Hey, sorry I didn’t get the nominations advert up this year, but I would still like for you to vote for the Worst Commercial of 2008. I have five nominees listed, but since I did not solicit nominations from you, if you really want to write in one (so to speak), feel free to do so (though I will remind you that I do not accept movie trailers or political ads). And without further ado, here are the nominees (YouTube links included wherever possible):

1. Axe Body Spray: Specifically, I take issue with the commercial they aired during the MLB postseason. Basically, here’s the plot: A guy sprays the Axe deodorant (or whatever it is) all over himself. There’s a brief cutaway shot, and all of a sudden, the guy is made of chocolate. Now, at first this sounds like it would make for a great joke about Marisa’s dream guy (I kid, of course), but Chocolate Boy is so creepy looking you can’t derive any sort of humor from it. It gets worse. Chocolate Boy takes a stroll around town and every woman he comes in contact with can’t help but lick him or nibble on him (one even takes a bite out of his ass). The commercial ends with his arm getting ripped off and the slogan “As Irresistible As Chocolate.”

2. AT&T: These guys have got a couple different lame ad campaigns going on, but this nomination focuses on the “zero bars” campaign (or, as AT&T’s Youtube page calls it, “Alter Ego”). If you haven’t seen these (and I can’t imagine how THAT could happen): The commercial is narrated by the main character’s voicemail (portrayed by the same actor as the main character) telling the “caller” that the person is not going to get the call, resulting in some sort of “sucks to be you” moment for the main character. The ad campaign started out with dumb but fairly innocuous situations: some dude misses a call about going to see his favorite band, a teenage girl’s father misses a text message from her saying she’s spending the night at a friend’s house so he goes knocking on all the car windows at lovers’ lane, etc. Then the situations became more unrealistic (in particular, there was one played during the Olympics in which Michael Phelps’s obsessed teenage fangirl missed out on his autograph session). Recently, though, they’ve become downright life-threatening and therefore kinda tasteless (guy gets arrested cuz he missed the call from his friend telling him the alarm code, news reporter doesn’t get the message that he’s right in front of a building that’s about to be demolished, another guy fails to get the warning not to stick a frozen turkey into a deep fryer and his house blows up, etc). Enough already.

3. Cialis: Because FSN Detroit operates under the belief that I am a beer-drinking Republican man with erectile dysfunction, I must’ve seen these commercials about 8000 times during the baseball season. What I don’t understand (and what no one seems to understand) is the bathtub thing that always seems to be there at the end of the commercial. First of all, the man and woman are in separate bathtubs. If the whole point of Cialis is to have sex, won’t the separate bathtubs kinda defeat the purpose? Second, the bathtubs appear in the strangest of places, such as on the edge of a cliff or in the middle of a forest. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a Youtube video of it. There might be one, but let’s face it. When you type “Cialis” into the search bar, you tend to get a lot of porn and parodies.

4. The Charmin Crapping Bears: Obviously, that’s not the official name, but they get called that on message boards all the time and it kinda stuck. These bears have been around a really long time, but in their effort to keep hanging around, their creativity is starting to run into questionable territory. Case in point: There’s a commercial in which Mama Bear is vacuuming bits of toilet paper off Baby Bear’s butt (I couldn’t find that one on Youtube, but the one I did find is similar). There IS a bear in the woods, but let’s just leave at that. Please, no more.

5. Arby’s: Yeah, I know they’ve already been inducted into the Commercial Hall of Shame. I usually don’t like to nominate the same ad campaign twice (especially when it’s “won” already), but this time they have gone too far. In this particular ad, a guy is sexually aroused by having his wife/girlfriend dress up as an Arby’s employee, complete with tray that has sandwiches and fries on it (I think you’re supposed to start the commercial believing she’s gonna dress up in some kinky nurse outfit or Catholic schoolgirl uniform or something). Once she enters the room, the guy says “me likey” and Arby’s hat logo pops up over his head in a not-so-subtle symbolic fashion. Ick.

So there you go. Vote away. You have until…let’s say, oh, January 10^th. Have at it and Happy New Year!

It should be noted that I lack the income to be a regular Starbucks consumer, but every once in a while (be it finals week or an early class/work shift) I’ll stop by the one inside Krogers (I generally never go to the one at school because the line almost always nearly goes out the door). As a holiday presentation, I’ll give you my review of several Starbucks drinks that I’ve sampled, and I’ve separated it into two categories: Coffee and Not Coffee.

Coffee

Most of you already know that I absolutely HATE the taste of coffee. However, it seems to be the only kind of caffeine that actually works for me, so whenever I have to get up ungodly early and I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep, I try to select the variety that gives me the best chance of having that coffee taste covered up. Here are three that I’ve tried:

White Chocolate Mocha

Starbucks’ Description: A delicious variation of the classic mocha. Rich, full-bodied Starbucks® espresso is complemented with our proprietary, creamy white chocolate syrup and topped with whipped cream.

