If you’ve watched much television in the last year, you’ve probably seen some odd Wendy’s commercials. They feature guys wearing a red wig (like the red pigtails of Wendy herself) who usually preach about fresh burgers, ending with the phrase “That’s right.” According to an Associated Press story, Wendy’s is pulling this ad campaign due to underperforming sales.

Somehow I’m not surprised. Remember the Baconator commercial? Screaming masses run away from a guy in the red wig pointing backward and yelling “BACON!” This is only one of several strange scenarios Wendy’s dreamed up for the now-defunct ad campaign. It’s likely that these commercials left consumers more confused than hungry.

Will the ad campaign replacing it be any better? Let’s hope it will be a little less bizarre. They’re trading in “That’s Right” for “It’s waaaay better than fast food. It’s Wendy’s.” I’m thinking they’ll go for a psychedelic look. Any thoughts?

Get ready for some serious skanking this Saturday as Mustard Plug bust open the Courtyard Cafe with The Drastics and Alleyway Sex. This is sure to be a pretty wild show in a venue as small as the Courtyard Cafe, so put on those skanking shoes and leave your small children at home.

Mustard Plug, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, released their sixth album, “In Black and White,” last year. Lead singer Dave Kirchgessner said parts of the album are more serious and darker than previous efforts.

“I think its partly a reflection of the world around us. A lot of it has to do with growing older – I’m 39 now,”  Kirchgessner said.

Mustard Plug has been around for 16 years, so it’s natural for their sound to go through some changes. He said they like the name of the new album because it shows that the songs are open to interpretation.

“The whole black and white thing we like because its sort of ambiguous,” Kirchgessner said. “It could be a reference to newsprint or to two-tone ska. Whoever buys the album can interpret it however they see it.”

Despite the new album’s darker tone, Kirchgessner said they still have fun playing the party songs.

“Right now, I’d say ‘Hit Me, Hit Me’ and ‘Real Rat Bastard’ are my two favorite ones (to play live,)” he said. “They’re kind of like fun party songs more or less.”

After 16 years and six albums the band has plenty of material to choose from for live shows. Kirchgessner said Mustard Plug’s setlists are a combination of what the band thinks the best songs are and what they think the crowd wants to hear. He does not envy bands that have one huge hit and are subsequently obligated to play it at every show.

“I think we’ve both been cursed and blessed by not having a radio hit, so we don’t have that problem,” he said.

So get ready for a show with plenty of energy, drawing from 16 years of ska.

Mustard Plug plays at the Courtyard Cafe Saturday at 8 p.m. The show costs $5 for University students and $8 for the general public. The Drastics and Alleyway Sex open.

Today I did something rather unusual. I went to a passion party. Now, for those of you that have no idea what this is, let me clue you in. It’s a sex toy party. I’ll admit I was quite intrigued to see what one of these was like, and I was actually a little surprised. No, not by “Pharaoh’s Surprise” or “Nipple Nibblers,” but that this company actually had beauty products in their catalog.

One item I was particularly intrigued by was the moisturizing foot cream that tingled when you rubbed it on. According to the catalog, the bottom of your foot is one of  the most erogenous places on your body. This cream contained shea butter for intense moisturizing and has a minty smell that cools and refreshes. The tingle produced is supposed to be the extra stimulus.

However, it was $18. But good news my beauty obsessed people who love when people paid attention to their feet- you can get an exfoliating bath glove. Put moisturizing bodywash on the glove and scrub the bottom of your feet. Pay particular attention to the soles. Afterwards, slather on some moisturizer with shea butter and you get a similar effect as the cream. At least, I really enjoy it and it is like getting a pedicure!

The cost of the glove is about $3 for a pair at Walgreens. This is one thing I highly recommend, and even if you don’t get a little turned on, you’ll get pretty feet!

I haven’t seen all of the movies up for nomination in every category, so I’m not going to pick winners. Instead, I will sound off on my thoughts for each particular category of importance.

