– – The off-beat comedy Wilfred is returning to the FX network for another season starting June 28th. The protagonist of the show is a depressed former lawyer, Ryan Newman, who has unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself; following that effort, his neighbor’s dog, Wilfred, now appears to him as a foul-mouthed Australian in an obvious dog suit! The dog, while selfish and worldly, serves as a helpful guide and mentor to the often clueless human.
This isn’t a show for kids, with drug use portrayed and the humor frequently raunchy. That having been said, however, the show has surreal and existential overtones, and mixes shock and hilarity with the absurd. We were asked during the previous season to “embrace the mystery” of Wilfred’s existence, and it was unclear as to whether the dog-person actually existed, was a projected manifestation of Ryan’s animal impulses, or if the human was simply insane and Wilfred a hallucination or a medication effect. Some answers may be revealed in the upcoming season, one promo for which is a spoof of the classic spaghetti sequence from Lady and the Tramp!
– – He’s played a raccoon, and now the Allstate “Mayhem” guy is going to the dogs, playing an utterly ineffective guard dog! The commercial spot begins with the Mayhem guy sprawled canine-like on the floor but wearing no costume whatsoever. “I’m your dog, holding down the fort while you’re out catching a movie,” he explains, pausing to gnaw on a hefty bone. “Lucky for me your friends showed up with this awesome bone.- -Hey! You guys are great!,” he declares with a mouthful to the surreal white-faced flashlight-wielding robbers ransacking the house.
Mayhem in canine guise steps outside with the departing thieves to remind us that if we got our home insurance where we purchased our cut-rate car insurance, it might not replace all this…but alas, the canine is apparently wearing one of those “invisible perimeter fence” collars, and he receives twin zapping jolts of electricity which knock him to the ground at that point! We see Mayhem sit up and shake his head to clear it as the thieves drive off…great stuff!
– – The action continues at the Watering Hole, and in this airing it’s time for the girls to come front and center…two long-necked beauties, specifically an ostrich (–perhaps swan?) and a giraffe! The animation is amazing, but reactions to the commercial itself appear to be divided along the lines of, “It’s creepy and disturbing,” versus “They’re hot!” So choose your side, I guess…but I like this universe!
Females everywhere regardless of species apparently have commonalities if this commercial is to be believed, and these two ladies engage in the bar pastimes of shooting down guys who hit on them, and making “catty” comments about other females…in this case, a rhino girl who had her nose done, and a camel chick with humps that “do not exist in nature!“
Whether you love this commercial series or hate it, you can entertain yourself deciding which female celebrities the four presented characters resemble! I’ve heard Taylor Swift, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Snookie mentioned as possibilities…
– – I, for one, enjoy a good creative anachronism, and the Capital One vikings seem oddly at home in this election year, even if they do have seemingly-British rather than Danish, Scandinavian, or by default Germanic accents. We’ve seen these highly-visible Visigoths at places like New Orleans, Vegas, New York, and Washington, D.C….here, apparently checking out some dinosaur exhibits at the Smithsonian. They even formulate a public policy agenda of “No new axes!” Now that’s a slogan we could live…or die by!
Appearing at times with goats, a donkey, or hairy children, perhaps these vikings are the shape of future retro…
– – Frontier Airlines boasts wildlife images that appear on the tails (- -where else?) of each of their aircraft! There are more than 60 animals with distinctive personalities and bios that are said to represent the airline’s character, commitment to service, and humor.
Members of the “stable” include Larry the Lynx, Grizwald the Bear, Jack the Rabbit, Sal the Cougar, and my personal favorites, Foxy the Fox, and Trixie the Fox.
Frontier Airlines was founded in 1994, and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Their corporate slogan is, “A Whole Different Animal.” With tail art like this, Frontier looks like a good place to rack up my frequent flier miles!
– – We all know that many dogs like to ride in cars with their heads sticking out of an open window; a dog who prefers to ride with his tail end sticking out of the window would be, to put it mildly, a contradiction, or at least an unusual preference.- –Well, we meet such a dog in action in a recent Starburst commercial, the idea of which is to show how a sweet which is both juicy like a liquid and also solid is also a contradiction.
Starburst has explored this notion of contradictions before in their commercials about “Scottish Koreans.” This dog, as his owner contends, is not weird, but an innovator…and in any case, they’re cute!
