Credit where it's due

I can't help but notice that a bunch of these posts are negative, as in "Why I don't like X (where X=the Superstars, Republicans, and for some bizarre reason, Alan Thicke)."So I'm sucking it up and handing out some credit.

That new NBC show, "Community," merits some special mention. Not to go all hyperbolic, but it is quite possibly, at this point in its development, a flawless show. Joel McHale makes me laugh out loud a minimum of 4 times per episode. The supporting cast is growing on me, and (yes, Mitch, I'm stealing your line) I'm really happy to be able to find Chevy Chase funny again.

As much as I was trying to avoid it, there's a larger point here, because the emergence of "Community" has pointed out to me what both it and "The Office" are really about. It's the slow, and usually soul-crushing realization that you (because let's face it, both Joel McHale's Jeff and John Krasninski's Jim are "you" in this scenario, meaning I like to picture myself as being about 6'3" with atrocious hair and a permasmirk) are no better than your surroundings, no matter how much you may think you are. Sure, you may be back at a community college, stuck working for a crappy paper company, or working yet another in a string of unfulfilling corporate jobs, but eventually the reality settles over you that this is, professionally speaking, all there is. You aren’t going to be magically transported to some other world where everyone acknowledges your inherent awesomeness, quintuples your salary and promises to make it up to you for all the suffering you’ve endured over the years. My guess is, this a better thing to experience for 24 minutes a week on network, surrounded by impossibly attractive and witty co-workers (or classmates) who always neatly wrap things up before moving on to the next adventure. If Jeff struggles with the self-doubt his situation is bound to have caused, it’s temporary and can be whisked away by a few encouraging words from a pretty girl. Jim can go play a prank on Dwight, smirk at the camera, and regain his sense of superiority. The rest of us? Well, I guess we get to tune in next week, anyway.

The Wait is Over...My Take on Tiger (Finally)

Hey, uh, it's me...Tig..um, I mean, Eldrick, no, dammit...Steve. Yeah, it's Steve, go with that.

Is it me, or is this whole thing just a little too convenient, a little too sordid. Ambien? Are you kidding me? The denials, then the immediate admissions? The wall to wall to wall coverage in every single news outlet? For frack's sake, ESPN is now throwing it to an actual ABC News reporter for the Tiger stuff. It just smells funny, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's late (it is), and maybe I'm just odd (duh), but this whole thing is starting to feel like a rebranding initiative that got off to a little bit of a rough start. Sure, the accident went as planned, but the problem was the first people to run with the story got it a little bit wrong. The Friday after Thanksgiving (perfect time to launch, your entire demo is watching Who Cares State vs. Digested Tryptophan U) all the networks ran the breaking news crawl "Tiger Woods seriously injured in car crash." This is, admittedly, a Major Story. You're left wondering "wow, is he dead? Is he in a coma? Does he have massive internal bleeding and organ failure? Did he lose a limb?" which leads to "is his career over?"

Then the story quickly changed to "treated and released" which always reminds me of the Carlin bit (it really only works with that voice of his) "usually, I'm treated and detained." Then it became "and by the way this was all 12 hours ago." The hell?

There was some idle speculation on Saturday, but it was mostly cleaning up the details. Escalade, fire hydrant, tree, no airbag, not talking to police yet, Elin with a golf club. It wasn't until Monday or so that the "rumors" started. Then the one who was in the Enquirer, Rachel something, gave a pretty convincing (if bat-guano crazy sounding) denial about the whole thing. Combine that with her hiring the lawyer, and it seemed like this was going to go away, maybe. Sure, there were a couple other women playing the me-too game, but whatever.

Then the voicemail. Oh, ok, so this is true, then, eh?

So here's the thing. This all sounds so weird and out of whack that you could make the case that this was an image-rebranding that launched poorly. Imagine:

Minor car crash...check.

Oh crap, they're reporting it as serious, which is causing this to cross over to non-sports media. Abort!


Floodgates open, etc. Quick, what's our exit strategy?

Have the girl deny everything. There'll be some collateral damage, but we can revisit this thing in the spring.

Other women are coming out of the woodwork (heh). And it's not just the sports blogs picking it up. Who is? ESPN? Oh, #%$%&, Access Hollywood. Ok, I guess we're full go with "Operation Horndog Tiger" again. Put Elin in hiding, let's get the marriage counselor on retainer.

I mean, look at the calculation here. First, the lead seems to be "Tiger's squeaky clean reputation ruined!" But is it? Has he lost anything here? Are his sponsors going to drop him? Amex? No, though they're probably the most likely to be hacked off at this. They'll get over it. Nike? For crying out Pete, this was probably Nike's idea in the first place.

Let's face it. Tiger is pretty boring. And he knows it. And so do the companies that sponsor him. Now? Not so much. And when he wins 10 tournaments and 3 majors this year, it'll be hailed as the greatest achievement in the history of achievements, what with the "distractions" as this will officially be known from now on.

If this whole take seems unusually cynical, even for me, I should back up a second. This entire scenario is based in my belief that, with certain exceptions, most celebrity relationships are a complete and utter sham, created by marketing consultants. In the case of athletes, it's even worse. These people are young, rich, famous, and on the road a lot. And you're going to tell me that there aren't certain trade-offs you, as the spouse of an athlete, aren't making? Come on, unless you're completely and totally naive to the world of professional sports (and Elin was a nanny for another professional golfer, let's not forget, so there's no way that's possible), you've got to know what goes on. Put it this way...I'm not a professional athlete, and I know at least three slang terms for the women with whom such extramarital relations happen (groupies, Annies, and Road Beef). When I was in college, the Magic Johnson HIV story broke. It came up in a discussion group, which was filled to the brim with moralizing (I know, you'd think college kids, but no...this was Northwestern. Oy, the repression) when one of my classmates cut in, saying that he played Class A minor league baseball the previous summer, and even they had groupies. And not just a few, either. So go ahead, name a Class A baseball player for me. They aren't exactly what you call mainstream famous. And if they're attracting groupies, can you imagine Tiger's groupies? I'm not defending him or saying he had no control over himself, but come on. What I'm saying is that to not understand the situation, and to suddenly go completely nuts over the revelation of an affair just seems a little fishy. My final piece of evidence that this is a fake? The cocktail waitress. I mean really, Jamie Grubbs? Did you add in the extra "b" thinking we wouldn't notice her last name was a verb that describes what she was doing in selling her story? Amateur hour.

