I recently saw a new Nike commercial featuring Lance Armstrong where he puts the critics to rest and sets the record straight about who he really rides for. As a fellow survivor, I understand this determination. I also understand how the experience can lead you to care less about what critics think and focus more on what can be done and what those actions truly mean.

#4: Bud Light Meeting
Great ad placed in a corporate setting. How do we save money? Let’s find out!

#3: CareerBuilder.com: Tips
Hilarious ad for CareerBuilder. Seems that since the job market is slow that it is a prime time to strike with the job placement website.

#2: Cash4gold.com
This one was tough. Between Cash4Gold.com and Careerbuilder.com I’d say that they were pretty close in competition but the addition of Ed McMahon and MC Hammer (basically) making fun of themselves just put this one over the top for me. You gotta love Ed looking at his solid gold toilet and saying, “Gooddbye Old Friend” Or how about MC Hammer saying he could send in his gold sledge hammer! Another thing that put it over for me was the fact that I thought it was a real commercial. Ed’s not doing well financially, that’s been well documented, so seeing him in a commercial like this (making light of said situation) just makes it even better! Here it is:

#1: Pepsi: Refresh Anthem
By far my favorite of the night. The Pepsi Refresh Anthem featuring Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” off the “Planet Waves” album. Not only is it one of my favorite renditions of “Forever Young” but the commercial itself is just awesome, mixing old and new with clips of Bruce Lee, John Belushi, and Bob Dylan along side with Will I Am from The Black-Eyed Peas, Jack Black and a little tribute to our fighting forces overseas. And even though it’s a Pepsi commercial it gave me a great feeling and just made the overall ad more memorable. *Note: Planet Waves rendition of Forever Young does not include rap by Will I Am… Just throwing that out there in case I get any Dylan haters. Check it out!

So those are my top picks for Super Bowl commercials this year. They weren’t the best ever, but certainly better than most that I’ve seen over the past couple years. Also, I didn’t include any of the 3D commercials since you needed the glasses to really appreciate them. While they were good and entertaining… and yes, those glasses worked, they were over produced, especially for the Super Bowl and required the glasses… in other words, they had an unfair advantage so I didn’t include them.

A few weeks back I had heard that Bruce Springsteen was going to be performing for the halftime show. I was very psyched to see The Boss bring some good music back to the Super Bowl Halftime Show. The NFL has tried for a number of years to get a valid and entertaining performer for the show. Recent memory brings Prince to mind, however I think that the response for Springsteen was much better. I had my doubts, but seeing the crowd sing the old favorites and seeing how they reacted to him made me think twice. The entire E-Street band was on stage and Bruce began with a tune that I didn’t recognize but turned out to be “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”. He later dropped into “Working On A Dream” as the 3rd song. The obvious highlights of the show were the second and last song, “Born To Run” and “Glory Days” respectively. It’s understandable why he would put some less-popular tracks or newer tracks into the mix, but I am of the opinion that when you have such a huge career and some many popular songs to pull from, why not just stick to the standards? I’ll be honest, the first and third song did nothing for me, but as soon as I heard the familiar riffs of Born to Run and Glory Days, I immediately perked up. In my opinion, it was a great halftime show. Well done, Boss… Give it up for the legend! In addition to the halftime show… well ahead of it actually were the three “Real 3D” movie and show trailers that followed the end of the second half. I had ordered some 3D glasses to see these commercials, one being for the new movie “Monsters Vs Aliens”. I was very surprised at how well the glasses worked and the quality of the commercials themselves. Understandably so I would think since I haven’t seen a 3D movie or had 3D glasses since I was in the single digits. (I do remember when TNT showed “Hondo” in 3D, I think I was in middle school, but I never watched it… Sorry, Duke) Anyway, the halftime show was worth sitting through this year, at least I would say it was. =)

