jack’s musings

As a regular late-night cable TV viewer, I’m often bombarded by advertisements for some of the worst products known to humanity.  One of the most common types of ads is for commemorative coins.  You know, the kind that are, “Legal tender”, “In limited production”, “Guaranteed to go up in value”, and “Strictly limited to 5 per caller.”  (Did I put my commas where they should be?) However 99.9999% of the time, all of these bills and coins are “legal tender” in places like Liberia and Panama.

One of the more hilariously awful products I’ve seen ads for lately is the “9/11 Twenty Dollar Bill.”  At first glance I said to myself, “Look Jack!  You can finally purchase the insurmountably classy September 11 commemorative item you’ve been so desperately looking for!”  And who could blame me!  Not only is the bill legal tender Liberia, it’s struck with .999 pure silver leaf!  (AKA, decorative metal sheeting.)   The 9 and 11 denominations on the back of the bill “add up” to its face value of $20 Liberian, and it’s available for a limited time at the face value of $20 USD!

However hopefully everyone will immediately notice that the bill is valued in Liberian dollars instead of American dollars.  Furthermore, a quick currency conversion will reveal that twenty Liberian dollars is equivalent to 32 American cents.  (At least as of today.) So basically, you’re spending 20 bucks for a piece of silver tinfoil that has a face value of 32 cents.

If you’ve purchased this horrifically tacky, insensitive, colossal scam of a product, you should probably just go ahead and give all of your money to me as you clearly have no grasp on reality.  No wonder this country is so hopelessly in debt.

Full disclosure:  I’ve never set foot in a TGIFridays.  Additionally, I have no intention of ever stepping foot inside of a TGIFridays.  There are three main reasons for this.

1) I’m not convinced that it’s not Chili’s/Applebees/Shenanigans , etc.

2) Massive restaurant chains with crazy crap all over on the walls make me highly suspicious.

3) They thought it was good idea to get Guy Fieri, one of the biggest douches in the universe, to plug their family eateries.

I feel like I could burn for hours about how frosted tips are one of the douchiest things in the universe.  Admittedly, I myself came perilously close to doing this to my own damn self during my middle school years, but was mercifully denied by my parents.  (Truth be told, it seems like most of the douchey things I rag on are things I thought were cool in middle school.)  However pardon me TGIFridays when I avoid taking my restaurant and dating advice from a chef and “food dude” who’s celebrity shtick involves a bottle of Clorox, a tub of hair gel, and some lame sunglasses strapped to the back of his head.  (I wonder if he picked up those sunglasses in the Wal-Mart that was undoubtedly sharing the same parking lot as the TGIFridays?)

My brother and I have had a long understanding. Certain music absolutely drives us insane, and we should have the right to automatically turn off the stereo should one of our forbidden songs appear. We say that these songs are dead to us, and number one with bullet on my brother’s list is Bob Seger. (Those Chevy commercials from the 90s did it for him.) At any rate, I figure this would be a pretty good venue to establish a continuous list of songs/artists that are dead to me. With that, I’m going to go into my first “Dead to Me” song, Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” of of their album IV.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Led Zeppelin. I do feel that they might be overplayed to a level of absolute insanity, and there is no better example than the line of Cadillac commercials that ran earlier this decade that featured this “Dead to Me” song:

This may not be the best example as the song is only featured at the end of the commercial, but it’s a good indicator of how commercials can absolutely murder a good song. I can’t even listen to it anymore because I just feel like I’m getting worked. Plus, what about Led Zeppelin is embodied in Cadillac? I understand the company is trying to revamp their image, but could they please not take the greats of rock down with them? They had another great example of a misguided ad choice in their 2007 ad that featured the Teddybears’ “Punk Rocker.” But you hear that in the background? That would be Iggy Pop. (The same Iggy Pop signed off on allowing his iconic drum intro to “Lust for Life” to be featured in featured in a Royal Carribean Cruise Line ad campaign that was mercifully shortlived enough to avoid being added to my “Dead to Me” list)  But I digress, Cadillac murdered “Rock and Roll” for me, and I’ll never forgive them for it.

