The Smarmy Carny

As I entered the movie theatre to watch the predictably banal Bewitched, I noticed some extremely awful posters for a movie called Sky High. It was obvious that the comic book movie fad was again being exploited by the movie execs, this time for a movie akin to Generation X being on the big screen.

Before our movie, the Sky High trailer played, and I was surprised. Did it look like a great movie? Nope. Does it look like it's going to be fresh and original? Not really. But did I enjoy watching the trailer? Yep. Granted, this isn't a movie that I'm going to be watching in the theatre, but it's certainly worth renting or VOD'ing.

Kurt Russell plays the father of the superhero family (the Strongholds), and he delivers the best line: "All I ever wanted for him was to save the world." OK, maybe former Kids in the Hall Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald upstage Russell with their comments about the citizens used during the contest.

One big plus is that they did manage to get at least a couple cameos (or possibly larger roles) for some familiar faces. Bruce Campbell and Lynda Carter are listed as the Gym teacher and Principal, respectively.

Another plus? I noticed there's a character named "Warren Peace." Good times.

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Sunday's Site

I finally signed up with the free service StumbleUpon, and thought you might like to try it out if you haven't already. It lets you channelsurf the best sites on the web. SU installs a toolbar on your browser. Once you set up an account, you merely click the SU button, and the browser loads up a random page for you to view. You can tell SU which categories you would like to see, so you're not always getting fodder you don't care about like Soap Opera Digest Online or whatever. On top of that, there also seems to be a networking system built in as well (think Friendster), where you can view people who have similar interests, join topic-specific groups of like-minded people, etc. I even found a "Stop Hillary!" group. That's reason enough, right there.

If you click here to sign up (for free), I believe I will be automatically added to your "friends" list once you join. That will save you a step, considering everyone wants to be my friend!

One interesting note, however: Most people who visit this site will be able to use StumbleUpon, but SU does not support Safari, Opera, or IE on Mac (which insinuates that IE on Windows should work just fine, so calm down.) Of course, the easiest and best way to use StumbleUpon is to install Firefox. There are numerous reasons to switch from IE to Firefox (including much better security), but I'll post more about that some time in the future.

Let's kick Video Vednesday off with something really fun. This is an awesome video of a couple guys playing Matrix Ping Pong. You have to see it to comprehend it. After a few moments, you can clearly see how it is done, and that makes it even more entertaining.

Matrix Ping Pong. Good times.

Apparently, there is a theology quiz meme that is running rampant across religious blogs and irking Joe Carter over at the evangelical outpost. Carter says that "making such precise distinctions between theological camps requires more than just stock photos, non-descript questions, and a few lines of HTML," so he decided to come up with his own method of allowing yourself to be pigeonholed.

So, open up the Christians: The Denominator flowchart. If you have spent a significant amount of time in Christian religious circles, you will likely find the entertaining or annoying.

Everyone and their brother seems to want to comment to his post and make sure that it gets updated so that they are categorized correctly by the flowchart. That may be the joke within the joke right there.

Burt = Celebrity

I simply have to weigh in on my favorite Super Bowl commercials from tonight. Overall, there were a few great commercials and plenty of fodder. I would have to say that this year's selection did not live up to many of the past years' ads. I can remember years where most of these top five selections wouldn't have even made it to the Honorable Mention section! Still, you take what you can get. If the ad title has a link, you can click it to watch the video. You may also view many ads at USA Today by clicking on the AdMeter tab. (The page doesn't work in Firefox, blame USA Today!) Thanks to The Irish Trojan's Blog for that extra link.

Here are the five best commercials in my opinion. I'll start with my favorite of favorites and work from there:

1. FedEx / Kinko's, 10 Keys to the Best Super Bowl Commercial (2nd link): From celebrities to animals to attractive girls, FedEx really does a great job of poking fun at the stereotypical Super Bowl advertisement.
2. Ameriquest, Don't Judge: You're Being Robbed (2nd link): These silly hands-free cellphone kits cause problems for an unsuspecting convenience store shopper.
3. Bud Light, Parachuting (2nd link): This typical comic Bud Light ad does not disappoint. Bud ads like this are great because they can easily be talked about around the water cooler the next day, and they usually are.
4. Anheuser-Busch, Thanks (2nd and 3rd links): Everyone in an airport terminal stand and applaud American soldiers arriving back in the States. Very simple, very classy, very touching.
5. Olympus, New Groove Machine (2nd link): Some interesting CGI in this commercial has people dancing in a weird fashion. Not exactly Monkey-Matrix moves, but just as cool. I haven't seen any CGI this much fun since the recent HP Photo commercials.

Five more commercials earning honorable mention (in no particular order, this time):

• McDonald's, Lincoln Fry (2nd link): This commercial pokes fun at all those people who find objects of food that look like things or people.
• Anheuser Busch, While You Were Out (2nd link): Another good Bud Light commercial. Two guys use their cameraphone to try to harass a buddy who had turned down tickets for the big game.
• Emerald of California, The Truth: A father lies to his daughter about Santa and the Easter Bunny (being fake) so he can avoid sharing his food.
• Ameriquest, Don't Judge: Cat (2nd link): Another Ameriquest "Don't Judge" commercial. This time the confusion comes from a pesky cat bothering a husband's dinner preparations.
• GoDaddy.com, FCC Panel: A buxom girl in a skimpy shirt tries to pass her commercial by the FCC decency panel. Here is a link for the slightly different banned version. In fact, here's two minutes of the full hearing coverage.

Dishonorable mention grand prize goes out to Cosentino USA's "I am Diana Pearl" spot featuring Ditka, Rodman, Perry, and McMahon. I'll never get that 30 seconds back again. As if the commercial wasn't sad and boring enough, not only did we have to hear celebrities repeating "I am Diana Pearl," but you only hear three of them repeating it over and over and over. Runners-up are all of Fox's promos for 24, The Simple Life, and whatever else. We know you have other shows. We don't care. We want you to rake in the additional money and give us more content! If nothing else, at least make the promos worthy of the Super Bowl, and not the exact same clips that we see at 2 am. Second runner-up dishonorable mention goes to Cialis. Yes, I really needed to hear about yet another erectile disfunction product. The commercial was made interesting only by the phrase "Erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare . . . "