From USA Today:

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 79, who has had his share of rendezvous with pop culture, launches three projects today, including a rap video that features Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy and Quincy Jones.

Oh God.

The mere sight of the dusty husk of Aldrin wearing those sunglasses is enough to make me want to just stop trying at life.

To make matters worse, the humor vacuum that is FunnyOrDie.com put out a mockumentary making-of featurette about Aldrin’s single “Rocket Experience.” This would probably have been hilarious if it wasn’t, you know, real. It’s essentially five minutes of Snoop Dogg, Talib Kweli, and Quincy Jones pretending that the song isn’t completely awful.

Granted, Aldrin is also releasing an autobiography about the moon landing and his subsequent battle with alcoholism, but this is America. We all know that a book will always be trumped by a viral internet rap video.

(via Videogum)

Beautiful. A huge, cushioned phallus to stick between your breasts while you sleep. How did we ever function as a society before the Kush?

As one astute Youtube commenter mentioned, “you could wrap electric tape around a toilet paper roll and it would do the same thing.” And that’s a valid point. However, it wouldn’t be a Kush branded toilet paper roll wrapped in electric tape. You need to pay $55 for that. Check and mate.

You can visit the Kush website here. Unfortunately, they don’t have blogs written by the Kushes between the women’s breasts or character profiles or anything to that extent. No handwritten indie titles, either. Obviously the people at Kush have a lot to learn.

One thing I did find there, though, was an FAQ section. I thought the most obvious question would be “Why would I ever need this stupid thing?” Somehow, that one didn’t make it on the page. I did find this, though, which I thought was pretty funny:

Q. Is there an adjustment period for Kush?

A. Like knee pillows prescribed by orthopedic physicians and chiropractors, there may be a brief period of adjustment for the first two or three nights. However, most customers report being unaware that Kush is even there while sleeping!

Awesome. A slip resistant sleep-dildo that’s uncomfortable for two nights, and then you don’t even know it’s there. If breasts are so hard to deal with while sleeping, wouldn’t the point be to notice that the Kush is there?

Frankly, I’m feeling a little left out. If I can’t find a commercial for a nighttime cock sling by tomorrow, I’m going to have to take it to the streets. I’ll be damned if I don’t get to blow $55 on some kind of embarrassing sleeping genitalia related item.

What the hell was that?

Why would Tampax make a 12 minute long commercial that feels like a terrible, terrible sitcom? What was the point? Who are they even marketing to?

I had to dig deeper. It turns out there’s an entire Zach Johnson webpage. And the 12 minutes doesn’t even scratch the surface. There’s a video for each day. And a blog for each day. And a profile for every one of the non-characters in the ad.

I could be wrong, but this seems like a really insane misappropriation of funds. It’s like they figured that slapping a hand-drawn font on a tampon commercial would automatically make it Juno. What drunken executive okayed this?

Just in case this somehow becomes the future of advertising, I’ve decided to do KFC a solid and give them their own indie quirkfest ad campaign:

Garb Tooper is your average high schooler who wears a suit jacket or maybe sweat bands all the time for some reason. He’s chock full of pop culture references and does quirky things like… I don’t know… saves his dead skin flakes in a jar so that he can be cloned in the future. The reason? He’s quirky!

But Garb has a problem. He just can’t get full. So he wanders around with his inner monologue making comments about how he really loves gravy. And then ten minutes in, he walks into a KFC and dives into one of these:

Wait… that’s not right. I meant one of these:

Then maybe he takes a girl to a dance. Or better yet, he dances on a stage in front of the whole school for some reason. We can hammer that all out later.

Pure gold, people.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re interested in the whole hand drawn font thing, my friend John wrote a post about it here. Pretty interesting stuff.

Well guess what, you digital cable loving communists? According to MSNBC.com, you’re disenfranchising those who need analog television, nay, television in general, more than any other demographic in the United States of America today.

I’m talking, of course, about campers.

Anyone who has been camping will be familiar with this situation: You arrive at the camp site with your family in your RV (is there any other way to do it?), and you and your spouse spend a good half hour yelling at each other about how to properly back the vehicle up into the appropriate spot. Some names get thrown around: Bastard. Whore child. Pillow lover (one of those deeply personal insults that only your spouse would know to call you). You finally get camp set up. Now let me ask you one question:

Are you ready to enjoy the great outdoors?

