Best Beverage Ad (Alcoholic)

Winner: Budweiser's "Worst Day" - The big theme this year seemed to be animals, from talking dogs to snakes crawling up pant legs to dolphins driving convertibles. It was a big year for our furry, scaly, and feathery friends. This animal-acted commercial, a spoof of Hollywood filmmaking in which a canine actor recalls his worst day to inspire his performance, was doggone funny. Apart from merely featuring a pratfalling dog, it also stabbed the pretension of method acting -- plus, we're just suckers for a dog jumping headfirst into the side of a truck.

Runner Up: Budweiser's "Give Him the Best" is a Spot-on parody of a dog food commercial, straight-down to the voice-over of the proud owner, speaking about his pet's energy and bright eyes. When it turns out to be the dog speaking about his human, your jaw can only drop. Kudos.

Honorable Mention: One of the few non-Budweiser commercials to actually entertain us was Michelob's "bubble wrap" commercial, in which an otherwise reckless grocery bag-boy exhibits extraordinary care when packing a six-pack of Michelob.

Dishonorable Mention: Michelob's "Train Car" commercial continues the trend of "Beer Will Get You Chicks" thinking that went out with the Swedish Bikini Team.

Dishonorable Mention: Budweiser's "Birth of a Clydesdale" - Who knew that being a horse's gynecologist could be so glamorous?

Best Beverage Ad (Non-alcoholic)

Winner: Mountain Dew's "Cheetah Chase" - It's one of those "not sure what they're advertising" commercials that actually works. It builds you up for an ad about a sports drink or a mountain bike, and hits home by extending the "extreme sports" attitude all the way to pet ownership. Seeing this "cat person" reach down his kitty's throat to retrieve his can of soda is sure to inspire a grin.

Runner Up: 7-Up's "Show Us Your Can" promotion features new-found comical pitchman Orlando Jones misinterpreting marketing strategies once again with this contest, which results in photos, not of 7-Up cans, but of people's rear-ends. Jones plays this shtick on just the right side of obnoxious. Give us a good butt joke anyday.

Honorable Mention: Mountain Dew's "Bohemian Rhapsody" - A reworking of the classic Queen ballad that will forever have you chanting "He will not get the Dew!"

Dishonorable Mention: Pepsi One's "Sodas on a Ship" was not only blasphemous to Coke-lovers, it wrongly made the assumption that no one can discern between artificial sweeteners and corn syrup/sugar sweetening. This ad sinks.

Best Use of a Senior Citizen

Winner: Tropicana's "Iron Grandma" ad features an orange-juice swilling octagenarian with powers far beyond her peers. She jogs, she jumps, she somersaults -- all without breaking a hip.

Dishonorable Mention: Volvo's too-rich truck-driver with the ultimate luxury rig was just stupid.

Best .com ad

This year we were besieged by ads from web site companies trying to make it big, so a "dot-com" category seemed necessary.

Winner: Pets.com's "Sock Puppet Serenade" features a canine sock puppet speaking for the pets of the world as their owners depart to find goodies for their animal friends. You'll never listen to Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" the same way again. Adds the phrase "I've gotta boot" to our lexicon.

Runner-Up: Oxygen.com's "Baby Girl Power" ad was subtle, it emphasizes that even baby girls don't like to be stereotyped, and it presents a great image for the site, even if the site itself doesn't deliver.

Worst .com ad

Winner: WebMD's extremely vague "Me Fighting Time" ad exploits Muhammad Ali's "athlete with an illness" image and simply makes no sense. What do those comments mean anyway? What are they trying to sell?

Runner Up: Ourbeginning.com's "Fighting Brides" was at least comprehensible, but committed the crime of failing at humor. We've seen this before in an episode of "Three's Company," and it wasn't funny then either.

Dishonorable Mentions: Kforce.com, Monster.com's "Road Less Travelled" ad.

Most Pretentious

Winner: Speaking of Monster.com, we probably would have given them "Best Overall" award last year for their "When I Grow Up" ads. This year, though, they strayed into the land of Art House Cinema Dreck with the black and white "Road Less Travelled" ad. Robert Frost is spinning in his grave. And what's with those flying kids?