One final point. How many more times does this need to happen before we acknowledge that Tomme Lee Jones was right in Men in Black? The first media outlet on this story, a full 4 days before the crash...the National Enquirer. They were right. Again. Damn.

Tribune Sports...I got nuthin'

Ok, so it's Monday afternoon. I'm a sports reporter for a major city daily paper. The local team played last Thursday, so there's not much left to dissect about the game. The next game...well, it's a little early for that. Hmmm, what can I do? Hey, I haven't called up the Bear's QB's dad lately, I'll do that. Hmm, don't know Jay Cutler's dad's number. Or Caleb Hanie's dad. Or Brett Basanez' dad. Hmm, I wonder what the father of the backup for Houston thinks about Jay Cutler?

Hard to believe newspapers are in trouble, isn't it?

...and Wolfgang Puck popped the popcorn

Oscar winner Halle Berry, Oscar nominees Don Cheadle and John Travolta (both of whom were robbed, by the way. Forrest Gump and Ray Charles, my ass), Tony and Emmy winner Hugh Jackman, Emmy winner Drea De Matteo, Oscar and Emmy nominee Sam Shepard. All brought together to bring you one of the biggest crapfests of the decade, "Swordfish," a movie that is only ever shown on HBO, and for only one reason (OK, two reasons. Heh...oh jeebus, a boob joke? It's late, forgive me).

That tops my previous favorite, which was Oscar winners Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in "Twister." And I guess Bill Paxton isn't going to get any Emmys for "Big Love" the way I thought he would, so this one is of limited future value, barring some sort of Jami Gertz disease movie.

I'm disqualified from commenting on what should probably be the winner in this category, because I've never had the pleasure of seeing Multiple Oscar winner Denzel Washington and Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Louise Fletcher in "Virtuosity." Small favors, I suppose.

A Few Random Thoughts

Color me completely naive for not thinking of this before, but I finally figured out something that has bothered me for a while. Most, if not all, of your major organized religions, frown on or outright ban birth control (and no, Pope Benedict, I don't consider "the rhythm method" actual birth control). I've never quite understood it, and wrote it off as simply sex=fun=bad, so unless you want a child, no sex. But maybe it's more practical than I give them credit for. Maybe it's just simple marketing (sorry, when it's a non-profit it's called "membership recruitment"). Most people are indoctrinated to their religion through their parents, so wouldn't you want those parents to pump out as many custome...uh, new recruits as possible? So they know people want to have sex, and will do so no matter what they say. But to balance out the guilt of committing sins of the flesh, they'll skip the birth control and thus greatly increase the likelihood that they'll be giving the church what they really want, which is more little'uns. Does this theory make me a cynic? Probably. But if I'm anywhere in the ballpark, I'm not the biggest cynic in this equation, now, am I?

Mad Men is a really, really good TV show. It can make you like some really bad people. They can make you laugh at really horrible things. When Roger, Bert, Don and company called in whatshisname (with the glasses, don't make me look it up) and explain their plan and he's stunned into saying "are you kidding?" and Roger doesn't even look up and says "yeah, we are. Happy Birthday" I was glad it was Diet Sprite (ahem, excuse me, Sprite Zero) I was drinking, because that diet Cranberry soda I've been drinking lately would've stained the furniture.

Note to, well, all football announcers...is Mendenhall really that much easier to say than Roethlisberger? Because you don't have any trouble busting that one out, but the other one is always just "Ben." Stop that.

While we're at it, specifically to Jon Gruden...you went to college, ok? Stop doing the whole "whoa, I don't understand all these big fancy words you guys use" shtick. I know you think you're appealing to middle America that way, but what would appeal to middle America more is someone doesn't insult their intelligence. You said this week that you heard about a couple of players who sleep in hyperbaric chambers in order to heal minor injuries faster. Then you pulled the whole "whoa, I have no idea what any of that means." Hey, Jon, here's a tip, then. Google it. Most people already know what that is (possibly because Michael Jackson supposedly had one), but if there are those who do not, how 'bout taking the opportunity to tell them about it? Just because most coaches are anti-intellectual pricks doesn't mean you have to be also.

I hate to admit this, but the health care reform debate has finally beaten me. By which I mean, I just want it to be over. Pass something, declare victory, and let's move on. The GOP strategy seems to be to say and do more and more outrageous and crazy things because they know not a lot of moderates are paying attention, so maybe this is just a temporary lull for me and I'll get a 14th wind and get revved up about it again, but we'll see.

Hmm, college basketball already? I suppose.

and now for Something Completely the Same as Everything Else.

So I've been watching, somewhat faithfully (by which I mean within 24 hours of it airing) the new Monty Python documentary on IFC. And yes, it's a well made talking-head retrospective documentary talking about some incredibly interesting people, but I'm kind of sorry I'm watching it.

Backing up a bit. I love Python, but I'm by no means a fanatic about it. I doubt I've seen every single episode of the show, though maybe I have, and I've probably only seen Life of Brian 2 or 3 times. But I love Live at the Hollywood Bowl and of course the Holy Grail and I even like the Meaning of Life more than most people. And at one point, I was enough of a fan to watch Fawlty Towers.

But one of the things that struck me while watching this documentary is that I knew absolutely nothing about these guys. Ok, not entirely true, I knew Terry Gilliam was the lone American. I knew Graham Chapman was dead. But that was pretty much it. And I realize now that I preferred it that way.

I didn't want to know that Graham's coming out of the closet caused tension in the group, not that they disapproved but because they were so shocked at it, which Graham apparently took as disapproval. I didn't want to know that Eric Idle hardly ever wrote anything. I especially didn't want to know that, when battling with BBC censors, John Cleese occasionally sided with the censors against the group. Ok, sure, I do find it amusing that Cleese's father (or grandfather, I don't remember) changed the family name from "Cheese" to "Cleese." But I don't want to hear about how John and Terry (Jones) were frequently at odds, and made everyone else pick sides. And one of the stories Cleese told (about the parrot sketch) actually contradicts the legend of how it was created (he said it was based on a car salesman Michael used to know and they immediately knew it should be a dog or a parrot. The legend I'd always heard said it started out as a toaster, they couldn't get it right and Graham, who hadn't even been working on the sketch said "forget the toaster, make it a parrot")

In other words, I didn't want to know that Monty Pyton was a collection of human beings. My preferred vision for them was that they were beamed here from another plane of existence as a unit, given the ability to create this mystical blend of satire and slapstick, and were then immediately beamed back to their home world, leaving behind older versions of Cleese, Idle and Palin to do the occasional travel documentary or "A Fish Called Wanda."

