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.