Domestic Violence, Cartoons with Cigarettes, and Racism

I ran across this article today. Retro Commercials. I was particularly entertained by the Jello commercial and its striking similarity to the Sales Genie.com commercial that I posted yesterday. Oh how far have we come! Id actually like to think that we have come fairly far from those advertising days, although who knows what companies are hocking now that may turn out to be the cause of the next cancer. In 50 years I'm sure we will all be laughing at the cell phone commercials while all of us Razor shaped brain tumors, or perhaps we will get a good laugh at all the beer commercials because maybe alcohol will turn out to cause impaired judgment or something and that people drink to much and crash their cars, killing thousands every year. Who knows what the future will prove! Watch the old commercials, leave a comment with your thoughts.

Super Bowl Commercials

I am not going to write a long drawn out post analyzing each Super Bowl Commercial. There are plenty of other blogs and websites that I am sure you can visit to get the full run-down of them. Overall I was not extremely impressed by a lot of the commercials. I think the E-Trade baby was clever and I liked the cars.com commercials, but I think the major advertisers like Anheuser-Busch came up a bit short in the creativity department this year. However, I think people will be talking about two commercials more than any others. They are the SalesGenie.com commercials. (I posted one in this blog, you can find the other on You Tube or MySpace.) These commercials will not be drawing the attention on their merit, but instead on their over the top stereotypical portrayal of Indian and Chinese people. I am pretty sure the company just committed suicide that cost them over $5 million. Good investment. Too bad they are going to have to shell out way more than that in PR dollars if they ever intend to turn profit.

You Cannot Blame the Messenger - Only the News

Well it looks like Punxsutawney Phil, the self-proclaimed 'official' groundhog of groundhog's day, has seen his shadow again this year thus declaring that we will have to endure 6 more weeks of winter. You can see the video here. Phil is not the only groundhog predicting the weather these days however.
For the last 14 years, one General Beauregard Lee has been predicting the remaining period of winter with a much high success rate than Phil. Lee has accurately predicted the oncoming weather an impressive 98% of the time, while Phil has only been successful about 39% of the time. Oh, did I mention that Lee did not see his shadow, which tells us to expect an early spring. I don't know about you, but I would much rather believe the groundhog who predicts warmer weather, not to mention the one with a near perfect track record. I for one am sick of the media's biased coverage of Groundhog's day. CNN.com at least gave mention of the differing prediction of the true professional groundhog, Lee, but Fox News, with their 'Fair and Balanced' approach neglected to even report on existence of another groundhog or the fact that Punxsutawney Phil's predictions have had the reputation of being completely inaccurate. I would like to call for a switch in news coverage for next year's Groundhogs Day. The massive media attention of Phil brought over 30,000 people to the small town of Punxsutawney, PA this year to witness nothing more than an unreliable gimmick which is controlled by a bunch of high-powered business men wearing coat-tails and top hats. Lee on the other hand only attracted just over 250 people to his festivities in Lilburn, GA. American has the right to know whether winter will continue or not. I challenge the news to report the news, not pop-culture. Leave that to E! or Perez.

Postscript: You can check out www.yellowrivergameranch.com to get more information on General Beauregard Lee and his home at the Yellow River Game Ranch.