Even worse, the ad (for Microsoft) is actually animated; the cup runs over again and again.

If you watched the entire Golden Globes last night, you witnessed the reanimation of a corpse (no, not Warren Beatty). Popcorn peddler Orville Redenbacher, who suffered a heart attack and drowned in his tub in 1995 (now his products have zero trans fat), was Frankensteined with parts of three actors—one each for voice, body and face—to create a fucking creepy digital Deadenbacher.

Apparently, the biker from the Village People couldn't make the audition.

A pair of Dolce & Gabbana ads that ran in the London Times and Daily Telegraph have caused a row (as they say over there) due to their literally knife-edgy content. The first ad shows a pair of D&G-clad boy-creatures on the brink of stabbing another of their number, apparently having already done in yet another who lies dead on the floor. The second ad is a Marie Antoinette-ish tableau that also involves a knife. (Full-size versions of both may be found after the jump.) These ads didn't cause trouble elsewhere, even in the U.S., but perhaps it was bad luck that the first ad ran opposite an article on knife-related crime. Beyond the stagey stabs, it's typical D&G melodrama all the way, "taking inspiration from the paintings of Delacroix and David." Not nearly as violent as those ads from Vogue Italia anyway. Can't we just get back to the blowjobs?

Last year, an amoebic cosmic blob supplanted the male CEO ego as the largest known thing in the universe.

Oh, those nutty viral marketers! Adrants thinks this site, which purports to be collecting celebrity pubic hair for charity, is the work of some razor company or other, and they're probably right. Witness their pitch:

"Raw, authentic, and intense" are none of the words we'd use to describe a campaign to pitch televised bull-riding by wrapping New York taxis in cowhide. But what do you expect from Versus, formerly Outdoor Life, a channel that wants to become "an avatar for success in the world or success in life." Our instinctive response does at least begin with the word "bull."

Congratulations to the city of San Francisco, whose three-year-long "advertising campaign featuring cartoon characters shaped like male genitalia encouraged more men to get tested for syphilis in San Francisco." We vigorously applaud the campaign's bravery and implicit suggestion that gay men are more likely to take health advice from squiggly, chatty todgers than the usual talking heads you see in PSAs. We're holding our breath awaiting a version of the spot for our own fair city; we're hoping for something like Herpy, the Talking Sore. Still, we're slightly puzzled by some of the self-congratulatory response to the initiative's success:

Fashion advertising is usually done in-house by edgy art directors named Andr who are even more overpaid than me and who truly believe they're "artists" but who seriously don't know their ads from a hole in the ground, so they hire edgy photographers and pay them a shitload of money to shoot their singular vision, which is usually either models pretending that they're stoned or models pretending that they're dead—but definitely edgy models to help justify their label's 500 dollar price tag for cotton pants with holes in them.

We've grown to love VW's safety-conscious ad campaign because now that we've figured out what always happens in the middle of these commercials, we can, for the first ten seconds or so, relish the fact that a carload of annoying hipsters is about to be blindsided midsentence. The only drawback we can see is the fact that they're actors and won't have to deal with the insurance ramifications that come afterward.

It's not exactly an adventure in contextual advertising, but we've still got to imagine that the folks at Food Emporium aren't exactly thrilled by the placement of this ad on page 26 of today's Post. Although we are experiencing an odd craving for chocolate right now.

We were actually looking at the X-ray thing, but the dish Network ad works as well, baby dong-wise.

Please enjoy this holiday greeting from the good people at Deutsch Inc., the advertising behemoth helmed by cable television personality Donny Deutsch. Here's a little bit of trivia that might add to your enjoyment of the video: After filming, Donny impregnated the reindeer.

To all appearances (and despite being offered for sale in a few New York locations), the Drummond line of fine sweaterwear has passed from this vale of tears. Too bad, because any product advertised with the following lines should be preserved for the ages: "Men are better than women! Indoors, women are useful, even pleasant. On a mountain they are something of a drag." Full giant scan at Dethroner, with relevant ad copy highlighted after the jump.

Snuggle. Mr. Opportunity. These are numbers two & three on my all-time makes-me-curse-out-loud ad icons list. Number one is the Balvenie Guy. Or, as I call him—the Balvenie Weenie .

We might need your help to figure this one out (click to enlarge). From the land where Terry Richardson does denim photography, this Brisbane ad for Frangelico has a young lady palpating nuts in her mouth until the sweet, sticky juice overflows her succulent lips. Wasn't this beverage named after a priest or something? Hardly seems appropriate.

Well, you know, when people just pop up like that without warning, there's a pretty good chance they're gonna get hit.

In other news from Time's Person of the Year selection of "You," a small coda related to automaker Chrysler forking over millions to be the sole POTY sponsor. As Daniel Radosh points out, several of their genius ads began with the tagline "You Might Not Be Time Person of the Year." But then again, You might, and in fact, You are! Give Yourself a hand, and buy a Chevrolet while You're at it.

Try the breadsticks!

Over 250 Sick After Eating At Indiana Olive Garden [AP]
Earlier: Further Adventures in Contextual Advertising

In a New York Times article about the city of Sao Paulo's decision to do away with outdoor advertising, our hearts leapt at the sentiment predicting this would make Sao Paulo "like New York without Times Square." Of course, the sentiment came from an ad man, complaining about "a diminishing of urban life" in ad-free city. Still, only 1 of 46 city councilors voted against the ad-killing measure: