TV Me: Why Under Armour Won Best Super Bowl Ad '08

I hated both teams playing in last night's contest. The Patriots are seemingly a team of endless assholes, while the Giants are the Giants, so as an Eagles fan I cannot root for them, especially when they have the most sinister-looking coach in the world. So last night I decided to have the least-football-influenced Super Bowl party ever: myself and my girlfriend and four female friends, none of whom really cared about the game of football. We brought in a pizza, laughed at Tom Coughlin, considered playing Guitar Hero, and were ridiculously excited for the stupid advertisements. Everyone wanted to see what would be the year's fan favorite, the one commercial sure to unite a nation. I didn't have to wait long for my pick.

The year? The future; specific things such as numbers no longer matter. The sky is a hazy dash of orange, and we are in a post-apocalyptic city, presumably destroyed due to years of economic decline, perhaps because of shoddy athletic apparel. There is a football stadium, and we see the Under Armour logo in the middle, suggesting an alternate universe where Under Armour is a football team. The only football team.

Holy fucking shit.

A narrator, speaking in some sort of Asian drawl, says, "All new prototypes... leave everything behind." We then cut to various good-lookings working out: a man with dreadlocks drags a tire (?) across a dusty alley, a woman weaves back and forth holding a cinder block in front of three humongous spinning fans, two people sorta fuck around on a big block of ice, etc. "We! Started this thing!" a more manly voiceover proclaims. "It's us! Versus them!" And then it cuts to a shot of Baltimore linebacker/accused murderer Ray Lewis, lifting what appears to be a gnarled scaffold in order to build a more perfect Under Armour universe. He looks calm, yet dissatisfied.

This is 30 seconds of the minute-long Under Armour commercial that aired during the first quarter of last night's game, and it was at about this point that I fell hopelessly in love with it. Combining a vague sense of confusion, people working out alongside incongruous hunks of metal, and Ray Lewis has ALWAYS proved successful, but this spot really goes the distance. What I find disconcerting is that everyone has appeared to callously ignore it. I have read at least a dozen articles today detailing the best and worst commercials of last night, and not a single one has mentioned this ad. The Coke commercial with the parade balloons seems to be the overwhelming favorite, and while I admit that it was cute, no one worked out on a block of ice in it, so it was automatically disqualified. On a side note, is it entirely possible that Budweiser, which has long been the leading advertiser for the Big Game, cannot find a single person who can think of better ideas for their ads? Does anyone enjoy them?

The Under Armour army grows and grows, and now the well-clad muscular dudes are banding together in the streets. They are clearly heading toward a similar location; one guy looks at another, who gives him a quick nod that conveys a "Yo, this shit is about to get REAL" attitude. The Under Armour leader is seen walking through a dark corridor, contemplating his speech for the masses. Suddenly we are at the rally, which is mobbed with people and decked with Nazi-like Under Armour banners streaming from the sky. Our fearless leader is restless.

"The game... has CHANGED!" he snarls. "It all starts... TODAY!" Reaction shots of his constituency; yeah, they know what the fuck's up, man.

"YOU... are the new prototypes! WE... are Under Armour!" The music swells. I'd like to mention that, in back of the leader, a large red TV screen is showing designs of sneakers, which may be the funniest thing I could ever think of showing at what appears to be a war-mongering speech. Suddenly the leader becomes enamored by the spirit.

"The FUUUUUTUUUUURE..... IIIIIIS.....

OUUUUUUUUUUUURS!"

I can't really convey how much I personally related to this ad. First of all, I want to make clear that I have no idea what the fuck is going on in it. These people are apparently training for something, something big, something that I can't imagine when the only war I know is one concocted under false pretenses. They are about to fight for something real. I don't really know what they're all about to do after this dude is finished his soapboxing about games and change and prototypes, but I know it's going to be awesome as hell. It sounds like they're gonna go to war, but with whom? Adidas? Maybe. They might be getting ready to compete in some sporting event, but what would require an army of thousands in order to win? But clearly something is starting today, and they are the new prototypes... hm. "Prototypes", that word troubles me. Are they all robots? Who is the "we" that the leader is referring to as Under Armour, their gods and creators? Perhaps Under Armour is launching a calculated coup upon the nation, in which UA-clad robots overthrow our government and establish UnderArmourocracy. Hey, Obama had an ad last night, maybe this was just a little less subtle.

