But while this year had its share of cheesecake, in the form of Megan Fox and the blouse-doffing women of GoDaddy.com, men were the ones who got caricatured into inanity. Advertisers, who for the past few years have been encouraging men to embrace their inner bro, are now telling them to throw in the towel. The fight’s over, guys, they’re saying. The women have won, and all you can do about it is buy yourself a bunch of cool gadgets.

First there was Chrysler’s “Dodge Charger” ad, which features men staring glassy-eyed into the camera as the narrator intones all the things their wives and bosses makes them do. And, in most cases, this ad would have us believe, “wives” and “bosses” are pretty much interchangeable. “I will eat fruit with my breakfast,” the narrator says. “I will sit through two-hour meetings. I will say yes when you want me to say yes. I will carry your lip balm. I will watch your vampire TV shows. I will keep the seat down.” The sole way these pathetic schlubs can retain their masculinity, the ad states, is to buy the car they want to buy, in this case a Dodge Charger.

Then there’s FloTV’s eyeroller, “Injury Report,” in which a guy is mocked for clothes shopping with his girlfriend instead of watching the game. “Change out of that skirt, Jason,” the announcer scolds. How’s Jason to do so? By making a compromise with his girlfriend? By telling her he just plain hates shopping with her, but that there are other things they can do together? No, Jason is advised to take the passive-aggressive way out by buying a miniature TV so he can watch the game wherever he goes! A word to Jason’s girlfriend: Dump him now, or he’ll be watching FloTV at your wedding.

Are men really feeling this emasculated? If so, I don’t think American cars, more TV, and sport-scented body wash are going to help. But most of the guys I know aren’t that defeated. Heck, some of them even enjoy spending time with their wives and girlfriends, and see their jobs and household tasks as responsibilities to live up to, not drains on their vital masculine energy. Back in the day, masculinity used to be defined by responsibility, not buying yourself toys. For a lot of men, it still is, something advertisers need to wake up and realize.

But don’t worry, guys, Dove knows that you still feel “comfortable with your skin” and that you need to celebrate that fact with regular old Dove body wash in a gunmetal gray package Dove for Men! I snark, but the Dove ad actually subtly makes fun of all the “you’re not a REAL MAN unless you do/buy X” commercials out there: It follows a guy from conception to fatherhood through a number of split-second vignettes (climbing the rope in gym class, getting married, mowing the lawn, etc.), while the announcer sings about all the things you’re supposed to accomplish to be a man. “Be tough, be strong, be good at sports,” he says, to the tune of the William Tell Overture. “Don’t show your sensitive side. Go out and have fun with your friends but be a gentleman, too. Check out that noise at night and never be afraid.” The humorous visuals — a nervous husband, armed with a pot, checking out that ‘noise at night,’ a guy getting slapped for ‘not showing his sensitive side’ — subtly poke fun at the list of requirements the narrator sings, and make the point that we’ve seen most of these cliche requirements before, in other ads aimed at men. It’s a fun, self-aware look at how advertisers portray manhood, and it slyly points up the fact that society asks a lot of contradictory things of men. And the relaxed, feel-good tone is much more appealing than that of the insulting Chrysler and FloTV ads.

An Armchair Sociologist’s Field Day

Hulu.com has added a fun feature to its Super Bowl ad videos: you can vote on whether you like each or not, and you can see what other Hulu viewers thought of the ads, too. Hulu also allows you to track the voting on each ad by gender, age group, and location, providing lots of room for speculation. A few observations:

• We’re a nation of saps. The top five ads (at least on 9 PM EST on Monday night) featured a cute kid defending his mother, an international love story (with marriage and baby), more babies, and a dog. Oh, and Betty White getting tackled.
• Men and women chose the same favorite ads, with one glaring exception: Motorola’s Megan Fox-in-a-bathtub ad. Interestingly, a substantial proportion of men disliked this ad, and very few liked the GoDaddy ads at all. Give us more credit! guys seem to be saying.
• And men and women largely disliked the same ads, with the controversial Tim Tebow ad and the annoying Taco Bell and Boost Mobile Shuffle ads coming in among the most hated. The Megan Fox ad was also one of the women’s top 5 disliked. And, giving me hope for the future of this country, one ad everybody detested was the trailer for  that wretched-looking romcom The Backup Plan.

