"Extra" Superbowl Stupidity

Hey, NBC! Somebody from the ad department might want to tell those yokels over at "Extra" to learn how to spell the name of your biggest cash cow of the year. Idiosos!

Ellen's Backseat Makeout

When I saw this song list for a fictional album on the commercial teaser for today's episode of "Ellen" I thought I had a two-fer, but you'll have to decide for yourself about "backseat," which I thought would be two words here. The one-word version yields just under six million hits on Google, while the two-word version shows up over eight million times. Webster's not only lists it as a word but dates it back to the 1700s, while Oxford doesn't recognize it in noun form at all and offers the hyphenate "back-seat" as an adjective, which this isn't. But even assuming the party responsible favors Webster, that's no excuse for the mash-up of "makeout."

"Good Morning America" Look-A-Like

Clearly preoccupied with its effort to make a funny pun about Conan O'Brien's support for Finland's President Tarja Halonen in 2006, "Good Morning America" forgets how to spell look-alike.

"Colbert Report" Sinks Titantic

Peabody Award, April 2, 2008. Emmy Award, September 13, 2008. Cap'n Typo's Lame Spelling Award, October 1, 2008. FYI, a search for the misspelling "Titantic" yields over 200,000 hits on Google. But we expect a bit more from our fake news programs.

Starz Trips on Pyschedelic

They must be putting something good in the tea over at Starz to induce the kind of pyschedelia found in this new TV ad for "Across the Universe." What would you expect from a company named Starz, itself part of a slur of names like Bratz and Razr that seem intent on plucking the English language apart one letter at a time?