Whining little maggots

Is anybody else sick of the whiny "boy rock" that's been coming out lately? Bands like Hoobastank, Sum 41 and Simple Plan. High-pitch-voiced BOYS singing and whining about their daddies, literally using the word "daddy" in their lyrics, and moaning about the fact that they're "not a perrrrfect perrrsonnn...." God I swear, if I hear another little boy bitch with a guitar whining about how he's not perfect, I'm going to punch somebody in the face. For the love of God, BE A MAN! Take a tip from your other deeper-voiced contemporaries like Nickelback, Three Doors Down or Rob Thomas. Wait until your balls drop, and your voice changes before you go making music. Nobody EXPECTS you to be perfect. Just own up to the things you've screwed up, move on, and sing about something with more substance that we might actually give a crap about. Or if the teen angst is really just too much for you to handle and you just can't help but lament over how not perfect you are, the least you could do is take a cue from the king of angst, Kurt Cobain, and deal with your problems in a constructive way.

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Hey readers, new stuff on the What's New page.

Now if only there had been naked women at stake

Who knew golf could be so exciting? Certainly not I. But I too watched with bated breath as this year’s U.S. Open drew to its dramatic conclusion and Phil Mickelson lost his tenuous lead and finished second to Australian Geoff Ogilvy. Though, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really care who won the tournament on Sunday so much as I cared that somebody won on Sunday. You see, I spent this past week providing Avid tech support for one of the sports networks up at Winged Foot Golf Course. Nineteen-hour days, early starts, late outs, and inundated on all sides by a sport that I absolutely despise. Not that it was really all that bad for me. Overtime pay aside, on-site Avid support done correctly really means a week’s worth of downtime. If you prep your systems the right way and keep them running properly, the editors should be able to work all week with zero problems, thus zero reasons for you to do anything technical for the duration of your stay. I spent the bulk of my week the same way I did during this job last year: sitting out in the shade, writing, reading books, eating awesome catering and hanging out with other engineers who had done their job correctly too. We laughed, we joked, we busted each others balls, we caught some of the World Cup here and there. The one thing we didn’t do much of was watch golf.

It’s a funny thing working as a TV engineer. Work is work and you get it where you can, and that often means working on shows that, while the rest of the country is salivating to get in on, you yourself could really care less about. I had zero interest in the U.S. Open and neither did the engineers around me. Not a one of us had watched a single minute of golf all week long. And yet, there we all were, a dozen or so of us, huddled around a tiny television monitor out in the TV compound hanging on every shot at the end of Sunday’s competition. Why you ask? It certainly had nothing to do with this Mickelson Grand Slam thing I heard people talking about. Our motives were entirely selfish. You see, the outcome of Sunday’s match would determine when we all got to go home.

If two players are tied at the end of the U.S. Open, an entire 18-hole playoff is conducted the following day. That means every editor, producer, truck guy, camera guy, sound guy, fiber guy and Avid guy has to stay an extra day to cover the event. And none of us wanted that. Sure the overtime had been good and I personally hadn’t lifted a finger since Monday, but it’s still a long week when you’re confined to one area the entire time and we were all ready to go home.

So no matter what the outcome, we didn’t care who won, just so long as the match didn’t end in a tie. Yet with only two holes left to play, that was looking more and more like a possibility. For the past several holes we’d all been routing for big Phil, simply because he was already in the lead and we wanted him to broaden that lead far enough to make a last minute rally by one of his competitors unlikely. But then on the 18th hole, Phil choked. He sliced his tee shot into the crowd where it actually bounced off the media tent behind the trees.

“Oh no.” The entire compound made a collective groan. His closest competitor, Olgilvy was only down by one stroke after his 18th hole. It seemed very possible that Phil would now need to spend an extra shot over par to get himself out of the purgatory where his ball had clunked down. Phil chipped the ball and it landed in the sand trap just outside the green. If he somehow sunk his next shot, he would hit par and win the match by a single stroke. But we all realized that the more likely scenario was going to be that he’d chip it up onto the green with one stroke and then put it in the hole on his next, effectively resulting in a tie for first place, and sentencing the entire compound to a day beyond what our bodies had prepared themselves to handle. I and my fellow engineers clustered around the TV, sending curses and jinxes of our own design upon Phil’s head. He spent a good thirty seconds practicing his swing, assessing his shot, and then let fly. The ball popped up out of the sand, landed on the green and rolled toward the hole. It was obviously off course, but if it stopped within a reasonable distance, we were all screwed. But it didn’t stop within a reasonable distance. It rolled and rolled and rolled… and then it rolled some more. With each additional foot it traveled from the hole, the cheer from our little band of engineers went louder and louder until the ball finally came to rest in the rough on the opposite side of the green.