My Take: Meh. You can definitely sense the coffee in there, but as it cools, it either blends in better or you become desensitized to it. But I’d stay away from the last sip. You know, the one with all the syrup that’s accumulated on the bottom of the cup.

Cinnamon Dolce Latte

Starbucks’ Description: An indulgent beverage with flavors of sweet cinnamon, butter and brown sugar, combined with our signature Espresso Roast, freshly steamed milk, and topped with whipped cream and Cinnamon Dolce sprinkles.

My Take: Not bad, actually. Most of the coffee taste is sufficiently covered up, and the little bit you can taste is sweetened to the point where you can tolerate it.

Espresso Truffle

Starbucks’ Description: We’ve combined Starbucks espresso with our premium European-style cocoa blend used in our Signature Hot Chocolate and steamed milk, and topped it with whipped cream and a touch of chocolate powder. This sophisticated beverage delivers rich chocolate flavor with a velvety mouthfeel balanced with a smooth coffee flavor.

My Take: With all the other crap that’s in this drink, you’d think the coffee flavor would be thoroughly disguised. You’d be wrong. All I could taste was coffee (and unfortunately I got a medium instead of a small, so I ended up wasting a good portion of it). Besides, the calorie count alone should be enough to scare you off (The thing’s almost 500 calories; contrast that with the Cinnamon Dolce Latte, which is only a little over 200).

And The Winner Is: I’d say the Cinnamon Dolce Latte. But keep in mind that it’s still coffee, so I’m only using it in emergencies.

Not Coffee

My preferred category, though as you’ll find out, I can be quite picky here.

Hot Chocolate

Starbucks’ Description: Choice of steamed milk with mocha syrup, vanilla syrup and whipped cream

A classic hot chocolate – sweet and creamy – made with steamed milk, mocha syrup and topped with whipped cream and chocolate drizzle (optional).

My Take: Considering the price of Starbucks drinks, I was expecting something rather rich. To my surprise, it was rather watery. I’ve definitely had better (Tim Horton’s comes to mind). Please keep in mind that this was the regular hot chocolate, NOT the Signature Hot Chocolate. I didn’t try that.

Salted Caramel Signature Hot Chocolate

Starbucks’ Description: This delicious sweet and salty combination brings together our rich, indulgent Signature Hot Chocolate and the flavors of buttery caramel and smoked sea salt. It is topped with whipped cream, a swirl of caramel and a sprinkle of our sea salt topping – a combination of artisan sea salt and Turbinado sugar from Hawaii.

My Take: I obviously didn’t read the website description before purchasing this, cuz I figured the “salted” part was somehow related to the way the caramel was prepared or something, but no, it actually has salt in it. And it tastes pretty gross (not to mention there are even more calories than in the Espresso Truffle). By the way, I don’t know about the mention of Hawaiian sea salt, but at Kroger, they just used Mrs. Dash.

White Hot Chocolate

Starbucks’ Description: A traditional, hot chocolate beverage with a Starbucks twist of white chocolate and vanilla syrup and topped with whipped cream (optional).

My Take: Maybe it’s supposed to taste like this, but I think the lady waiting on me forgot to put the syrup in, cuz all I could taste was hot milk. Once it cooled down to that lukewarm level, it started to taste kinda gross, so I didn’t finish it.

Hazelnut Signature Hot Chocolate

Starbucks’ Description: We’ve accented our rich, creamy European-style Signature Hot Chocolate with hazelnut syrup to create a classic chocolate and nut flavor combination. It is topped with fresh whipped cream and a dusting of cocoa powder.

My Take: I’ll let you know now that I sampled a lot of these during Exam Week. My goal was to try a new drink each day that I had an exam, which turned out being (in order) Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, White Hot Chocolate, Espresso Truffle (since my Wednesday exam was at 8 in the morning), and this Hazelnut Signature Hot Chocolate. Now, I absolutely love Nutella spread, plus Kroger’s makes a really good instant hazelnut hot chocolate, so I was really looking forward to trying Starbucks’ version (especially since I had kinda struck out on each of the three previous days’ drinks). Well, as it turns out, it IS better than the other three, but I was still rather disappointed. It’s got an extremely STRONG chocolate flavor, but it’s not very sweet, and it’s hard to discern any hazelnut flavor. But, unlike the other three days, I did drink the whole thing. So if we continue the baseball analogy, you could say I ended up being 1-for-4 in the Exam Week Starbucks Taste Test, but with that “1” being a little infield single or something.

