So, it really bothers me that when a guy like Ron Paul comes along who does not change his beliefs based on popularity and consistently discusses issues at their philosophical foundations (instead of just flapping his jaw about how dumb and terrible [x] party is), he seems to be almost completely ignored by the media. I don’t watch The Daily Show and from the few clips I’ve seen I generally tend to disagree with it, but they really nailed this issue. Check out this clip that pretty much says it all:

Here’s an argument that I hear often coming from the right wing commentators: “the debt was increased by much more when Obama was in office than when Bush was in office” inferring that somehow this makes republicans right and democrats wrong. That’s such a load of crap. That’s the same logic as “Bob killed 23 people, but Jim only killed 11 people, so Jim is a good man.”

C’mon, media, seriously?!

I guess you already know Best Buy is stupid, you don’t need TGM to tell you that. I mean have you ever gone into a Best Buy? It’s a bunch of kids dressed in blue polos who think they’re too good for their customers, but they actually don’t know anything about the products they sell. It’s a big box store. A grocery store for electronics. Yet, why do I always find myself wanting to go there? I can tell you, that desire has been waning of late. Take their latest weekly ad, for example. It’s so blatant an attempt to please everyone, that it pleases no one, and it makes me sick:

(Click image for larger view)

I could really dissect this thing. Is the biggest news in the tech world truly WHITE cell phones? And let’s count all of the advertising they are cramming down our throats on just this one page: Verizon, AT&T, Android, Dell, Sony, Samsung, Facebook, YouTube, and Taylor Swift. Yes, we could go on and on ripping this apart. But I want to focus on the footer of the ad. Did you notice it?

(Click image for larger view)

Eid al-Adha is a Muslim holiday that has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. I have nothing against Muslims being able to celebrate their own holidays, but why in the name of all that is sacred is Best Buy telling me “Happy Eid al-Adha”? What does that have to do with flat-panel TVs and Xboxs? I didn’t see anything in the Wikipedia article about Eid al-Adha being a holiday of buying each other consumer electronics.

Also, why does it say Merry Christmas right next to it? Did I miss something? Did Christmas move from December 25th to November 15th? Wouldn’t you feel silly if you walked around on November 15th saying “Merry Christmas” to your coworkers? There are yet four additional holidays to the right of Merry Christmas. What’s happened here is that Best Buy has seen how much it can capitalize off of Christmas, and it has decided to rake its hand across the religious realm gathering all major holidays it can find within 2 months of Christmas. Then it puts “Happy ______” or “Merry _______” or “Feliz _______” on the front of its ad so more people will come buy stuff.

The funniest part about this is any other time of year Best Buy couldn’t give two sh*ts about Islam or Judaism. It’s only during Christmastime that the dollar signs appear in retailers’ eyes and they start spouting out salutations in 5 languages to show how much they “care” about other cultures. In my opinion, it’s actually kind of offensive that they even put Merry Christmas right next to Happy Eid al-Adha, seeing as how the holy book of the latter instructs its followers to subdue and/or kill the followers of the former. Do they really belong right next to each other?

Seriously, Best Buy?!

In an attempt to please everyone, Best Buy actually risks alienating it’s customers. If I want to buy a gift this year that I could have gotten at Best Buy, I am going to go to a different retailer that is not so offensive to me – if I can find one. Hello, Internet.

Think about what’s happening in our country right now. No, not the war, or the oil spill (is that fixed?), or the California missile, or WoW Cataclysm. I’m talking about something much more profoundly dumb than anything that is supposed to be happening in our world. Something that is worse than killing puppies. I’m referring to the fact that there are commercials for wearing your seatbelt. To quote Misters Anheuser and Busch, HERE WE GO:

Wearing your seatbelt can save your life. I wear my seatbelt all the time. Duh. That does not explain the commercials. Think about it. The very existence of cops is made possible because the government bills each of us thousands of dollars a year to pay their salaries. Here you go, cop, here is my money, now make sure no one kills me or steals my stuff. Even that much I don’t agree with, but I can at least live with it. But it’s when the cop pulls me over for driving a very safe and responsible 65 in a 55 in broad daylight with no other traffic around and bills me an extra $150 on top of the thousands I’m already paying him, without my consent, that I start to get red in the face. Somebody stop these guys!