The second half began and by the 4th quarter the Cardinals had the Steelers sweating. The Arizona Cardinals came back from one of the greatest deficits in Super Bowl history… actually, THE greatest deficit in Super Bowl history. The only problem, they didn’t win. It was truly a nail biter at the end of the game. The quiet Larry Fitzgerald sprung to life in the 4th picking up 2 very much needed touchdowns and putting the Steelers behind 20-23. The Cards began celebrating early but the Steelers weren’t phased. With the focus of a laser, Roethlisberger took the Steeler offense into the red zone paired with the 2 incredible receptions from Santonio Holmes and the final 3rd reception for a Pittsburgh game winning touchdown! With the good extra point the score was now 27-23 requiring the Cardinals to make a final touchdown with only seconds remaining on the clock. Unfortunately for the Arizona Cardinals, there was no coming back and the Pittsburgh Steelers clenched their sixth Super Bowl title, the most in NFL history. It was definitely one of the best Super Bowl games I have seen and the commercials weren’t too bad either, but that’s another post for later!

Okay, so what’s the point?! Well, a new season of “Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen” premiers this Thursday and Maria and I are psyched! We already have our Tuesdays and Wednesdays planned with the new American Idol season, but that has been lackluster thus far so we’ll see how long that last. And while we wait for new seasons of Rescue Me, Sons Of Anarchy and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to come on, we’ll hopefully have a good season of Hell’s Kitchen to watch. The other news in Ramsay-world and subsequently the real reason I am writing this post is the recent news about his restaurants and how the financial crisis is hitting him as well. Turns out that Ramsay’s flagship restaurant, Foxtrot Oscar, is now closing for 2 days out of the week and his two other London-based restaurants are for sale. He apparently also owes about two years in back taxes… Looks like Gordon could use the help of the newest addition to the FOX line-up, “Financial Nightmares” where a Gordon Ramsay-like character belittles and berates Gordon for his poor financial situation and teaches him how to pay his bills and write checks. (this idea is now my intellectual property, FOX, please contact me to discuss the payment for this idea.)

If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a woman who came in with a folder full of “songs she wrote this year” as well as diagrams and “stuff off the internet” of various vocal chord images and structures, human anatomy and the best part about it was that she couldn’t pronounce a single bit of it. Her outfit was just as bad. It looked as if she came right off the street (as if she’d been living there) with her big coat, ripped jeans and the knee-high black boots which the jeans were tucked into. When interviewed by Seacrest she called the Trachea (tray-key-ah), “TRAYSHEEA”! Maria and I rolled laughing! “Oh my god, did she actually say that?” Not only did she say it, but she meant every word of it. After Seacrest corrected her, she corrected him back by once again calling it the “TRAYSHEEA”. Other nice faux pas included her referring to the Larynx (lair-inks), as the “LARNIX” and uses of the prefix “mis” in just about every word where it’s not appropriate. Overall I would say the night was pretty weak. There are many more mediocre singers and “performers” getting through. I’m not sure what this says about American Idol… I do know what it says for my prediction… SPOT ON! so far. For the folks not aware of the Larynx joke… man I hope you know why we’re making such a big deal about it… Here is some information about the Larynx:

The larynx (plural larynges), colloquially known as the voicebox, is an organ in the neck of mammals involved in protection of the trachea and sound production. The larynx houses the vocal folds, and is situated just below where the tract of the pharynx splits into the trachea and the esophagus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larynx

When asked last night if I was an Eagles fan, I replied, “Yep, sure am.”

When the response was, “Wow, I feel sorry for ya, man. Why?”

As Kevin Curtis made the 50 yard reception giving the birds much needed life, I said, “That’s why, ups and downs, man, ups and downs. It’s always interesting with Philly.”