Also Worth Mentioning

• Most memorable ads: Audi, “Green Car.” If Al Gore had been Big Brother, 1984 might have read a lot like Audi’s “Green Car” ad, in which nerdy “Green Police” arrest people for such infractions as failing to compost their fruit peels and requesting plastic bags instead of paper. When the Green Police set up a roadblock, the guy in the “clean diesel”-powered Audi gets to zip right by. At first, this ad seemed counterintuitive: If you drive a hybrid or other green car, you probably worry that other people see you as an eco-Nazi, not that the Green Police are going to bust down your door. The more I thought about it, though, the more sense this ad made. It sends the message that if you buy an Audi, you can absolve yourself of environmental guilt, and safely ignore the Green Police in your life (presumably, your Bobo neighbors or fellow Whole Foods shoppers). The ad’s parody of COPS is pretty funny, too.
• Most memorable ads: In Bridgestone’s “Whale of a Tale,” three guys speed a killer whale to safety, “Free Willy”-style . . . in a station wagon. Two guys pour bottled water over its head to keep it cool, while the driver skids to a stop on a pier, crushing the railings and ejecting the whale into the water. It’s quirky, charming, and it makes the point that Bridgestone tires (supposedly) let you stop on a dime.
• Most memorable ads: Cars.com, “Timothy Richman.” The hero of this ad is a genius who delivers Bengal tiger babies, speaks perfect Italian in junior high, and uses his knowledge of meteorology to rescue a bus full of cheerleaders from a tornado. But, the ad tells us, he’s still nervous about buying a car, so he goes to Cars.com. This ad reassures people that there’s no shame in not knowing much about the car buying process, and does so in a gentle, tongue-in-cheek manner with the spirit of an indie film.
• Worst ads (beside the masculine anxiety ones mentioned above): In “Driven Crazy,” FloTV once again suggests a miniature TV set can solve all your problems. Here a mom ineffectually warns, “Who wants a time out?” as her three kids brat it up in the backseat. One even hits her in the head with a stuffed animal. (Forget time outs; if I had done that to my mom I would have been cleaning for a week!) But does she give them something to read? Shoot them The Look Of Certain Grounding, Or Possibly Death? Actually follow through on her idle threat of a time out? Nah, it’s easier just to shut ‘em up with Spongebob!
• Worst ads: Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret’s spot went for weird for weird’s sake, featuring humans doing dolphin-like tricks for the nuts and popcorn their “trainer” threw. All I could think was, “Wet, chlorine-soaked popcorn. Ew.”
• Worst ads: Vizio, “Forge.” Giant cranes pluck people and objects out of their homes in an ad that evokes an apocalypse in which humanity is enslaved by robots. Even Beyonce looks robotic. Surrender to the machines!
• And, finally, monkeys!

There’s a certain logic to that: being crammed in sardine-style for a 12-hour slog to Beijing, for example, can lower anyone’s resistance. At 3 in the morning, between 40-minute naps, contorted into a pretzel formation, with The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice playing as the in-flight movie overhead, rubber bands that promise an “instant face lift” can start sounding like a good idea.

But on shorter flights, SkyMall’s just a showcase for the worst aspects of a consumer society: mass-produced crap packaged as “collectors’ items,” complete with “certificates of authenticity,” and devices that appeal only to the desperately credulous, like laser and “ion”-emitting wands that purportedly regrow hair or erase wrinkles (because apparently, “sciencey stuff you don’t understand” = magic!). Then there’s the capitalizing on the ambient environment with the geegaws to make your flight more comfortable, including my favorite, the Drunken Crash Pillow.

But then there are products of such obvious inutility that they’re in a class by themselves: the groan-out-loud, why-would-anyone-buy-that? category. Here are this year’s prime offenders:

The Canine Genealogy Kit

Dying to know your mutt’s ancestry? Send in a sample of his spit to Hammacher Schlemmer, and, for only $59.95, you’ll finally figure out if Fido is part pit bull. Hammacher Schlemmer’s test can distinguish between 63 different breeds, but if that’s not accurate enough for you, send $124.99 and a blood sample to the Wisdom Panel (and anyone who does so is apparently immune to the irony of that name), which can trace your dog’s lineage back to any of 173 breeds.

