I can’t bear to see Jack Nicholson like this

This awful commercial comes to us today via the Consumerist, featuring a young Linda Soundtrak who no doubt looks like Moses’ mum present day.

These three commercials are from 1986, and have all the production values of an Electric Company skit. Watch for Linda staring towards the camera / director for her cue to sit back up in bed.

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Do you wave your pinkie at me sir?

The World of BBC News covers this television commercial ad brought to us by New South Wales, Australia.

Phil Mercer says in the report, ‘Television and online ads show scornful women bending their little fingers at young men in fast cars. It’s a signal to infer that the men have small penises.’

Oh so that’s what that means, no wonder none of the taxis stopped for me when I was in Australia doing that at them. And by the way Phil, the signal would imply the presence of a small penis, though the signaler could maybe infer its existence.

Hypothetical small member asides, the report goes on to warn that some think the ad might promote the finger waving in public, and lead to small-donged road rage.

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Via the Consumerist.com

The Consumerist writes that people are apparently watching commercials recorded on DVR devices more than no times. A lot more than no times. For some shows the numbers are estimated around 2 million extra commercial viewers, once thought Lost to advertisers.

The commenteers on their article probably rightly hit the nail on the head when they say its mostly a combination of people letting the program run while they leave the room, or simply forgetting they have the ability the fast forward. TV is both a passive and pacifying medium, eventually making the act of pausing and fast forwarding a chore unto itself.

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Did you know Thomas Edison invented popcorn?

Commercials before movies is worse than piracy, says The Movie Blog, which I found via digg.

Here is the writer-man’s all caps beef: ‘The theater industry is pulling in RECORD amounts of income from those commercials, and unlike TV (where we get a free show), WE GET NOTHING IN RETURN FOR OUR TIME SITTING THERE WHEN THE MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO START.’

The Movie Blog goes on to shout: ‘I don’t mind theaters making money off me when I get a product, service or entertainment in return… but commercials playing at 7pm when you told me the movie would be starting is doing nothing but STEALING my time. You are taking from me without giving anything in return. HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM ONLINE MOVIE PIRACY!?!?’

While ads before movies can be obnoxious, I don’t find them that obnoxious. While no one is really ’stealing’ your time, this could amount to false advertising when theaters claim a movie starts at one time, but delays the movie with ads. As long as the movie starts at the advertised time, the pre-game commercials would be no worse than the horrible slide show most theaters have running before hand.

I tend to sympathize with the theater chains, who don’t make a ton of money off the box office (that’s why they rape you at the concessions stand).

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Peter Griffin and his buddies prepare for.. Oh wait what show is this again

This promo for the new Futurama DVD video, Bender’s Big Score, is exciting for Futurama fans, myself included. Pound for pound the four seasons of Futurama that aired were far superior when compared to the whole body of work of say, the Simpsons, whose first season could be described as unwatchable by cranky detractors. Not me though, I wouldn’t describe that season thusly.

Some fans have quaked that they hope Futurama isn’t ‘pulling a Family Guy’, which released a disappointing straight-to-DVD movie prior to its resurgence. I doubt this will be the case since this first movie is going to become the first four episodes of season five. Three more movies are planned to follow in similar fashion, with some retooling to make them work as stand-alone episodes. More information can be found here.

While it’s disappointing that the show will only make it back on the air as far as Comedy Central, and not Fox, it does raise the possibility of the episodes becoming much more free with their content. Does Comedy Central even have a standards department?

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