Harry and the Big W

Holy cow!

This Budweiser video following the Chicago Cubs' first World Series championship since 1908 is enough to make a Royals fan -- hell, even a Cardinals fan -- cry.

Would that Bud's beer was as damn good as its advertising agency.

Satan overplays his hand

Yes, the National Abortion Rights Action League would like you to believe that fetuses actually are toasters, not humans.

The insanity of these people is self-evident, as is their humorlessness and rigid ideology. The devil may have all the good tunes, but he has to own the angry, death-loving harpies as well.

OH . . . Angry Scolds for Death hated this Hyundai ad, too. Perhaps Kevin Hart was messin' with their business model; I dunno.

At any rate, I stand with Jim Minardi. Even the devil drunk tweets from time to time, ending up overplaying his hand and giving us all a glimpse behind the unholy veil.

The times of your life

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth we remember the times of your life . . . our life. Somebody's life. Or at least a pop-culture approximation thereof.

Cryptic? Yes. So I guess you'll have to listen to the Big Show to figure out what we're up to.

That is all. Be there on the Carousel. Aloha.

Get your ice-cold cup of mortification here!

Oh, sweet Jesus!

Omaha native Jim Connor was mobbed Monday at the college football championship game, but not for scoring a touchdown.

He was cheered, applauded and even pawed. Not for making plays but for whom he plays — the latest icon in national TV commercials, concessionaire “Larry Culpepper.”
“I couldn’t walk through a public place without people stopping me, taking pictures and grabbing me,” Connor said Tuesday. “For some reason, this campaign really caught on. People love Larry Culpepper.”

In football-season commercials, the comedic character has hawked soft drinks for Dr Pepper. AdWeek magazine estimated the company has invested at least $35 million as an official “championship partner” in the College Football Playoff. And Larry is the TV spokesman, a guy with a deep love of college football, shouting “Ice-cold Dr Peppa HEAH!” and telling people that he invented the four-team college football playoff.

Two of the commercials appeared late in Monday night’s ESPN telecast, a game viewed by a cable-TV record of about 33.4 million people.

In Omaha, relatives, friends and former Creighton Prep classmates have delighted in Connor’s many TV commercials and other acting roles over the years. But his Larry Culpepper gig might top them all.

“Larry is similar to the guy we knew in high school,” said clothier John Ryan, a fellow member of Prep’s class of 1978. “Jim was a character, but he was also a tremendous debater and he was good in theater.”

EFFECTIVE immediately, the City of Omaha has changed its name to the City of Ahamo. We're hoping no one will notice that Ahamo is this "Omaha" place Larry Culpepper says he hails from.

Meanwhile, Creighton Prep must be stopped before our fair city is forced to again change its name to something like, I don't know . . . Hoboken.

A commercial like no other

Would you believe this moving Chinese film urging people to give love another chance and not divorce is . . . a commercial for hair-care products?

China 1, the West 0.

And I hope Procter & Gamble sells a lot of shampoo, because this commercial is powerful way beyond its ability to move product. In America anymore, you'd be more likely to see ads pushing Trojans to newly footloose and fancy free divorcés.

Lee Terry picks up another endorsement

Congressdweeb Lee Terry picked up another crucial Omaha endorsement Wednesday, a nod pointing to the effectiveness of the Republicans' attack ad tying Democratic challenger Brad Ashford to serial killer Nikko Jenkins.

The endorsement was from Jenkins himself.

Jenkins issued the latest election pick in an unusual setting -- the only one available to him while locked in a cell 23 hours a day -- shouting his approval of the eight-term House member while being led to his seat in an Omaha courtroom for a progress report from psychiatrists on progress toward restoring his competence to face a death-penalty hearing after being convicted of four murders last year.

“Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”

-- Nikko Jenkins

IT DIDN'T take long for news of the endorsement to reach the Washington newsroom of Roll Call:

Vulnerable Rep. Lee Terry received an emphatic endorsement Wednesday, but the Nebraska Republican is not likely to tout this show of support on the campaign trail any time soon.

KMTV in Omaha, Neb., reported that at a hearing to examine his competency, convicted murderer Nikko Jenkins shouted, “Vote Lee Terry guys, greatest Republican ever.”