But wait – there is yet an older and more powerful magic at work here. An evil magic. Facts: A) cops are paid too little, and B) we are taxed too much. So what does the government do? Spend millions of our tax dollars on commercials about wearing your seatbelt.

Seriously, Cops?!

WHAAAA???

I’m calling that triple taxation. Let it be called!

I have been asked a few times why I hate Nickelback so much. Well, hopefully after writing this blog post I can answer that question in the future by giving the person the URL to this article. Thanks, past self. You’re welcome, future self.

I was in the car today and forgot my iPod, so I had to listen to the radio. I came upon a gem of a song. And by “gem” I mean “turd” and by “song” I mean “homeless man”. It’s called “If Today Was Your Last Day” by Nickelback, and it is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. In fact, the only worse songs I’ve heard have been other Nickelback songs, like the one where he says something about looking at a photograph and he’s asking what the hell was on his friend Jimmy’s head or something like that. I hope you never have to hear it.

Anyway, Nickelback is notorious for writing what are almost universally agreed-upon to be bad bad songs. The song I heard on the radio today was probably the 20th radio single I can think of in the last 2 years from this band. I stopped listening to their songs after “Leader of Men” (good song actually) off their debut album, so I decided to take a listen to the lyrics of their newest “hit”. After finishing the song, I decided that if there was ever a highlight reel of modern idioms, this song would be the soundtrack. Here is the song, and the first two verses written out below it:

My best friend gave me the best advice
He said each day’s a gift and not a given right
Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind
And try to take the path less traveled by
That first step you take is the longest stride

Against the grain should be a way of life
What’s worth the price is always worth the fight
Every second counts ’cause there’s no second try
So live like you’re never living twice
Don’t take the free ride in your own life

Seriously, Nickelback?!

Let’s look at each line individually and see if this song is even about anything:

Lyric:

“My best friend game me the best advice. He said each day’s a gift and not a given right.”

Meaning:

Don’t take anything for granted.

Reason it’s dumb:

What adult male talks about his best friend? A 12 year old adult male, that’s who. Also, it’s taken straight from this quote.

Lyric:

“Leave no stone unturned, leave your fears behind and try to take the path less traveled by”

Meaning:

Go for it in life – don’t take life for granted.

Reason it’s dumb:

It’s completely unoriginal. It’s three tired idioms in one sentence: 1) Leave no stone unturned, 2) Leave your fears behind you (28 million Google search results – most unrelated to this song), 3) Take the road less traveled (already a book based on a famous poem).

Lyric:

“That first step you take is the longest stride”

Meaning:

Beginning something is the hardest part.

Reason it’s dumb:

Again, completely unoriginal and stolen from this ancient proverb: The first step is always the hardest.

Lyric:

“Against the grain should be a way of life”

Meaning:

The same meaning as when he says “take the road less traveled”

Reason it’s dumb:

He already said this using a stolen idiom. Now he’s not only just repeating what others have said, but he’s stealing multiple idioms to say the same thing! This time he uses this one: Go Against The Grain.

Lyric:

“What’s worth the price is always worth the fight”

Meaning:

This actually doesn’t mean what you think it does – it’s incomplete.

Reason it’s dumb:

This is sort of a Begging The Question logical fallacy. He’s trying to make a point by saying the same thing again a different way. If something is worth the price you pay, what you are saying is that the benefits outweigh the sacrifice, or the pros outweigh the cons. Consequently, if you say something is worth the fight, you are essentially just saying something is worth the price. Both “price” and “fight” are meant to represent the sacrifice or “work” you put into it. So, we naturally hear this sentence as “What’s worth the benefit is worth the cost”, even though that’s not even what he said! That also proves this is yet another stolen idiom – how else could we have naturally known what he was trying to say, despite what he actually did say, if we hadn’t already heard it a thousand times?