Perhaps it’s my fault for watching too much TV and listening to too much radio, but these freecreditreport.com commercials have got to stop.  These commercials have annoyed me on such a profound level that I have vowed to never, ever purchase their products.   And they’re just a gigantic scam as well, the credit report is only free if you sign up for some sort of monthly monitoring service through Experian.  On top of all this, thanks to an Act of Congress everyone can already get a free credit report once a year from each of the three major reporting houses. (Including Experian)  These commercials are clearly just preying on the stupid/gullible, and they are absolutely driving me insane.  No real insight here, just a good ‘ole tirade.

With the past weekend’s CBS broadcast of an MMA fight and the subsequent mass reaction this week, I figured now would be a good a time as any to describe why I am, at best, suspicious of this new trend. Mixed Martial Arts fighting seemed to have popped up over the past decade as a largely organic movement. For the most part, there was little mainstream coverage, but the sport still managed to grow rapidly. And that’s about the one thing I find impressive about the whole MMA craze.

One of the tenets of modern sport is the existence of set rules of play. All sports including existing competitive martial arts like jujitsu, boxing, and kick boxing have established rules and styles. People aren’t simply free to do whatever they want, and the adaptation of players to excel within the defined rules that makes sport impressive. Take basketball for example. The fundamental rule of dribble movement makes the sport fundamentally more complicated as it forces people to adapt their style of play to fit the rules. Basketball would be out of business if it just consisted of people running up and down the floor carrying the rock and shooting Js. However these rules don’t seem to apply in MMA. The sport largely consists of setting two guys in a polygon wailing on each other with whatever style they so please, and half the time it involves both fighters locked up grappling on the floor. If I wanted to see this garbage, I’d go to my local sketchy bar and watch late-night brawls.

It is often argued that these MMA fighters are tremendously skilled athletes who train relentlessly to perfect their craft. This may be true, however in general the more people have to describe to me how much skill and athleticism is involved in a given sport, the more suspicious I get. I should be able to detect these skills on my own, and watching a couple of dudes grappling on a mat isn’t convincing me.

I’m finally back in town, so let me start the summer rants off with some stored up thoughts from our recent travels through Boston, New York, DC, and Chicago.

Couldn’t You Have Found a Better Way to Say This?

The first leg of our trip was spent in Boston, and after we had settled into our hotel, we decided to stroll around the Beacon Hill and downtown areas. While wandering by the Massachusetts State House, my brother noticed this sign. Really Massachusetts? That’s the best way you could think to say this?

However the mystery deepens. I first assumed that there was an entrance on a “Hooker St” nearby, but a quick glance at Google Maps reveals that there is no such street near the State House. What in the hell does this sign mean then? Is there some local term I’m just missing? (Also notice that whatever was written below the line in question was taped over.  I guess it was potentially offensive.)

Have the Yankees Learned Anything About Security?

The three of you that read my rants are well aware that I’m not the biggest fan of the new national obsession with security. With this in mind, I’m guessing you can predict how I’d react when the security officers at Yankee Stadium would not allow me to bring my bag in with me to the stadium. In order to attend the game, I would have to check my satchel across the street at some bar and then go back through security. Now normally this would be the point of the write-up in which I would launch into a tirade, but I’m actually alright with this. I can get with the fact that some potential “targets” are of higher profile than others, and as I much as it pains me to say it, I can agree that New York is likely the potential bullseye in many an international malcontent’s grand schemes. So I admittedly was cool.

So why do I include this little observation in here if I myself had no problem with it? Well I met up with my mother inside the stadium, and she had no problem bring in her bag. It turns out females can bring in bags and backpacks as normal, and they only get the casual bag search that is normally to be expected at a sporting event. So let me get this straight, men can’t bring in bags, but women can? Better hope the next big extremist movement isn’t exclusively female.

The New Nationals Stadium Blew It

Earlier in the summer I caught at baseball game in Pittsburgh, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the stadium. The seats had a wide panoramic view of the many bridges that cross the Allegheny River. All of this was set in the imposing shadow of downtown Pittsburgh. The team may suck, but they’ve got an incredible stadium.

