Super Bowls, Whoppers and the Renaissance of Pam Anderson

The Super Bowl is near! To sum it up short and sweet, this matchup kind of sucks. Philly is a terrible city. I’m sick of Patrick Mahomes, his idiot brother, his douchebag of a tight end and his annoying-ass wife. The only thing I’m rooting for this year will be my various Super Bowl squares, some meme worthy content (never forget Left Shark!), and Rihanna because who doesn’t like Rihanna?  Also, I don’t understand why the media is so obsessed with Jason and Travis Kelce’s Mom? Are we as a society really at a point where we are supposed to be obsessed with this woman just because her two sons are good at football? I hope they let her do the coin flip and the entire stadium boos her out of Arizona. Utter nonsense. Anyways!  This weekend usually provides some good pop culture content, so I felt the urge to right up a good ol’ fashioned pop culture smorgasbord for old times sake. 

Boo this woman!

There seems to be a certain renaissance of late 90’s and early 00’s superstars here in 2023, and I am all about it. Jennifer Coolidge is a gift from the comedy Gods. Brendan Fraser back in Hollywood is a feel good story, especially with all the weird shit that happened to get him blacklisted by studios. Let’s do him right and get a new Mummy movie. Pam Anderson is once again the baddest bitch on the planet, a title that should never have left her. This is great to see! Icons are icons for a reason. Hell, even Bennifer is back together of J Lo and Affleck…holy shit I hope they make a Gigli 2! Please God make Gigli 2. What could go wrong?!

...and bring this hat back into style!

While I’m not the biggest fan of their food, I have to give Burger King their props for their marketing teams. I was obsessed with the creepiness of the BK King in their ads. That magnificent bastard was creepy as all hell yet it would always make me laugh when he popped up out of nowhere. Maybe that says something about me but it’s the truth. Now they have their catchy Whopper Whopper jingles that could and should take home a Grammy next year. They have managed to create something that has instantly gone viral and now covered/remixed by TikTokers. It’s the catchiest song I’ve heard in a while and it shows how important a simple jingle can be. I don’t know about you but if I ever need flooring, I’m rolling with Empire Today because of their ear-virus of a jingle. That stuff works! I hope you all eat like a King who’s on a budget this weekend.

An Icon seen here with Bob Baffert

Are the Charlotte Hornets the most random team in the history of American sports? This dawned on me when thinking about the popularity of the purple and teal starter jackets that randomly everyone owned. You either had a Chicago Bulls (duh), Orlando Magic (Shaq and Penny Hardaway) or a Charlotte Hornets one. The fact that they had an iconic Starter jacket may have been the high water mark for them as a franchise. They haven’t won a playoff series since the 2003/2004 season. Their most famous player had to be Muggsy Bogues, and that was mostly because he was a little fella and got some screen time in Space Jam. Throw in the fact that they moved to New Orleans, then got a new team as the godawful Charlotte Bobcats and then switched back to the Hornets…there’s a lot of weirdness going on there. This has really been weighing on me lately. It’s my slow season at work. Cut me some slack. 

The Razzies got in trouble for nominating some girl who was like 10 for her performance in some movie I never heard of and people got mad. Meh. If Shirley Temple could win an Oscar, and Macaulay Culkin could make Home Alone and Home Alone 2, this girl could have simply stepped up to the plate and been better. I blame her presumably awful stage Mom. 

UFC head honcho Dana White has a new show called Power Slap where it looks like a bunch of drunk guys who never leave their home town stand still and slap each other in the face. I caught about 24 seconds of an episode while looking for the remote to change the channel, and I felt dirty just glancing at it. This has to be the lamest thing on television, right? There was so much more entertainment in the hallway fights back in high school. Some of those were legitimate battles! I just find it amazing that this show of slap and tickle matches got the green light for a real network deal. We used to be a proper country. Bring back Most Extreme Elimination Challenge already.

The only bigger head scratcher of a TV show still on has to be the fact that Chrisley Knows Best just kicked off a new season despite Todd and Julie starting their prison sentences. USA Network just acts like nothing has happened and they just love filming all the totally not staged hijinks with the grandma and weirdo kids. I really do think Todd Chrisley’s biggest gripe is that he won’t be allowed to have his face moisturizers in the pen. I cannot wait to see the before and after photos of him when he gets out of prison. You know how they always show pictures side by side of Presidents on their first and last day in office? This has potential to be blow all of those out of the water. I know you can learn to make toilet wine in prison but I’m not sure if anyone has perfected toilet Botox yet. Poor bastard.

I bet he'll be saying this quite a few times over the next 12 years.

People love the notion of Super Bowl commercials even though they seem to be few and far between in terms of quality these days. Not a whole lot really have the staying power that they used to. This whole M+M’s ad campaign about a name change with Maya Rudolph is a waste of time. It seems exactly like the flop of when IHOP tried to jokingly rebrand as IHOB (you know, burgers instead of pancakes). The only noteworthy thing about it is Tucker Carlson getting all hot and bothered over the sexy green M+M and her shoes. That weirdo has got some kind of perverted mind if you ask me! Obsessing over a candy person. Sheesh. His poor wife. Outside of that, I guess the inevitable Ben Affleck Dunkin’ Donuts commercial could have a chance at being an all-timer. Just don’t over-Boston it. It’s played out. The accent jokes are too easy and lame. 

While this blog is all for funsies and the point is to skewer all things pop culture or whatever, may I please pass along my deepest condolences to the legendary Burt Bacharach, cut down in his prime at the tender age of 94 today. 

Your performance in ‘Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery’ and ‘Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me’ were spellbinding. As a youth, I thought it was the classiest thing in the world to try and woo a woman by hiring Burt Bacharach whilst on top of a double decker bus in Las Vegas. Mr. Bacharach dressed to the nines, tickling the ivories with a candelabra resting on top of his piano, all while drinking champagne on the Vegas strip was the epitome of class. In fact, when I was planning the first date with my girlfriend, I tried to recreate this. I was dismayed to learn that Mr. Bacharach was 91 years old and double decker buses don’t really do a lot of sightseeing in New York City in the first week of February. 

Anyways, rest in power, Burt. You brought a lot of joy to my generation via a couple cameos.