{"id":3913,"date":"2006-12-15T10:05:51","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T18:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2006-12-16T02:37:59","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T10:37:59","slug":"and-now-for-something-completely-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=3913","title":{"rendered":"And Now for Something Completely Different&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalengineering.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/MentalEngineering_Panel_080506.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\"><\/a>During our travels last summer, one of our stops <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=3189\">was in St. Paul, Minnesota<\/a> (lovely city, btw, first time there!), where I had been invited to be a panelist on PBS&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalengineering.com\/\"><i>Mental Engineering<\/i><\/a> program. The show takes an amusing look at four different TV commercials each week, and then criticizes the hell out of them. It was a nice change of pace. Bill Moyers says the show is &#8220;the most interesting weekly half hour of social commentary and criticism on television.&#8221; On the other hand, <i>New York Times<\/i> calls it &#8220;brilliant&#8221;. So proceed at your own risk.<\/p>\n<p>When the host\/producer John Forde found out who my longtime companion is (actress Desi Doyen, who had actually been featured in one of the commercials they&#8217;d critiqued from the Super Bowl), he was thrilled to invite her onto the show as a panelist as well.  She&#8217;s the gorgeous one sitting to my left. Also filling out the panel was gorgeous comedian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tommyrhodes.com\/home.aspx\">Tom Rhodes<\/a> and gorgeous media professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reneehobbs.org\/\">Renee Hobbs<\/a>. It was a hoot.<\/p>\n<p>The first episode we shot last Summer begins airing this Sunday on PBS (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalengineering.com\/stations.asp\">check listings for local air dates and times<\/a>). The second episode will begin airing <i>next<\/i> Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>For your dancing pleasure, here&#8217;s a quick video clip of one of the segments &#8212; in which we tear apart one of Chrysler&#8217;s bizarre &#8220;Doctor Z&#8221; spots &#8212; just to give you a taste&#8230;<br \/>\n<center><object width=\"290\" height=\"198\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/1RWSCLj4HmA\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/1RWSCLj4HmA\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"290\" height=\"198\" hspace=\"3\"><\/embed><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During our travels last summer, one of our stops was in St. Paul, Minnesota (lovely city, btw, first time there!), where I had been invited to be a panelist on PBS&#8217;s Mental Engineering program. The show takes an amusing look at four different TV commercials each week, and then criticizes the hell out of them. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-appearance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}