The Smarmy Carny

For the latest Black Friday posts, check out blackfriday.smarmycarny.com

Black Friday Deals!

Black Friday @ GottaDeal is up and running again for this year's Black Friday season! In the spirit of the season kicking off, I'm answering a few questions about Black Friday and GottaDeal. To keep up on my Black Friday posts, just keep an eye on the Black Friday category.

When is Black Friday?

Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving. In 2006, that will be Friday, November 24.

What is Black Friday?

Sales, sales, and more sales! It's the day to completely clean up on thousands of items. Save hundreds of dollars on large ticket items like computers and HDTVs. Get smaller items completely free. Jaw-dropping savings all over the place. It's the day to buy every single Christmas present for your entire family.

Of course, it's not called "Black" Friday because it's depressing, but because business often move from losses (red) to gains (black) for the year on this day. Though many people refer to this day as "the biggest shopping day of the year," this is not the case. The weekends preceding Christmas, along with Christmas Eve, top Black Friday in terms of sales. Black Friday is, however, the busiest day of the year as far as the number of shoppers.

How do you find out about Black Friday deals?

By far, the best place to find out about Black Friday before the deals are published is via GottaDeal.com's Black Friday site and forum. In addition, you'll want to buy the newspaper on Thanksgiving to get all the Black Friday inserts to make sure you're not missing any deals.

Why aren't there any ads posted yet?

If you're reading this any other month than October or November, it's because the ads are usually posted some time near the end of October. If you're really drooling for the information as soon as it's available, keep a close eye on the GottaDeal Black Friday forums for the information first. It's not as pretty when it first shows up, but you're getting the scoop! If you really just want an idea of what types of deals you can look forward to seeing, check out the thread outlining Black Friday deals since 2003. (Last year, GottaDeal posted deals for the following stores: Wal-Mart, Toys 'R' Us, CompUSA, Best Buy, K-mart, Sears, RadioShack, Costco, and many more!)

Why GottaDeal?

Whether it be GottaDeal's Black Friday page or the GottaDeal forums, the site is by far the Black Friday site. GottaDeal hosts most of the Black Friday ads (including scans of many of the ads) before anyone else. Right on the Black Friday page will be a list of store icons that will link to Black Friday deals as they pop up. Of course, you can also sign up for periodic e-mail alerts to keep up on the developments as Black Friday approaches.

GottaDeal also offer a few nice features on their Black Friday site. My favorite feature is the Black Friday Shopping List. Registered users can select Black Friday items from a list and add them to a personalized shopping list.

The forums are also an invaluable tool for communicating with others about deals and details. The community is quite helpful, and this year brings a better, easier to navigate layout in the Black Friday forums. Not only do the new ads show up here first, the community also scrounges for additional coupons both online and offline to increase your discounts and savings. Post a list of items you're looking to purchase on Black Friday and where you're headed, and someone might suggest which stores to hit first, or maybe even point out a better deal at a different store. Additionally, there is a Black Friday Basics section to answer FAQs like "Can I price match BF items?" and "Can I get BF deals online?"

"Weird Al" Yankovic's new album, ::amazon("B000H9HWSM", "Straight Outta Lynwood"):: will be released on September 26, 2006.

The 12 tracks include:

• "White & Nerdy" — (See below for video) A parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" ("White & Nerdy" = "Ridin' Dirty")
• "Canadian Idiot" — A parody of Green Day's "American Idiot"
• "Confessions Part III" — A parody of Usher's "Confessions, Pt. 2"
• "Do I Creep You Out" — A parody of Taylor Hicks' American Idol finale song "Do I Make You Proud"
• "Trapped in the Drive Thru" — A parody of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" (and just as long)
• "Don't Download This Song" — (See below for video) A "We Are the World"-esque attempt at preventing illegal music downloads
• "Polkarama!" — No explanation necessary. Includes "Let's Get It Started," "Take Me Out," "Don't Cha," and "Gold Digger."

::amazon("B000H9HWSM", "Straight Outta Lynwood"):: is a DualDisc release. The extra features on the other side will be six animated music videos, karaoke versions of all songs, and a brief documentary.

Get more news and hear some other clips at Weird Als' MySpace page.

