There's a stilted, "Twilight Zone"-ish vibe to the opening of this commercial, as if the viewer somehow broke through the time/space continuum to find herself watching TV in Poland.

Last week at MadBlog, my "Best Spots of the Year" column ended with a mention of empty chairs. Yup -- I suggested that the year's winningest commercial, Chrysler's "Half-Time in America," inadvertently led Clint Eastwood to commit his unhinged monologue involving an innocent seating unit at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Here in part deux, my nominee for worst spot of the year also comes from powerhouse agency Wieden & Kennedy, and also involves -- wait for it -- empty chairs!

Recently, my funny, prolific, and prescient MediaPost colleague Bob Garfield, the author of the award-winning book "The Chaos Scenario," publicly declined to do a column listing the best-and-worst commercials of the year. He could not do it, he semi-joked, because he hadn't seen any ads. Rim shot.

I'll admit to feeling a bit sacrilegious as I write this, given that I am still a devoted member of the cult of Cupertino. But fair is fair: I nominate Samsung to be Best Tech Advertiser of 2012 (image division) for "The next best thing is already here," its Galaxy S III campaign.

Poor Donald. He's fallen off the fame cliff, and he can't get up.

Superstorm Sandy. The fiscal cliff. Twinkiecide. Talk about sounding the alarm. Lately, events have been so ominous that a person could be persuaded that the Mayans were on to something, apocalypse-wise.

Other than the adolescent titillation over the title of the book "All In," why am I obsessed with the Paula Broadwell/Gen. David Petraeus scandal?

It's all over except for the shouting, which, given the whole polarized tenor of the race so far, will no doubt be loud and nonstop. I pray that the outcome of this presidential election does not become a Gore-Bush redux, with fighting going on for months.

Now that Sandy has been designated a "superstorm" (and who decided that and why?) it seems that in the last four days, Northeasterners have cycled through five or more stages of grief, even though "severe cabin fever" or "fury at Con Edison" might not register on the classic Kubler-Ross model.

Pardon me for a minute while I mourn my loss of innocence. It has something to do with a Shakespearean, (or perhaps Arthur Miller-ian) drama involving a bald, big-headed baby, a squealing toddler older brother, and the eternal fight for recognition and human dignity within the family structure. I refer to the You Tube sensation, "Charlie bit my finger," which first surfaced in 2007, a true digital triumph (in the finger sense) on the then fledgling YT channel.