Caramel Apple Spice

Starbucks’ Description: Freshly steamed, 100% pressed apple juice is complemented with cinnamon syrup, whipped cream and our proprietary buttery, caramel sauce drizzle, creating a delicious balance between sweetness and tartness.

My Take: YUM! This has been my favorite Starbucks drink for a long time, and I order it almost every time I go to Starbucks in the winter (There’s this frozen strawberry lemonade thing I like to get during the summer). If there’s any drawback to it, it’s that it’s usually so hot that you have to wait quite a while before you can drink it without it burning the inside of your mouth.

Cinnamon Dolce Crème

Starbucks’ Description:An indulgent beverage with flavors of sweet cinnamon, butter and brown sugar, combined with milk, and topped with whipped cream and Cinnamon Dolce sprinkles

My Take:Actually, it tastes a lot like the Cinnamon Dolce Latte, which I guess is a testament to how well the latte disguises the coffee flavor. The crème has a bit more cinnamon taste to it, I guess, especially when you get to the bottom of the cup.

And the Winner Is: Caramel Apple Spice. Duh.

And so ends the Starbucks Holiday Review. I hope everyone out there has a nice Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever else it is you celebrate this time of year.

I’ve got a couple of different topics for you today. First up, a little bit of hot stove news (Yikes, I can’t believe I’ve been drawn in enough to actually use that terminology). Sometime last night, it seems the Tigers went ahead and eliminated “catcher” off their list of needs by acquiring Gerald Laird from the Rangers. For all their pitching problems, Texas always seems to have had good catching (at least for the last 15-20 years or so), and Laird seems to fit that mold. He’s not an All-Star or Hall of Fame type, but he’s a good defender, an excellent thrower who routinely throws out around 35% or so (always a plus in my book), and a decent enough hitter. And he’s a veteran, but he’s only 29 years old, so he’s plenty young enough that the Tigers could potentially hang on to him for a while if they need (like if Dusty Ryan doesn’t pan out or gets hurt or something like that). I approve of this trade (and considering my usual lack of enthusiasm for American catchers, that’s saying something). Then again, I also approved of the Edgar Renteria acquisition last year, so make of that what you will. Then again, I wasn’t real crazy about getting Kyle Farnsworth, and I turned out to be right about that, regardless of the reasoning behind it. Also, while everyone else was drooling over the big Cabrera/Willis trade last year, I just got a bad feeling that I couldn’t shake (If you go back to the initial posts I made last year on December 4^th and December 6^th, you can definitely sense it). That’s a weird one though, because while the season didn’t exactly work out, I’m not sure if that trade was what did it (unlike Farnsworth, who pretty much sucked from his first appearance, and by the time he was able to put together a decent string, the Tigers were long out of the running). I mean, Cabrera had a slow start, but so did everyone else except Brandon Inge, and Cabrera ended up leading the team in home runs and RBIs AND he won the home run title (and probably would’ve been a serious contender for MVP had the Tigers done better overall), and I am glad that he’s with us for the next few years. Dontrelle Willis didn’t pan out, but his de facto replacement (Armando Galarraga) completely surpassed expectations and was outstanding. If anything, the Renteria deal was more of a backfire than the Cabrera/Willis deal, cuz Renteria struggled offensively until about August and his range factor dipped dramatically. So there’s a little bit more food for thought on how reliable my intuition actually is.  At any rate, as it stands now, I’m feeling good about Laird. Now onto getting the shortstop and closer situations worked out…

I watched the season finale of The Amazing Race last night, knowing full well that it’d be anticlimactic since I didn’t really have an ounce of enthusiasm for any of the teams left. The winners turned out, unsurprisingly, to be Nick and Starr, the brother/sister team whose praise of each other tends to sometimes border on creepy. By the way, I recently learned that their last name is Spangler. Which means the sister’s name is Starr Spangler. Her parents need to be arrested for that. Ken and Tina finished second (though I suspect not as close as the editors would have you think) and decided to give their marriage a second chance (or, at least, they did so as long as the cameras were rolling). For being pegged as this season’s bickering couple, they really didn’t bicker all that much. I’ve seen far worse. I know several people online don’t like Tina cuz she’s kind of a nag, but really, most seasons we get subjected to the Screaming Jackass and His Whiny, Submissive Wife/Girlfriend, so it’s about time the genders were reversed on that archetype (although it should be noted that Ken and Tina, for the most part, were respectful to the citizens of the various countries).  By the way, what was up with the lack of geographic range this season? They never set foot in the Middle East, Africa, or Western Europe. I mean, on any given season, one geographic region (either Africa, Central/South America, Middle East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia/South Pacific) usually gets skipped, maybe two, but never three. And there was a lot of clustering together and several countries that featured two legs. This season’s countries were Brazil, Bolivia, New Zealand, Cambodia, India, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Even that’s a little on the low side (there’s usually nine countries…I think). Geographically, they just about skipped over an entire hemisphere. Was the budget for this season really crappy or something? It could’ve been, cuz last season they went to Japan, and that’s a rarity cuz apparently it’s really expensive to film there. Oh well, hopefully next season will be better. I have to wonder about one thing, though. The producers of The Amazing Race are very, VERY fond of sending the racers to India. India shows up nearly every season. There’s a very good reason for this. Geographically, India is situated at a point in the race where the contestants are all physically and mentally exhausted (usually about one half to two thirds of the way through). Between the extreme heat, large population, and widespread poverty, India is known for being a stressful country even to the well-rested traveler. Add those two facts together, and you’re bound to get what the producers love to refer to as Good Television™ (to their credit, though, they try to expose the contestants to the positive side of India as well, as they try to do with all the countries they visit). However, with the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, I wonder if CBS executives will shy away from sending the contestants back to India any time soon (whether that caution is warranted or not). In previous seasons where they don’t go to India, they’ve used Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam as “stand-ins,” but those countries usually don’t create as much stress as the producers are looking for. Personally, I’m getting just a little bit tired of India (and Thailand, for that matter, since it seems to be the preferred “India stand-in” and I believe there was one season where they went to both countries, but I could be wrong). In the meantime, I’ve kind of gotten on an Iron Chef roll.