Of course not. That’s not what camping is for. Camping is for spending all day just outside your RV sitting in lawn chairs and yelling at your kids for bothering the neighbors. And watching TV, of course.

Now I realize that the main complaint from these campers, I’m sorry, heroes, was that they could not get local weather forecasts easily without the use of their TVs. Well, I have a solution and it’s called the radio. Never heard of it? It’s like TV, but it just talks to you without the picture. I know. It’s wild.

Honestly, if there’s anyone to be irritated with here, it’s probably MSNBC. I’m sure they were just scrambling to report on any demographic that was upset about the digital conversion. Campers just happened to be the obscure, irrelevant group they landed on. Sorry, campers.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: How can I reduce relationships to a blindingly stupefying formula? Well, Steve’s here for you.

From CNN:

Steve says a woman needs to know how a man shows his love. It’s all about the “three P’s.”

“We profess, we provide and we protect,” he says. “A man has got to see where he fits into the providing and protecting role. If you’ve got everything, you can do everything, you’ve got your own car … you’ve got a guard dog and a handgun. The guy is thinking, ‘Where do I fit in here?’

“You’ve got to make a space for him to fit in so he can come in and do what men do.”

I know nothing turns me off like a woman owning a car. How am I supposed to feel if I can’t even profess that I would like to provide her with piggy back rides as her only means of transportation and protection?

This is making good sense to me. However, I feel as though I’m being treated as too much of an adult here. Can we make this a little more euphemistic and demeaning to my intelligence?

How important is sex in a relationship? Sex, or “the cookie” as Steve calls it in his book, is a major point of contention for many couples. If you don’t think it’s important to your man, Steve says you’re wrong.

“It’s critical,” he says. “It’s one of the three things that a man has to have. A man has to have love, support and the cookie. [If] anyone of those three things is missing in the relationship, he’s going to go get it somewhere else.”

There’s nothing better than relationship advice from a hackneyed, aging comedian.

Wrong. Dead wrong. It’s a lack of romance and the fact that they’re doing it more than their parents. Feel like a dummy yet?

This is all according to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who appeared on the Today Show (Don’t feel obligated to watch the whole thing. It’s pretty bad, but not “Ha ha” bad. Mostly, it’s just obnoxious).

Apparently, some Today Show executive said to himself, “It makes sense to have a health professional at a talk about teen sex, but what’s the next most logical decision? Of course! Jewish caricature!”

And thus Rabbi Shmuley made his way on to the airwaves. I really have a hard time believing that having written the “Kosher Sutra” gives him any kind of credentials as an expert on teen sex. Maybe Jewish comedy. Maybe.

You know what’s probably worse for teen girls’ self-esteem than sex? Having the boys tower above them while they sit. You know what else probably doesn’t reinforce positive attitudes? Feeding the white kid the coherent responses to all of the questions.

Maybe it’s time we stop caring so much about the psychological bogeymen attached to the issue of teen sex when there are so many other subtle reinforcements to negative behavior in teens.

And to Rabbi Shmuley: Stop talking. You’re de-valuing my Bar Mitzvah.

According to the Nielsen ratings (via the New York Times), you’re falling behind. Neither “Bachelorette” nor “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!” managed to get the number one spot. They were beat out by a rerun.

This makes sense because something like an old episode of Seinfeld isn’t the visual equivalent of putting a plastic bag over your head until you almost pass out, and then getting kicked in the crotch. So what beat them?

Really, America? The one with the fat kid and Charlie Sheen? There was nothing better to watch than a rerun of that?

Your TV owes you more. If it can’t provide you with anything better than a rerun of “Two and a Half Men,” then it doesn’t deserve a place in your home. Kick it to the curb so at least a family of swallows can nest in it. Think about the swallows.

For you’re sake, I’ve compiled a list of seven better things to watch than a rerun of “Two and a Half Men.”

