"The simulacrum is never what hides the truth... it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
--Ecclesiastes

I Went To A Super Bowl Party for the Commercials:
And the hot tub! I don't remember much about the game, but Pat and Gina opened their beautiful Sunset home and hot tub to the usual gang of monkeys Sunday for a Super Bowl party. There were certainly a lot of talking animal commercials this year and the usual monkeys really like the monkey commercials. Monkeys talking into bananas really scored big with us and it was an image I remembered today while walking through the financial district. (Although the commercial monkeys should have been clutching cups of Starbucks like warm bottles as well for a closer match.)
For the past decade, it's seemed like advertising has been completely devoted to the ironic, the wink and a nudge. We generally don't want any reassurance or "truth in advertising" as much as we want to feel like we're in on the jokes of the cool kids.
"Timex: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking" is far less appealing to us now that we're barraged with ironic pitches for jeans, beverages, cars, and burgers. Has anyone seen the Levis commercial in which the hipster dude gives the hipster chick flowers just to distract her attention from the fact that he wants to retrieve his pants from her apartment? Hey everybody! Look...total manipulative cads wear these pants and you should too!
If the Super Bowl commercial line-up is any indication of things to come, talking animals are the wave of the future. Goodbye ol' ironic "If It Doesn't Get All Over The Place, It Doesn't Belong In Your Face!" and hello Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp...unless, of course, you would like to argue that the appreciation of talking animals is irony in the third order, which I’d be willing to discuss at length.

The other day, I said to Brett, "I had such a strange dream last night," and he said, "Me too! I had a dream that I was helping Ray Charles find buried treasure, but then there was this evil wild west aquacade and they were trying to trick us and throw us off course."
And I said, "You win."