Men with comb overs look hapless. Little boys with comb overs look creepy. To see the difference, please watch the latest Jell-O television spot, appropriately titled “Comb Over.”

In the forty-five-second ad built by CP+B, a balding father whose depressing life resembles a deflated balloon schools his son on the importance of the little things, like a cup of Jell-O pudding. In turn, we see some surreal daydream where the son, still about six years old, goes through a day in the father’s life, only now he has a giant cone head and a comb over. If you ever wanted to know what the male offspring of Lord Voldemort and Francis Dolarhyde (Manhunter version, not Red Dragon) would look like, here you go. Is that not the definition of creepy, a little boy who somehow resembles two fictional psychopaths all because of a comb over? Still, the commercial’s surrealist twist manages to make it stand out in an otherwise standard concept. It’s almost sweet, if not for the whole hapless/depressing/pitying reaction that comes along with comb overs.

Credits after the jump.

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This column has been pinballing around my head for the past few months. I’m curious about hashtags. I’m under the impression that although everyone knows what a hashtag looks like, not many people pay attention to Twitter statistics beyond Follower counts. And now that every commercial – online or televised – comes with a hashtag, many of which seem perfunctory, I want to make an inexact science a bit more exact by evaluating basic Internet data and applying it to our coverage for the previous week.

Twitter clearly has value. Celebrities of varying degrees get paid silly amounts of money for sponsored tweets (sidebar: did you know that Melissa Joan Hart makes $9,100 for some of her tweets? That’s more obnoxious than silly). With money and brand equity to be had in the Twitter economy, every company can now slap a hashtag onto a visual ad and pretend to know what it’s doing. Remember when Newsweek ran with #MuslimRage? Or McDonald’s unintentionally eviscerating itself with #McDStories? Twitter can be tricky for the lazy and oblivious.

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You’ve never seen an episode of the fictional figurine drama “The Real Soccer Moms of Datalandia,” but you’ve probably seen a show just like it. And for anyone who has encountered the frustration of a malfunctioning TV signal or a storm-induced blackout, missing that crucial moment in whatever show you’re watching can make you want to punch your monitor until it breaks (side note: if you have Time Warner Cable, this process happens daily). Though we watch the shows, we, as consumers, don’t really pay attention to how the sausage gets made, that is: how the wires and signals connect to make sure that our real soccer moms stay on the screen.

For the past few weeks, General Electric and Mekanism have been using a series of online videos to explain this process to consumers. The newest spot, “Stormageddon,” is shown above. I’m not sure if consumers care much for big data explanations. They’d rather watch bad reality shows where women frequently toss glasses of pinot grigio on each other. Thinking about how General Electric makes the sausage feels a little like they are patting themselves on the back as their bank account gets smaller. If I liked sausage, I’d rather just eat it. Check out a second clip after the jump.

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BBDO New York and Foot Locker know that Clippers forward/dunker Blake Griffin is a commercial machine – Subway, Kia, Jordan Brand to rattle off a few quickly. So for their latest joint venture, “The Endorser,” the creatives decided to physically hook up Griffin to a machine called The Endorser as if he were programmed to place products. For some Lob City support, Clippers point guard/whiner Chris Paul steps in as a foil to turn off the machine and show us the difference between Real Blake and Robot Blake.

The spot is another smart and self-aware sports bit that takes advantage of an athlete’s public persona through subversion. Griffin is usually stone-faced or arrogantly posturing on the court after huge dunks, but he’s built up a quiet niche as a funnyman on television. Just see this Grantland piece from March that discusses why Blake’s comedy is more complex than you might think. The only issue with Blake is overexposure, like, when his sponsorship brands debut separate commercials within the same week. His Jordan “Blake and Drain” spot, which alludes to MJ and Spike Lee ads from twenty years ago, is even better than the Footlocker commercial. And for that reason, “The Endorser” might get lost in the ever-expanding Blake Griffin commercial merry-go-round. Credits after the jump.

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On the football field, Peyton Manning runs the Denver Broncos with a robotic efficiency fitting of a man with a giant, shiny forehead. His younger brother Eli roams the sidelines for the New York Giants with the mopey glare of a six-year-old who wants to pick his nose but can’t because cameras are watching. Usually, the funniest thing about the Manning brothers is that they’re so unfunny. They’re stiff and white. But every once in a while – don’t forget the acclaimed “Football Cops” – they unleash some comedy genius for a football-related commercial.

