If you’re like me, you’re sick and tired of watching stuff on a regular TV. In fact, if you’re like me, you’re fed up with even HAVING a TV at this point. I don’t care if it’s an old CRT with rabbit ears or one o’ them fancy-pants LCD whatsits hangin’ on the wall; either way it’s time to call up the Salvation Army or Goodwill or whatever and have them haul that embarrassing hunk of garbage out of your house. It’s 2008, and regular TVs are for poor people. You have discerning tastes, you have disposable income, and dagnabit, you deserve a projector that’s shaped like R2-D2.

And we have the technology. Thanks, Nikko Home Electronics.

Complete with inputs for a variety of analog & digital signals, built in speakers, and a projector that can crank out a 260 inch-wide picture, the R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector is 100% guaranteed to fill that void in your empty apartment that your ex-girlfriend left when she moved out on you because you bought an R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector. Gut-wrenching loneliness got you down? Try the Millenium Falcon remote control. Crippling depression and abandonment issues bubbling to the surface after years of suppression? Did I mention the iPod dock?

The R2-D2 is also able to recline and project a signal onto your ceiling. For example, if you had a home movie of you and your ex having a picnic together, and you wanted to project it onto the ceiling above the bed that the two of you used to share so you could watch it while crying and masturbating at the same time, the R2-D2 Digital Audio & Video Projector could TOTALLY handle that without a problem.

You could also use it to watch one of the many fine Star Wars films. Or Terminator 2, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, or Look Who’s Talking Too. Or any other movie you wanted to watch, really. They would all probably work.

The fame that comes with being a Cracked blogger has its pros and cons. I can always get a reservation at fancy restaurants, I get into all the most exclusive night clubs, and thousands of women email me pictures of their junk on a daily basis. That’s great and all, and yeah, I’m filthy rich and everything, but it’s not all cash and clubbing and ill-lit close-up jpgs; the schedule can be exhausting, the gossip mags say the nastiest things, and I can barely walk down the street anymore without a dozen women throwing themselves at my feet. It can get to be a little much sometimes, but hey

This gig is my Different Strokes (Gladstone is Willis, Swaim is Kimberly, and Daniel O’Brien is the maid). That being said, what’s going to happen to us when it’s over? Swaim will end up doing porn and OD’ing (but we all knew that was going to happen anyway), and Gladstone will knock out Vanilla Ice on Celebrity Boxing, but what about me?! Will I be making diaper rash cream commercials and making fun of myself on any show that will take me? Will I run for Governor and get 14,242 votes? Perhaps most importantly, will I end up on Divorce Court with my beastly ginger wife and talk about my inability to get an erection on national television? Is that’s what’s going to happen to me?!

How much money could Gary Coleman have possibly received to appear on this show, and at what price does it actually become worth it to tell the world you’re packing a limp noodle? My guess is that he got paid $10,000 for this. Times must be rough for Gary Coleman.

You know what he should probably do with that money? Go to community college and get an associate’s degree. Something practical. Data processing, or maybe stenography or something. Anything to get this guy a steady paycheck and some dignity. Seriously, Gary - get it together.

Gus Johnson: Dancin’ Queen Diva

I don’t know much about basketball, but Wikipedia tells me that guy on the left is Clyde Frazier, who is apparently a very famous former NBA player and current spokesman for Just For Men hair products. That’s good to know, I guess, but the look on his face when the guy on the right (Gus Johnson, who Wikipedia tells me is also famous) starts singing “Dancing Queen” completely transcends my lack of knowledge of basketball.

You don’t need to know a damn thing about basketball to know that dude looks REALLY bummed out.

Is there really no place for ABBA in sports? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “Dancing Queen” while cosmic bowling and playing mini golf, but is that as far as it can go? Is it really so wrong for a full-grown man to express a healthy appreciation for Swedish disco?

I know the connotations: Disco is kind of fruity and sports are the opposite of fruity, therefore sports dudes can’t admit to liking disco. That sounds simple enough, but you know what? I’ll bet all those dudes making shitty faces and nodding disapprovingly all know the words to “Dancing Queen.” I bet a good number of them have it on their iPods buried in a secret folder named “Untitled,” and I bet the file itself is renamed something like “Eye Of The Tiger” or “Sports Mix Vol. 1″ or “I Can’t Get Enough Pussy - What Can I Say? I Just Really, REALLY Like Pussy,” which is weird, because that’s obviously not a real song title.

If you’re reading this, members of the basketball community, I have a message for you: loosen up a little. The gay 90s came and went, and now, in these enlightened 00s of ours, it’s totally socially acceptable to admit to liking ABBA. Also, please change the rules of your game to make it not seem so boring to me. All that running back and forth… it’s a real snoozefest. Try to incorporate weapons or booby traps or something.