Lyric:

“Every second counts ’cause there’s no second try, so live like you’re never living twice”

Meaning:

You only live life once.

Reason it’s dumb:

Look at the Wikipedia results for each of these two phrases: Every Second Counts, and You Only Live Once. There are already albums, books, films, and game shows with these titles. Again, nothing new here.

Lyric:

“Don’t take the free ride in your own life”

Meaning:

Don’t take anything for granted.

Reason it’s dumb:

Again, yet another stolen idiom. It’s this one: Free Ride.

There you go, not a single original idea presented. There is nothing to debate, and nothing to discuss. Even the chord progression – that cliched, overused, G-D-A progression – has been used a million times before even by Nickelback themselves (see chorus of Nickelback’s “Someday”, and then compare that chorus to Nickelback’s “Savin’ Me”, and THEN try to distinguish all three of these songs in your head – it’s impossible).

I am not trying to be a music elitist here as I will be the first to admit that I like music that true elitists scoff at. But I will say that I draw the line at Nickelback. Let’s look at a true song by a true band. It’s called Pyramid Song by Radiohead. I didn’t choose it because it’s the most complicated and deep song by Radiohead (which it’s not) because that would be an unfair comparison. I chose it 1) because it’s very short and 2) because it randomly came on my iPod when I got back to my desk at work. Here is the song and the full lyrics posted below it:

i jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
all the figures i used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little row boat
there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

First of all, if you can name the time signature of that song I will be very impressed. Secondly, the song is not preachy at all. It is an eerie story that presents different imagery to different listeners, and it has spurred much debate, as do a lot of other Radiohead songs. Some say the song is about euthanasia, while others say it’s inspired by Dante’s Inferno. And while some of the lines were inspired by or taken from previous works, none of them were based on common idioms, maxims, proverbs, sayings, cliches, or quotes.

This is not to say that you have to like Radiohead’s song and you aren’t allowed to like Nickelback’s song. It is just a comparative example of why I think Radiohead, for instance, is such a better band than Nickelback, and I would even argue that is an objective statement in the world of music (not the world of pop, hollywood, ‘tweens, or money). Radiohead is musically complex, Nickelback is not. Radiohead is lyrically original, Nickelback is not. Radiohead is thought-provoking and inspiring, Nickelback is not. Radiohead is musically diverse, Nickelback is not. Radiohead does not get boo-ed off stage, Nickelback does.

UPDATE***

Here’s proof that Nickelback is unoriginal musically and even copies itself. This video layers How You Remind Me and Someday. They are THE SAME SONG:

This is a thing. A real thing. It’s a medication to treat acid reflux disease. What did they call it? AciPhex, naturally. Wait a second… AciPhex? Assiphex? Ass effects? No, no that can’t be right. Well yes, actually, that’s exactly how it’s pronounced. ASS EFFECTS. See for yourself – watch the commercial and try to keep a straight face:

Ass effects is such a great term. It can apply to so many things. You can walk into a really stinky bathroom and say “ooh jeez… ass effects!” Or when you clear out a room with a fart, you can smile and quietly repeat to yourself “man do I have some special ass effects!”. Even Taco Bell can benefit from this phrase, because now they can start including it in their fine print: “ingesting our Volcano Burrito may cause extreme ass effects.”

I was debating on whether or not I should do an entire blog post about the failure of a pharmaceutical company’s marketing department, but my doubt was cast aside when I came across an infographic on Digg about fart facts today. It was at that point that I realized someone was trying to give me a sign. Here is the infographic (click the image for a larger version):

Source: Online Education

So there you go. A TGM post with a bunch of words like “ass”, “fart”, and “pharmaceutical”. Enjoy it while you can because it’s not likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.

