Super Bowl ad yanked

Just a quick follow-up to my last post, which touched on a questionable Super Bowl ad featuring cartoon pandas speaking in dubious Asian accents.

According the New York Times, the ad has been withdrawn with an apology from Vinod Gupta, the head honcho at InfoUSA, the parent of Salesgenie.com. It’s a good article, detailing how Gupta has been the brains behind the commercials over the past couple of years and the reaction from audience tests of the ads (as part of the Super Bowl ad extravaganza).

The NYT article also discusses humor and race in advertising. It’s a fine line and it’s one that appears to be easier to cross as time goes by. Is it still safe to mix humor and race in advertising and programming and still be entertaining/effective?

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Super Bowl delivers super stunner

There are certain assumptions that people have about the Super Bowl — most people watch the commercials and the game itself is actually kinda dull. This year’s Super Bowl turned those assumptions on their heads by delivering an outstanding game. The commercials were more of an expensive afterthought offering the usual mix of hits and misses.

Sure, the game was slow going after the New York Giants scored a field goal in the first quarter and the New England Patriots answered with seven points just barely into the second quarter. The fourth quarter definitely paid for the price of admission as the Giants surge into the lead only to let it slip from their fingers with just minutes left in the game.

Down four points, Giants quarterback Eli Manning delivered one of the most outstanding Super Bowl plays I’ve seen. I would try to describe it, but watching a clip would do it much more justice.

The Patriots blitzed Manning and had their hands on his jersey. Pulling away from the eager tugs of his opponents, Manning is able to scramble into the open briefly. Instead of letting the chaos wash over him, Manning actually throws the ball downfield into the arms of his receiver.

I’m sure you can get better recaps elsewhere on the ‘net. However, when people are screaming “Oh, my God” repeatedly over a play, it’s worth mentioning.

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Super Bowl reflections

Commercials — As I said earlier, the commercials were almost an afterthought although three of the people attending my exclusive Super Bowl party were primarily interested in them.

If you want a recap of the commercials, TV Squad is one of the dozens of places with mini reviews and embedded videos.

My bottom line — it’s outrageous that people pay $2.7 million for 30 seconds of exposure, especially when the ads are mostly dissatisfying. Here’s what I thought was the best and the worst:

The best: I definitely liked the NFL’s Super Ad, much for the reasons detailed by TV Squad. Essentially, it details how future NFL player Chester Pitts was bagging groceries in San Diego when another football player discovered him and encouraged him to try out for college ball. Although Pitts said the only thing he played before college was the oboe, he turned out to be a good football player.

What an awesome commercial with a sweet rags-to-riches story. It definitely had a fairy tale feel to it, leading many to ask if the story was real. I said it has to be because I knew the months of promotion for the NFL Super Ad competition where people were asked for vote for the best story from NFL players.

I also enjoyed Coca-Cola’s duel between parade balloons Underdog and Stewie Griffin. It was all the sweeter that periennial loser Charlie Brown finally won.

Although the commercial was played for laughs, part of me was reminded of the injuries when floats have gotten out of control in the past (which is why there are much stricter rules in place at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade).

The worst: Let’s say you have a Web site in business to generate business leads, somehow. What better way to get the word out than buying at least $5 million of commercials. One of the commercials was pretty bad — it was a cartoon (!) featuring pandas having problems selling their bamboo furniture. However, thanks to this Web site (which I’m deliberately forgetting the name of), they were able to save their business.

This commercial completely rubbed me the wrong way. Not only was it the extremely rare cartoon promoting a business Web site, the whole premise of pandas selling bamboo furniture and speaking with seemingly stereotypical Asian accents struck me as vaguely racist or at least disrespectful. It seemed like one step away from making chopstick buck teeth and saying “Me so sorrie.”

I can’t say the Asian accents were faked because I don’t know who the voice talent was, but the whole endeavor didn’t seem sincere to me.

While Go Daddy may have been able to successfully promote its domain-registration business with inexplicably popular commercials, I don’t know if this other company will be able to see similar success.


The broadcast: I thought the actual game broadcast was nice although I have no idea what Super Bowl 3 and Super Bowl 42 are, as FOX Sports referred to them in on-screen graphics. I thought all the Super Bowls had roman numerals, like III and XLII. Learn to count, people.

I skipped the pregame show (which was apparently 18-hours long, give or take a day). It’s usually a lot of fluff and my disinterest grew when I heard that FOX News was producing this argueably sports-oriented program (so they could tout their Super Tuesday election coverage).