Coming up next: Think that seat-kicker behind you is the spawn of Satan? Prove it to his parents with the Inflight Paternity Test! Only from SkyMall!

The Telekinetic Obstacle Course ($99.95)

This “game” allows you to move a foam ball through an obstacle course using only your theta brain waves. Its other function is to make you look like a gigantic dork as you strap a clunky bionic band to your head. Trekkies reading about this device will have only one question: Does it give you an orgasm every time you move up a level? Seriously, this sounds like a half-baked Scientology plot to take over the world – or at least recruit some dumb people with too much disposable income.

The Howard Hughes Collection

With the “Keep Your Distance” Bug Vacuum ($49.95), the Million Germ Eliminating Travel Toothbrush Sanitizer ($29.95), and the Nano-UV Disinfection Scanner ($59.95), you’ll never have to encounter organic material ever again! And, if you’re concerned about those filthy, bedbug-ridden hotel linens, invest in the PillowBuddy ($19.95), a “hypoallergenic,” “100% natural cotton” cover for your pillow, which differs from an ordinary pillowcase ($3.99) in some subtle way I am unable to determine.

The Pants Un-Heeled

In the ever-popular “problems you didn’t know you had” category comes Pants Un-Heeled, sticky strips you can attach to your pant cuffs to save yourself from the scourge of the “pant/heel” wedgie, SkyMall’s term for what happens when your cuffs get caught between the heel of your foot and the sole of your shoe. They’re $12.99 for 12 (strips, not pairs). Or you could always, you know, get your pants tailored.

The Solafeet Foot Tanner

If I had to nominate one product in this catalog for the “Most Likely To Start A Marxist Revolution By Virtue Of Its Very Existence,” it might well be the Solafeet, a $299.99 miniature tanning bed for your feet. As opposed to the sun, a giant ball of gas located 92 million miles from Earth, which will tan your entire body for free.

The Hide-Away Foot & Body Personal Infrared Sauna

Also known as the Christopher Pike emulator, this $499.00 device will “boost your immune system from the comfort of your own home.” It has infrared technology, and since you, the average SkyMall consumer, know all about electromagnetic radiation, you can be confident this sauna will make you healthier. Remember, one flash means yes, two means no!

Crooks stealing personal information off our hotel room key cards

Thieves using sophisticated technology to remotely unlock our car doors

Pyrex glassware (it can blow up in your stove!)

Pancake mix (mold spores in it can cause an allergic reaction and send you into anaphylactic shock!)

Drinking Coke (it’s ACID!)

My personal favorite was a news team’s video of an identity theft scheme so elaborate it would put the Ocean’s 11 gang to shame: An actor posing as a thief steals a woman’s purse from an outdoor café. When she discovers the theft, she panics, and his accomplice, pretending to be a neutral bystander, calms her down and calls “her” bank for her on his cell phone. Unbeknownst to her, he’s actually called a third accomplice pretending to be a bank associate – complete with a recording of office chatter playing in the background for added authenticity. When she punches her PIN into the phone, he records it. The “thieves” then reveal the scheme to the woman – who, shockingly, does not punch any of them in the eye – and warn her that, had they been an actual criminal organization, they could have wiped her bank account clean. Cut to the narrator who intones that this could happen to you, audience member!

Well, yes, it could, if you lack the sufficient presence of mind and/or common sense not to let a perfect stranger dial your “bank” for you, and if all the crooks this smart and organized decide your puny checking account is better worth their effort than, say, robbing Fort Knox or starting a colony of superhumans on the moon.

When did we become this paranoid? I mean, parents don’t even let their kids walk to school alone anymore! Surely, things were better fifty years ago, right? . . . Right?

Not if you believe the scaremongers at Sid Davis Productions. Their educational films Boys Beware (1961) and Girls Beware (1961), available at the wonderful Internet Archive (or you can watch ‘em below), make today’s fearmongering tele-“journalists” look like amateurs.

