No, you don’t need that goddamn SUV

This is almost not worth my time.  It’s fucking ridiculous that I’m actually taking time out to rebuff some stupid article I just read.  Because the subject of SUVs is so fucking old and tired, and it’s been done to death, and it’s fucking boring.

Yet, THIS CANNOT BE A REAL ARTICLE.

Surely this is some shitty troll write-up that’s meant to rile up certain gearheads who are stupid enough to get riled up (me).  I mean, most of the time, I love Gawker – Deadspin, in particular – but holy shit, do they come up with some massively pointless articles every so often.  In fact, that’s the problem with a lot of these sites that used to be sites that just reposted someone else’s stories.  Somewhere along the way, they decided that they need to compete as content generators and not just content aggregators.  And in so doing, often they struggle to come up with some minimum amount of original content for our insatiable appetite for said content.

And that’s why we end up with such a seemingly banal yet thoroughly retarded write-up assuming to validate SUVs.

If you can’t be arsed to read the article, here’s the sum up of what the whole stupid write-up is driving at:

OMG, your mom must’ve gracefully descended from the heavens, with all her hyper intelligence and miraculous supernatural powers, to have managed the herculean task of carting your stupid ass all over town without some swollen, overpriced pretend-offroading vehicular monstrosity.  Just how DID she manage?!  What a saint!  Oh, the humanity!

With all due respect – and complete sincerity – do fuck off.

ZOMG, sedans aren’t “convenient as something with a big tailgate”!!!  WE NEED A TAILGATE!!  Everyone needs tailgates!!  And sedans can’t accommodate large car seats!!  “OMG, these soft, pudgy, fast food-fed kids are too big-boned to fit to a family sedan!!”  “We must pack lightly – the horror of not being able to cram the entire contents of my house into my car!”  “Honey, there’s no way I can’t fit little Maddie’s Barbie dream house, her pack-n-play, the bottle warmer, her DVD player, all her Baby Einstein discs, AND your mega-duty breast pump into our normal car so that we can go to the mall – WE TOTALLY NEED AN SUV!!!”

This writer’s a fucking idiot.

As a father of two, I’ll just say that anything larger than a four-door sedan is completely pointless and unnecessary.  We have comfortably survived – fuck it, thrived! – with only four-door sedans.  Imagine that: a simple sedan, four wheels, four doors, a trunk, and we’ve managed fine.  Car seats, strollers, diaper bags, toys, foldable playpens, all the shit that you *need* (:rolleyes:) when you have little kids – they all fit nicely into our humble Volkswagen sedan.  AND a little dog, too, beeyotch.  I never even had a roof rack on my car until very recently (hey, it’s not my fault that paddleboards are 12 feet long).

I know some families with one or two kids, and they all have some beastly SUV with an enormous engine in it.  They clamp on some equally enormous luggage carrier to the roof rack.  The rear of the car’s got some a massive bike rack.  And it’s got a hitch.  I have no idea if the luggage carrier on top ever has anything in it, but those bike racks are always empty, and everything’s permanently bolted to their SUVs ALL THE TIME.  Really?!  The fuck you need all that shit for?  It looks like a prop from the upcoming Mad Max movie.  It’s like they’ve just bought some monstrous car and they’ve got to further validate this purchase by attaching all these extra bits and pieces on it because “that’s why we needed the big SUV!”

I’ll tell you what this is: fucking gluttony.

So what you end up with is single-digit mpg, a heavy lumbering shit box that handles even more poorly than it already did, awful parking jobs (because, admit it, you can’t park that thing for shit), and maximum carbon monoxide for maximum earth scorching.

I speak from the perspective of having two kids.  And I get that there are many families who aren’t limited to two kids.  God, you feel like such a fucking underachiever these days when you have only two kids.  “You have only two kids?  Fuck that, we’re going for more kids than the Brangelinas, loser.”

Yet, it matters little whether someone’s got two kids or nine.  Fact is, most of you are gonna buy an SUV no matter what.  Because you want more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!  Just don’t use your goddamn kids as the excuse.

And I’m not suggesting that anyone has to make do with less (though that’s hardly a bad thing).  I’m suggesting that maybe we can all learn to live without so much fucking excess.

 

Paris and London: just the lowlights

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way.  That old adage about how Paris would be wonderful if it weren’t for all the French?  Bullfuckingshit.  Paris blows because it’s filled with Americans.  Everywhere you go, it’s Yanks all over the place.  What the fuck, I thought we were in some massive sinkhole of economic diarrhea – yet, Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the motherfucking universe, is filled to be brim with holidaying Yanks.  Fucking blows my mind.  Granted, I was there to do the same, so I’m not gonna begrudge someone else’s holidaying shenanigans, but goddamn there are a lot of Yanks in Paris.

