I have not had a proper chance to express my outrage at just how terrible the latest serious of Miller Lite commercials, the "Man Up" series, which have aired for a couple of months now are.

Basically each commercial proceeds as so: Man walks up to bar, asks for a lite beer. Attractive female bartender asks him whether he wants more taste, or less. Man responds that he doesn't care. Bartender gives him the beer with less taste, makings an insulting comment about something involving his appearance, and tells him that when he fixes that flaw he should come back and get his Miller Lite. Man walks back, flabbergasted, in denial and his friends make fun of him.

There are so many problems here, naming them all is simply overkill.

First, why would the man respond that he doesn't care? Actually, even before that. Why would the bartender even ask? From the waitress's description, there's nothing distinguishing the beers other than quality in which one is better than another. Why would anyone ever want to take the less flavorful choice? Would a waiter at a restaurant ask whether someone wanted the good item, or the less good item? Would anyone in any circumstance ask this? Is she worried about supertasters with sensitive tongues? Is there really a market for less flavor that I'm not familiar with? (This is a lot of questions in a row, I know).

Her having asked that, for all the same reasons why would the man possibly say he doesn't care, and not say more. In fact, if there was even a possible reason supertaster or otherwise, he'd specifically say less. There would absolutely be no conceivable circumstance in which he said he didn't care unless he literally doesn't have a sense of taste and it's actually all the same, which maybe is possible, I don't know.

Why would anyone go back to this bar? The bartenders insult you. Sure, I get that they're hot, but it can't be all that difficult to find another bar with hot bartenders. Every time you walk up to the bar, they purposely hand you the beer with less taste every single time, and then they make an insulting comment.

Also - even aside from the insult, how bad is the service here? Until they change something about their attire, the bartender won't give them the apparently better tasting miller lite?

Not to mention the things they are making fun of these guys for are the most played out, easiest things to make fun of in the book. A guy wearing a speedo? Hilarious. A guy wearing way-too-tight skinny jeans? That's novel. Creativity is completely absent. To call the assembler of these ads simply lazy is not harsh enough.

I thought about linking all of them, but a couple really give you the general idea. If you really want more you can just type "Miller Lite Man Up" into Youtube.

I don't know if there's any other genre of commercials more than beer commercials that tends to produce such great ads (Miller High Life guy, Most Interesting Man in the World) and such equally terrible commercials (the Miller Lite triple hops brewed commercials, most Bud Light commercials).

So, I've been sick the last couple of days, and not super serious sick, but for me, more sick than I've been in quite a long time. Anyway, I feel like my immune system has the talent to defend me from illness, but they've gotten lazy and stagnant with few imminent threats, and have forgotten to work as a team.

I wish I could round up my white blood cells or whatever and give them some sort of motivational speech - throw them a Dennis Byrd jersey (by the way if I have to hear one more story about how it was this speech that actually inspired the Jets to victory - yes, at first it was a very cool story, but how about emphasizing the actually, um, plays in the game - I'm sure the players would have put in their best efforts either way) or tell them what the virus said about their ability to fight it - that they had no chance, that the virus would cruise to an easy win. Maybe I just need a better coach. Maybe my voice has lost resonance with the team. I hear Larry Brown's now available; if I don't get better soon, I'll put myself on the hot seat.

I just saw Sugar, a film about a young dominican playing in the low minor leagues. I highly recommend the film, it's an interesting sports film about something sports films aren't usually about and without the arc sports films usually have, leading to a grand triumph at whatever sport they are featuring - it's instead all about dealing with the isolation of someone away from his own home, and the frustrations of not always being successful.

I write not to talk about that however, but rather a small part of the movie. At one point, main character Miguel "Sugar" Santos strikes up a minor friendship with big time prospect Brad Johnson when they are both in single A ball in Iowa. Santos barely speaks any english. On the bus, they manage through the language barrier to ask each other their favorite players. Santos says his is Robinson Cano, and Johnson says that his is Roberto Clemente. Johnson is stunned when Santos has no idea who Roberto Clemente is. (Johnson then asks Santos is he knows who Babe Ruth is - Santos responds something like, "the chocolate" and I honestly have no idea if he's supposed to be joking or just doesn't know who Babe Ruth is). Johnson then asks Santos if he listens to TV on the Radio. Miguel Santos has barely been in America a month or two, doesn't speak english, doesn't know who Roberto Clemente is and possibly who Babe Ruth is. What on earth could possibly give Johnson the slightest idea that Santos might know who TV on the Radio are? A vast majority of Americans would not know who TV on the Radio is. What were the chances Santos would? Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was just a weird way to make a logical transition into using a TV on the Radio Song (Blues From Down Here) into a montage sequence of Santos' early baseball life in Iowa.

There were 17 different #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last year, a fair number, though the quality was quite variable. Time to rank 'em.

17. "Raise Your Glass" - Pink - There doesn't strike me as there being an incredibly obvious will-be-instantly-forgotten number one single as a lot of years have, but if I had to pick I'd take a stab at this (with relatively little confidence, but got to pick something).