I know what you’re thinking: two Seriously?! posts about television networks, back to back? The economy is in bad shape, man, and it affects everyone. Or I watched a little too much TV this week. So, did you happen to catch any of the programming on NBC last night, namely The Office and 30 Rock? If you did, you may now loose the wire around your neck – it’s not worth killing yourself. If you didn’t, I just want you to know that this blog post is not exaggerated – these things actually occurred on this planet in this dimension in this country in my living room.

Apparently it is “Green Week” or something (didn’t know that) and NBC is the most liberally-biased network there is (did know that), which is a very annoying combination. Before I tell you what happened, let me refresh you with our classic TGM political disclaimers. I am neither conservative nor liberal on all matters, and I do not fall into either of the groups in the two one-party system. If NBC was ultra-conservative instead of liberal, and it was like “Gun Week” or something, then I would be equally annoyed. Glad we cleared that up. So, what hoopla went on last night, besides a pot-head scoring 3 TDs against Carolina?

I’ll start with a list of topics in the “hot debate” category that were force-fed down our throats with a big, smug, liberal spoon (probably made out of recycled cardboard):

• Zero carbon footprint (The Office)
• Fluorescent lights (30 Rock)
• Green week (The Office/30 Rock)
• Socialism (The Office)
• Biodegradable objects (The Office)
• Earth-friendly sun tea (30 Rock)
• Homosexuality (The Office/30 Rock)
• How bad aerosols are for the atmosphere (The Office)
• Endangered whales (30 Rock)
• Big corporations are evil (The Office)
• CEOs who spend unnecessary money should be “thrown in jail” (direct quote – The Office)

Seriously, NBC?!

That is just a partial list. I only watched about half of 30 Rock, which equals about 11 minutes, so if you combine that with 22 minutes of The Office, that is a total of 33 minutes of actual shows. You read that list and you start to wonder if there was any actual “show” at all. I guess it’s a testament to NBC’s knack for comedy that the answer to that question is yes, there were actually still quite a few funny moments (although down from the regular average).

My wife pointed this out to me. She noted how we go through each day inundated with ideals, politics, opinions, and controversy. We finally get the chance to sit down at 9 o’clock at night and turn off our brains for a half hour of laughter, and the last thing we want is more ideals and politics, but NBC apparently disagrees. Have you seen SNL recently? It hasn’t always been so political, but nowadays it is probably the most politically-charged, liberal show in the entire world (another NBC show).

I know more than one person who has stopped watching The Office because of how much Micheal Scott reminds them of their own bosses. I have yet to meet someone who has stopped because they can’t stand to hear any more about liberalism. I can tell you right now, I’m not going to be that person who stops. However, if you are that person, and you are strong enough to actually quit, please let me know so I can never accept your challenge in any sort of self-control contest.

For what it’s worth, I am drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee out of a styrofoam cup as I write this, and I promise I will throw it in the styrofoam recycling bin when I’m done – don’t worry.

I just need to vent for a second about the coverage that I have seen in the media regarding the 11/16/09 Sunday night Colts vs. Patriots game, and this is just in the 12 hours after the game. I’m not going to waste a lot of your time, and I wasn’t going to do a post about the game because it sort of speaks for itself. But by golly someone needs to stand up and defend the Colts against this biased, band-wagon jumping, star-struck, Tom Brady-loving nation.

ESPN’s game recap is here (specifically 3 minutes in).

First of all, Trent Dilfer’s an idiot. He mentions that the Pats’ playing style changed once they were up 2 touchdowns, e.g. they weren’t applying “the same defensive pressure”. Just last year Trent Dilfer was sitting in that same chair defending the Pats for running up the score on the Browns/Jets (whoever) because of the fact that “Belichick never changes his playing style due to the score”. Trent Dilfer, you contradict your own statements, and you say whatever you think will not get you fired from ESPN, and thus you are a stupid sell-out idiot.

He goes on to agree that the Pats are a much better team than the Colts. In fact, all three anchors admit this nonchalantly as if the Colts didn’t just beat the Patriots. WITH HALF OF THE TEAM OUT ON INJURY.