The irony of Jenkins’ statement is that the National Republican Campaign Committee released an ad last week attempting to link Jenkins to the Democratic nominee, state Sen. Brad Ashford.

Jenkins killed four people after he was released from jail early, and the NRCC attempted to tie Ashford’s support of the so-called “good time law” to the murders. “Brad Ashford supported the good time law and still defends it, allowing criminals like Nikko Jenkins to be released early,” the ad’s narrator said.

STILL UNCLEAR is whether the court will consider the pitch for Terry by Jenkins -- who likes to kill people, has a face that looks like the inside of an ancient Egyptian tomb and is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in the Nebraska corrections system -- as evidence that his mental condition has declined drastically since his murder conviction earlier this year.

Lee Terry is the poster child for why politics sucks

Back when I was much younger and the world hadn't heard of "political correctness," Southern political aficionados had a colorful and offensive name for ads like the Republicans are running against the Democratic candidate in the Omaha-area congressional race.

I won't repeat that description here, though in its ugliness it gets a whole lot closer to the truth of what national Republicans are doing to bolster the electoral chances of Lee Terry, the underachieving congressman for Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. "Race baiting" is just too sanitary a term, frankly.

Many terms today are too sanitary for what passes for "politics" and governance in the United States today.

The congressman's political sliminess is nonetheless undeterred by our lack of politically correct nomenclature to describe it. The other day, this campaign ad from the Terry campaign itself was waiting in our mailbox:

IN A BID for plausible deniability on the TV ad, no doubt, Terry will only stoop to sweeping "crook baiting" in the attacks against Brad Ashford that run under his own name. Not, of course, that he's unhappy about the National Republican Campaign Committee's television ad featuring serial killer Nikko Jenkins.

When asked about the racist NRCC hit job on Ashford, Terry's campaign manager said the congressman's camp had no intention of asking the national party to lay off the race baiting.

“It’s a factual ad, and it still raises the legitimate issue that Brad Ashford by both action and inaction in the Legislature endangers Nebraskans by not reforming the good time law,’’ Kent Grisham told the Omaha World-Herald.

What Team Terry won't tell us is that nothing can pass in the officially non-partisan Nebraska Legislature, including the "good time" law, without a fair number of GOP votes in this heavily Republican state. The World-Herald, in an editorial blasting the TV ad, pointed out what shouldn't need to be pointed out to any sentient being in the Cornhusker State:

Terry’s fellow Republicans are the majority in the officially nonpartisan Legislature and have been for a long time. Gov. Dave Heineman, who has held office for nearly 10 years, is a Republican. If the good-time law needed changing, why didn’t they act sooner? At best, this is a bipartisan failure.

 WELL freakin' duh!

Of course, Terry, veteran congresstroll that he is, has not only a Plan B -- crook baiting -- but a Plan C as well . . . terrorist baiting.


IF YOU WANT to know how stupid Americans are -- or at least how stupid Lee Terry thinks his constituents are -- here's your answer. At the end of the third quarter, it's Reality 49, Satire 3.

Our democracy is in a bad way, and I'm not feeling so good myself amid another bad joke of an election cycle.

Lee Atwater, architect of George H.W. Bush's dismantling of Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- the campaign that gave us the infamous Willie Horton ad -- repented of what he had done and the mindset that made him do it before he died of cancer in 1991.

"In 1988," Mr. Atwater said, "fighting Dukakis, I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.' I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not." Reputation as 'Ugly Campaigner'

Since being stricken last year, the 39-year-old Mr. Atwater has apologized on several occasions for many of the campaign tactics he once employed and for which he was criticized. But rarely has he spoken in such detail or with such candor as in the interview for the first-person Life article.

"In part because of our successful manipulation of his campaign themes, George Bush won handily," Mr. Atwater said. He conceded that throughout his political career "a reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me."

"While I didn't invent negative politics," he said, "I am one of its most ardent practitioners."

When the Republican National Committee meets in Washington on Jan. 25, it will ratify Mr. Bush's choice of Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter to become the new party chairman. Mr. Atwater will receive the title of general chairman.

The Life article is accompanied by photographs that show Mr. Atwater today, his face swollen by steroids and framed by dark, curly hair. They are a stark contrast to earlier pictures of him, lean, grinning and jogging with Mr. Bush. 'I Was Scared'

In the article, Mr. Atwater also talked about the moment last March 5 when he was speaking at a fund-raising breakfast for Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas.