If your going to be a fan of pop music, or really music general one thing you need to do, or should try to do, I think is separate the song from the artist. What I mean is that, try your best to not let the fact that you hate an artist's first ten singles influence your listening to the artist's eleventh single. Will you like it? Probably not - but you should judge it on its own mertis and not bring in your preconceptions. Normally I'm good at this, and over time I've come to enjoy many a song by artists I haven't liked in the past, and certainly wouldn't have in my early college most pretentious phase. But everyone has their exceptions to rules, and mine I admit it, is Pink. There's just something about her and her songs that pisses me off, and I certainly don't dislike them all equally, but I can't shake that predisposition to dislike them.

My relationship with Pink is like that with an annoying friend - the most you hear them, certain things start to get on your nerves that wouldn't if anybody else did them - the way they say certain words, or make some gestures - when you step back they seem like they should be innocuous, but they drive you crazy. It's a Max Martin production and I don't hate the music but some parts of the song just irrationally irritate me, such as the line when she says "What's the dealio?". I can't explain why it pisses me off so much, but it does.

16. Love the Way You Lie - Eminem featuring Rihanna - In a year of repeat artists at the number 1 spot (12 of the year's 17 number ones were recorded by the same five artists), it's about time to hit on a collaboration of two repeaters.

Why so serious, Enimem? Gone any semblance of playful or wit lyrics and in are superserious messages about spousal abuse. Heavy shit.

In addition is the strange coupling in the music video of Maxim Hot 100 head Megan Fox (of toe thumbs and all) with former hobbit/drug-addled one hit wonder bassist Dominic Monaghan, though I suppose Fox's boyfriend in the video is no less likely than her real life squeeze relevant-fifteen-years-ago Brian Austin Green (unfair much probably - he did play Metallo in Smallville and was in the Sarah Connor Chronicles). Maybe Fox in a video would help resurrect Green's rap career.

15. Firework - Katy Perry - Perry's third number of the year capped off a year in which she firmly established herself as one of the biggest women in pop today clearly "making" on the make-or-break second album. The first many times I heard Firework, it suffered from a case of "All I Need is a Miracle" syndrome. The Mike and the Mechanics song is the prevailing example of a song which, upon listening to it, it takes until the chorus to recognize. You maybe kind of think you recognize the song and you spend the whole first minute trying to peg what it is until you get to the chorus at which point you smack yourself in the head for how you could not have realized what such an obvious song was until that point. With Firework, I suppose it might be at the end of the pre-chorus - once it gets to that "Fourth of July" part, the mental light turns on identifying it, making me sigh and say to myself, next time I'll remember it.

Anyway, Katy Perry suffers from a mini-Pink problem - but I realized later that it is actually her sound and not just her (though the more I see her talk, the dumber she sounds - this classic proactiv commercial is prime example - skip to 55 seconds if you don't want to watch the whole thing - the line "I'm talking about zits here people" has entered my vernacular and the scene in which she uses a shoe as a fake phone is not to be missed), so I feel less bad. Anyway, there's two later Katy Perry entries to discuss that.

Also, fireworks are clearly coming from her breasts in the video. I don't really get it. I get that she has big breasts, but the California Gurls video seems like a more typical way to show them off.

Moving on.

14. "Not Afraid" - Eminem - Okay, if I someone cut this list into tiers, the next cut would be either her or after the next one. Basically, half of the people I know think this song is better than "Love the Way You Lie" and half think that is better, and I'm a member of the former. It's still a disappointing effort for Eminem but it has going for it over "Love the Way You Lie" a distinct anthemic quality -the whole everybody chorus and all that and it's a little catchier. I do also appreciate his ability to knock on his last album, rapping, "let's be honest/ That last Relapse CD was 'ehh'." It's more super serious shit. To be clear, I have nothing against serious rapping. If it was from, say, Nas, I wouldn't expect any less. I just have something against Emienm serious rapping, and not for any other reason except that it is far inferior to his earlier songs. I mean, it's cool that he's off drugs and if it actually inspired others I guess it doesn't matter the quality of the song anyway. That's all.

13. Imma Be - Black Eyed Peas - Say what you will about the quality of Black Eyed Peas songs, I think it needs to be admired that their singles really all do sound significantly different, especially in the days of uber-similar Dr Luke synth riffs. I've liked probably the majority of their singles, and I like the other four top ten singles off of The END (Boom Boom Pow, I Gotta Feeling, Meet Me Halfway, Rock That Body), I just don't particularly like this one. The constantly repeated "Imma Be" like gets a little grating. Okay, kind of a lot grating. I just watched the video and considered counting how many instances there were of it, but quickly gave up. Well, you can't win them all.

12. "What's My Name" - Rihanna featuring Drake - The way I feel about Pink and Katy Perry, I think I feel the opposite about Rihanna songs. Before this year, I've generally liked almost all of them, and because of that I probably came into the new ones expecting to like them. However, after this year it didn't end up that way. I didn't particularly care for just about all of her songs this year (well, I liked "Hard" and that peaked in 2010, and she, uncredited, sings the hook in Kanye's great "All of the Lights"). Honestly, I'm hard pressed to say anything too bad about "What's my Name," it's more that I really don't have much good to see either. For all the super steamy lyrics, I find it to be kind of a boring song. The Drake part is okay, and yeah the Rihanna part is, um, okay. It's a song that if done right should be caught in my head, especially with the amount of times I've heard it, and it really hasn't. That's about it.