It was unlikely that Phil was going to sink the shot from where he was now, but you never knew. Signs of the devil were wiggled in the direction of Mickelson. All he needed to do was miss one more shot and our Monday would be liberated. Once again he spent several seconds lining up his shot and practicing his swing before chipping the ball onto the green where it rolled a healthy six feet off course. Another, much louder cheer erupted. It’s probably the only time you’ll ever hear a group of people on a golf course cheer when a guy misses a shot. I don’t think that myself and that many people I’ve known have ever had so much riding on a single putt. It was truly a beautiful moment.

The energy in the compound, which is always a little sluggish by this point in the week, was immediately restored. Editors, producers, utilities, production assistants, everybody kicked into full gear, giving it everything they had… knowing that tomorrow they would be home. So on behalf of the entire TV compound at the U.S. Open, I’d like to express our congratulations to Geoff Ogilvy for your big win and our deepest thanks to Phil Mickelson for your colossal choke.

Russell Crowe had NOTHING on these guys

You know what TV show I used to love as a kid? American Gladiators. What an awesome show that was. To a ten-year-old boy, that show was like gym class for superheroes. I mean you had dodgeball, except the balls in this case were tennis balls fired at you from a high speed canon while you shot back with giant Nerf crossbows and rocket launchers. There was a rock wall with the added element of a really big guy chasing you, trying to yank you off. You had an obstacle course, though it was more like a mythological gauntlet full of smoke, flashing lights and really big guys trying to knock you down.

I don’t know if that show would impress kids these days, what with the gluttony of fast-paced action-filled cartoons and kid shows they already have at their disposal. But when the most exciting shows we were used to watching were Growing Pains and Muppet Babies, American Gladiators was like a forbidden look into the hidden lives of action stars or something. The fact that it came on late on a Saturday night, right after Saturday Night Live where I lived, only added to the allure that you were somehow breaking the rules and seeing things that only grownups were meant to see.

As kids who played sports, my friends and I would often talk about wanting to go on American Gladiators. To be honest, I don’t even know what kind of prizes the winner of each show received. For us, it wasn’t about winning, it was about competing. But really it was about playing. Hardcore, meat and muscle, violence-for-fun playing. Running inside a giant metal sphere and bashing into your opponents in an effort to score points. Walloping a guy twice your size with a big foam jousting stick, trying to knock him off his ten-foot pedestal. How freakin’ awesome would it have been just to be allowed inside that auditorium and be given the chance to compete in any of those games.

I read in TV Guide one time the qualifications needed to be considered as a contestant for American Gladiators. I don’t remember them all, but I do know you had to be able to do something like thirty chin-ups in a minute. That was crazy. Even at my strongest I’ve only been able to do ten of those things. I’m sure other qualifications were you had to be able to run a mile in less than five minutes, you had to be able to lift a certain amount of weight with your legs and arms. Stuff like that. Stuff that only somebody at the very peak of physical strength and fitness had any hope of accomplishing.

I wish they’d bring back competition shows like that. Shows where you actually had to have, not just talent, but extreme talent to compete. What an awesome bar that gave us to shoot for. To get onto American Gladiators you had to aim high and work hard. These days, most of the competitions shows you see on TV require no other qualifications than not being a convicted felon. Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race. Anybody can, in theory, appear on those shows. The only thing that increases your odds of being chosen isn’t superior strength or talent, but above average looks and a quirky personality. I guess that appeals more to people these days. The average viewer can watch these shows and actually picture themselves on that screen competing as they are, without any new skills or improvement. Hell, William Hung taught us that you didn’t even have to be a good singer to appear on American Idol.

Is this all a sign of where we’re headed as a country? As a civilization? As a species? The bar used to be high. Impossibly high no doubt. None of us were going to attain the superiority required to appear on American Gladiators. But in the end, was that really such a bad thing? It gave us something shoot for and even when we didn’t hit that mark, we landed higher than we would have had we shot for a low mark. These days, there’s no mark to shoot for. The message competition shows send out today is, “Just be yourself… your regular, stupid, talentless self, and you too could be a star.” If this trend continues, the human race is doomed. Evolution cannot progress if we aren’t constantly challenged in our daily lives.