Best Picture: I guess I’m sort of surprised to see “Juno” on there. It’s the odd-one out in the crop of sober, serious Best Picture candidates. I don’t see a teen-pregnancy movie winning Best Picture, but hey, at least they threw them a bone, right? It seems half-hearted to me. I don’t think it has any chance, so why nominate it? Just to get a mix of different types of films?

Best Actor: I fully expect Daniel Day Lewis to walk away with this one for “There Will be Blood”. He’s been waiting for it for a while, and the Academy loves to award Oscars for

1. This sort of sprawling historical thing

and

2. To actors who have been deserving Oscars for past roles but haven’t gotten one yet. Morgan Freeman got his the other year, and now it’s Lewis’s turn.

And the less I have to hear about Johnny Depp deserving Best Actor, the better. If he really, really wants one, he should consider doing a more conventional role. Less Tim Burton, more Steven Spielberg. I can just imagine a Johnny Depp acceptance speech. He would stand up there at the podium, not smiling behind dark glasses, and mumble into the microphone something about how he likes living in Paris, his unkempt Oscar-beard filled with crumbs, and then shuffle off while the audience gives a standing ovation.

Best Actress: This is the most interesting category to me because Ellen Paige, or “Juno”, really does have a fighting chance. It would be cool to see a 20-year old win Best Actress for playing a 16-year old. She really doesn’t seem to have much competition in the category. In fact, she is the only actress in the nominees whose film is one of the Best Picture nominees. Hmmm…what does that say about the Hollywood system, I wonder?

Best Director: My money would be on the Coen’s for “No Country for Old Men”. That is, if I were betting money, which I certainly wouldn’t be. For example, if you contacted me, I definitely wouldn’t have a chart of probabilities that I would use to give you very fair odds on the winners. I just wouldn’t do that.

Best Supporting Actor: The crazy-creepy Javier Bardem (”No Country for Old Men”) should have this thing locked up. This guy is seriously creepy. He might be the most violent character ever to win a Best Supporting Actor.

You know who my nomination would be, though? The “Cloverfield” monster. I’m not entirely sure it’s a he, but what the hey. Throw that big guy a bone. “His” movie just broke the all-time January box-office record! You should go see it.

Best Supporting Actress: I have seen precisely zero of the movies these actresses come from. Therefore, I say give it to Tilda Swinton, who is cool and under-appreciated. I see no more important criteria than those.

 Final Oscar Prediction: They will suck. The writer’s strike continues at full speed, and if the Golden Globes were any sort of warning, the Oscars will be a pretty drab affair this year.

 -Jim

This morning the nominations for Hollywood’s most prestigious awards were announced and there are plenty of snubs, surprises and no brainers to talk about. “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country for Old Men” led the field with eight nominations each. “Atonement” and “Michael Clayton” were close behind with seven a piece. “Ratatouille” picked up five (go ahead, count them) nods while “Juno” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” grabbed four each.

Let’s start with the surprises. Again, “Ratatouille” was nominated for FIVE Oscars (best animated feature film, original screenplay, sound editing, sound mixing and original score), behind only four other films this year. This is a huge achievement, especially for an animated film.

We all knew “Juno” had a chance to get in the best picture category and Ellen Page had a chance to grab the best actress nomination for that film. Well, they beat out all the other films and actresses who had a chance to get in those categories and snagged a best director nomination for Jason Reitman on top of that.

As always, there were some big snubs this morning, not the least of which was Keira Knightly for her performance in “Atonement.” That film had three acting nominations at the Golden Globes, only one of which translated into an Oscar nomination.

Tim Burton (”Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” ) and Ridley Scott (”American Gangster” ) were shut out of the directing category. While Burton was a sure thing for the Golden Globes, it’s not a huge surprise to see him left out at the Oscars as his dark style might turn some voters away.

“American Gangster” was also shut out of the best picture category, as was “Into the Wild.” Denzel Washington was snubbed in the acting category for his portrayal of Frank Lucas in “American Gangster.”

