Do You Want ‘Possums with That?

Having just returned from two weeks in splendid [self imposed] isolation, I’m tempted to declare that I was on a spiritual retreat, or writing the next Great American Novel.
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I’m not a sports fan. That’s why I didn’t bother to watch the Super Bowl. I knew that I could see the cool commercials today. I kinda wish I’d watched it after seeing a couple of ‘em. Here are the ones I liked.

 

 

Iron Man

 

 

Iron Man - Paramount Pictures

I’m starting to change my mind about the Iron Man movie. I looks like it might actually be good. If he spends more time in the suit than he does as Tony Stark it could be great.

 

 

Leatherheads

 

 

Leatherheads - Universal Pictures

Looks like George Clooney is finally getting back to what he does best, comedy. Not just that, but period comedy like the best movie he ever made O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

 

Guess who else is going back to comedy after making some depressing crap…

 

 

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

 

 

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan - Sony Pictures

Adam Sandler! Woooo! Goofy characters with weird accents. This could be the character he was born to play, or it could be crap. You can never tell with an Adam Sandler movie.

 

Oh, and speaking of movies you can’t tell about…

 

 

Jumper

 

 

Jumper - 20th Century Fox

 

Looks like they took Nightcrawler, from the X-Men, and made him less blue and fuzzy. Probably a lot less interesting too.

 

 

 

Other Commercials

 

If you want to see the rest of the commercials, including a couple more movies that look kinda crappy, then head over to the 2008 Commercial Bowl powered by Spike and iFilm.

 

 

This could be bad news, but even bad news is great when it’s reported by Stephen Colbert.

Moist Von Lipwig makes money the old fashioned way, he prints it. Actually, printing money is a new idea in Ankh-Morpork. Moist is going to have a tough time convincing people that paper is worth it’s weight in gold. Especially when he has his Bank Director licking his face and the Assassins’s Guild looking over his shoulder. He’s already been hanged as a criminal once. What’s the worst that could happen?

The Story

Making Money continues the story of Moist Von Lipwig, formerly known as Arthur Spangler con man extraordinaire, introduced in Terry Pratchett’s book Going Postal. As the story opens Moist has the Post Office running like, well, a Post Office. Things are running as smoothly as they can for any public service. That’s a bit too smooth for Moist.

After living his life by relying on his wits any normal job, even one as respectable as Post Master, is just a bit too normal. Oh there are ways of keeping a hand in, like picking the occasional lock, but it’s just not enough. Even Extreme Sneezing doesn’t provide the edge of your seat, and possibly your life, thrill of his old career. The gods must have taken pity on him because he’s about to have all the thrills he can handle.

Through some very odd occurrences Moist becomes acting Director of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork. It seems like everyone is out to get him, even those that want him to succeed. It’s going to take every con man’s trick he knows, and he may have to invent a few as he goes along, just to stay alive.

My Recommendation

If you enjoy the Discworld books, be sure to pick this one up. I don’t know if it’s Terry Pratchett at his best, but it’s darn close. The hoops that Moist has to jump through in this book would make any stunt man cringe.

Coca Cola has set up a pretty interesting site to promote Coke zero. The “Life as it should be” campaign consists of some black and white videos. Not only that but you get to screw around with ‘em. It’ll give you a line, then you type in your response. Using text to speech you’ll hear your typed dialog spoken. When you have it set just right you can save it and share it with friends.

Of course you’ll be sharing it with more than your friends. Your videos will compete for ratings on the site. This will attract a lot of weirdos, like me.

I’ve tried it a few times. With a little imagination it can be pretty amusing. of course, this is the sort of thing I do anyway. I’m always filling in dialog when watching TV. That usually results in my g/f smacking me and telling me to shut up, so this is a bit safer.

You could do a Coke Zero ad I suppose. Just type in something like “Real taste, zero sugar” or something. What fun would that be? Probably not as much as some of the videos on there. There are a few good ones. I hope more people check it out, because if enough creative types make videos there should be some great ones soon.

Any large site you visit that allows commenting is bound to have a thread or two that looks like this. The one that it reminded me of the most was PVP, the webcomic by Scott Kurtz. Quite a few of the comment sections on his site are fairly similar. I’d like to imagine this is what meetings are like over at Mr. Kurtz’s office.

Yeah, I know it’s not a Youtube video, but that’s the category I’m using for now.

Check out more stuff like this at CollegeHumor.com.