I suppose I could try to make some larger point about how back in the day we didn't need to know every little obsessive detail about celebrities, and how they go to Starbucks Just Like Us. But I think this is more of a one-off situation. I actually like knowing that Keifer Sutherland is so self-conscious about his height that they only cast people who are 5' 8" or shorter on 24. Or that Stephen Colbert doesn' let his kids watch his show because he doesn't want them to think he's really like that guy on TV. Python was different, and they should stay that way. I think I'm going to delete the rest of the documentary and just watch Grail again.

Quitting

So I was all ready to crank out this post on Republicans who quit, since Tom "The Hammer (meaning the indicted former House Majority Leader, not the Adam Carolla movie of the same name)" DeLay quit a TV show I've never once watched the other day. Apparently, he had some sort of stress fracture in his foot, which would seem to not be the kind of thing you want to have when you're trying to dance for several hours a day.

I once danced (excuse me, I need to get the air quotes from the back porch) "danced" for 30 straight hours once, and that pretty much sucked all the way around except for the part where we raised a couple thousand dollars for a charity and I got to see Alan Thicke get all sleazy and give a 19 year old his hotel room key.

Quick side note: I have twice in my life been in the same room as Mr. Alan Thicke, comedian (wait, "comedian") star of "Growing Pains" "Thicke of the Night" (on which I, for one, thought he was surprisingly tolerable) and "Pictionary: the Game Show, not at all a rip off of Win, Lose or Draw which was a rip-off of Pictionary to start with" (title approximate). Once was during aforementioned charity dancing event, for which he was the celebrity (just consider them assumed) host, and once when he wrote a book for the company I worked for. The book, which is still in print with another publisher, is called "How Men Have Babies: The Pregnant Father's Survival Guide," which I can sum up thusly: Wow, the boobs get big! But don't touch 'em, they might explode! Because the hormones, I tells ya...anyway, you get the point. It was incredibly unfunny and stereotypical and sad, considering he claimed to be motivated to write it thanks to witnessing the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth and enjoying so much the experience of becoming a father a few years back (this was in 1998 or so)...no doubt much to the confusion, chagrin and rejection of his adult children from his first marriage, who only inspired him to leave their mother for a 26 year old Miss World contestant. So yeah, he wrote this totally hypocritical and shallow book that privately we called "Bill Cosby's 'Fatherhood' for sleazy middle-aged Canadians." Or maybe that was the jacket blurb, not sure. So, as is occasionally the custom in these situations, we flew him in to chat up the sales force and have dinner. He spent the entire night badmouthing the food (it was a made-to-order stir fry type thing, which he called "pork and peanut butter"...they must not get much Thai food in your part of Canada, eh Alan?) and slobbering over my friend (name redacted), who did everything but shove her new engagement ring up his nostril trying to get the creepy old guy away from her. I guess the moral of the story, if there is one, is that Alan Thicke is creepy and horny. By the way, the 19 year old immediately started passing around the hotel key, trying to get someone else to use it, but no dice. It now occurs to me that the key was for a room in the same hotel where the meet-and-greet dinner occurred 6 years later. I feared for my job at the time, so I did not have the guts to ask him if he remembered the last time he was at that hotel.

Hmm, that really didn't pan out as a "quick" side note, now, did it? Well, that's how these things go, I guess.

Anyway, where was I? Right, Tom DeLay. Quitting. This, on the heels (relatively speaking, at least), of Sarah Palin quitting as governor of Alaska. It made me wonder if maybe this were some sort of trial balloon by the GOP, as in "let's see how far we can get by quitting" or maybe the reality show bit was just a short term test of whether they could raise someone's prospects by appearing on a show like that (much like Bill Clinton did by appearing on Arsen...hee, I can't even say it with a straight face...Arsenio Hall's wildly successful late night talk show...woof) and maybe after a couple weeks they had all the data they needed. We'll know if that was the case if we see Newt Gingrich on "The Bachelorette".

That made me think about quitting in general, and how we're so conditioned to see it as a bad thing. And it's not necessarily. There's no shame in quitting when there are better options, or even when doing nothing is a better option than doing what you're doing. I've often said that the best move I ever made in school was quitting the 8th grade football team. I sucked at it, and I hated it (those who know my love of the game now will be shocked at this, but the coach was a tyrant, I was out of shape and had very little interest in puking my guts out every day for 6 weeks so I could be a 3rd string offensive lineman, even though I was clearly a fullback or tight end). I'm not sure why I decided to quit, I just remember sitting in the bathtub after practice one night, wondering if I could risk bringing my homework into the tub with me so I could soak for another hour and...oh yeah, that's why. It was a rough time at home. My dad had recently come off a two year long layoff and was working either 2nd or 3rd shift, meaning I only saw him on Sundays, really, and he was pretty well wrecked then from the weird schedule. I didn't want to disappoint him by quitting, because I knew all of his stories from playing football at my high school (my favorite being the time he got knocked unconscious and they had to hold up the game...mainly because they couldn't get him off the field, but also because our team only had 11 players so they had to wait for him). Not having the relevant source of advice available was a problem, so I left him a note. In retrospect, I could have stayed up until he got home from work, but I seem to recall that being a) a waste of time, since it was the middle of the freaking night and he was tired, adn b) to be used only in a genuine, something's-on-fire emergency. Essentially, I asked him if he would be upset or disappointed if I didn't play football anymore. Maybe I wrote two lines. What I got back, without getting too corny, was pretty much the template for the parent I've always tried to be. It was definitive and supportive and genuine, and I don't remember exactly what it said, but I do remember the words "ABSOLUTELY NOT" in all caps (in reference to the "will you be mad at me?" question, not the question of whether I was allowed to quit). He knew that I was miserable, and was able to put aside his own biases and ideas and see things from my point of view, which is a pretty remarkable thing for a guy trying to support a family by busting his hump at a terrible job in a stupid factory for 10 hours a day. And, though no mention was directly made of the incident, shortly thereafter a job miraculously opened up on the first shift again. I'd have hated to be my dad's boss the day after he got my note, and now where the hell did my snarky little post about republicans and Alan Thicke go, and why did it suddenly get dusty in here? Damn you, allergies.

