The commercials during this year's Super Bowl were mostly dull and forgettable (and the pro-life ad from Focus on the Family, which we blogged about, turned out to be mild, ambiguous, and even kind of funny). Many of them were passingly creative attempts to capitalize on some pop cultural flavor of the moment like Auto-Tune. Rest assured, however, some ad agencies are still making advertisements that raise the quick sell to a form of compelling, self-aware folk art.

Yes! I'm using a lot of descriptive words, and I’m using them to write about "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," a new ad from Old Spice with which I’ve become obsessed. The ad is a fast-talking, absurdist shell game ("Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me." "Look down—back up. Where are you?" "What’s in your hand? Back at me." "Look again!"). It parodies the huckster's art of distracting and disorienting the mark, and takes place in a psychological landscape where objects of desire (ripped, shirtless hunks, tickets to "that thing you like," diamonds) and settings (bathrooms, boats, beaches) have no permanence—fundamentally changeable elements in the illusory universe of want. Also, the guy in it is really hot. Just watch:  

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UK freak-soul wunderkind Ebony Bones is a woman possessed. Last Thursday I caught her intergalactic spectacle at San Francisco’s Popscene where it immediately wrangled me into its dance-inducing Funkadelic voodoo spell à la George Clinton. The wide-eyed songstress pushed onstage looking like a multicolored cartoon superheroine in her leopard-print space suit, purple and pink prosthetic lashes, hot pink tights, green boots, and large golden fro.

Bones’ hour-plus set presented a psychedelic, psychic exorcism of electro-buzz, tribal beats, African punk, and FUN! Backed by two dolled-up singers prone to uncontrolled convulsions, she performed her hits “W.A.R.R.I.O.R.” and “We Know All About U,” along with a crowd-rousing cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall (Part 2).” At one point, unable to find her signature cowbell, Bones exclaimed, "Where the fuck is it?" before erupting into hypnotic, torso-pumping gyrations. Flanked by her backup musicians, she even busted out a little voguing number, which you should witness here.

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In his 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank probed the psyches of Midwestern "values voters" to explain why blue-collar Americans abandoned economic self-interest to vote for George W. Bush. This eponymous documentary begins as a retelling of Frank's book but ends as a timely exploration of how an obsession with a narrow moral agenda can be self-defeating.

Much of the film revolves around the Dillards and the Bardens, likable families who belong to the congregation of Terry Fox, a Baptist preacher who's been ousted from his church for his right-wing politics. The families follow him to a new house of worship in a gaudy auditorium in Wichita's Wild West World theme park. Fox convinces them to pour their savings into the park, which goes bankrupt under a cloud of suspicion. Still, this betrayal doesn't cause the Dillards and Bardens to question Fox or his beliefs.

There are fleeting hints of a shifting political climate. Hard times during the Bush years convince "redneck" farmer Donn Teske to forsake the GOP, declare himself a "populist without a party," and even praise the New Deal. Yet the film ends with a home-schooled Fox follower declaring that the framers believed "that our country needed to be founded on Christian principles" and a mention of the murder of Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. We're left to draw our own conclusions about what the next chapter of this story may be, but in the age of Tea Party populism and a reenergized conservative base, it's hard to see Kansas making an about-face.

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When Henrietta Lacks—a poor, African American tobacco farmer from Virginia—checked into Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer in 1951, she had no idea that tissue removed from her body without her consent would become one of the most important resources in medical history. She died soon afterward, but her cells, dubbed HeLa, astonished scientists with their still-mysterious "immortality"—they were the first ones to survive indefinitely in the lab, and reproduced at an unprecedented rate. HeLa provided the raw material necessary to develop the polio vaccine and many other medical breakthroughs. In this gripping, vibrant book, Rebecca Skloot looks beyond the scientific marvels to explore the ethical issues behind a discovery that may have saved your life.

Skloot pinpoints HeLa as the origin of many ethical debates that still define modern science, tissue research, and the ownership of the body. Since learning about HeLa in 1973, Lacks' husband and children have felt betrayed by what they see as a medical establishment that secretly experimented on and exploited black patients. Some of Lacks' relatives wonder why they shouldn't get a cut from what is still one of the world's most popular—and profitable—cell lines: All the HeLa cells ever made would weigh 22 tons; a single vial can sell for nearly $10,000.

Skloot spends nearly 10 years earning the trust of Lacks' daughter Deborah, who's also obsessed with learning more about her mother. She still runs up against the Lackses' understandable suspicion, such as when Deborah slams her up against a wall and asks if she's really working for Johns Hopkins—but Skloot persists, intent on paying homage to the flesh-and-blood woman behind HeLa.

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