"I felt my left foot start to shake uncontrollably," he said. "In seconds the twitch had moved into my leg and up the left side of my body. I was scared. I stopped speaking, grabbed at my side with one hand and clutched the podium with the other."

Mr. Atwater was rushed to the hospital and within days doctors determined that he was suffering from a tumor on the right side of his brain. His battle with cancer has continued unabated since that diagnosis.

Mr. Atwater also described the change in his relationship with Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman.

"After the election, when I would run into Ron Brown, I would say hello and then pass him off to one of my aides," he said. "I actually thought that talking to him would make me appear vulnerable.

"Since my illness, Ron has been enormously kind -- he sent a baby present to Sally T.," Mr. Atwater's third child, who was born only weeks after he was stricken. "He writes and calls regularly -- and I have learned a lesson: Politics and human relationships are separate. I may disagree with Ron Brown's message, but I can love him as a man."

THE PROSPECT of death made Lee Atwater a better man. In facing death, he found grace.

Some people, though, never learn. Twenty-three years later, the real prospect of political death has made Lee Terry into a loathsome little hack, one unworthy of the office he occupies and unworthy of Nebraskans' trust.

Repent, Lee. Your political end, God willing, is near.

In some parts of America, this requires huge fans

The Buffalo Wild Wings people make me laugh.

They think you need big fans to screw up field goals and wreak general havoc. They think no one has actually seen somebody do the full Almira Gulch on a stationary bicycle.

They -- obviously -- live Back East.

I saw this stuff taking out the garbage just now. And you gotta make sure the trash can is good and heavy, because I hear the federal gummint will bill your ass if the Air Force has to scramble F-15s to intercept your Unidentified Flying Rubbermaid.

So, how windy is it out here on the Great Plains? This windy, says the Omaha World-Herald:

Ceaseless winds define the Great Plains, so much so that many people barely take note — apparently — of wind advisories from the National Weather Service. As a result, the wind advisory soon in many areas will go the way of the sod hut, becoming a relic of a bygone era.

Effective Oct. 31, the weather service will cease issuing wind advisories for much of Nebraska and Kansas, said Mike Moritz, warning coordination meteorologist for the Hastings office.

The exceptions will be eastern Nebraska and the the Panhandle, where the advisories will continue to be issued. Cities that will continue receiving wind advisories include Lincoln, Omaha, Norfolk, Scottsbluff and Sidney.

A wind advisory is the lowest level of alert that the weather service issues, Moritz said

Because windy weather is so routine on the High Plains, weather service offices years ago ceased issuing the wind advisories for Colorado and Wyoming.

All of the Great Plains will continue to receive special warnings when dangerously high winds are forecast.

(snip) 

Moritz said the decision was based on the results of a survey that the weather service conducted from late April through late July. Three-fourths of the respondents said they make no change in their daily lives when a wind advisory is issued. In contrast, most people take action when the more serious "high wind warning" is issued. Among those participating in the survey were local emergency managers.

"Most of the response was, ‘Bravo, thanks for doing this. We know it’s windy here,’ " he said.

Allen Funt was an amateur

 
You thought the first Jeff Gordon "test drive" ad was good?

Well, here's a sequel that's even better -- mostly because he takes an automotive journalist who was convinced the first ad was a fake, and that Gordon wasn't even behind the wheel, for an expressly non-fake ride of his life. And I'm sure Jalopnik's Travis Okulski saw his life flash before his eyes.

Maybe twice.


RARELY do you find a sequel to anything that lives up to the original. But this Pepsi Max viral commercial by Davie Brown Entertainment/The Marketing Arm matches, then surpasses the original produced by TBWA\Chiat\Day. Don Draper (not to mention Allen Funt) would have thought this was awesome. Which it is.

Gordon as an ex-con cab driver pulled over by the cops? Epic.

"I can't go back, man. I f***in' can't go back!"

Well, Gordon the "cabbie" can't go back, but I can go back to this video again and again.

And Pepsi certainly has gotten its advertising money's worth over and over again the last few months with this gem. I mean, when you see so many absolutely idiotic commercials -- when you just can't avoid so many idiotic commercials these days -- it's just such a joy to see one done to perfection.

