Best and Worst Commercials currently on Television:

Best: Starbucks Frappucino featuring Stacey Rumplestein and the four black men singing a capella. If you haven't seen it, you can catch it regularly during Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

The premise is this, for those of you who do not have cable or do have better things to do: In an office, you see Stacey walk from her cubicle to the office refridgerator, out of which she takes her Starbucks Frappucino. When she takes a sip, she's surrounded by a group of black men dresed like a Barber Shop Quartet. They ever-so-politely stop the people who were about to bother her with their insignificant needs in the following song:

"This is Stacey Rumplestein.
It's Stacey's time to clear her mind.
So, step off Bob. Expense reports can wait.
Larry, she's not interested in a second date. (No, no, no no noooo)
This is Stacey's tiiiiiime."

The promise of a group of charming singing bodyguards stopping people from annoying me in the course of my work day almost makes me want to brave my life-long hatred of coffee.


Worst: McDonald's commercial featuring an unusually cruel, and seemingly delusional, black woman denying her Chicken Selects to a group of imaginary children. I don't know this one by heart, but one line that really stands out at me is when she says "Momma loves you, but you need to back away from my chicken." speaking, of course, to the Kitchen sink. It's a sad world we live in.

I haven't seen it too much, but it annoys me. It's part of a series of commercials in which this same Lady is constantly eating her Chicken Selects and denying anybody else a piece-- another in the series features s a geeky white guy in an office yelling at people in the lunch room who aren't really there. A mother who's imagining her children and a boy who sees dead people...these are less wholesome commercials and more the bastardized plots of some recent horror flicks.

This is really a disappointment, because McDonald's, I think, had really hit a home run with those "da-da da da-daaaa, I'm lovin' it"commericals. Everytime I heard any group of notes that sounded even vaguely like those, I went out and bought a ten piece nugget and fries. Indeed, my pants size is in direct correlation with McDonald's Dow Jones rating. Use this information wisely.


On with it.