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The World Food Programme provides nutritious food to over 71,000 school-aged children from conflict-affected areas of Mindanao in the Philippines. Nutritious food brings children to school, keeps them there, and stimulates their learning, while also helping to prevent micronutrient deficiencies and undernourishment. Provide a nutritious meal and a healthy start to conflict-affected children in Mindanao to support their full potential. Give to the World Food Programme. http://www.wfp.org/donate/philippines

Anyone who knows me knows that I have no interest in spectator sports whatsoever. I am clueless about sports across the board. We were playing softball in P.E. once in High School and I asked them to put me in the spot that would get the least action because I can’t catch a ball to save my life. They put me in the “outfield” – as far out as you can get in what was our little concrete open court. Of course someone hit the ball way out to my area and I ducked and covered my head instead of trying to catch it. And when I opened my eyes and saw the ball in front of me I kicked it. (Hahaha how comfortable I am with my athletic ineptitude.) And yet today I got up at 6:15 a.m. to watch the Superbowl!

This is because my dad cheers for all the New York teams (he, my mom and my older sister lived there for a few years) and tries to get the rest of the family to root for them as well. Since my younger brother is more interested in video games and the rest of us are girls, my dad is really the only one who follows sports. He’s had success in baseball though, which my younger sister now avidly follows. I, on the other hand, join him once in awhile to watch the Yankees, the Knicks or as the case was today, the Giants, battle it out for the championship (?).

We watched the game with my younger sister and great aunt (who is visiting from Chicago and was cheering for the Patriots, booo) in Friday’s on High Street where Solar was showing the game. Dad had explained the basic rules but I found it a little confusing anyway. So many players and how are you supposed to keep track of where the ball is? What I found myself noticing instead was (surprise) the advertising.

In so many words it was crap. They only showed two ads, which they’d bicycle during each commercial break – one for Alaska, which had a kid playing soccer and after drinking milk he turned into an adult for a split second and was able to head butt the ball (wowwww), and one for JVC which wasn’t so bad except that the sound would transpose every few seconds into a really wrong and oddly flat note.

...Which got me thinking that had I been watching in the States, the ads would be fabulous. I mean, the Superbowl is the only real piece of prime time mass media left right?

So I turned to Google because they know everything, to find out what the more fortunate viewers had gotten to see during the commercial breaks. Here are some of the funny ones I saw:

    Will Ferrell is always best

    Pepsi + Amazon = Justin Timberlake at your feet     > I think that this is a great tie-up. Pepsi always has great acquisition promos.

    Job Interivew 101

    Mail gets back to basics

    The Godfather gets an upgrade

    (Click here for a link to all of this year's Superbowl ads.)

What I found interesting was how almost all the ads ended with a dedicated web URL. I guess that’s almost mandatory now. Maybe one day we’ll get there!

I just saw an ad on Second Avenue (or ETC?) for Mad Men! I first heard about the show in an issue of AdAge a few months ago and it naturally piqued my interest :)

Too bad, I thought, that I’d never get to watch it. Pessimistic me! I’d forgotten that all media eventually finds its way to Makati Cinema Square. I chanced upon a copy one day while browsing through the stocks of one my favorite DVD tinderas. Huzzah! I wanted to buy more to give my officemates for Christmas, but they only had that one disc.

I started watching the next day. Unlike other series that I breezed through in thirteen-hour or weekend-long marathons, I had to take my time with Mad Men.

The show is set in the fictional ad shop Sterling Cooper (though there are BBDO, DDB and of course McCann Erickson name drops) in 1960. The star is Creative Director Don Draper.

In the first episode the news has just broken that (gasp) cigarettes are bad for you. Turns out that they were first advertised by touting their health benefits. Client Lucky Strike is in a bind as is Don about how to spin this while sidestepping their detrimental properties. But he pulls through. “This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal.” I love it.

And anyway, Don realizes that everybody is going to keep smoking. And he's right. They smoke all the time – in the office, in the car, when taking care of their kids, when cooking, when pregnant – all the time.

This isn't the only thing that is strikingly different about the 60s. As soon as the ad execs get in, they pour themselves a glass of Smirnoff vodka (ahhh product placement?) which they even drink with milk. Gotta love that. Blacks rode in separate train cars and there was still the anti-Semitic sentiment. Sexual harassment was unheard of and (it sounds so cliché now) women were merely sex objects. The show’s name is unfortunately accurate as there were no mad women allowed in the boys club that was advertising at the time.

There are times when you almost feel offended by what is happening on screen. But then you’re lured back in to the glamorous Golden Age of advertising. When business was done in softly lit clubs and the women were curvy and gorgeous and sex was always right around the corner. There is great tension in each episode, as if the world is about to tip over into the modern age...

At the end of the day, even the Mad Men go home to their real lives. The show sometimes seems to be more of study of human behavior at that time before the emergence of self-discovery. So it is especially interesting to see the Don and the rest of the characters evolve, create and reinvent themselves.

If you’re working in advertising today, you will undoubtedly note the world of change that has taken place since that time when clients didn’t pay for creatives, when women were limited to the secretariat, when there was only tri media and when calls had to be made through a switchboard of operators. Di pa nila abot ang mundo. Hahaha.

I really enjoyed the show but it seems so serious that you can’t just go around saying that you love it, as you would say about Gossip Girl or (as may be unique to myself?) The Bold And The Beautiful. But I love this show.

I finished the first season last week and promptly harassed my DVD guy for the second season. Alas, the second season is set to air (or tape?) in October 2008! I dearly hope that this date will not be affected by the writers strike!

I got my regular stock of DVDs today. Picked up the latest episodes of Grey’s and Heroes, plus my Mom’s Bones and my brother’s House, from my trusty supplier.

He’a a funny guy. He once spoiled an episode of the OC for me by saying that he couldn’t believe what happened to Been Mackenzie. (That wasn’t a typo; he pronounces it “Been”.) In his stall there is a whiteboard with their entire roster of shows (one of which is Victoria Beckham Comes To America. They’re pretty complete). Name him one, he’ll tell you what he thinks. I started watching Mad Men recently and when I asked if he had the entire season, he quoted from the second episode. (He’s the one who got me hooked on Entourage by the way by giving me a complimentary disc. What a gift.)

Once in awhile I download the shows myself. I think it’s a hassle and a waste of computer space but there are times when you just can’t wait to find out what is happening to your friends in Seattle Grace, Wisteria Lane, Mode magazine, One Tree Hill. Hahaha just kidding, I know they aren’t real.

But you come to depend on them. On so many nights a week, after work is done and my brain has turned into soup, all I want to do is sit down in front my TV (or laptop) and enjoy someone else’s life for a moment. Cause there’s good stuff in other people’s lives! If only there were DVDs of The Bold and the Beautiful...

So dearest Hollywood, I hope everybody finds a winning solution to the writers’ strike! I don’t know how this is going to be resolved but dear God I hope it happens soon! I JUST SAW THE LAST EPISODE OF HEROES AND I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! WE HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE START OF THE LOST SEASON YET! COME ON, PEOPLE! MAKE IT WORK.