Hi, guys. Long time no whine. I’m just popping in here to rant briefly about how much I hate this ad the cumbersomely named New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes is running against Governor Paterson (NEW JERSEY!)’s proposed tax on bottled drinks like soda and juice.

Oh my Christ on a tiny little crutch. Seriously, she might as well be saying, “How dare you infringe on my right to feed my child highly processed corn sugar in liquid form! Respect mah authoritah!”

Now, I don’t watch a lot of commercials. I have a tifaux, after all. And even though my new HD box (YEEEEESSSSS, HD BOX) is kind of glitchy and bitchy and likes to randomly NOT RECORD THE SOUP, I still record almost everything and watch it at least a little delayed. But I do occasionally watch live TV. Take, for instance, last Sunday, when I watched like seventeen consecutive hours of USA’s Law & Order: SVU Ripped From the Headlines marathon. And I saw that commercial like thirty times. I was ready to punch that whingeing hag by the end of it. God, lady. Suck it the fuck up. Don’t make me list all the things I can see in that kitchen of yours that indicate you can afford an extra five frigging bucks a week. Give your kid water. Mix your whiskey with seltzer, like I do. Brew your own damn iced tea. Or just save up the bottles and get the deposits back. Voilà, taxes canceled out.

And tell the American Beverage Association, which paid for that ad, to shove it. Same to the state of Iowa, with their billion dollars a year in corn subsidies.

P.S. Friends, I promise my shameful hiatus will end soon. I plan to write about Justified and In Plain Sight quite soon, and at the end of the month the fourth season of Friday Night Lights will begin airing on NBC, and I’ll start up the recaps again. Sorry for sucking lately.

Can you hear it? Friends, can you? The fourth season of Friday Night Lights is coming to DirecTV at the end of the month, and I AM SO EXCITED I CAN HARDLY STAND IT. I have missed everyone so much! Coach! Mrs. Coach! Tim Riggins! Matt Saracen! Julie, now that she’s not acting like an asshole all the time! All those other people! Hell, I’ve missed Buddy Garrity.

If you’ve also missed the good people of Dillon, treat yourselves to this splendid behind-the-scenes video from the production of a promo (yeah, A PROMO, that is how hard up I am) for the fourth season.

Visually it reminds me of last year’s promos, but with, you know, more exploding. It’s just so blissful to see everyone again, especially three minutes in when Tim Riggins Taylor Kitsch (yes, I know Tim Riggins is a fictional character. I’m working on accepting that) just wanders through the frame. He’s so pretty.

If you’re watching carefully, you’ll see one of the technical fellows showing off the pre-visualization of the spot on a laptop, and I’m pretty sure the pre-viz we see is of the Tim Riggins scene. In which he looks like Prince Valiant, because that hair, it just does not translate to animation. I laughed.

Friday Night Lights returns to DirecTV Oct. 28. I will be writing about it every week here at TiFaux (and I’m saying that so you all hold me to it). Clear eyes, full hearts.

As if I didn’t already feel an overwhelming urge to get a cute little pup, this commercial only makes things worse. Plus, it’s pretty funny.

This is the new commercial going around where some gymnast repeatedly catches a laptop in his ass crack to prove just how thin and portable it is.

And I understand why they chose this campaign. As with all my electronics purchases, if I can’t comfortably lodge it in my anus then I’m going to keep looking around.

On the serious, though, this really doesn’t make me want to buy their computer. But it is getting schmucks with blogs (like me) to write about them on the internet, so I guess any publicity is good publicity, right?

I want to buy one of these, put it on a rented pick-up truck and have a friend drive me around town as I shake my ass at all of the traffic behind me.

Below, find a ridiculous and sweet clip I came across for The Red House — a North Carolina furniture store that provides quality furniture for both black people and white people.

The clip is clearly too outlandish to be for real. And it is.  The two minds behind it are named Rhett and Link — who created a series of outlandish local commercials.  But the stiff, frightened-looking cast are what sells the whole production.

Enjoy.

And if you’re still curious, here’s a .

Ever worried that you just might wake up and find yourself in a country where everyone is polite and there’s universal health care?

Me too.  Spooky.

The Canadian government, though, has announced that they are grandfathering citizenship to legions of foreigners. Last month, a law restored Canadian nationality to people forced to renounce it when they became citizens of another country. The law also extends to their children.

As such, the government has been running this cute “Waking Up Canadian” ad. Take a look.

Remember that time gay marriage became legal in Iowa and Vermont and then all the Christian children across the country became gay, gay homosexuals?

Yeah, that was awesome.

You may not have seen it, but there’s a silly ad put out by the usual jokesters in the right wing called The Gathering Storm.  It’s gotten a lot of attention because of how ridiculous it is (over the top acting and rhetoric) and, thus, has become the target of a lot of inspired parodies.  There’s been an “It’s Raining Men” parody, etc.

Here’s a pretty good one, though, that features Alicia Silverstone, Jane Lynch, Lance Bass, George Takei and more.

Take a gander.

Little Asian children are my kryptonite — against them I am powerless.  I am guessing you are too.

Microsoft knows this, and now has a handy tool in their belt in the fight against those insufferably smarmy “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials.

I’m definitely someone who watches the Super Bowl more for the ads than for the game. My verdict for this year: bummer! So many ads about job-hunting services, free breakfasts, and cars that you can give back if you lose your job. I’d give it a C+ overall–and that’s because there were a lot of movie trailers bringing up the average.

I’d say, on the whole, NBC got it right. Or NBC stars, I should say. Their ads were funny–and not in that weird way that Starbursts ads THINK they’re funny when they’re really not (see also: the “grease monkey” commercial). And they managed to be funny without really talking about how the fabric of our society is unraveling around us. Take, for instance, the MacGruber ad Jesse already mentioned:

Two more of my favorites, starring Alec Baldwin and Conan O’Brien, after the jump: