Calling the Clio Committee

Why do I love this commercial so much? You might think it’s because of the daughter’s incredible NY accent. No, that’s just, like, a supah oh-w-some bow-nus. I like this commercial because these two are actually good actors. Especially the injured Pop. Totally believable. Not like that sham Hillside Honda romance. (While you’re at it – please check out some of the comments under the video on the YouTube. Classy.) With all the unwatchable commercial acting out there, let’s recognize how remarkably decent these performances are.

Related: Commercials Worth Watching: J&R

News from the NY1 Gaydar

Apologies that I couldn’t pull the video, but take a listen for an amusing misuse of the word “gaydar” from a New York 1 travel report today. It comes in at 35 seconds.

Have Your Cake – And Play It, Too

Though I wasn’t invited to this design-heavy games-n-cupcakes new years party, I’m thoroughly enjoying the digital results. Pastries and gaming — playstries? Count me freakin in. These folks got together and made 100 cupcake honoring 100 awesome games. Some highlights, from video games…

…and old school analog favorites…

Even the site itself is kind of a game. Pure gold.

Ass Effects

Most writers will probably tell you that if you want your writing to come out well it’s important to read your work aloud. Things that look good on the page and may make perfect logical sense often come out awkward or confusing when verbalized.

So one might wonder what they were thinking over at Eisai/PriCara when they named their acid reflux mediation AcipHex. Or how their commercials got by the ad group without anyone raising a hand with a discomfited clearing of the throat, “ahem, did he, uh… does anyone else think it sounds like…?”

But it might explain why they started looking for a new marketing manager for the product a month and a half ago:

Requirements: Self starter, multi-tasker, understands rhyming.

Google Game: Midgets (Do They or Don’t They?)

This week’s Google Game either speaks for itself, or requires a depth and breadth of analysis I’m ill prepared to deliver at present. While I process, please mull, and enjoy.

By the by, if being a midget does, indeed, constitute a serviceable defense against incarceration, then I’m going down to the DMV and putting my real height on my drivers license.

PS. “Willies”? That’s the web’s go-to word for penis?

[Thanks, DFH]

Reader Appreciation: Almost redundant, isn’t it?

I like this monkey.

Un-Happy new year, folks. You may have noticed a brief, unannounced NMH dematerialization in the final days of the aughts. I’ll cop. The Unhappy Mediator took a protracted tropical hiatus from virtually all things media, edged into realm of actually-happy, and as such, stymied the site’s editorial mission.

But I’m back, and to honor that mission in the nascent decade, I’d like to introduce a new rubric, Reader Appreciation, wherein we doff our post to those virtual visitors who keenly and deftly stumble upon the heart of No Happy Medium.

Without much further ado, and with the best of wishes (and a sheepish apology for half a December of neglect), the first NHM reader shout-out:

jkljkl

Thanks to the reader who found the site by searching                     “asshole with bluetooth.”

This Week’s Top Nerd-mail Dec 13-19

Seasons greetings from the Norwegian Coastal Administration.

[From Norway to you, via my inbox]

Related: Top Nerd-mail Dec 6-12

Heathcare Debate Reaches New Heights: Heaven.

I invite you to take a quick journey with me. Experience something magical the way I experienced it. It started on the IM:

yokiro: am currently reading a blog post with this great bit:
“Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington’s wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?”
me
: is that for real? obama is going to abort the next jesus?
yokiro
: you haven’t even heard the best part.
it was written by chuck norris.
me
: stop it.
yokiro
: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34841

Go ahead. Click it. It’s worth it. But let me comment on a couple of my most favoritest parts:

In short, while President Obama was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the Democrats in Congress drove a sword through the womb of the unborn.

Hold the phones! Through the womb of the unborn? Now even the unborn can have abortions? That’s an outrage! (And impressive!)

Washington certainly has reached a new low by forcing American citizens who oppose abortion to pay for abortions via their taxes in this massively comprehensive way. Is it intentionally trying to spark the next Boston Tea Party? When our greatest values are thrown under the omnibus, how do they expect us to respond?

Um, apparently by throwing aborted fetuses into rivers?

Tell your representative and senators to quit fast-tracking these momentous bills without periods for debate and during secret sessions on weekends, when America is least attentive.

For that matter, don’t do it during Giants games either. Or when NCIS is on. Or when my wife is talking – blah blah blah – I just totally tune out.

It needs to reopen the pages of its history to our Founders’ elevated views of and rights for all human beings (including those in the womb), as documented in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

(But excluding the blacks, natch.)

Don’t miss my Christmas column next week, titled “Away With the Manger,” about how the feds are whitewashing America’s Judeo-Christian heritage via a progressive, politically correct and pro-Muslim platform.

Oh, you better believe I’ll be there, buddy. Chuck Norris isn’t delivering blows to Islam, Islam is kneeling down and ramming its head into Chuck Norris’s fist.

What is this shit doing in my New Yorker?

Did you read this article in the current New Yorker about a philanthropist revitalizing Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park? And did you find it strange when the writer, Philip Gourevitch, used the word “shit” in describing hippos’ important ecological role?

It really caught me off guard. Not that I think it’s inherently inappropriate to use expletives  (fucking obviously), but it’s jarring in a quasi-scientific context. I studied wildlife management and ecology in East Africa, and I don’t remember ever discussing “shit.” (Unless we were talking Typhoid and pit toilets.) Just sayin.

Publish or Perm Press

How do you know that you rinse and spin among the intellectual elite? When this is on the magazine rack at your neighborhood laundromat:

As an added bonus there was also a recent issue of PopSci, so I could distract myself from the sad triviality of my days by perusing my own bylines. So easily salved, the tender ego of a writer.