The chick and rhino must die

Hey, anyone see Bright Eyes play on The Late Late Show the other week? He smashed a really expensive guitar and the trumpet player smashed his instrument too. Way to represent, band geek. After the break, Craig Ferguson surprisingly sat Conor Oberst down at the desk for a brief interview. Not surprisingly, Conor gave the WORST INTERVIEW EVER. It was funny though. Check out the link to it here.

As someone who watches cable when most of the world is sleeping, I feel an obligation to report on certain things that go on, just so you (the world) can be aware. And I've noticed a disturbing trend. But not just in the amount of spoiled rich kids having riDONKulous parties and having MTV tape them for posterity. That's just "Super Sweet 16," a show I hate in ways I can't even begin to express in The King's English.

No, the trend I am speaking of is the recent increase in the amount of commercials for stupid ringtones and other cell phone add-ons. We're talking a SHARP increase here, people. Two months ago, there were none. Now I swear there's at least one every break. Are people that attached to their cell phones? Do they really watch these commercials and think, "You know, I just haven't been happy with my cell phone, or really my life for that matter, but I think having a shadowy animation of some dude playing basketball in the background of my cell will help. Yes, I will pay five dollars for it."

But the worst are these freaking commercials with singing creatures. Spike the Rhino or Squeaky the Chick or Sparky the Anemic Elephant pops onscreen and starts to sing the most annoying song you can imagine. It's as if some skeezy ad exec was trying to imitate a Top 40 song but inexplicably made it worse, wrote terribly cheesy lyrics about how you REALLY SHOULD ANSWER THIS CALL SERIOUSLY, I'M NOT JOKING YOU SHOULD ANSWER IT, and then had it recorded by Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Just Theodore, mind you, because he's the least talented and therefore the cheapest.

So we have the most annoying song in the world, sung by the most annoying animated character ever created. You would think this is just some clever ploy by a rival network to get you to change the channel to their station, but no. THEY ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO PAY MONEY TO HEAR THE SONG AGAIN. AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. In fact, they would love it if you had this song play every freaking time your cell phone rings. Unfortunately, not all of us can actually have the character sing to us when it rings. For those of you with less advanced cell phones, you can get the same basic song in mono or poly tones, so the most annoying song ever is played in tones reminiscent of early Nintendo. Think "Bad Dudes" era and you're close. The sad thing is that reducing the song to boops and beeps actually improves it.

But the saddest thing of all is that people actually buy them. People have to buy them, right? Otherwise they wouldn't be on the air anymore. Although the makers have shown so little sense up to the airing of the ad, the results of the campaign are probably far from their concern. I get the sense that these are people who are disappointed that they missed the Hale-Bopp Comet the first time around.

Wait, I think one of the spoiled rich kids on MTV just had their cell phone ring and it was the "Spotty the Leprous Zebra" ringtone. I really despise my generation sometimes. By the way, boys of America, please stop popping the collars of your Izod polo shirts. You look stupid. You really do.