Vintage TV ads: in twenty seconds or less!

As usual, this was a process. For reasons unknown, something popped into my head today. Years ago, in a compilation of "classic" TV ads, I saw a very brief spot for a certain type of cooker that I hadn't seen before. I just remembered that the announcer was British, and the cooker cooked things at some sort of supernatural speed. You could do a chicken in 5 seconds or something. I also remembered the type of energy used was weird - thermonuclear or something? Thermodynamic? Convectional? I could NOT remember the name, only the weird feeling it gave me, as if it would emit radiation or something.

It took a lot of googling and search terms and switching back and forth from YouTube to Google images, but I finally found it - and I knew I would recognize the name the minute I saw it! It was INFRARED. For some reason, the idea of an infrared cooker scared the hell out of me. It sounded like it should come with its own Geiger counter.

Once I knew the name of it, it wasn't hard to find the ad on YouTube. It was the same one, except I had remembered it a little bit wrong, as something with a glass dome. In truth, it's a sort of prototype for the George Foreman grill, or one of those thingies that awful Southern lady pushes in the infomercials.

Having noticed how mercifully brief the ad was, I thought: what if I did a whole post on ten-second-long "classic" commercials? I didn't get too far. Soon I was up to 20 seconds. Most of them are at least within 30.  I love things that get right to the point.

BLOGGER'S DISCOVERY! NOW I know what I was thinking about! I must have conflated (if that's the word) the British infrared cooker ad with a "vision of the year 2000" video in Russian (or Polish or Czech). It featured an infrared cooker with a glass dome, which claims to cook a chicken in a few seconds or less.

Like this.

Reese Witherspoon animation!

In my ever-more-demonic attempts to make things move, I took this picture of Reese Witherspoon from Legally Blonde - that DOES have an "e" on it, doesn't it? - and made her talk. Well, sort of. It's hard to mess with facial features and have them come out looking more-or-less natural. They don't here, but that's all part of the fun, isn't it? The idea to make her eyes move was an afterthought. I'd have her filing her nails, tossing her hair back, giving herself a mani-pedi, etc., but hell, I don't want to push my luck.

This was taken from an image I put together for the thumbnail of my YouTube video, Whatever Happened to the Popular Girl? Everyone says a good thumbnail attracts more views. Ha. YOUR thumbnail, maybe. I make personalized thumbnails because they're fun to make. And it's even more fun to make them talk.

Bentley does nothing - to music!

Cats Doing Nothing, Part 496: Bentley does what he does best - to the tune of Leroy Anderson's charming classic, The Waltzing Cat.

Whatever happened to the popular girl?

Late one night, my thoughts began rambling, and I turned on the video camera. I've been trying to figure some things out about internet popularity, and popularity/lack of it in general, what it means, why people crave it - and whatever happened to that girl who seemingly had everything, the one who had not friends, but an entourage, when she was fourteen years old. 

Surprisingly, I DID find out what happened to her! Literally, I found out. I got a Facebook message from The Popular Girl, and in this video I tell you what it is. This was simply amazing. I have the answer, folks, so you have to watch this.