Last chance to pick apart the carcass of 2011 in search of anything of any value:
MOST EGREGIOUSLY RIDICULOUS BULLSHIT OF 2011: As usual the Republicans have a lock on this topic. Hurricane Horseshit started on January 1st, when the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy were renewed for two years. The Republicans were positively giddy that President Obama caved in to their extortionist demands that the tax cuts remain because the "job creators" needed them in order to create the millions of jobs that were lost in the financial collapse of 2008. The Republicans harped unmercifully on how important the "job creators" are and the jobs would surely follow. And a lot of them did - in China, India, and other parts of the world, just not in the United States. These mythical and elusive "job creators" would be invoked incessantly as a favorite Republican mantra. Every time a proposal would come up to change the tax code the Republicans blocked it because the "job creators needed stability." Every time the administration would try to get a jobs bill passed and pay for it with a surcharge on the wealthiest 0.5% of taxpayers the Republicans blanched in horror, because the "job creators couldn't possibly create any jobs if they had to pay more in taxes." As of this writing, blubbery, carrot-colored buffoon John Boehner and his Republican-controlled House of Representatives have not come up with a single jobs bill, and the "job creators" have so far created nothing. It also is pathetically hilarious every time the Republicans say that there is "class warfare" going on because the billionaires are being attacked merely for being successful. What a horrible thing this "class warfare" is on the ultra-rich, they say without a hint of irony, when everyone knows the Republicans have been waging class warfare against the middle class and the poor for decades. It's almost like the part of the Theory of Relativity that says space is curved, and if you could look far enough in one direction you would see the back of your own head. In the crazy, curved-space world of the Republicans, the same thing happens except you see your own ass.
MOST OBNOXIOUS PERSON OF 2011: There certainly is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to obnoxious people in 2011. To the surprise of no one, most of the political ones are Republicans. Whom shall we pick? It could be Sarah Palin, who inexplicably continues her high-pitched bleating on Fox News, or as Keith Olbermann consistently calls it, "the political whorehouse that is Fox News." Is it Michelle Bachmann, who always shows that women can be every bit as ignorant, misinformed and just plain stupid as men? Is it perennial toilet monkeys Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich? Or how about a broomstick-up-the-butt prig like Rick Santorum? And I'm more than willing to bitch-slap former Democrat Representative Anthony Weiner for sharing photos of his junk with the world. Maybe we should look to the world of entertainment, there must be plenty of candidates there. Oh, I know - how about someone who pretends to be in both worlds? That would be none other than roadkill-crested gargoyle Donald Trump. Whether he's boring everyone on the planet with that birther nonsense, or wasting everyone's time with his farcical campaign for president, Trump has shown that there is nothing too underhanded or idiotic or just plain deadheaded for him to do, as long as he can get his puffy, Botoxed face in front of the cameras.
MOST PROMISING POLITICAL MOVEMENT: Occupy Wall Street, and all the other "Occupy" offshoots which have taken hold. This is quintessentially American - citizens coming together to raise their voices against the Republican-supported notion that corporations can do anything and everything they damned well please, regardless of how many people they injure. Of course the slimy douchebags on the political whorehouse that is Fox News (thanks again, Keith) take every opportunity to ridicule and mock the Occupy protestors, characterizing them as filthy hippies and malcontents allergic to employment. How very odd that they had nothing but praise to heap on the Tea Party, choosing to portray that motley bunch of corpulent, racist rednecks and senile, confused old people blissfully unencumbered by anything higher than a third-grade education as a true "grass roots" movement of righteously indignant patriots.
MOST APPALLING POLITICAL CONCEPT: That would be "personhood," which is the idea of bestowing the full rights, privileges and protections of a real human being on entities that normally wouldn't have them. This has turned into the latest ploy of anti-abortion activists to strike down abortion rights, by claiming that a fertilized human egg is a "person" from the instant of conception and should be protected as a real live human being. This would obviously preclude any form of abortion, even when the health of the mother is in jeopardy, but also would outlaw what is referred to as the "morning after" pill and other forms of birth control and family planning which have been around for decades. Clearly a draconian, over-reaching attempt to take away rights from the American people by marketing it as "protecting the unborn," its advocates saw it as a slam-dunk in conservative southern states with large Christian populations. That is, until the state of Mississippi stunned everyone by soundly and decisively rejecting a personhood ballot initiative last month. This is not the end of the story, unfortunately, and proponents will be back with a state-by-state battle plan to shove their radical agenda down everyone's throats. Equally disturbing is the trend to give corporations a measure of personhood, blithely articulated by presidential candidate Mittens Romney when he simply said at an August 11th, 2011 campaign stop in Iowa, "Corporations are people!" Presumably because they pay taxes like normal people do, Romney and others seem to think they should be afforded free-speech protections. Coupled with the horrendously awful Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case which gave the green light to corporations to pump as much money as they want into an already-choked political system, "personhood" is rapidly becoming a political monstrosity of Frankensteinian proportions.
TV WORTH WATCHING: Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Nurse Jackie, The Walking Dead, Homeland, True Blood, and if they ever get off their butts and finish it, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome.
BEST REASON TO GET UP IN THE MORNING: Rabbits! Oh, and fresh-brewed coffee.
2012 NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS: I resolve to read more books and watch less television. I resolve to get off my lazy ass and start painting and drawing again. I resolve to do my best to become a vegetarian. I also resolve to be kinder, more understanding and more respectful toward conservative Republicans and fundamentalist Christians. Guess which resolution I'm lying about.
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Rear End Review, Part 1
Actually this is supposed to be a "Year End Review" but not surprisingly I could not resist the bad pun. Yes, I am 12 years old and thank you for noticing. Here are some of the things I feel made 2011 a year best forgotten quickly, like at 12:01am on January 1st, 2012:
TRAINWRECK OF THE YEAR: Has to be the Republican Debates. A comprehensive, visually repellent summation of everything that is evil, corrupted, debased and cancerous about the American political system, this on-going crapfest of historic proportions is like one of those zombies on "The Walking Dead." It fairly lurches on to your television screen, all disgusting and awful, and you can't watch it for more than a couple of minutes without wanting to kill it. I'm not going to list here the candidates' individual psycho-pathologies, having done that more than once on this blog and it gets more depressing each time. I will say that if you put Batshit Bachmann, Neuter Gingrich, Rick Sphinctorum, and Rick "Oops" Perry on horses, you would have the Four Horsemen of the Dumbpocalypse. Now everyone knows that these candidates are trying to appeal to the rank-and-file Republicans who will be voting in the primaries, and therefore will pull out all the stops in trying to appear as intolerant, bigoted, racist, homophobic and elitist as they possibly can. After all, they are politicians and you expect such soulless, shameless pandering on their part. But what does that say about the composition of the Republican party when you see them eating up all this rancid, toxic garbage and demanding more? In its quest for money and electoral power, the Republican party has swung so far right it is barely recognizable as American. Party of Abraham Lincoln, indeed.
CULTURAL ICON ON ITS WAY OUT: Facebook. Everybody is on Facebook and it has like 500 million subscribers or something. Huge, to be sure, but new users have leveled off, and there is an increasing perception that Facebook is poised to follow the path of MySpace, and look where that is now. It's now considered cool if you are NOT on Facebook, and that's the beginning of the end. But we can't write its obituary yet. Facebook is too big and too entrenched in the public psyche, and no worthy successor is yet visible on the radar to take its place. Certainly not Google Plus, which is weird and not easy to use. Not Linkedin, which is not nearly trashy enough, and whatever the hell they're trying to do on Yahoo is never going to catch on. But, Facebook may hang on a lot longer than it should. It may turn into America Online (AOL.com) - one of these Internet things that was real big about 100 years ago but now just hangs on forever because your parents and your aunts and uncles and grandparents are on it and will never, ever give it up. I would be much more agreeable to letting Facebook continue to take over our lives and get rid of Twitter, which is a horrific abomination.
MOST ENCOURAGING CULTURAL TREND: I noticed this holiday season there was a lot of people who rejected the oppressive, spirit-killing commercialization of Christmas and opted out of participating in the mindless materialism and shopping mania of the season. Still more people are also jettisoning the religious overtones of the season and returning to the ancient, much more sensible and inclusive celebration of the Solstice as their holiday of choice. I have made both these changes in my life and can honestly say this has been one of the happiest, most enjoyable and stress-free holidays in years. I heartily recommend it if you want to get back to the so-old-it's-new concept of actually having fun during the holidays.