...It's his eyes, that's what always get me. When the leader says "The fuuuutuuuure," he's so damn convicted to Under Armour that you cannot overlook his credibility. And his muscles; that's what lets me know that he's cool. The rest of the game I was anxiously awaiting a sequel to this spot, perhaps depicting an Under Armour revolution of sorts, with shots of Ray Lewis twisting the necks of Nike douchebags. There's always next year. Until then, I shall savor this poetic advertisement, and dream of a day when I myself am the new prototype. Keep your stupid Coca-Cola commercials. You say you want a revolution? Join the ranks of Under Armour, while you still can, bitch.

My Week With Mono/TV Me: Seeing "Fight Club" For the First Time

Okay, so... okay, wait, who am I again?

So having mono completely sucks. I popped about 80 cough drops and dusted off a box o' popsicles in a week's time, just so my throat wouldn't feel terrible for a few seconds. While I was doing this, though, I managed to catch up on a handful of fairly mediocre movies that I had thus far avoided, with the help of HBO On Demand! "Fight Club" seemed like an obvious pick, and I watched it the first night or two that I was sick. Edward Norton! Brad Pitt! Beating the bejesus out of each other! And somehow, soap is involved (I had seen the poster)! Plus, ya know, David Fincher is a pretty okay director; "Seven" is an outstanding thriller, and no matter how many people tell me that the ending's dumb, I think it's brilliant. And like... "Panic Room", yeah, I guess. So yeah, "Fight Club", should be a solid pick!

Woo boy. "Fight Club" is by far the most nihilistic film I have ever seen, but not in the brutally sexy way it should have been. Honestly, I think everything about this movie was done incorrectly. The script is littered with good ideas that end up turning to shit. When Norton and Pitt start beating the crap out of each other and the other men start watching, perplexed and intrigued, genuine excitement is conjured. Most men have not been in an actual fight, and their willingness and (homoerotic) excitement to do so delves into issues of primal masculinity we honestly have not seen addressed in such a mainsteam feature before. There are things this movie can talk about. Instead, we get a gonzo cult organization being formed, lots of confusing sex (no, literally, just damn confusing), and a dead Meat Loaf. "His name is Robert Paulson," my ass; the man's name is Meat Loaf Aday, and he will do anything for love, except that.

I'm also wondering why David Fincher, a director whose other films are completely plot-driven and rarely deal with any issues besides dimly lit fun, would run through this landmine. The entire last third of the movie is a neo-political rant/trippy mindfuck, and he can't even begin to handle it. Fincher's clearly a mood guy: he enjoys playing with shadows, creaky noises, and Jared Leto's hair, and he does these things well. But because he's way outside his range, the result reflects poorly on the actors. I would never call Norton and Pitt's respective performances superb, but given that their characters are basically typified as Superego and Id, they really sink their teeth into the roles and make them entertaining. Hell, their commitment can be seen in every fight scene, where they seem to be taking a bunch of very real shots.

Pitt's character is much more stylish, but is ultimately hollow (spoiler alert: in more ways than one!) because most of the things he does are such utter bullshit. Roger Ebert's review of "Fight Club" may be the best review of his that I've ever read, if only for the lines, " 'It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything,' (Tyler) says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor." A perfect simplification of a character that may appear to be complex. Pitt does a fine job with the character, but not enough to leave him unexposed. As for Helena Bonham Carter's batshit performance, in which she talks and moves like a Looney Tune... let's just say it's been overrated by quite a few.

But no, this is not a complete "Fight Club" slam, because there is one moment at the start of the movie (the movie begins very well, by the way) that contained every inch of raw emotion the film should have tried for but never got close to again. I'm talking about the Chloe scene, by far the best scene in the film, by far the best performance in the film. Norton's character journeys through night groups of terminally ill people to leech their emotion and find something to prick his numb existence; an interesting concept, undoubtedly, and one executed nicely in "Fight Club"'s first third. Then he gets into a tizzy because Helena Bonham Carter shows up to these meetings too, even though she's clearly as healthy as he is. During one of these groups (I'm pretty sure it was for some type of cancer), a bald, gaunt, sad-looking woman named Chloe approaches the podium to muted applause:

"Well, I'm still here," she says to the crowd, including a thoughtful Norton and Carter. "But I don't know for how long. That's as much certainty as anyone can give me. But I've got good news: I no longer have any fear of death." The onlookers clap politely, and the group's leader smiles encouragingly at Chloe, who gives an appreciative nod. And then the speech becomes the most gut-wrenching in recent memory.