I MIGHT even go buy me some Pepsi Max in appreciation of a job well done.

Why they hate us. And should.

I've seen some repulsive TV ads in my 50-plus years on this media-saturated earth. This ad for Cadillac may top them all.

Combine out-of-control materialism, hubris and a generous helping of smugness, and you have a television-commercial graduate course on Why They Hate Us. This ad is the audio-visual representation of the Ugly American, and when Americans are ugly, we are ugly indeed.

Advertising, as a rule, is the art of selling people stuff they really don't need -- of convincing folks they desperately need stuff they really don't. You don't need a damned Cadillac, and something is wrong with you -- namely, the profoundly broken human condition -- if you think you really, truly need a Cadillac ELR . . . or anything else apart from your health, food, shelter, love and God.

This ad -- which ran over and over and over again during the Winter Olympics, during which the United States famously underachieved -- takes it a step further and tries to do so while convincing you all those other inhabitants of the earth who aren't citizens of the United States are, in fact, losers if they don't sacrifice heart, soul and all those things money cannot buy to the great god Greed. In Cadillac America, the 1 percent are demigods because they have done just that, and if you don't aspire to material wealth at the expense of all else, you are, too.

SO GO out there and give yourself an ulcer, leave little Johnny to shift for himself while you're putting in 80 hours a week at a job you probably hate not for food, shelter and health insurance, but instead for an effing luxury vehicle. Which you will spend hours in while commuting to that 80-hour-a-week job to which you've offered up your soul . . . for what?

Your wife may rarely see you, your children may not know you -- who may, indeed, loathe the materialistic bastard who's thrown them to the wolves of neglect -- and all this wreckage you have left in your wake for . . . a Caddy? Screw you, and screw the America that's made this sort of materialism the sum and summit of it's earthly existence.

This America deserves whatever may befall it. And will, in time.

But at least we'll be going to hell in not a hand basket but, instead, in a really sweet ride. Right?

For the America of stuff, hubris and over-the-top arrogance, that will have to do as small consolation. No, you can't take the Cadillac ELR with you when you go to your richly deserved reward (or richly deserved lack thereof) but perhaps you can be buried in the damned thing.

The "losers" of the world will be greatly amused at that.

Drink milk. It's groovy, man.

When you're throwing a Shindig, there's nothing more refreshing than a nice, cold glass of milk. And if you're not hep to that jive . . . er, forget that, wrong decade . . . and if you don't think "the vitality drink" is sooooooo totally far out, man, just ask Bobby Sherman.

Really, man. If you're not hip to that, maybe you're just too square to be a Shindog, man.

Block by block, piece by piece, somead agency got way overpaid for this

If an SEC version of this super dumb Big 12 ad ever got made -- which it won't -- the last shot would be of Nick Saban's lifeless body under a giant "S."

Or, as a commenter on the Saturday Down South website excellently said:

Nick Saban is too busy eating the still-beating hearts of children to care about things like commercials. He has no time for your silly human publicity.

This used to be news

This weekend before America's birthday, how about we take a minute to reflect on the way things used to be -- and how far we've come in less than half a century?

This story ran in the Aug. 19, 1963 edition of Broadcasting magazine, recounting a bold advertising move made by Lever Brothers. That bold move? Integrated advertising.

In August 1963, when your 51-year-old correspondent was a 2½-year-old child, it was a risky thing for TV commercial for Wisk detergent to feature an African-American Little Leaguer.

We used to call blacks "Negroes" or "colored" then, and that's when we were being polite. And Lever Brothers, the makers of Wisk and other household products, felt the need to send "letters to its six advertising agencies informing them of its decision to 'take affirmative action' in the representation of minority races on TV."

In 1963, color television was still a big deal, too. In 1963, that Wisk ad absolutely represented being more of "your all-color station" than many areas of these United States had bargained for.

Food for thought. Happy Independence Day.

There's a thin line between love and hate

I think you might call this TV commercial from the Netherlands . . . a Dutch treat. Even though this is the English-language version.


HAT TIP: The Browser.

A word from our sponsor

This intense urge to hop into the DeLorean and head for 1966 is brought to you by Kellogg's -- it's going to be a "Rice" decade!