MOST ANNOYING TELEVISION TREND: Apparently the powers that be in network television (and by that I mean NBC, ABC, CBS, etc) have decided that there are no original ideas to be had anymore, and for some reason think it's a good idea to resurrect long-dead shows, tart them up with a little high-definition make-up, and then throw them up on the screen like it's something new and wonderful. ABC tried to do that with a re-launch of "Charlie's Angels," and it was a very pleasant surprise when the American public turned their noses up at it like a bowel movement in a punchbowl. NBC is doing the same with "Fear Factor," a 2001-2006 show in which exhibitionistic fame-whores with a death wish do stupid things like jump off a building into a septic tank or eat live scorpions and camel testicles. It's nice to see Joe Rogan working again but if he can't do his filthy stand-up routine, what's the use of having him there? Just because the reboot of "Battlestar Galactica" worked incredibly well doesn't mean it's guaranteed to apply to everything. Even if it's not a direct reboot, there's a good chance that a new show's writers will dredge up every ridiculous, contrived stereotype and plot situation that we've already seen about a thousand times, as the idiotic, unwatchable Fox show "Terra Nova" demonstrates. That's why subscription channels like HBO and Showtime are vastly more interesting than the free-to-air networks, and it's not because people can say "fuck" any time they want.
MY FOOD OBSESSION FOR 2011: Greek yogurt. Mmmmm!
GET OVER IT, PEOPLE: "Civility" and "civil discourse" are dead. The Tea Party effectively put the final nail in the coffin of civil discourse in the summer of 2010 when fat, loud-mouthed old people got up at town hall meetings across the country and shouted everybody down every chance they got, but civility in everyday life has long been heading into extinction. In the past decade, right-wing talk radio found that it's very profitable to spew all manner of hatred and bile and disrespect toward anyone who doesn't share their narrow-minded, bigoted views. Anti-abortion zealots, many with supposedly "Christian" backgrounds, have created a climate of hatred against those people who choose to exercise a reproductive option guaranteed by the Supreme Court and have encouraged their followers to believe that murder and physical coercion are completely acceptable means to make their point. And through every fault of their own, members of Congress have demonstrated that they are completely unworthy of any kind of respect and are regularly criticized in the harshest of tones. This country has become far too polarized on many different levels to even entertain the notion that opposing sides can have a reasonable debate and discussion of the issues that separate them. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we will be able to move past it and toward some kind of middle ground, we can only hope.
More mindless carping and indiscriminate slander coming in Part 2, soon.
TRAINWRECK OF THE YEAR: Has to be the Republican Debates. A comprehensive, visually repellent summation of everything that is evil, corrupted, debased and cancerous about the American political system, this on-going crapfest of historic proportions is like one of those zombies on "The Walking Dead." It fairly lurches on to your television screen, all disgusting and awful, and you can't watch it for more than a couple of minutes without wanting to kill it. I'm not going to list here the candidates' individual psycho-pathologies, having done that more than once on this blog and it gets more depressing each time. I will say that if you put Batshit Bachmann, Neuter Gingrich, Rick Sphinctorum, and Rick "Oops" Perry on horses, you would have the Four Horsemen of the Dumbpocalypse. Now everyone knows that these candidates are trying to appeal to the rank-and-file Republicans who will be voting in the primaries, and therefore will pull out all the stops in trying to appear as intolerant, bigoted, racist, homophobic and elitist as they possibly can. After all, they are politicians and you expect such soulless, shameless pandering on their part. But what does that say about the composition of the Republican party when you see them eating up all this rancid, toxic garbage and demanding more? In its quest for money and electoral power, the Republican party has swung so far right it is barely recognizable as American. Party of Abraham Lincoln, indeed.
CULTURAL ICON ON ITS WAY OUT: Facebook. Everybody is on Facebook and it has like 500 million subscribers or something. Huge, to be sure, but new users have leveled off, and there is an increasing perception that Facebook is poised to follow the path of MySpace, and look where that is now. It's now considered cool if you are NOT on Facebook, and that's the beginning of the end. But we can't write its obituary yet. Facebook is too big and too entrenched in the public psyche, and no worthy successor is yet visible on the radar to take its place. Certainly not Google Plus, which is weird and not easy to use. Not Linkedin, which is not nearly trashy enough, and whatever the hell they're trying to do on Yahoo is never going to catch on. But, Facebook may hang on a lot longer than it should. It may turn into America Online (AOL.com) - one of these Internet things that was real big about 100 years ago but now just hangs on forever because your parents and your aunts and uncles and grandparents are on it and will never, ever give it up. I would be much more agreeable to letting Facebook continue to take over our lives and get rid of Twitter, which is a horrific abomination.
MOST ENCOURAGING CULTURAL TREND: I noticed this holiday season there was a lot of people who rejected the oppressive, spirit-killing commercialization of Christmas and opted out of participating in the mindless materialism and shopping mania of the season. Still more people are also jettisoning the religious overtones of the season and returning to the ancient, much more sensible and inclusive celebration of the Solstice as their holiday of choice. I have made both these changes in my life and can honestly say this has been one of the happiest, most enjoyable and stress-free holidays in years. I heartily recommend it if you want to get back to the so-old-it's-new concept of actually having fun during the holidays.
MOST ANNOYING TELEVISION TREND: Apparently the powers that be in network television (and by that I mean NBC, ABC, CBS, etc) have decided that there are no original ideas to be had anymore, and for some reason think it's a good idea to resurrect long-dead shows, tart them up with a little high-definition make-up, and then throw them up on the screen like it's something new and wonderful. ABC tried to do that with a re-launch of "Charlie's Angels," and it was a very pleasant surprise when the American public turned their noses up at it like a bowel movement in a punchbowl. NBC is doing the same with "Fear Factor," a 2001-2006 show in which exhibitionistic fame-whores with a death wish do stupid things like jump off a building into a septic tank or eat live scorpions and camel testicles. It's nice to see Joe Rogan working again but if he can't do his filthy stand-up routine, what's the use of having him there? Just because the reboot of "Battlestar Galactica" worked incredibly well doesn't mean it's guaranteed to apply to everything. Even if it's not a direct reboot, there's a good chance that a new show's writers will dredge up every ridiculous, contrived stereotype and plot situation that we've already seen about a thousand times, as the idiotic, unwatchable Fox show "Terra Nova" demonstrates. That's why subscription channels like HBO and Showtime are vastly more interesting than the free-to-air networks, and it's not because people can say "fuck" any time they want.
MY FOOD OBSESSION FOR 2011: Greek yogurt. Mmmmm!
GET OVER IT, PEOPLE: "Civility" and "civil discourse" are dead. The Tea Party effectively put the final nail in the coffin of civil discourse in the summer of 2010 when fat, loud-mouthed old people got up at town hall meetings across the country and shouted everybody down every chance they got, but civility in everyday life has long been heading into extinction. In the past decade, right-wing talk radio found that it's very profitable to spew all manner of hatred and bile and disrespect toward anyone who doesn't share their narrow-minded, bigoted views. Anti-abortion zealots, many with supposedly "Christian" backgrounds, have created a climate of hatred against those people who choose to exercise a reproductive option guaranteed by the Supreme Court and have encouraged their followers to believe that murder and physical coercion are completely acceptable means to make their point. And through every fault of their own, members of Congress have demonstrated that they are completely unworthy of any kind of respect and are regularly criticized in the harshest of tones. This country has become far too polarized on many different levels to even entertain the notion that opposing sides can have a reasonable debate and discussion of the issues that separate them. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we will be able to move past it and toward some kind of middle ground, we can only hope.
More mindless carping and indiscriminate slander coming in Part 2, soon.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The Last Day of The Last Year of the First Decade
Here we are on December 31, 2009. A Thursday night, and from all indications tonight is going to slink away quietly, tail tucked between its legs, as if it were somehow sorry or embarrassed for what had gone on before on its watch.
Yes, we did end the year with a Christmas Day terrorist scare. A Nigerian man got on a Northwest Airlines plane in Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, with explosives in his underwear. I suppose that was only a natural progression from the rectum bomb that nearly took out a Saudi Arabian prince earlier this year, but just how delusional to you have to be to place dangerous chemicals next to your naughty bits? I don't think that this whole suicide bomber thing was properly explained to that dimwit. I mean, if you do blow your junk off, exactly what are you going to do with the 70 virgins that are supposedly waiting for you on the other side? Luckily for everyone, the bomb did not ignite, and amazingly this Al Qaeda group somewhere claimed credit for the failed bombing and even made some boastful comment about building the "sophisticated detonator." Well I guess it was too "sophisticated" to actually "work," better check that out a little more next time.