I have been doing some research on this for a while… since I began the new job search back in July. Locally we have an Amtrak train station that goes down to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. It looks like a pretty simple and straight forward way to travel down there and you can purchase a monthly pass to use the train as well. The train stops a few times along the way, so if the train ends up working out, Maria and I could POTENTIALLY find a new place somewhere close to a station on the way and cut my time down even further… OR I could just drive at that point. But that is fairly far in the future and I’m not gonna worry so much about that. ANYway according to the schedule it looks like  I’d be getting up a bit earlier and coming home a bit later… I have no problem with that because I see the time on the train being a little more relaxing and giving me more time to prep. I’d be able to get online if I got a WIFI card or went through my phone or just nap if I really needed to… though I doubt I’d ever be that comfortable by myself to do that. So according to Amtrak, I could potentially leave at 7:00 or 7:55 and get into Philadelphia around 8:30 – 9:15 respectively. If I’m lucky enough to find a job within walking distance from the station I won’t have too much else to worry about. If not I may have to look into the subway system in order to get me from point B to point C. Assuming that I would work a 9-5 the morning schedule could work out pretty well. Coming home would be another scheduling hassle. Depending on what time I would be able to leave its a very solid possibility that I wouldn’t be back in town until close to 7pm and then would have to drive home. Currently we aren’t all that far from the train station which makes this idea even more tempting. I think I could handle the schedule especially if I was getting paid better than I am now. The positions I have viewed so far look like they pay pretty well and would cover any extra expenses I may incur.

One of the largest expenses I think that I would encounter with this would be the monthly pass I would want to purchase. Currently the unlimited monthly price on a ticket is $253. Now this seems like a ridiculous amount of money to pay at first but after taking a minute to analyze what I would be paying in gas alone… Now that we have somewhat stabilized the gas crisis and we’re not paying $4 a gallon (and hopefully we won’t have to) I find that I’m spending about $20 to fill the tank. Driving back and forth to Maria’s friend’s house alone kicks about 1/4 or more of a tank and that’s not even right downtown. Last time I drove down for an interview I had to stop on the way home to fill up so there is definitely a good bit of gas being blown on each trip. I figure I will be refilling the tank every couple days spending around $50-$60 per week. Multiply that by 4 weeks, sometimes 5, and you are looking at a monthly gas expense of $200-$240. Add in wear and tear on my car and the 160+ miles per day that I would be putting on it if I drove, my mental anguish, parking fees downtown, etc… and you can see that the $253 a month for a train pass isn’t so bad after all.

So now the only thing to do is put this theory into action. We shall see how that works out!

Oh yeah, by the way… the title, some people will recognize it from The Simpsons as none other than Mr. Ralph Wiggum. “Yes, Ralph, I choo-choo-choose you.”

But enough of Kara…KA-RA, KAR-A… who gives a rip, really? Let’s talk about these people! Okay first off there were some talented singers in there. The blind guy was pretty cool… You have to chuckle at Ryan Seacrest when the blind guy came out and he tries to high-five the dude. The “out of the closet” fellow looked like a buddy of mine but could certainly sing well. One of the stand outs as far as the first episode was the pink haired, punky looking gal, Emily, who I think sang “Barracuda” by Heart. Great song and in my opinion a great audition. Plus she is in a band and has some experience. She could potentially be the next “rocker” chick on Idol, however we know from the last 7 years that the “rocker” chick never makes it.

The weirdos were definitely out in force as well. Starting with the wannabe rock star. I can only imagine this guys life after that was on last night. I think that the term “POSER” really fits here. I mean this guy was the epitome of poser. Never trained to sing, never put any work into a career except buying the rock star gear and dressing like a wanker. I felt bad for this dude and THEN he started to beg. Nothing worse than a bad signer begging to be on American Idol… well, except for BEING that singer. Michael Gurr was the Adam’s family looking guy with a very interesting voice. I don’t think that I could explain the sound, but Maria and I were laughing our butts off when he came on! The biggest flop of last night was the “soon-to-be-famous-for-nothing” bikini girl with the horribly nasal voice. She made it through with the help of Randy and Simon but was totally oblivious to the joke. Paula and Kara were appalled as they should have been but I really didn’t need to see Kara stand up and start scattin back and forth with the bikini bimbo to see who really has the best pipes. WE KNOW this chick can’t sing, don’t make it worse by looking as bad as the contestant (just a thought). Overall, I guess we both enjoyed it, but we are definitely looking forward to tonight’s episode and the non-stop train wreck that is American Idol.