Red Widow

There is a new series coming up on ABC called Red Widow:

It sounds interesting enough.  From what I understand a mob man dies and his wife decides to carry on his work to protect their family.  I could see that being worth watching.  And it is brought to us by the screenwriter of the Twilight Saga!!!!

. . . wait, what?

The worst part about the Twilight movies was the screenplay!  Why would you pitch that as the selling point?!  Have they seen those films? 

I've seen most of the actors in the twilight movies in other movies and they're really not too bad.  But the reason Twilight was so awful was all of the awkward dialogue.  On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest in Red Widow just went from about a 6 to a 1 (which might as well be a 0).  Maybe next time, ABC . . . maybe next time.

ObsessTV

I'm the kind of person who enjoys watching commercials.  Yep.  And even though pretty much the only broadcast TV I watch is professional sports,  it's enough to fulfill my advertising appetite.  Sometimes, commercials even make for a good blog post.  

So, has anyone seen this commercial?  

Link to video: http://youtu.be/hQk7lhRYb10

It is basically DirecTV advertising one of their features in which the viewer can pause whatever they're watching  in one room of the house and continue watching it in another.  I have to admit, the technology is actually pretty cool, but it's also very American. . . and by "American" I mean indulgent.  

Think about it.  Who is that obsessed that they can't pause a movie for 5 minutes?  No one I know.  But then again, I have friends.

Hoarders

Mandalyn and I have been watching this ridiculously depressing (yet somehow entrancing) show called Hoarders.  The show can be truly difficult to watch, especially the true hoarders who just keep EVERYTHING. It is bizarre.

But there are a few people on Hoarders who probably belong on a different show.  Ones like this:

We have a different name for that where I come from . . . Slob.  

Pushing Daisies

Pushing Daisies


On more than one occasion, I've been asked why my site is called Dry Humor Daily.  My consistent answer is that lots of people have told me over the years that I have a dry sense of humor.  For the longest time, I never really understood what that meant, but I took it as a compliment and just kept being myself.  Well, over time, I've come to a fuller understanding of dry humor (or deadpan humor, as some might say) and I'd like to present some of my favorite examples of it over the next couple of days.

First thing's first.  Pushing Daisies.

The show was fantastic.  It was kind of a mix between a fairy tale and a crime-solving show.  It only aired for two seasons (2007 and 2008) before it got cut, but they were two very entertaining seasons.  So why the pink slip?  Pushing Daisies was unfortunately too quick-witted for the average American.  The dialogue is fast-paced and clever.  To top it off, the characters have strong vocabularies.

What does this have to do with dry humor?  It's all in the delivery.  (That's basically what sets dry humor apart from all the others.)  There's not really a punchline.  Dry humor comes from the context of a situation and relies on things like straight-faced puns.  The detective in Pushing Daisies is very good at this.  You will find yourself laughing at him, even though he isn't saying anything directly funny.  If you have a chance, watch an episode or two.  I think you'll like it.

More Likely

More Likely

Guess what.  Children who are overweight are 75% more likely to be overweight as adults.  Know how I know?  The news told me (which means you can take that to the bank!). You see, someone did a “study” on it.  Well, I’ve got 2 cents for them:

#1 First of all . . . really?  They needed a study to find that out?  I’m trying to tread lightly, here, but that study is kind of like saying that people who drive a car are 75% more likely to get where they’re going faster than walking.  People who eat beans for lunch are 75% more likely to have a noisier afternoon than those who don’t.  People who own cats are 75% more likely to have cat fur on their furniture.  My point is: duh.

#2 Who cares?  Can’t they find something more relevant to talk about on the evening news?  How about world events or politics?  How about the economy?  Extend the weather section of the news, for Pete’s sake.  Oh, well.  I guess if this study is the only thing we all have to worry about at the moment, we’re doing alright as a society.

#3 Surely, someone had to spend money on conducting this study.  I feel like that money could be better spent curing cancer, feeding the homeless, or, let’s see, maybe improving defensive driving videos or something.

