The Smarmy Carny

A man shopping for a car explains to the car salesman that he did all his research on his cell phone with cars.com. He said it was that, or "Plan B".

The salesman asked what Plan B was, and the guy explains, "Oh, I was gonna have you fight Glondor in a stone circle death match."

We then see Glondor, a tattooed hulk of a man, pressing his fists into shards of glass and stepping into a fiery stone circle with the car salesman.

Glondor sounds a barbaric yawp, and the guy strongly suggests to the salesman that he should step out of the circle "to avoid any confusion."

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An office worker impresses his boss by showing him how he was shipping all the company's packages via carrier pigeons equipped with GPS tracking and night vision sensors.

For the large packages, however, he used giant pigeons and robes that almost immediately broke and dropped the packages right into the street, crushing cars. The pigeons then landed, pecking bread from a bread truck, drinking from broken fire hydrants, and causing accidents with feathers.

The boss immediately mandates that they will switch to FedEx.

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In this commercial, a guy shows up with his girlfriend at a wine and cheese party. He is carrying a huge piece of cheese — probably a foot tall and almost as wide.

He takes the cheese into the kitchen, where most of the men are hanging out. As a guy comments on the size of the cheese, the man picks up the faux cheese to reveal a six pack of Bud Light underneath.

Another guy removes the end of his baguette and reveals a bottle of his own and a third guy opens his Chablis wine, which actually houses a mini television.

As they run out of beverages, the guy tells his girlfriend that he is going on "a cheese run."

Watch the video:

This ad starts out with Troy Aikman discussing football as Joe Buck starts dozing off, with his head nodding as he falls out of consciousness a couple times. Haddaway's What is Love? starts playing.

We then see various people nodding off: A guy with a combover at a diner, office workers, valets, cowboys, and nominees for "Song of the Year" award at a music awards ceremony (Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Macy Gray, and Missy Elliott). More people are nodding off: sheep shearers, Japanese restaurant workers, "Galacticon" convention geeks, a bobblehead factory worker, a game show contestant, and a father pushing his daughter on a swing, a trucker, and an auto mechanic. During the commercial, the father is sent flying as his daughter swings back and nails him across the playground, the auto mechanic doesn't awake to see that the has lifted a car up into a metal bar, and the diner man nods off into his soup.

Finally, an office worker pushes in a cart filled with Diet Pepsi Max. The office workers take a healthy gulp and are suddenly energized. Their sleepy head nodding suddenly turns into head bobbing to What is Love, a la A Night at the Roxbury. We see the various characters bobbing their heads now.

The true punchline of the commercial comes when Chris Kattan enters the scene, notices the head bobbing, and yells, "STOP IT!!!" at the people doing the head-shaking dance. Of course, Kattan popularized the movement with Will Ferrell in the Saturday Night Live sketches that inspired the movie A Night at the Roxbury.

Watch the video:

At the end of the commercial, an obnoxious voice yells, "Wake up, people!"

For this ad, Audi reworks the classic "horse head in the bed" scene to sell their cars.

As the commercial opens, we see an exterior shot of a house followed by a pan in on Moe Greene (played by Alex Rocco) sleeping in bed. Just like in The Godfather, we see him stir and notice the stains in his bed.

Moe looks at his hands and sees the dark fluid. He throws back the covers to reveal — not a sawed off horse head, but the sawed off front end of a car. The dark liquid was not horse blood, but motor oil.

We then see the exterior of the house again, with the Audi R8 and its neat-looking running lights.

The message: This is the death of old luxury.

Watch the video:

For more on the Audi R8, check out TruthinEngineering.com

American Idol 7 started up this week, bringing us two episodes full of hilarious and frightening auditions. As usual, Idle Idols is blogging the funniest and most entertaining auditions.

We've only had two episodes thus far, but don't miss articles on the female linebacker, the crazed, hyper glitter woman, a song from a Paula Abdul stalker, an enthusiastic worshiper of Simon, a man willing to wax his chest hair, a psycho Star Wars fan, a fingernail collector, an unconvincing transvestite, and even a politician.

Be sure to stay tuned to Idle Idols for more updates during the rest of the audition season, which should last for three more weeks.

A while ago, The Smarmy Carny covered two Tower Defense games worth playing, and strategically the best game out there is Desktop Tower Defense.

At long last, the Casual Collective website has opened its virtual doors for anyone to register and enjoy. Previously, I had been playing under the "invite only" beta version of the site.

MPDTD — Multiplayer Desktop Tower Defense

MPDTD

The Multiplayer version of Desktop Tower Defense is much more thrilling and fast paced than the original single player version when the Arcade version is selected. In the original, the higher your tower upgrade, the longer the upgrade took, and when you sold your towers, you got back less money than you spent on the tower. In MPDTD with the Arcade option, all upgrades are speedy and you get all your money back when selling towers. This makes gameplay much more exciting, especially if you are nimble enough to sell and build towers to suit the upcoming wave of creeps.

Another feature of the multiplayer game that creates urgency is that the next wave starts whenever any player completely kills off a wave of creeps. So there's an urgency to finish the wave off before anyone else, thus sending more creeps before your opponent is ready for them.

Desktop Armada and Desktop Armada Missions

Desktop Armada

With Desktop Armada, 2 players each have six "ports" on their own side of the playing board. From each port, you can choose to build and launch one of a variety of different ship types in a variety of routes. Patrol boats are very fast and build quickly but are easily destroyed. Destroyers and missile boats are medium sized ships — the former take plenty of damage and the latter have a long firing range. Battleships are large ships that take a while to build but take a large amount of damage.

The goal is to get your ships through to the other side, where your boats will fire upon the enemy's base. The trick is to not run out of money and to send enough firepower to overtake your enemy or to send your ships on paths that will avoid detection by enemy ships. A fog of war also makes things more interesting and make the puny patrol boats valuable in scouting the terrain.

Desktop Armada Missions is quite similar to Desktop Armada, but as the name would suggest, you get certain missions or challenges to take on instead of the straight out war.

Buggle

Buggle

Buggle is a great game that players can jump right into without much training. A multitude of little buggles (ball-type characters) fly around the board and eventually freeze. You click to place your marker, as do the other players. Your marker converts the nearest buggles to your color, and those buggles in turn convert other nearby buggles. The buggles freeze again, and each player places a second marker on the board. You get more points for controlling more buggles.

This game is a fairly mindless game that involves a small amount of strategy and a large amount of luck. Even if you place your marker in the best location on the board, two other players' markers could flank you, leaving you buggle-less. Sometimes the other players place their markers in a group, allowing your marker to grab the lion's share of the points for a round.

Flash Element TD 1 and Flash Element TD 2

Flash Element TD

Flash Element TD 1 is the single player tower defense game that was the precursor to Desktop Tower Defense. Unlike the newer Desktop Tower Defense, bad guys follow a pre-determined path and your towers must be off the path. You can upgrade towers and have only a small selection of tower types to choose from.

Flash Element TD 2 is still in production, but promises more variety from the fairly limited Flash Element TD 1. Keep an eye out for this new version, as it will certainly improve upon the monotany of the original game.

What would a multiplayer game be without rankings? The Casual Collective keeps track of your own personal score and rank as you win or lose games. Each player gains or loses points based on the ELO system, a sort of prorated points system used in chess rankings. You get more points for defeating players with a higher ranking and you can also lose many points for losing to players with a lower ranking.