Having FOX cameras spot the celebrities in the stands was fun for a minute, but I always wonder why they have to be Hollywood celebrities. Just once I would like Joe Buck to say, “There’s Nobel Laureate Gerhard Ertl. He won the 2007 Nobel for his contributions in chemistry.”

I know not to hold my breath.


Halftime: I’ve largely derided the halftime shows since the NFL took over the production after the incident that brought America to its knees. In retrospect, it’s mostly because of their super safe choices not the entertainment value.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers gave a fun performance that definitely had a lot of people at my party singing along. I just wish the NFL would showcase some younger talent.

Also, it would be nice to see another female performer on the halftime stage. Heck, FOX Sports included a woman in its out-of-place, yet nice, tribute to the Declaration of Independence (which addressed a beef I had the last time).

Since “the incident” in 2004, the NFL must follow an extremely rigid set of rules when selecting the halftime show. The rules are all geared to avoid another “malfunction” of the sort that so disrupted our state of affairs. To the best of my knowledge, they are:

  1. No breasts — No breasts, no problems. Right?
  2. Performers must be on Social Security — All right, they’re not 65, but they’re close. The average age of performers is 59
  3. Performers must be dudes — See rule 1.
  4. Must not have reputation for taking clothes off, at least not recently.

In the end, the Super Bowl is supposed to be about a game and it succeeded this year.

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College football is like a bad simile

Louisiana State University and Ohio State University are duking it out tonight for the national college football championship in New Orleans. This season showed more than ever that the Bowl Championship Series is a flawed system.

Some gripe that two teams with one and two losses shouldn’t vie for the championship. I really didn’t have a problem with how the BCS game was determined until after this year’s season of upsets and constant turnover in the rankings.

In a season that didn’t make a lot of sense, the series of equations and computations that the BCS uses to determine the rankings didn’t really add up either. Perhaps, it’s a matter of the old programming axiom GIGO — “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

It didn’t start with the BCS, the bowl system that preceded it is a little goofy. A Yahoo! Sports commentator pointed out earlier that college football doesn’t need the bowls, but it’s in the best interests for the bowl organizers to keep the system.

Ultimately, the BCS and the bowls are an incomplete fit for college football and an unsatisfying conclusion to what is usually a fun season of sports.

The current system is like a Waldorf salad — full of great tastes like apple and walnuts, but then topped off with mayonnaise. After this year, a better recipe is needed.

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Ouch

This post really doesn’t have to do with pop culture except I picture the surveillance camera footage appearing on an episode of “Wackiest Supermarket Goofs” on FOX. Perhaps it will be in between clips of the shelves of soda falling to the floor and the band-saw butcher disaster in Bemidji.

I was at Safeway on Wednesday. I had just entered the store through the swinging door when I realized I needed a shopping cart. I turned to head back out the store and then I paused to ponder about which door to exit through.

Part of me thought it was inconvenient they put the shopping carts by the exit doors because people grab carts when they are coming into the store. Since I was in the act of coming into the store, I decided to go back the way I came — out through the “In” door.

Wham!

I realized I made a mistake when I took a step forward and the “In” door closed into my face. The swinging door of doom crushed my glasses into my face. My eyes were OK, but I yelped in surprise and brief pain.

I reassured the one customer who came over to see what was going on. The momentary shock and pain passed quickly.

There was some blood, but it stopped quickly after rinsing and cleaning the wound.

Ultimately, I told the store’s management about the door. Perhaps they will find a way to make it more idiot-proof than before.

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On the media

Way back in late October, I was happy to be a part of a panel at the Great Valley Center’s Sacramento Valley Forum. I joined Jeff vonKaenel, from the Sacramento News & Review, and Bryan Byrd, a Comcast director of communications, for a panel discussion entitled “Ink, Pixels, and the Remote.”

The discussion was focused on how people and communities can use different technologies to get their message out. vonKaenel discussed how people can use the alternative press while Byrd talked about community access and Comcast’s OnDemand platform. I spoke about NorCal Blogs and how people can use blogs as a news and information platform.

I recorded the discussion because I thought I would use it for some aspect of the Enterprise-Record or ChicoER.com. Since that hasn’t materialized, I’m presenting the audio of the hour-long panel here:

Download audio (MP3, 12MB)

My portion of the discussion starts about 28 minutes in. I was surprised my portion pushed up against the recommended 20 minute speaking length. I thought my performance started out a little shaky, but I think my basic message got across. The ultimate message was “If you can send an e-mail, you can blog.”

