• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, February 6, 2007

I clicked on the side arrows to scroll through Bud.tv's new Webisodes. It felt like using the remote. I saw lots of trailers telling me what was coming and why I ought to check back often.

In this one about "Ted Ferguson, Bud Light Daredevil," he tried to order a pizza on the phone using only two words, yes and large. I felt a little bad for the person taking the order since she began to think he was suffering in some way, mentally or physically. In the end, Ted had to give up and called for some Bud Light to revive him, which two women came rushing to give him. One of them massaged his shoulders.

There's one about "Budweiser's Rejected Ads." These two guys are talking about these drawings that show tiny mermaids swimming in a glass of beer. One guy's trying to talk the other guy into the idea, even adding a "mer-dude," but it totally grosses out the other guy. I can see why that one was rejected.

On "Hardly News," the trailer shows how you can play a game about current events, like guessing which words are bleeped out in a speech that Al Gore is making with Prince Charles in the audience. The newscaster says the show will also show how you can play a game where you guess whether something is a native dish or a world leader. Kim Jung Il, for example. Then the newscaster guy starts chugging a huge bottle of Bud.

There are some other trailers about "What Girls Want" where these girls do a makeover on some guy to make him more attractive to women and they have, like, 100 seconds to do it; a "Twilight Zone"-y "Afterworld" where technology is dead and this guy searches for his family; a "Replaced by a Chimp" where a chimp takes over people's jobs--and this one is my favorite, "Truly Famous," where this "international celebrity Cristano" puts on shades and has these big bodyguards around him and they go into stores and people think he's some big celeb so they'll do anything for him, even give him a car!

On "Happy Hour," which starts with a bottle of Bud sliding down the bar, there are a bunch of shows like "Ice Vision and Chef," where Ice Vision is a laid-off superhero who hangs with his chef who used to work for him; "Future Show" with Dr. Larry Bird who wants the announcer to call him Lawrence ("I told him three times"); "Guided Meditation with the Billy Lama," who sits by the pool in the backyard and makes a shake that doesn't turn out so well ("Okay, I threw up a little bit in my mouth," he says when he smells it); "Channel 546 Puppet News Team" which you don't want to go there; "This Day in History" about Jan. 15, 1947, when some guys in Michigan said for the first time, "Talk to the hand cuz the face ain't listening" and "Don't go there," which maybe didn't really happen, I think; and "Donnie Briggs, Life Coach."

That last one features this guy, Donnie Briggs, who looks like somebody's idea of a pervert uncle from the Seventies. He's got on a blue beret and scarf with an open shirt to show his white chest hair and shirt collars with major points over a puke-tan, faux-leather jacket and he's wearing aviator shades, a pinky ring, a big gold watch and a gold chain around his neck to complete the look. He has his office in a bar so the waitress brings him a rotary dial phone while he's listening to a vinyl old record on a stereo. The song he's listening to is "Kites Are Fun" by The Free Design, some psychedelic totally stoned (they must have been) group from the Sixties.

In this Webisode, Donnie's playing chess with his stuffed "compatriot," Robert Catalano aka Bob Cat, when this "Hot Girl," as the 'sode is called, sits down in the round black leather booth and tells him she has a problem, that people don't take her seriously because she's so beautiful. Donnie interrupts her to say, "I didn't hear a word you just said, you're so f***ing hot," and things proceed much along those lines. They move to the bar, where she's on one side of him and another pretty girl gets on the other side to pick up her drink and he says, "It's like a Don-wich with four glasses of milk." Through the toothpick clenched in his teeth and over his white goatee he says that if "they can't see that you're more than a USDA prime cut ****burger with a side of thighs, maybe you oughtta knee 'em in the old wrinkled walnut bag."

With a neon Budweiser sign glowing in the background, she knees him one, and he remarks, "I deserved that." This was one big back to the future and back again.

But enough about Bud.tv. I have to get back to work.