Faster, Higher, Stronger, More Cleavage?

This article wasn't posted as early as I would have liked. I had an interview that ran really long today, and then I had to get a Shamrock Shake. All in all, it was probably one of my more productive mornings.

So the Olympics are over, and I have a hard time remembering a less exciting Olympics. Apparently I'm not the only one who felt this way, as viewership for the Olympics was extremely low this year, losing out to shows like American Idol.

A quick aside on American Idol: I hate it. I've always hated it. The show happens to bore me, but even more importantly than that, I have a philosophical problem with any show that takes regular people and turns them into celebrities, which pretty much describes every reality show ever made. These shows make it easier for regular people to achieve a sort of celebrity, which isn't bad in and of itself, but since more and more people are able to become celebrities, the value of being one has greatly decreased. I call this celebrity inflation. Now that Alan Greenspan has retired from the Fed, maybe he can get our celebrity economy straightened out. Of course I have a sneaking suspicion that Greenspan died about a decade ago and that the government engaged in Weekend at Bernies-style antics in order to make it appear as if Greenspan was still alive so that investors would not lose confidence in the economy. Really, though, that's an entirely different article altogether.

Anyway, to combat the celebrity inflation I think we need to follow the Jehovah's Witnesses' lead. I'm not referring to their love of door to door proselytizing (triple word score!), but rather to the fact that they believe that only 144,000 people will get into heaven. So, if you're number 144,001 on the list, tough shit, but you're going to hell. Well, I think we need to take that stance with celebrities. Everyone will agree on a certain number of celebrities we'll allow, and that's it. If anyone wishes to join the ranks of celebrity, then someone within will have to be kicked out. This doesn't mean that shows like American Idol need to cease, but it means that we'll have to have a show to counteract American Idol. I'm thinking it could be a show where a bunch of C list celebrities like Coolio, William Hung, and Nicole Richie compete in contests to win the public's favor, and at the end of the season one unlucky person will be forced to relinquish their role as celebrity, and, just to add insult to injury, be banished from the country. Who wouldn't watch that show?

Putting my opinions on reality TV aside, the Olympics this year were a letdown. It's not that the Olympics didn't try to have any drama. The fight between those two American speed skaters should have been interesting, but ultimately I'm not going to care about a sport where men wear spandex. The problem with the winter Olympics is that they are filled with a bunch of sports that no one cares about. The one exception of course is hockey, which is pretty entertaining and does have an extremely loyal, even if small, fanbase. But the majority of the sports, even during the sports doldrums that are the days of February, are sports that I don't want to watch. I think the main reason is because hardly anyone in America actually plays these sports. Almost everyone has tossed a football around, played HORSE, or played catch with a friend before. But how many Americans have attempted to cross country ski and then shoot at a bunch of targets. Hopefully, outside of winters in Detroit, not too many.

Without having the experience of playing most of these sports, the only thing that will attract Americans to these sports is the spectacle of the event, rather than the actual competition. In other words, I only watch the Olympics to see athletes fall or to ogle attractive women (the latter of which the winter Olympics delivers fairly regularly, considering Sweden is prominently involved). The winter Olympics needs to understand that and alter the events accordingly. To hell with the sanctity of competition, I want to see some action and some T and A. I think the IOC should make the ski jumpers jump through a hoop of fire. I think the short-track speed skating should adopt a no-holds-barred format where contact is not only allowed but encouraged. What was that skiing sport that killed that Kennedy a couple of years ago? Clearly we need that in here as well. The winter Olympics needs to take more advantage of their attractive women as well. Let's get some more attractive low-cut uniforms, rather than unflattering parkas. Divide women's figure skating into different divisions based on cup size. The possibilities are endless. I'd also can ice dancing. It's clearly not a sport, and there are too many male dancers involved that look vaguely like magicians. As a replacement for ice dancing, might I suggest exotic ice dancing. The pageantry and artistic form of ice dancing will remain, but now we will also celebrate the nude human body as well. The mere thought of this is probably enough to make most Canadians have to change their underwear. Plus, if anyone falls, the sadistic side in all of us will get to see a naked girl go sliding across the ice. Really, I can't see how this wouldn't be awesome. So please IOC: heed my advice. I don't want to see the Olympics fail, and I really, really want to see a naked girl on ice skates.

A Dilemma

So I'm a little torn over whether or not I should view this Scott Stapp-Kid Rock sex tape. In case anyone hasn't heard, a sex tape from 1999 starring Scott Stapp, Kid Rock, and four strippers has recently come to light.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/17/people.kidrock.reut/index.html

I have to admit that I am a little interested in seeing what's on the tape, but the fact that it is identified as the "Scott Stapp-Kid Rock Sex Tape" makes me think that watching the tape could be seen as a queer act (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just not for me). This doesn't seem fair, however, as the women in the video outnumber the men 2 to 1, and no one would call a porno with one guy and one girl gay. The real reason I want to watch the tape isn't for any voyeuristic thrill, but rather because watching the tape more than likely will give me hours worth of stand-up material. Still, I'm not so sure it's worth it if it means I have to see Kid Rock or Scott Stapp's dongs. Oh, the shades of gray I deal in...

