Another Half Minute

Well, the magic is back. And of course by magic I mean my own insanity mixed with an obsession with television that manifests itself in writing and music. It all came full circle while watching the Penguins triumph over the Red Wings (in yo face!!), driving me to write this.

The way in which it came full circle was that while I was watching, a new commercial for Olive Garden came on (or at least new to me) and it contained within it the actress that I started off One Half Minute with, who at that time I knew from commercials for Volkswagen, Taco Bell and Progressive. I still don't know the name of the actress, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's the same blond woman in all of them.

This goes further than that, though, and moves beyond just the playoff commercials. Let me begin a few years ago when I was in New York for the CMJ Music Marathon as a "journalist." While I was there, I spotted an actress who I couldn't place. That must have been 2005 or '06, so three or four years ago. When I saw this woman, we made eye contact. I looked away and then did a slight double take, realizing that I recognized her, but couldn't figure out why. She returned my double take, recognizing my look of recognition and smiled slightly before saying good bye to the people she was with and then moving along her way. I've kept that visual exchange in my head for those three or four years, waiting to see the woman on TV so that I could figure out who she was.

To explain further, it's like last night watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights and seeing the actor Matthew Porretta and not being able to think of what I knew him from. Then it hit me, he was Dan Rubin, Andrea Zuckerman's first college romance from Beverly Hills, 90210, which of course is my favorite show of all time. In fact, recently I've been telling people that it's my religion. They think I'm joking.

In the case of the woman from New York, however, that feeling of not knowing where I knew her from lasted for years. But I got my "aha" moment the other day. Late at night, I turned on the TV to wind down before bed and found a movie called The Anniversary Party. The description was something along the lines of "Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh cowrote this star-studded comedy about a debaucherous anniversary party" or such. Seemed like a good pick for the time and place. I happened to tune in during the climax of the movie, though, which is actually pretty intense and depressing. It still served well for me, however.

One of the first people I saw was John C. Reilly, and since I mention him, let me give a quick shout out to Dr. Steve Brule (Reilly's recurring character in Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job). "Sweet Berry Wine! For Your Health!" The next person to come into the shot was a woman wearing only a bikini bottom, and for that reason I didn't realize for a few seconds that it was the woman I saw in New York. So, of course I watched the movie to its close and found in the credits that I had spotted Jane Adams, who has been in numerous movies over the years. I'm still not sure if there was a particular role I was thinking of when I saw her, but in looking at her IMDb profile, I see that she's in The Wackness, which I've been told by a few people contains a line from Mary-Kate Olson saying that she was just watching the 90210 episode where Brandon takes U4EA, pronounced "euphoria" (the episode itself is actually called "U4EA" as well). Classic episode that I've already sampled a few times.

With that out of the way, let's move to my next order of business, which revolves around the new ad campaign for the search engine, Bing. If you're familiar with these new commercials, then you'll know that they're total freak outs. There are two or so which consist of one person asking another person a question and the person answers with a spate of phrases tangentially related to the question. Then it makes some comment about search overload syndrome and brings up the Bing logo.

Those two are okay, but there are two distinct ones that I've watched with other people that never fail to make people stare at the screen with that look in their eyes that says, "What the hell is going on?!" The first one is very similar to the ones I describe in the last paragraph, except that rather than only two people being involved, it's a cut up collage of maybe eight scenes of people who look possessed and are spouting off a stream-of-conciousness barrage of semi-related phrases. The commercial cuts between them in rapid succession making it absolutely impossible to follow what's going on.

The second one starts like another commercial and then speeds up like fast forwarding TiVo through a bunch of other recognizable commercials, but it looks distinctly different from how it looks when we record programs and fast forward through the commercials. When I saw this one for the first time, I was holding the remote and my roommate, eyes still fixed to the TV, asked me, "John, what'd you do?" I had already made mention of the previous Bing commercials and how they were effective, so when the Bing logo came up at the end, it was like, "Oh, you got me again."

Now, these commercials are interesting and effective for a couple reasons aside from their entertainment value, although I just read the other day in an article that a lot of people despise these commercials (which is actually still considered interesting and effective in my book). The first thing I'd like to note is that they're shown at least once a commercial break during my two nightly programs, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. However, in watching the Stanley Cup finals on NBC I didn't see one commercial for them.

I believe that I can share some insight into this as a huge fan of being in focus groups. It's no secret that The Daily Show has a coveted demographic (18-30) in the palm of Jon Stewart's hand; guests mention it all the time when they come on the show. Being part of that demographic, a fan of the show and a user of OnDemand and recordable TV, advertisers are desperate to know how I can be reached through television advertising as a consumer. How do you reach a generation of short attention-spanned consumers who fast forward through all the commercials that you put in their place?

The answer: Bing commercials. They've taken an approach that completely exploits that short attention span and pushes it to the point of insanity, insanity that I can relate to as well as be entertained by. So far that also goes for the people around my age with whom I've watched these commercials. Well, speaking of short attention span entertainment pushed to the point of insanity, I hope you've enjoyed this manic episode of mentally blended TV-watching. I'm out. Peace.