On the other hand, plenty of nominations were announced just as they should have been. “Atonement’s” nominations for best picture, cinematography and original score were no brainers. The film may not win best picture but it should pick up the latter two. “No Country for Old Men’s” best picture and director (Ethan and Joel Coen) nominations couldn’t have surprised anyone. Likewise for “There Will Be Blood’s” best picture and actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) nods.

It was no shocker to see “Juno” and “Lars and the Real Girl” in the best original screenplay category, just as “Atonement” was no surprise for best adapted screenplay. The musical “Once” picked up a well-deserved nod for best original song for “Falling Slowly.”

Here is a rundown of the big categories, for a full list of nominations head to the Oscar’s official Web site.

Best Picture

“Atonement,” “Michael Clayton,” “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Juno.”

Best Actor (lead)

Daniel Day-Lewis (”There Will Be Blood), George Clooney (”Michael Clayton”), Viggo Mortensen (”Eastern Promises”), Johnny Depp (”Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” ) and Tommy Lee Jones (”In the Valley of Elah”).

Best Actress (lead)

Julie Christie (”Away From Her”), Cate Blanchett (”Elizabeth: The Golden Age”), Laura Linney (”The Savages”), Ellen Page (”Juno” ) and Marion Cotillard (”La Vie En Rose”).

Best Director

Julian Schnabel (”The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Ethan and Joel Coen (”No Country for Old Men”), Jason Reitman (”Juno”), Tony Gilroy (”Michael Clayton” ) and Paul Thomas Anderson (”There Will Be Blood”).

Best Supporting Actor

Javier Bardem (”No Country for Old Men”), Casey Affleck (”The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”), Philip Seymour Hoffman (”Charlie Wilson’s War”), Tom Wilkinson (”Michael Clayton” ) and Hal Holbrook (”Into the Wild”).

Best Supporting Actress

Cate Blanchett (”I’m Not There”), Saoirse Ronan (”Atonement”), Amy Ryan (”Gone Baby Gone”), Tilda Swinton (”Michael Clayton” ) and Ruby Dee (”American Gangster”).

Alright, I haven’t posted in forever, so it is time for a big honkin’ movie recap. If I were you and not me, I would probably settle comfortably into my seat and maybe adjust myself, because you will probably be here for a while unless my typing finger becomes weary.

 Let’s start with the most recent first, eh?

Cloverfield: Well, I’m glad that the movie that I have mentioned in every other blog all year round has gotten such a good reception. I think some of my movie cred may have been resting on the performance of this one. The critics liked it well-enough. More importantly, though, people are actually going to see it. It has made–in one weekend, mind you–46 million dollars, which is amazing, considering that films like Grindhouse made half that in their entire theatrical run. The viral marketing campaign for J.J. Abram’s big monster movie really seems to have done the trick. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard so many people discussing a movie after it’s release.

 I saw it a few nights ago, and it was a lot of fun. A word of warning–you may want to sit further back than you normally do, especially if you have a weak stomach. Nobody puked in my showing, but I have heard about it happening, and the point-of-view camerawork can be sort of disorienting at first. For those who don’t know, Cloverfield is about a group of friends in New York who are filming their friend Rob’s going-away party when the city is attacked by a unique beast from the sea. Along with it are smaller creatures, parasitic lice that drop off and hunt people in the city. The entire movie is shot from the perspective of a man with a handheld camera, obstensibly because he thinks that it will be an important record of what happened.

 I loved the idea, but as long as I have been excited I was also afraid that the movie would end up being fluff in the vein of “The Blair Witch Project”; that we the audience would never actually see the creature, that the movie would be a bunch of smoke and mirrors. To this extent, I was very surprised. The creature is featured heavily, much more than I would have expected. I enjoyed that it was a unique design, nothing to make the casual observer think it was a Godzilla clone. For one group of friends with a camera, you could really argue that they have no right to see the creature as well or as frequently as they end up doing.