I could say more, but then I would be getting into topics not involving evening news studies.  Got any more “duh” studies you’ve heard of?  Please share!  J

My Car Did

My Car Did


I'm a commercial geek.  I watch 'em. . . and I generally enjoy them.  I'm extremely judgmental about them, too.  I tend to be vocal about good advertising versus bad advertising.   (Like the recent Burger King breakfast commercials: stuuuuuuuupid.  Flute solo?  Really?)  Anyway, car commercials are almost always ranked among the worst.  Why?  Because they've all been done.  (Actually, Ford F-150 has had some very good ones over the last couple of years.)

There are only so many angles you can film a car doing donuts in the desert or zooming down unrealistically unoccupied city streets.  When that stops working, companies try to cram customer testimonials into their ads, when is never convincing.  Well, Mercedes Benz went the testimonial route.  The customers were very honest, but, well, see for yourself:



So let me get this straight, if you want to guiltlessly take your eyes off the road whenever you'd like, fall asleep at the wheel, and drive for more continuous hours than legally allowed by a semi-truck driver . . . then you should buy a Mercedes E-Class.  Right?  Did anyone else get that from that commercial?  You buy the Benz, you can be a lazy driver.  Cool.  How much is this going to cost?

Oh...

Guess I'll have to drive lazy in my regular car.

...And Rachel McAdams Wears Prada, Too

. . . And Rachel McAdams Wears Prada, Too

This was not by any means intentional.  The TV was on (I wasn’t really watching it) and a trailer played for an upcoming romantic comedy.  Guess who wrote it:

(If you read yesterday’s post, it wouldn’t be all that hard to guess…)

I could hardly believe my ears.  I was just making fun of how silly it sounded to promote a movie by flaunting its screenwriters.  Lo and behold!  Here comes a movie called Morning Glory.  (Boy howdy, they are reeeeeeeeeally proud of the work they did on The Devil Wears Prada!) 

To be completely honest, Morning Glory stars Harrison Ford (usually worth seeing) and Rachel McAdams (always worth seeing ;)), and I wouldn’t be totally against watching it.  Even though I’m a guy and this movie is a romantic comedy, it’s still a romantic comedy.  Who can say "no" to comedy?  Right?  (I'll keep telling myself that.)

You know, Prada has deep roots in American film making, as well.  It's no surprise that marketers flash it around every chance they get.  I believe that in this case, it has finally come full circle, too.  Remember Star Wars?  Harrison Ford was in that, too (as a youngin', of course).  Who else was in Star Wars?  Darth Vader.  Any idea what kind of boots Vader was wearing?  That's right:

Juke

Juke

I have to start this out by saying that out of all of my blog posts to date, only about two or three ideas weren’t originally my own observation.  My lovely fiancé pointed those out to me.  Well, without knowing (and not having asked) if she would want to be specifically mentioned on Dry Humor Daily, I have simply beaten around the bush in those instances, carefully avoiding pointing out the inspiration as my own.  Anyway, she brought it to my attention last week and so now, whenever she inspires me, I promise to diligently deliver her due drollery distinction.  Thanks, baby!  (I know for a fact she gave me the ideas for both On the Bubble and Wet Roads.  I don't recall which others, if any.)

So we were watching something on TV, I don’t remember what, and a commercial played for a new car from Nissan.  It is . . . for lack of a better word . . . unattractive.  I understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but, my eyes are telling me “ugly.”  Mandalyn (that’s her name, by the way) clearly felt the same way.

The commercial goes on and on telling you all about the new car, but doesn’t mention the name until the very end, “the all-new, Nissan Juke!” 

Mandalyn turned to me and said, “so is it a joke or a puke?  I can’t tell!  That thing is ugly!”

I said, “I couldn’t agree more!”  (Yes, we speak in exclamation.)  It was true.  I conjured up the same exact question in my head.  Not only is “Juke” a stupid name for a car, it’s ugly.  If you’re going to make an ugly car, don’t give it an ugly name.  And don’t try to make it look cool.  It’s not going to work.  The headlights look like they are smeared on the hood, the front of the Juke is way bigger than the back, and the doors open like a side by side refrigerator/freezer. 