Anyway, two weeks in Paris with a slight detour to pre-Olympic-bullshit London yielded some entirely pointless observations:

French countryside.  For all talk about the visual orgasm that is the French countryside, it’s remarkably dull.  You might as well be driving through the middle of New Jersey.

British graffiti sucks.  Banksy notwithstanding (which is technically is street art, not the sort of graffiti I’m talking about).  On the left is what was scrawled on the back of a loo in an average pub right off Greek Street in London’s Soho.  Compare that to the right, taken from the bathroom at Max Fish in New York’s Lower East Side.

When you make the mistake of going to see the Mona fucking Lisa, you usually have the misfortune of getting crammed with about 150 other boneheaded tourists all clamoring to see the same stupid painting.  Problem is, every single of one of them will be a complete imbecile.  Not only are they pushing and shoving, you get dipshits like this trying to take a picture of the painting from about 30 feet away.  Using an iPad.  Took every ounce of self-restraint not to swat that iPad out of his hands and send it hurtling towards the Mona Lisa itself to test out the painting’s perspex shielding.

 

This fucking guy at Versailles.

Café du Flore, Café Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp – apparently this view affords you a tiny lukewarm cup of espresso that’ll set you back 10 euros.  We hit all three landmark restaurants in one sweep one lazy Tuesday afternoon.  Sure, they were lovely and boasted all sorts of literary history, but holy shit do they know how to work the whole tourist trap thing.  In fact, all the tourist traps are finetuned to perfection.  We hit a whole bunch of them – Au Pied du Cochon, Bofinger, Chartier, the three above.  You walk in and not a single Parisian is to be seen in any of these places.  Yet, somehow they make you feel OK sitting down and having an unspectacular yet unoffensive meal.  You know full well that you’re in a tourist trap, for some fucked up reason, you’re OK with it.  Which is heaps different from any given tourist trap in New York.  I think.  I haven’t been to New York tourist traps in a long while, so I’m just projecting here.

Andouillette.  Speaking of restaurants, my typically brave demeanor when it comes to food finally betrayed me.  On my final night in Paris, having already tried so many typical French foods, opted for one of the few remaining things I had yet to try: andouillette.   Sounds like an andouille, right?  And I fucking love andouille.  I had to try it.  Even if the description is nothing like andouille – andouillette is a sausage that’s constructed of chopped up tripe stuffed into an intestine.  Not just a natural gut casing, but the whole fucking intestine.  Filled with chopped up tripe.  How bad could it be?  Holy shit, never ask that question when it comes to andouillette.  Because the andouillette will punch you in the mouth with a definitive and declarative answer.  It tastes like you’ve just eaten the toilet from Trainspotting.  And you can’t swallow it because it’s all hard and crunchy and it tastes like shit and you start to gag and the combination of gag and a mouthful of shit causes you to asphyxiate, and your only solution is to wash it down as quickly as possible by guzzling wine right out of the bottle which causes you to instantly become the ape-like retarded tourist in the restaurant.  Everything is horrible and you want to die.  After coming to, I politely sent the plate of Satan’s pinched loaf back and ordered a steak tartar instead.  You have no idea how delicious a raw hamburger is after you’ve tried andouillette.

The subway music is much more interesting.  That’s not to say that any halfwit walking around with an accordion equals something good.  In New York, half these schmucks on the subway create some indiscernible racket and demand loose change from you.  Parisian minstrels, on the other hand, often sound like they might actually be good at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Deodorant.  Europe is gonna be so awesome when they discover deodorant.

Reclaiming the city from awful tourists

(source: Mark Armstrong Tumblr)

Unlike a lot of city dwellers who can’t wait to skip out of the town the minute the sweltering summer hits, I fucking love New York in the summer time.  Granted, I don’t live in the city, and if I was stuck in a smoldering shoebox in the city, I couldn’t be blamed for wanting to bail and glom on to my friends’ Hamptons rental at every available opportunity.

I live in the burbs of New York, and even though I spend every fucking day in the city at work, I love being in the city.  But with the onset of summer, I’m hastily reminded of the single-most grating aspect of city – the motherfucking tourists.

Motherfucking tourists are the fucking worst.

A couple of years ago, when I saw that picture above of the two-laned sidewalk, I thought my dreams had finally come true.  If I could vote, I would’ve re-elected Mayor Bloomberg as mayor for life.  Alas, it was a fucking stunt, and my dreams and hopes were crushed to smithereens.