I just realized a few days ago that in the combination of Wolfe Hall and Bowman-Oddy, there are no staircases in the middle of the building. All the staircases (and there are many of ‘em) are near the exits. I guess if there’s a fire and you’re in the middle of the fourth floor, you’re just screwed.

I hope everyone had themselves a good Thanksgiving (well, at least to my American readers; to everyone else, I hope your weekend was good). I did watch the parade, but perhaps not as much as I normally do (though I once again accurately guessed one of the performers; this year I correctly predicted Miley Cyrus). You know, I spend so much time on the Internet, and yet I had never heard of Rickrolling prior to this weekend. When Rick Astley showed up on the Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends float, I just thought it was totally random. But funny. Dinner was good, except my aunt got the tiniest turkey possible so there wasn’t much in the way of leftovers.

The Amazing Race sucked last night. I kind of had a feeling it’d be Toni and Dallas who would lose their passports, although what did them in (at least in the short run) kinda ended up being losing their money. Actually, it was the fact that they took the Metro instead of the requisite taxi to the next place. They probably figured that they’d be hit with the standard 30-minute time penalty at the Pit Stop, but it appears that the producers will go to any length to make sure the time penalty is not used as a strategy (It was used once before, though not because of an illegal means of transportation). I find myself wondering what would’ve happened had they not done that (though with the heavy and creative editing this show uses, you can’t be sure how long they were out begging for money). The passport thing probably would’ve done them in instantly once the next leg started, though, cuz they’d probably be spending several hours at the embassy to get new passports and visas (especially when you realize that they’d not only have to get Russian visas, but visas for any other country that may still be on the race). Unfortunately, this team was definitely my favorite amongst the ones that were left, and I can’t really whip up much enthusiasm for the other three teams. Nick and Starr are too smug for my taste (though not nearly as smug as Rob-from-Survivor…both times he ran the race), Ken and Tina are okay but I’m still not crazy about them, and Dan and Andrew have to go down in history as the most inept team ever to make the final three. To their credit, though, they realize this. And as much as other fans are complaining that Dallas’s mistake “gave” the Frat Boys a spot by default, I should point out that they actually finished the leg second, so all other things being equal, it would’ve been Ken and Tina who would’ve come in last (though their mistake is what allowed the Frats to finish in second anyways). One more thing: For most of this season, Starr has struck me as a fairly intelligent girl, if somewhat high-strung. But in last night’s episode, she had a total brain fart. First, there was a clue telling them to go to a certain park and find a woman with a Shetland pony. For some reason, Starr wasn’t sure whether this meant that the woman was with a pony or whether the woman had a ponytail. Later, she kept referring to the Cyrillic alphabet as the “acrylic alphabet.”

A couple of strange things have happened this morning. When I got to the elevator to go up to the third floor, there were three girls standing in front of it talking to one another, but the elevator button was not lit. I eventually decided that their placement in front of the elevator was coincidental and pushed the button myself. When the elevator arrived, though, the girls got on with me and proceeded to go to the second floor. Why did they never push the button? Also, when I got to the computer lab, another girl arrived at the same time as me. I scanned my ID card to unlock the door (since I was closer to it), but as I went to open the door, she pushed it open and proceeded to just look inside. Her arm was blocking my path, and apparently either didn’t hear me or didn’t understand me when I tried to excuse myself. I finally ended up just ducking underneath her arm, much to her surprise.