Seriously, Sportscenter?

Let me explain how a football game works to you telecommunications degree college dropout washed-up retired mediocre NFL player-turned-commentators: the Patriots scored 34 points, and the Colts scored 35 points. Points don’t hold a higher value when they are scored in the 2nd quarter as opposed to the 4th quarter (in fact you could argue that the opposite is true, which makes you even more wrong, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt). Points also don’t increase the longer you have them. This isn’t bank interest, it’s a damned point in a damned football game. If you take 35 and you subtract 34, that leaves you with 1 – which is the score margin between the Colts and the Patriots, which means the Colts won, and thus out-played the Patriots.

Hold on a second – what about outside forces, such as cheating or bad officiating? I will now address that issue:

NFL’s game recap is here (specifically 2:30 – and everything Deion Sanders says).

Deion Sanders says for us to “watch the yellow line.” Deion: WHAT? I could say so many things about how I hate everything about the way that you choose to be:

1) The yellow line is not official
2) The view was not perpendicular to the yellow line, so the angle is not appropriate to judge the play (the official WAS perpendicular to the 1st down marker, unlike TV viewers)
3) Just because at one point in time a receiver is in front of a yellow line doesn’t mean that he can’t run back behind it. I bet you would love to give the Pats an unlimited forward progress pass if you could get away with it, wouldn’t you?
4) In the NFL when you bobble the ball you do not have possession. By the time the receiver obtained control of the ball AND his foot came down, the ball was clearly behind the yellow line.

It’s just another example of how the media loves to distract us with side issues instead of actually giving credit to the Colts for playing all 60 minutes of the football game. In my opinion, I think they’re threatened by us.

Something all these talking heads have in common throughout their analysis is that Belichick lost this game by going for it on 4th and 2. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever because the Patriots have the highest 4th down conversion rate of any team, plus it was only 2 yards. If they got the 1st down the game would pretty much be over because the worst case scenario for the Pats would be that the Colts would have to drive all the way down the field and score a touchdown with 20 seconds and no timeouts. I’m sick of the focus, once again, being taken off the Colts and put on an irrelevant side issue. THE COLTS STOPPED THE 4TH DOWN CONVERSION BECAUSE OF A GREAT DEFENSIVE STAND. Nothing else needs to be said about this issue.

One more thing. I watch Sportscenter on ESPN 4-5 days a week, and I have been doing so for almost 3 years. I have noticed that the news stories almost never feature the Colts, even though we’re 9-0 and clearly one of the best, if not the best, teams in the NFL. For some reason ESPN has this huge aversion to the Colts. I don’t know what it is, but I’m afraid there is still a stigma placed on the Colts for leaving Baltimore in 1984, and I have several examples of specific instances where ESPN and other networks have alluded to this. Come on now, has 25 years not been enough time to dry your eyes, Baltimore? Jeez.

Thank you for letting me vent, blog. I will buy you a sweet tea from McDonald’s tonight. But only if they’re still a dollar.

Seriously, moviegoers?! You liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?

There are two explanations for the way I feel about the downward-sloping overall quality of movies over the past few years. 1) I am getting older and my taste has become more refined, or 2) greed has ruined the movie industry by encouraging quantity over quality. Seeing as how my favorite cuisine is Taco Bell, I own a Nick Lachey album, and prefer Miller Lite when it comes to beers, the first explanation has to be impossible.

So, it’s greed. Greedy movie studio executives (is that redundant?) are buying up film rights to old cartoon franchises faster than Grand Theft Auto fanboys were buying San Andreas before it was pulled from the shelves in 2005. However, placing the blame for terrible movies on film execs is like blaming GM for the decline of domestic automobiles. Film execs represent a corporation, which exists solely to make money. They will do whatever they can get away with to cause consumers (which in the case of GM includes the government) to spend money on their product. While it is because of filmmakers that films are terrible, it is not their fault. The blame should be placed on the American consumer. You. It is your fault.

