Sometimes a commercial is just a commercial, and other times … it’s not. While watching Sunday Night Football (aka “Sunday Night Is Football Night in America,” or SNIFNIA for short), I started thinking, and thinking turned into clicking my YouTube search bar, and that turned into this post.
1.
Field Generals – Madden 08
Somehow this commercial makes me antsy for Season 2 of Friday Night Lights. Maybe it’s the music, the sweeping 6/8 instrumentals. Maybe it’s the narration: “Somewhere along the way you lost a step. You swapped two-a-days for eight-hour days. You surrendered tackles for timecards.” It could even be the cheesy pastiche of American everydaymen wasting away their sad-sack lives in front of the game console.
Whatever it is, it makes me wish I were actually any good at Madden, and could join in the carnival of self-indulgence. I played it once while drunk off my face, and could not figure out how to throw the ball. I’m pretty sure I had Rex Grossman trying to run the ball on every play, which, given the current state of his ball handling, is something that should be kept a fantasy.
2.
Leave Nothing – Nike
This music is from Last of the Mohicans, which is one of my guilty pleasure movies, no joke. I love that it’s such an unmanly song when taken on its own (hello, Riverdance?), and yet I’ll always associate it with war, and battle. I love the trick editing, I love the shaky camerawork, I love the progression through the seasons and the stadiums, I love the shift in POV from defense to offense. So excellent that it makes you lose track of what the commercial is trying to sell — no, really, what are we supposed to be buying here? The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack? Because I already own it, sorry Nike.
3. Unrelated to commercials: I love Keith Olbermann. I love what he’s doing to SNIFNIA. I will probably love TKO reports. I love his voice, the monologues, the way he brings out the best in his cohosts. God, Keith Olbermann, please just stay by our side forever.
1 Comment
September 11, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I do not really have a reason to comment on most of your posts, sry, but I did want to tell you that I bought the first season of FNL! It is so cheap that I couldn’t resist for very long.