So it seems like Jay Leno recycled many of his old jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Comedians tell the same jokes over and over all the time, but surely something like this event would make Jay Leno come up with some new material, right? Nope.

The only thing worse than hearing Leno’s jokes once is hearing them twice.

I was prepared to go on one of my long rants about this commercial, but I don’t think I have the energy to do so. All I’ll say is, do you think Office Depot even realizes that they’re Nitro Cutz in this whole scenario?

I mean, the irony of a large discount company taking shots at large discount companies in their commercials is mind-numbingly jaw-dropping.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Febreze. I think it smells delightful. But there is a new Febreze commercial out that annoys the shit out of me whenever I see it (typically in the morning during the Today Show). Let’s take a look at the commercial first, before I proceed to rip it a new one:

Let’s start with the obvious: WTF is up with their voices? The audio is clearly dubbed in for both the mom and son, and it even seems that it’s not even the voices of those actors. I mean, seriously. It’s like they want the kid to sound like the generic prepubescent kid from the Simpsons or something.

Now, let’s pick the rest of this thing apart. The mom tells Karl she thought he had friends coming over. Look at this kid. No way in hell he has friends. But we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Then she notices how messy and smelly his room is. And it truly is a pigsty. There’s crap everywhere, and most likely crusty bodily secretions all over the place. (She notes how bad the chair smells, and if I were her, I wouldn’t put my face so close to it, as you just KNOW he’s been sitting on that chair bare-assed every night for the past week). And the mom’s like, “oh, we’ll just clean with Febreze”. That’s fair enough to cover up Karl’s wretched stink, but look what happens when she starts spraying…the mess in his room magically disappears without either of them lifting a finger! That is a truly amazing spray!

Then, the kicker. Karl’s “friends” show up. Now, when his mom said he had friends coming over, after the shock of realizing he had friends, I figured they would just be a couple of nerds coming over to play Dungeons & Dragons or something, but it turns out to be a couple of cute girls. Yeah, right!!! Like either of those chicks would have anything to do with that pimply-faced dweeb. Then the blond chick seductively tells Karl how nice it smells in there (points for the audio possibly actually being her real voice), and he puffs his chest and acts like he’s responsible for the state of his room. What a d-bag.

So Febreze would like us to believe that a) spraying their product will not only improve the odor of your room, but also magically clean any messes within it, and b) if you’re an ugly awkward teen boy, spraying Febreze in your room will make cute girls want you to take their virginity. Who are the ad wizards that came up with that one?

But still, it’s the audio that bothers me the most. When that self-righteous little prick boasts that he likes to keep things fresh because it helps him concentrate at the end, I just want to reach through the screen and wring his scrawny little neck til his head pops off. Then dropkick it across the room.

So kudos, Febreze, on crafting one of the most ridiculous commercials in recent memory. I hope you burn in a hell that stinks like Karl’s room for eternity.

Chris Brown hasn’t said much about his goingson regarding Rihanna, but he had some brief time while hanging out with basketball cronies, Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Tucker, and Bow Wow over at Shaq’s house last night.

A couple of YouTube videos are now on the interwebs, in which Brown rambles on about lying blogs, talks about black eyes, and hocks is new album, Graffiti.

“I don’t do all this talking on the thing, this is just some new stuff I’m doing,” Brown said, bending over and leaning into the camera. “I just wanna say ‘what’s up?,’ because I ain’t been out there in a minute. But the new album is gonna be coming soon. We working on it right now. It’s called Graffiti. It’s got everything on it, so y’all be ready for that. I’m about to drop a single this summer for y’all. We ain’t going nowhere. Everybody that’s haters, they just been haters. All my real fans, I love you. I ain’t a monster.”

Guess that settles it then. Chris Brown is not a monster  because he said so. In similar news, Bow Wow wants you to “belee dat”.