And there will be a next time, unfortunately. What this failed attempt did show is that the much-ballyhooed post-911 air travel security system has more than a few gaping holes. That Nigerian man should never had had a visa or been allowed to board, there were plenty of indications of his intent. Information was not shared, conclusions were not drawn and preemptive actions were not taken. Next time, we might not be so lucky.
This hasn't been the best of years; so many depressing, disappointing things happened. Sarah Palin refuses to go away, just like the worst case of irritable bowel syndrome you could imagine. So many people who should know better just continue to say and do the most outrageously stupid, destructive and embarrassing things possible. Dick Cheney continues to be one of the scariest and most evil people who used to be alive. Like they say, the good die young but evil is forever. If Cheney had his way the nuclear bombs would be falling from the sky like raindrops in Seattle and he would be King of Necrotopia forever.
Did anything good at all happen this year? I suppose we can say the fact that we made it through this year and are still around to gripe and moan about it is something good. But this has been a very difficult year to get through for a lot of people, including me. The job situation is still horrendously bad, with unemployment at 10%. Property values are still in the toilet, foreclosures still raging. The U.S. economy is showing some meager signs of recovery but is still very, very sick, and can relapse at any time. Greed and avarice continue unabated. There have been a number of news stories indicating that year-end bonuses on Wall Street are going to be as outrageous as ever, almost as if the financial meltdown earlier this year was just an unpleasant fever dream, the kind you get from eating tainted lobster or bad caviar or something.
This year more than ever, stupidity reigned in this country. Whether it was the "balloon boy" supposedly drifting across the Colorado landscape in a silver spaceship, or former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich doing and saying the dumbest things he could possibly think of, or Kanye West creating a cultural firestorm by stomping all over Taylor Swift's first American Music Award, or boring Barbie doll Carrie Prejean posing as some conservative Christian pillar of morality passing judgment on the marital arrangements of others while sitting on a homemade sex tape, it does seem like the idiots are really taking over this country. But there were little touches of welcome relief, such as Susan Boyle's stunning debut on a British talent show, when a studio audience (and later the world) morphed from cynical derision to enraptured adoration in the time it took her to sing the words, "I dreamed a dream of times gone by...." or the surprising success of Lady Gaga, who is a fairly good singer and musician once you get past all the junior-college-art-class costumes and posturing. She seems like what would happen if Icelandic pop star Bjork dyed her hair platinum blonde and got a hold of some bad drugs.
I may or may not be awake when the clock strikes midnight tonight. If I am I'm sure I'll be serenaded by the sound of automatic weapons fire coming from the cheap apartment complexes to the south of me. Just another indication that in spite of all my deepest, most sincere wishes and prayers, we will still have to deal with stupid people next year. Is there any hope for 2010 to be any better than 2009? It's so hard to judge at this point. I remember on January 1, 2009, no one was holding out any hope that the year would be any good. And it certainly lived down to our expectations. Maybe we should try the opposite approach, and start thinking good thoughts about 2010. Perhaps if we do things will work out and the year will return prosperity, security and hope to everyone. I wish that does happen, but just in case, I'm going to start working on Plan B tomorrow.
Yes, we did end the year with a Christmas Day terrorist scare. A Nigerian man got on a Northwest Airlines plane in Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, with explosives in his underwear. I suppose that was only a natural progression from the rectum bomb that nearly took out a Saudi Arabian prince earlier this year, but just how delusional to you have to be to place dangerous chemicals next to your naughty bits? I don't think that this whole suicide bomber thing was properly explained to that dimwit. I mean, if you do blow your junk off, exactly what are you going to do with the 70 virgins that are supposedly waiting for you on the other side? Luckily for everyone, the bomb did not ignite, and amazingly this Al Qaeda group somewhere claimed credit for the failed bombing and even made some boastful comment about building the "sophisticated detonator." Well I guess it was too "sophisticated" to actually "work," better check that out a little more next time.
And there will be a next time, unfortunately. What this failed attempt did show is that the much-ballyhooed post-911 air travel security system has more than a few gaping holes. That Nigerian man should never had had a visa or been allowed to board, there were plenty of indications of his intent. Information was not shared, conclusions were not drawn and preemptive actions were not taken. Next time, we might not be so lucky.
This hasn't been the best of years; so many depressing, disappointing things happened. Sarah Palin refuses to go away, just like the worst case of irritable bowel syndrome you could imagine. So many people who should know better just continue to say and do the most outrageously stupid, destructive and embarrassing things possible. Dick Cheney continues to be one of the scariest and most evil people who used to be alive. Like they say, the good die young but evil is forever. If Cheney had his way the nuclear bombs would be falling from the sky like raindrops in Seattle and he would be King of Necrotopia forever.
Did anything good at all happen this year? I suppose we can say the fact that we made it through this year and are still around to gripe and moan about it is something good. But this has been a very difficult year to get through for a lot of people, including me. The job situation is still horrendously bad, with unemployment at 10%. Property values are still in the toilet, foreclosures still raging. The U.S. economy is showing some meager signs of recovery but is still very, very sick, and can relapse at any time. Greed and avarice continue unabated. There have been a number of news stories indicating that year-end bonuses on Wall Street are going to be as outrageous as ever, almost as if the financial meltdown earlier this year was just an unpleasant fever dream, the kind you get from eating tainted lobster or bad caviar or something.
This year more than ever, stupidity reigned in this country. Whether it was the "balloon boy" supposedly drifting across the Colorado landscape in a silver spaceship, or former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich doing and saying the dumbest things he could possibly think of, or Kanye West creating a cultural firestorm by stomping all over Taylor Swift's first American Music Award, or boring Barbie doll Carrie Prejean posing as some conservative Christian pillar of morality passing judgment on the marital arrangements of others while sitting on a homemade sex tape, it does seem like the idiots are really taking over this country. But there were little touches of welcome relief, such as Susan Boyle's stunning debut on a British talent show, when a studio audience (and later the world) morphed from cynical derision to enraptured adoration in the time it took her to sing the words, "I dreamed a dream of times gone by...." or the surprising success of Lady Gaga, who is a fairly good singer and musician once you get past all the junior-college-art-class costumes and posturing. She seems like what would happen if Icelandic pop star Bjork dyed her hair platinum blonde and got a hold of some bad drugs.
I may or may not be awake when the clock strikes midnight tonight. If I am I'm sure I'll be serenaded by the sound of automatic weapons fire coming from the cheap apartment complexes to the south of me. Just another indication that in spite of all my deepest, most sincere wishes and prayers, we will still have to deal with stupid people next year. Is there any hope for 2010 to be any better than 2009? It's so hard to judge at this point. I remember on January 1, 2009, no one was holding out any hope that the year would be any good. And it certainly lived down to our expectations. Maybe we should try the opposite approach, and start thinking good thoughts about 2010. Perhaps if we do things will work out and the year will return prosperity, security and hope to everyone. I wish that does happen, but just in case, I'm going to start working on Plan B tomorrow.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Stuff I Think About
I gotta admit, I have a really good life. I'm retired but I keep myself busy with lots of projects and activities. My biggest project is keeping myself amused. And that is a full-time job. A lot of the time the world is just not funny enough on its own to keep me going, so I have to amuse myself. These are some of the things that pop into my head as I try to get through the day:
>> If you're reading a news story about the economy and unemployment and it starts getting too depressing, if you substitute the word "topless" for the word "jobless" it makes things funnier. Not better, just funnier.
>> Everybody knows Andy Rooney, the "irascible curmudgeon" (nice for "cranky old goat") correspondent on CBS' 60 Minutes news magazine. I don't understand why he is still on television. He is at least 3 decades past his "sell-by" date. Curiously, if you subtract 3 decades from his present age you get uncomfortably close to my present age, so what does that tell me? I hope I can live long enough to become a caricature of myself.
>> The other day it dawned on me that the difference between the words "perpetuate" and "perpetrate" is only one letter. When I first realized that I thought it was really clever but now not so much. Since they both mean sort of the same thing, to extend the life of something, can't we get rid of one of them? I've calculated that the amount of brainpower we'd save dealing with only one word instead of two would keep Fox News going for 10 years. On second thought, I really don't want that to happen, so we're keeping both.
