It’s February and I’m grumpy. As the following observations will prove

Time to beat up on McCain again.

The New Brunswick potato kings are a favorite whipping boy for us advertising ‘experts.’ They follow the same pattern as California’s Gallo Wines: a resolutely rural outfit, founded by two feuding brothers, who buy massive amounts of television and fill it with boring, predictable commercials.

And when we criticize their methods, they cry all the way to the bank.

But holy spuds, their stuff is terrible. What bothers me about them this week is a complete lack of understanding of timing.

The best communicators know, instinctively or otherwise, the value of pauses. Of silence. Of change of pace.

From Jack Benny to Bob Newhart to Michael Richards (Seinfeld’s Kramer, who is superb when he’s not selling Clorets), top performers know when not to talk, but to shrug or stare or stumble.

It’s not just comedians. Good orators, good drama directors, and even good music videos, are also very careful with their timing.

McCain, on the other hand, never ever shuts up. They paid for 30 seconds, and they are going to talk for 30 seconds.

They have recently rummaged in their vault and found their wonderful old footage of a seven- or eight-year-old boy munching french fries. The kid has the same charm of the boy who stole the show in the recent movie, Jerry Maguire. He is totally natural, and his fascination with the fries gives them enormous appetite appeal.

But McCain steps all over his appeal with a sound track that drones endlessly about totally unrelated stuff like cholesterol. (While having the nerve to call him ‘the strong, silent type’!)

The result is, I am not only irritated, I am distracted from the strength of the kid. It’s as if you put Cindy Crawford on camera in a bikini and then talked for half a minute about her intake of vitamin E and green, leafy vegetables.

McCain people, pause for a moment. Please. Silence can be even more golden than french fries.

If you’re going to deal with delicate subjects, you’d better be funny.

I’m not against stepping into dangerous territory. In fact, I applaud it. The new cbc sitcom, The Newsroom, which has been praised elsewhere in these pages, has managed to be truly witty on such subjects as aids, plane crashes, and even suicide.

However. There is a radio spot out there right now for a TV Guide Web site which I find to be in objectionable taste. It is actually very well-produced, which contributes strongly to my dislike for it.

It is based on the premise that TV watching can be an addiction. Nothing new about that. Nothing terrible, either.

But in this commercial, they take that analogy literally. They parody an addiction counselling session, like Alcoholics Anonymous or a drug rehab centre. The main character introduces himself as ‘a user,’ and we hear the background sounds of other addicts offering their support. At the punch line, he fails his rehabilitation and asks for a fix. Since the TV Guide Web site makes television so irresistible, he weakly mutters, ‘Anybody got a laptop?’

Well, by the grace of Whomever, I have never been in such a session. But millions of Canadians have, and I think they take it very, very seriously.

This commercial makes a cheap grab for attention, riding on their backs. It ain’t funny, and it doesn’t reflect well on our business.

Il-logical. This Seinfeld gas pump commercial for American Express, what’s the deal?

First, I don’t know how you can get $20.37 worth of gas into an mgb, even at today’s prices. Second, if the pump has advanced credit-card technology, why doesn’t it also have a digital readout instead of 1955-era spinning numbers?

Picky, picky. But more importantly, I don’t get the motivation here. The evil gas jockey apparently wants the poor customers to pump themselves an uneven price, not a nice, neat round figure. Why? If they pump 20 bucks, they just hand him a twenty and drive away. If they don’t come out even, he’s got to get off his duff and make change!

So I don’t understand him. So I don’t hate him as much as I’m probably supposed to. So, as a result, I find Seinfeld himself not only incomprehensible, but way over the smart-ass line which he walks so carefully on Thursday nights. And that’s not good for the message, or for the client.

Yeah, I told you I was grumpy.

John Burghardt, formerly president of a national advertising agency, now heads his own communications firm in Toronto. He can be reached at (416) 693-5072; by fax (416) 693-5100; or via e-mail at burgwarp@aol.com