Sorry, Nissan.  I think you missed the mark on this one. (What’s that, Nissan?  You wanted to capture the essence of a once-emo-but-now-college-graduate-wanting-to-personify-long-contained-but-never-outwardly-expressed-feelings-of-parental-rebellion-and-false-sense-of-longing-for-individuality-in-the-form-of-blending-twenty-first-century-artistic-flair-with-a-bit-of-foreign-vehicular-prowess-which-can-seat-four?  Oh. . .  Then, nice work.)

Not Funny

Not Funny

Are there any products you avoid buying because of something a company does or perhaps because of something they stand for?  Maybe you don’t buy Gap or Nike because of infamous child-labor-and/or-indentured-servent-esque­ lawsuits.  Perhaps you avoid Odwalla bottled drinks because once upon a time, a kid died from drinking it.  (I’ve got news for ya.  I’m fairly certain most foods kill at least one person some time or another.)  Well, I don’t have a personal list of A-list offenders, a “do not buy” list.  Some companies really make me think twice, though. 

Congratulations to Jack in the Box!  They’ve just recently scored some huge negative brownie points.  The first time I saw this commercial, I had to fully digest it before realizing just how appalling it is (no pun intended).  If you want to see the commercial, it was still up on the Jack in the Box website last Friday when I wrote this.  The beginning of the commercial is fine.  Jack is promoting his Pastrami sandwich by showing how much the focus group likes the new bread.  Then, he stumbles across a different focus group room in which two employees are hazing an intern by dunking him upside down in a vat of Strawberry Shake:

Really, Jack in the Box?  Really?  Hazing?  Hazing is absolutely not funny.  It never was and it never will be funny.  People have died in hazing incidents before (not at Jack in the Box, however, but still…).  I can’t believe this made it through to the airwaves. 

This commercial is in completely and utterly bad taste.  (Although that strawberry shake is looking pretty good right now…)

OCD or Crazy?

OCD or Crazy?

The other day, I was listening to the morning show on my commute to work and I heard a segment about deciding whether certain habits were either crazy or just plain old OCD.  The DJs asked listeners to call in and tell them about any habit of theirs and the DJs would vote on which category it fell into.  I sat there wondering if the fine line between the two was really all that fine of a line.  I mean, I think crazy is pretty easy to tell from OCD. 

…Then, people started calling in.

Without going into detail, some certifiably crazy and OCD people called in.  It got me thinking.  Is there anything I do that’s borderline OCD/crazy?  Probably.  Although, it took me a while to think of a habit to question.  Here it is.  I guess y’all can be the judges. 

For me, the volume on the TV always has to be an even number.  To clarify, when changing the volume on my TV, a number and a bar both pop up to display what level (number) the volume is at.  The higher the number, the louder the TV is.  Well, inexplicably, I can’t leave it on an odd number.  It has to be even.  I usually keep it at 18 or 20, but never 17, 19, or 21.  And when the kids are watching a movie, I put the volume to 28 or 30, not 29. 

I’m not going to go bonkers if the volume is an odd number and I can definitely force myself to change it to one, but I’ll always make it even out of habit.  Sometimes, I’ll hold the volume up or down button for a little bit to change the volume quickly, but if it lands on an odd number, I just as quickly adjust it to an even.  I suppose I just feel at peace when it’s even.  If someone were to ask me why, I wouldn’t have an answer for them. 

So is that crazy?  Or OCD?  Do you have any of said borderline habits?

America's Got Talent

America's Got Talent


I don’t get hooked on network television too often.  (And I’d like to keep it that way.)  And since LOST finished a few months ago, I’ve been overwhelmingly happy not to be tied to the TV.  Well, by coincidence, I caught a few acts of this year’s America’s Got Talent.  And sure enough, I find it entertaining enough to keep on watching . . . shamelessly.  The show sort of reminds me of the types of magic stage shows we used to watch when I was young.  (The difference is: I think there may possibly be even more commercials now than back in the 90s.) 

Something does fundamentally bother me about America’s Got Talent, however. . .

