Results tagged “commercials”

Michael Morowitz of the Local Beet tipped us to this commercial for Sunsweet prunes featuring Waukegan's native son, Ray Bradbury.

The above picture is of 19,000 Gatorade bottles used to create a mosaic for an upcoming Gatorade commercial honoring Michael Jordan. The location is basketball court somewhere on the South Side. Looks pretty cool, no? You can read more about it over at Ball Don't Lie, one of the Yahoo! Sports blogs. [via Gapers Block].

Yesterday, we brought you a trio of cute, cuddly, and funny insurance commercials. But reader "augustkl" took umbrage with our calling the ads the greatest ad campaign of all time, suggesting, instead, that the title was held by the locally produced Eagle Man commercials. After looking at these three ads, we think he may be on to something. Like a John Waters movie crossed with Sesame Street on meth, the Eagle Man commercials make the Empire jingle sound like Tchaikovsky.

No, that's not a joke. Contrary to popular belief, we've been known to put a mass-produced beer to our lips from time to time. One thing we'll be able to tell our grandkids about last night is that we had a Pabst Blue Ribbon in our hand when ABC's Charlie Gibson called the election for President-elect Obama. (Wow! That sounds good.)

The Chicago 2016 Committee unveiled its new commercial, narrated by CSI's William Peterson, a Chicago native. The copy is rousing, positively busting with civic pride, etc, etc, but man, that stock footage looks cheesy.

These ads for Americans for the Arts were created by Chicago's own Leo Burnett agency. It's goooood!

Fascinating article in the NYT Magazine yesterday about a Chicago company that revives old but they hope not forgotten brands like Brim, Salon Selectives, Eagle and Nuprin. After megacompanies merge, sometimes name brands get folded together. And that's where River West Brands comes in.

In yesterday's Extra, Extra we announced the "triumphant" return of Classic Schlitz, and today the Trib's Phil Rosenthal looks at why Schlitz left in the first place. Sure, it could be that they messed with the formula, changing it from watered down piss to watered down piss with a hint of asparagus, or, as Rosenthal thinks, maybe it was their god awful advertising. Specifically, this spot that he dubs "Drink Schlitz or I'll Kill You":

Now here's a blast from the past. It's Linn Burton of Burt Weinman Ford showing off the best used car deals that 1982 had to offer. How our family were able to resist buying the deathtrap that was the Ford Pinto, we have no idea.

One of the more contentious races in Tuesday's election is at the Cook County Board of Review, where incumbent Joe Berrios is facing a stiff challenge in trial lawyer Jay Paul Deratany. For many homeowners throughout Cook County, the Board of Review is their best chance at finding relief from both the monster property tax increases proposed by Mayor Daley and the County Board and the skyrocketing assessments of County Assessor Jim Houlihan.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the death of Harold Washington. The Chicago of 1983 was very different from the Chicago of 2007: factories were shutting down, and white middle-class homeowners were leaving the city in droves, taking their property taxes and urban stability with them. An alarming upswing in crime and drugs, coupled with escalating racial tensions left many Chicagoans nervous about the future. Richard J. Daley had been dead for seven years, and...

In light of last week's news that almost a quarter of Ilinoisians are obese, should a new study that found that 98% of all food advertised to children between the ages of two and 11 was high in sugar, fat or sodium really surprise us? Slightly less alarming (but only slightly) was the finding that 89.4% of food-product advertisements viewed by 12-to-17 year olds, were high in fat, sugar, or sodium. The study was conducted...

In the mid 90's we were television addicts. From soaps to sitcoms, we soaked up nearly everything the tube could offer. Our collection of VHS tapes at the time was chock full of good stuff. But in some cases it was the commercials that we loved most. One of our favorites featured Judy Tenuta drinking Diet Dr. Pepper while "working out" at the gym. The moment she proclaiming "You can't get a body like mine...

It’s all fun and games until someone calls sell-out, but how is almost every artist not a sell-out when it comes to putting tunes behind a commercial these days? From the use of “Lust for Life” to get us aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise to Wilco shilling for Volkswagen, what are the best or worst songs used in commercials? Mark Caro wants your comments about that over at his blog, Pop Machine. Do we care...

We can be scatterbrained sometimes. There's just so much cool stuff going on all the time that it's easy to forget a few things now and then. And that's exactly what happened yesterday when we neglected to give a shout out to Mr. Roger Ebert, who celebrated his birthday. There's a soft spot in our collective heart for Mr. Ebert. Long ago we forgave him for his once-scathing reviews of David Lynch films; for one,...