What New Yorker wouldn’t relish some concerted initiative focused on making sure that tourists get and stay the fuck out of the way?

This morning I had to refill my subway metrocard.  Wouldn’t you know it, I get stuck behind two tourists.  They did everything you expect tourists to do – fumble around the touchscreen, going back and forth.  Which is understandable if you’ve never used the machine before.  But they were buying a shit ton of single-ride tickets, and chose to pay for each fucking ticket with motherfucking coins.  Coins.  Half a dozen single-ride tickets with goddamn coins.  Where the fuck did they score that many coins anyway?  There are no slot machines in the city, far as I know.  Pair of shitheads.

We need set up one subway card dispenser in some dark corner at each station.  If you take more than 10 seconds to buy your subway card from the regular machines, boom, you get locked out of the regular machines and you have to the shitty machine in the corner.  That’s fucking teach you.  Especially if you’re a New Yorker – stop buying your subway card like a goddamn tourist.  Subway card machines should be like the Soup Nazi.  You walk up, you punch the buttons precisely, you take your card and you walk away.  Quickly.  If you take more than 10 seconds, you gotta go to the dreaded tourist card machine in the corner where the wino using as a makeshift urinal.

You know what, let’s make it a whole checkout thing altogether.  In stores – I don’t care if it’s a small drugstore or a massive department store – we need to have dedicated checkout lanes for anyone with bulky backpacks, athletic sandals, fanny packs, soccer jerseys, and/or Hollister shopping bags.  That shit’s a dead giveaway you’re goddamn tourist ready fuck things up for the rest of us.  Special lanes for you so that you can fumble for loose change in that fanny pack while the rest of us can get our shit, get out, and get on with our goddamn day.

And why limit those tourist and local paths to sidewalks?  Put that shit on crosswalks as well.  I’m not sure what it’s like in other cities, here in New York, most of us will fucking jaywalk a Don’t Walk sign if we feel we’ve got anything more a 50% chance we’ll make it the other side of the street before getting splattered by that mad yellow cab careering towards us.  I got shit to do, I can’t be standing around waiting for some light.  But what good is that when you’ve got a wall of German tourists standing like they’re trying to defend a free kick at the World Cup in front of you?  I say we make ‘em stand in a tourist-only crosswalk lane while the rest of us are free to put our lives in our own hands and dodge traffic all day.  Like I said, I’ve got place to go and shit to do.

And how the fuck do we get around the whole tipping thing when it comes to tourists?  I get that tipping isn’t a big thing outside the U.S. – some more argue that plenty of assholes don’t tip within the U.S. either, but that’s another story.  Anyway, I was in dark, dank bar in the West Village a few weeks ago – one of those bullshit “secret” bars that EVERYONE knows about.  Well, I sat down for a few brews and this Swedish girl walks up to order some drinks for her friends seated at a nearby booth.  “Can I have a beer?” she says.  First of all, that’s completely retarded question to ask at a bar.  In any case, the kind barkeep offered a beer suggestion, she took it, got three pints, paid for the beers, LEFT NO TIP, and walked away.  The barkeep didn’t seem too bothered by it – probably not the first nor last bunch of clueless tourists who wandered into his bar that night.  But holy fuck, can these assholes please get some crib sheet when they arrive at the airport on what proper etiquette is expected of them when they come to NY?  Shit, if I’m obligated to try and converse in a bit of French when I’m in Paris, you sure as fuck are expected to tip the people serving you in NY bars and restaurants, bitch.

Here’s what a cheat sheet might look like (and of course it’d have to be written in goddamn Comic Sans – if it wasn’t written in Comic Sans, how you would know it’s completely stupid?):

All of which is to say that Big Gulps aren’t ruining New York.  Not bath salts.  Not douchey hipsters.  Not Tim Tebow (OK, maybe a bit).  It’s fucking tourists.  Goddamnit.

Jack White: design junkie first, musician second

I can’t believe that Jack White’s been around for about 15 years now.  But when you stop to consider all his different projects in, between, and after The White Stripes, you start to realize – how did he ever find the time to put so much music out in such little time?

In 15 years, we’ve been treated to ample servings of The White Stripes, two albums from The Raconteurs, another two from The Dead Weather.  And that’s not counting the many albums he’d produced for other artistes (like Wanda Jackson), all the collaborations with different artistes  (like Danger Mouse or Alicia Keys), and running his own record label, Third Man Records.  Now, we have his long-awaited debut solo album, “Blunderbuss”.

Jack White III sure is an industrious thirtysomething.