So, to regroup and recap...quitting, not all that bad of a thing. And maybe it's a trap, softening the ground for another 2012 hopeful to get massive free exposure. I'd watch next season's lineups on the reality shows if I were you, which certainly beats the hell out of watching the shows themselves.

Collinsworth opens the real season.

No, not the NFL season, but the Highly Paid Network Football Commentator Saying Something Monumentally Stupid season (or the HPNFCSSMS).

The situation: tie game, under a minute left. Hines Ward (WR-Pit) catches a ball at something like the 20 yard line, makes a nice move at the 10, and cuts back toward the end zone for what will surely be the winning touchdown, when from the back side comes a defensive back to make a one in a gajillion play and strip the ball, which was promptly recovered by the defense.

Collinsworth, new to his gig as the lead commentator for the marquee game of the week, lets fly that (I'm paraphrasing) Ward made a mental error by trying to score a touchdown...instead "all he has to do is kneel down and they kick the game winner."

On its face, this statement is factually correct. Had he knelt down at the 10 yard line, the Steelers could have run the clock down and kick the FG. But to suggest that a player should not try to make a reasonable effort to score so that they can kick a field goal later is so patently stupid and obtuse that it's almost hard to fathom.

First of all, it's not like he was dragging three defenders with him fighting for three inches. If the DB doesn't flail at him desperately, he breaks the arm tackle of the other DB and scores easily.

But Collinsworth isn't satisfied. "Even if he can manage to score a touchdown there, you've still got 51 seconds left for them to answer."

Ok, Cris, let's take that "education" you got at Florida out for a spin. What would you rather have, a 7 point lead with 50 seconds left (really 45 after the kickoff), when Tennessee has exactly one touchdown all night, and your pass rush can "pin their ears back" and go after the 36 year old immobile quarterback? Or a chance at a 30 yard field goal? Let's not forget there had already been one miss, one block (both for the other team's kicker), and one really ugly low line drive that went through. I'm doing all this by memory, so forgive me if I'm off by couple percentage points. FG accuracy in the NFL is like 80% overall. Drives that start from the 20 yard line (and there's no gurantee that they would start that deep, but they would likely have run any kick out of the end zone) result in touchdowns something like 15% of the time. Add in the fact that they had 50 seconds to do it? Well, I'll let you decide what you'd rather have.

I've often said (and I stole it from someone else from wayyyy back) that the single least qualified group of individuals to comment on the game of professional football are those who have in fact been hired by the networks to do so. Collinsworth, usually better than this, seems to be fitting in nicely.


P.S. No, it doesn't change my opinion that Hines Ward said "I need to get down there." Try to score, dude, it's your job.

In which I get fed up and start naming names...

I've yet to be political in this blog, and that's on purpose. I'm a liberal, and I'm proud of it, but I don't want this blog to become about that any more than I want it to become about my fondness for Nutter Butters and "Mad Men." But today is an exception.

If you are a certain kind of conservative, and you know who you are, who protested (or, frankly, allowed to exist unchallenged the protest) the President's address to school children this morning, then shame on you. Calling it an "indoctrination" speech, the Lunatic Right has taken a remarkable opportunity away from some children. The wingnut morons have railed against this speech to the point that several school districts decided not to broadcast it.

Read the speech here. Now, all you so-called conservatives out there, I dare you, I defy you to find one single speck of liberal propaganda or indoctrination. One thing. Go ahead, I'll wait. There's not a word of politics in there. There's not even anything political about education, which is the subject of the speech (Of course, now Karl Rove is now claiming that the White House re-wrote the speech to take all the politics out of it thanks to the protest. But we all know that's not true, and we all know that that's the easiest game to play...claim that if it weren't for your heroic efforts, there sure would've been a lot more merit to your baseless complaints). How dare they claim to know better what's best for children than a leader giving a message to kids to get an education (note: I originally wrote "what's best for their children," until I realized that most of the knuckleheads doing the protesting probably didn't have children, or sent them to private schools where they get plenty of indoctrination already).

As a result of the phony outrage, some schools are not showing the speech. The principals and district supervisors responsible for the decision not to show the speech should be removed from their positions immediately. The message they just gave to their students, that in the face of a figurative temper tantrum, the appropriate response is to find some flimsy reason to give in to the tantrum, shows they lack the capacity to educate children, and they lack the backbone to be leaders. That they would allow something as positive and harmless as this speech to be shouted down makes me wonder, what else are the children in the care of these spineless fools missing out on?

You've gone too far this time, wingnuts. This speech is simply about working hard, staying in school, overcoming personal hardships and being responsible to others in the community. Hmm...on second thought, maybe this was a liberal indoctrination speech. Hard work? Education? Not trying to take the easy way out? Those would seem to be, especially today, exclusively liberal values, because the right lacks the seriousness of purpose and the overall credibility to claim those values as their own. It makes you wonder what, if any, values they have left.

Things that don't mean what you think they mean...

Space Age: Technically, this means that the thing in question comes from roughly the same time period as the TV show "Mad Men." So don't say that something modern is "Space Age," because that means it's almost 50 years old. Same thing goes, sort of, for "Classical Music." When someone complains that you never hear any good new classical music, you may feel free to inform them that that's because the Classical Era ended around 1825. You may also feel free to introduce them to the work of Phillip Glass, but then you'd be an idiot.

Bipartisanship: contrary to what CNN tells us, bipartisanship is not the same thing as a compromise. Bipartisanship is a cudgel that Republicans, who could give a crap about bipartisanship when they're in charge, use to beat moderate Democrats about the head and neck to get their whiny little regressive policies listened to.

Having a dead hooker in the trunk: OK, that one usually does mean what you think it means.

Being Waylaid: Not only is this a consistently solid entry in my standard joke repertoire given how dirty it sounds, but it's also genuinely misunderstood. It doesn't mean you were delayed, it means that you were attacked by someone or something lying in wait, which is usually what causes you to be delayed.