We don't normally run out and buy things just because we see them on commercials. There have been two recent exceptions to that rule (way thumbs up and fairly disappointing), but for the most part, we just wish we had a DVR.

Back in May of 2003 we started watching one of the few reality shows that had us hooked from the first episode. Four years later we're still watching and have become borderline obsessive/compulsive about America's Next Top Model. It's not Tyra that's the draw for us. Nor is it Twiggy, the original waif. Not Nigel Barker who is "married", nor is it even really about the girls competing for the big win (well, maybe just...

At the risk of inciting a riot, Chicagoist is back with another shameful (and frozen) secret. And the secret is simple: we like ourselves a frozen pizza every once in a while. We usually prefer fresh pizza over the frozen variety, but there are nights (usually intoxicated, late nights) where all we want to do is get home and throw a frozen pizza in the oven. Yes, the cheese is never as good nor the...

30 Rock's Scott Adsit

Playing a little catch-up this week after our first round of reader contributions. There's no overriding theme this time other than a general lack of foresight. To paraphrase Gov. Rod's campaign commercials, "What were they thinking?" The municipal elections offered their fair share of the ridiculous. We'd like to thank Arenda Troutman, the campaign volunteers in the 16th and 24th wards, and supporters of Bernard Stone for their special contributions. (Thanks Jerry) A Chicago man...

Chicagoist loves television. Chicagoist loves all television. There are no prejudices here; we watch an episode of "The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency" with the same reverence as we watch "24." We’re rooting for Rob and Ambah as much as we’re rooting for Chris Sligh. We’re looking forward to "America’s Next Top Model" as much as we’re looking forward to answers on "Lost."

"Your Friday Food Buffet" is a new feature where we combine business-related news concerning food and drink with tastings and fixed-price dinners happening around town this weekend. Pretty cut-and-dried, don'cha think? Anyway, we hope you like it. Starbucks finally drops act, admits inspiration for business model: After test-marketing in Chicago and other markets throughout the country, Starbucks rolled out their breakfast sandwiches and drive-thru service in Boston and select Los Angeles locations. No information...

Super Bowl Sunday will be a bittersweet day for Chicago actors who happen to be Chicago Bears fans … or Bears fans that happen to be in a show. They’ve been waiting over two decades for the Bears to return to The Big Game but likely have been honing their craft even longer. That conflict was too much for the Neo-Futurists, who have cancelled Sunday night’s performance of perennial favorite Too Much Light Makes the...

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into...

If one were just casually following the news about ComEd, they might get the impression that there are a lot of regular folks concerned about the poor utility monopoly's ability to stay in business if those meddling kids in Springfield don't let them jack up their prices. They probably saw those deadly serious commercials sponsored by C.O.R.E., the Consumers Organized for Reliable Energy, warning that ComEd could suddenly not afford to keep the lights on, and that we concerned customers would be stuck with meat rotting in our freezers.

Anyone expecting to get their usual dose of local music videos via JBTV was sorely disappointed, as the show was pre-empted on WJYS Channel 62 for one of the many ministries broadcast on the station (though it did air on its sister station WEDE Channel 34). Then today we saw this on JBTV’s MySpace blog:

Allan Stagg, the Chicago DJ who hosted “Sanctuary,” an homage to the days of underground FM radio, died Monday night in Battle Creek, Michigan, (last item) due to complications from pneumonia.

Remember back in September when we warned you about the impending rate increase from ComEd, and everyone talked about TV shows instead? That was awesome. But you might want to think about switching off the telly every now and then; ComEd's 24 percent rate hike goes into effect this week, meaning that the "Ugly Betty" marathon you watched this weekend just cost you approximately $485.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first network television broadcast of The Wizard of Oz. The first CBS broadcast (which was on WBBM Channel 2 in Chicago) was introduced by Bert Lahr with a 10-year-old Liza Minnelli sitting on his lap. Back then, people were unfamiliar enough with the film that viewers were warned that it opens in black and white, lest they think something was wrong with their color televisions. Except for the years 1957-1958 and 1963 (because of JFK's assassination), it has been broadcast annually. The Wizard of Oz has been seen by more people than any other movie (an estimated one billion), and a 1998 Gallup Poll reported that 94% of American adults had seen the film.

The Rapture is in town tonight to play a dancetastic set at Metro. They're touring to support their sophomore full-length Pieces of the People We Love. This opening paragraph is boring in all the ways The Rapture is not.