(Soure: dListed)

So a few weeks ago, we were grocery shopping at Stop and Shop, and I was looking for my weekly ice cream fix. Usually we’ll get whatever’s on sale, but prefer Ben & Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs. Haagen-Dazs won out that trip, as it was on sale, but something seemed odd when I put my Chocolate Chocolate Chip in the cart. I held it up to Jo and said, “It seems smaller (that’s what she said)”. It didn’t say “one pint” on the container, but 14 oz. And it now listed only 3 1/2 servings per container instead of 4.

Something seemed fishy in the freezer section. I checked again, and some of the other flavors were listed at one pint. As the weeks went on, the pint containers became more and more rare, at both Big Y and Stop and Shop. What was happening was apparent. Haagen-Dazs was reducing the size of their standard pint containers. This would be all well and good…IF THEY WEREN’T CHARGING THE SAME PRICE FOR THE SMALLER CONTAINERS!

Upon researching, I’ve discovered that yes, they’ve admitted to the smaller packaging, but don’t F your consumers in the A by charging the same for a 14 oz. container as a 16 oz. container. I don’t want to pay for 2 oz. of ice cream that’s simply…vanished.

Ben & Jerry’s knows where it’s at. Their containers still proudly display “1 Pint”. And their prices are comparable to Haagen-Dazs’s, so you’re getting more bang for your buck. Or more ice cream for your buck, as it were.

So don’t be fooled. Don’t let Haagen-Dazs rape you bloody. The ice cream consuming public deserves better.

Awhile back, Pizza Hut introduced their Panormous pizza, which they call their largest pan pizza ever. I remember something seemed off in the commercial when it originally aired, and then last night I saw they started airing the commercials again. I have many bones to pick with Pizza Hut about this, and unfortunately, there are no decent quality videos of the commercial, so here’s the only one I could find:

Really, Pizza Hut?!

The first thing that jumps out at me, and the thing that always rubs me the wrong way, is how the Panormous logo is so obviously photoshopped onto the box. It’s obviously not really ON the box, and doesn’t move properly as they pass the box around.

Then, the announcer says, “A pizza so big, it never ends!”

REALLY!?!

It NEVER ends?! What an absolutely ridiculous statement to make. At some point, the pizza will be finished. It WILL end. You can tell by the size of the box in the commercial that it’s much smaller than most local pizza joints’ party size pizzas. Add that to the fact that it only has 16 pieces. 16!!! I could polish off 16 pieces of pizza in my sleep, yet these jackoffs can’t finish an entire Panormous pizza? I counted the people in the commercial. There are 18 people that appear. That pizza won’t even be enough for one slice each, yet they claim it never ends? Ridiculous. And then there’s that guy that says (even though if you count the people, he should be taking the last slice), “We are never gonna finish this!” What a dick.

And the silliest part of all? It’s not even ONE pizza! It’s 2 pizzas in one big box! So it shouldn’t say “Our biggest pan pizza ever!” on the box, it should say, “Our biggest box that contains pizza ever!” and then in fine print, “And it’s still smaller than most other pizza places’ largest available pizza”.

Gather ’round the good stuff, my ass. More like gather ’round the lying, hypocritical douchebags. Ya hear that, Queen Latifah? Stuff that in your pizza box and eat it.

The All-American Rejects performed on the Today Show this morning in anticipation of the release of their third album. And on Today’s concert series page, this is what appeared:

“Move Along to these guys”? Really, that’s all ya got Today Show? Two previous albums worth of lyrics, and that’s the best you can come up with? Not to mention they picked one of the most ridiculous still images of lead singer Tyson Ritter they could find. And what’s up with the usage of “these guys”? Is John McCain working for the Today Show website now?

If Songspeak gave out booby prizes for worst songspeaks, today Today would be at the top of the list. I mean, honestly.

Anyhow, for those interested, here are the All-American Rejects performing their new single:

Click to enlarge to see The Original Mavericks ad

I can’t help but notice the songspeak site has had some banner ads for the McCain/Palin campaign lately. I can only imagine this is because we’ve had a few McCain and Palin related posts recently, but rest assured that we here at Songspeak in no way, shape, or form support the McCain/Palin ticket.