More as they become available

Reluctant TV Complaint

Just about anyone who reads this will know that I have a special relationship with the old 70s era TV show "the Superstars." It was the original "Trash Sport" dynasty (though the producers of the old "Home Run Derby" and "Shell's Wonderful World of Golf" might argue, they were different in that the competitors were, respectively, Major League Baseball players and professional golfers). It was a beautiful competition, with baseball players and football players and skiiers and track and field types and boxers all competing in some goofy sports with an arcane scoring system. There were 10 events, of which each athlete needed to compete in 7, plus the obstacle course (or maybe that was the 10th event, but I remember it was mandatory). The events were straightforward, athletic type events, like a swimming race that damned near killed Joe Frazier. There was usually a bowling or a billiards or something goofy thrown in for balance, but in general it was real sporting events, legit competition, and it was names you knew trying hard to win, with a ton of action packed into every show.

This new incarnation, not so much.

Hey, look, I know, this is the easiest post imaginable. "Something from my childhood is changed and therefore inferior! waahhhh!" It's really not all that difficult or imaginative to dump all over the modern version of something. That's why I gave this crapfest every chance to succeed. But it just ain't happening. My complaints are many, and they break down as such...

A. The set-up:
Instead of a bunch of recognizable and semi-obscure athletes, they took 8 "athletes" and 8 "celebrities" (believe me, those quotation marks are carrying a lot of water there) and teamed them together. Each team is a boy-girl team, with each male "athlete" paired with a female "celebrity" and vice versa. The quality of athlete varies widely...Terrell Owens down to Kristi Leskinen (apparently some sort of skiier), while the quality of celebrity really flatlines at the top (uh, Dan Cortese?) and goes nowhere (one of the Extreme Makover designers? Seriously? Were all the Baldwins busy? Are you sure?). Along the way, we get such luminary athletes as Robert "Fourth Banana" Horry, Lisa "Impending ACL Tear" Leslie, and Jeff "Wearing a baseball cap 'cause I don't feel like putting on the hairpiece" Kent. The celebrity side...Christ, I'm not even going to bother, but suffice to say there are a couple of supposed models, an Iglesias (not that one...no, not that one either) a Baywatch dude (no, none of those), and the chick from the Doritos commercial from the Super Bowl a few years back.

B. Quantity and quality of action:
The teams compete in two (2) events each week. Two whole events, one filmed each day. After the two events, the top X teams are "safe" the bottom X teams are "going to the obstacle course" and, ostensibly to eliminate ties, two teams perform in "the rubber match" which is not nearly as dirty or interesting as it sounds. Essentially, they get a mini-do-over from the second event, and the loser goes to the obstacle course. That night, they go double elimination relay on the watered-down (sadly, not literally) obstacle course, and the loser is eliminated. Herein lies a major flaw. Whereas most competitions are about winning, this one is entirely based on not losing, a fact that skiier Bode Miller has exploited successfully. But, you say, just look at the nearest analogue in the reality-show world, "The Amazing Race," in which the losing team is eliminated each week, and a team could conceivably finish 2nd to last each week until the finale and win it all. This is true, but at least on TAR, the winner of each leg gets a prize. In this show? Nothing. It's never even really mentioned who won the week. That means the bulk of the thing is about who is almost losing. I'm completely used to the fact that most modern day game shows (Survivor et. al.) celebrate mediocrity (can't be seen as too competent, I'll be exposed as a threat!) but this isn't Survivor, this is the Superstars. This is supposed to be about ubercompetence, not scraping by.

Back to the quantity of competition. Two events. I'm sorry, let me go back into my dwindling supply of sarcastic quotation marks and say two "events." One of them was a long jump, though a long jump into water, which was vaguely awesome. But, in total, the thing had about 90 seconds of actual athletic exertion, total. Because each team member jumped once. One jump. Sure, they got a "practice" jump, so I'll give them a full three minutes of action. But this was fully one third of a 90 minute episode. Then they had to show each competitor wading out of the water and telling Warren Sapp (no, I'm not kidding, it's actually Warren Sapp. What, like you thought he was busy?) how it felt out there. Gah.

The most recent episode was the breaking point. There were 5 teams left, including a team that had been eliminated and brought back citing the shady "if another team drops out, we bring back the most recently eliminated team." Apparently, someone in Buffalo caught wind of the fact that their high priced free agent WR was competing in an athletic endeavor and, more to their shock, I'm sure actually trying, and so they put the stop to that but quick. But I digress. The 5 teams competed in a "relay race." In this race, each person had to run in the opposite direction from their teammate around a "course" (it was the cart path around one hole at the golf course at the resort this nonsense was filmed at). They met somewhere in the middle-ish, handed off a baton and ran back. First team with both members back wins. They were a little vague about the distance, but the incredibly stiff John Saunders (more on him later) referred to it once as a "half-mile" run. I'm thinking that means each competitor ran a half mile (give or take where they met up with their partner) in total, or a run of less than 5 minutes (most people can walk a mile in just over 1o minutes, if they try). And that's your day's grueling event. Wow, kids, a whole 5 minutes of effort? Say it ain't so. Turns out, that was the endurance test for this week, because the next day's event was bowling. Ok, sure, they used to do bowling on the old show, so it's legit, but it was the format I quibble with. First, the bowling lane was, for no discernible reason, set up to stretch out over the pool. That made it incredibly wobbly, and meant that the pins were falling when I don't think they should have. But more importantly was the scorekeeping. Each team bowled a frame. Yes, one frame. Each partner threw one ball. The team that had the lowest total was eliminated. The the scores re-set to zero and they did it again, eliminating the next team and the next and the next. That means that to get to the winner, a total of 14 frames were bowled. Not by each team, but total. Bowling less than a game and a half takes about 15 minutes, and that's with beer involved. I mean, was it too taxing on the editing staff to have them edit down (or, god forbid, show) one full game of bowling? Do the producers think so little of their audience that they fear that we wouldn't understand the complex bowling scoring system? If that's the case, I've got news for you...the people who you are the most worried about are the ones who generally bowl the most.

That's about 20 minutes of action, followed by a best of three elimination round on the obstacle course (by my count, each round took about one minute to complete, but I'd be willing to go all the way to 90 seconds each, so 3 minutes for the 2-0 sweep. Twenty-three minutes of athletic competition, (did I mention that the relay race seemed edited down some?) to fill an hour-long episode. That's less action than a major league baseball game, and just barely more than my 5 year old's tee-ball game. It somehow makes it worse that this was recorded over two days. On the old show, by the end of the 10 events, the competitors were gassed. I think they did it over a couple days as well, but it was more than one event per freaking day, that's for sure.

