The award for best (local) Super Bowl ad goes to Hari Trivedi for Wisconsin governor
Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked over the weekend. Here are some things to think about as the workweek begins.
• If you’re the kind of (awful) person who watches the Super Bowl for the commercials, then you were probably disappointed last night. Aside from a few mildly amusing moments and the sight of David Beckham’s schlong, this year’s crop of million-dollar talking babies was tired, sad, and downright baffling. (Samsung’s bringing back the stylus and The Darkness?) But scattered among the ruins was a local spot that cut through the Budweiser bullshit and told it like it was. Yes, we’re talking about Hari Trivedi for Wisconsin governor, of course.
In a series of low-budget, delightfully stilted ads, Brookfield physician Hariprasad “Hari” Trivedi officially enters the soon-to-be wide open race for Wisconsin governor, giving fans of independent candidates a beacon of hope, and giving the folks who spent the last year of their lives trying to recall Scott Walker a cold, cold shower. According to The Business Journal, the ads cost Trivedi in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 a pop. And who says you need a Jay Leno cameo or the prayers of Gisele Bundchen to make a Super Bowl splash?
• The once fabled “director’s cut” has fallen on hard times. For every classic film deserving of new scenes and artistic control (think Touch Of Evil recut to Orson Welles’ original memos), there’s a direct-to-DVD dud that adds three seconds of T&A and plays the phony “Totally Unrated!!!” card. The recently released “director’s cut” of David Zucker’s Travel Wisconsin commercial is an example of the latter (minus the T&A, of course). What happens when you nearly double the length of a well-meaning but tepid tourism spot that involves the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and a snowball fight? Not much!
• The criminally underreported Bon Iver was the musical guest on this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live. The Eau Claire-based group performed the Milwaukee-name-dropping “Holocene” and the Top Gun-esque “Beth/Rest.” Check out both songs here:
• In a bit of non-video news, The A.V. Club would like to congratulate Cristina Daglas on her new gig as editor of Milwaukee Magazine. The 27-year-old Daglas takes over for longtime editor Bruce Murphy, and she begins today. Congrats!
