What're You Doing Selling Cable, Mr. Hummel?

Yes the new spokesman for Time Warner cable may look awfully familiar to some of us. Its actor Mike O'Malley; famous notably for his role on the television sitcom "Yes, Dear" and, more recently, as Burt Hummel on Fox's new comedy Glee.

While O'Malley displays a more serious side on Glee (quite well, we may add), he's sticking to his comedic roots in these commercials. The cable giant has chosen not to focus so much on the services provided as on creating an atmosphere of congeniality with light humor and mischievous digs at Verizon, Time Warner's main competitor.

In order to bring that feeling to their tv spots, Time Warner successfully picked a spokesperson with an "everyman" feel to him; O'Malley skillfully sells himself as a relatable guy you'd probably like to hang out and have a beer with some afternoon. When he empirically proves that Verizon hates puppies in a particularly funny ad, one is inclined to believe him.

All in all, these promotions seem to do a good job of projecting a harmless and congenial image and connecting that image to their product. Whether or not the product actually lives up to that image is in question, if the raging YouTube debate between Time Warner and Fios customers with nothing better to do is any indication.

As making up one's own mind is often the best course, one of the ads is posted below for your purview and analysis. Get a dictionary, we'll wait.

Hey Darkside...Get Your Feet Off the Car.

Most people would probably be in agreement (should you happen to ask them) that commercials with annoying jingles are a creation of the devil. That, in fact, they are an incarnation of pure evil that get ridiculous tunes stuck inside someone's brain playing on an endless loop until that person is driven to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity. Of course thats just one opinion. That may or may not be ours.

Having said that, there are those few-and-far-between occurrences of the powers of a jingle being used for good and (dare we even speak it?) being somewhat funny. A recent State Farm television ad provides a welcome example.

Three women that are just, one assumes, hanging out and doing things that women do walk back out to the parking lot to find a garish dent in one of their vehicles. Normally one would panic in this situation, but luckily the owner of the car has a good head on her shoulders and takes the prudent action of magically summoning her State Farm agent right to the spot.

What does she use to do this? Why, the State Farm jingle. Duh. Amazed, her companions follow suit, with a bit more specificity, and a hot guy with a rescue bunny and a dark past appears to...look pretty while sitting on the car. I'm sure that helped save the day somehow.

Its a good thing State Farm guy wasn't taking a shower when this happened, isn't it? Ad is posted below.