Just the other day, I was surprised to see Hemky Madera, better known as Ignacio from Weeds, starring in an ad for Progressive. Tonight, I looked up from my dinner of Red Baron pizza (a step up from my usual dinner of Totino’s Party Pizza) to see that same taser-loving gangster staring back at me, this time in a commercial for Best Buy. Is there anything this lovable henchman can’t sell?

One of my favorite character in Showtime’s Weeds is Ignacio, the hardened thug with a penchant for Milo and Otis. Now the actor who plays Ignacio, Hemky Madera, is branching out and doing commercials, apparently, and I spotted him in this recent Progressive ad as a motorcycle dude. It’s hard to imagine him as anything but a gangster type, but I guess by playing a biker he’s staying in that same bad boy realm. Either way, I’m glad to see him getting work!

What’s up with Derek Jeter’s new Ford Mustang commercial? First of all, he just drives around and barely does anything to earn his money, but that’s not my problem with it. It’s the soundtrack.

It’s not that I don’t like the song “Empire State of Mind,” it’s just that it was a big hit…last year. And like any pop song, it got played out and now the sound of it is just fairly irritating. Is this really the freshest song you could get the rights to, Ford?

It’s hard enough for a psychic to make ends meet, and then disillusioned divas come into their shop to ask for their advice and then storm off, announcing they don’t believe in this bull. Divine-and-dash!

This is a new one: having a subject of derision like Pauly D from Jersey Shore give an anti-endorsement to your product. Whatever works, Miracle Whip, but after this and your “Don’t Be So Mayo” campaign, I’m starting to think you’re having self-esteem issues. I still prefer Stephen Colbert’s mayo ad.

There’s this commercial with Penélope Cruz that keeps playing, for Trésor perfume by Lancôme, and I swear, every time I listen to it, I get a little choked up inside because it reminds me of the sad scenes in Lost. Am I the only one?

You know that travel show Globe Trekker, where some young and charismatic person travels to an exotic (or sometimes not so exotic) location in the world and walks around and talks to locals and sees the sights? I always think I’d be good at that show, except when I remember that occasionally there is mountain-climbing involved. Hell to the no, or rather, no to the thank you.

My favorite cast member on this show is definitely Suffolk-born Ian Wright, who is both charming and British. He always seems to have such a good time, and everything he says sounds cooler because, you know, he’s British. Well apparently the people of Aruba wanted a piece of that too, because they’ve cast him in their new “One Happy Island” tourism campaign. Glad to see him getting work! For some reason the tourism board’s website doesn’t have the ad up yet (even though there are a ton of those Lewis Black commercials archived), so in the meantime, here’s a press release and a clip of Ian being hungover in Globe Trekker.

Update: The ads have been posted! I guess they have been for a month and a half, but, you know, I’m lazy. The first one is embedded below but the rest are at the ArubaTourism YouTube channel.

Guy Ritchie and sexy Jude Law teamed up for this long commercial (it’s more like a mini-movie) for Dior Homme, a fragrance. It is very nicely directed and sexy and stylish and all that you’d expect from a Guy Ritchie short, but am I the only one who is still sort of confused by the plot at the end? Thanks to Holy Moly! for posting it in this article.

The new TV ad for Excedrin Migraine stopped me in my tracks (well, I was on the couch, so I guess you would say it stopped my eyeballs in their sockets). “Is that Peggy from Mad Men?” I asked nobody in particular. The commercial didn’t make it obvious that it was her (by, say, putting her name on the screen), and the company doesn’t typically use celebs in their commercials, so was it really her?

Well, Jezebel answered my question in this post. And the answer is yes. The video is not being friendly to embedding, so, uh, I guess you should just watch it at Jezebel.

But the whole Peggy being in an advertisement is a little weird, considering her character in Mad Men. What would Don Draper think of this ad? More importantly, what would Sal have thought of it? Couldn’t she have jazzed it up with a number from Bye Bye Birdie? I know it’s just a commercial about an over-the-counter pill, but dammit, it’s really about America.

Kathie Lee Gifford is a drunken joy on the fourth hour of The Today Show, but when I was growing up, she was simply the lady on the Carnival Cruise Lines commercials. Here are a couple of classics.

This is pretty funny, if only because I’ve seen those fake Cover Girl commercials being shot in so many seasons of Top Model, and they’re in such desperate need of being mocked. Ellen DeGeneres really seems to know how to send up the whole thing, with her confusion and inability to look at the camera (which could be a scene straight out of Top Model). And the opening line is genius and so true — it’s something I wish all makeup commercials would say.

I just saw Avon’s new commercial for the perfume “In Bloom,” which was apparently created by Sweet Home Alabama actress and sometime Jake Gyllenhaal canoodler Reese Witherspoon. And, I know, perfume ads are always cheesy (see every Britney Spears designer fragrance commercial ever made). But for the love of all things tacky, did they have to make it so ridiculous and over-the-top?

They should have gotten David Lynch to direct it. Then the cheeriness would be tinged with the suspicion that a darker side is lurking just beneath the surface, like in this Bambi-themed Playstation 2 ad he did a while back.

Thanks to Rock the Vote, I got a sneak peak of this new commercial, which is set to start airing tonight. Actors Zach Braff and Donald Faison from TV’s Scrubs voice their support for health care reform, and Donald shows off his sexy abs (well actually it’s more of a pot belly). Oh, and Zach Braff implies he’s had lots of extra nipples removed. That would make sense considering his last commercial role.

Actor Ron Perlman, best known for playing Hellboy, appears here in an ad for beermaker Stella Artois. The ad is titled “Devil’s Island,” a reference to the famed prison colony of yore.

This is one of the better directed beer commercials I’ve seen. Well worth checking out! And if you know who directed it, drop me a line!

This is a very Wes Anderson-ish Wes Anderson commercial for a Japanese cell phone company. Brad Pitt appears as some guy who looks fly in a safari outfit and gets into adventures.