So it bothers me that ads for them are popping up on the site. Why should it look like we’re promoting someone that we don’t support, nor agree with? Worse yet, the ad looks like some sort of satire, repeating the “maverick” catchphrase over and over. This whole maverick idea is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen in politics, and reeks of pandering to the lowest common denominator. “Hey, Joe Six-Pack! We’re mavericks! We’re gonna shoot up Washington with change…YEE-HAAAWWWWWW!” The whole thing seems like one big (sad) joke. But it’s for real. Frightening. (Never mind that I don’t understand how a candidate like McCain that has served in the senate for 22 years can pretend that he’d be “change”).

Everyone knows that the ORIGINAL mavericks are the Ford Maverick, James Garner (who played Maverick in the TV series that ran from 1957 to 1962), Tom Cruise (who played Maverick in the 1986 hit movie Top Gun), and Mel Gibson (who played Maverick in the 1994 movie version of the TV series). And even though one is a car, and two of them are total whackjobs now, I’m confident that ANY of them would make a better Vice President (or President) than Sarah Palin. Especially the car.

The Original Mavericks (left to right) - Maverick, Maverick, and Maverick

"All I need is a damn knife!"

Back in 1995 Alanis Morissette released a little album called Jagged Little Pill.  This album launched Alanis (formerly of You Can’t Do That on Television and Dave Coulier popped my cherry fame) into international superstardom.  The album spawned 5 hit singles, the first being You Oughta Know (supposedly in reference to the aforementioned Dave Coulier), but the one that gets my goat the most is Ironic.

Now, maybe Alanis really just doesn’t understand the meaning of the word. Maybe she’s legally retarded (I mean, she is Canadian, after all). But nothing in the entire song actually constitutes actual irony. Rain on your wedding day? Puh-leeeeeze.

Matt and I have had many debates on what constitutes actual irony. For instance, Matt would tell me about how he was writing on a post-it or something, and then the show he was watching would feature a tour through a post-it making factory, and then call it ironic. I’d explain that that’s just a coincidence, not irony, and we’d have to figure out what irony actually meant. This has been going on for years.

Collegehumor.com even modified the lines from Alanis’ song to make them actually ironic. I like their examples better, because, well, it really is ironic. Don’t you think?

Perhaps Alanis doesn’t think enough of her fans or the general public to believe we would know what irony is. Perhaps she doesn’t know herself. Or perhaps it was done on purpose, and the actual irony is in the fact that a song called Ironic contains no real examples of irony. That would truly be genius, but I’m not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. I’m gonna have to go with the second option here.

Maybe all that green slime affected her brain.

This past Thursday, Jo and I headed to Foxwoods for an afternoon of poker and The Price is Right Live Stage Show later that evening.  The show was, in a word, awesome.  All of our favorite Price is Right games were featured, and host Todd Newton was funny, charismatic, and entertaining.  However, this post isn’t about the show itself.  It’s about something during the show that reminded me of one of the best ad campaigns ever.

Hole-in-One (or Two!) featured a contestant trying to guess the prices of products in ascending order. One of those products was Aspercreme Heat. Jo leaned over to me and told me that if she were up on stage, she’d reply to Todd Newton with, “You bet your sweet Aspercreme, Todd”.

This took us back to 2005 and Aspercreme’s phenomenal ad campaign in which their jingle gleefully proclaimed, “You bet your sweet Aspercreme!”. Until retards like this got their panties in a bunch, forcing the company to change the jingle to the infinitely less entertaining (and less memorable) “You bet if it’s Aspercreme!”. When the updated ads started airing, it was blantantly obvious that it had changed, and if I’ve proven anything in the past, I really dislike it when companies change their commercials slightly and pretend nothing has happened. Shame on Chattem for caving in to a bunch of self-righteous assholes and ruining entertaining early evening syndication advertising for everyone. Still, the updated versions are still miles ahead of this abomination.

So, to review, effin’ oss:

The one with the newer jingle is so lame that there are no videos of it anywhere on the interweb. Pwned.