It's deliciously fitting that Matthew Weiner, the exacting creator of "Mad Men," chose designer Milton Glaser to create the promotional poster for the AMC series' seventh season, beginning April 13. As the designer of the original 1967 Bob Dylan's "Greatest Hits" poster, Glaser's work became the defining image of the time. That poster, in turn, greatly influenced the graphic design and ad worlds of the late 1960s, the time Weiner has so convincingly recreated with the show.» 10 Comments
Still on a post-Oscars, Samsung-mega-selfie/poignant-botched-surgery/did-that-thing-on-Travolta's-head-perhaps-invade-his-brain bender? Then take a look at this new milk commercial. With its "Milk Life" tagline, and corny vignettes involving perversely spurting bodily fluids, it is so head-scratchingly bad, it'll sober you right up.» 18 Comments
If you still think Alec Baldwin is a talented actor, and lest you retain some of the glow from the memory of his enjoyable role as Jack Donaghy on "30 Rock," let him disabuse you of that feeling. Yup, in this week's "as told to" cover story in the new biweekly New York magazine, the Angry One feels compelled to offer 5,000 words of sadly delusional self 'splainin.» 16 Comments
Appointment binge-watching? That would seem to be a contradiction in terms, but it absolutely describes what happened last weekend, when Netflix unleashed all 13 episodes of Season Two of "House of Cards." The scheduling of the Valentine's release, on the Friday evening leading into President's Weekend, was diabolically clever, almost like something from the fevered brain of Frank Underwood himself.» 13 Comments
For Valentine's Day, I'm fantasizing about receiving a huge, closet-sized, stuffed bear getting dragged into my apartment by my love interest as he makes lewd jokes about his penis size and winks to an unseen bro about "getting lucky." Boy, will my friends be jealous!» 14 Comments
The Super Bowl opened with a lavishly fur-coated Joe Namath (in a world full of PETA) screwing up the coin toss. That act proved strangely prophetic.» 19 Comments
This year, I am encouraged that a new mini-trend might be on the horizon. Yup, we might have finally reached so low that the standard lowest-common-denominator approach has outlived its shelf life.» 11 Comments
Intuit -- isn't that the company that supplies software for migratory Arctic peoples? Or am I thinking of Intel? Wrong again? Anyway, you must have intuited by now that the financial accounting software maker (which actually produces Quicken and TurboTax) will advertise on the Super Bowl.» 5 Comments
Chris Christie has in the past famously criticized Snooki and the other stars of "Jersey Shore" for reflecting badly on the state. But who'd have thought that lane closures on a bridge could become such an object of national fascination that an assemblyman from Sayreville, N.J. could precede Robert Gates as a guest on "Face The Nation"?» 31 Comments
The singing mom who opens this (new) Old Spice commercial is so grotesquely invasive and overbearing that she spies on her adolescent son from behind his bedroom door and then drags herself behind his car, grabbing his rear bumper, riding the highway atop her plastic laundry basket like a deranged witch. With the comically uninviting tag line "Smellcome to Manhood," this spot positions the Old Spice spray to be a bar mitzvah in a bottle. As the song puts it, the stuff "sprays a man on my son."» 25 Comments