Best Celebrity Appearance

Winner: Disney's use of Leonard Nimoy was a classic cameo moment. Nimoy explains that some of Mickey Mouse's fans know him best for his ears, something that Nimoy thinks might be bothersome. We're not sure why Shaq was in this commercial too, but it was still one of Disney's best productions in recent memory.

Best Automobile Ad

Winner: Oldsmobile's "Gap Parody" ad filled us with fear and dread by presenting Gary Newman's "Cars," as sung by empty-eyed waifish models, complete with changing clothes. Another annoying "Gap" ad! Suddenly they are swept from the screen by an approaching Oldsmobile. Never have we been so grateful to see "Your Father's" brand of car.

Dishonorable Mentions: all the other car ads, which were unimaginative and worse, nothing special in a time slot where all commercials should be special.

Best ad featuring a retired NFL coach

Winner: Blockbuster's "Runaway Bride" commercial showed us that even Mike Ditka has a sensitive side. If we had known he was this funny, maybe we would have watched more of his games.

Runner-Up: Schwab's "Home for Retired Athletes" emphasizes that retirement may be closer than you think. Another classic Ditka moment.

Best Use of Special Effects

Winner: Federal Express' "Delivery to Oz" was the most interesting use of the computer effects that have become so ubiquitous in movies and television. Not only did it riff on a beloved classic movie scene, it also had a punchline, which made it a well-rounded commercial.

Dishonorable mention: autotrader.com proved that you can't sink too low when ripping off popular movies by appropriating the "bullet time" whizziness from The Matrix.

Best use of a woman with a long pole

Winner: Visa's "Pole Vaulter" reinforces the "sex sells" attitude we've so come to love. Thrill as this nubile athlete proves she knows how to handle a stiff one. We're glad this spot didn't follow Oxygen.com's ad, but it sure showed us everywhere we want to be.

Best Campaign

Winner: etrade.com's line of humorous commercials was topped off by the "Dancing Monkey" ad that proclaimed "We just wasted two million dollars." In truth, none of E-trade's money was wasted, especially by hiring the ad company that put together "Wanna Dance," and "Money out the Wazoo." These folks kept us laughing in each block with consitently funny and clever ads.

Runner Up: Mountain Dew had slick and interesting ads, including the excellent "Bohemian Rhapsody" ad, but they weren't quite as punchy as e-trade's barrage of jokes.

Dishonorable mention: Chili's recycled their stupid "chili pepper" ads, making us wonder if they spent all their money on buying the ad time, or were just plain lazy.

Worst Overall

Winner: Nuveen's "In the Future" ad was insultingly exploitative of a nation's goodwill towards an injured actor. If we invest in Nuveen, will that really let Christopher Reeve walk again? And what exactly was his motivation for participating in this manipulative garbage? Ads like this that make us run for the bathroom during commercial breaks.

Runner Up: NFL's pompous "For the Fans." A case of too little too late. This token acknowledgement of the fact that the fans' continual flow of moolah pays players' megamillion dollar salaries has all the false sentiment of a Chris Columbus movie.

Best Overall

Winner: EDS' "Cat Herders" This was a very inspired realization of a familiar phrase we use when describing the tangled elements of our lives. The juxtaposition of grizzled cowboys with fluffy kitties made us laugh, made us cry, it became a part of us. It was better than Cats. We want to see this ad again and again. It succeeds not for one big joke, but for the many tiny details that give life to the tale of the cat herder. A classic. Why was there just one installment?

Runner up: Etrade's "Monkey Dance" is a tale of two men and their chimp. Just put a monkey on screen and we're gonna think it's funny. Just when you start to wonder, "Who's throwing their money away on this?" They give you the answer, and you realize that the money wasn't wasted at all.

Closing thoughts:

There were rumors of an X-Men trailer to be shown, but the closest we could get was the outfit of Brenda Warner (wife to Rams quarterback Kurt Warner), which proves that if you can't be a supervillain, you can at least dress like one.

Date: February 1, 2000