Even though only a paltry 34% of Houston's television-watching households watched yesterday's Super Bowl -- the second-lowest amount out of 56 other cities -- those 34% were in for a delicious, sleazy treat in the form of this commercial for the mysteriously-named Ashley Madison Agency:
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Results tagged “commercials”
When Yia Yia Mary's comes into conversation, we automatically are plagued by the overwhelming scent of Lysol and fall into the fetal position. Commercials involving cleaning solutions come to mind as we reminisce about the most disappointing dining experience in Houston so far. Too harsh? You be the judge. After months of hearing about Yia Yia Mary's, we finally stopped in for some mind boggling Greek food. Hummus has quickly climbed the list to become...
Hot off of our anonymous tip line comes this chopped and screwed video remix of mega retailer, Mattress Mac and his famous local commercials....
Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. I just saw a commercial for a cereal, I think it was Total, that used a Canned Heat song as the background ditty. It really bothered me for some reason, and I'm not sure why. -- Abbie H., Chicago Though you didn't really ask a question, Abbie, I get your drift. The growing number of 60s rock songs in TV commercials right now...
Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. Ok, why does Mr. Whipple ask me not to squeeze the Charmin, yet he does it himself? Whipplecrites! They really irk me! -- Connelly Wirth, Houston First of all, for anyone born after 1980 or so, here's a link to a couple of Charmin commercials. You will note that once upon a time there was a pencil-thin mustachioed man whose sole purpose at...
Good morning, Houston. We've seen various incarnations of Google, but this one was new to us. Blackle is a search engine that is very similar to Google, but with a darker color scheme. And it's not just Google for the depressed - it's meant to save energy. A predominantly black screen requires less energy to display than Google's white background. One blog said that Blackle could save 750 megawatt-hours a year (or $75,000), if...
Good morning, Houston. Thanks to KHOU, we have a couple more details on the coming switch from Time Warner to Comcast cable — sort of. Next week, 20 new channels will come to the Houston cable market, including five HD channels — but Comcast isn't saying what they are (aside from ESPN HD and the NFL Network, which should appeal to you sports fans). Up to this point, the most visible result of the...
The Bald Heretic had an interesting bit of doorspam this week. The spammers didn't want to trim his trees or sell him pizza though. They wanted him to worship with them.. at Tinseltown. Apparently, a local church left a flyer on his door that said first-time visitors to Celebration Worship (10:15 Sundays at the not-so-safe Tinseltown Westchase, if you're interested) with Church at the Cross receive a free movie ticket. We wonder what movie they'll...
A couple of weeks ago, Houstonist was downtown and noticed a film crew setting up lights, cameras — and, presumably, action — at the corner of Louisiana and Rusk. We wondered in passing what was going on, but we figured it was just Time Warner shooting another of its asinine commercials with a guy in a space suit or a businessman who says "Click! Boom!" for half an hour. In reality, though, what we...
Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. My husband and I went out to dinner last night. The restaurant was valet only, and it cost $6. We didn’t really mind until we watched the attendant park the car just a few feet from where we were standing. Then, after dinner, we had to give a different valet guy a few dollars for a tip when he retrieved our car. Seems...
Jerry Seinfeld at Jones Hall What's the deal with Jerry Seinfeld? He's part of the brains behind Seinfeld, TV Guide's greatest TV show of all time, and Wikipedia reports that he's earned more money for the portrayal of a single character than any actor ever. Not bad, for a show about nothing. The man himself, Jerry Seinfeld, will grace Jones Hall with his presence this evening for two stand-up comedy shows at 7 and 9:30....
The times, they are indeed a-changin' in your cable box, y'all. Just when you were getting used to groaning at the horrific Time-Warner commercials, which we think were meant to be "cute" and "quaint" but actually just looked "terribly unprofessional" and "dumb", your Time Warner cable is becoming Comcast. So, now that we've brought you up to speed, what does this actually mean for Joe Houstonist, cable subscriber? Well, not a heck of a lot...
During last night’s Super Bowl, you may have seen the commercials for the upcoming Grammy Awards, where Justin Timberlake is given your average, everyday person a chance to sing with him on stage at the event. Secretly, we thought to ourselves, it’d be fun to win that contest and get Justin to bring sexyback to some old, I don’t know, maybe John Denver, while JT gets his groove on the stage. Well, a local girl...
BB King was released from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston this afternoon, feeling “fabulous and ready to go.” As we noted earlier this week, King was scheduled to play a concert at the Grand 1894 Opera House this past Thursday and Friday. Instead, he was admitted to UTMB for a fever and flu symptoms. The legendary blues singer and guitarist is 81 years old, and, because of his age, doctors wanted to...
Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into...
Instead of vegging in front of the TV, or fighting the crowds at the mall, we suggest one of these concerts to pass away your holidays. Houston’s Allen Oldies Band is celebrating their 10th anniversary Wednesday night, allowing you to dance off some pounds before you fill up on turkey. Some great original local bands to catch this week include The Dimes and Something Fierce at Walter’s, and Ryan Scroggins’ ska band at Fitz....