>> Favorite comedienne Lily Tomlin says in her stand-up routine, "If olive oil comes from olives and corn oil comes from corn, where does baby oil come from?" The humor there lies in a deft swapping of "source" for "intent". That is, olive oil "comes" from olives but baby oil is "intended" for babies. Point is, nothing takes the funny out of something faster than analyzing it. Remember that next time someone insults you. If you make them explain it it will NOT be funny or effective. This is the voice of experience.
>> This is the land of the free and everyone is in favor of personal freedom and doing whatever you want, blah blah blah. But seriously, for the love of God can we pass a law permanently outlawing eating contests? Every July 4th it's a hot dog eating contest. I really can't think of any set of circumstances that makes gluttony entertaining or acceptable. To watch a bunch of people, who are mostly overfed to begin with, stuffing their faces with food is just plain revolting. If you take into account the number of people in the world who are dying of starvation at any given minute, plus the number of Americans who are obese, it makes eating contests somewhat of an obscenity. Get rid of eating contests. They might have gone over big at midwestern state fairs in the early part of last century, but they have no place in the world today.
>> Fox News Channel: "Fair and balanced." HAHAHAHA! That never fails to amuse me.
>> If you're reading a news story about the economy and unemployment and it starts getting too depressing, if you substitute the word "topless" for the word "jobless" it makes things funnier. Not better, just funnier.
>> Everybody knows Andy Rooney, the "irascible curmudgeon" (nice for "cranky old goat") correspondent on CBS' 60 Minutes news magazine. I don't understand why he is still on television. He is at least 3 decades past his "sell-by" date. Curiously, if you subtract 3 decades from his present age you get uncomfortably close to my present age, so what does that tell me? I hope I can live long enough to become a caricature of myself.
>> The other day it dawned on me that the difference between the words "perpetuate" and "perpetrate" is only one letter. When I first realized that I thought it was really clever but now not so much. Since they both mean sort of the same thing, to extend the life of something, can't we get rid of one of them? I've calculated that the amount of brainpower we'd save dealing with only one word instead of two would keep Fox News going for 10 years. On second thought, I really don't want that to happen, so we're keeping both.
>> Favorite comedienne Lily Tomlin says in her stand-up routine, "If olive oil comes from olives and corn oil comes from corn, where does baby oil come from?" The humor there lies in a deft swapping of "source" for "intent". That is, olive oil "comes" from olives but baby oil is "intended" for babies. Point is, nothing takes the funny out of something faster than analyzing it. Remember that next time someone insults you. If you make them explain it it will NOT be funny or effective. This is the voice of experience.
>> This is the land of the free and everyone is in favor of personal freedom and doing whatever you want, blah blah blah. But seriously, for the love of God can we pass a law permanently outlawing eating contests? Every July 4th it's a hot dog eating contest. I really can't think of any set of circumstances that makes gluttony entertaining or acceptable. To watch a bunch of people, who are mostly overfed to begin with, stuffing their faces with food is just plain revolting. If you take into account the number of people in the world who are dying of starvation at any given minute, plus the number of Americans who are obese, it makes eating contests somewhat of an obscenity. Get rid of eating contests. They might have gone over big at midwestern state fairs in the early part of last century, but they have no place in the world today.
>> Fox News Channel: "Fair and balanced." HAHAHAHA! That never fails to amuse me.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
One Toke Over The Line
I was trolling around the internet a while back looking for cheap laughs and I found some with this YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg
This is a clip of the old Lawrence Welk show featuring a rendition of Brewer and Shipley's 1970 stoner epic "One Toke Over The Line." My jaw dropped as I watched the video. Did they have any idea what the lyrics of this song were about? Do the math: 1970 + "toke" = marijuana! Ding ding! We have a winner! Did that not even occur to them? The cheesiness factor is off the scale here especially with the clothes, which seemed pilfered from a high school drama class production of "Oklahoma." I thought I was hallucinating and became overjoyed because maybe the long-promised flashbacks from taking all that LSD in the 60s and 70s were finally happening. The kicker is at the end when Mr. Welk himself refers to the song as a "modern spiritual." That got a huge WTF? from me. I really wish the Welk show had continued long enough to do their version of the Village People's "In The Navy" as part of a patriotic music show. I can just see that - a dozen singers on stage, the women in their jacked-to-Jesus hair and puffy-sleeved dresses and the men in their Rotary Club haircuts and canary-yellow leisure suits. With Myron Floren on accordion, of course.
When I was a teenager you could not get any more uncool or unhip than Lawrence Welk. It was usually sponsored by a product called "Geritol" which was some kind of vitamin and mineral tonic specifically made for old people. I immediately labeled the music "Geritol music," something even my parents thought was funny. I'm sure Geritol tasted like the bottom of an old fish tank and I was convinced the only thing it did was made you smell funny, which most old people did. It was painful when the studio audience was shown dancing on the Welk show. Watching them stumble, jostle and bump each other I was sure we were only seconds away from someone breaking a hip. You could just hear the Depends undergarments crinkling and crunching beneath all the polyester. There was usually a bubble machine behind the musicians on stage which spewed out clouds of bubbles in a faux-elegant attempt to invoke the highbrow appeal of champagne. Side note: I read somewhere that the dancers on the show hated the bubbles because they broke on the floor and made it extremely slippery. If there is a "blooper reel" of the Welk show I would love to see it.
But seriously, I can look at clips of "The Lawrence Welk Show" now and get nothing but warm fuzzy feelings from them. It's kind of like televised comfort food - something that fills you with the sweet glow of nostalgia for the kinder, gentler days of your youth. My parents were parked in front of the television every Saturday evening to watch. They could not get enough of the show's schlocky, stridently old-fashioned production values and the creaky, timeworn old songs they exhumed for each show. When I was younger I had to wait very impatiently until Welk was over and something better came on. As I got older I would go upstairs to my room, clamp my stereo headphones on and play rock music at ear-splitting volume in an attempt to purge my brain of the flatulent stodginess of the Welk show.
Okay, that was pretty harsh. Now I really have nothing but nice thoughts about Welk and his "Champagne Music Makers." If nothing else, they gave the people of my parents' generation an hour of clean, pleasant and safe entertainment each week specifically tailored to appeal to them. It was one of their small but meaningful pleasures in the rapidly-emerging youth culture around them. They and their peers could celebrate the comfort and solidarity of their common memories and experiences, much of it rooted in the World War II era. I know my parents delighted in remembering good times when they danced to Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey and I really enjoyed hearing them reminisce about their youth. Sure, the show aggravated the crap out of me when I was a kid but I have no doubt I aggravated the crap out of a lot of people back then. It all goes around and comes around, and now looking back over the years the Welk show is a direct link to memories of my now-deceased parents and what was a very pleasant time in my life. And anything that made my parents happy makes me happy, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg
This is a clip of the old Lawrence Welk show featuring a rendition of Brewer and Shipley's 1970 stoner epic "One Toke Over The Line." My jaw dropped as I watched the video. Did they have any idea what the lyrics of this song were about? Do the math: 1970 + "toke" = marijuana! Ding ding! We have a winner! Did that not even occur to them? The cheesiness factor is off the scale here especially with the clothes, which seemed pilfered from a high school drama class production of "Oklahoma." I thought I was hallucinating and became overjoyed because maybe the long-promised flashbacks from taking all that LSD in the 60s and 70s were finally happening. The kicker is at the end when Mr. Welk himself refers to the song as a "modern spiritual." That got a huge WTF? from me. I really wish the Welk show had continued long enough to do their version of the Village People's "In The Navy" as part of a patriotic music show. I can just see that - a dozen singers on stage, the women in their jacked-to-Jesus hair and puffy-sleeved dresses and the men in their Rotary Club haircuts and canary-yellow leisure suits. With Myron Floren on accordion, of course.
When I was a teenager you could not get any more uncool or unhip than Lawrence Welk. It was usually sponsored by a product called "Geritol" which was some kind of vitamin and mineral tonic specifically made for old people. I immediately labeled the music "Geritol music," something even my parents thought was funny. I'm sure Geritol tasted like the bottom of an old fish tank and I was convinced the only thing it did was made you smell funny, which most old people did. It was painful when the studio audience was shown dancing on the Welk show. Watching them stumble, jostle and bump each other I was sure we were only seconds away from someone breaking a hip. You could just hear the Depends undergarments crinkling and crunching beneath all the polyester. There was usually a bubble machine behind the musicians on stage which spewed out clouds of bubbles in a faux-elegant attempt to invoke the highbrow appeal of champagne. Side note: I read somewhere that the dancers on the show hated the bubbles because they broke on the floor and made it extremely slippery. If there is a "blooper reel" of the Welk show I would love to see it.
