Don't you just love it when life sort of imitates art?

Jon Hamm, who plays the chain smoking Don Draper on TV's 'Mad Men,' has been hired by Mercedes Benz as a pitchman for their car commercials, which will premiere during the Academy Awards.

This means, of course, that Mr. Hamm will replace actor Richard Thomas who has done the voiceover for Mercedes' car commercials for the last four years. Good night Jon-Boy.

The company's marketing VP Stephen Cannon called Hamm "a hot actor." That must have been one awkward audition.

Filming for the third season of Mad Men starts in a few weeks (and starts on AMC in August), but some folks want to watch season two again (or for the first time). Here's the cover for the season two DVD package and here are the extras.

It's not a cigarette lighter, but it's still pretty cool.

I mentioned in my review of the first Mad Men episode that the show makes me want to start smoking and drinking a lot. Now I have another reason to take up smoking (or should I say return as I did smoke for one summer as a teen): I got the two new collectible lighters yesterday.

They're both pretty damn cool and look a lot like the limited edition, lighter-shaped DVD set for the first season of the show. The limited edition lighter features the full Mad Men logo (the title and the back of the man's head and arm) and is numbered (only 1000 were made). It comes in a nice black case. The regular lighter is metal and features the Mad Men title (without the pic of the man) on the bottom of the front.

AMC is spending $25 million to promote the second season of the show (commercials, print ads, promotional products, tie-ins, etc), which premieres on July 27, and I'm all for spending that kind of money if it gets me cool collectibles like this. Now I have to go get a few cartons of Lucky Strikes and a couple of really nice suits. (Check back on July 21 as we'll be giving away some Mad Men goodies like the DVDs and one of these lighters, so you can start smoking too.)

What's there to say about Mad Men that hasn't already been said? The show is beyond brilliant is every single way - acting, direction, writing, music, set design - and this DVD set contains all 13 episodes from the first season. So while it's tempting to go back and review the episodes themselves, I've already done that. So let's concentrate on the features and extras and commentaries and all of the other goodies. It's mostly well put together set, but there is one thing that's rather disappointing.

It's interesting how some shows that come out on DVD are really bare affairs, with basic packaging and little or no extras. That's why it's great to see that the people behind the new Mad Men DVD (out July 1) have gone all out.

That's the DVD on the right, made to look like an old-fashioned cigarette lighter (if you haven't seen the show, it's set in 1960 and just about everyone smokes). You don't see many DVD packages, or any other packages for that matter, that actually celebrate the pastime of smoking (except, um, cigarette packages). But this one is even better than I could have ever imagined. It looks like a lighter when closed and it also opens like a lighter opens.

And did I mention there are a ton of extras?