Let's learn cause and effect with Superboy in "The Cigar that Killed Superboy!"

Ever hear of carcinoma, Superboy? As Pa Kent learned the hard way, lung cancer is the most common cancer-related death in America. Remember kids, "super-convenience" may seem swell, but you'll feel far less guilty if you make your parents get their own matches! Better luck with your next set of parents, Kal-El!

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In between networks promos and local cable advertisements during The Penguins of Madagascar (clearly they've run out of good names for cartoons these days) on Nickelodeon, I encountered two the most senseless commercials I've seen in recent months.

The first was an ad for Honey Nut Cheerios featuring their animated mascot, Buzz. The only problem with this commercial was that it didn't make any sense. Honest-to-goodness transcript as follows:

BEE: Buzz, everybody's at the Honey Geyser to make Honey Nut Cheerios!

BUZZ: Yeah, 'cause here comes the honey!

Honey Geyser erupts, but then is drawn back in on itself in a honey vortex.

BUZZ: Where's it going? Come on!

No one follows Buzz into the vortex.

BUZZ: Where am I? And the honey... It's being sucked into that mummy's tomb!

Cue glowing, growing, growling sarcophagus.

BUZZ: I've only got one shot at this!

Buzz points his wooden honey dipper like a magic wand at the sarcophagus. The honey dipper releases electricity which topples nearby obelisks, damming the honey stream, causing the sarcophagus to shrink.

SARCOHPGOUS: Nooooooooo!

BUZZ: Yes!

Buzz leaves as the geyser starts flowing again.

BEE: Buzz, you're safe!

BUZZ: And so's our honey, so everybody can have delicious Honey Nut Cheerios.

VOICEOVER: It's the honey sweet part of a good breakfast. From the hive that's nuts about honey.

Lessons learned: honey comes from honey geysers, is coveted by bee-mummies (who present only a mild inconvenience), and honey dippers are electrical in nature. None of which makes me want to eat cereal.

The very next commercial broadcast was done infomercial style for Touch-N-Brush, "the hands-free toothpaste dispenser that works with just a touch!" The highlight of this ad is the series of images of apparently physically or mentally handicapped people frustrated by messy, hard-to-use, and difficult to understand toothpaste tubes. "You squeeze. You roll. You press. Now your bathroom looks a mess!"

Maybe this commercial is speaking to the portion of America I've never visited, but I don't recall seeing any bathrooms where dried toothpaste was on all the countertops, sinks, and walls as depicted by the users in this commercial. If that's how these people squeeze toothpaste tubes, I'm interested in watching them squeeze ketchup, shake hands, or hug their children.

Lessons learned: Squeezing a tube of toothpaste is hard. Can't someone else do it for me?

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I was really pulling for Pyro in today's 134th running of the Kentucky Derby. However, Pyro was unable to catch fire after being snuffed by other runners right out of the gate. This is two consecutive bad races for Pyro, who appears to have burned out after scorching the field with blazing speed earlier in his career. (I'm sorry for all that, really I am.)

Other sad news was the euthanization of the filly Eight Belles following the race for two leg fractures. Ironically, "eight bells" is nautical slang for the end of a ship's watch shift and is used by sailors as a euphemism for death. Someone probably should have told this to the filly's parents.

The moral to this Kentucky Derby is be very, very careful what you name your horse.

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Last month, I received a signed book from a friend's employer, one of the world's foremost authorities on Superhero Mego figures. This month, I'm working for another friend's employer, one of the world's foremost authorities on Coca-Cola bottles.

This week's moral is "learn more about something than anyone else, and someday maybe you, too, can meet me." (Sorry, no autographs.)

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In honor of the creature feature Cloverfield, which has made an absolute killing at the box office despite -- or perhaps because of -- not telling its potential audience anything about what it's about (ala "Gabbo Is Coming"), I present my current favorite monster movie quote from Roger Corman's masterful Attack of the Crab Monsters:

Martha Hunter:"But Doctor, that theory doesn't explain why Jules' and Carson's minds have turned against us."

Dale Drewer:"Preservation of the species: Once they were men. Now they are land crabs."

