It's that time of year again... that magical evening in which advertising agencies show the public what they've got. In between which they show some football game, which provides time to use the bathroom, make some food, and clean your room without missing any of the ads. Considerate of them, I think.

Pepsi gets top honors this year, for its commercial with Bob Dole. It's a beautifully executed parody of his Viagra spots, and it got me to laugh out loud.

Pepsi's other new spots were cute, but nothing to write home about. And, strangely enough, they ran their old Cindy Crawford ad after the game, which doesn't even make sense now, given that the punchline of that ad is about the new look of the Pepsi can... and the can's changed entirely since then. I don't get it.

(Not that I can honestly say that part of me won't accept any excuse for putting Cindy Crawford onscreen in a white T-shirt and denim shorts. But still.)

Anyway. A very close second is E*Trade, whose commercial with the chimp riding through the dot-com ghost town had me cackling gleefully. Especially when the dead Sock Puppet made its appearance. Perhaps not the nicest commercial, but it made its point, and I liked it a lot.

And then there was the Charles Schwab spot, in which a mother is telling her daughter a story about how someday, her prince will come and carry her off, and take her to the palace, and everything will be happiness and sunshine and light, and just when the viewer is gagging on the sexist treacle, she switches gears and says "But if that doesn't work out..." and starts giving a lot of technical investment advice. And as the daughter looks dismayed, the camera pans to the mother and provides the caption: "Sarah Ferguson: Schwab Investor."

With anybody else as narrator, the ad would be a disaster. With her, it works. It's perfect.

Immediately beyond my three favorites is the perennial winner, Budweiser, this time earning points for two takeoffs on their "Wassup?!" campaign. I never really got or cared for the original ads, but I rather like their upper-class white-male parody "What are you doing?" The frightening thing is that I think seeing this helped me understand the original. Maybe I'm white after all?

Bud's alien "wassup" ad was quite amusing, too, and the Bud Light ad with the guy dancing in the kitchen was cute. Merely okay were the one with the dog and the overstuffed fridge, and the one with the factory. (Yes, I took notes.) Actually bad was the one with the pencil going through the ceiling. Eww. No thanks.

EDS.com continues its streak of Surreal Commericals That I Don't Care For, chasing last year's "cat herding" spot with this year's "running of the squirrels." The only reaction I can summon up would be "huh?"

Cingular had many spots, one of which -- with the artist -- was interesting, and one of which -- the male ballet spot -- was mildly cute, but on the whole, the viewer is left with the question of, "so, umm, what's the product?" And they don't answer that, apparently aiming solely for logo recognition. Branding is often overrated.

Similarly, Accenture appears to have decided that a bunch of mediocre ads would somehow add up to create something good. I can't say I agree.

But, hey, I like a good jam session. And I'll even settle for a mediocre one.

The only other revelations, I suppose, were that, one, Brittney Spears really can sing, although the was only evident for the one line or so she had solo; and, two, reports of her customary state of (un)dress were, if anything, understated.

Hardly groundbreaking, but I don't have MTV; how would I know?