But seriously, I can look at clips of "The Lawrence Welk Show" now and get nothing but warm fuzzy feelings from them. It's kind of like televised comfort food - something that fills you with the sweet glow of nostalgia for the kinder, gentler days of your youth. My parents were parked in front of the television every Saturday evening to watch. They could not get enough of the show's schlocky, stridently old-fashioned production values and the creaky, timeworn old songs they exhumed for each show. When I was younger I had to wait very impatiently until Welk was over and something better came on. As I got older I would go upstairs to my room, clamp my stereo headphones on and play rock music at ear-splitting volume in an attempt to purge my brain of the flatulent stodginess of the Welk show.
Okay, that was pretty harsh. Now I really have nothing but nice thoughts about Welk and his "Champagne Music Makers." If nothing else, they gave the people of my parents' generation an hour of clean, pleasant and safe entertainment each week specifically tailored to appeal to them. It was one of their small but meaningful pleasures in the rapidly-emerging youth culture around them. They and their peers could celebrate the comfort and solidarity of their common memories and experiences, much of it rooted in the World War II era. I know my parents delighted in remembering good times when they danced to Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey and I really enjoyed hearing them reminisce about their youth. Sure, the show aggravated the crap out of me when I was a kid but I have no doubt I aggravated the crap out of a lot of people back then. It all goes around and comes around, and now looking back over the years the Welk show is a direct link to memories of my now-deceased parents and what was a very pleasant time in my life. And anything that made my parents happy makes me happy, too.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
American Idolatry
Last night was the finale of season 8 of the television program "American Idol." I was lucky enough to tune into the last four minutes only, to see the winner announced. Other than the audition programs at the front end of the season, I skipped all of it, and haven't really followed the show in years.
"American Idol" has become the Junior-High-School-Popularity-Contest from hell, a big-budget student-council election on steroids. I have to admit a guilty pleasure in watching the shows early in the season where they go from city to city auditioning hopefuls for a shot at moving on to Hollywood. Those shows are truly the Parade of the Seriously Delusional. I find it hard to believe they audition like 10,000 people or more over a couple of days in San Diego or Houston, but whatever, they sure do deliver the chortles. The vast majority of the auditioners have to be unremarkably average. A smaller number are seriously horrible and talent/sanity-free. An even more minuscule number actually have talent. Needless to say we are shown the truly good and the truly awful, because that's what pulls in the ratings. And nothing ever happens on AI unless it's for ratings or profit. You have to watch some of those bad auditions and ask, "Can you even hear yourself? Who the hell told you can sing?" I sometimes get a mite uncomfortable and squirmy when someone comes on who is obviously mentally disturbed and the dream of being on "Idol" is the only sliver of hope in their unrelentingly bleak, tedious, dead-end lives. No matter, they are chewed up and spat out just like the contestant before them was and the one after will be. AI auditions are only about the 40 seconds you get to display your mental problems on national television - anything happening in your life before or after is pretty much irrelevant.
The American cultural imperative of "rooting for the underdog" is always present, as it was a couple of years ago when a marginally-talented, obviously over-aged Taylor Hicks won. That was my first tip-off that something was rotten in Idol-land when someone, who looks like the uncle that always mortifies the family at weddings by getting drunk and either dancing like he's in a dinner-theater version of "Saturday Night Fever" or croaking out an almost-unrecognizable version of "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," came out on top. And where is his career now? Don't know and don't care. And I tuned out early the next season when something called "Sanjaya Malarky" was upchucked into our living rooms and disgraced and debased the entire human race with not just lack of any kind of talent (other than self-promotion) but in fact an abundance of negative talent that I believe came close to scuttling the entire "Idol" franchise, which at that point would have been a blessing.
But the fact remains that when you let millions of pre-teen kids vote on who they "like" the best it's pretty depressing when they almost always choose bland and boring over different and (slightly) edgy. From the little I heard glam rocker Adam Lambert had a better voice than missionary kid from Arkansas Kris Allen. "Glambert," as he was called, had range and power and did a lot of screaming and histrionics, which in the world of "Idol" is almost universally mistaken for talent. The other one looked like he would be right at home strumming emo/folk tunes at a coffee shop in a Minneapolis suburb with a tip jar in front of him. They say "Idol" appeals to a wide range of viewers, but I don't think it can be denied that pre-teens and teens make up their biggest voting bloc. Other demographic groups don't stand a chance when those crazy kids can just pop mega-doses of Adderall and Ritalin and stay up for 24 hours straight speed-dialing the voting lines like 5,000 times each.
So, just as the eternally loathsome Sarah Palin is destined to rear her empty head and soul onto the American scene in the not-too-distant future, so will "Idol" return for (**shudder**) season 9 in January 2010. There are some minor things to look forward to - mainly the Theatre of the Damned that are the audition shows, and you can almost always count on Simon Cowell for a bracing, refreshing blast of vitriol and hatefulness on a regular basis. Paula Abdul is fun to watch for her vast, endless supply of pharmaceutical enhancements and her subsequent dotty, surreal behavior. Randy Jackson continues to mystify as to why he is even on that program as a judge, and I doubt that the fourth judge will be back next time so who cares. The Cowell-Seacrest "You're-gay-No-you're-gay!" snipefest is becoming a bit tattered, but still amuses. A little. But as long as the ratings and the profit and the publicity keep rolling in, "Idol" will take its place right behind death and taxes as one of the inevitabilities of modern life.
"American Idol" has become the Junior-High-School-Popularity-Contest from hell, a big-budget student-council election on steroids. I have to admit a guilty pleasure in watching the shows early in the season where they go from city to city auditioning hopefuls for a shot at moving on to Hollywood. Those shows are truly the Parade of the Seriously Delusional. I find it hard to believe they audition like 10,000 people or more over a couple of days in San Diego or Houston, but whatever, they sure do deliver the chortles. The vast majority of the auditioners have to be unremarkably average. A smaller number are seriously horrible and talent/sanity-free. An even more minuscule number actually have talent. Needless to say we are shown the truly good and the truly awful, because that's what pulls in the ratings. And nothing ever happens on AI unless it's for ratings or profit. You have to watch some of those bad auditions and ask, "Can you even hear yourself? Who the hell told you can sing?" I sometimes get a mite uncomfortable and squirmy when someone comes on who is obviously mentally disturbed and the dream of being on "Idol" is the only sliver of hope in their unrelentingly bleak, tedious, dead-end lives. No matter, they are chewed up and spat out just like the contestant before them was and the one after will be. AI auditions are only about the 40 seconds you get to display your mental problems on national television - anything happening in your life before or after is pretty much irrelevant.
The American cultural imperative of "rooting for the underdog" is always present, as it was a couple of years ago when a marginally-talented, obviously over-aged Taylor Hicks won. That was my first tip-off that something was rotten in Idol-land when someone, who looks like the uncle that always mortifies the family at weddings by getting drunk and either dancing like he's in a dinner-theater version of "Saturday Night Fever" or croaking out an almost-unrecognizable version of "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," came out on top. And where is his career now? Don't know and don't care. And I tuned out early the next season when something called "Sanjaya Malarky" was upchucked into our living rooms and disgraced and debased the entire human race with not just lack of any kind of talent (other than self-promotion) but in fact an abundance of negative talent that I believe came close to scuttling the entire "Idol" franchise, which at that point would have been a blessing.
But the fact remains that when you let millions of pre-teen kids vote on who they "like" the best it's pretty depressing when they almost always choose bland and boring over different and (slightly) edgy. From the little I heard glam rocker Adam Lambert had a better voice than missionary kid from Arkansas Kris Allen. "Glambert," as he was called, had range and power and did a lot of screaming and histrionics, which in the world of "Idol" is almost universally mistaken for talent. The other one looked like he would be right at home strumming emo/folk tunes at a coffee shop in a Minneapolis suburb with a tip jar in front of him. They say "Idol" appeals to a wide range of viewers, but I don't think it can be denied that pre-teens and teens make up their biggest voting bloc. Other demographic groups don't stand a chance when those crazy kids can just pop mega-doses of Adderall and Ritalin and stay up for 24 hours straight speed-dialing the voting lines like 5,000 times each.