I’ve split no hairs about my thoughts on the abomination that is “Reality TV.” I refuse to watch any of it. But I promise all you TV executives out there, if you were to bring back American Gladiators, I would watch. But it’s got to be the real thing. The standards have to remain high. Contestants actually need to be able to pass a physical test to compete. And for the love of God, if I don’t see ugly people in the mix along with the hotties, I’ll tune you out forever. Because strong people with talent come at all levels of beauty.

Bring back American Gladiators. The future of the world depends on it.

Wheel... of... DEATH!

I was sitting around in the edit truck the other day and Live With Regis and Kelly was on. Well apparently Reeg was out sick or something because they had a very special guest host on: the one and only Pat Sejak. Can I just tell you how incredibly weird it was to see old Pat on this show. First of all, can I just say, man that dude is getting old. Pat Sejak always struck me as a Dick Clark kind of guy. His face remains plastered permanently at whatever age he was circa 1985. Probably because that’s the last time I really watched Wheel of Fortune. But also, and more so, it was just weird to see Pat doing anything but that show He’s been doing it for how many years now? His face is synonymous with that big clicking wheel and the idiots who spin it every weeknight. Same with Vanna White. You cannot hear her name or see her face without immediately picturing her in front of that big green and white board.

There are only a few other game shows and game show hosts that are like that. First of all, that other Merv Griffin hit, Jeopardy. The only time I can remember seeing Alex Trebek on a show other than Jeopardy was when he was on Cheers playing himself as the host of Jeopardy. And then of course there is the long standing The Price is Right with the longer standing Bob Barker.

As I sat there watching Pat Sejak on Live, a couple thoughts occurred to me. The first being, why have I never noticed before just how freakin cute Kelly Ripa is? You could just put her in your little pocket and take her home with you she’s so dang cute.

But back to the whole gameshow thing, I couldn’t help but wonder what is going to happen to the three gameshows I mentioned when their key personalities either retire or die? Like I said, their names and faces have become synonymous with those shows, but more importantly, I don’t think anybody in America could picture those shows without those names and faces. People tune in to watch The Price is Right as much to see Bob Barker as they do to watch an hour-long commercial for TidyBowl. I remember Vanna White was planning on leaving Wheel of Fortune several years ago after nearly two decades and the studio somehow threw enough money at her to get her to stay because they knew people tuned in to watch her more than the silly game.

Actually I find her whole situation funny in and of itself. Those of us who grew up with that show during the 80’s remember that she used to actually spin the letters around when they lit up. It was like that had to give her some semblance of a function to distract people from the fact that she was really only on screen to be eye-candy. These days they don’t even pretend that she has a larger function than that. Now when the letters light up, all she does is touch them while some production assistant backstage presses a button to make them actually flick on.

But back to my point, what are these shows going to do when their personalities move on? Because it certainly doesn’t seem to me that they’re doing any planning for that certainty. At least shows like The Tonight Show will bring on a guest host every now and then so it isn’t such a huge shock when their main guy retires. But have you ever seen anybody other than Bob Barker hosting The Price is Right? How about Wheel or Jeopardy? Of course you haven’t. These producers are certainly putting all those eggs in the proverbial basket full of more fabulous prizes. Bob Barker alone is a ticking time bomb. He’s starting to look like Pope John Paul II did toward the end, like he’s about ready to collapse into himself. Vanna White is eventually going to get old and cease to be pleasant eye-candy anymore. And at some point I’m sure Alex Trebek, who I’ve heard is quite the asshole off screen, is going to draw a line in the sand and demand more money than he’s worth and that will be the end of that. And dear Pat Sejak. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a taste of greener pastures doing these little guest host stints he’s doing and finally have the three-quarter-life crisis that sends him on his merry way.

And then what happens? What happened before? I know Alex Trebek wasn’t always the host of Jeopardy. Can somebody older than myself tell me what happened when he took over for the previous host? Was it a hard transition? Did they not like him at first? Was there some other letter bimb that Vanna muscled out? Was there a catty breaking-in process for her and the rest of America? And what about Pat? I know he’s charming and charismatic now, but did people take to him right away or did they say, “Who’s this yutz with the poofy hair?” I know things obviously worked out in the end because here they all remain. But then again, studios have lot shorter attention spans these days. Will the producers and audiences of these three shows have the patience and loyalty to break in a new personality? Or will the producers simply allow the shows to die along with their hosts?

Does anybody know? Anybody?

