on January 19th, and for the next few weeks until then, make yourself familiar with the rest of their output if you aren’t already. You won’t regret it.
The new single, “Written in Reverse”:
Ooo, ominous.
YEAH OBAMA!
Now that these new fresh and all the more photogenic personalities have had their place in our nations Capitol for a few months lets see if anything meaningful has been accomplished. Lets look not in the fields of healthcare (nothin’ yet), increased privacy and transparency (not really) or anything political dealt with by the president, but with his new home city. Has DC become anything more to Obama than it was to George W. Bush; I mean, taking into account some of the shortcomings of this city, we better watch out for Obama running out to clear brush in Crawford….
The Metro
What people, including city planners, dont seem to understand is that Washington is not that large of a city. Tenleytown, Dupont Circle and the Capitol are not that far away from eachother. But, for some reason, there is a horrendously complicated metro system with several lines to service stops that are very close together. I mean, for fucks sake, most of the lines are in the shape of a U, and the map is so cramped that you don’t even know which names belong to which station. Because of all the overlapping and extra track, there is more cars, tracks and stations to maintain, not to mention the hundreds of miles of escalators. Its a little unnerving to thing that there will never be a time when all of the escalators in Washington DC’s metro system will work all at once.
Throw in the fact that the ticketing system is by distance, not a flat rate as exists in many other city rail systems, and you’ve got confusion for newcomers and tourists, and good old fashioned inconvenience and unreliability for the locals.
Oh, also…did I mention its not exactly the safest in the world?.
Cabs
Cab drivers are universally understood to have back-of-the-hand knowledge of the city they work in. In London especially, cabbies can navigate the centuries old streets and corridors to bring you, surprised and confused, to your destination. In New York, cab drivers instead are known for their speedily efficient (some say reckless and insane) through borough traffic.
As always, Mr. T is Right
Washington DC has the twofer of ridiculous traffic and insane streets. Now every asshole likes to point out that the streets were designed to fend off a British invasion, which A: failed miserably, and B: would therefore have to cripple the cities inhabitants as well. That’s what we get from taking urban planning ideas from the people who built the Maginot Line.
But I digress, to the point: cabbies in DC do not know where they are going. There’s no question about this when more than a few times I have gotten in a cab ride that took an extra 5 minutes so the driver could program his GPS(!). I don’t even have one of those in my car. How long does it take to drive around in a city before you being to figure out where shit is? How about if your job depends on it? Jesus. Have some personal pride in your work at least.
My second, less important but brand new gripe with cabs is the new meter system. The problem with the old zone system was that if you just went over the line, you’d be paying twice as much for that extra block. So Adrian Fenty’s idea instead of effectively implementing a margin between zones of a few blocks to solve this, he opted for a meter system. Because DC itself is so small, traffic is so bad, and the fucking drivers don’t know where they’re going, there are extra charges on top of whatever the meter fare is. So don’t be surprised when your $7.50 cab ride turns into $12.50 when they pile on the rates for absurd things like $4.00 for just getting in.
The above video was made by someone who calls themselves Ricardo Audobahn. It’s a pretty amazing feat considering the diversity of movies involved: anywhere from Citizen Kane to Freaks, and the fact that the words actually rhyme. Still in disbelief? Read the lyrics below:
I have a quick question for you: what do cigarettes and crayons have in common?
Answer: They’re both killing your children. That’s right, graphic design isn’t only about creating cute slogans for large crowded metropolitain areas (I fucking do heart New York), its also used to get your kids used to seeing cigarettes while they’re wee-little tots going batshit insane while getting their art on in 2nd grade.
Jesus Christmas even the children arent safe.
Marlboros & Crayons: A Child’s Best Friend
Think about it: what could be better than lighting some plants on fire and inhaling the smoke, and then chewing gum after to get the taste out of your mouth? And so goes the question that no-doubt prompted the creation of menthol cigarettes.
Packaging has evolved only a little for cigarettes since their inception. Originally cigarettes were pretty much wrapped in paper with a plastic jacket around it (like a library book!) and could be crushed easily in the pocket of your 1950’s rolled up blue jeans. The essential pack resembles those of Crayola crayons, most likely because of the similar shapes of cigarettes to crayons. What’s surprising is the design on the outside of the package. Design trends favoring flat color and more modern typefaces were prevailing, and both found their way into cigarettes as well as seemingly unsuspecting products like crayons. Even with the introduction of the crush proof pack, cigarette package design changed very little. And after WWII, many servicemen brought lighting up back to America for everyone to enjoy.
Camel Crush and Wrigley’s Chewing gum: practically the same thing.
Noo, those are totally different....
Crayons may be a bit of a stretch, but how about another product people consume on a daily basis? Chewing gum and tobacco have obvious and important similarities. Marketing involving gum has evolved to pinpoint every section of the market, especially 18-25, roughly the target for cigarettes. Getting people to start a habit relatively young is the best way to ensure their continued monetary support.
If you’re getting lost and not seeing my connection, then do what they told you to do while everyone else was learning to read in elementary school and skip to the pictures. I submit to evidence Wrigley’s new Five gum. The package is striking because its unique, but its really not, its just cigarette packaging formed to fit strips of gum. And Ooo, look, there’s smoke coming up from the… strips of gum(?). Even the colors match a new brand of Camel cigarettes of the same flavor called Crush.
