A modified—but equally misleading—version of the ad ran in the New York Post today. While it doesn't say CNN is "No. 1, with more viewers than Fox and MSNBC," it says essentially the same thing—CNN is "#1 v. Fox News and MSNBC"—based on the same laughable metric of cumulative viewership that nobody pays attention to when buying ads.

We get that times are tough. News Corporation, the Post's parent company, posted a 60 percent decline in newspaper profits last quarter and a humiliating $203 million loss company-wide. So the Post will take any ad it can get, even one that its corporate cousin's spokeswoman is calling it a bald-faced lie first.

Note: We don't know that Irena Briganti, the Fox flack, called the ad "bullshit"—the Los Angeles Times rendered it as "[nonsense]" in the quote. But we still know it.

In the fine tradition of fake-collectible-monstrosities like the beautiful and respectful 9/11 plates, infomercial behemoths Telebrands has rolled out a once-in-a-lifetime stock of Michael Jackson "Thriller" lithographs for you to hang on your wall and proudly admire while you fluff your roses. Now that he's dead and all.

They're only $10! But because the demand is already so high, you can only buy two per order. So maybe you should apply for a few more credit cards and open a PO box or something so you can stock up, like you did on Beanie Babies. (Man, those things will never devalue).

The best part of the lithograph (and of the commercial)? That Michael's white suit is "as pure as his heart." Which is fancy infomercial speak for "buy this useless trinket that pays tacky tribute to someone who never molested anyone, please."

The ad is about Guantanamo Bay, and how Barack Obama is trying to close it, but Senate Democrats are all assholes who are now trying to block that. It is a legitimate point, that Senate Democrats are assholes, but how this helps the Republican party, to point out that all the major debates about governance in this country are happening on an intra-party basis completely excluding the so-called opposition, is unknown.

Also what the hell does this have to do with the Daisy ad?? They cut out the damn mushroom cloud so there is literally no message here beyond "a little girl can't decide something, and Harry Reid is a dick." But, you know, we probably shouldn't pay any attention to web ads, because they are only designed to be written about, not to be watched by humans.

Meanwhile, in yet more "Harry Reid is a dick" news, the Washington Post reports the startling news that hey there are already terrorists being held in prison in the US, alongside all the murderers in the supermax prisons. HARRY REID WILL NOT ALLOW CHARLIE MANSON TO LIVE AMONG US.

And, amusingly, the YouTube features Al's fairly succint explanation of the tax problem: his accountant fucked up. But that doesn't even matter because who will this video convince and what will it convince them to do? Franken already probably won his election by a couple votes and now it's tied up in court. Is this directed at a judge? A judge would probably not see this video and decide, based on that catchy tagline, to give some extra votes to Coleman as a reward for paying his taxes.

So, yeah, some video intern at the Minnesota Republican Party just had some free time, we guess. Al Franken sucks! Paying your taxes rules!

Nevertheless, here we have a Japanese ad for, uh, Volkswagens? Canary-yellow pith helmets? Oh, it's an ad for phones, we guess, Japanese phones, and Anderson directs Pitt in it as though the actor had just stepped off a Jacques Tati set. Aniston, your move. Might we suggest lining up David Lynch in a hallucinatory commercial for pachinko?

[Us]

[Via Radar]

Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.

Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!

This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.

So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.

Why did they put you on TV?

I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.

But really – you aren’t even an actor!

No I’m not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven’t heard of.

How did you get selected?

I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.

Are you interested in more acting?

Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun.

What’s with Windows Vista?

You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.

-The Real PC, Sean Siler

[via crunchgear]

While we're loathe to plug the film (in fact, we would sooner piss in our own mouths than watch it again) or its network, we acknowledge the vague intrigue of Lohan's pseudo-twin/stripper/victim antics among the IKWKM cultists out there. Here's hoping the torpedoed likes of Speed Racer and The Happening find this kind of love in their own pay-cable afterlives, perhaps on Starz soon-to-be-introduced sister channel Flopz.

• I Know Who Killed Me [Starz]

Baby Mama as Tina Fey Vehicle:

Baby Mama as a film In Which Amy Poehler Steals The Show:

Baby Mama as something even dudes will like (note the use of 40 Year Old Virgin star Romany Malco):

"He's finicky about scripts, mainly because he's so concerned about his voice and face being attached to the project...He's apparently so finicky that his demanded changes completely decimated a scheduled shoot in Latin America to get the campaign rolling."

This ad that Harrison shot for Kirin Beer sometime in the early `90s is the most disturbing celebrity endorsement we've seen since Diddy proclaimed his love for Proactiv. And after watching this monstrosity, we're left even more puzzled as to why Ford would give this oddball the thumbs-up but is fighting with the well-respected creative house BBDO over a series of spots to promote the least controversial cause of the moment. Sounds to us like ole Harrison might need some more green before he goes green.

• HARRISON FORD...COPYWRITER? [AgencySpy]

This is not mere self-mockery, or even Bay spinning his appeal. The ad is not a celebration of the epic, but Bay clearly intends it to be so. It's not just that Michael Bay "demands things to be awesome," but that he believes he can achieve this with explosions and constantly shouting at himself, "awesome!" He congratulates himself four times in 31 seconds. And for what? He's made some flames and a waterspout and bought a tiger. To Bay, this is what awesome means.

Don't say it's just a joke for a commercial. When Bay wanted to add character to the non-speaking car in Transformers, he made it talk through radio songs. To raise the tension in a movie where an asteroid is about to wipe out humankind, he added a father-redeems-daughter's-boyfriend scene. In space. This is a man who rewrote the bombing of Pearl Harbor so one man shot down the entire Japanese air force. Michael Bay's definition of awesome is the opposite of epic. It's 2 Fast 2 Furious. The only impressive things about Bay movies are how carefully he can build up for an obvious plot twist, then even more obviously not twist anything.

The ad also reveals the man's service to commercial interests, wherein entire plots are constructed around product placement and merchandising. Bay calls himself awesome, calls his work awesome (note that up to this point, no third party, except possibly a tiger, is credited with any awesomeness), then calls Verizon awesome, blessing it with his holy power. Like God, the awesomeness of Bay is axiomatic; it needs no defense, for Bay has declared it so.

Contrast with Wes Anderson, who elegantly parodied his style in an American Express ad that drew not only on self-reference but on the classic film Day for Night, the whole genre of arch drama, and filmmaking itself. He's shown as a sloppy spendthrift making a bad film. Someone completely unaware of Anderson could appreciate this ad. And he does it all without even showing the card.

Bay, though, attempts no self-parody. The idea that he'd blow up his swimming pool (I assume he's really installed explosives on the shallow end) is just a half-joke on the level of a Dane Cook "punchline," providing no self-deprecation; he tells you right away to think he is awesome. And even Bay, with the help of footage from his own movie and a giant Transformer, can't keep it up for more than half the ad's length; the second half hard-sells the product. Someone unaware of Bay could appreciate the Verizon ad — because Verizon didn't have enough confidence to sell the product using Bay's aura alone.

So the ad proves: Bay is powerless. He can only feed off the power of an already cataclysmic plot: Earth-destroying asteroid, earth-destroying robots, earth-destroying Japanese. He can't even convince me to switch Internet providers.