Now back to The Monkees . . . in living color on NBC.

Little pig, little pig, give us a quote

Bloody brilliant! And bloody well spot on in its portrayal of the present media landscape.

As seen only on colorful Channel 2

There's a reason this Super Bowl ad Will Ferrell did for Old Milwaukee beer ran only on KNOP in North Platte, Neb. And, really, it's the funniest thing.

Let me explain something about Channel 2 -- and, really, this is rich. See, back when I lived in North Platte in the early 1980s, KNOP had this really


UPDATE: The editors at Deadspin are such a bunch of tools. They entice the entire media universe to link to their YouTube video . . . then, after everyone does, they make it private, thereby breaking every embed. Watch fast. We expect them to copyright-flag this YouTube version any second now, concerned as they are about the legal rights of Old Milwaukee.

Stay classy, Gawker Media.

Season's greetings from 1965

Hmmm . . . and now from 1966.

God, I miss the '60s. That is all.

Apparently, the Germans are decades overdue

G*ddamn Krauts.

A few centuries of religious wars, Karl Marx, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, Adolf Hitler, World War II and the Berlin Wall apparently weren't enough for Everybody's Favorite Troublemakers.

No, that wasn't enough, because they largely left out the dogs. Until now. Until Gunther and Georg decided that multinational conglomerates need to start targeting ads at our pets, not just our kids.

If there's anything I don't need, it's Molly and Scout watching their favorite shows on television, and then pestering me after every Beneful commercial just like I did my parents for Great Shakes, G.I. Joe and a Gilbert American Flyer train set.


But no. It's not enough that me and the missus drag our sorry asses to Hy-Vee every week to get dog food by the sackful for the two simple-minded loafers getting dog hair all over our couch while we're out of the house.

Now we have to have the little bastards reminding us that it's either a sack of Beneful atop the fridge or a puddle of piss on the dining-room floor.


AND WOULDN'T you know that, according to Reuters, the people destined to throw the world into chaos every generation or three, those g*ddamn Krauts, are behind the whole doggone thing:

Nestle, one of the world's biggest makers of pet food, said on Friday it had launched the first television commercial designed especially for dogs, using a high-frequency tone to grab their attention.

"Dogs' hearing is twice as sharp as humans. They can pick up frequencies which are beyond our range and they are better at differentiating sounds," said Georg Sanders, a nutrition expert at Nestle Purina PetCare in Germany.

Nestle asked experts in pet behavior in the United States to research what would appeal to dogs and used the results to create the 23-second commercial for its Beneful dog food brand.

The advert, to be screened on Austrian television this week, features a tone similar to a dog whistle, which humans can barely hear, as well as an audible "squeak" like the sound dogs' toys make and a high-pitched "ping."

"So delicious, so healthy, so happy," ends the commercial in German, which features a dog pricking up his ears.

"The television commercial aims to reach both the pet and the owner, supporting the special one-to-one relationship between them," said Xavier Perez, Brand Manager of Beneful for Europe.

NO, IT'S NOT enough that Molly yaps and yaps and yaps at me when it gets within two hours of meal time, and that the elderly Scout attaches his creaky little body to my leg like a furry tumor. Now it's going to start in the middle of Rin Tin Tin reruns whenever the Beneful commercial comes on.

"DAD! DAD! DAD! Beneful! Now! Get Beneful! Food! Food! Get Beneful! Now! We'll pee!"

Just. F***ing. Great.

G*ddamn Krauts.

Draper wept

It takes a real douche to come up with an advertising campaign like this.

Pundits have commented on the cultural insensitivity of these Summer's Eve ads but, frankly, I was too focused of the tawdriness of it all to even start thinking about racial and ethnic stereotyping. Sorry, couldn't get past the EWWWW!

And then there's this one. . . .


TRUST ME, if the missus for a second thought the only thing I saw in her was her V, I'd quickly be missing a P. Unfortunately, Western popular culture -- and the advertising subset thereof -- has staked everything on enough consumers, male and female, buying into The Big Sexist Lie for lots of its purveyors to make a tidy profit.

Which they are.


AFTER ALL, before there was "Hail to the V," we had years of "Hail to the D."

And when you take your hailing of the V and add your obsession with the D, what possibly could go wrong for society?