Even if you disagree with the first two paragraphs, you cannot hide from the following fact: most people love terrible movies, and that is what this blog post as about. To illustrate this point, lets take a look at a recent disaster of a movie: Transformers 2. When I first saw the movie I was stunned at how utterly terrible it was. I immediately went online and read the review by Roger Ebert, who had this to say:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.”

Maybe the world is not doomed after all! There is at least one man of considerable respect who agrees with me. Then I started researching other reviews, and I came across this one from Time magazine:

“My son does not own any Transformer dolls. I’m sorry, make that Transformer action figures. But if he did, upon my return from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I would have taken these Hasbro toys outside, placed them under the wheels of the car and driven back and forth across them until they were ground into dust.”

I was beginning to feel validated as a human being. I wanted more. So I read Rolling Stone’s review, which included this line:

“I know there are still 17 months to go, but I’m thinking Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.”

Yes! Thank you Rolling Stone (which gave the movie a 0 on a scale of 0-100 by the way). At this point I had read some individual reviews from prominent film critics. Whether or not you generally tend to agree with these guys, you can at least acknowledge that they know the elements that are supposed to compose a film. Even so, if you do happen to have a specific aversion to Ebert or Travers, there are other ways to find out whether or not a movie is good or bad. The best way is to look at all the top critics at once. There are a lot of sites that compile reviews, but there are three in particular that I think represent how good or bad a film truly is, and they are Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and Yahoo Movies.

On each of these three sites there are two figures, the first represents an average of all the critics reviews, and the second represents an average of all the user reviews (non-critics – regular people). Rotten Tomatoes gives Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a 20/100 (219 reviews counted), Metacritic gives it a 35/100 (32 reviews counted), and Yahoo Movies gives it a C- (14 reviews counted). It’s one thing for one person to hate your movie, but if 80% of film critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 65% on Metacritic hated it, your film is aweful. Remember, that doesn’t mean that the other 20% on Rotten Tomatoes or 35% on Metacritic loved it, it just means they didn’t give it a terrible review. Most of the “positive” reviews were probably nothing more than 2/4 stars or a 5/10.

Have I beaten this point into the ground enough? We can all agree that anyone who’s anyone hated this movie. All the film critics hated it, and more importantly TGM hated it. So why the need for this blog post? It’s called the ugly truth, and it is that despite all the facts presented, the majority of people actually liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

How do I know this? Again, let’s have a look at the facts. The user rating for Transformers 2 on Rotten Tomatoes is 58/100 (5,740 reviews counted), on Metacritic it is 6/10 (743 votes counted), and on Yahoo Movies it is a B+ (21,441 ratings counted). If almost 6,000 people think this movie deserves a 6/10 on a site where over 200 critics thought the same movie deserves a 2/10, we have a problem. That is a huge discrepancy, and with such a large pool of user ratings it can’t be left up to chance or a personal vendetta against the director or something like that. How can over 21 thousand people on Yahoo Movies rate this movie just shy of an “A” when almost every critic despises it? Is this phenomenon contained to just Transformers 2? Than answer, sadly, is no. Here are a some other movies and their corresponding critic and user scores:

Between these two sites, this list’s average critic rating per movie is 28.7, and the average user rating per movie is 61.3. That means the user ratings are 113% higher than the critic ratings. How can this be?

