When it comes to fast food advertising, it’s clear that only Chick-Fil-A gets animal humor.

Back in June, I pointed out that a new line of Captain D’s spots have people who are about to eat things other than seafood being “attacked” by a giant fish that slaps them around until they eat seafood after all. Why, I asked at the time, would a fish want people to eat fish?

Here’s one of the spots in question:

Now there’s Burger King, with a new spot featuring a man hiding in a hotel room, about to eat a chicken sandwich, when a cow shows up at the door, apparently angry that a hamburger is not what’s for dinner. Why, I ask now, would a cow want people to eat hamburgers?

See for yourself:

Chick-Fil-A, on the other hand, has the ad campaign that makes sense. Their cows how old up signs that read, “Eat Mor Chickin.” Cows, after all, don’t know much about the silent e.

Get it? Cows wanting you to eat chicken. So you won’t eat cows. So they won’t end up as the main course.

Is that so hard to understand?

The original opening of Gilligan’s Island — from the pilot — was nowhere near the familiar theme song we grew up with.

Have a look for yourself:

Not bad, but I still like the familiar one better.  Which do you prefer?

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

—George Carlin

George Carlin was one of a kind. And that’s the saddest part of his sudden death on Sunday of heart failure.

When I was little, I remember seeing Carlin on HBO specials. I was too young to remember the Al Sleet (hippie dippie weatherman) routines from the Carson and Sullivan shows. And by the time he had made his way to HBO, his shows were of an unapologetically adult fashion. So I’d only get to catch a clip of him before Mom would make Dad change the channel.

But once I heard a full routine, I laughed all the way through it. My favorite routine — and picking a single favorite took a lot of time — was the bit about a safety lecture on the plane; it was an attack on the ridiculous and the misuse of language all rolled up into one. And it contained a line I borrowed here not all that long ago:

“The next sentence is just full of things that piss me off.”

Here’s a clip from that one:

I’ve stolen the part about near misses several times, and I’m always amazed at how many people have to stop and think about it. (Refer to the opening quote!)

In the coverage reporting his death, I’ve seen many words used to describe him: acerbic, witty, irreverent, frenzied, social commentator, philosopher, and icon.

But it was Jack Burns, his former comedy partner from the early days who said it best:  “He was a genius and I’ll miss him dearly.”

So will a lot of us.

The past few days here in Charleston, we’ve had some pretty powerful storms move through.  They’re nothing like what the midwest is dealing with, and the worst of them, so far, has been a spectacular lightning show.

There’s that old phrase about “raining cats and dogs,” and there were a few moments where the rain was pounding down so hard that it might qualify for such a description.  But only for a few moments.

Adam, who recently stopped by to play one of the weekend memes, survived a storm recently powerful enough to make whales fly.  No really:  see for yourself.

This week’s edition of Ten On is a little different: I’m happy to present, for your viewing pleasure, ten video clips from YouTube that are worth a look.

1. DOWN THEY GO: When is runway video from a fashion show funny enough to break up two anchors? When it looks like this:

Who wears orange with pink, anyway?

2. BUDDHA BLESS YOU: This is a classic scene from the classic sitcom All in the Family in which the family debates what the Chinese might say when someone sneezes:

The funniest thing is, Archie is right: one way or another, while talking to the two men in his hypothetical scenario, Meathead would ask enough questions to get the answer he’s looking for. I just doubt he’d phrase it quite the way Archie did.

3. LAUGHING BABY: I dare you to keep a straight face while you watch this one:

Couldn’t do it, could you?

4. BROKE HER WHAT?: You’ve all seen the famous clip from The Price is Right featuring the excited contestant in the tube top. Here’s a different wardrobe malfunction:

5. FEELING NO PAIN: Adam recently played the Sunday Seven for the first time, and when I went to his blog, I found some videos he has produced on YouTube. This one, which analyzes an Aleve commercial cracked me up:

My favorite line: “I don’t think he’s taking Aleve.”

6. …AND TAKING NAMES: A three-year-old who may have seen one action movie too many:

At least the mom did point out that there was a better word to use.

7. ANGRY ANCHOR: In the 1970s and early 1980s, Jessica Savich was a well-respected anchor on NBC News. But this wasn’t a good night because the stage manager, the person who is supposed to give talent their time cues to make sure they’re finished on time, wasn’t where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there. This did not air…it was leading up to the live NBC News Update, but it’s nice to know that problems happen even at the Network level.

I love the line, “This is prime time television, here, folks!”

8. ROUGH RIDE: Here’s a blooper from the legendary Carol Burnett Show in which Tim Conway, playing his little old man character, is supposed to crash through a breakaway wall to escape a hospital room. But the wheelchair, which has been weighted down so he can ride on the front legs of it, can’t get traction on the slick studio floor. Hillarity ensues:

As promised, he finally got it.

9. BUT HE GOT A LAUGH: What do you do when you tell joke after joke that no one gets? If you’re Johnny Carson, you do this:

I still miss Johnny

10. GOLLY, HOLLY: Here’s one more clip from The Price is Right, which features Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” instead of the regular theme during the credits. (It’s cool these days to actually see a credit roll.) Barker’s original Beauties get a little too “into” the tune, and for Holly (in the black gown), long before Janet and Justin’s “wardrobe malfunction,” there’s a near disaster.