C. The presentation
Four words: sideline reporter Warren Sapp. There's a female sideline reporter as well, named Jenn somethingorother, and I have no idea who she is, nor do I care. They are both predictably awful.

But the real surprise amongst the announcers is the generally competent and amiable John Saunders. Here, he's terrible. He's trying to sound like part Jeff Probst, part Alex Trebek and part Bob Costas (otherwise known as TVs White Man's Holy Trinity). He's clearly reading the "play-by-play" from a script in post-production, and it's poorly written by some intern who's not a writer OR a play-by-play person. When he goes into reality-show host mode, he's so stiff and bad that every time he goes into faux-drama patter "and we'll find out (Shattnerian pause) what challenge awaits you next," the heretofore unmentioned athlete Brandi Chastain actually gives him the fake scared "ooooooh," complete with "I'm scared" finger wiggle.

That's not to say it's a loss. There is, at least, some unintentional comedy. The psychosexual ramifications of the dynamic between Brandi Chastain and her much younger partner, Julio Iglesias Jr. give us, like some dirty-minded "Before and After" clue on Wheel of Fortune, a Soccer M(om)ILF vibe, complete with his occasional lapse into the "besibol been berry berry good to me" Latin Lover stereotype. Lisa Leslie's complete and utter lack of the most remote shred of athleticism is both awesome and telling (how could she lose the basketball shooting competition? Seriously?!?!) Robert Horry (pre-elimination) constantly trying to cop a feel on his partner under the guise of celebrating with his teammate brings new meaning to his old "Big Shot Rob" nickname. TOs partner (I'm not going to bother looking her up, she's some model) was such a horrible person and a bad teammate, she made him into a totally sympathetic figure. And the fact that the most anonymous team (ballroom dancing show guy, extreme skiing woman) is probably going to run away with this thing is exactly what ABC deserves for putting this moronic thing on the air.

Ok, well, that's enough of that. I should go. Keyshawn Johnson is judging "Iron Chef America" on my DVR right now, and I need to go make a bunch of "Just Give Me the Damn Balsamic" jokes.

Gonna pass on this one...

Good to know I've still got standards. Today, I was offered a shot at a telemarketing job for an online university with nonstandard hours (some evenings, every other Saturday) for roughly half my previous salary.

Separately, I saw an ad on (big major job site) for a Marketing Manager for medical devices. Location of the job: Northern Iraq.

So at least I know I'm not there yet.

Nitpicks

@ Dan Patrick, SI:

Charles Barkley cannot be a "perennial source" of your quote of the week, unless you mean to say that he provides one quote per year.

@every company on Careerbuilder.com:

Most of you, if not all of you, would instantly disqualify me from the position I am applying for if my resume or cover letter had even one of the typographical errors that are in nearly every one of your listings.

@Steven Soderbergh

At the end of "Ocean's Eleven," There's no way that the crew could pack all that money into the black bags in the few seconds between Brad Pitt telling them to cut the power and the explosion. Also, I'm not clear where the hooker flyers came from that were in the back of the van that blew up at the airport.

@most sportscasters

A team cannot have scored 10 "unanswered" points (or runs or goals) in the middle of the game. They may have scored 10 "as yet unanswered" runs/points/goals, or 10 "consecutive" runs/points/goals, but the runs/points/goals cannot be "unanswered" until the end of the game (match, whatever).

while we're at it, sportscasters...

a player who is not performing well does not need to get "untracked," he/she needs to get "on track." The problem is not the player's being tracked, the problem is the player's being off track.

More as they become available...

Open Letter to Myself

Dear Self,

For the love of god, stop complaining about the weather in Chicago. Yes, it's the end of May. Yes, it's only 65 degrees. Yes, it's mostly cloudy, and threatening to rain, just like it has been 5 of the last 6 days. Yes, it dropped 15 degrees in an hour yesterday, and you were freezing on the way home from the library.

Two choices. Move, or shut up. It's like this every year, and every year you complain about it. Everyone you know is really sick of it, I'm sure.

The average high temperature for May in Chicago is 70 degrees, and that's at O'Hare, and as close as you live to the lake, it's always going to be like this. So again, move to Naperville, or Cincinnati or Phoenix (there may be other options, I'm not sure), or shut up. It's 68 now, that should be fine. Go outside already.

Also, please don't forget to take the garbage out. That is all.

Regards,
Self

A Gift

So yesterday, after a spirited set of tennis at the park with the roommate (he lost his serve halfway through, and to be fair, was feeling the aftereffect of the sleep aid he took the night before, so it was more competitive than the final 6-2 score would indicate), I saw something hanging from the front door. Usually, something in a little hanging bag on the front door like that would be a course catalog/brochure from the local community college, or a flaming bag of poo.

But this was a book, with a green leatherette cover, with a brochure tucked in with it. The faux-gold leaf detail was the first tip, this was a religious tract. Oh goody.

See, we live in what the roommate has called "the most liberal Zip code outside of San Francisco," so we have people of many faiths and races here. I'm not sure if that makes us more fertile recruiting ground for the Jehovah's Witnesses and the other proselytizers or less, but we do get the occasional knock on the door that we have to politely blow off. But it turns out this was different...

Dear Neighbor,

Please accept the enclosed book as a
gift from the Muslim community...

And thus I saw the title "The English Translation of the Message of the Quran." Hmm, this was new.

Then I had a stunning moment of self-awareness (not really stunning, and probably not all that self-aware). The fact that it was the holy text for one religion I don't believe in (Islam) made it somehow better than it being the holy text for another religion I don't believe in (Christianity). Does that make me the kind of namby-pamby liberal that Ann Coulter (who is anything but a Christian) is always on about? I can hear her sneering "oh, sure, they love the Quran, but if it was a Bible, they'd have had some kind of fit." And she'd be entirely missing the point, but she'd also have a grain of truth in there. Because if it had been a bible, I'd have scanned up and down the block to see if the people delivering them were still there, and if so, I'd have jogged my copy back to them and said something charming like "here, don't waste the dead tree on trying to tell me about your invisible man in the sky." But since it wasn't the Bible, I actually set it down on the kitchen table, with absolutely no intention of reading it, but certainly no intention of making a show of tossing it out, either.