Dunk this

I was watching a little bit of the NBA Finals tonight and a couple of thoughts occurred to me. The first was just a reaffirmation of how much I really and truly hate spectator sports. I mean, I enjoy playing basketball but watching it is just so incredibly boring. Same goes for baseball. I enjoy it when I'm actually sitting in the bleachers because it's all about the overall experience. But to watch it on TV... just can't do it. I can kind of get into football, but with as much as the play constantly starts and stops and goes to commercial, it's hard to stay excited about what's happening. And I certainly can't follow a team game for game all season.

About the only sport that I could truly sit and watch an entire game of on TV, and never get bored with, is soccer. I've realized this week, with the World Cup being on TV in just about every bar, restaurant and production truck I walk into, soccer just sucks me in and keeps me in. I think the fact that soccer doesn't get broken up by commercials is the first and most important factor. But also, soccer is the only sport where I feel like I have to watch every minute of the game. In basketball, they score a basket an average of every thirty seconds. A goal in soccer, on the other hand, is sometimes scored only once a game. And it could happen at any point. If you walked away from a basketball game and came back to realize ten points had been scored during your absence, you wouldn't really think too much about it. But if a soccer goal was scored while you were looking away, it would be a very big deal that you missed it. That goal could in theory be the only point scored all game. That goal, scored perhaps within the first ten minutes of the game, would essentially then be the winning goal. I've always felt that the only exciting part of a basketball game is the final two minutes. And then only if the game is close. Because only at that point does every point count. All the baskets scored in the first 38 minutes of the game are essentially null and void at that point and all that matters is what the two teams do during the crunch time at the end. But in soccer, every single goal counts because they're so hard to score and they are so few and far between.

And when you do score a goal... I remember watching an interview with some soccer player a few years ago who compared soccer to basketball. He said that a really good player in the NBA will score maybe 30 points in a single game. And each basket he scores will give him a little charge and cause the crowd to applaud. But scoring a goal in soccer is like taking the little charge and little applause for each basket and cramming it all into one single moment. And that's why soccer is far more exciting and can draw me in more than basketball. Every drive to the goal, every shot on goal, your nerves seize up and then release when it doesn't result in a point. But then on that one key moment when a shot finally gets through, all those nerve seizures that have been building and building over the course of the game explode in an veritable orgasm of triumph because you know, you feel, how big a deal it is. The only comparison you can have to that feeling watching a basketball game is when a winning shot is scored right at the buzzer. That is as close as a basketball fan can come to experiencing what a soccer fan feels every time a goal is scored.

So that was the first thought I had tonight watching the NBA Finals. The second thought came during a short bump back into the game in which a large graphic was shown of the earth, and all the countries that were broadcasting the game were highlighted in red. Apparently this game is being broadcast to something like 250 countries around the globe. That's mindblowing. Do that many non-Americans really care about who wins this game? In the last couple years, ever since the start of the Iraq war, all I've heard about is how much the rest of the world hates us, how much America is such a joke, a laughingstock to the other countries of the world.

The popular conservative response to that is, "Well if they hate us so much, then why are so many of them trying to get in here?"

I'll take it a step farther than that. If they hate us so much, if they think we're all just a bunch of big fat ignorant slobs, then why on earth do they care so much about the stupid games we play? Why is the Superbowl the most widely watched event in the world? Why would somebody in India care whether Brokeback Mountain won Best Picture? If everything we stand for is so stupid then why are all our most popular TV shows repacked and not only aired in Europe but viewed by more people than their own native programs? In America we don't clamor to watch rebroadcasts of popular British or Japanese shows. If anything, we take their concept and redo it American style. Is it because we're close-minded xenophobic stupid Americans who can't appreciate things from other cultures?

Or is our shit just better than theirs?

Truly, if they hate us so much, why are they all so eager to experience our experiences, from Friends to the Academy Awards? If the World Cup is on right now, why the hell would somebody in France be watching the NBA Finals?

Write every blog...

You know what quote I hate and think is used entirely too much? Of course you don't, but I will explain:

"Live every day like it was your last."

People use this quote as a kind of bleeding heart encouragement to follow your dreams and not sit around either doing nothing or waiting for things to happen. Okay great sentiment, but if I thought I was going to die tomorrow, I'm not going to sit down and start writing the novel I've been putting off for the last year. I'm going to spend the day with my family, praying, crying, saying goodbye.

I get the point they're trying to get across, but there's gotta be a more appropriate quote for it. Perhaps Nike's old mantra works better. JUST DO IT. I guess it's not as poignant and dreamy, but it's a better kick in the ass I think. Besides if you need to invoke the thought of death in order to motivate yourself, well maybe you should just MAKE this day your last.