Game show fans will also recognize the late great Johnny Olson, the greatest announcer in the business. That clip, incidentally, was from 1981.

Hope you enjoyed this all-video edition of Ten On.  Have any clips you’d like to nominate?

This is one of those highly dangerous YouTube videos that mixes a nice, upbeat 80s melody with a goofy performance from someone who was clearly having entirely too much fun.

If you watch it, the tune will get stuck in your head.

No, seriously…it will. And you won’t be able to shake it free for days.

Do you dare take the risk and watch?

Aww, come on.  You know you want to.

This video clip is a perfect example of why I don’t get into competitive sports.

Anyone who gets into this much really, really needs to talk it out a bit.   Without a racket in hand.

Just sayin’…

Here’s an unofficial response to Hillary Clinton’s fear-mongering campaign ad:

Hillarious…especially the part about “turning your kids into Muslims.” Hillarious because Barack Obama is not a Muslim…but you already knew that, right?

There are several others popping up on YouTube, so explore and have a few laughs.

Picture this:  a candidate who claims to possess a “lifetime of experience” while fighting for your vote runs against a candidate she portrays as less experienced than she.   Those two candidates are battling for their party’s nomination for the presidency, while also facing an already-established nominee in the opposing party.

Whom would you expect this candidate to have the worst things to say about?  A fellow candidate in the same party, or the opposition in the other party?

You’d probably expect the worst to be said about the candidate from the opposing party.

But for Hillary Clinton, her “lifetime of experience” has taught her that it’s better to say good things about Republican John McCain in order to get a slam in against fellow Democrat Barack Obama.

Here are several instances:

In the latest Time magazine, Obama makes this more-than-reasonable point about Clinton’s claim of 35 years of experience that makes her “ready to lead from Day One:”

“If somehow she can discount my 20 years of experience working as a civil rights attorney or as a community organizer or as a state senator or as a United States Senator and suggest that that career can be summed up in one speech, then I’m going to be interested in finding out what exactly she thinks makes her particularly well-prepared, for example, on foreign policy.

“So let’s ask a very simple question.  Has she negotiated any treaties?  When she traveled to those 80 countries, was she involved in policymaking?  If so, what?  My suspicion is that you’re not going to get a bunch of particularly impressive answers.”

I suspect that if you can’t bring yourself to vote for Obama, he’d at least recommend Hillary over McCain.  And I’m quite certain that when Huckabee was still in the race, McCain would have recommended a vote for Huckabee over a vote for Clinton or Obama.

It sounds as if Hillary has decided that if she can’t win, she’d just as soon see four more years of the GOP.  Anyone else find that a bit odd?

On Friday night’s edition of The Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular, something happened that has never happened before: someone actually won a million bucks.

The show featured two opportunities for a contestant to win: during one of the six pricing games, perfect pricing would have earned a contestant the seven-digit top prize, but that one wasn’t won.

The second opportunity came in the Showcases. Traditionally, if a contestant bid the closest to his showcase’s actual retail price and was within $250 of the actual price, he’d win both showcases. For this special, if the winning contestant was within $1,000 of the showcase’s retail price, he won both showcases plus a million-dollar bonus.

Here’s the video of the big win, including the brief credits before CBS cut to those annoying split-screen credits courtesy CBS, which apparently had other people’s postings taken down in favor of its own “creditless” version:

I’m sure that if I were a contestant, I wouldn’t complain about a million dollar bonus. But as a fan of the show, tacking on a million bucks just seems a bit unnecessary to me…as if ‘Price’ is just tossing that out there because a million-dollar top prize seems to be the latest fad. At least now, a well-done game show is offering that prize for a change.

For the non-diehard ‘Price’ fans, I point out that the endgame of the show is the Showcase round. The “Showcase Showdown” is the part with the famous Big Wheel, during which it is decided which two contestants will move on to that final round. For a show that has been on the air for 35 years (and featuring the one-hour format with the Showcase Showdowns for the last 32 years), it’s amazing how many newspaper articles that discuss the show get the Showcase and Showcase Showdown confused.

Can you imagine tuning into your local news and seeing this exchange?

Lucky I wasn’t the news director for this shop.  Both of them would have lots of ‘splainin’ to do.

If you ever have a chance to attend a taping of The Price is Right, I highly recommend it. Not because you have a chance to win cash and prizes, but because it’s just an incredible experience.

One of the things that makes it so amazing is the spirit in that studio, when 320 people start cheering like there’s no tomorrow. To call it a party atmosphere is an understatement of epic proportions. And new host Drew Carey is issuing an interesting challenge to people who visit to keep that “magic” alive even when the red lights go off:

This little inspirational message was delivered during a commercial break before the final showcase round.  Do you dare give it a try in your own life?

If you were a child of the 1970s, you may remember a short-lived cartoon/live action series shown in the classroom called Vegetable Soup.

Thanks to the “miracle” of YouTube, here is the ultra-funky theme song:

The metaphor of the recipe — “It takes all kinds of vegetables…” — was intended to be a theme of diversity and acceptance of different people and views.

Hopefully, more of us can keep that in mind in 2008.