Anyway, the mere existence of this tape is problematic for me. For one, there is strong evidence to support the theory that Scott Stapp is in fact the antichrist. Think about it: if you were the devil, how would you drive away followers from God? Well, one really effective way of discrediting God would be by sending your own son out into the world to start an ultra-annoying rock group that not only sucks whatever enjoyment may have been left in mainstream music at the time, but also inanely prattles on about the importance and majesty of God. I like to think of myself as a reasonably religious individual, and even I was contemplating scaling back my faith when I saw how extremely uncool Scott's Stapp's faith was. That is significant because I am pretty stubborn; if Scott Stapp managed to affect me, I can only imagine how many people left their faiths altogether, which must have pleased the devil greatly. Additionally, Scott Stapp's popularity itself seems to question the existence of God. Watching the "With Arms Wide Open" video, I remember asking myself questions like, "If there really is a benevolent God, why would he subject humankind to this crap?" and "Do I really want to follow a God that created a world where such a tool as Scott Stapp could not only survive, but achieve millions of dollars and massive fame?" These are dark questions from a dark time, and we have no one to blame but the antichrist and his subsequent rise up the pop charts. Finally, the third piece of evidence that suggests Scott Stapp is the antichrist is that he is a University of Miami (FL) fan. If anything good has ever come out of that "school" I haven't seen it yet. Enough said on that.

So, knowing that Scott Stapp is the antichrist, why would four women agree to be in an orgy with him? Aren't they afraid that they could get pregnant and then give birth to some sort of jackal-like creature? The chances of them surviving such a delivery would be extremely low.

The final thing that confuses me about this whole affair is the fact that Scott Stapp and Kid Rock were allowed to be in the same room together. Not unlike how the president and the vice president aren't allowed to fly in the same airplane together for fear of it crashing, I would think that the National Association of Mullet Wearers (NAMW) would seek to keep Scott Stapp and Kid Rock as far away as possible. What if the tour bus they were on had caught fire and exploded? The mullet community would be devastated; Billy Ray Cyrus would more than likely have to come out of whatever cave he is currently living in just to calm everyone's fears. And even if a bus exploding seems a little far-fetched, what if both Kid Rock and Scott Stapp had contracted a deadly STD, which seems a little more probable given the circumstances? I hope that NAMW sees this as a wake-up call and starts enacting policies to ensure that the risk of Kid Rock and Scott Stapp being in the same room is never taken again.

After having thought about this for a while, I don't think that I am going to check the video out. It's simply not worth the risk. Like your grandmother naked, there are just some things too horrifying to ever forget seeing, and this may be one of them.

Hello Internet

Having recently quit my job, it occurred to me that I was one step closer to becoming a hobo. While it will undoubtedly be awesome to be able to stop worrying about hygiene and start drinking at 8 in the morning, the one problem with being a hobo is that no one ever listens to any of your ideas. Even if you are a true visionary hobo with profound thoughts ahead of their time, all the world will ever see is a crazy wino wearing a tin foil hat. This is a problem for me, as I have a lot of ideas. All these ideas are why I'm starting a blog.

So here is the first of what I hope will be many articles on this site. For anyone kind enough to actually read this site, I have a couple of promises for you. First of all, I promise to write a new article every Tuesday and Thursday, at the least. Additionally, I promise that about 75% of what I write will be written while I am relatively sober. And finally, I promise that that other 25% will contain some of the crudest, foulest language ever known to humankind, and I expect the racial slurs to be plentiful. But fear not: I plan to offend all races equally, so as not to appear a bigot. Except for you Eskimos; I've got an ax to grind with you.

So now that I have told you part of what to expect from me as a writer, I should write a little something about what the subject of this blog will be. I have a problem, however: I don't really know what that subject should be. As I sit here racking my brain, it becomes apparent to me that there are only three subjects for which I have both interest and knowledge: sports, music, and the career of Corey Haim. Seeing as there are websites that already specialize in these subjects (www.espn.com, www.rollingstone.com, www.coreyhaim.de, respectively), I don't know if I can offer anything these established websites don't already. As a result, I don't think the specialized approach is the way to go for this blog. Rather, I'm going to take the completely random, make-shit-up-as-I-go-along approach to blogging. So, for example, if I want to talk about how Dusty Baker is holding back the Chicago Cubs, I'll do that. If I want to talk about how I'm afraid I'm slowly getting hooked on Grey's Anatomy, I'll do that too. Hell, if I want to write on the military practices of China during the late Ming Dynasty, I'll do that as well. And if you don't want to read my random thoughts, then don't. I don't promise that reading this blog will be fun, but I do promise it will be a time killer. And let's face it, the majority of people on the internet are only interested in killing time anyway, whether it be at work or waiting for that porn video to finally download.