That said, Jack White’s offering has been pretty much the same the past decade-and-a-half.  No matter what band or collaboration he’s in, at the very core, he’s an obsessive white boy from Detroit who plays deep Mississippi blues.  White confessed that his entire sound has been developed on the basis of chasing the Son House sound.  Son House is Jack White’s great white whale.

But look at how he’s brilliantly packaged the Jack White brand so differently over the years.  We’ve always known about The White Stripes’ persistent red and white aesthetic, but I hadn’t didn’t realize how seriously he had engineered that persona until the New York Times Magazine article in which he divulged that The White Stripes walked away from their first label offer because the record company wanted to put their green logo on the spine of The White Stripes’ album.  That would never do for Jack White, he told the record company to get fucked, The White Stripes walked, and the rest is Grammy history.

(Source: http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/)

When White set up his side project, The Raconteurs, he quickly established a different aesthetic: bronze.  In live shows, White would play bronze-colored Gretsch guitars wired through bronze-colored pedals.  The first album would feature a bronze-colored frame.  All of which was to remind you that you were suddenly listening to another Jack White band not called The White Stripes that demanded your attention.

(Source: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN via austin360.com)

For his other side project, The Dead Weather, White would make yet another shift in his color palette.  Everything about The Dead Weather was black and white.  He would play a large Gretsch White Falcon, as would Jack Lawrence, the band’s bass player.  The band would frequently wear only black when playing live.

White’s record company, Third Man Records, bears a black-and-yellow theme.  The website, the employees in his Nashville record shop, all of it.  Jack White’s attention to the power of color isn’t limited to just his bands.

This week, we see the release of Jack White’s debut solo album, “Blunderbuss”.  And with that, of course we’re treated to another spectral branding of the artiste – Jack White has entered his Blue Period.

When you listen to “Blunderbuss”, it is unmistakably Jack White.  Sure, it doesn’t sound anything like The White Stripes (I feel “Blunderbuss” probably closest to a Raconteurs album), but the Jack White DNA is unmistakable.

Through all these iterations, Jack White hasn’t metamorphasized.  He’s stayed the same, he’s been faithful to his sound.  Unlike Madonna or Primal Scream through the years (can’t fucking believe I just compared Madonna with Primal Scream – just kill me now).  Jack White is Jack White is Jack White.  No matter what the aesthetic on the outside, he’s still Jack White doing the Jack Whitest things in the Jack Whitest ways.  Yet, his red-and-white guise is a different animal from his bronze guise, which in turn is different from his black-and-white guise, and so on.  I can’t wait to hear his Lone Ranger soundtrack.

Who else is as carefully thought out at Jack White these days?

Regardless of how “Blunderbuss” does (I’m sure it’ll sell just fine), surely that sort of attention to design has got to count for something in the Gobi desert that is the global music scene.

Jack White = fucking genius.

 

Move over Draper, Roger’s here

Let’s face it – Mad Men’s return hasn’t got off to a great start.  Quite the opposite, really.  I took a quick poll around the office the day after the show’s two-hour season debut and I think I got more thumbs-downs than I did thumbs-ups.  Which was weird considering how the interwebs seemed to explode with delight at Megan’s “Zou Bisou Bisou” performance (totally thumbs-up, amirite?)

Then two lazy, rather inconsequential episodes snoozed by.  Draper dreaming about banging the girl from Twin Peaks – really?  Betty (puke) getting fat and having a tumor scare – who gives a shit?  The show was starting to look pretty fucking grim.  Not the sort of series I was looking forward to.  This was turning into a downward spiral of pointless bullshit.

But then again, each season starts with a massive amount of hype, and it’s damn near impossible for any show to live up to that type of hype.  Which means each season I go through the same roller coaster ride – I’m pumped for the show, then I feel let down, which leads me to contemplate walking away from it, and before you know it, I’ve gobbled up another season.

Part of the reason I stick with the show is because it is so entirely self-indulgent for me.  I work in advertising.  With TV being completely overrun by cop shows and/or medical dramas, I like having one show that puts a spotlight on what I do for a living and what I love doing.  Not that Mad Men has any real sense of accurate representation of what I do on a daily basis.  It doesn’t really dive too deeply into the advertising side.  Like any good series on TV, it’s a show about flawed people behaving badly and making poor decisions.  This one just happens to use an agency as its canvas.

But self-indulgence aside, the true magnet of the show for me is the one character who is persistently under-appreciated in favor of Dapper Don.  Everyone – EVERYONE – loves Draper.  They love Jon Hamm.  Most people can’t pull the two apart.  They love Draper, they love his hair, his big arms, his chest fur, his swagger, his gaze, everything.  Fuck that.  Sure, he’s become the quintessential anti-hero in today’s TV, but four seasons in, we’re left with a hollow shell of what Draper used to be, and frankly, I’m tired of his shit.  I can hear the objections to this allegation already.  “He’s so dreamy” is no basis to worship a character on TV – that were the case, Draper’s become the Maroon 5 of Mad Men.

