We Interrupt These Commercials to Bring You Football

The Black Eyed Peas are in the middle of an incomprehensible musical performance at half-time, so crankyjewishguy (CJG) has a few minutes to start this blog post about last night's Super Bowl commercials. Apologies to readers outside of North America, most of whom don't really care about the Super Bowl. Here in the USA, Super Bowl Sunday is second only to Groundhog Day as a day of national importance and in recent years it's become popular to handicap the television commercials shown during the game, most of which are prepared specifically for the Super Bowl, because the game itself often isn't interesting enough on its own.

So far, CJG is completely underwhelmed with the commercials, though he thought the little kid in the Darth Vader costume who thinks he started his father's Volkswagen with his special powers was really cute, and careerbuilder.com got a chuckle out of CJG, but only because the chimps in the commercial are funny the way chimps always are when they're dressed up in business clothes and driving cars. If Christine O'Donnell doesn't think humans and chimps share a common ancestor, she obviously hasn't seen a chimp in a jacket and tie trying to park a car.

The cost to all these advertisers to run these commercials is astronomical so you'd think Pepsi Max could do better than insipid slapstick in which people get hit in the head or the gut by flying soda cans. And CJG still doesn't know, after all these years, what GoDaddy.com does except make commercials with women with large...you know. If CJG had to guess he'd say Go Daddy is a restaurant chain that competes with Hooters. Sealy tried a little sexual innuendo, far more subtle than Go Daddy, with their "It's Better on Springs" ads, but CJG already has a mattress so he didn't care, and the ad where some guy sucks another guy's finger because he has Doritos residue on it ensured that CJG will never, ever eat Doritos again unless offered some by this Go Daddy girl:

Just what business is Go Daddy in anyway?

Car ads were big; Acura, Audi, BMW, Chevy, Chrysler, Toyota, Kia, Mini Cooper, Mercedes and Hyundai all tried to get CJG to buy a car, but to no avail, and what was Chevy thinking with its ad for the Cruise Eco which made fun of old, hard of hearing people? CJG is no expert in advertising, but this is supposed to motivate car buyers to choose an Eco?

CJG has always loved the eTrade talking baby, but the new ad with the baby and his Italian tailor wasn't nearly as funny as previous eTrade commercials. The baby didn't look like the same baby to CJG, either -- not nearly as cute as this guy:

An eTrade classic: shankapotomous.

Anyway, the Super Bowl is America's annual celebration of its real national pastime, overconsumption, and somewhere during the day-long saturation media coverage a football game was played and one team won and one team lost and now that we have that out of the way will pitchers and catchers please report to spring training so we can start thinking about green grass and blue skies? Thank you.

Evolution Proved! Christine O'Donnell Forced to Admit Error

As one of CJG's favorite scribes, Bill Bryson, once wrote about an effort in the 1990s to again ban the teaching of evolution in the Tennessee public schools, "the danger for Tennesseans isn't so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them." Which brings us to Christine O'Donnell. Remember her? She was the dim-witted Tea Party/Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware who once asked Bill Maher, if evolution was a valid theory, why aren't monkeys still evolving into human beings?

Well, crankyjewishguy (CJG) sure hopes she saw this story and this YouTube video of a gorilla named Ambam who lives in a sanctuary called the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in England because, as you can see in the video, and the photo below, the answer to Christine O'Donnell's question is, "they are." Ambam, you see, walks upright, not on all fours like some humans.

Ambam, a Western lowland gorilla, out for a stroll.

In fact, some are evolving so fast that it only took a few days for Ambam to go from walking upright to this...

Yup, that's an iPhone G4 and just like his human counterparts Ambam is so engrossed in sending meaningless texts and downloading pornography that he's ignoring his son. In about two weeks he'll be ready for the U.S. Senate himself.

Little Horoscope of Horrors: Do You Know What YOUR Sign Is?

As if we needed more proof that some people have way too much time on their hands, the Internet is all atwitter (:-) about what can best be described as an astrology crisis. Though crankyjewishguy (CJG) read this article on CNN.com several times, he still can't quite parse it, but as best he can tell there's been some kind of shift in zodiac signs that means some people who thought they were Libras are now Virgos, some who thought they were Scorpios are now Republicans, and others have been bumped from their flight of fancy altogether into a whole new sign called Ophiuchus. CJG thought the ophiuchus was the part of the gastro-intestinal system just below the colon, but apparently CJG was wrong. It refers to a constellation of a man wrestling a serpent, something you can see on pay-per-view almost any weekend night.

CJG defies you to stare into the night sky and come up with this
 because without the artist's help it would just be a random bunch of stars.
CJG guarantees he could take the same group of stars and come up with
 a hot dog vendor in Times Square...with sauerkraut and mustard.

