Super Bowl Commercials and the Power of Business Humor

Wikimedia Commons

Super Bowl commercials are a very big deal. There’s even a show about Super Bowl commercials. There are  also commercials about the show about the commercials. Some of the commercials on the show about the commercials are about the Super Bowl.

Business humor is the common element in most of the commercials. The businesses that are spending big bucks on Super Bowl ads understand that good business jokes get people’s attention and thus help to sell products and services.

Now the companies that are paying the big bucks to get their commercials aired during the Super Bowl are putting out million dollar ad and P.R. campaigns to generate buzz for the commercials. Does that not seem a bit crazy?

Soon people are going to begin to realize that football is what happens between the commercials for the Super Bowl.

Suggested Slogans for Howard Schultz’s Campaign

Ask not what your country can brew for you…

Life, lattes, and the pursuit of happiness.

Four score and seven mochaccinos ago…

Give me free lattes, or give me death!

We, the baristas…

United, we brew.

The brew stops here!

Home of the Brew!

When love goes wrong. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Courtesy of FreeGreatPictures.com

Did you know that Valentine’s day was rooted in a festival called Lupercalia in pagan Rome? It involved abusing women and engaging in some sort of sexual lottery. I guess that sounds romantic to some people. 

And how did the image of a naked baby flying around and shooting arrows at people become a symbol of love? That's more like a scene out of a horror movie.

Years ago, I told my wife that because of the pagan roots, I preferred not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The next year, after I moved back into the house, I brought her some flowers. Go along to get along, right?

Valentine’s Day Trivia

When sugar and candy were rationed during World War II, flowers became the preeminent gift for Valentine’s Day. 

Americans spend about $13 billion annually to celebrate Valentine's Day.

About 145 million valentine cards are purchased annually. Women purchase 80%of all greeting cards.

Further reading

St. Patty's Day Humor

April Fools' Headlines

Fat Free Jokes

Overcoming fear when it goes from reasonable to irrational

The Gator Whisperer

I once went hiking up a mountain with some friends. As we went higher the trail got thinner. In some places we were one small slip from plunging to the depths of Hell. Then there was a spot where the trail had been washed out. A jump of about three feet was required to go forward.

I was at the front of the group but I was so scared of missing the little jump that I stepped aside and let the others go first. I was in good shape and there was no reason to think I would have any trouble with the jump. However, the more I looked, the more I envisioned myself sliding down the mountain to my demise.

Fat Free Jokes

The punchline is the funny part of the joke. First you have the setup, then comes the punchline. It’s the destination. The setup normally exists for one reason - to lead the way to the punchline. (There are talented people who get laughs out of their setups, but that’s fairly unusual.)

Most people have probably heard someone tell a joke and include all sorts of details in the setup that really weren’t necessary. There’ve been many times when I‘ve heard someone setting up a joke and I’ve muttered inwardly, “Would you please get to the punchline?”

Blue Angles, Jacksonville Beach, 2007

I've seen the Blue Angels dozens of times, but this was the the best performance I've ever seen. The sky was perfect, the light was perfect, and I had a good camera and a nice spot to shoot from. Unforgettable!

Humor for the Totality, The Mother of All Traffic Jams, 2017 Eclipse Predictions

Box-headed people in 1963!

The bad news is that there is a nationwide shortage of glasses to view the eclipse. The good news is that suitable viewing boxes can be made out of the millions of Amazon boxes that have been piling up in Americans’ garages. Now, nobody has to miss out.

Bill Maher and Kathy Griffin: Jokes that hurt and jokes that kill.

Once upon a time, I was having a good set at a small nightclub in Georgia. I was in my angry phase and that was really working for me. Someone in the audience asked, “Do you hate everyone?”

I said, “No, I don’t hate everyone. Just people like you.”

I know it doesn’t sound funny at all, but people were laughing. Then I said, “I’m kidding. That was just a joke. Have you noticed that when people say something was just a joke, it usually wasn’t?”

More laughter. Once in a while when you do standup, you can say anything and people will laugh. I even blew a few punchlines that night and people still laughed. On the other hand, when you tell lots of jokes, some of them are going to go wrong.

#KathyGriffin: When the joke goes wrong

When Kathy Griffin saw how many Americans were offended by the severed Trump head, she acknowledged that she went way over the line. Americans from both sides of the political spectrum agreed. As Melania Trump commented, it was very disturbing. Griffin posted an apology which seemed sincere. Nevertheless, there were consequences. Griffin was fired by CNN for the annual New Year’s Eve gig. Al Franken cancelled appearances with her.

With some of the commentary that has gone back and forth prior to the last election and since then, the line between decency and vulgarity seems to have disappeared. Profanity has become very common and the insults hurled between the right and the left are limited only by the imaginations of the people speaking them.