1. Yourself, in a mirror- Clearly, if you’re watching “Two and a Half Men” reruns, you’ve let yourself go.
2. Your neighbor with a lawnmower- And if you do it from a window, you can pretend you’re Jimmy Stewart.
3. The sun- If you can be entertained by the fat kid, you’ve lost your sight privileges.
4. Porno- Fun alone, or with friends!
5. A leaf twitching in the breeze- I’m not saying this one is particularly entertaining, but I promise it will never look like Charlie Sheen or say the words “numb nuts” or “knucklehead.”
6. Your neighbor with his/her spouse- And if you do it from a window, you can pretend you’re Jimmy Stewart.
7. I don’t know… a rock – Honestly, I’m not sure if you need me for this list. Stop being an idiot. Stop watching the show.

You’re welcome.

I turn on my TV, expecting the box to vomit advertisements directly in my face. Instead, I have to watch Mario Lopez pretend he has more charisma than a cabbage while hawking his book on a show about vapid, rust colored sock puppets.

I’m confused! How am I supposed to know to buy his book if he doesn’t show it to me during a commercial break? And the cuts are so slow I need to snort lines of Ritalin just to focus! Can’t someone please dumb it down for me?

From Yahoo News:

[Twitter] said Monday it has teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the site, which invites 140-character postings from members around the world.

The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format.

Ah, there’s that injection of stupidity I needed.

It’s got everything I’ve ever wanted. Twitter. Unscripted. Members. Celebrity Stalking. Why, there are enough buzz words here to keep me excited until long after the show has been canceled.

Maybe each episode can have 140 different contestants. That way, we only have to spend an average of 12.85 seconds with each contestant during a half hour block. Make them each chase five different celebrities, and you have a show where the cuts are so fast that its seizure-inducing powers would rival Dragonball Z.

Screw it. The Twitter show would probably still be a little too smart for me anyway. I propose we just have Lauren Conrad eat red carpet footage, and then we can smear her star studded feces across the air waves. TV gold.

He reached in his pocket for a piece of bubblegum to clear the stale taste of booze and loneliness. As he unwrapped the bright pink cube, he was greeted by a colorful comic with an even more colorful cast of characters:

My God! he thought to himself. A charming young lad with an eye patch? Women with sunglasses? A mysterious figure with an identity obscured by a turtleneck? I must make a film!

And so the horrible, horrible idea was born to make a Bazooka Joe movie. But who would write it?

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Michael Eisner and his Tornante Co. have tapped newcomer Mark Hammer to pen a feature adaptation of “Bazooka Joe,” the comic strip that comes with Bazooka bubble gum.

Hammer, who this weekend is attending the graduation ceremony at Orange County’s Chapman University, where he studied film, wrote a spec titled “Sonny Takes to Peru,” which made the studio rounds but ultimately did not sell.

That spec, however, turned into a strong writing sample that got him into meetings as well as representation at management outfit the Safran Co. Execs at Tornante, seeking to fill their open writing assignment, liked the spec and brought in Hammer, who gave them his winning take.

Poor, misguided Mark Hammer. Doomed to ruin his career for the notoriously unfunny, ancient evil that is Bazooka Joe.

Puppy on a treadmill! I want to spend $48 billion on it!

According to the New York Times, this is how much pet owners spent on their animals in 2008. The article provides us with some new pet gadgets that I’ve decided to add a little perspective to.

Litter-Robot

How many times have you said to yourself, “I want a cat, but I also want a $300 plastic globe for it to shit in”? The Litter-Robot is here for you! And while your cat is making its precious business, you can relax knowing that somewhere in India, someone is dying of cholera because there’s raw sewage in their drinking water.

Zoombak

It’s GPS for your dog! You too can spend $100 to know exactly in what part of the lawn your dog is alternately sleeping and eating grass. You know who would probably also like GPS? The African man who is racing through the jungle to get to the nearest hospital before his innards are liquidated by Ebola.

And my personal favorite, the earlier pictured Jog A Dog

Obesity and its related illnesses are at an all time low. Frankly, Americans are just too in shape to walk their dogs. Thankfully, you can spend $1200 to never walk your dog again. Sit back and relax as your dog whimpers and scrambles to stay standing on this pint sized conveyor belt.

So go ahead. Spend several hundred dollars on a practically useless chunk of plastic for your pets. And in regards to the children of South America living out of dumpsters: Let them eat garbage.