Hellivision

I had high, or should I say low (very low), hopes for Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns. The Magliozzi brothers’ Car Talk is an institution of American Radio and Tom and Ray are masters of corny, so-bad-it’s-good humor. But I guess their humor only works in an off-the-cuff, conversational way because this scripted TV program was just plain bad and not entertaining at all.

I guess expecting good TV from radio personalities is like expecting an accurate rectal exam from your dentist. I haven’t gotten one yet. But hey, they’re free.

This is the most immature, sophomoric piece of comedy I’ve ever seen. I love it. It goes on way to long, but that’s part of its charm.

Video produced by Boydlonafide.

This commercial for Symbicort looks fantastic. The silhouette concept worked great for the iPod, so why not for asthma medication?

Do people really want medical information/advice from some faceless shadow lady though? I don’t know about you, but I prefer to get medical advice from people with faces. Well, people with faces or WebMD.

Sometimes I wish I were a faceless shadow when asking for medical advice though.

Don’t get me wrong, I like PBS plenty. But I’m really getting sick of all the pledge drives they’ve been having over the last few years. It’s not the actual interruptions and begging that gets under my skin though, as much as the fact that more and more often, PBS channels are showing special programming during these near weekly pledge drives.

Why are they intent on alienating their regular viewers by constantly preempting the very shows that draw them in? If I tune in every week to see the hijinx at Grace Bros., I’m not going to be happy when I tune in one Saturday and instead see the corpses of ’60s era pop stars wheezing through their old anthems, or the spectacle of Suze Orman’s prodigious choppers yelling at me about being smart with money, or some lame Celtic Woman concert.

If you want my money to continue bringing me the shows I want to see, show me the shows I want to see—not some special program that’s not even remotely related.

These Six Flags ads are pretty sad. It’s like they started off with the juicy idea of using a shouting Japanese guy stereotype, but then backed way off so as not to be offensive. Where’s the mangled English? Where’s the crashing gong?

Stereotypes should be pushed to the extreme, otherwise they just fall flat and you set people up for something that never comes through—leaving everybody disappointed. Even the guy on the commercial looks like he’s not quite sure why he’s there sometimes.

When I started this dumb blog I figured there’d be tons of stuff to write about. So much of the programming on TV is horrible, you’d assume there’d be an endless supply of material, right? Oh not so, my bro… I’ve found that 90 percent of the stuff that sucks just plain sucks. There’s not much more you can say about it other than, “It sucks.” It’s rare that something on television achieves a level of suction that’s inspiring.

Ghost Adventures however, is one of those rare somethings. It’s so appallingly bad, I find it hard to believe it’s not satire. This documentary takes the premise of ghost hunting and pushes it to its extremes. Unlike the prissy Ghost Hunters who get bogged down in the stupid Scientific Method, Ghost Adventures gets down and dirty and actually shows you ghosts and hardcore paranormal action on film. If Ghost Hunters is Victoria’s Fantasies on Cinemax at 12PM Friday night, Ghost Adventures is that triple-X DVD you bought at Amazing.net with the words “Scat”, “Dwarves” and “Part 37″ in the title.

Their camera captures objects flying through the air, spectral figures passing through rooms, and the crew shrieking like little girls and fleeing for dear life. Completely impartial video authority Slim Whitman confirms that these clips are for real and not staged or digitally manufactured too.

Hopefully Ghost Adventures will become a full-fledged series and we’ll get to see possessions, succubi, and the Devil himself caught on film some day. These guys definitely one-upped the Ghost Hunters gang. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’ll be glued to the set for more if they get their own weekly program.

Tonight I saw this documentary about rockstar explorer Ferdinand Magellan on PBS. It was alright as far as documentaries go. Among other facts, I learned Magellan was a hard-ass who executed one of his captains to put down a mutiny, and died chopping up Filipinos who wouldn’t accept Christ as their savior.

The most interesting thing though was how the craggy faced Australian narrator pronounced Magellan with a hard G (as in good). I always thought it was pronounced with a soft G (as in gellin’). That’s how they say it on the classic Dr. Scholls commercial…

Who should I believe? PBS or Dr. Scholls?

BTW: I couldn’t find video of the Dr. Scholls commercial, but I did find this reasonable facsimile.

In this ad for Rexona deodorant we see Young Professional deftly handling the usual hurdles of getting to a meeting on time in the future. A rabid mechanical dog wants to sniff his butt, and an anthropomorphic theft deterrent system tries to kick that same butt. But our young professional manages to stay dry through his ordeal and this elicits a skeevy smile from his (gay?) robot boss. I wonder what he wants to do to Young Professional’s butt?

Why is this commercial so obsessed with butts? Are you supposed to use deodorant down there? No one ever told me that!

I don’t know why I even care, but this new Animal Planet logo drives me nuts. That sideways ‘M’ is such a bad design choice. What were they thinking when they came up with that?

I guess maybe, “Who cares? Nobody watches Animal Planet anyway.”

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I bought a pair to watch my old TV with.