I’d be perfectly fine if Draper was written off the show.  Honestly, I would.

(from: LostInMyOwnAtmosphere)

Instead, I think most people are missing out on the genius of ROGER STERLING.  That guy fucking MAKES the show.  Sure, my fandom may have a generous slice of vicarious living involved, given that Sterling is an account guy and all, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he is easily one of the two best characters on TV today (the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey is the other, duh – and no sooner had I written that had I discovered that the Huffington Post drew a deserving comparison between the two).

Don’t get me wrong: Sterling is every bit as fucked up as everyone else on that show.  His sense of entitlement – having inherited the original Sterling Cooper from his father – matched with his brazen cockiness make for many, many cringetastic moments.  He’s put blackface on, had a heart attack, fathered Joan’s baby (we guess), wrote a memoir, married then quickly grew tired of his secretary, the list goes on and on.  And then there’s his dreading of age and irrelevance.

But as much as Sterling’s adventures are brilliant, his electric tongue is what makes him pure fucking gold.  Face it, Sterling’s lines are among the best on TV.  In last week’s episode, Signal 30, the absolute highlight of what was easily the best episode of Mad Men in ages was when Sterling advised Pryce on how to romance a client as they prepare to respond to an RFP for Jaguar.  It was mesmerizing.  The thought, the lines, the attitude, the delivery.  By the time Sterling walked out of Pryce’s office, I literally shot up and exclaimed to the missus, “ROGER STERLING IS A KILLER ACCOUNT GUY!!”  Whether or not that’s true is immaterial, Sterling’s scene was masterful.

Roger Sterling is single-handedly the most exciting personality on TV.  At the moment, he is the ONLY reason I watch Mad Men.  So if you haven’t been paying enough attention to him – and you know you haven’t  – it’s high time you became a Roger Sterling slut like me.

 

Downton Abbey is much, much sluttier than Mad Men

Like many others, I’m now in limbo waiting for the next season of Downton after ravenously eating up season 1 and season 2 in a hurry.  Thing is, I’m not even sure why I enjoy that fucking show.  When I think of Downton Abbey, the first thing that comes to mind is that I hate how each episode is written – I hate that an episode starts with some dramz but it always – ALWAYS! – gets tidily resolved by the end of that episode.  All wrapped up in a bow.  (Speaking of bow, what the fuck is up with O’Brien’s bangs?)

Whatever happened to having several arcs stretch across multiple episodes to let stories grow bigger and develop for our amusement?  Starting and ending shit within one episode is for the land of stupid sitcoms, bitches.  Stories like Cora’s baby or the disfigured Patrick with the Canadian accent (who oddly enough looked like a real-life version of South Park’s Canadians) lasted a mere 60 minutes.  Would it have been that hard to draw those out a bit longer so that more shit can happen to those stories?

Anyway, now that Downton’s gone ‘til at least the fall, we have Mad Men to fill the void.  I got so fucking tired of Mad Men towards the end of the last season, way, way back in 2010.  Maybe ‘cause there was a glaringly diminished appearance of Trudy on the show.  [Sidebar: Trudy is easily the hottest thing on television.  But then Megan came around, and that was cool, but then it went pear-shaped when Draper does a completely unfunny impersonation of Roger Sterling by trying to marry his secretary.  I guess a hint of the absurd is what keeps us on our toes, right?]

But can Mad Men properly fill the Downton void?  And that’s the way I see it, by the way – Mad Men is filling in the Downton Abbey void, not the other way ‘round.

Because I’m convinced that Downton Abbey is way sluttier than Mad Men.

Slutty how?  For starters, Lady Mary is with three dudes in two seasons – Kamel Pamouk, Sir Richard Carlisle, and Matthew Crawley.  Four, if you count the non-starter with Evelyn Napier (English accent AND a creepy girl’s name?  Must be evil).  The most screaming siren on Mad Men, Joan Holloway, only hooked up with two dudes, and one of them, she was actually married to.  Lady Mary Crawley?  What a trollop.

The proverbial heads of state are no better.  Look at Lord Grantham trying to shag a maid, while trying to semi-confess to some prior offense (when he tells Mary that she’s “not the first Crawley to make a mistake” – you know that shit’s gonna hit the fan in no time).   On the other hand, as far as what we know on Mad Men, Roger Sterling only hooked up with Joan before getting hitched to his secretary.  Roger Sterling is just the best character on Mad Men, bar none.