So, just as the eternally loathsome Sarah Palin is destined to rear her empty head and soul onto the American scene in the not-too-distant future, so will "Idol" return for (**shudder**) season 9 in January 2010. There are some minor things to look forward to - mainly the Theatre of the Damned that are the audition shows, and you can almost always count on Simon Cowell for a bracing, refreshing blast of vitriol and hatefulness on a regular basis. Paula Abdul is fun to watch for her vast, endless supply of pharmaceutical enhancements and her subsequent dotty, surreal behavior. Randy Jackson continues to mystify as to why he is even on that program as a judge, and I doubt that the fourth judge will be back next time so who cares. The Cowell-Seacrest "You're-gay-No-you're-gay!" snipefest is becoming a bit tattered, but still amuses. A little. But as long as the ratings and the profit and the publicity keep rolling in, "Idol" will take its place right behind death and taxes as one of the inevitabilities of modern life.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Commercials That Suck
Commercials are the fleas and ticks of our modern media-drenched life. They can be mere annoyances or they can be evil, bloodsucking soul-stealers. Commercials are how your life slips away from you undetected and as a result one day you wake up and see your father staring back at you in the mirror and you wonder WTF happened to my youth? The vast majority of commercials are complete, utter wastes of time. I have no interest at all in whatever product or service they are shilling and never will. Sitting through them is dead time, 30-second segments of my life squandered that I will never get back. And that's plain wrong.
Necessary evil, you say? They pay the bills? Maybe. The occasional commercial I could deal with. But when they come in packs of eight or more in a row, a tedious torrent of banality disgorging from your television into your living room, well, I have a little problem with that. Often repeating themselves in the same short span of time, their spawn-of-Satan creators apparently regard us as a bunch of idiots who need to have their tiresome message mercilessly drilled into our heads like some kind of cerebral root canal.
Most television commercials are just boring, stupid and lame. But there are some commercials that rise above mere mediocrity and reach toxic levels of mind-numbing, stupefying awfulness. These are commercials that not only clumsily attempt to sell some crappy product but also, intentionally or not, end up killing your mind and spirit and make you feel like you have been assaulted by some media zombie that just sucked your brain out through your eyes. And that is not an acceptable thing to do, just to sell some high-calorie sandwich or laundry detergent.
Here, then, is my list of Commercials That Suck, from least to most offensive. Five masterpieces of awful that crush your spirit and stink up the air. I rated them 1 (very low) to 5 (very high) on these attributes: General Ickiness, Level of Obnoxiousness, and Creep Factor, which is when either implicit or explicit sexual connotations are thrown in just to make everything a little more loathsome. Because you can never have too much loathsome when it comes to commercials. These are not local commercials, which are so invariably, deeply inane and stupid they don't even deserve mentioning. These ads are for national products and services shown in prime time or late night, on either over-the-air networks or cable/satellite.
5. Jared Jewelers: Every Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day it's the same damned thing. A bunch of hoity-toity people are in a restaurant or something and someone's administrative assistant starts waving her hand in everyone's face showing off her ring. With a smarmy, dead-headed smile she intones, "He went to Jared's!" Then everyone in the restaurant has to knowingly say to each other with a winky-winky nudge-nudge, "He went to Jared's!" Even total strangers have to crane their necks 180 degrees around and say that. It is annoyingly repeated over and over again like some kind of mantra, which if said often enough will impart some cachet of quality to a tacky, overpriced bauble that was probably cobbled together in a sweat shop in the Philippines. Bitch, please.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 1
Total Score: 7
4. Alltel Wireless: There are a whole raft of annoying cell phone commercials starring some blonde him-bo named "Chad" and how cool and with-it he is compared to the quartet of pathetic geeks representing other cell phone providers. The commercials are stupid and bad enough, but their obnoxiousness is immeasurably compounded by the hyperaggressive saturation ad campaign which airs these ads literally hundreds of times an hour on ever single available channel. In the weeks before AND after Christmas you could not get away from them for one single second. They've since dumped the Four Geekmen of the Apocalypse but "Chad" is still around navigating us through the moron-filled expanses of cell-phone hell. Needless to say I will never patronize Alltel, solely on the basis of these appalling ads, and I hope no one else does.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 2
Total Score: 9
3. Just For Men Hair Color: Most of these "get rid of some of the gray" ads are pretty vapid and lame, as if having gray hair is that big a deal or a problem. They are more boring than offensive, but there is one commercial that is really bad. It shows what appears to be a single dad with two tween daughters, who barge in and say to him solemnly, "Dad, we think it's time..." and shove a bottle of hair coloring in his face, adding, "We think you would be a great catch for someone." First of all, why are those two preteen daughters so obsessed with their dad's sex life? How did they figure out that graying hair = never get laid? Secondly, any guy who takes romantic advice from a ten-year-old deserves to never get laid. Inexplicably, the guy listens to his daughters and the next scene has him at dinner with less gray hair and a hot babe, taking a cell phone picture of the two of them to send to his girls. And the girls cackle gleefully when they see the photo, like, "Gee, once Dad starts getting some on a regular basis he'll be in a good mood and we can do or have anything we want." "Wheeee! X-box, here we come!" Sad, pathetic and downright icky.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 4
Obnoxiousness: 3
Creep Factor: 4
Total Score: 11
2. Trojan Fingertip Massager: Picture it: two younger with-it chicks are in a library leafing through a magazine when they come across an ad for a Trojan Female Fingertip Massager and begin chortling and snickering about how awesome it is. Behind them is a much older, matronly woman, who can hear them and look over their shoulders and seems to be getting a little grossed out at the concept. One of the younger women whispers something in the ear of the other, presumably some ungodly activity you can do with the massager, and the other says that's something that can "save a relationship." I consider myself reasonably sophisticated but have no idea what she whispered and I so DO NOT want to find out. The ad then switches to a look at the actual massager, and I have to admit at this point my brain went into lockdown mode to avoid any further damage. I do not remember much until the end of the commercial where the two young women are wondering if you can order this thing online and Aunt Hagatha behind them pipes up and says, "Of course you can get it online, that's where I got mine!!!" The two women look at each other all embarrassed and grossed out, to which I enthusiastically add EWWW!! OMG!! I SO did not need to know ANY of this! And no, I didn't see this on some porn channel, it was on A&E.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 5
Total Score: 14
1. Erectile Dysfunction Medications/Male Enhancement: There's just so much going on here I don't even know where to start. Let's do the ED drugs first. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra - yeah, you know who you are. Viagra with the bunch of good ol' boys sitting around a broken-down roadhouse with their musical instruments singing its praises. Those insipid couples in the Cialis commercials with the matching outdoor bathtubs. And I can't remember what's going on with Levitra but I'm sure it's no better. All these normal-looking guys having earnest conversations with several million of their closest friends (actually, total strangers - us!) about their erectile problems. Dudes, seriously: if you're having a problem getting Mr. Winkie to stand up and say howdy, try having that earnest conversation with your urologist, NOT US! Keep it to yourselves, we don't want to know. Side note: I wonder if the actors in these commercials are ever recognized on the street for their "work" with people coming up and asking them, "Are the guy with the flat tire?" or "What's up, Mr. Softie?" The worst one is with the black couple where the male has popped his little blue Ticket to Paradise and is starting to get amorous with the little woman, when DING DONG, it's the doorbell and one of their grown kids shows up with a gaggle of grandchildren. The couple look at each other like, "Oh well!" and welcome the kids inside. Not only does the man lose his big chance for sexy time, but he has to hang around a bunch of children for four hours with an erection. The Creep Factor is kind of off the scale with that one, and personally it makes me want to call Child Protective Services on the lot of them. As for "male enhancement", which invariably has to do with size, blah blah blah, there's this crap called Enzyte which is some compost of weird herbs and industrial waste that is supposed to "enhance the male member". Yeah, I'm so sure that will work. But the commercials for Enzyte are truly awful, terrible and loathsome. They are set in some kind of hallucinatory netherworld of 1950's-era Leave-It-To-Beaver bad fashion and furniture, starring this grinning idiot named "Bob" and all these horrible creepy Stepford-wife types. There are many variants of these Enzyte commercials and there is not one single good thing to be said about any of them. They are all repulsive and appalling and everyone connected with them needs to suffer a very public, painful death. They are truly the worst of the worst.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 5 (only because it doesn't go any higher)
Total Score: 15 (and that's being conservative)
Honorable mention goes to the Subway sandwiches ads and their spokesgeek/former dirigible Jared, who is one cheap wig and a bad make-up job away from being a really ugly drag queen. And now that we've found out that Subway workers spew all sorts of bodily wastes and fluids all over the sandwiches they make just to have fun, how many more reasons do we need to avoid Subway?
