The new Target holiday ads are out, and if you've been scratching your head, trying to figure out who that vaguely familiar-looking woman is who's playing that competitive and slightly demented Black Friday shopper, scratch no longer.

It's Maria Bamford, the cute but decidedly off-kilter stand-up comedian who is probably best known for participating in the Comedians of Comedy tour with Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, and Brian Posehn.

Most of the ads show Bamford playing the competitive shopper, pulling full Target carts uphill and sleeplessly decorating a gingerbread village in preparation for the store's big Black Friday sale. But in some of the spots, Bamford also plays the woman's more "normal" sister, who doesn't need to be there as soon as the doors open. Problem is, she also puts her wreath up using a staple gun. So how normal can she be? One of the ads is below, and a couple of more are after the jump:

Stand-up comic Patton Oswalt (The King of Queens, Comedians of Comedy, Reno 911) has one of the better celebrity blogs I've found. Maybe that's because he mostly talks about comic books and bad road food, and has yet to format anything to look like poetry. His blog's pretty funny, the fact that he calls it his "spew" not withstanding.

Right now he's begging his readers to tune into HBO Sunday night and watch The Wire season 4. Like others have, Patton calls The Wire the "best show ever on television." Here's the money quote : "The Wire is one of the few times you'll watch TV and not feel like the people making TV think you're a fucking idiot."

There's a tendency in our culture, and it's certainly prevalent in the blogosphere, to snark at anything that doesn't immediately turn us on. I'm guilty of this myself, but I cut myself some slack because I'm writing about the entertainment industry, which is, to me anyway, of little consequence within the Grand Scheme.

Comedy clubs tend to be parodies of themselves, a place where mediocre comics trot out the same tired gags while the audience, semi-drunk on watered down cocktails, laughs and claps along. It's a great place to perform if your act involves impressions of celebrities or a trunk full of ventriloquist dummies, but if you're looking for an audience that really wants to be challenged, they won't be hanging out at PJ Laughenheimer's Giggle Hut.