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...