"But... I am in a pretty lonely place. No one will have sex with me. ...I'm so close to the end and all I want is to get laid for the last time." She looks around wistfully, and then approaches the microphone closely. "I have pornographic movies in my apartment, and lubricants, and amyl nitrite..." She speaks until the group leader grabs the mic and sternly says, "Thank you, Chloe. Everyone, let's thank Chloe."

It's just that this scene, this minor scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the film, is more affecting than anything else presented during its 2-hour-plus running time. I've only watched it once, because I don't think I could take a second time. Rachel Singer has approximately two minutes of screen time, and in that frame she crafts a character at once funny, sad, horny, desperate, self-loathing, and deeply in denial. Not only does she illustrate the general point of the film's first third, but she epitomizes the theme of whitewashed futility that hangs over the film but is never fully analyzed. The way that those last few perverse words stumble out of her mouth to show how deeply intent this poor woman is to find someone, anyone, to share a moment of happiness with overshadows all of the unfounded psychobabble pouring out of Brad Pitt's mouth. At least Fincher had the foresight to pull the reins back in the scene and give Chloe a moment or two to summarize how horrible this world can be sometimes.

The only other mention of Chloe is much later in the film, when Helena Bonham Carter mentions that she's dead to Edward Norton after engaging in some more confusing sex. Norton doesn't really care. I do, because I know that means that she's not coming back for an encore, and that I've got another hour of Ed and Brad and a tub full of twist endings. Oh well. The Chloe scene in "Fight Club" should always be remembered for lending a human touch to a film too preoccupied with its ludicrous morals. If Judi Dench got an Oscar for acting really fucking British for ten minutes in "Shakespeare In Love", Rachel Singer, a mostly unknown character actor, deserves to at least be acknowledged. Great scene, great performance, shrug-worthy movie.

TV Me: "America's Psychic Challenge"

And I have seen Hell, and it was on Lifetime...

So I had a pretty shitty weekend. Went to the Eagles game (they got F'ed in the A), lost in fantasy football, saw "American Gangster". And although "Mighty Joe Young" is on TBS right now and things are improving, what I really wanna do is vent right now, so I'm going to turn my attention to the disturbing fascination the Lifetime (television for women) network has started to develop for psychic shows.

There was a terrific episode in season six of "South Park" that dealt with Jon Edward, who was the popular television psychic around that time. I won't go too deep into the episode, but it basically showed that Edward was using cold-reading techniques to trick people into believing he had a special power. At the end of the episode, he gets taken aboard an alien spaceship and brought to an intergalactic awards ceremony, where he wins the honor of "Biggest Douche in the Universe", to his whiny chagrin. The best part of the episode was actually the commentary on the DVD of season six; most of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's commentaries are uncensored and hysterical, but this one was particularly special. Parker explained why he believes that people like Jon Edward, who fake telepathy and profit off of the misplaced beliefs of others, are the absolute worst people in the entire world, and he was dead serious about it. Parker says something to the degree of, "there is nothing worse that you can do. Nothing."

I used to think that Parker was exaggerating, but after watching the first episode of "America's Psychic Challenge", now I'm not so sure. The show hurt me and offended me on every level. Usually the only show on Lifetime to do this is "The Nanny". Not anymore.

The basic premise of the show is simple and silly: group four psychics together and make them jump through hoops to see who is the most legitimately "psychic". Already the show is flawed to me. If you're, ya know, legitimately psychic, aren't you just COMPLETELY psychic? In other words, couldn't you just perform all of the activities the show has lined up without breaking a sweat because they all require simple psychic ability, which you apparently possess?

But no. With the use of some wacky voice-overs and tool host John Burke, "America's Psychic Challenge" inadvertantly disproves that none of its contestants are fa real. On the show's first episode, we meet blonde girl Jackie, bald dude Jamie, creepy lady Karyn, and bespectacled gal Zenobia, who all are 100% positive that they are psychic. However, they all fail the first exercise miserably. Burke takes them, like a douchebag, to an almost-empty hospital, and they have to use their powers to guess which one room out of thirty holds a person sitting in a chair. The correct room is 215, and I kept waiting for one of the psychics to walk into the hospital and casually say, "Duh, the guy's obviously in 215." Unforunately, all four contestants guess wrong, although bald dude Jamie is really really happy because he guessed 214, which gets him 10 points. Wait... what? But... he guessed the wrong room...