Oh - also, please teach me how to dunk. That would be awesome.

Pretty Much Everywhere, It’s Gonna Be Hot

What’s the matter, buddy? Are you all bummed out because it’s Monday and your weekend is over and you’re back at work, typing away in your little cubicle and drinking bitter office coffee while that bitch Grace - you know, the one in the next cubicle over - is blathering on and on about how touching last night’s episode of Extreme Home Makeover was? Did your boss just drop by to remind you that he needs that Powerpoint presentation by 3 o’clock, and that he wants it to have “pizzazz… but not TOO MUCH pizzazz”? Are you sitting there now, trying to figure out how to give pizzazz to a Powerpoint presentation about latex glove sales figures, and beyond that, if you actually do manage to give it some, how to know if it’s TOO MUCH pizzazz? Are you thinking about how much it sucks that you have to actually think about this crap while defeatedly double-clicking the Powerpoint icon?

Yeah, yeah - your 9-5 is sucking your soul and people aren’t made to live this way under harsh fluorescent lights and college-doesn’t-prepare-you-for-this-blah-blah-blah wah-wah-wah-boo-hoo-sob-sob. Loud & clear, lil fella - life is hard. I GET IT. I feel for you, though, and that’s why I’m posting this video today. Jobs are tough and Monday sucks and all that, but if you watch this video a few times in a row I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be in a better mood than you were when you started. Seriously - try it. I’ll wait right here.

Feeling better yet? I thought so.

As an added bonus, this “related video” of Arnold Schwarzenneger flipping out is pretty awesome, although what it has to do with a Haitian weather report is completely beyond me.

Santo Gold Infomercial

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Big shoutout to The Virtual Santo Gold Museum for gathering all the great information that I’ve liberally paraphrased below.

Back in the 1980s, a successful businessman named Santo Rigatuso decided to create a film. Through his “Santo Gold” mail-order fake jewelry business, Santo had racked up a considerable amount of cash - more than enough to fund his first feature film. The result? Blood Circus, a “science-fiction wrestling movie” featuring cannibals, washed-up professional wrestlers, aliens from the planet Zoran and, naturally, lots of Santo Gold mail-order jewelry.

Strangely enough, Santo had a hard time finding distribution for his creative masterpiece. His solution? Promote it through his Santo Gold infomercials and rent out a few theaters in Baltimore to show it in. Sadly, only three people showed up for the premiere - not quite enough to make up for the film’s $2 million budget. Perhaps out of desperation, Santo moved on to crazier money-making schemes: selling credit cards to people with bad credit for $49.95 (redeemable only for Santo Gold merchandise), and offering $2000 blocks of an unnamed millionaire’s fortune for the low, low price of $52 a pop. The law eventually caught up with Santo and he ended up indicted on twelve counts of mail fraud, and sadly, his film lives on today only in the memories of those (un)fortunate enough to have seen it: there are allegedly no copies remaining in circulation.

You can read more about Santo Rigatuso (that’s him screaming in the white suit and sunglasses FYI), his films, and his legal troubles here. There is also a longer clip from his infomercial available here, and a completely baffling, typo-riddled, barely-functional website promising sundry goods at SantoGold.com. It has pictures of office buildings on it, so I’m pretty sure it’s legit.

A good friend and I were recently discussing what would make for the most exploitative reality television program. We cycled through recovering drug addicts, quadriplegic veterans, and the corpses of stillborn children, and yet despite our best efforts, Oprah has outclassed us in every way imaginable.

How foolish we were, thinking that the way to make the show offensive was to pit undeserving and underprivileged classes of human against one another. As Oprah’s new reality show “The Big Give” proves, what it really takes to exploit these people is to pit people trying to help them against one another.

See, in our version, at least the dead fetus has a chance of winning fabulous prizes through his or her own merit. In Oprah’s show, teams of “Givers” compete against one another to bring in money for people in need. That means that if you’re a quadriplegic veteran, you get to watch helplessly while a team of morons infight, bicker, connive, and generally treat your welfare as a game. Which, if you’re an Iraq War veteran, you’re probably used to by now.

Plus, by turning the whole thing into a television show, she encourages corporations to line up “spontaneous chartable donations” ahead of time, so as to get themselves prominently featured on the show as “Big Givers.” Paying large sums of money to get your brand on a television show? Why, it’s hardly even charity at all! Huzzah!

But perhaps the worst of it all is that if this thing works like all the other reality TV shows I’ve seen, the viewers at home are going to pick favorite teams to root for each episode. It brings it one step closer to a sporting event, which is infinitely more bearable. Except that in this case, it means that millions of people will be sitting in their living rooms willing your team to fail to provide for you.