So is the Christian Right, which of course really is neither (no, I never will get tired of that joke, why do you ask?) actually correct about me? Or is it simply that complicated but genuine notion that I was raised to be more polite to the neighbors than to my family? The president keeps talking about having more respect for those that disagree with us, and I keep thinking "yeah, what he said" without really considering if I need to do the same.

Sorry, I guess this is one of those posts that raises more questions (1) than it answers (0). But that's what you get for now.

Reading is Fun, Learning How is Really Irritating

So the boy, as you can see from the little "About Me" section over there, is 5 years old. That, in and of itself, is not a problem. He's adorable and precocious, and just generally a lot of fun/work. But there's a growing issue, and it involves the unholy marriage between learning and entertainment that is PBS (more accurately, PBS Kids).

Our morning routine, at least for the last few months (those months corresponding to those in which I have nowhere in particular to be in the mornings) has been pretty stable. With the exception of the days when Mommy takes the late train and lets Daddy sleep in, we (the boy and I) get up at 7ish, stumble downstairs (he bounds, I stumble), fish a granola bar out of the box, and turn on the TV (at this point, a lot of you parents out there are thinking "Gah! You turn the TV on in the morning? Don't you know that the latest research indicates that the developing neuroreceptors of preschoolers are 11% more likely to show a decreased response to stimuli if they are allowed to watch television before 11AM?!?!? Don't you love your child?!?!?" I'm here to tell you now: shut up. Seriously. Shut the hell up, and go back to making your child a neurotic germophobic wreck by subtly resenting him for taking away what was doubtless a promising social life). The choice on TV was automatic, to the point where we didn't even need to discuss it most mornings. One episode of Curious George, one granola bar, one glass of milk. He could watch the first one (each episode has two separate cartoons) while he ate the granola bar, then get dressed during the second one, and if you need me, I'll be dozing off on the couch over here, the dulcet tones of narrator William H. Macy gently drifting into my last few moments of attempted sleep for the day. When George was over, it was time to put on shoes (both of us), and get off to school/daycare/whatever it is.

Recently, though, events have conspired to change this hard-earned routine, and I'm partially to blame. First, there haven't been many new episodes of Curious George lately, and it really started to get old. If I had to watch the one where George and Hundley are on the deserted tropical island (that exists approximately half an hour off the coast of what is generally assumed to be New York, but I'll save that for a "Kids' TV nitpicks" mega-post that will probably have to be published in multiple 8,000 word segments) one more time, I was going to have to take Mr. Macy hostage. So I deleted a few from the DVR, and went about searching for another show or two to record, just to freshen things up. And that's how we ended up with "Word World."

For the uninitiated, Word World is a PBS show where all the characters and many objects are made out of letters that roughly form the shape of the thing. Thus, dog. And so on. In this universe, if you needed, for example, a ball, you would need to find a "b," an "a," and two "l"s, then put them together, wherein they would magically cling together in the shape of a ball. Again, nitpicks aside (what sort of matter are these letters made of? How do they know what kind of ball?), the annoying part is that a) it generally takes the characters the entire 7 minute segment to find the requisite 4 to 5 letters, even though it's a known fact that Dog has a giant pile of all sorts of letters strewn about his house, and b) you have to do the word building while singing "It's time to build a word/Let's build it/Let's build it...Yeah!" to what I believe is an old House beat from the mid-90s. Needless to say, I can't really doze off during this.

Of course, the boy is mesmerized. And this morning, just as I was considering donating the TV to charity or stabbing my eardrums with a knitting needle (and subsequently lamenting the fact that we don't own knitting needles), I hear "Map...m-a-p. Ball...b-a-l-l. Drink...d-...daddy, how do you spell drink?" "Mmmph..rrrgh...erfft...nnnenggh" I replied, which apparently was close enough. "Drink...d-r-i-n-k."

"Good job, buddy," I said, and then it occurred to me. Drink wasn't one of the words on the show, and ball was yesterday. Holy crap, this stuff just might be working. I wonder if there's a new episode this afternoon...

Liveblogging my roommate's hookup

For the last 8 months or so, a friend of mine has been living in our basement. It's cool.

The one issue that never really came up (that's a bad pun...you'll see) is the problem of...well, let's say overnight guests (see? Bad.) The bulk of the problem comes from the fact that I really don't want to have to explain to the 5 year old what that strange woman with the rumpled hair and the roommate's dress shirt on is doing in our bathroom at 7AM. Luckily, we had one thing going for us in this regard...the roommate is terrible with women. Ok, two things. Not only is he generally terrible with women, I don't see a whole lot of women being attracted to the following scenario at a bar: so, you're almost 40, you're an unemployed member of a profession generally seen as recession-proof; you live in what is essentially a dorm room in the basement of your friend's house, and you want to go back there now? Ok, sure, where do I sign up?

But all that has come to a tragic end this evening. Because the roomie has just brought someone home (to his infinite credit, he called ahead and asked if we minded). A rough timeline:


3:30 PM The roommate departs. Who leaves for a date at 3:30? What are they, 70 year olds hoping to catch the senior special over at the Old Country Buffet?


3:31PM I forget about the whole thing for about 6 hours.


9:30PM Phone rings. Seeing the roommate's number, I look for a comfy place to sit as he gives me the tale of woe about how bad the date went while he waits for another friend to show up at the bar.


But no, this is the "uh, you mind if we come back to the house? I'll take your stunned silence as a 'yes'" call. They are to arrive in about 20 minutes.


9:30:30PM My wife, hearing the plan, nearly sprains something rolling her eyes. She decides to go to bed. In retrospect, this is why I married her. She is much, much smarter than I.


9:40PM Because I am the most awesome wingman in the history of wingmen, I rush downstairs to the roommate's room, and clear a rough path from the door. He's not what you might call a tidy person, so this is no gimme. I initially went down there to make sure there was no stray dirty underwear sitting out, but then decided it would be a mitzvah if I helped a brotha out.


This is not without it's cost. First of all, I don't want to know why there was an unopened bottle of squeezable mayonaise on the nightstand. Second, no human being should need that many tubes of Carmex, and I shudder to think how those two facts may be related. But I digress.