Here is the video for "Don't Download This Song." The animation was done by Bill Plympton, perhaps the animators of animators. You can't watch a shorts show without crossing a Plympton animation. (He animated 2005 Academy Award "Best Animated Short Film" nominee "Guard Dog.") Of course, you can also obtain "Don't Download This Song" at dontdownloadthissong.com . . .

In addition to listening to "White & Nerdy" on Weird Als' MySpace page, you can also watch the video. It's not a strict parody of the "Ridin'" video, but if you'd like to compare with the original, check out Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" video.

As an aside, ::amazon("B000H9HWSM", "Straight Outta Lynwood"):: is the first album release since his parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning in April 2004. (This three year span is not different than the spacing between any of his other albums.)

New Numa!

Gary Brolsma, the guy thrust into online fame via his video "The Numa Numa Dance," is back with a new video and a new dance!

Earlier this month, NewNuma.com appeared. Lo and behold, Gary finally returned at everyone's request to create a New Numa video along with his band, The Nowadays.

The newly released song "New Numa" has Russian lyrics and is performed by Minnesotan Chad Russell. It is reminiscent of O-Zone's "Dragosta Din Tei" (the original song used in the Numa Numa Dance).

Watch New Numa now:

NewNuma.com is also hosting a contest with a total of $45,000 given out in prize money to the top winners. Details will not be released until September 22, but it looks like it will probably be a "make your own video" contest.

NBC has released the first 10 minutes of the My Name is Earl season 2 premiere as a treat to the online community.

As far as Earl goes, I've seen better scenes than these, but the plot for the episode is set up, and I'm guessing that the remainder of the episode will ramp up the fun factor.

NBC has been catering to the online community, it seems. Between seasons, NBC.com hosted The Office: The Accountants webisodes that center on Kevin, Angela, and Oscar. The ten webisodes covered a story arc involving a missing $3,000 and their attempts to find out who might have stolen the money.

Today I was tagged by Jono over at *insert witty title here* to play a word association game.

Here are the five words provided for me, followed by my associations:

• Stick — Post-It
• Bottle — Message
• Mint — Listerine
• Camera — Lens
• Trolley — San Francisco

I hereby dissolve myself from any conclusions anyone might make — trained or otherwise — regarding these thoughts from my subconscious. It's disturbing to me, however, that 3/5 of my answers are proper nouns. Two companies and one city. Perhaps I'm merely a product of television and advertisements. At least my Trolley answer wasn't Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco treat).

And now, I pass the torch along to 5 more bloggers. Here are the 5 random words for them:

• Kumquat — ?
• Gobbledygook — ?
• Lollygag — ?
• Diphthong — ?
• Masticate — ?

You can always count on me to be less traditional and more eccentric than the rest.

And here are the five bloggers I am tagging:

• Jule Ann – Who is Jule Ann?
• xenomouse – Screaming for Mercy
• Marlene – Buffalo Tales from South Wales
• Abigail – Shotsnaps
• Jim – According to Jim…

Of course, these five wonderful people are obligated to post their responses on their own blog, choose five new words, and tap five other people to play!

OK, so I cheated and picked not-so-random words. All the words I selected were from my list of 100+ Fun Words to Say. So sue me! (Disclaimer: By "sue," what I really mean is "place no legal action against.")

Click to view

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie have this great song truthfully titled "Every OS Sucks." It's funny because it's true.

There is a fairly lengthy introduction, but it's worth the wait if you're a computer geek. The song reminisces about the good ol' days when our computers never crashed. It's truly geeky snark at its best.

Be sure to check out the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie site for more!

Update: The 2006 winners have been announced!

For most of August and September, you can vote for your favorite icon and your favorite slogan.

Previous icon winners include the M&M Characters, the Geico Gecko, and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Slogan winners include Wendy's "Where's the beef?" and Verizon's "Can you hear me now?" This year, you can choose only one of 26 icons and also one of 26 slogans. Trust me, for fans of pop culture, it's not an easy choice. Next year, I suggest that they allow people up to 5 votes to spread around.

For the third consecutive year, Advertising Week is conducting this poll to determine which two icons and slogans are added to the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame.

On September 29th, you'll be able to head back to Advertising Week to see who won this year.

Do you see any favorite icons or slogans that are missing? The icon I am surprised didn't make the list is Ronald McDonald. The missing slogan that I just can't believe didn't make the list is Miller Lite's "Tastes great! Less filling!"

Do you see any other icons or slogans missing? Comment here and let your opinion be known!