Radio Free LA

Boy, you know what I hate right now? Jack FM's little promo thingies where they play a montage of 3-second clips of songs. I hate it A) because it goes on about 20 seconds too long and B) the songs are usually ones that I would have liked to have heard all of. And then they still just play Def Leppard's "Hysteria" for the 300th time.

I'm not really dazzled by the radio stations here. I've even heard the same stories repeated on NPR several times in the past few days. But I will say that for several years now, I've gotten a weird piece of enjoyment from whatever alternative radio station doing their standard introduction to the next song, where they say, in an order I never know for sure, the title of the song and the artist. I never know what order it's in because apparently I'm already some old fart who hears "Douglas Heartache. Lemon Buzz" and doesn't know which one of those could possibly be the song title. But it's ridiculous enough that it's kind of a fun game. Try it! "Remotely controlled. Sponge bath." See? Easy and fun!

Ad geek love

The following comes from Advertising Age magazine. There's lots of other info within the article, but here's the good stuff. It's from an article about top commercials of the year. I apologize for the formatting of this post.



SONIC

Barkley, Kansas City, Mo.

Thanks to DirectTV, we finally discovered this 4-year-old campaign featuring various pairs of improv comics at the Sonic drive-thru. The byplay is laugh-out-loud funny yet somehow natural, even though it is 100% about product features.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS

This was the year's best category, because each of the nominees is a master of the 105%, that slight exaggeration of character -- one click past verisimilitude -- that discovers comic familiarity without venturing into cartoonishness.

This year's Bobby, however, goes to Molly Erdman, who is wife to hubby Brian in dozens of improvised Sonic spots (Barkley, Kansas City, Mo.). Her job is to regard him, lovingly, in utter contempt. You know, like a wife. Perfection.


Here's the full article: http://adage.com/article?article_id=122634

Talking about the weather

There is a meteorologist on channel 7 here names Dallas Raines. And he has exactly the hair you'd think someone with that name would have.

It was nearly 80 degrees here today. There's a blizzard in Chicago. I win.

Fun Raiser

Unfortunately for "regular folks," but fortunately for Mr. Obama, tickets for the fundraiser at Second City are $750. But then, if you've ever purchased tickets for a regular Second City show and bought two drinks and some cheese fries, you've probably paid that much. Bam! Hey-o!

Yesterday on TLC they aired the episode of "Home Made Simple" where the backstage area was "made-over." The show actually made it look like more was done than actually was. I'm sure it's going to air a few times if you want to look for it. My favorite thing while I was watching it was to try to see if I could read some of the quotes on the walls, knowing that many of them are not TV-appropriate. Most of them were impossible to read if you didn't already know what they said, but I could clearly read "There's a tumor in your dumper" behind the woman who was teaching Amber how to use a drill.