With that in mind, I figured that the new Nationals stadium would make use of views of the iconic landmarks in DC in placing their stadium. I understand space is tight in the city, but it would make sense to at least be able to see the Washington Monument or the Capitol Building off in the distance. And from what I read back in the early stages of its development, the organizers had done such that. The stadium was to be situated in the southern portion of the city and was planned to have a nice, albeit distant, view of these landmarks. However after sitting in our seats, all I could see where crappy office buildings and parking garages. It turns out the city didn’t zone the area outside of the stadium as a no-build zone to preserve the view. Now the view is a wasteland of office parks. FAIL

The Playing of Queen at Sporting Events

I’ve mentioned many of my irrational hatreds on this website, but I remembered one that I haven’t mentioned: Playing Queen at sporting events. Let me qualify this here, I actually like some Queen songs, I just hate HATE HATE hearing “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You” at sporting events. This is probably the most played out trend at arenas of all time, and I want it to die.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered why crowds basically only use the same three clapping routines during cheers. (I.e. “O-ver-ated! Clap Clap Clap-Clap-Clap”) Might I suggest a new one? The Terminator 2 clap. (Just the intro little bit.)

While I certainly dislike many popular musicians today, there are some “artists” out there that have elevated themselves from “disliked” to “despised” in my eyes. One bright, shining example of a band that made this transition is Nickelback. I’m not entirely sure when they became popular, but it seems like every time I hear their lead singer’s voice, (I refuse to look up his name) I want to jab the nearest sharp object into my ears.

Their 2006 single “Rockstar” really encapsulates why I despise them so much. The lyrics describe how people’s dreams should be the desire for extravageance and excess, and it’s precisely this mentality that has helped America achieve such a poor standing in the world today. Say what you will about the global socio-economic realties of today, but if I’m living in a cave in a desert with only a short-wave radio and underwear full of sand, I’m going to be awfully pissed at a country that desires, flaunts, and celebrates extravagance. Whenever I wonder to myself, “Why do the terrorists hate us?”, I generally only have to wait a millisecond before remembering this horrendous song and the mentality its promoting. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly enjoy the luxuries we have in this country, I just loathe people who abuse the privileges we have. I’m a big fan of the line that says something to the effect of,”I want a credit card with no limit.” Ummm…didn’t most Americans try that already? How’s that working out now? I mean don’t you idiots get it? We have everything already, and it’s this relentless desire for more and more that has gotten the world so pissed at us and wrecked the global economy.

In a way, the song is actually kind of brilliant I guess. Nickelback managed to encapsulate why many foreign countries hate American culture in one song. (They’re Canadian too!) Perhaps they’re in the process of some sort of weird Albert Camus-esque experiment in which they generate millions of fans and then suddenly turn on them and lecture them on how the values expressed in their song were designed to expose the flaws in western culture. (I doubt it.)

The fact that this song is so popular really seems to be indicative of why America is held in such poor standing today. And as a bonus, check out the yahoos that appear in the video as well! For the most part, it’s the “Mount Rushmore of The Aspects of American Culture I Hate.”  Perhaps I should start a new series of blog entries on this site: “How To Tell if Someone is an Idiot.” I think that liking this song would be way up there on that list.

During the deluge of NHL Playoff, NBA Playoff, and MLB regular season games I’ve been watching, I’ve noticed this Mike’s Hard Lemonade commercial come on more than its fair share of times. It basically says that putting soy into drinks is for wusses and Mike’s Hard Lemonade is for manly men. Really, Mike? Your overly sweet, wine-cooler-esque product is manly? Whenever I see someone order a Mike’s Hard Lemonade I ridicule them mercilessly for being a pussy. While I might agree that “In a world gone soft, someone’s got to be hard,” I can safely guarantee that that “someone” has never, ever bought Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

I stopped by a local sporting goods store today to pick up an air mattress, and while browsing the racks, I noticed a particularly disturbing selection. Coleman has apparently created an air mattress with “mp3 speakers” built in. That’s right, you can hook up your iPod to your air mattress. You see that shitty little cord coming out of the black rectangle on the edge of the mattress? That’s your iPod/mp3 player hookup, and it connects to an unlistenable speaker as well! This is a crossover so hopelessly misguided that I had to stop and stare to make sure I was reading it correctly. You know the mp3 revolution is getting tired when it starts being featured in mattresses.

It seems like these folding camping chairs started appearing around 15 years ago or so (who knows how long they’ve been around), so whoever invented it is probably not dead, but his achievement should definitely be recognized. As an avid tailgater, griller, drinker, and sitter, I use these things just about every weekend. They’re easy to figure out, easy to use, highly functional, easily transportable, inexpensive, and above all else, comfortable. The dude who came up with these things was truly inspired when he (or she, but these things just scream “dude invention”) came up with it. I feel like shaking the inventor’s hand is not enough. He should probably be deified.