It’s a tense movie. Bad things happen to people. There is a ridiculous amount of silly product placement, which I found pretty funny. It’s entertaining. The CGI shows a frightening New York City. Imagery of the 9/11 attacks is inevitably called up. Overall, it offers a different take on the usual style of the “Giant Monster Attacks City” sort of movie, and is genuinely entertaining. Let’s just hope that they let it die here, and we don’t have to sit through a rash of poorly-produced imitations or outright sequels.

 Juno: Another surprising box-office winner, and I am glad for it. When a movie like Juno does well, it gives a better name to the American theater-going populace. Sure there are people flocking to steaming piles of celluloid like “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”, but at least they went to see Juno too, right? To date it has raked in 87 million, which makes it by far the most successful film from Fox Searchlight Pictures, which in the past has produced such indie hits like “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Sideways”.

 I really enjoyed it. It’s a very funny, very cute movie. It is silly, I think, to try and criticize it for being untrue to the real-life issue of teen pregnancy, because it is so far from reality to begin with that it makes no sense. No people in real life are as witty or rife with one-liners as the characters in this movie. In real life, when a girl gets pregnant at 16 and it’s made into a movie, it’s not a comedy. It is anything but. So don’t say that Ellen Paige (who is great) as Juno is unrealistic, because it’s like complaining that you didn’t like Alien on the basis of aliens not being real.

Fox Searchlight Pictures is the “low end” studio of 20th Century Fox, but they’ve really produced a lot of good movies. I was wondering how that is and am figuring it must have to do with the sorts of movies. I mean, how many special effects shots does a movie like Juno require? Zero? Now look at National Treasure, where Nicholas Cage has to fight the re-animated corpses of our founding fathers in zero gravity on the Eiffel Tower, and suddenly you see where that money went, in lieu of other things, like, say, a script.

 Sweeney Todd: It wasn’t bad, but I think the “Best Actor” buzz that people are trying to make for Johnny Depp is kind of silly. I also wonder at what point Depp learned to sing since he was in “Corpse Bride”, where he played the lead of a musical that does not sing in it. Perhaps he took some voice lessons in the interem. Perhaps they just contacted NASA to build a machine to make anyone’s singing voice sound good. Hell, even Alan Rickman belts it out in Sweeney Todd.

 In short: The music is fun, for the most part, and they are not shy about the blood. There is one particularly annoying song that gets repeated several times that I never wanted to hear again, but I’ll leave you to guess which.

January: We must face facts. This is the weakest time of the year for movies. This is when the junk gets dumped and studios quietly hope nobody notices, as we talk about last year’s Oscar candidates. This is why I suggest that if you’re headed to the movies in the next few weeks, you go see one of the above movies that are already out rather than the movies that will be opening, which are the likes of “Meet the Spartans”, “How She Move”, and “Untraceable”. I don’t think I need to say more.

 I will be seeing “There Will be Blood” by the end of the week, which I fully expect to be awesome. Further bulletins as events warrent!

-Jim

There are a couple female vocalists I’ve been aware of for the last six months or so that until recently seemed to be on the fringes of their respective scenes. Now they are appearing in more and more places, which isn’t terribly surprising but I have to say I didn’t expect this upsurgence so soon. I’m talking about Sara Bareilles and Kate Nash.

Nash joins the Brit-pop crowd with her first album “Made of Bricks,” which was released last August in the U.K. but just two weeks ago here in the states. She received an endorsement from fellow British singer Lily Allen on her MySpace page, but is only just starting to get a glimpse of the popularity Allen and Amy Winehouse have seen here. Watch for Nash to fill the gap while Allen and Winehouse are between albums.

I was first introduced to Sara Bareilles by some Disney-loving friends who couldn’t stop listening to her “Fairytale.” The song is enchanting in its own right between her solid vocal performance and the affable piano. Since then her single “Love Song” has become nearly ubiquitous. I was surprised to hear it in Legend’s a few months ago, but it seems they like to play it there (or someone likes to request it on the jukebox anyway.) The song has also been featured in a commercial for a music player, although I can’t remember the specific brand. Bareilles is sure to continue her trajectory upward as more people become aware of her.

