Now I don’t know a lot about Mike Huckabee, but he strikes me as someone I will never vote for. That said, the man makes a funny political ad.

It reminds me of that time Bob Dole went on Letterman after he lost against Clinton. He was a humorless bore during the election but after he lost he was hilarious (creepy Viagra ads notwithstanding).

Is it possible for a serious contender (which Huckabee clearly is not) to stop being so serious during an election and still remain a serious contender?

Last night a base was stolen, so America gets a taco. America, you can claim your taco at Taco Bell next Tuesday between the hours of 2 and 5 PM.

Just writing that sentence made me laugh so hard I could barely see the screen. So stupid. So funny.

First off, I love this ad. And you will too, judging from Dan’s Emmys poll.

Secondly, I need help identifying the tall German shepherd on the left. Freeze at 0:36 for a good look at him.

This very well could be someone I went to college with and hence pretty much unidentifiable by the public at large, but let’s put our brains together and see what we can come up with. It’s driving me CRAZY.

Did you know that there is an Emmy category for best commercial? Neither did I.

In order to make you a more educated Emmys viewer, we’ve compiled all the YouTube clips from the nominated commercials. Take a look, let it marinate, savor the bouquet of each. Then, when you’re done, vote for your favorite below.

Animals (American Express)

Battle (Cingular)

Happiness Factory (Coca Cola)

Jar (General Electric)

Pinball (Pepsi)

Singing Cowboy (Truth)

Snowball (Travelers)

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering around my house with the TV on (I like the background noise — it’s a weird psychological thing) and my ears perked up when a commercial for AT&T came on. There were some familiar, jubilant boy/girl vocals shouting out a spirited tune and they were backed by drums and organ. It was none other than Mates of State performing For the Actor for AT&T Wireless.

The song is one of the best off their most recent album, Bring It Back. Download the mp3 here (at the Web site for the guy who uploaded the YouTube clip).

A lot of people get their knickers in a twist about musicians selling their songs for commercials. Personally, I’m all for it (as you can see by this essay I wrote as a lad of 23). I don’t need my artists to take a vow of poverty for me to take them seriously, so if Mates of State are able to buy some diapers and vintage instruments because they took a day off to shill for a corporation, who am I to judge? As long as they just use the money to keep doing what they’re doing, it sounds like a win-win.

Some artists aren’t keen on the practice. The Go! Team licensed their song Huddle Formation to Honda, but did so kicking and screaming. Said Team captain Ian Parton at the time: “I’m not worried about fucking people off, but the trouble is that for the second album we need a publishing company to clear the samples (which is what a publishing company does) before it gets released to avoid the mistake of the first album. It would be a serious handicap to have an album full of uncleared samples. Basically this ad was a concession so that there would be someone to clear the samples.”

Take a look at the spot below.

Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily advocate selling music to dubious causes. The Thermals have famously turned down the people at Hummer who wanted to use one of their songs in a commercial. And God bless the people who can stick to their guns — I don’t know if I would have that much restraint with that kind of money being dangled in front of my face.

Thoughts?

I have lots of happy memories from my childhood. While many of them didn’t involve television — many of them did. There was the time my dad let me stay up past nine one time and I got to watch Night Court. There were my pajama-clad Saturday mornings that climaxed at PeeWee’s Playhouse. And then there was the Disney Afternoon with Ducktales and Rescue Rangers.

There is one television memory that has stuck with me, though, and I didn’t really understand it when I was a kid. Now that I’ve grown and developed a love of cheesiness (the flavor and the concept), I’ve rediscovered it as one of my favorite PSAs.

Remember this?

I’ve got nothing especially profound to say about it, but you have to admit, it’s pretty sweet.

All the upfronts talk and Cristin’s post have served to remind me that the regular season is coming to a close. There are only two more episodes of Heroes left this season. I don’t want to get pessimistic, but I’m pretty sure — what with all this peripheral nonsense NBC’s got planned, and a general sense of desperation conveyed by their relentless marketing — that Heroes is going to have a major backlash in either quality or viewer response next year, so enjoy these two episodes even more with that in mind.

That’s what we probably should’ve done with last season’s 24, but how were we to predict the show’s incredible decline? Jack Bauer continues his busy day tonight. Terrorists. Spies. Yawn.

In the most drawn-out television wedding I can recall (counter-examples? anyone?), it’s Marshall and Lily’s reception tonight on the season finale of How I Met Your Mother. Oh, and thank you, show, for explaining Marshall’s hat.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: American Experience on PBS profiles Alexander Hamilton, which I only mention so that I might direct you to this: Who shot Alexander Hamilton? That, in turn, has inspired me to find this, which I may like even better.

Those of you who saw Heroes (in real time) on Monday probably saw this commercial.

First of all, I love this ad. Here’s a numbered list of reasons:

1. It’s “ha ha” funny.
2. It takes a huge dig at the slimy Aryan machine of eHarmony.
3. The guy’s kind of cute.
4. It presents gay people as completely ordinary and does so during a mainstream show.

Not only is it accepting of the gays, it’s surprisingly aggressive and political. There’s that whole other part of the country that’s convinced sexuality is a choice (come on, didn’t you see Work Out last night?).

I don’t really have much more to pontificate on, but hats off to the good folks at Chemistry.com.

Almost a year ago, I posted a link to some nifty new Mac ads that I thought were pretty cool. At the time I actually thought they would have limited air time and would mostly be watched by people on the Internets actively seeking them out. Oh, Kyle From The Past, you were so naïve. Now those ads are everywhere. They show them silently on webpages I visit, begging me to “click for sound.” And I do. I click on them. And they’re on TV all the time. Sometimes I stop fast-forwarding the TiFaux to watch them.

