allow me to paint for you a picture...

...Wednesday, July 26.

8:30 a.m.

I have a job interview in Bala Cynwyd in 2 hours.

I'm in the bathroom, immediately post-shower, trying desperately to do something involving gel and my hair that doesn't result in hideousness so that I can look good for "Becky," who is the person from Business Wire who called me and is therefore the one I must assume is going to be interviewing me.

My mother, oblivious to my struggle with my bountiful locks, putting on a CD that I burned for her, and then starting to do the dishes in the kitchen, which is in the next room over.

Ben Folds, who is on this particular CD, singing plaintively, "Everybody knows it sucks to grow up, but everybody does."

While I'm still trying to convincingly put gel in my hair.

So that I can get a job. And, you know, grow up.

It was poignant, in my mind.

Maybe you had to be there.

york peppermint patties...

...and cute smiles rule my roost.

television-induced comma (and other punctuation, and letters)...

I'd like to begin this presentation by saying if this were 9/12/2001, that Chevy commercial where the people jump out of buildings in order to get to the model year-end clearance would be very, very offensive.

But it ain't, so it's just a another bad car commercial.

Next slide, please.

Ah, yes. Okay, the fact that we're hearing Fall Out Boy on the commercials for the movie "Zoom" creates, for me, mixed emotions: on the one hand, the bad hand, that is, it forces you to listen to a snippet of the song unless you're quick with the mute button. On the other hand, though, the good one this time, it's a very solid indicator that the song, and therefore the band that wrote it, is finally dying a slow, painful death.

Next - ooh, you anticipated me that time. Well done.

Here we have an example of one of the finest commercials ever made, a real slump-buster after the annoying fare with which they'd been attempting to ply us.

I give you Dunkin' Donuts:

"The backs of my LEEEEEEEEEEEGS!

*pause*

Stickin' to the PLEATHERRRRRRR!"