That is, none of the judges are American!!

That’s right.  Piers Morgan is British.  Sharon Osbourne is British.  And Howie Mandel is (are you ready for this?) Canadian.  I realize that the show is indeed searching for talent in America, not particularly by Americans, but give me a break.  Why not just name the show, “Great Britain, Aided by Canada, is in the US, Looking for Talent.”  It seems a little more appropriate to me. 

If you haven’t watched the show, but you’re at least slightly interested, now would be a good time to start.  The judges, as non-American as they may be, have successfully weeded out most of the acts you’d probably rather skip anyway.  The following is a list of what’s left which is worth watching:

Jackie Evancho – she’s 10 years old and creepily sounds like a season, 30-year-old opera singer

Prince Poppycock – if you can stand the flamboyance, he has a great voice and an entertaining routine

Fighting Gravity – they get credit for originality, definitely worth seeing before their inevitable vote-off

I hope that helps make up your mind, in case you were on the fence about whether to watch America’s Got Talent.  If so, enjoy the show!

Friday 5/21

The Finale, Finally!

Something BIG is happening this Sunday!  I’m not talking about World Turtle Day or Drew Carey’s birthday, either.  I’m talking about LOST.  Yep.  The final chapter in a lot of viewers’ lives will come to a close around 7/6 central this Sunday night.  And can I just say…thank goodness!

Season six has been frustrating beyond belief.  Week in, week out, we were promised answers to this and answers to that, and what did we get?  Answers to all the questions we had far less interest in, like how there are a bunch of dead people running around showing themselves to only certain people.  On top of that, more questions kept popping up in season six.  What the heck is up with the flash sideways?  How and why did John Locke get to be the smoke monster schmuck?  Most importantly, what is the island?  Purgatory?  Hell?  A dream?  A freaking snow globe? 

I don’t have the time and energy to pour into trying to decide and theorize about how it’s going to end.  I can, however, share with you the top three endings that I don’t want to happen.

#1  It was all a dream.  An entire empire of Lost fans would collapse around this ending.  A dream would be one of the all-time biggest let-downs in TV series finale history.  I don’t watch that many shows on ABC, or any network for that matter, but I would probably boycott ABC shows if this were to happen. 

#2  Jack wakes up in the bamboo field just like in the beginning of season 1.  He runs to the beach to find a new plane crash with people screaming and things exploding.  If things are going to come full circle in the finale of LOST, it had better not be all the way around.  It would be highly disappointing and lacking creativity. 

#3  If the show ends with a big, fat question mark.  Say, the island moves again, or the very, very last scene shows Locke still alive as the smoke monster.  As a corollary, if they fail to explain DHARMA and continue to leave us in the dark about the man in black, it would be highly frustrating.

Well, here’s to a great ending!  It’s going to be a nail-biter.

Tuesday 5/18

Demonstration

Do you ever fall asleep on the couch with the TV on and suddenly get woken up by a screaming infomercial?  Sure you do.  Pay no attention and if you don’t turn it off quickly, you’ll get sucked in!  (And most likely fall back asleep on the couch.)  Why are they so catchy?  Probably because they’re chock full of demonstrations and testimonials.  Well, let’s just assume that most of the testimonials are rehearsed.  That leaves us with demonstrations. 

Demonstrations are great!  Without product demonstrations, we would have no state fair.  (and with no state fair, no state fair corn dogs.  What a travesty!)  We consumers love to see and feel things before they buy them.  We love to see how things work.  Infomercials do a great job of that and just about everything else except letting you touch the product.  The problem is: no one likes them and rarely do people go out of their way to watch them.  At least we don’t admit to it. 

Big companies know that demonstrations are still great tools, so they try to work them into the short commercials you see on regular TV.  It’s marginally convincing.  There are only so many ways you can instantly prove one paper towel can pick up more spilled spaghetti sauce than another.  This tissue holds your sneeze better than this one!  This shampoo makes you hair look more like this celebrity than that one!  It’s endless.  You have to draw the line somewhere.