On Sundays, Houstonist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in Houston. The opinions expressed below are entirely those of the author. This Tuesday (November 7) is Election Day. This means only two more days of those terrible TV commercials – the ones with the booming voiceover and no discernable ties to reality. My opponent, Bob Smith, likes children. In fact, he likes them a lot. He may have eaten a child in his twenties while...
It’s one of those acquisitions that make us nervous. The creatively-named company Mexican Restaurants, Inc., has purchased local independent eatery Mission Burritos. Houston-based Mexican Restaurants, Inc. operates many “casual dining” establishments, including Casa Ole, Tortuga's and Monterey's. Mission Burritos has been a longtime favorite of Houstonist. For 10 years now, it’s been consistently the best place to go when you get a hankering for a huge burrito, created on the spot with the top-notch ingredients...
Starting Monday, Houston drivers will begin hearing radio advertisements in which Mayor Bill White will urge residents to give money to social service agencies instead of street panhandlers — and the city has already started gearing up to help make that point. The ad campaign is part of a strategy White announced last year to help reduce panhandling; another part is an ordinance City Council approved in December that put restrictions on roadside soliciting (which,...
It’s still not completely clear if we’re the fattest city or the skinniest, but either way, Houston will soon have a few more restaurants in the Galleria. The space that used to be occupied by Lord & Taylor has been divided so that it can hold 12 businesses. The eateries will include The Kona Grill, which will be the first to open in August. It will be followed by The Oceanaire Seafood Room in November...
It's summertime and the livin' is easy. Why not look for love? Of course, we don't recommend browsing for a significant other on Craigslist, but if you insist... Would like to know what the smile was for Roller Blade Babe, I saw you while you were rollerblading yesterday while I worked in my yard. And later that evening we passed each other twice while I was out running and you were still blading. We...
Brought to you by the producers of another summertime hit (albeit one of a few years ago), VH1's World Series of Pop Culture is a gameshow based on Entertainment Weekly's Pop Culture Quiz, and it's brought to you by the zany folks behind Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Sixteen three-person teams compete in tournament-style gameplay, answering questions in categories covering everything from The Brady Bunch to Buncha Crunch. The show is the first to...
Nightmares and Dreamscapes, a miniseries, consisting of eight hour-long episodes, comes to us straight from the mind of Stephen King. All-star casts include William H. Macy, William Hurt, and Jeremy Sisto ("Six Feet Under's" Billy Chenoweth). One future offering stars Claire Forlani, best known for making out with Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black...assuming you stayed awake that long. Forlani plays one half of an American couple honeymooning in London who basically..um...get trapped in what...
Houstonist is a sucker for bad local commercials — we've been a fan of the Thunderbolt ad for as long as we can remember — and keeping that in mind, we are happy to bring you this 1990 ad for the Season Ticket sports bar. Cheesy sales pitch thinly disguised as phone conversation! Mysterious, oddly colored bar food! A waitress who can't deliver a line! 18-inch televisions! Yes, it's all here. (If you check...
One of the great things about looking back at old TV commercials is — well, heck, there's not just one thing. The bad hair. The cheesy situations. The horrible music. And it's all right here in this 1987 promo spot for KPRC. Journey back with us now to a time when everyone was Houston Proud, our mayor was a dead ringer for Tootsie and Bill Balleza ... looked a lot like he does today....
So we had heard about Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale's hip-hop Gallery Furniture "commercial" from Jamie Kennedy's Blowin' Up, but we couldn't have guessed quite how odd it really is. As Ken Hoffman explains: It's really not a commercial — it doesn't even mention Gallery Furniture. It's actually a clip from Jamie Kennedy's new comedy reality show on MTV called Blowin' Up. Kennedy is pretending to pursue a career in hip-hop, and Mattress Mack somehow,...
Now that we’ve all recovered (haven’t we?) from this weekend’s NFL draft, it’s time to refocus on the game at hand -- baseball; more specifically, Roger Clemens. Beginning today, the Astros can officially start courting Clemens to stay in Houston for another half partial season. Don’t expect Roger’s final decision to come quick, negotiations may drag out for a month or two. Most likely, he’ll land in either Houston, New York or Boston (Dallas...
We saw this story early this week and couldn't help but comment on it. It turns out some teens were stealing beer, got shot at by a deputy and one got away. Of course, we at Houstonist do not condone stealing beer or underage drinking, and we are certainly anti-shooting at anyone (even lawyers). But if you're going to get shot at for stealing beer anyway, don't get shot at over a 12 pack of...
If you've watched cable TV in Houston lately, you've probably seen the commercials for the "theology of the iPod" sermons at Metropolitan Baptist Church. The series, which started last week, already attracted the attention of the AP, which carried an article today — and we're still trying to figure it all out. "The reason the outside of the iPod is so simple to use and so beautiful to look at is because of the way...
Houstonist has its own guilty pleasures when it comes to TV, but we're happy to say ABC's Wife Swap isn't among them. Even so, we've seen enough commercials for the show to know the basics: Two families switch moms, one of them with certain traits and the other with the opposite traits. Chaos ensues. And now it's come to the Houston area! In last night's episode, Shantrise Maness of League City swapped with Frankie Roy...