First, there’s Judy. Judy wants to babysit, so she posts an advertisement on the bulletin board down at her local supermarket. She accepts a sitting job, her client picks her up at home, and a few days later, the narrator tells us, “The report came in. Judy’s body had been found on a lonely desert road.”

Slut.

Then there’s Mary. She doesn’t do anything as dangerous at babysitting. But she does meet an “older boy” down at the local malt shop, and, next thing you know, she’s making out with him in the park, the camera suddenly pans up towards the trees and sky, and . . . then Mary’s in trouble and has to be “taken out of school and placed under the guidance of the juvenile authorities.” Mary’s vignette ends on a shot of her principal looking very disapproving as his hand ominously taps on the folder that doubtless holds her Permanent Record.

Sex and independent business, girls, will get you into danger any time! Better to stay home and knit, or something.

But, boys, don’t think you’re off the hook just yet. You see, there are sick men out there. Their sickness is not visible, like smallpox, but it is no less dangerous and contagious. It is a sickness of the mind – the sickness of the dread hoMOsexual.

Ralph the homosexual.

You can identify homosexuals because they have creepy mustaches, wear sunglasses, and have putzy names like Ralph. Also, they hang around public bathrooms. And they play basketball in tuxedos. Yes, one minute you’re shooting hoops with a dude who looks like a refugee from a wedding party, and the next you’re “riding in the shadow of death.” Or, worse, you wind up selling your virtue at the Sleep-Eazy Motel, get arrested, and presumably, are sent to reform school along with Mary.

But no one bothers to point out the biggest danger of all in these videos: the cars. There were 36,399 highway fatalities and 27,909 non-highway vehicle-related fatalities in the U.S. in 1960. The murder total for that same year? 9,110. Folks in 1960 were 7 times more likely to die in a car crash than be murdered. They were many, many more times likely to die of a heart attack, stroke, cancer, or pneumonia than be murdered. (And, to be fair, Sid Davis did make the equally melodramatic “The Bottle and the Throttle,” which is about the dangers of drinking and driving.)

The thing is, eating too much fatty food, not exercising, and driving a car are quotidian risks. They’re not the kind of thing you email your grandchild or niece about, and any film about them is going to be pretty boring. (I wouldn’t mind seeing old Sid take a crack at it, though: “Little did Susie know, when she chowed down on that 27-cent taco at the malt shop, that she was dining in the shadow of death. Sixty years later, the report came in. Her body had been found on her lonely kitchen floor.”) But, chances are, they’re going to be what gets you in the end.

So follow the basic health advice you learned back in elementary school. Use your head. Let the rest take care of itself. Or, you know what, don’t. Accept the risks and laze around, eat that fatty food, forgo the seat belt, and even smoke if it makes you happy. That’s a perfectly legitimate option, especially if your preferred fatty food is Krispy Kreme donuts. (Mmm, Krispy Kremes . . .)  But either way, even if your Pyrex does blow up in the oven, sending a shard of glass through your jugular, you can have the satisfaction of knowing, in your final moments, that you didn’t live in fear.

“You’re supposed to wash and spray anything that goes in a kid’s mouth or anything touched by a kid with a runny nose!” she lectured us. “What if somebody has a cold and chews on a toy and somebody else picks it up and gets their germs?!”

Well, it was winter, and at least three of the kids had runny noses at any given time, and, given that toddlers have the attention span of caffeinated gnats, if we had followed this lady’s advice we would have been washing and spraying toys nonstop, and all the rugrats would have been knocked out by Lysol vapors before their moms got midway through Leviticus.

Now my homeschooled pal and I had enough to do – one mature 14-year-old and one 26-year-old grad student are just about a match for eight toddlers, on a good day – so we just kind of nodded and went back to our usual policy of cleaning the stuff that got actual spit or mucus on it and leaving the rest alone.