Yet another of Corman's cautionary tales. Beware, should you ever find yourself transformed into a gigantic semi-permiable land crab, you'll no doubt become homicidal as well.

Note that this film featured Russell Johnson, better known as "The Professor" on Gilligan's Island. I'm pretty sure that I've never seen anything that he appeared in that I didn't really enjoy, though I could probably say the same about Bob Denver or Alan Hale, Jr.

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Statistics indicate that once every two minutes, someone in America is sexually assaulted. While that sounds bad, it's tempered by the fact that most of those victims are probably in a relationship with Charles Bronson.

In Death Wish, Charles Bronson is a New York City architect whose wife is murdered and whose daughter is raped by a band of hoodlums that includes The Fly's Jeff Goldblum. In Death Wish 2, Bronson's family relocates to Los Angeles, but his daughter is again raped and this time killed by a different band of hoodlums that includes The Matrix's Laurence Fishburne. In Death Wish 3, Bronson returns to New York City where his new neighbor's wife is raped and killed by a gang of hoodlums including Bill & Ted's Alex Winters. In Death Wish 4, Bronson's back in Los Angeles, where his girlfriend and her daughter are killed by drug dealers who include Star Trek Voyager's Tim Russ among their numbers. In Death Wish 5, Bronson is again in New York and he again has a fiance who is killed by mobsters including Medium's Miguel Sandoval.

No doubt, there are several lessons here, not the least of which is that New York and Los Angeles are both dangerous cities. If you want to keep your family safe from muggers and rapists (and drug dealers and mafioso), move somewhere else. Another moral here is that if you see a face you recognize in a crowd of thugs, that person is probably going to rape and/or kill you. (The real message may be that you shouldn't have a love affair with Charles Bronson, but seeing as how he's been dead for half a decade, I figure that one's just common sense.)

Why do I mention this now? Because I just heard that Sylvester Stallone, fresh off his zombie movies Rocky Balboa and Rambo, is looking to remake the first Death Wish. (Can Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot Again or Over the Top 2: WAY Over the Top be far behind?) Running out of his own material to re-tread, Stallone is moving on to others' franchises. Watch your back, Schwarzenegger.

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In the Star Trek episode "Operation: Annihilate!", Mr. Spock is infected with a mind-controlling parasite. As an experiment to remove the parasite, Spock is exposed to the full spectrum of light at high intensity. However, when Spock is blinded by the experiment and lab reports show that the parasite is vulnerable to spectra of light invisible to humans, Kirk blames McCoy for blinding Spock. Note the following:

• Captain Kirk rejects the "logical" proposal by Mr. Spock that the infected inhabitants of Denev be destroyed to prevent the spread of the parasite. Apparently concerned about his legacy, Captain Kirk refuses to be the man who killed a million people to save a billion.
• The "expose the space aliens to light" plan was based on Captain Kirk's own suggestion that the parasite may be vulnerable to light. None of the science or medical officers on board the Enterprise's "best in the galaxy" labs have come up with or endorsed this apparently desperate plan of action.
• The experiment was rushed on the orders of an emotional Captain Kirk so that he may save his nephew, who has also been infected. Kirk's earlier plan of interrogating his sister-in-law for information about the parasite and its weaknesses resulted in her death.
• Captain Kirk orders Mr. Spock to participate despite Dr. McCoy's objections. Though Spock is willing to participate (as the logical participant), McCoy is concerned that Spock should have eye protection, a concern that Kirk immediately and unreasonably overrides.

The moral to this story: If you're going to be a dick, be a Captain.

On a side note, immediately after ridding the planet Denev of the parasitic invaders, Captain Kirk orders the Enterprise out of orbit. This is despite the fact that he has just left his only nephew, Peter, an orphan on the planet's surface. Nice show of compassion, Captain Dick.

