No, newfunny.com doesn’t have any sponsors. Not that I would mind someone giving me money for something that I’m already doing for free. “A Word From Our Sponsors” is my idea for another television reality show. I’ve worked for UPS for seven years now, and in that time I’ve come up with several ideas for what I think would be great commercials. Unfortunately, UPS doesn’t accept unsolicited marketing concepts– even from it’s own employees. With some 400,000 employees, I guess I can understand their position. This is where “A Word From Our Sponsors” comes into play.
Instead of having commercials in between the show, the show is all about making commercials for specific products, and there aren’t any traditional commercial breaks. The show starts off with 30 contestants: 10 writers, 10 directors, and 10 graphics specialists. Each week, teams are randomly assigned with one person from each of the three groups. At the beginning of the week the CEO of a company makes a presentation about a certain product they would like to promote. Then each team of three has until the end of the week to come up with an idea for a 30 second commercial, film it, and add any needed computer graphics. Next all the teams are brought back together with the sponsor to view the results. Each team gets to score all the other team’s finished product. The sponsor gets to decide if he wants to “buy” any of the commercials. If the sponsor purchases a team’s submission the team automatically gets to go on to the next week. The team with the lowest score gets eliminated. The next week everything starts over. The remaining people are randomly assigned new teams, and a new CEO and product line is introduced.
The show should be geared to encourage “outside the box” concepts that are funny, non-traditional, and memorable. Here are examples of the UPS commercials I’ve thought of:
In the style of the television show “24”, show how a next day air package moves through the UPS system. Show what it would be like if all the UPS drivers and pilots met in one place with their vehicles. A “Lord of the Rings” themed commercial on an easier way to deliver the ring
So, if you are reading this and happen to be the CEO of General Electric or Viacom give me a call and we can work something out. If you are a nobody, don’t call me– I’ve got a truckload of packages that need to get delivered before I can go home for the night.
I have to start out by mentioning that back in the day I used to just skip out of work so I could be one of the very first people to see the latest Star Trek movie on Friday afternoon. Being a UPS driver doesn’t make this very easy, and I didn’t really want to use one of my two option days I get each year. So Katherine and I went to the theater on Sunday afternoon to see what all the fuss is about.
My first impression of the movie was, “Wow– they must have saved a lot of money by using the set of ‘Ugly Betty’ as the bridge of the Enterprise.” Every time they turned a corner on the ship I was expecting to see Vanessa Williams bravely holding up some comically large space weapon with her assistant Marc cowering behind while making sarcastic comments about how the crew dressed such as, “if this is the best outfits the future can come up with, well just phaser me now.” I’m not quite sure where America Ferrera fits into this situation, but I’ll bet she would stick her nose in everyone’s business and find a quirky resolution to the problem.
Here is a run down of the some of the main characters:
James Kirk: fiesty kiddo who spends most of the movie dangling perilously on the edge of things.
Young Spock: realizing that the television show “Heroes” isn’t going to last forever, Zachary Quinto stepped out of the role of the evil Sylar and hopped on board as Spock. His biggest challenge for the role: shaving his facial hair between every take.
Old Spock: according to the movie, Leonard Nemoy was 147 years old when he got sent back in time. I swear he didn’t look a day over 90.
The Bad Guy: Had some strange tatoo on his face and went around destroying Federation planets. I’m not sure if these two facts are related. Too bad Ricardo Montelbon wasn’t around when they filmed this– now there was a guy you just couldn’t help but hate.
And the big surprise at the end: There wasn’t any! None of the main characters were killed because they all have to be kept alive so all the stuff that has already been made at least kind of makes sense. I guess that’s the problem with making a movie that is both a prequel and a sequel in the Star Trek Universe.
I suspect the next film will focus on how William Shatner became such a bad actor.
Facing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Chrysler announced a new “Employee Pricing Plus Plus,” incentive program Tuesday. A top executive at the automaker explained how the new system works. “Not only will employee pricing be offered for the purchase of all Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge vehicles, but for a limited time customers will also receive an actual Chrysler employee. Have them clean up the yard, help the kids with their homework, or take the dog for a walk in the afternoons. When we start up our factories again we will have the employee shipped back with no charge to the customer.”