– – It’s not well known that Batman creator Bob Kane also created a comic parody called Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. Originally run from 1960 to 1962, the series almost anticipated the campy extremes of the later-appearing live action Batman TV series. The ‘toons averaged five minutes in length, and 130 were produced, intended for use as airtime filler to accommodate a movie or another feature which didn’t quite fill a time slot.
Parallels to the Batman series were numerous, with “Courageous Cat” and “Minute Mouse” anthropomorphic animal superheroes who lived in the “Cat Cave,” were summoned by a “Cat Signal,” and drove a sleekly-feline “Cat Mobile” which could convert to a plane or boat. The villains were likewise furry, with a frog a recurring archenemy.
The theme music for the show was fashioned after the memorable theme for Peter Gunn! All in all, Courageous Cat was campy fun decently done…
– – A rhinoceros, a cheetah, and a gazelle walk into a bar…it sounds like a hokey joke, but it’s the theme for a Kraft MiO liquid water enhancer commercial! Blending the line between live action and animation,the spot makes over wild animals into twenty-something dudes, inhabiting a bar appropriately called, The Watering Hole. The Rhino is a solid, muscular guy with glasses wearing a tight T-shirt labeled (–What else?) “Animal.” The Cheetah is a sleek speedster in a leather jacket who bewails the fact that MiO energy drinks are “completely crushing my game” by making everyone “…more energized, more alert” after mixing MiO into their water. As a result, the Cheetah is no longer the fastest beast around!
“Remember when I used to be it?,” continues the Cheetah. “I was the man. If you needed to track a gazelle down for dinner, you came to me.” At that point a jeans-jacket wearing Gazelle literally laughs in the Cheetah’s face!
It’s a great furry bar scene, a place where I’d certainly be at home! Watch for a future spot to include a giraffe…
– – Although he has a human visage, Alec Baldwin as seen in Hulu commercials is an extraterrestrial of an unknown alien species who together with other aliens harbors evil plans of world decimation, planning to consume the brain matter of the entire Human race!
The alien entity masquerading as Alec Baldwin possesses at least two lengthy green tentacles, each of which split at the end to form a tridactyl head. They are generally kept hidden underneath his clothes. Sure, he’s evil…but this is the way that aliens roll, and besides, “evil” spelled backwards is “live!”
– – Think The Muppets meet Family Guy, and you’ve got a starting idea of what the show Mongrels is like! This British sitcom revolves around the lives of five anthropomorphic animals who hang around the back of a pub in London. I’m an easy sell for the show as one of the main characters is Nelson, described as a likeable middle-class urban “metrosexual fox.” Other regular characters include an Afghan hound, a borderline-retarded cat, a pigeon, and another sociopathic, foul-mouthed fox. The pilot of the show also included a suicidal chicken!
Definitely not for the wee ones, the show features neutering, incontinence, cannibalism, and catnip overdoses! The show was described as attempting to do for puppetry what American shows like The Simpsons have done for animation. The show, which took five years to make, ran on the BBC for two seasons between 2010 and 2011, but sadly was not renewed for a third seasondue to poor viewing figures. Episodes and clipsof Mongrels may still be viewed on Hulu and YouTube, and Nelson has a page on Facebook as well as another promoting him for Prime Minister…what a fox!
– – The off-beat comedy Wilfred is returning to the FX network for another season starting June 28th. The protagonist of the show is a depressed former lawyer, Ryan Newman, who has unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself; following that effort, his neighbor’s dog, Wilfred, now appears to him as a foul-mouthed Australian in an obvious dog suit! The dog, while selfish and worldly, serves as a helpful guide and mentor to the often clueless human.
– – He’s played a raccoon, and now the Allstate 
– – I, for one, enjoy a good creative anachronism, and the Capital One vikings seem oddly at home in this election year, even if they do have seemingly-British rather than Danish, Scandinavian, or by default Germanic accents. We’ve seen these highly-visible Visigoths at places like New Orleans
– – Frontier Airlines boasts wildlife images that appear on the tails (- -where else?) of each of their aircraft! There are more than 60 animals with distinctive personalities and bios that are said to represent the airline’s character, commitment to service, and humor. 
– – A rhinoceros, a cheetah, and a gazelle walk into a bar…it sounds like a hokey joke, but it’s the theme for a Kraft MiO liquid water enhancer commercial
– – Although he has a human visage, Alec Baldwin as seen in Hulu commercials is an extraterrestrial of an unknown alien species who together with other aliens harbors evil plans of world decimation, planning to consume the brain matter of the entire Human race! 
FOXSYLVANIA 
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