And then you’ve got those two hyenas, O’Brien and Thomas, on Downton.  I swear, those bangs on O’Brien are like the snakes on Medusa’s head.  And Thomas is a level of scumbag the likes of Mad Men haven’t even come close to.  There’s no Thomas equivalent on Mad Men.  Who’s the most evil person on Mad Men?  Let’s not talk about Draper, everything’s all me-me-me with him, he’s like a big child.  He’s not evil.  The most evil?  Pete Campbell?  Probably.  You put Pete Campbell up against O’Brien and Thomas, and you see who gets kicked in the nuts.  O’Brien killed an unborn baby, for fuck’s sake.  NOBODY on Mad Men has the balls to do that!

How about all the blackmail in Downton?  Between Carlisle’s threats regarding Mary’s shenanigans with Pamouk, and Mr. Bates’ evil hag of an ex-wife, it’s more like a Scorsese film than a period series.  The closest we got to blackmail in Mad Men was Campbell threatening to blow Draper’s Dick Whitman story.  Big fucking deal – what a non-starter that was.

Listen, I can go a million ways on this.  Besides, one’s set in York, and the other in New York – how far apart can these two shows be anyway?  The truth is, given the amazing array of poor decisions and bad behavior on Downton Abbey, I gotta say that Mad Men’s got a shit ton to live up to.  Something HUGE better go down this season if it’s going to measure to up to the guilty indulgence that is Downton Abbey. Maybe Betty kills Megan or something.  Or Pete gets splattered all over the road by drunk driving Duck (never trust a recurring character named after a water fowl, amirite?).  Fuck it, just bring a dowager on to Mad Men and we’ll call it even.

 

Teams with shitty uniforms don’t win shit

In college, one of my fraternity brothers bestowed this nugget of wisdom with me – teams’ performances often match the appeal of their uniforms.  Well, he didn’t exactly say it that way.  He was more like, “Teams with shitty uniforms never fucking win.”  Then he probably puked out the window after downing a case of Natty Light in our booze-free dorm.

So, yet another unoriginal idea from me, then.  Still, I’ve always kept this concept in the back of my head as I follow different sports season in, season out, year in, year out.  And you know what – he was fucking right.

Since I work in a creative industry (hah!), I’m always drawn to aesthetics.  I think it’s mostly because I probably always wanted to be a creative person.  But since I don’t do well with rejection (“What the fuck do you mean you don’t like my idea of midgets swimming with eels as an idea to sell penis pills?!”), I never pursued it properly.  Doesn’t stop me from always judging things by their aesthetics.  You don’t have to be Steve fucking Jobs to constantly see that things can work and look better.  Case in point: bigger boobs win almost all the time.  You know I’m right.

Anyway, shitty uniforms.  My buddy Keith was fucking right – teams with shitty uniforms don’t win shit.  The sport world is absolutely littered with examples to support this.

Look at the Denver Broncos.   I’m not talking about Jesus H. Tebow.  This pre-dates him by over a decade.  This involves his boss upstairs.  Again, not talking about God, let it go already.  John Elway, bitches.  That shitty orange and royal blue with the snorting horse in the D cursed Elway for almost his entire career.  Thank fuck they went to the Cyber Bronco design just in time.  Design change = instant Super Bowls.  Two of ‘em, in fact.

 

[Side note:  While I’m so, so fucking tired of the zoo that is Tebow Time, I just need to say that if Tebow was as fucking pious as he keeps telling us, he wouldn’t have been a professional football player.  This fucker chooses the one profession outside of the clergy that absolutely requires that you work on the Sabbath.  What a dick.]

More evidence?  The Tampa Bay Bucs had the pussiest orange uniforms ever.  They were completely and utterly useless.  Until they went to the pewter helmets and red jerseys.  And they dropped the creamsicle color, the stupid swashbuckler and went with a proper pirate logo. Sure, they became much more cartoonish – they have a pirate ship with real working cannon right there in their stadium! – but that swashbuckler was such a douchebag logo.  And wasn’t (isn’t?) Jon Gruden a real-life cartoon anyway?  In any case, new uniforms = Super Bowl.

Speaking of naff-looking mascots, I present the fucking New England Patriots.  Look what happened when they dropped Paul Bunyan Revere (EDIT: idiot moment) in a three-point stance.  Flashy silver helmet, stylized logo that’s not vomit-inducing = dynasty.  Granted, it’s a dynasty of voodoo-wielding, peeping tom assholes.  But a dynasty is a dynasty anyway you get it.