So I’ve seen this Pampers commercial several times now which demonstrates, well, absolutely nothing.  It shows some babies crawling and laughing and then two computer-generated diapers get computer-generated simulation baby pee on them.  Then, two computer-generated volley balls bounce in the diapers and then roll back to show how the inferior diaper lets more simulated baby pee on its demonstration ball.  WHAT THE HECK?!  NONE OF IT IS EVEN REAL!  The whole demo was digital!  If you know what commercial I’m talking about, look closer next time.  What’s the point of giving a demonstration if it’s completely fabricated? 

It’s really quite funny because I’m sure some schmuck out there seriously thought, “Ooh, that Pampers diaper does hold more pee!  Would ya look at that!”   Come on, Big-Multi-National-Company, we’re not that stupid! . . . yet!

By: S. Cole Garrett

Tuesday 4/27

Time Travel

The first part of a series of documentaries from the mind of Stephen Hawking aired last weekend.  I missed it, but my brother told me about it.  Here’s what I took from it.

My brother told me that he had watched the show last Sunday. 

“Cool,” I said, “how was it?”  (At this point, I didn’t yet realize that it was to be a multi-part series.)

“Pretty interesting,” he said.

“Isn’t he supposed to know how the world ends, or I’m guessing the probability of it, at least?”

“No,” he replied, “that’s next week.”

Wait a second.  Next week?  Bummer.  I guess I can cancel my summer vacation.  This is when I realized there was at least one more show.

“Oh,” I quickly pondered the end of the world, “well, what was it about?”

“Aliens and time travel.  Aliens are likely to invade our planet for resources.”

“And time travel,” I asked, “what’s that all about?

“Well, theoretically, it’s possible.”

I thought for second how cool that would be and that someone beyond our lifetimes might figure out how to do it.  It would be nice to float through time and fix some things here and there.  I wouldn’t have eaten those bad leftovers.  Maybe go back and get some wining power ball numbers… then my thought was cut short.

“But you can only go forward.”

“What do you mean?”  I asked him.

“Well you could travel through time, in theory, but you can only go forward.”

So let me get this straight.  The arguably smartest man in the world is on TV explaining that time travel is theoretically possible, but we can only go forward?  Maybe I’m missing something here, but… DON’T WE DO THAT EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY?  I’m no rocket scientist, but if that’s all it takes, then I’m fairly certain I’m traveling through time right now, at the rate of about one second per second (normal speed).  

I’m not bashing Stephen Hawking or the network, but can’t the people that are way smarter than all of us come up with cars that run on garbage or ways to build cities on water or something?  (That’s a lot of real estate, by the way!)  Just a thought.

By: S. Cole Garrett

Friday 4/23

Rambler

Do you know a rambler?  Someone who has absolutely no problem talking or hearing their own voice.  You can try to edge a few words in, but they just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.  So much to a point of exhaustion by listening.  I have a pet peeve with something ramblers do (and it’s not just because they waste my time . . . or if they have an annoying voice).  I think it’s best illustrated by example.

Do you know this person?

You should.  It’s Nadya Suleman (The lady who had six kids . . . and then eight more).  I know you’re probably as tired as I am of hearing about her.  Well, I was listening to her on a talk show in the background when I got home the other day.  She rambles!  No, she has a rambling problem!  (Is there an RA for ramblers anonymous?)  But you know what gets me?  It’s when someone asks themselves a question, and they don’t have an answer! 

It went something like this:  Nadya was talking along about how she would pay for all of those kids and nannies and so on and she said, “Would I go back and change any of the decisions I made?  Maybe.  Would I . . .”  (No one prompted her, she just asked herself the question.)

Maybe!?  (Seriously?  She said ‘maybe’?)  What kind of answer is that?  In my completely amateur opinion, if you ask yourself a question, you’d better have an answer!  Because if you’re answering your own questions with a ‘maybe,’ that could mean one of two things: either you’re a crazy or a rambler (amazingly, they sound a lot alike!) 

Wanna stay on the safe side?  Don’t ask yourself questions.  (Who does that anyway?  Oh yeah, her.)

By: S. Cole Garrett

4/23/10