The TBS original series “10 Items or Less” begins its second season tomorrow night. TBS is still delving into original programming and has been hit or miss thus far. The network may eventually be able to grind into a niche the way FX has been able to, but for now its niche is still centered on syndication.

However, “10 Items or Less” is one of the better offerings TBS has put forward in the last couple years. The show is set in the struggling homespun groccery store Greens & Grains. The store’s optimistic manager rivals SuperValueMart, a Wal-Mart-esque uber-corporation that operates across the street.

In the first episode of the new season Leslie, the manager, finds $5,000 in silver dollars and attempts to use it as a promotion by putting five thousand dollar bills into a money machine where the dollars will float around and a customer can grab as much as possible in a minute. The promotion ends up attracting two robbers that hold the employees hostage while Leslie tries to avoid giving up any cash or getting shot in any way he can.

Some of the moments in the standoff are the funniest in the episode. However, the show tends to take an already ridiculous situation over the top to the point that it gets too goofy. While this is part of the show’s sense of humor, I feel that if “10 Items” can get rid of the over the top moments and focus on the straighter gags it will be a funny show. The situations and characters are ridiculous enough that the show is a lot funnier without that extra step into mayhem.

Regardless, the show is worth watching even with a few problems, because you will get some laughs out of it. Keep your expectations in check and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Season two of “10 Items or Less” premieres tomorrow at 10 p.m. on TBS.

My dahling readers, how have you been? Today I found myself wandering in the aisles of Ulta in downtown Naperville, trying to find a compact powder the same shade as my skin. I used to use a fantastic one by Maybelline, but I think they may have discontinued it because I can’t find it in any store. It controlled shine very well, was inexpensive and matched my skin tone perfectly. Basically, it was the perfect powder and now it is no longer being made.

Anyway, I first tried the Almay Clear Complexion Powder in light 100. I don’t know what it is about this powder, but I don’t really like it. It seems to be too cakey and as a result, left my skin with darker patches where the powder clumped. Therefore, I clearly needed a new compact powder and so I picked up the Covergirl TruBlend Powder Foundation in Classic Ivory. Nonetheless, I haven’t really tested it out apart from at the store.

Still, being at the store really made me realize how helpful sales assistants can be. I know that a lot of times they pester you when all you want to do is browse uninterrupted, but sometimes they can be your best friend. I mean, they are there for a reason. I think the one I talked to today was actually annoyed with me for interrupting her conversation with her coworkers! Yet, she still helped me choose a powder. Then she helped me get a foundation to match my skin tone. I had narrowed down my choices and she helped me pick the best powder and foundation. It is always nice to have a second opinion, and when that opinion comes from a makeup consultant at a beauty store, it can be quite helpful.

I’ll be sure to let you know how the makeup turns out.

Tips for picking the perfect shade:

Try to test the color on your neck. A lot of people say to test it on your jawbone and blend down to your neck, but because there is a natural shadow right under your jawbone, it can be hard to see if it matches. Plus, it is hard to see your jawbone in the first place! By testing it on your neck, you can actually see if the color blends into your skin and it gives you a true color test.

Wear the color outside before you buy it and see how it looks in natural lighting. You might feel a little strange walking in and out of stores with makeup on your face, but when you don’t look orange, you will be grateful. This is especially important for people who wear foundation during the day. If you just wear it in the evening, you have the advantage of dim lighting which can disguise a color that is too dark. It is also important for people like me, who wear a powder during the day, to test the powder shade in natural lighting. Or if you are a perfectionist when it comes to having a flawless face. Try it out and you’ll find you will have more natural looking coverage.

I love you all! Muah!

xoxoxo

PS if I decide I like the makeup I got today, I’ll let you know more about it.