As we wrap up the holiday season (and indulge in bad puns like "wrapping up the holiday season") I must say that in the last three months advertisers have offered up a banner crop of unusually aggressive and annoying ads.

Last week, NBC's much-discussed live production of "The Sound of Music" brought in 18.5 million viewers -- the network's highest ratings since the finale of "ER" in 2009. But in tailor-making a series of five spots for sponsor Walmart, NBC went too far, entering into a "when the dog bites, when the bee stings" situation.

Jeff Bezos: "Let me show you something." Charlie Rose: "Oh, man...Oh, my God!" That five-second clip, showing Charlie Rose opening a door, was teased all weekend on CBS, in the walk-up to the greatest 15 minutes of sponsored content ever to appear on "60 Minutes." (Except Amazon got the editorial gratis.)

Sometimes it's hard to pick your battles of the sexes; this particular little dust-up has my head spinning. It's devolved into a fight between Beastie Boys and Mean Valley Girls. (That's Silicon Valley.) And so far, I'm siding with the Beasties.

Rob Delaney is one of the luckiest people in the Twitterverse. Well, aside from all the insiders who made billions of dollars via the company's recent IPO, of course. Never mind. We're talking profiting the old-fashioned way, by slaving for almost three years to produce that thing that is printed on paper and bound between two hard covers -- you know, a book.

These "Bro-surance" ads first surfaced three weeks ago, under the auspices of The Colorado Consumer Health Inititative and ProgressNow Colorado to bring attention to their website. Please excuse me -- I'm going to bro-mit.

This new 60-second commercial reintroduces the born-again Jeep Cherokee with the tagline "Built free." And just as in the movie "Born Free" with Elsa and her cubs, the spot, called "Manifesto," is filled with images of birth, newness, and freedom in nature: muddy trails, open skies, little boys swimming, jumping and showing their muscles.

"Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels." -- David Ogilvy. Though we can't know what the great D.O. might have thought of street artist/media provocateur Banksy, I think we have a pretty good idea of what the still-anonymous Banksy would think of David Ogilvy.

"It's not that we are women. It's that we are not men, we are the other," said Cindy Gallop, founder of IfWeRanTheWorld.com, speaking of the agency world, and firing up the audience, 400-women strong, at the 3% Conference last week in San Francisco.

Let's talk about Vines. Not the sub-Twizzler variety of licorice candy sold in bulk at warehouse stores - although they too are delicious, in an underdoggish, Hydrox vs. Oreo way. Nope, I mean Vine, the year-old, six-second video-clip-sharing system now owned by Twitter.