The newest addition to the Manning oeuvre is a fake R&B music video created by Grey for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket. #footballonyourphone. Remember that hashtag. It’s going viral, because a company that deals with an incredibly popular sport got two huge stars to subvert their normal personalities and completely buy-in to a goofy campaign that could’ve been an abandoned Lonely Island digital short. In the first 12 hours or so after it hit Youtube, the clip reared in 100k views.

Everything about the spot is smart, right down to the tiny Archie Manning cameo and the best/worst hair design you’ll see this year until American Hustle, starring Bradley Cooper’s curled terribleness, hits theaters. Peyton may be known as the more gregarious of the two brothers, but Eli is a vastly underrated comedian in his commercials. He ends up stealing this show with some odd riffs on milk, blouses, and Alexander Graham Bell. Pay attention, brands: This is how you go viral.

I’m the Rooster guy apparently and I’m back to cover some more irreverent Rooster shenanigans. The above video, “How to Take a Punch,” epitomizes what a side project should be: easily digestible, fun to watch, and humorous. A slow-mo gif of James Franco taking a punch to the face has been making the blogging rounds before his Comedy Central roast airs on Labor Day. Vice co-founder/Rooster boss Gavin McInnes decided to join in on the slow-mo fun and take a harder punch to the face. The result is a side-by-side 13-second video comparison of the punches that is probably too stupid for its own good. Something makes me think Rooster likes that. These guys seem to have fun in the office.

After the jump, you can watch a longer video of people getting punched in the face slowed down to 1000 frames per second. It’s violently elegant and directed by Cody Kern, a man who has no relation to Rooster. As you watch, feel free to let the catharsis of watching others get walloped improve your day. Jiggling jowls have the affect on people.

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Adidas and Sid Lee are framing the new “Unite All Originals” as Run DMC vs. DJ A-Trak, but the versus bit comes on too strong. The campaign is much more affable than combative, think of it as a buddy cop combo where there are three buddies instead of two and the buddies like to wear black felt hats.

Run DMC’s famed history with Adidas dates back to the 1980s, and they’ve been lending their benign street cred to the three stripes ever since. A-Trak may not be comparable as a household name, but he’s a worthy spokesman for the next generation, as you can see in some coverage from early March. For this new campaign, the two acts are combining for a fan-controlled music video that will be dictated user voice commands. A true embodiment of “My Adidas.”

Credits after the jump.

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Discovery’s annual Shark Week extravaganza not only confirms that viewers go crazy for underwater creatures that can rip them into a thousand pieces, but that brands will use just about any tangential connection to a popular theme to try and wring out that extra dollar. Take the fat, colorful Tide billboard above the Lincoln Tunnel that I came across yesterday: “We get the blood out, too.” That’s one way to do it.

Volkswagen and Deutsch are going all in as well, bringing cars and sharks a lot closer than they’ve ever been before, a true sharknado of brand association if there ever was one. The VW campaign is loaded on social media, mainly focusing on sharable videos through Instagram and Vine. VW created a Beetle convertible that will be used as an underwater cage hooked up to cameras for the remainder of the week, hoping to conquer a chunk of the digital space floating around with these exclusive videos. Credits after the jump.

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When Lollapalooza kicks off its annual Chicago invasion today, there will inevitably be the droves of concertgoers who spend more time recording music on their smartphones than actually watching the music, which this year comes from the likes of Nine Inch Nails, The Cure and Queens of the Stone Age. Three staffers from Leo Burnett – designers Derek Heinze and Adam Prewozniak and writer,  Jake Reilly – are attempting to put a stop to the digital nonsense, asking anyone who goes to a concert to experience the music on their one. Lighters are acceptable, although you can use those at your own risk.

After the jump, you can see more graphics for the movement, including a photo of Jane’s Addiction frontman/Lolla mastermind Perry Farrell signing his support on some posters (we’re sure the Yeah Yeah Yeahs approve as well). Oh yeah (“Superhero” joke).

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Seattle shop Creature really loves their window space. We’ve covered some of their pane projects before, like the motion-sensor-triggered mirror installed in April. There’s also the pop-up window shop from last winter. And now recently, as part of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party that ran from July 26-28, Creature used their window space to chute out creative fortunes to festival-goers and set up cameras, so they could see who had what fortune and then make that fortune come true.

Creative Director Pam Fujimoto blogged about the whole experience and described the project as “pure Creature,” which aside from being lyrically fun, also sounds like the name of a bad 80s rock band. Makes you wonder what impure Creature would look like. A sample fortune was: “Someone will tell you you look like a younger Tony Danza.” Others involved $2 bills and Mike & Ike’s. The fortunes themselves aren’t that important, but the execution from staffers who spent their weekend on the venture is not only good free publicity, but just a cool bit to cover on a rainy Thursday.