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CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and all the local channels were reporting on the Virginia Tech shooting, so I changed channels and watched Revenge of the Nerds. Things that I noticed:

1. Breaking into campus housing, a sorority, and leaving cameras behind, the protagonist Nerds committed crimes including but not limited to Breaking and Entering, Criminal Trespass, Disorderly Conduct, Intrusion of Privacy, Unauthorized Videotaping, and Vandalism. No police investigation was depicted. (Granted, the Nerds committed these crimes in retaliation for similar crimes committed upon them, but retaliatory vigilantism is not a defensible stance in the eyes of the law.) Moral: Have fun at others expense; privacy and security are rules made to be broken!
2. During the Adams University sponsored Homecoming Carnival, one sanctioned event requires tricycle riding participants to drink one12-ounce can of beer for completing each of twenty laps around a short racing track, simulating a dangerous drinking-and-driving scenario. In addition to mocking DUI statutes, this reckless encouragement of binge drinking and excessive consumption can pose a serious health risk to those participating. Moral: Go ahead and drink and drive; trying to stay on both of the roads that you see will make you a better driver in the long run!
3. After essentially being raped by a man impersonating her boyfriend who has also widely distributed pictures of her in a state of advanced undress (another criminal act altogether, even if proceeds of the crime are going to charity), the head cheerleader, Betty Childs, decides to abandon her previously aggressive anti-Nerd role. Again, no investigation is indicated for the sexual misconduct of the Nerd in question, though since Ms. Childs is an adult and unwilling to press charges, unless someone complains about the indecent pictures, little legal action is necessitated. Moral: Use sex as a weapon, but be good at it!
4. Seven black fraternity members are threatening enough to the pro-Jock establishment that they cow them into allowing a voice to the Nerd minority. In this case, the African-Americans are actually supporting the previously unenforced rule of law rather than challenging it, but this clear depiction of unequal race relations is still a jarringly clear disparity between factions of the University community. Moral: Black people in fraternity sweaters are especially violent!

Violence on campus: still hilarious.

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Gooooold!

I may have mentioned the TV show Gold Fever on my blog before. If not, shame on me. It's broadcast on the Outdoor Channel, the same channel as the sublime Ted Nugent's Spirit of the Wild, and features prospecting enthusiast Tom Massie crawling through caves and tundra in search of that most alluring of elements: goooooold! (Which is, I swear, how Tom pronounces the word every time he says it.)

The show is unintentionally one of the funniest on TV. Tom's earnest, endless pursuit of gold is just about as amusing as watching Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny. I've seen Tom get lost in a cave, slip and split his pants, and fall into a creek, all the while talking 100 words per minute about gold and pitching $80 annual memberships in the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). In short, I've always pegged this guy as the good-natured, hyperactive fellow in high school who was a lot of fun to hang out with for a few hours, but a few ounces short of a pound, so to speak.

Turns out, Tom Massie is the Executive Vice President of the Outdoor Channel itself, a $40 million company. Tom and his comparatively surprisingly suave brother Perry - think of redneck versions of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger from Twins - have owned and managed the company since the death of their father, Buzzard (no joke), in 1993, developing it into a minor media titan on the back of such shows as Shooting Gallery, Inside Paintball, and Turkey Country. So not only is Tom Massie a cornball, gold hunting machine, he's also a successful television executive in the dog-eat-dog world of cable television.

What is the moral to this story? Don't judge a GPAA book by it's cover? Scratch the surface of a ridiculous goofball and you may find gooooold? Do what you love and the gooooold will follow? I'll let you decide.

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On October 2, Emerson Electronics sued GE because NBC showed a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running InSinkErator brand garbage disposal on the show Heroes. Emerson manufactures the InSinkErator and claims that NBC's parent GE, also a manufacturer of garbage disposals, was trying to sully the InSinkErator brand name by showing the damage it could cause to a human. Money.CNN reports the lawsuit, including the plaintiff's argument that "according to data from the government's Consumer Products Safety Commission, you are actually ten times more likely to get injured by your dishwasher than your garbage disposal."

First of all, I should think that InSinkErator would be pleased to demonstrate what it can do to a human hand. If it can destroy bone, it damn well should be able to take care of a few apple cores and potato rinds. Secondly, why does the government track and study how likely you are to get injured by a dishwasher? Are we in imminent danger of invasion from insurgent dishwashers? (Well, I guess possibly so if you count Mexicans.)

So the lesson here, NBC, is that next time you should show a person's hand being chopped up from being thrust inside a running GE brand dishwasher. You'll save yourself money in the long run.

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