The News Junkie

Not Danny Murphy.
Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve been a news junkie since I was a boy. My first job in a suburb of Boston was delivering The Boston Globe, The Herald Traveler, and for a handful of discerning readers, the Record-American. Eighty or so newspapers on a bike, long before I started driving a car. There was another guy in the neighborhood who delivered the Patriot Ledger in the afternoon. 

My father worked in the Mailers’ Union for the newspapers. When I was in high school, right across Morrissey Blvd. from the Boston Globe, he got me a few shifts on Saturday nights putting the Sunday papers together at The Globe. That was back when the Sunday newspapers were gigantic. When I went on breaks, I enjoyed reading the paper in the middle of the night, before anyone else had an opportunity to.

I did well at writing in high school and I took writing classes in college. One of those courses was Magazine Feature Writing at the University of North Florida. That class was taught by the incomparable William Roach. Students in that class had to go through the process of writing and submitting four articles to magazines. One of mine got published! It was a thrill to see my name in print. I went on to write book reviews for the Florida Times-Union and numerous articles that were published in excellent magazines like Onyx, The Wittenburg Door, and National Business Employment Weekly.

Lights! Camera! Blackout? A story of a friendship restored during the holidays.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the home,
no devices were running, not even a phone.
The children did gather, totally bored,
in hopes that the power would soon be restored.

Christmas Eve was unseasonably mild. The power went out right after sunset when people were turning their Christmas lights on. Shortly afterwards, Fred rolled his generator into position not far from the kitchen window. He had purchased it a few months earlier in preparation for Hurricane Matthew. It was still shiny and new. It was also easier to crank up than his lawnmower.

Santa may cancel deliveries due to drone traffic.

Since the 1960s, when Rudolph began lighting the way, there has never been any talk of shutting down Santa’s delivery runs. However, new issues have come up which may force the cancellation of Christmas. The air traffic from holiday delivery drones has been building for several years, and an insider at the North Pole says a shutdown by Santa may be imminent because of it.

The Lord's Fishing Buddies

The calling of Peter and Andrew
by James Tissot, 19th century

Did you ever wonder why Jesus chose fishermen as his disciples? I think one of the reasons is that people who make their living by fishing are very tough, both physically and mentally. Fishing for a livelihood is hard. Fishermen have to be able to withstand all kinds of weather, from searing sunny hot days to dangerous sudden storms. They work with knives, ropes, and hooks, which results in injuries from time to time. They know how to take some pain once in a while.

The Purposeful Persistence of Doug Vanderlaan, the Listener Who Compelled Clear Channel to Change Its Tune

This article was originally published in the Winter 2005 issue of Christian Networks Journal. 

“The more I listened, the more irresponsible content I heard. I just felt this sense of purpose. I thought to myself, ‘Somebody ought to do something. Why not me?’” Doug Vanderlaan

“One (expletive) in Jacksonville is going to change the
complete landscape of radio forever.” Bubba the Love Sponge ¹

Long before Bono’s prime time profanity and Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, Doug Vanderlaan filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about the indecency he was hearing on WPLA, Planet Radio, in Jacksonville. It was like David throwing a stone at Goliath. Vanderlaan isn’t a Congressman or a millionaire. He’s the father of two young men who were teens at the time. Clear Channel Communications, the owner of Planet Radio, is the biggest radio empire in the United States.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of App-en

17th-century depiction of the Tree of Life
in Palace of Shaki Khans, Azerbaijan

Then the Master of the Apps put Adam in the Garden of App-en to tend to it. And the Master of the Apps commanded Adam, saying, “You may download and use any of the apps, except for one. You will not download the App of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For in the day that you download the App of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, your bandwidth will surely be destroyed, your updates will cease, and your connection will fail.”

The Serpent App was clever and adaptive, and, unlike the other apps, it had a mind of its own.

Declaration of Dependence on God

This image can be printed and signed.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for People to acknowledge that they are not God almighty, a decent respect to the opinions of Mankind requires that they should Declare the causes which have brought them to this conclusion. 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident:

• that all men are Created
• that if there were no God, nothing and nobody would exist
• that when we depend on the Lord, He takes care of us
• that the Lord is God.

We, therefore do, in the Name of God, solemnly publish and declare, that we are totally, and completely, and in every way, Dependent on God. 

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we pledge to our Lord our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.

If you liked this, you might also like some of Danny's other writings. Check out his Amazon Author Page. 

Related blog posts

The Garden of App-en

The Lord's Fishing Buddies

Prayer Wireless? 

Adapted by Danny Murphy from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. This piece was first published in the First Coast Community section of the Florida Times-Union website in 2005.