 

A subtler, less successful example would be the Philadelphia Eagles.  The Eagles went from looking like green M&Ms to that slick-looking hunter green – it’s just a much cooler shade of green, isn’t it.  With that new green, they consistently marched into the playoffs (in 2011, it appears that the new uniform mojo has completely worn off).  Fuck Andy Reid, it was the uniforms.

On the other hand, teams that constantly change their colors and/or logos deserve to fuck right off.  The most egregious offenders?  The MLB and the NBA.  Bar none.  How many times have the Texas Rangers, the Arizona Diamondbacks, or the Houston Astros changed their team colors?  Or the Milwaukee Bucks or the New Jersey Nets (Brooklyn represent!)?  Fuck ‘em.  Pick your goddamn colors and stick with them.  Learn to create a fucking legacy instead of trying to be like the sports equivalent of InStyle magazine.

So by definition, if teams with cool uniforms do more winning, then the reverse has to be true – teams with shitty uniforms don’t win shit.  This elite class of failures is practically overrun with willing participant teams: the New York Mets and Jets (spiritually these two are the exact same team who happen to play with different-shaped balls), the aforementioned Milwaukee Bucks, the New York Islanders, the Miami Dolphins (their stupid cetacean is wearing a goddamn helmet… on a helmet), and the reigning king of retarded uniforms, the University of Maryland football team.  Listen, you half-shell fuckwits, if you’re gonna show up on the field looking like a truck full of Skittles slammed into your locker room before the game, you’re gonna get your asses kicked like the goddamn clowns you resemble.

Now I’m off to figure out what I can wear with my University of Texas sweatshirt which I made the mistake of buying when I visited Austin.  That burnt orange color is bullshit and matches with NOTHING.

 

Some poorly-dressed guy tried to knife me while I was having lunch (no, not really)

Sorry about the title, I couldn’t be arsed to come up with a theme to cover the five things below:

 

The other week, we had lunch brought into the office – the shallow thrill of a “working lunch”! – and the countertop on which the lunch was laid out had a ton of these white cans huddled together. It took a while for me to realize that regular Coke and Diet Coke are now the same fucking color.  What packaging design whiz in Atlanta decided that this was a clever idea?  Also, was the entire legal department out on vacation that week?  Imagine the one diabetic kid who reaches for regular Coke thinking it’s a Diet Coke, then collapses into a diabetic coma?  All because of these fuckheads at Coke never once thought that making the regular and sugar-free versions of their most popular drink the same color was a poor idea.  Nevermind the diabetic kid, why the fuck are you guys making it so fucking hard for the rest of us to pick between diet and full fat?  Assholes.

 

And speaking of lunch, here is a picture of an Italian sub I picked up the other day.  Yes, that is exactly what you think it is – fake foreign newsprint used to wrap up my sandwich.  Holy shit, the print medium is so fucking dead that even real newspapers are being rejected for this highly disposable purpose.  The fact that the fake newsprint had a big “London” printed on it only served to aggravate me further – as if a fake British paper will infuse some sense of quirky “authenticity” to my hastily made sandwich.  It’s not even printed on regular paper; it’s like parchment paper.   As if to further mimic how newspapers go all translucent when the grease from the sandwich soaks into it.  Wow, just like a proper, greasy chip shop in Essex!  Kindly fuck off, sir.

 

When has the gaudy-tie-on-a-black-shirt-with-a-light-suit look ever worked for anyone?  EVER?!  Granted, the flagrant nose pick does complete the look, I will give you that.

 

This knife is the single-most loathsome thing in my kitchen.  It’ll also bring no surprise whatsoever that this is wifey’s favorite knife in our collection.  Of course.  She insists on trying using this stupid little knife with the perfectly flat edge to cut everything.  Meanwhile, THIS PIECE OF SHIT CUTS NOTHING!  Try as hard as you will, but that straight edge will fail to make a clean cut through jello.  Frankly, I have more success slicing tofu with a hammer.  Look at that stupid flat edge.  Fuck the idea that the tried and true design of having a knife edge that curves and tapers at the tip works perfectly well 99.99% of the time.  Like the big fuck-off knives that I like to use.  The sort that I’m constantly sharpening (dull kitchen knives are the assholes of the kitchen countertop).  But those just won’t do for the missus – no, she insists on keeping this useless metal stump around.  I’m quite sure it’s for the express purpose of annoying the piss out of me.

I’m quite sure that short of Uggs, these are the most retarded things you could possibly stuff your feet into.  My brother recently saw my sneakers, liked its stupid squiggly sole (like the red knife, that sole DOES NOTHING) and promptly ordered himself a pair.  Except he chose one that makes it look like he’s just trampled a dozen Smurfs to death.  Someone should take away my brother’s driving license.  Clearly he’s clinically blind.

