adrian is rad

I’ve seen a lot of World Cup commercials, both in SA and then online from people sending them to me. Here are some of my favorites.

Easily my favorite is the Puma ‘Journey’ one, previously mentioned, shot on film and put to a soundtrack of Gnarles Barkley. Absolutely gorgeous:

I like the concept and idea behind BBC’s ‘Rainbow Nation’ commercial:

Nike has quite a well-produced but frantic commercial in ‘Write the Future’:

More after the jump.

(more…)

This ad is on SA TV quite a bit. I think it’s pretty funny. What’s funnier than a guy dancing to “Single Ladies”?

There’s also the flash dance version of “Single Ladies” if you like that sort of thing. (And that reminds me of the Belgian train station version of a Sound of Music.)

And another ad that I always laugh at is this one that’s on here as well as US TV:

Talk about Afrigadget,

You can buy the book here, William Kamkwamba, who was then about 14, made a windmill to provide power for his family based on a picture in a library book. A pretty good interview with him above.

(Kamkwamba is now in school in Jo’burg.)

I thought this blog version of what Doogie Howser types at the end of the show is funny.

Natalie pointed out that Hulu has all the episodes of Doogie Howser.

That’s not true, actually. But it might be some day.

I’ve been watching a fair amount of Jeopardy[1] recently. It’s one of the few shows I devote all my attention to; no emailing or blogging while watching, like I do with most shows. I play along–who doesn’t? I’ve been doing decently every day. I haven’t been keeping tracking of my score, but I feel like–in the comfort of my home and without needing to buzz in, mind you–that I’ve been holding my own. I’ve been feeling like I should try out for the show at some point.

The issue is the gaps in my knowledge. For every science or music category I run, there’s a Shakespeare or art category that I know zero or one question on. Ken Jennings, in his book Brainiac brings up studying for categories like these. It becomes a practice of memorization, of connecting words together that doesn’t have any other meaning or context. I like knowing trivia, but I’m not sure I’d like to know it in this way.

I day dreamed today about how to best make a practice buzzer, incidentally. Yeah, that’s the sort of thing I daydream about.

[1] Part of the reason why, oddly enough, is that my roommate got an HD tv and we don’t get all our channels in HD so I tend to watch the ones that are a little more.

This is pretty funny.

I laughed a lot at the first of these videos and then the follow-up videos wer pretty good, too.

HD TV commercials are funny: they try to demonstrate that their picture is better despite the fact that you’re (probably[1]) viewing it on a TV that can’t actually show any of the advantages.

[1] And if you’re viewing it on a TV that can show the advertised TV’s great picture, then their TV isn’t better than yours.

watch Teen Jeopardy. It’s easy.

I think I missed one clue in today’s Double Jeopardy round.

You can get more channels without any extra cost. 3 channels from one PBS affiliate! Two from the ABC affiliate!

But here’s the thing, on the secondary channels, they show the stuff that’s not good enough to put on the main channel. Given what’s on the main channel is crap, this stuff is a few levels up on the crap ladder.

The strangest alternative-Super-Bowl TV ever had to have been Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. Did anyone see this?

There have been Bud Bowls and Celebrity Death Matches, but putting a bunch of puppies (and kitties, for the half-time show) on a small field-looking play area and filming them? That’s absurd.

Also, we missed at least one or two plays of the actual Super Bowl watching it.

[Yes, I’m consciously stealing the title.]

Lucerne (Safeway’s house brand) now has a green tea light yogurt. It’s really good. I’ve been enjoying it frequently. The mango green tea is also good, but I’d give the peach green tea flavor a skip.

Fight Quest is a pretty fascinating show. I caught a couple episodes of it today. Two guys travel to different regions of the globe to learn regional martial arts styles. They have 5 days of intense training and then they have to fight a skilled fighter of the style. I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating; maybe it’s seeing these guys push themselves to the limit.