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How to tell jokes: Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Remedial Sensitivity

Lenny Bruce, Wikimedia Commons

Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t play colleges anymore due to political correctness. Neither does Chris Rock. In an interview with Frank Rich of Vulture, Rock said, "I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they're way too conservative... Not in their political views — not like they're voting Republican — but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody."

In the tradition of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin, comedians love to exercise their wit privilege by telling jokes about anything. They're essentially wit supremacists who act as if nothing is off limits. Sometimes they push the envelope just to see how far they can go. Louis C.K., Bill Maher, Ricky Gervais, Seth McFarlane, Tracy Morgan, Amy Schumer, Dane Cook, Daniel Tosh, and Michael Richards have all been accused of going over the line in one way or another. Radio personalities Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, and Howard Stern have also been accused of going too far with their humor.

Richard Pryor, Wikipedia

It could happen to anyone who’s trying to be funny. For example, I myself was once tempted to come up with a few jokes about what happened to Bruce/Caitlin Jenner’s javelin. It just seemed to me that there’s probably a man in a woman’s body somewhere who would love to have Jenner’s old javelin. It seemed to me that it could have been sold or auctioned off on Ebay. However, I realized that jokes based on those premises, which could be extremely offensive to some people, would be way over the line. Thank goodness I figured that out before it was too late.

Just because a joke is funny doesn’t mean that it has to be told or that it should be told. Funny people love their wit privilege, but it doesn't give them the right to tell jokes that offend and hurt feelings. Comedians and others who earn their livings through humor must have sensitivity for the feelings of anyone who might be offended. They must figure out how to deliver kinder, gentler jokes that won’t hurt other people's feelings. They simply must. If they cannot do that, the laughter must stop.

Further Reading

Politically Correct Jokes

How to tell jokes

Learn to tell jokes from the masters

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The Good Provider

When I was twelve and playing Pee Wee hockey, I scored a goal in every game for a while. Game after game, I was in the right place at the right time. It was one of the best times in my life. The only way it could have been better would have been seeing my father in the stands at a game. However, he worked two jobs and he never had time for things like that. He paid for the hockey, but never did come to a game. It bothered me.

One winter, during my hockey years, he got some wood, framed up a small area in the backyard, and lined it with plastic sheeting. Then he filled it with water which froze. It was a tiny skating rink. It was too small to do much and there was actually better ice in a nearby swamp. Still, my father had built it for me, and that meant something.

Our relationship became strained after I grew up. There were times when I went negative when I thought about him. One day I woke up and realized that there wouldn't have been any hockey without my father. Now, I choose to think about the little skating rink he built for me. I wish I had a picture of it. My father worked a lot and he was a good provider. I’m very fortunate to have had the father I had.

Heroes on board and heroes on the hill - Remembering Bunker Hill and United Flight 93

“Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” Colonel William Prescott told the minutemen. It was June 17^th, 1775. They couldn’t afford to waste one round. They stood their ground till the ammunition ran out. They lost the hill, and they lost the battle. However, they had proved to themselves, to the British, and to potential supporters that they could fight. Whereas the British lost about 1000 men, the rebel forces lost about 400.

Bunker Hill Day commemorates the first major battle of the Revolutionary War. When I was growing up, it was one of the best days of the year. My father and his lifelong pal, Fred ''Sullie'' Sullivan, grew up in the Charlestown section of Boston, not far from Bunker Hill. Sullie lived in Charlestown his whole life.

Every year, on June 17^th, my family went to the Sullivan home for a cookout. My father was in the Boston Fire Department Color Guard for a few years, and he marched in the parade. I got to hang out with Danny Sullivan, who was a really fun guy to be around. After the parade, Danny and I would check out the Bunker Hill Monument.

A few years ago, I saw the movie United 93. United 93 was the flight where a group of modern day minutemen stood up and fought back against the terrorists who had hijacked the plane. One of the best things about the film was that the actors and actresses were relative unknowns. They were regular people, as were the passengers on United 93.

Those who fought back on United 93 had something in common with the patriots who fought on Bunker Hill. Their greatest resource was their own courage. Ultimately, they prevented the terrorists from carrying out their mission.

The gripping story of United 93 is shown in real time. It's impossible to know, for certain, how close the movie was to what actually happened. The director and writers pieced together as much as they could from the flight recorders and from phone calls that were made by the passengers. The film depicted, in a very plausible way, what happens to people when they are confronted with acts of terror – the confusion, the fear, and the resolve.

Director Paul Greengrass writes, ''The terrible dilemma those passengers faced is the same we have been struggling with ever since. Do we sit passively and hope this all turns out OK? Or do we fight back and strike at them before they strike at us? And what will be the consequences if we do?''

For more information about the movie, check out http://www.flight93.net/index.php.

For more information about Bunker Hill, check out http://www.nps.gov/bost/bost_lographics/bunkhill.htm.

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