Later, the contestants are taken to a room with a big wall in the middle, and are challenged to guess which "celebrity" is behind it, using only their minds and a folder with a picture of the celebrity in it, which they cannot open. Okay. The "celebrity" is Lisa Williams, who happens to have her own psychic show on Lifetime! Suddenly I'm thinking, "Oh great, all of these idiots are gonna guess it right, because they're psychic and she's psychic and she'll obviously help them by sending them brain signals." But again I was wrong: not only did they not have to guess what specific celebrity was behind the wall, but all they had to do was vaguely describe this person. Things such as "The eye, I see something with an eye..." and "Something with music, they have some involvement with music" were said. Lisa Williams was impressed: "Yes, I WAS involved in some way with music!" she uttered, astonished. Creepy lady Karyn did not understand the test, so she got visibly frustrated and started standing very close to John Burke. She later professed a deep resentment for the test, begging for me to say, "Hate the player, not the game!" and my friends to eyeball me strangely.

I should at this point mention that, before each commercial break, us TV watchers were given our own psychic tests! One of them featured four face-down playing cards, and a voice-over asked, "Can you locate the jack of diamonds?" Another showed a woman walking down the street and the voice-over smugly prodded, "Where is this woman from? Washington, Minnesota, or New York?" The answers were revealed after the commercial break; my friend got the second one correct, so she left the room to pursue a career using her own psychic ability.

None of the preceding events on the show are very dumb, but none could be classified as offensive. It is unfortunate, then, that the show's third segment tested my faith in humanity as a whole. Like an idiot, Burke led the four psychics to the residence of the Martinez family, whose son had been killed in a drive-by shooting a few years earlier. The family decided that they wanted to reach out to the psychic community, as a sort of last resort to bring the boy's killer to justice. The challenge for the contestants (and I'm not making this up, I swear to you, all of these things happened) was to walk around the residence and use their psychic abilities to identify as much as they could about the death, about which they had been given no information. They each walked around the living room and front yard, closing their eyes and taking guesses about the nature of the death. Bespectacled Zenobia got the closest, saying that the death was a murder that had occurred in the yard, while the other three psychics were pretty much way off. The Martinez family, watching the psychics on a video screen, started tearing up with emotion. They liked Zenobia so much that they decided to bring her back for a private reading, which was (of course) captured for us to see. When asked about whether their son was okay in the afterlife, the confident Zenobia assured them that he was, and that he was very "proud of his family". The Martinez family then asked whether or not the killer would ever be brought to justice, and Zenobia said that she sees a courtroom in the future, and that progress would indeed be made. The family, fully relieved, hugged Zenobia and thanked her from the bottom of their hearts.

This scene made me start to agree with Trey Parker. I don't care if these lying nutjobs want to flaunt their psychic powers in childish little tests (that they couldn't even kind of pass), but why the HELL would you allow people trying to find a little more screen time tinker with the emotions of a family still grieving from the loss of their son? And why would you then broadcast this shit as Lifetime original entertainment?? This is the business of profiting off of the vulnerability of people grasping at straws for answers, and it's deeply shameful. Don't these people secretly know they can't talk to the dead, and that it's all been just an act? How can you do something like this?

After the challenge, two "winners" were crowned, and it was announced that they would move on to the quarterfinals of the show. I'm guessing that this process will be repeated until the show has found someone either legitimitely psychic and all-knowing, or really fucking good at guessing things. But for me, it's already down the drain. Lifetime (television for women), I don't care how many quips you allow Bea Arthur to release on your network, this is just inexcusable. "America's Psychic Challenge" isn't even fun to make fun of... it's just sad.

Although I do enjoy an occasional ribbing of host John Burke. Man, that guy's a dickwad!

TV Me: The Last Half-Hour of "The Hills Have Eyes"

Dude's way scary...

Warning: this post spoils the ending of "The Hill Have Eyes". If you are lame, read no further!

Last night I caught the last half-hour of "The Hills Have Eyes" on HBO, and the experience was a profound one. Before last night, I knew basically three things about "The Hills Have Eyes", and they are as follows:

1. People are trapped in what looks like the Grand Canyon
2. Mutants are attacking them
3. The hills have motherfucking eyes, man

I don't really know anything about the original "Eyes" (this one is apparently a remake) or the sequel that came out last March, and I'm okay with that. The 30 minutes I caught last night, which I presume made up the climax of the film, were so whacked-out and weird that I feel like I don't need any supplement to them, and that includes the entire beginning of the movie. I was able to piece together a few things: a lot of people have already died at the hands of mutants who sort of look like humans, except all of them have silly disabilities, like a droopy eye or the lack of a neck. They seem to enjoy killing humans, but I assume that they once were humans themselves? And they also seem to be real assholes -- just kind of always laughing sinisterly, or throwing axes at things -- which makes me wonder what this particular group of trapped humans did to them, if anything at all (look, don't actually answer these questions for me, because I don't care, and it's much more fun to guess).

