• Candy UNJUNKED Video Preaches Rather Than Persuades
    Because I once read a pamphlet about the food pyramid in the waiting room of a doctor's office, I do not labor under the impression that candy is good for me. Whenever I find myself mainlining nougat, I don't try to convince myself that it is a distant nutritional relative of kale. When I wake up with a hot case of the Butterfinger sweats, I don't blame Big Chocolate for forcing its wares down my throat. Personal accountability, people. All the cool kids are holding themselves to a higher standard of it.
  • Smartwater's "Lost Footage" of Jennifer Aniston Should Stay That Way
    The "lost footage" unearthed last week by smartwater, in which Jennifer Aniston reveals both a baby bump and a wig-shrouded splotch of patchy brown hair, won't prove the viral supersensation that smartwater clearly expects it to be. Spiritlessly introduced by Ryan Seacrest as "breaking news... leaked online from an online source," the clip catches Aniston in a series of acts - casually crashing a car, unharnessing a girdle, scolding her two children (one an alien and the other a Jimmy Kimmel) and addressing herself in the mirror as "Rachel."
  • Things to Skip: The Emmy Awards and Its Viral Video Starring Parker Posey
    To try and win over more rational-minded TV buffs, however, the Emmys have pumped out one of those crazy-outrageous viral videos that the kids today just can't get enough of. And it's everything you'd expect from an organization that honored Helen Hunt 37 times. Which is to say: tone-deaf, sledgehammer-subtle and unwittingly self-parodying.
  • The Onion Takes Stride Gum's Twitter Feed to Mintacular Levels
    Not that we measure the Internet the way we do athletes, but The Onion's 2012 is shaping up as something out of the Babe Ruth canon, minus the Rubenesque torso and frequent near-asphyxiation on husks of ballpark meat. It became the first media institution to reduce a sitting Vice President to a caricature for purposes of light entertainment (Dan Quayle doesn't count - he did it to himself).
  • The Truth is More Effective Than A Sugar-Coated Message: Texting While Driving Kills
    I'm a distracted person, so it would follow that I am a distracted driver. Among the activities in which I regularly engage while careening down twisty roads at 70 mph are scratching itches, burrito-wrangling and manipulating the iPod to find that one song whose name always escapes me - you know, the one with the guitars and melodies and words. I also check in on and converse with my kid, usually stationed two rows back in our suburban colossocruiser.
  • Are You Ready For Some Well-Executed, Season Opener Football Videos?
    In this week's edition of my Yay Awesome America F-Yeah power rankings, I've got radio rock riding a new Journey hits compilation up to number 5, freedom surging to number 4 (a post-conventions bounce?), halter tops falling from the top spot to number 3 (boooooo, September!), barbecued meats holding steady at number two and football - awesome American football, not the spritzy foreign kind -- back at the top after a seven-month convalescence. To the surprise of nobody, Francophilia and organic produce remain tied at number 3,747,201.
  • Fashion Designer's Baffling, Wackadoodle Vision
    There are several valid reasons not to do drugs, among them their illegality as per the laws of this great nation, the exhilaration that comes with conforming to non-self-imposed notions of morality, the possibility that they will fry your neural wiring, and the deleterious effect they might have on your driving or taste in music. To that list I'd like to add Anna Dello Russo's "Fashion Shower" series of clips -- because after watching the most recent installment, it's like: Stoned, not stoned -- who can tell the difference anymore?
  • Newest Incarnation Of Old Spice's Blithely Bizarre Ads Launch
    Here's a question: Do Old Spice's blithely bizarre viral-bait ads and clips actually move product? I don't ask this rhetorically; I ask it hoping that the answer is a firm, unassailable, quantifiable-with-data-and-pie-charts-and-retweetifications-and-whatnot yes. I ask it as an unabashed admirer of the skill with which Old Spice obliterated all traces of its Grandpa-brand past, one who prays the ads spur enough sales and goodwill to ensure that its marketing minions will never be asked to rein themselves in.
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