What happened? The kids got colds. The 14-year-old got colds. I got colds. And you know what? Nobody died. The kids proved pretty hardy, and continued to play and toddle around and listen to stories despite their runny noses. (They did better sick than I did, actually.) And everybody’s immune systems got a little more resistant. Kids are little germ incubators simply because they haven’t caught everything that’s out there yet. Disinfect everything they get their hands on and they won’t be able to develop the antibodies they’ll need later on in life.

I thought about Lysol Lady often while reading Warwick Cairns’s How To Live Dangerously, a great little book about how we’re all a lot safer than we think we are, and how we worry far too much about catastrophes like plane crashes and terrorist attacks when what we should really be concerned about is clogging our arteries and not getting enough exercise.

The Walkodile: Are we having fun yet?

Cairns’s book is filled with such examples of nightly-news-induced paranoia as:

· The Healthy Handle, a plastic device that you can slip over those “filthy, germ-infested” shopping cart handles to protect yourself from the horror of other people’s germs
· The Walkodile, a weird chain-gang like device for multiple kids to hold onto during walks, presumably so that they don’t wander out into the road and get hit by cars. It comes complete with bright yellow reflective sashes for the kids and crossing-guard-style vests for the adults
· How 43 percent of all parents now think that children under fourteen should not be allowed out of the house alone
· The fact that a 2007 survey by Trutex, a school uniform company, revealed that 59 percent of parents expressed an interest in having electronic tracking devices embedded in their children’s uniforms

But this paranoia is unfounded, Cairns argues, delving into brain science and evolutionary psychology to explain why we go into panic mode over things that, most likely, will never cause us harm. The fearful part of our brains, he claims, is a holdover from our caveman days, when we were much more likely to be killed by acute threats like saber-toothed tigers, poisonous snakes, and warfare with rival tribes. Back then, we needed that adrenaline rush to help us fend off these dangers.

These days we’re more likely to die from heart disease (killer of 1 in 3 Americans), cancer (annual risk of death 1 in 387), and car accidents (annual risk of death 1 in 140), but we don’t give these everyday threats enough credence. Instead, when the media presents us with novel threats – swine flu, terrorist attacks, child abductions – we react in much the same way as we would if Big Ugg were standing over us, club in hand.

Do I look like Ralph Wiggum to you?

Cairns’s main point, though, is that this primitive panic reflex is causing us to live impoverished lives. This is especially true of children. Lenore Skenazy, of the blog and book Free Range Kids, writes of moms who wait with their kids at the bus stop for the school bus, housing developments that want to ban kids under 16 from playing outdoors unsupervised, parents who are afraid to let their children go on sleepovers, and a day care center where, to gain access, you must pass through a “vascular recognition system” that identifies you by the pattern of veins on the back of your hand. Skenazy, who was once vilified for letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway by himself, rightly criticizes these helicopter parents. Kids aren’t Faberge eggs, after all: they’re little human beings who need an appropriate amount of independence if they’re to thrive. And, until full-body force fields are invented, there’s no way you can keep them – or yourself — safe from every risk out there.

What to do? Use your common sense, basically. Exercise. Eat well. Drive safely. Let your kids out of your sight once in a while when they’re old enough and ready for it. And, when it comes to germs, heed the advice my beloved grandma gave me at age 5 when I pouted about getting dirt on my Popsicle: “Aw, eat it anyway. You’ll eat a peck of dirt before you die.”

So I’m wondering if I’m the only one who doesn’t find the video kind of irritating.

The “aisle dance” strikes me as the logical extension of a very annoying trend: the first dance “surprise.” Search “funny first dance” on YouTube and you’ll get dozens of videos, all featuring couples slow dancing to Sinatra or Louis Armstrong when, suddenly, Sir Mix-A-Lot or the Village People comes on and the couple “spontaneously” rocks out.

Now, I know that, for everyone except the principals themselves, the first dance can be a snooze. There’s only so long you can watch two people somewhat eptly half-waltz around a square of parquet to the tune of “At Last” or “From This Moment On” until you start wondering when they’re going to start the salad course already, or gauging how soon you can hit up the bar again without people thinking you’re a lush.