Oprah, if I wore a hat, it would be off. Your ability to cheapen the act of helping the less fortunate really makes me feel better about the very little I do to improve the world. If you see Bono, tell him thanks too.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes reality TV as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Dustin the Turkey - “Irlande Douze Pointe”

I can’t think of many things that draw a clearer line in the cultural sand between Europe and America than the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It’s one of the longest-running TV shows in history, it’s watched by 600 million people worldwide, and nobody in America has any fucking clue that it even exists.

The details are a little fuzzy to a cheeseburger chewin’, Budweiser swillin’ cowboy Yank like myself, but from what I can tell, each country picks a song to represent them in the contest, and then the viewers vote to determine the most popular song. That sounds like it should be pretty straightforward, but here’s the problem: This year, Ireland has chosen to be represented by a puppet named Dustin the Turkey. And that, unfortunately, is where I cease to understand what the hell this competition is all about.

Why would you want to send an obnoxious turkey puppet to represent your country in an international competition? Does this enter some sort of bizarre grand tradition that we here in the States aren’t aware of? Is it customary for countries to be represented by bizarre animal puppets? Is France sending a water vole with a mustache? Does Germany send a highly fashionable goose with a strong work ethic? Your European customs are strange and frightening to my American eyes. I’m not making fun of you, Europe; I’m just trying to understand you. Please explain yourself in simple terms I can understand. You know - by using the words “freedom,” “terror” and “McDonalds.”

Do it fast, though - American Idol’s on soon.

“When You Let Everyone Play… Nobody Wins”

You’d think I’d have some choice words to say about this ad for TheLadders.com, a “premium job site created exclusively for $100k+ people looking for $100k+ jobs,” but I’m coming up strangely blank. I’m not a $100k+ person myself, but this is probably a great idea for someone out there. You know - someone who owns more than one suit, or at least one that they didn’t inherit from their dad.

Sure, people who would use TheLadders.com are all rich and fancy and stuff, but whatever - I’m not going to be all sour grapes about it. If you’re a successful professional and you’re looking for a new job, you probably want a website that caters directly to your needs. One that separates the wheat from the chaff. The commercial might be kind of obnoxious, but I think it gets its subtle message across nicely:

TheLadders.com is for thin, attractive white people, not fat, balding slobs.

If you’re reading this, TheLadders.com, don’t you think that last sentence would be great as your new slogan? I’ll gladly sell it to you… for $100,000. Think it over and meet me at the bargaining table. You know - the one out back. Yeah - the one by the dumpster. That’s perfect.

Wiener Poopie

It must be hard to be a local TV reporter. You probably have to go to school for a long time, taking tons of classes on journalism and ethics and diction and all that stuff. Then you have to get an internship, hoping they’ll keep you on after the summer’s over. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get an entry-level job at some TV station in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You’ll work there for a couple of years, barely making ends meet, working late nights editing copy while your spiteful wife sits at home, stirring watered-down Kool-Aid and operating a phone sex line from your living room.

This will be your life.

Then one day you’ll get your big break. Your boss will call you into his office and hand you a script. “You won’t be on camera,” your boss will tell you, “but it’s a great human interest story. We need you to do narration.” You’ll give him a little self-satisfied nod, thinking to yourself, “No problem. I’ve got this.”

But then later on that night when you’re at home, staring at yourself in the mirror and practicing your lines, you’ll realize that nothing in your career could have prepared you for this. Most of it will be fine, the vast majority of it, really, but there will be those two words that you just can’t seem to get right.

“WIE-ner poopie,” you’ll say. “Wiener POO-pie. WIE-ner POO-pie.” You’ll inflect it differently each time, your voice rising and falling on each syllable in endless permutations. “Wie-NER poo-PIE.”

Your wife will sigh impatiently in bed. “Come to bed, honey,” she’ll say.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” you’ll say, then you’ll turn back to the mirror and furrow your brow. “WIE-ner poopie. Wiener POO-pie. WIE-ner POO-pie.”

Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy.

While Ross and I only included one Salesgenie.com commercial in our rundown of the lamest Super Bowl ads, I think it’s fair to say that all three ads the company produced could have by rights made the cut. They were stupid, borderline racist, and apparently entirely intentional. Turns out the company’s strategy was to make the worst commercials possible, thereby GUARANTEEING that every lame Internet blogger would highlight them in the coming weeks (as I’m doing now. Congratulations Sales Genie, you’re geniuses).

But that’s not the whole story. Shockingly, the ads that aired were actually watered down versions of CEO Vinod Gupta’s original scripts. Those preliminary scripts were recorded, and although they were ultimately deemed too offensive to run, my vast network of resources has located the lost commercials, presented for your displeasure now:

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes intentionally offensive videos as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!