My theory is that the layman fails to make a crucial distinction, and it’s a distinction that can really play into other areas of your life if you truly learn how to make it. There is a difference between a “movie that is good” and a “movie that you enjoyed”. There are plenty of times one should deem it appropriate to say to someone that they like a movie but that they don’t recommend it. They should be able to distinguish between their particular liking of a particular movie, and how good it is as a film. For instance, I love Starship Troopers and it’s one of my favorite movies, not because it is such a well-made movie with good acting and plot, but because I saw it as a teenager with good friends and we frequently quote it and talk about hilarious scenes from it and it has lots of awesome violence and stuff we had never seen before. While I own the movie and enjoy watching it, given the chance to rate it on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m sure the score wouldn’t be much higher than a 40/100.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s almost as if people are afraid to rate a movie poorly because they feel in doing so it takes away their ability to watch it and still enjoy it. I would describe this psychological phenomenon as nothing more than Opinion-Esteem Disorder™ which is a term I just created and has now become trademarked before your eyes. If you think about it, it’s true – people generally are sensitive about their opinions and often strive to push them on others. Sometimes consciously, more often subconsiously. The more people that share your opinion, the more your opinion is validated, and the less hesitant your are to tout your opinions around town. However, if too many people jump on board, it can be tempting to jump to the other side of the spectrum, which is called Pop Aversion Theory™, described in a previous blog post of mine entitled “Why Do People Hate Titanic?”. Be sure to read the comments, as a lot of what’s discussed is very relevant to this blog post.

Opinion-Esteem Disorder™ sounds like a natural, logical function of our psyche, but in reality I think it is actually a negative trait of human nature. You should be proud of your opinion even if you’re the only one who has it. While I don’t seem to struggle in this area when it comes to movies, I definitely run into it in other areas of interest to some degree, so don’t think I’m immune to it.

So why does any of this matter? It matters because Transformers 2 earned $108,966,307 in its first week. That tells movie studios that we like this caliber of movie. More of these movies will be made. Resources that could have gone to better movies (budgets, actors, composers, sound stages, special effects departments) will be sucked into the black abyss of fast-food films. And I will have to watch the trailers for them while I sit and wait for my good movie to start. And despite all of my principles and standards, my curiosity will get the best of me and I will inevitably think to myself “I guess maybe Terminator 5: The Edge Of Reason could be good. Maybe I’ll see it…” And then I will be $10 poorer each time that happens.

America: make the distinction. I’m not telling you which movies you can watch, or even which movies you can like. I’m telling you which movies you can say are good movies. Stop tricking other, more skeptical people into seeing terrible films! Of course, all the people who liked Transformers 2 are probably just redneck Nascar fans. Shoot, I did so well with this post until that last sentence.

And now I will end with a funny video to offset the negative tone of this blog post. This is from The Abstinence episode where Kramer experiences a lifetime of smoking in 72 hours:

It is a husband’s responsibility to zing his wife back. If he doesn’t, the ensuing relationship is his own fault. However if my wife ever smiled at me as condescendingly as the woman in this commercial I would probably throw up all my lunches from the past 4 days straight into her little bowl of soggy oat rings. It literally makes me gag just watching it. It makes me GOL (that’s a real thing starting now).

Seriously, Multigrain Cheerios?! Do you think men are really this petrified of their wives? Also of note: what kind of slogan is “Because it tastes good”? That’s almost as bad as Rally’s “You gotta eat!”

I’m not a fan of how men are being portrayed on commercials and sitcoms and pretty much anything on TV these days. If men are really this dumb and women are really this insidious, how is anyone getting together? Especially if they’re as ogre-ish as the actors in the Multigrain commercial? As usual, Seinfeld has the answer:

Don’t get me wrong, men are very stupid. I am a very stupid man and I do stupid things every single day. I also witness other men doing stupid things all the time. We don’t do it on purpose (usually), it’s just who we naturally are. But as much as it is in our nature to be stupid, there is one thing that is not in our nature, and that is to be scared of things. And “things” includes women.

My wife and I have been commenting on this phenomenon for years. We will see a commercial with the obligatory scene of a husband and wife about to engage in some banter, and we will frequently predict that the woman is going to be the smart one and the man is going to be the ridiculous idiot who gets no respect from his wife (or his kids – but that’s a different story). My wife is just as sick of this message as me.

But there is hope. Someone out there had the same thoughts as me and decided to go to marketing school and get a job at a big marketing firm so they could make this commercial:

It starts off like all the rest, but then *gasp* the man actually zings the woman back! It just feels so right. Bravo T-Mobile commercial writer! Couples of the world: rise up and bust each others’ chops, starting now!