Yes, I do watch too much television, and I am ashamed. I don't HAVE to watch horrible commercials, yet here I am. Hello, my name is Steve, and I am an addict. I'd tell you more except it's time for 24.
Necessary evil, you say? They pay the bills? Maybe. The occasional commercial I could deal with. But when they come in packs of eight or more in a row, a tedious torrent of banality disgorging from your television into your living room, well, I have a little problem with that. Often repeating themselves in the same short span of time, their spawn-of-Satan creators apparently regard us as a bunch of idiots who need to have their tiresome message mercilessly drilled into our heads like some kind of cerebral root canal.
Most television commercials are just boring, stupid and lame. But there are some commercials that rise above mere mediocrity and reach toxic levels of mind-numbing, stupefying awfulness. These are commercials that not only clumsily attempt to sell some crappy product but also, intentionally or not, end up killing your mind and spirit and make you feel like you have been assaulted by some media zombie that just sucked your brain out through your eyes. And that is not an acceptable thing to do, just to sell some high-calorie sandwich or laundry detergent.
Here, then, is my list of Commercials That Suck, from least to most offensive. Five masterpieces of awful that crush your spirit and stink up the air. I rated them 1 (very low) to 5 (very high) on these attributes: General Ickiness, Level of Obnoxiousness, and Creep Factor, which is when either implicit or explicit sexual connotations are thrown in just to make everything a little more loathsome. Because you can never have too much loathsome when it comes to commercials. These are not local commercials, which are so invariably, deeply inane and stupid they don't even deserve mentioning. These ads are for national products and services shown in prime time or late night, on either over-the-air networks or cable/satellite.
5. Jared Jewelers: Every Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day it's the same damned thing. A bunch of hoity-toity people are in a restaurant or something and someone's administrative assistant starts waving her hand in everyone's face showing off her ring. With a smarmy, dead-headed smile she intones, "He went to Jared's!" Then everyone in the restaurant has to knowingly say to each other with a winky-winky nudge-nudge, "He went to Jared's!" Even total strangers have to crane their necks 180 degrees around and say that. It is annoyingly repeated over and over again like some kind of mantra, which if said often enough will impart some cachet of quality to a tacky, overpriced bauble that was probably cobbled together in a sweat shop in the Philippines. Bitch, please.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 1
Total Score: 7
4. Alltel Wireless: There are a whole raft of annoying cell phone commercials starring some blonde him-bo named "Chad" and how cool and with-it he is compared to the quartet of pathetic geeks representing other cell phone providers. The commercials are stupid and bad enough, but their obnoxiousness is immeasurably compounded by the hyperaggressive saturation ad campaign which airs these ads literally hundreds of times an hour on ever single available channel. In the weeks before AND after Christmas you could not get away from them for one single second. They've since dumped the Four Geekmen of the Apocalypse but "Chad" is still around navigating us through the moron-filled expanses of cell-phone hell. Needless to say I will never patronize Alltel, solely on the basis of these appalling ads, and I hope no one else does.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 2
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 2
Total Score: 9
3. Just For Men Hair Color: Most of these "get rid of some of the gray" ads are pretty vapid and lame, as if having gray hair is that big a deal or a problem. They are more boring than offensive, but there is one commercial that is really bad. It shows what appears to be a single dad with two tween daughters, who barge in and say to him solemnly, "Dad, we think it's time..." and shove a bottle of hair coloring in his face, adding, "We think you would be a great catch for someone." First of all, why are those two preteen daughters so obsessed with their dad's sex life? How did they figure out that graying hair = never get laid? Secondly, any guy who takes romantic advice from a ten-year-old deserves to never get laid. Inexplicably, the guy listens to his daughters and the next scene has him at dinner with less gray hair and a hot babe, taking a cell phone picture of the two of them to send to his girls. And the girls cackle gleefully when they see the photo, like, "Gee, once Dad starts getting some on a regular basis he'll be in a good mood and we can do or have anything we want." "Wheeee! X-box, here we come!" Sad, pathetic and downright icky.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 4
Obnoxiousness: 3
Creep Factor: 4
Total Score: 11
2. Trojan Fingertip Massager: Picture it: two younger with-it chicks are in a library leafing through a magazine when they come across an ad for a Trojan Female Fingertip Massager and begin chortling and snickering about how awesome it is. Behind them is a much older, matronly woman, who can hear them and look over their shoulders and seems to be getting a little grossed out at the concept. One of the younger women whispers something in the ear of the other, presumably some ungodly activity you can do with the massager, and the other says that's something that can "save a relationship." I consider myself reasonably sophisticated but have no idea what she whispered and I so DO NOT want to find out. The ad then switches to a look at the actual massager, and I have to admit at this point my brain went into lockdown mode to avoid any further damage. I do not remember much until the end of the commercial where the two young women are wondering if you can order this thing online and Aunt Hagatha behind them pipes up and says, "Of course you can get it online, that's where I got mine!!!" The two women look at each other all embarrassed and grossed out, to which I enthusiastically add EWWW!! OMG!! I SO did not need to know ANY of this! And no, I didn't see this on some porn channel, it was on A&E.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 4
Creep Factor: 5
Total Score: 14
1. Erectile Dysfunction Medications/Male Enhancement: There's just so much going on here I don't even know where to start. Let's do the ED drugs first. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra - yeah, you know who you are. Viagra with the bunch of good ol' boys sitting around a broken-down roadhouse with their musical instruments singing its praises. Those insipid couples in the Cialis commercials with the matching outdoor bathtubs. And I can't remember what's going on with Levitra but I'm sure it's no better. All these normal-looking guys having earnest conversations with several million of their closest friends (actually, total strangers - us!) about their erectile problems. Dudes, seriously: if you're having a problem getting Mr. Winkie to stand up and say howdy, try having that earnest conversation with your urologist, NOT US! Keep it to yourselves, we don't want to know. Side note: I wonder if the actors in these commercials are ever recognized on the street for their "work" with people coming up and asking them, "Are the guy with the flat tire?" or "What's up, Mr. Softie?" The worst one is with the black couple where the male has popped his little blue Ticket to Paradise and is starting to get amorous with the little woman, when DING DONG, it's the doorbell and one of their grown kids shows up with a gaggle of grandchildren. The couple look at each other like, "Oh well!" and welcome the kids inside. Not only does the man lose his big chance for sexy time, but he has to hang around a bunch of children for four hours with an erection. The Creep Factor is kind of off the scale with that one, and personally it makes me want to call Child Protective Services on the lot of them. As for "male enhancement", which invariably has to do with size, blah blah blah, there's this crap called Enzyte which is some compost of weird herbs and industrial waste that is supposed to "enhance the male member". Yeah, I'm so sure that will work. But the commercials for Enzyte are truly awful, terrible and loathsome. They are set in some kind of hallucinatory netherworld of 1950's-era Leave-It-To-Beaver bad fashion and furniture, starring this grinning idiot named "Bob" and all these horrible creepy Stepford-wife types. There are many variants of these Enzyte commercials and there is not one single good thing to be said about any of them. They are all repulsive and appalling and everyone connected with them needs to suffer a very public, painful death. They are truly the worst of the worst.
SCORECARD:
Ickiness: 5
Obnoxiousness: 5
Creep Factor: 5 (only because it doesn't go any higher)
Total Score: 15 (and that's being conservative)
Honorable mention goes to the Subway sandwiches ads and their spokesgeek/former dirigible Jared, who is one cheap wig and a bad make-up job away from being a really ugly drag queen. And now that we've found out that Subway workers spew all sorts of bodily wastes and fluids all over the sandwiches they make just to have fun, how many more reasons do we need to avoid Subway?
Yes, I do watch too much television, and I am ashamed. I don't HAVE to watch horrible commercials, yet here I am. Hello, my name is Steve, and I am an addict. I'd tell you more except it's time for 24.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Farewell, Battlestar
Last Friday, March 20, saw the series finale of "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci-Fi channel. This was an event of seismic proportions for anyone who considers themselves a fan of science fiction on any medium - television, movies, print. Anticipated with a fervor usually reserved for six-year-olds a couple days before Christmas, it was a watershed event for me which still reverberates several days later.
