I love the Geico cavemen commercials. They drive Her Hotness up the wall, but there’s an allure to the stupid, ironic humor in the commercials that mesmerizes me. The writers hit on several levels of comedy that can’t be understated.

First, they nailed it when it comes to the awkwardness of time-and-place transplantation. The idea of cavemen living in today’s world of high technology, fashion and microwavable meals is out-and-out hilarious in and of itself, and they did an excellent job introducing the characters to us way back with the guys sitting around a television watching the Geico pitchman utter the now-infamous words, “So Easy, A Caveman Can Do It,” and then conversing intelligently amongst themselves in the same dialect we now speak in. Therein lies the second level they hit, which is unpredicted intelligence. It’s happened for decades in entertainment, and anything that features a talking animal falls into the same category. It’s like in the Clerks movie series (Clerks, Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc.) when Silent Bob says his one line per movie.

My current favorite commercial is the one in the airport with the caveman on a moving walkway. There’s no dialog, and the easy-listening music 1) helps to convey the point, and 2) really makes you feel like you’re in an airport terminal, waiting to see how long your flight has been delayed or, possibly, trying to pass the time by guessing how many thousands of miles by which you will be separated from your luggage once you’ve reached your final destination. It’s a fun way to pass the time, really.

I guess you’re wondering where this is leading.

It came to light last week that ABC has commissioned a pilot episode of a new television series featuring these very same cavemen. I’m seriously waiting very impatiently to see how this one turns out. If nothing else, it’s a fresh idea, which prime time TV has been lacking for years. With every station going the “reality TV” route — don’t get me started on how unreal reality TV shows actually are — ABC could strike gold by going to the absolute opposite extreme. It’s gold, Jerry!

In other remote regions of my brain…

Whatever floats your boat
As a child, I loved to build things. Heck, I still do, as evidenced by my Christmas-vacation excursion back into the world of Construx, going as far as creating a four-wheeled, motorized vehicle with working, wire-controlled steering. Still, as a child I never once dreamed of putting my Legos to use to create a scale model of the Italian city of Venice. Freakin’ amazing.

Caffeine high! Git yer free caffeine high!
Dunkin Donuts has joined the list of my heroes for giving me the option to feed my caff’ addition without paying for it. On March 21st (the first day of spring for the dense people in the audience) the Dunkin will be giving away free iced coffee all day long.

“…but you can say ‘son-of-a-b*tch’.”
Most of you will miss the reference in the line above. It was from a 1990′s sitcom called Herman’s Head. I was reminded of the line because apparently three New York high school girls were suspended for saying the word ‘vagina’ in a theatrical performance. The parallel here is that students today get away with so much crap that would have gotten them suspended for a week when I was a kid, yet they can’t say the scientific name of a part the female anatomy.

Yes, it’s gotten that bad in schools.

I learned that word in elementary school health class. I’ve witnessed kids verbally abusing teachers with tirades that would make sailors blush, only to see them in class again 30 minutes later. I’ve personally witnessed single-day suspensions for students who attempted to physically harm others. Cutting class will usually net you detention for a day or two. But God forbid you mention a body part.

Watch out kids, you’ll get expelled for saying “spleen.”

And finally…
Borat, that crazy Kazakh, apparently has developed quite a large following in Kazakhstan. The character may have enraged the small nation’s government officials, but the citizens are willing to pay a small Kazakh fortune to have the DVD shipped in from the U.K. It’s nice to see that there is at least a small group of people who still have a sense of humor, even if Americans have nearly all lost theirs.