This zodiac sign shift has caused a huge uproar. Astrologers have been inundated with calls and e-mails from distraught clients. Fortunately, one of them, Hilary Young, the CEO of AstrologyDating.com, had the presence of mind to tell everyone to calm the fuck down. "Everyone can relax," she told CNN. "People ask me what does it mean for their personality. I expect it will be the same it was yesterday. You probably didn't wake up with a new personality." CJG notes that Ms. Young was hedging her bets with the word "probably," but CJG thinks these people had one oar out of the water before the big announcement and they still do, no "probably" about it. Anyone who thinks a wobble in Saturn's orbit is going to transform their personality overnight should only wish it were true.

According to CNN, 25% of Americans believe the moon and stars can affect someone's life and CJG is going to go out on a limb and guess that Christine O'Donnell is one of them. As for CJG, he doesn't believe one whit in astrology. When people ask, as they do all the time, "hey, CJG, what's your sign," he shows them this and says, "take your pick."

P.S. The other day, CJG expressed his hope that Miss Massachusetts, the Miss America Pageant's only Jewish contestant, would win the crown. Is doing so, he poked a little bit of fun at Miss Arkansas. Well, Miss Massachusetts didn't win, but Miss Arkansas was the first runner-up! Your new Miss America, in case you haven't heard, is 17 year-old Miss Nebraska. Wow, today's NFL playoff games are going to be such a let down.

CJG's Top Ten Annoying People of 2011

Yesterday, the last day of the year, crankyjewishguy (CJG) named his Top Ten Annoying People of 2010 which means it must be time to name the Top Ten Annoying People of 2011. See, that didn't take long. Topping the list for 2011, as she will every year as long as she remains publicly visible, is She Who Shall Not Be Named. You know, John McCain's running mate. The one who doesn't speak a single language fluently, even English.

Followers of CJG may have been surprised that yesterday's list did not include some obvious candidates for most annoying person, namely Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and anyone who works at FOX News and has the chutzpah to call themselves a journalist. But there's a simple explanation for why they didn't make the list: CJG has shut them out completely so they don't bother him. So, who other than the Half Baked Alaskan are the other Top Ten Annoying People of 2011?

No. 1: Topping this year's list is the guy sitting next to CJG at Starbucks right now returning all the calls he missed last year. And he's not even having a coffee. He thinks he's in a large phone booth.

No. 2: Second is the guy at the other table next to CJG who is literally ripping up a year's worth of financial records as he gets a head start on his tax return. If this keeps up much longer, CJG is going to hand him a hundred bucks and tell him to go buy a paper shredder at Staples, provided he doesn't come back here and plug it in.

No. 3: The telemarketers at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). CJG made a crucial contribution to the DSCC in late October that kept the Senate from falling into Republican hands. (You're welcome.) While CJG was happy to do so, he didn't realize that someone from the DSCC would call him every day for the rest of his life seeking additional contributions.

No. 4: Christine O'Donnell. There's a big cauldron of trouble brewing for the erstwhile Senate candidate from Delaware; something to do with using campaign donations to pay her rent and other personal expenses, such as her three year supply of eye of newt. She blames disgruntled former aides for her legal troubles, but CJG thinks that anyone who claims that scientists are breeding mice with human brains has bigger problems than an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. Are we doomed to have to spend the rest of our lives hearing from this pea brain? Maybe she should try and get into that mice experiment.

No. 5: Allen West. You may not have heard of Allen West yet, but trust CJG, you will. CJG first learned of Allen West while doing a little research on Idaho militias (that's another story) and one of them had a web site with this video of Allen West giving a speech somewhere. West is an African-American right wing extremist, which sounds about as dissonant as pastrami with mayo. More troubling, West is also the Congressman-elect from the the Boca Raton area. How a heavily Jewish congressional district in south Florida elected a black right wing extremist to congress is beyond CJG, especially since the incumbent's name was Ron Klein, but this is one scary dude, and really, really annoying, too.

No. 6: Stewie Griffin. Everything CJG's younger son knows about sex he learned from watching Family Guy. CJG actually loves Family Guy and Stewie Griffin but he has to admit that allowing Seth McFarland to effectively raise his younger child may have been a mistake.

No. 7: Justin Bieber. CJG got annoyed just typing his name. Too much fame too fast. My twelve year old niece loves this guy. Anyone want to hazard a guess when he'll do his first stint in rehab? Send your predictions to crankyjewishguy@gmail.com and whoever comes closest to picking the exact date will win a t-shirt with Bieber's picture on the front and the words "I Told You So" on the back.

No. 8: Speaking of rehab and cautionary tales, Lindsay Lohan makes this year's list in anticipation of repeated parole violations in 2011. Will someone please e-mail CJG and explain what this woman is famous for other than being a complete train wreck? Why do we keep reading about her?

No. 9: Finally, last but not least on CJG's Top Ten Annoying People of 2011 is college basketball color man, Dick Vitale. CJG hates to pick on another Jersey guy, especially one who hails from his home county of Bergen, but if you watch college hoops, as most of us do, you know the ubiquitous Vitale can wear out even the most enthusiastic fan. CJG can take the guy in small doses, but by the end of the basketball season in March, Vitale's over-the-top, non-stop boisterous exuberance can leave a ringing in your ears that doesn't abate until Labor Day. This is why your TV remote has a mute button.

How about a little peace and quiet, baby!