What was it about this series that grabbed the imaginations of myself and several million other normally level-headed (give me a break, okay?) people with a vise-grip for four fragmented seasons? First and foremost, "Galactica" was a great story, expertly told. It was, in all instances, a character-driven drama, and had all the elements of great stories told in other settings: morality, mortality, the meaning and purpose of life, love and loyalty, ambition, delusion, guilt and redemption. The setting, in intra-galactic space, was at the same time, fundamental and irrelevant to the story itself. The story could well have been set in an urban, post-apocalyptic wasteland or the American West of the 1800s. The whole story pivoted around a desperate group of survivors of an overwhelming catastrophe being relentlessly pursued by a race of powerful, seemingly indestructible enemies with nothing short of genocide in mind.
As many writers have pointed out much more skillfully than I can, "Galactica" was the perfect drama for a terrifying, inverted post-9/11 world. How can you battle an enemy that looks exactly like you? Who can you really trust when you view everyone you meet with suspicion and uncertainty, because they could very well be a robot and you would never know it, until it's too late? How can you fight against an enemy when death is meaningless to them? In the "Galactica" universe these enemies simply download their consciousness into another, identical body and they are ready to go again. They are, in effect, the ultimate suicide bombers, who carry out their deadly missions with the complete assurance that they will come back again as good as new, with all their memories intact and ready to pick up again right where they left off.
One of the elements of genius of "Galactica" was that it was constantly keeping us off-balance and putting unexpected twists and turns on their increasingly complex world-view. In the "New Caprica" story arc, which spanned seasons 2 and 3, the parallel with the U.S. occupation of Iraq was uncomfortably obvious: the humans settled on a planet only to be discovered by the Cylons and invaded. The humans then became the insurgents, battling against a superior occupation force and using any means at their disposal, including suicide bombings, to fight back. The occupiers also had no problem using torture and imprisonment to force their rule on the humans. Abu-Ghraib, anyone? The story arc ended with the insurgents fighting a costly war against their oppressors and escaping back into space where their enemies resumed their pursuit. In the end religious beliefs fracture the Cylon nation into two parts, and the humans form a very uneasy, suspicious alliance with some of their former enemies.
Again the question comes up, why do I care so much about a television program? When I was much younger I was obsessed with "Lost in Space", but I was like 14 years old at the time. What is my excuse now, 40-some years later? Maybe it's the appeal of an excellent story, first-rate production values, and incredible actors working at the top of their games all coming together in a finished product that is much more than just the sum of its parts. "Galactica" grew on you, there was something about it that make you think about what you saw days after watching a program. I was not an immediate fan of the miniseries when it debuted in 2003. I watched it and thought, well that was strange, that wasn't anything close to what I expected. I would tune in occasionally through the first season of the show, but did not watch regularly by any means. Slowly but surely, I was pulled into the "Galactica" universe and by the middle of season 2 I was hooked.
The characters were so fully-formed and brilliantly acted, and the writing gave them plenty of opportunities to turn them into people you genuinely cared about. The series was ultra-realistic, with no sleek, designer "bridge" where all the action took place. On "Galactica" there were no phaser-pistols, talking computers, or matter transporters beaming people all over the place. The guns shot regular bullets and people communicated on huge, clunky old phones. While there were a few nods to the science-fiction lexicon we have all come to understand and accept - artificial gravity on all vessels no matter their size, faster-than-light travel, to name a few - the hallmark of "Galactica" was its granular, fundamental realism that made you think, yes this could actually happen, this could be real. And that might be its greatest triumph.
Now that "Galactica" is over, I feel like something meaningful and good has gone. The finale was by no means perfect - some long-sought answers to important questions were provided, but other matters (particularly the true nature of the resurrected Kara Thrace) were glossed over. Series finales must be the most difficult programs to create because you're almost assured to anger and annoy some segment of your loyal viewers. The "Seinfeld" finale was almost universally reviled, and the ending of "The Sopranos" is still being debated as either brilliantly creative or cowardly cop-out. The finale to "Six Feet Under" was in my opinion as close to a perfect end to a series as I have ever seen. But maybe we are to provide some our own answers when a story ends, in ways that are most meaningful to us. "Battlestar Galactica" was a great ride for over 5 years, and it holds up very well on repeated viewings. We will be thinking about some of those questions for years to come. For those of us willing to take the journey, it was a singular, richly rewarding experience that will most likely not be repeated anytime soon.
What was it about this series that grabbed the imaginations of myself and several million other normally level-headed (give me a break, okay?) people with a vise-grip for four fragmented seasons? First and foremost, "Galactica" was a great story, expertly told. It was, in all instances, a character-driven drama, and had all the elements of great stories told in other settings: morality, mortality, the meaning and purpose of life, love and loyalty, ambition, delusion, guilt and redemption. The setting, in intra-galactic space, was at the same time, fundamental and irrelevant to the story itself. The story could well have been set in an urban, post-apocalyptic wasteland or the American West of the 1800s. The whole story pivoted around a desperate group of survivors of an overwhelming catastrophe being relentlessly pursued by a race of powerful, seemingly indestructible enemies with nothing short of genocide in mind.
As many writers have pointed out much more skillfully than I can, "Galactica" was the perfect drama for a terrifying, inverted post-9/11 world. How can you battle an enemy that looks exactly like you? Who can you really trust when you view everyone you meet with suspicion and uncertainty, because they could very well be a robot and you would never know it, until it's too late? How can you fight against an enemy when death is meaningless to them? In the "Galactica" universe these enemies simply download their consciousness into another, identical body and they are ready to go again. They are, in effect, the ultimate suicide bombers, who carry out their deadly missions with the complete assurance that they will come back again as good as new, with all their memories intact and ready to pick up again right where they left off.
One of the elements of genius of "Galactica" was that it was constantly keeping us off-balance and putting unexpected twists and turns on their increasingly complex world-view. In the "New Caprica" story arc, which spanned seasons 2 and 3, the parallel with the U.S. occupation of Iraq was uncomfortably obvious: the humans settled on a planet only to be discovered by the Cylons and invaded. The humans then became the insurgents, battling against a superior occupation force and using any means at their disposal, including suicide bombings, to fight back. The occupiers also had no problem using torture and imprisonment to force their rule on the humans. Abu-Ghraib, anyone? The story arc ended with the insurgents fighting a costly war against their oppressors and escaping back into space where their enemies resumed their pursuit. In the end religious beliefs fracture the Cylon nation into two parts, and the humans form a very uneasy, suspicious alliance with some of their former enemies.
Again the question comes up, why do I care so much about a television program? When I was much younger I was obsessed with "Lost in Space", but I was like 14 years old at the time. What is my excuse now, 40-some years later? Maybe it's the appeal of an excellent story, first-rate production values, and incredible actors working at the top of their games all coming together in a finished product that is much more than just the sum of its parts. "Galactica" grew on you, there was something about it that make you think about what you saw days after watching a program. I was not an immediate fan of the miniseries when it debuted in 2003. I watched it and thought, well that was strange, that wasn't anything close to what I expected. I would tune in occasionally through the first season of the show, but did not watch regularly by any means. Slowly but surely, I was pulled into the "Galactica" universe and by the middle of season 2 I was hooked.
The characters were so fully-formed and brilliantly acted, and the writing gave them plenty of opportunities to turn them into people you genuinely cared about. The series was ultra-realistic, with no sleek, designer "bridge" where all the action took place. On "Galactica" there were no phaser-pistols, talking computers, or matter transporters beaming people all over the place. The guns shot regular bullets and people communicated on huge, clunky old phones. While there were a few nods to the science-fiction lexicon we have all come to understand and accept - artificial gravity on all vessels no matter their size, faster-than-light travel, to name a few - the hallmark of "Galactica" was its granular, fundamental realism that made you think, yes this could actually happen, this could be real. And that might be its greatest triumph.
Now that "Galactica" is over, I feel like something meaningful and good has gone. The finale was by no means perfect - some long-sought answers to important questions were provided, but other matters (particularly the true nature of the resurrected Kara Thrace) were glossed over. Series finales must be the most difficult programs to create because you're almost assured to anger and annoy some segment of your loyal viewers. The "Seinfeld" finale was almost universally reviled, and the ending of "The Sopranos" is still being debated as either brilliantly creative or cowardly cop-out. The finale to "Six Feet Under" was in my opinion as close to a perfect end to a series as I have ever seen. But maybe we are to provide some our own answers when a story ends, in ways that are most meaningful to us. "Battlestar Galactica" was a great ride for over 5 years, and it holds up very well on repeated viewings. We will be thinking about some of those questions for years to come. For those of us willing to take the journey, it was a singular, richly rewarding experience that will most likely not be repeated anytime soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