Why do I watch these ads? It’s not the content. Pretty much all of the advertisements are based on incomplete or false information targeted towards people who don’t know how to use their computers, and from what I can tell, have never used a Mac. Take the recent “Computer Cart” ad. “PC” is sitting on a cart with other business-suit types. PC has some sort of cryptic error message and he has to go away to IT to get fixed. “Mac” claims not to know about cryptic error messages. Now I’m no operating system partisan. I think they’re both great, and I actually have both OS X and Windows installed on my PC. But anyone who has ever used a Mac has seen those wonderfully cryptic error messages like “Adobe Photoshop has unexpectedly quit.” Is there anything more cryptic than a complete lack of information? Yahoo has a nice analysis of the accuracy of the ads which comes out at 50%, although I’d put it even lower.

But true or not, they’re unusually funny and clever. They’re instantly recognizable when you’re scanning through on the TiFaux. And they have John Hodgman. He’s a nerd legend. He used to be a literary agent, and now he’s a correspondent on The Daily Show! They have a great format that allows for a large number of episodes. There’s no reason why it couldn’t go on for years. Really what we have is a 30 second sitcom broadcast between longer television programs. It’s not serialized, and the characters never learn or grow, but the same was true of Seinfeld. It’s not in danger of being turned into a pilot like the Geiko Cavemen (a punchline that barely merited two commercials, let alone a 30 minute sitcom) since it’s impossible for these anthropomorphic machines to exist outside of the white netherworld of the commercial. And that’s a good thing. Just imagine a show with the two of them sharing an apartment like the Odd Couple.

There seems to be some tension on our merry little blog right now, given the battle of wills that has emerged due to the tournament as well as a number of commenters who are, likely, neglecting their geometry homework in order to lose their shit over months-old postings. Each member of the TiFaux crew has had to sass back at various unruly commenters.

But now I’d like to take a moment to even some things out and just dote on some of the wonderful things and people that live in the television.

Mindy Kaling as Kelly on The Office

I mentioned Mindy as one of the unsung heroes of The Office and I really think that. And now, after reading that AV Club interview, I’ve got this weird crush on her. Like I just want to tug on her skirt and say “You’re so funny and artsy and I want you to be my friend. Let’s go get Mexican food and then buy shoes.” (not that shoe-shopping is something that I like to do — I’ve avoided it to the point that one of my most regularly worn pair of shoes is rotting out from the inside. True story)

Furthermore, the character of Kelly really just gets better. She’s gone from ‘ethnic girl in the background’ to that celebrity gossip-obsessed person that you totally know. She’s had some really great moments such as “Shiloh and Suri are amaaaaazing” and when she begged for the murder of the bat.

And if you haven’t gone to her Web site (Things I’ve Bought That I Love) then you really need to get your blog-readin’ ass over there, pronto, because it’s some funny shit.

The Starburst “Berries and Cream” commercial

Now, I’m pretty sure that this will be a pretty polarizing subject, but I really love this new Starburst commercial. It could be because I’m attracted to anything that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t try to justify the fact that it doesn’t make sense. The foppish guy is quite nightmarish and I’m not sure how this one got past the guys at corporate, but I find myself hypnotized by this spot every time it comes on.

Kim Martucci

If you don’t live in the D.C. metropolitan area, then you probably don’t know Kim Martucci. She’s the local CBS affiliate’s morning weatherperson.

Now, I hate all the morning shows as much as the next guy, but I generally find CBS’s The Early Show marginally less grating than the rest. (The one exception to that rule is their weatherman, Dave Price. He’s always trying to get a big crowd of people to chant with him “What’s going on in your area?” when he throws to the local forecasters, but it’s so awkward and not catchy that it’s usually just him desperately trying to lead the crowd and them shouting gibberish.)

In any case, Kim Martucci doesn’t do gimmicks and she doesn’t do morning show artificial perky (once, she even gave Mr. Price a little tongue-lashing for taking too much time to on the main broadcast — it was awesome). She doesn’t have a stupid weatherman name. She’ll give a reasonable amount of good-to-see-you pleasantries. I kind of wish she lived in my breakfast nook so that she could give me the day’s forecast and give me a high-five as I head out the door.

Tanking Apprentice Ratings

I guess if the theme of this post is “keeping it positive,” then laughing at the misfortune of others really shouldn’t count. But it’s Donald Trump, so… yeah. Ratings and buzz for The Apprentice have been decidedly tepid, and even though Donald Trump has engaged in both shameless media ploys and petty, dare I say sexist and homophobic, antics with Rosie, none of that has really helped. The Apprentice might not be on its last legs just yet, but I’m pretty sure no amount of gimmickry will resurrect its popularity.

All Things Tina Fey

Listen, I’m not about to try to steal Maggie’s thing. I have more respect than that. I mean, it’d be like Cristin talking about Jake Gyllenhaal incessantly or Kyle swashbuckling around and talking about pirates. We each have our “thing.”

But I’ve been doting on Tina Fey a lot lately. I know people say that Alec Baldwin is the reason to watch 30 Rock, but I feel like Tina Fey gets the best laughs (see her sexy pajamas on last week’s episode). She really won me over several episodes back when she was talking about “being un-American” — saying something along the lines of “I’m not un-American. Just because I think gay dudes should be able to adopt and we should all be driving hybrid cars doesn’t mean I’m un-American.” Then she flashed a superstar smile to the camera, thus stealing my heart.

If you are wondering if I rewound the TiFaux to watch it again, the answer is yes.