Anyway, when I turned it on, the first thing I saw was a dude wearing glasses breathing really heavily. He seemed to be in a pristine suburban house, his face caked with blood, and he was trying to escape from a mutant who was really, really big, and whose height kept making me wonder why he wasn't spending his time more effectively by joining a mutant basketball team. The mutant was swinging an axe around, and Glasses Guy was running, but he kept falling down, or the mutant kept finding him! Under tables, behind doors... mutant guy just knew where to look! The mutant was about to kill Glasses Guy, but Glasses Guy suddenly drove a spike through mutant's foot, which hurt, and then proceeded to drive the axe into mutant's head, which was crowd-pleasing. Glasses Guy ran out of the house -- to search for a baby. A human baby.

Meanwhile, a teenage boy and a slightly older-looking girl were hanging out near a trailer full of dead bodies. This surprised me, but I soon found out that the dead bodies were their family. They walked away from the trailer for a second, and when they returned, their mom's body was gone! Older-looking girl started crying, while Teenage Boy went out to look for it (?), and told the girl to stay at the trailer (??) He was holding a handgun, which I found odd.

Right around here, there was a rare mutants-only conversation. A young mutant girl with sympathetic eye (the other one was kinda droopin') was taking care of the human baby, but an angry, redneck-looking mutant came into her room with an axe, ready to do some baby-choppin. He told her to get out of the room, and she did -- but not before making the old switcheroo between the baby and a pig (the baby had been under a blanket, for some reason). Needless to say, the redneck mutant was shocked, ugly, and upset, and went to find the little mutant girl with the heart of gold.

Cut to Glasses Guy, who was still looking for human baby, and couldn't find her. I remember him carrying a shotgun around a house that was empty except for a random mutant girl.

Teenage Boy -- oh, how naive you are! He went out to find his mom's body, and he DID find his mom's body -- being eaten by a mutant with a scraggly mutant beard! He got scared, ran away, bearded mutant chased him, Teenage Boy fired a few shots with his gun, and that did nothing. Teenage Boy ran back into the trailer with Slightly Older-Looking Girl, who at one point screamed really, really loudly. Bearded Mutant kept knocking on the trailer, but nobody answered! The boy and girl left the trailer through a window, and the trailer exploded, killing (...re-killing?) Bearded Mutant. Everything was okay.

Finally, FINALLY, Glasses Guy found the human baby, who was given to him by Sympathetic Mutant Girl. Unfortunately, Redneck Mutant had caught up with them, and attacked Glasses Guy. Glasses Guy and Redneck Mutant fought for a little while, before Glasses Guys kicked the shit out of him. GG turned his back... and Redneck Mutant got back up! And was aiming his shotgun at Glasses Guy! Sympathetic Mutant Girl ended up sacrificing herself to save him, making Redneck Mutant miss and fall off a cliff. The eyes of the hill... were officially blinded.

Glasses Guy and Human Baby met up with Teenage Boy and Slightly Older-Looking Girl, who were like, all hugging them. Before the credits rolled, a pair of binoculars were shown watching the reunion, which I guess set up the sequel.

A few thoughts about these 30 minutes:

1. Nothing was exciting or scary, there was just a lot of blood and screaming.
2. I was really, really glad when the humans ended up beating the mutants, but it made me wonder how there was ever a sequel to this. You lost, mutants! Don't you understand??
3. Almost every scene could have been better if "The Hills Have Eyes" had a killer soundtrack. I kept watching the carnage and thinking how cool it would be if, like, Dave Matthews' "Grave Digger" or Maroon 5's "Harder to Breathe" was playing.
4. Seriously, this movie sucks, but I feel like it would have been ten times worse if I had actually known what was specifically happening. Maybe all bad movies should be like that; just skip to the last half-hour, and appreciate the lack of a plot.
5. I wish the sequel had been called "The Hill Have Eyes 2: Now They Have Contact Lenses!"