But, the thing is, the first dance isn’t about entertaining your guests. (You do that by providing them with food, music, a place to dance, copious amounts of alcohol, and sartorial choices to nitpick.) It’s a chance for you and your new spouse to enjoy the fact that, after months of waiting, you’re finally married, and for the more sentimental of your relatives to get teary-eyed and snap pictures. Disrupting that moment to break into the “evolution of dance” montage just strikes me as a bit too hip and ironic. It’s a move for couples who say that weddings are stodgy and traditional, but who secretly want the pageantry and the big shindig.

And so the Minnesota couple seem even more too-cool-for-school. Yes, they were having fun, but I’m wondering what their parents and grandparents thought, or if their dance extravaganza affected the mood of the ceremony itself. Or if, ten years down the road, the couple might wish they’d opted for less pizzazz and more decorum. Or if, heaven forbid, this trend catches on and people start hiring themselves out as Wedding Aisle Dance Instructors or Wedding Viral Video Coordinators. (“‘Thriller’? That’s been done. ‘Y.M.C.A.’? That too. How about “I’m Too Sexy”? Ooh, and the groomsmen can strip off their shirts – they’re too sexy for their shirts, get it? That ought to get us at least half a million hits. Your groomsmen do have nice abs, right?”) [P.S.: This author is already cashing in on the "creative receptions" trend -- because it's not acceptable any more to have a reception that's "just okay."]

I mean, sure, everyone does the boring traditional walk-down-the-aisle thing. But traditions exist for a reason: because people like continuity and a sense of ritual around important moments in their lives. Things like exchanging rings and reciting vows aren’t mere cliches: they link you to history and to everyone who’s gotten married before you. Yes, these moments are repeated at almost every wedding you’ll ever go to. That’s what gives them meaning. And if they’re moving and enjoyable for the guests, it’s usually because the guests care about the people involved — not because they find it dramatic or surprising to watch two people stick gold bands on each other’s fingers.

I can see one bright side to this video, though: twenty-five years from now, when the music of the ‘00s sounds as dated as ABBA, this couple will have a great artifact to embarrass their kids with!

Virgil Griffith, a graduate student (tell me you didn’t see that coming) in Computation and Neural Systems at Cal Tech, has tracked the correlation between reading habits and intellect – or, more precisely, between one’s favorite book and one’s SAT scores. After determining the top ten favorite books of students at 1,352 colleges (as posted on Facebook), he then determined the average SAT score of students attending each college, crunched the numbers, and came up with the nifty graph below:

Griffith’s methodology may not hold up to scientific scrutiny–and, in fact, he doesn’t intend it to, having done this for a hobby–but it’s yielded some interesting results. Books That Make You Dumb has been posted on BoingBoing, Jezebel, and Sociological Images, in part because of his startling finding that preferring certain African American authors is linked to lower SAT scores. (I’d argue that this is because African Americans, who presumably might favor authors from their own ethnic groups, have historically attended sub-par public schools which don’t prepare them well for standardized tests like the SATs. But this is clearly an issue with many facets: please do click the links above to follow the discussion.)

But one thing I find interesting about this data is the fact that you don’t know how much posturing is going on. People craft their Facebook personas carefully, and a lot of the “favorite” choices sound suspiciously highbrow. I’m skeptical of the people who just picked “Shakespeare,” for instance. He’s an author, not a book—does anybody seriously enjoy all the man’s plays that much, or did they just figure an affinity for the Bard made them sound smart?

But that’s the big picture. When you start looking at individual schools, the top book choices sound a lot less forced. Here are the students’ reading preferences in a few, uh, not-so-randomly selected schools:

It’s a mix of popular, readable stuff—Harry Potter, Dan Brown, Ender’s Game—and, well, books people read in high school—Gatsby, 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird. The latter finding is rather depressing: it seems students will either only read if some teacher makes them do it (though they may find a book they really like that way), or, in making their choices, they won’t venture far from the bestseller lists. The big exception is Brown, which may mean that the high schools Brownies attended assign stuff like Lolita and Catch 22, or simply that Brown kids are more pretentious. (I’m going with the latter. Heh.)

The most heartening finding? The popularity of Pride and Prejudice. If you need any proof as to the superiority of UNC to Dook and State, here it is.