Congratulations, you are the stupidest people on earth

Ahhh, the thrill of holiday shopping.  Made more fun when shopping at an outlet mall.  And at the outlet mall, you will see the stupidest people on earth:

Notice the almost-all-Asian line-up outside the Burberry store.  My people are idiots sometimes.  I’ve already gone on record with my unending loathing of all things Burberry, so to see fuckwits line up for the privilege of entering the store to blow shitloads of cash on that ghastly brown plaid, it’s enough to make me want to take a baseball bat to every asshole in that line.  What a queue of douchebags.

This sight caused several minutes of gut-busting hilarity.  There were easily 50 fucktards lined up outside the Coach store.  Motherfucking Coach.  The fucking Applebee’s of bagware.  And these assholes were lined up for hours trying to get in and to buy some of that shit.  That’s like standing around waiting to order a greasy, deep-fried onion.  Oh wait, people do that at Outback restaurants, don’t they.  Fuck, people are stupid.

Welcome to 2005, stupid.  The next most hilarious line at the outlet mall: the line of 50 or so dummies stretched to the end of that building.  For fucking Uggs.  Those stupid boots that so fucking dated, Napoleon Dynamite’s moonboots were laughing at these assholes.

And speaking of assholes:

“I tiny-dicked shitbag” more like.  It took every ounce of self-restraint not to cut that convertible top open and take a shit in the driver’s seat.  Rule my steaming pile, you festering testicle.

Holiday shopping, ain’t it grand.

River of Regret

You’ve done some stupid shit, I’ve done some stupid shit, we’ve all done some stupid shit.  And we all live to regret some of it.

 

Colored prescription lenses.  Fuck you, Bono.  Just look at his fucking stupid doucheface.  Because of this fuckhead, everyone in the early 2000s seemed to aspire to look like a colossal douchebag.  Half my friends were sporting a pair of prescription glasses with colored lenses.  “Don’t mind me while I deliberately make everything I look at blue!  I don’t even need Viagra to make everything look blue!”  And the brilliant thing is almost all of them tossed out their stupid glasses after about a week.  Because it’s fucking stupid to walk around with colored lenses.

 

MiniDisc player.  I bought one of these fucking things while living in the U.K.  I really thought it was a clever idea at the time.  Fucking paid top dollar (or quid in this case) for it, too.  “Look at me, Mr. Cutting Edge!  Fuck portable CD players!”  This was BIP (before iPods).  How the fuck did the MiniDisc player ever work for anyone?  They had the capacity of newborn’s bladder.  They had the battery life of about 2 minutes.  They were heavy as shit.  And I can’t even remember how I got my music onto the MiniDiscs.  But because I paid a shitload of money for it, I still have the fucking player today… and all the MiniDiscs I made. Clutter classic.  What a pointless piece of shit that was.  If you owned one of these pieces of shit, you’d be filled with regret, too, I’ll bet.  Even the Japanese, the only remaining MiniDisc market in the world, have given up.

 

Tramp stamp and you’re a dude.  Nice going, bro.  This was one of my highlights this past summer.  It brought me an immeasurable amount of joy seeing these 30-something/40-year old douchebags by the pool, sporting really shitty tramp stamps.   You know even though these shitheads can’t see their stupid tats every day, the fact that it’s sitting in the small of their back has got to be gnawing away at their tiny brains.  BWAHAHAHAHAH, fuckers.

But here I am, inkless and I’ve been mulling over it for the better part of a dozen years.  I never got any ink because I live in fear that I’d regret the design one day.  Yet, over the course of the dozen years or so, I’ve been unwavering in the design I’ve chosen in my head or where I’d want to put the ink.  So what the fuck was I worried about?  But it’s too late now.  I think getting ink for the first time in your mid-30s is a bullshit move.  If I didn’t have the balls to do it in my 20s, I have no fucking business getting ink in my 30s.  It’s screams of Harrison Ford’s retarded earring.  Too fucking late, move the fuck on.  My regret now is not getting ink when I had a chance.

 

Burberry coat.  This is another thing that fills me with regret.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Years ago, I bought a Burberry coat.  Nothing over the top, just a grey coat with the tell-tale plaid lining.  A proper dignified article of clothing, right?   Sure, for about a week, before I realized that Burberry is out and out chav-wear!  I look at that chavtastic brown plaid and I wanna puke now.  But… because of what I spent on the stupid coat, I can’t bear to give it away.  And I wouldn’t wear any of this Burberry shit if my life depended on it.  I buy some really stupid things sometimes.