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Crickets ala blog

It’s been quiet here lately. There are lot of things on my mind that will make their way to this page soon.

Oh, and I’m slightly tickled to discover what was screwing up my RSS news feed (the way I let others know my blog has been updated). For some reason, a strange character got inserted into one of my posts. That was enough to throw my news feed into disarray.

I’m glad it got fixed.

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Diminishing returns, take 2

Over the years, I’ve made some pretty weird trips for an event, but probably not as often or as far as others. I’ve never been compelled to travel hundreds of miles for a music festival (although the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival sounds tempting).

This question came up recently when I saw the announcement for theater screenings of “Razor,” the new “Battlestar Galactica” movie airing later this month on Sci Fi. After my hopes were elevated about seeing the modern incarnation of the sci-fi series on the big screen, they were dashed by the realization that the nearest screening was Walnut Creek in the Bay Area.

Oh and the screening was on a Monday night.

One part of my mind screams, “It’s only a trip to the Bay Area. Get the tickets.”

Sometimes, I indulge that part of my brain (sometimes I indulge it too often). A cooler part of my head prevailed in this case.

In the end, is it worth driving about six hours for a two-hour movie? Considering that it’ll be on TV and available on DVD, I reluctantly said “no” and passed on the offer.

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Colts at Chargers: What was that?

I’m not going to make it habit of writing about sports on this supposedly entertainment-oriented blog, but I just watched the Chargers eek out a two-point win over the Colts. Although I’m a Chargers fan, I’m flabbergasted how the San Diego team managed to prevail over Indianapolis.

After watching some of the game, I really think it wasn’t really the Chargers “winning” as it was the Colts “losing.”

The Chargers offense didn’t light up the board too much. The Chargers scored all their points in the first half and most of them came from special teams in the form of punt returns. The Chargers were there to be sure, taking advantage of some opportunities and putting up stops, but it seemed like the Colts were in the driver’s seat.

If Indianapolis was driving, they were lost for much of the first half. The Colts first-half performance wasn’t great — quarterback Payton Manning threw far too many interceptions. He ended up with six for the night.

However, Indy righted course and Manning and the rest of his dinged-up team went on to put up 21 unanswered points. They were a field goal from winning the game, but the kick went wide right.

It was the Colts kicker that missed. Although the Chargers got the ball back, they didn’t reach a first down to put the game away. They had to punt on fourth down and gave the Colts 26 seconds to try and score. The ball was in the Colts’ court before Manning threw his sixth interception as the horn sounded.

From what I saw, the door was wide open for the Colts to win. By the flukiest of flukes, the Chargers were declared the winner.

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Bang for your buck: First edition

I’ve seen a lot of things over the past few weeks that I’ve been meaning to write about, but haven’t got around to. So I want to launch my first-ever “Bang for your buck” round-up where I look at things that I’ve done and seen or things that I might want to purchase.

Without further ado:

  • “Flight of the Conchords: Season 1” DVD – I didn’t quite know what to expect when I saw the first commercials for this HBO series, but the show about a lowly rated New Zeland folk band is pretty hilarious. The plots can be very straight-forward — most comedic band use the plot to string along a set of jokes or songs. The true genius is in the band’s songs and videos. The music ranges ballads to rock to pop electronica. It’s a brilliant deal for $20.
  • “Jekyll” — Less impressive was the performance at the Blue Room Theatre last Friday night. The troupe there put on an amusing, if extremely short, take on the classic tale of “Jekyll and Hyde.” It had been a while since I had been to the theater so I enjoyed the live performance and the staging. The music number was fun and the live music was a cool touch.

    The performances were pretty good with the actor playing Hyde doing a convincing job of displaying the wild nature of this classic alter ego. The play did a decent job of showcasing Hyde’s orgy of violence. However, I feel the play could’ve done more to offer a newer take on the classic struggle between a man’s civilization and his wild side. It’s OK at $10 and 45 minutes, but the play would be pushing it if lasted longer or cost more.

  • “Dan in Real Life” – The new romantic comedy starring Steve Carell was a pleasant way to spend an evening, but I don’t know if I would pay the full evening ticket price. Carell plays a widower who happens to write an advice column on parenting. He sometimes has a hard time living up to his advice as he meets a beautiful woman during a family reunion weekend. The catch is that the woman is the currently attached to Carell’s brother, played by Dane Cook. I thought the story held together all right, but it didn’t launch itself into greatness. If I was rating it on a four-star system, I would give a solid 2.5 stars.
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