I clear off the bed, feed his cat (not a euphemism), and turn off the computer monitor. I briefly consider dimming the lights and turning on the stereo, but I'm running out of time, and I can't immediately recall where my "Barry White's Greatest Hits" CD is. Plus, that'd be a little on the nose. Don't you think?

9:50PM I'm back upstairs on the couch. They arrive, through the back door (again, not a euphemism). I am thus spared the awkward "uh, hi, what are you kids up to?"


9:52PM The roommate runs upstairs to use the restroom. "Did you clean my room, or were we robbed?" He is appreciative, but that might be the Labatt's talking. In fact, the Labatt's is not only doing the talking, it is also controlling most of the central nervous functions at this point.


9:55PM Having unfortunately paused the DVR, thus muting the sound on the TV, I'm treated to my first noise. Oh great, I think to myself....she's a screamer.


9:55:03PM Correction: that was him. I think. This could be a long night, what with me needing to attempt to forget I just heard that.


9:59PM Well, that was quick.


10:10PM The roommate emerges, naked (GAH!) No, wait, he's got pajama bottoms on. Close call there. He is entirely too pleased with himself. Which is unusual in that usual he's pleased BY himself. He gets a glass of water, walks toward the living room, and gives what I'm sure he thinks is a "Victory is mine!" arm raise salute kind of thing that actually looks more like Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics, or maybe Nixon's farewell wave after a fifth of Old Granddad. I am simultaneously appalled and bemused. Then it's back downstairs for mandatory cuddling.

10:15PM Or not. At least I know this will be quick, and thankfully, the hockey game I'm watching is sufficiently interesting, if not quite loud enough. C'mon, Vancouver, let's make some noise!

10:20PM Up til now, I've been afraid to go into the kitchen, which is where the door to the basement is. I fear the noises, I fear the awkwardness of who might come up the stairs, and so on. But dammit, I'm hungry, and I need a sandwich.

10:22PM Ok, sandwich acquired. Ugh, forgot the chips. Cover me, I'm going back in.

10:35PM Footsteps on the staircase again. Multiple. Oy. It's both of them. They are fully dressed, back in bar costumes, and headed out, but she just wanted to meet the people he lives with. Because I'm still eating my sandwich, I do not stand up to greet them. I do notice, however, that in my haste to get in and out (ha!) of the kitchen, I made the sandwich on my 5 year old's Spiderman plate.

She seems nice, in a "just barely not drunk enough that I need to have my roommate arested for date rape" kind of way. The three of us chat for a few moments, and when the roommate mentions the 5 year old, she is surprised that there is a child in the house, despite the fact that she is literally standing in the middle of about 30 Hot Wheels that we neglected to clean up at bed time. She also says "oh, but he's probably asleep now, right?" I look at the clock to make sure it is actually nearly 11PM, then mentally cross off the list titled "Possible Jobs Held by the Person I'm Talking to" the entries "rocket scientist," "brain surgeon," and "day care professional." At least it's a good bet that she didn't notice the Spiderman plate.

10:45PM They depart, and it's unclear if he's taking her home or if they're going back to the bar. Nonetheless, the idea that has just hit me requires swift and immediate action. After all, straightening up the room was a good deed, and I just can't let that stand.

10:50PM You know that old computer paper with the holes along the side that comes in a big continuous perforated sheet? My in-laws had a box of it laying around and gave it to my son for his burgeoning art career. So I borrow a 6 foot or so section of it, and, using the boy's Crayola markers, make a large George-W.-Bush-on-the-aircraft-carrier banner reading, of course, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" complete with suggestive rockets and fireworks. Careful to avoid looking at anything too closely or touching anything, I hang the banner over his bed.

12:05(ish)AM Having just barely drifted off to sleep, I am briefly awoken by the sound, two floors down, of hysterical laughter mixed with unspeakable profanity, both directed at me. Mission Accomplished, indeed.

Uh-oh time

So here's the thing. I'm unemployed. I was let go at the end of February from a well, from a really crappy job. No, that's not right, the job itself was fine, midlevel Marketing BS. It was the situation that was crappy. My old boss was a Mayberry Machiavelli (until I figure out how to embed a link, I'll do it, but until then you'll have to accept my explanation that that's what they used to call Karl Rove and his ilk, but more generically I'm referring to someone who fashions themself a great strategist/thinker when really they're a couple of elements short of a periodic table). She was a "couldn't be bothered with the details, until something goes wrong, in which case I'll be all up in your business about the details, but let's be clear that my hands are clean here because I didn't even know anything about this" type. There was enough dysfunction around me that on one hand, I'm glad to be free of that place, and (some of) the people.

But you know, no matter how hard you try to be the guy that doesn't get wrapped up in what can charitably be called a "career," losing a job hits you eventually. It's been 4 weeks today (coincidentally, it's also been exactly a month, since it was February), and I guess today's my day. Not sure what triggered it, but I was walking down the stairs, and I thought of a name. It was the name of someone I was supposed to call back in February for some consultation on...whatever the hell, it doesn't matter. But that led me to realize that I hadn't crossed that phone call off my mental to-do list. That led to a couple other things that I realized I was still thinking about. The results weren't good. For some reason, I started re-living a lot of the nonsense that went on there. I started thinking about the politics, the mind games, and the way people treated each other. I felt the familiar feeling of being lost with no help. See, you weren't allowed to ask for help, not that you'd get any if you did. I remembered how every assignment was vague, every project was open-ended.

At the grocery store, I saw a guy who I thought was someone from there. I was only off by about 20 years, 50 lbs, and a race. I have no idea what I'll do if I ever actually run into anyone. Thankfully, that only happened maybe 3 times when I worked there, and that was almost 4 years.

Clearly, I'm not as over this as I thought.

So, now I have a blog. So now what?

A lot of people tell me "you need a blog." Ok, one person. And I think she was kidding. But I suddenly find myself with a lot more time these days, so time to get on with it, I suppose.

No expectations on what this will be. Meaning, I don't have any expectations, and I don't yet know what this blog will be about. I'll likely spout left-leaning politics pretty frequently (because there isn't enough of that on the interweb). And once it's in season, fantasy football (see earlier parenthetical). But really, I'm setting this thing up as a placeholder on the off chance I feel like I have something original or interesting to say, which really kind of seems conceited, when you put it that way.

At any rate, more to come...