SIX IDEAS I HAVE FOR MADE FOR TV MOVIES

To say I’m not very chummy with the film industry is a bit of an understatement.  Movies are very long and require too much of my attention to stay focused on everything that’s going on. 
 
Television is much different for me.  While most hipsters, douchebags, and exercise freaks will constantly mention that they don’t watch TV, I’m the first to pipe up and claim that I’m a huge fan of the medium.  I enjoy television because in a way it’s sort of a sick social commentary on how drastically fucked up everything has become in such a short amount of time. 
 
Still, a lot of people love the movie format.  Whether it’s renting a movie from Blockbuster, getting a new release in their Mailbox from Netflix, or simply watching whatever was in the DVD player they stole out of someone’s garage just a few hours earlier, people will probably always love movies. 
 
So I’ll go ahead and meet you halfway at a format that I feel has declined in quality over the past several years – The made for TV movie.  The made for TV movie has been buttfucked by the fine people at Lifetime and countless other TV channels so many times that it wouldn’t shock me one bit if there were movies in production about said buttfucking.  It never used to be this way.  For example, when I was in grade school, I vaguely remember there was a made for TV movie on PBS about the life of Johnny Appleseed starring none other than Martin Short.  It was a well thought-out docu-drama about the life of a man who contributed to society by travelling the country planting apple seedlings, then narrowly escaped lynching because everyone thought he was fruity (see what I did there?), and in the end didn’t even live long enough to see the trees grow. 
 
You know what?  That’s a shitty example.  The point is, I’m not sure I even have a point anymore.  But I do have a few ideas for inspirational made for TV movies that I personally think would be entertaining.  

1.  “Parts of My Junk”
 
A young man whose dick and balls are blown off in a tragic firework accident as a teenager makes it his life’s work to find the detective that collected the “evidence”, who ended up having to join the witness protection weeks after the original incident.  But along the way, he finds out the lessons he’s about to learn are much more important than the shriveled remnants of his sack.  At the end of the movie he is put on trial for double murder after two guys in a bathroom die laughing at him squatting over a urinal trying to take a piss.  Thankfully, the detective shows up during the closing arguments and defends the young man’s lifelong struggle.  The all-male jury feels instant sympathy for the sense of detachment he’s felt since that day, and acquits him. 

 
Starring:  Anthony Michael Hall, because you wouldn’t have to hire two different actors to play him as a teenager and an adult, and he always has that look on his face like he just had his dick and balls blown off anyway.   
 
2.  “No, Seriously, When is This Guy Going Home?” 
 
A man who had been hit by a train after his car died at a crossing is able to convince the Make-A-Wish foundation that he might not have much longer to live due to his injuries.  The foundation decides to grant his wish, which is ironically to go on tour for a week with that band Train that sings all of that terrible pop-rock that’s so popular in shopping malls and leper colonies.  However, due to a massive error in the paperwork he gets to stay on tour with Train as long as he lives.  The remainder of the film deals with how the band handles his annoying and totally uninspiring presence while on tour and in the studio, and how after a desperate case of writer’s block they’re able to bounce back with a number one hit that members of the workforce who ride elevators a lot seem to enjoy so much.  Spoiler alert:  The guy who was originally hit by the train dies, although I haven’t decided how just yet. 
 
Starring:  Of course the ideal solution that would please most of us who have taste would be to have the band play themselves so that they would consider shelving their recording career thus ceasing to torture us with their horrible music.  But it would almost even be funnier to have some band that was popular in the eighties but is totally fucking broke now play the part of the band Train. 
 
3.  “We Have So Much To talk About” 
 
A guy who’s particularly into older women orders a hooker via a personal advertisement requesting “generous men only” on Craigslist, only to find out that the prostitute ends up being his mother.  The length of silence when she finally opens the door to see the son she abandoned isn’t quite as long as the part in “Cast Away” that doesn’t have any dialogue, but it sure as hell feels like it. 
 
Starring:  Elizabeth Berkeley looks old enough nowadays to be both a mother and a Craigslist hooker, so that’s an easy pick.  The younger guy could either be played by Jesse Eisenberg or Reba McIntyre, who it might be a good idea to have on set in case Berkeley snaps because she could play that part as well.  
 
4.  “But Everything Still Tastes like Rex” 
 
A heartbreaking story of a young waitress who goes on a serious drinking binge in her apartment one night, only to wake up the next morning and realize that she ate her dog.  The film chronicles her further decent into anorexia due to the fact that everything she eats sort of reminds her of…well you get the picture.  However the plot takes a surprisingly positive turn as she eventually quits the sauce and deals with her emotional trauma by opening up her own Vietnamese restaurant which becomes wildly (and domestically) successful as she eventually gets used to the taste. 
 
Starring:  Jennifer Love Hewitt, who is probably already in the building anyway so why the hell not?  

5.  “He Went To Jared”

How this for an “against all odds” story:  A fourteen year old working in a diamond mine in Zaire escapes slavery to come to America and seek a better life.  In a bizzare twist, he ends up being one of the most popular jewelry salesmen in the United States.  His family writes him letters telling him that they wish nothing more to be able to see his new successful lifestyle, but he emails them back and tells them to get back to work – not even thinking for a second that they might not have purchased a computer yet.  The moral of the story?  If you’re going to work in a diamond mine, at least buy a computer so your relatives can get a hold of you.

Starring:  I’m not exactly familiar with which actors from Zaire are popular, but I’d bet that anybody not chained to anything would be prefect for the part, and that their female counterparts likely wouldn’t have much of a say in the matter. 

6.  “We Found Love at the Bottom of a Bottle” 

A man has called 911 because he has shoved a Coke bottle up his asshole and can’t get it out.  An EMT worker is called to his beautiful house in the suburbs where he walks in on this odd scenario.  Their eyes meet, and instantly they fall in love.  Throughout their relationship they face numerous hurdles of social persecution and go on to be well paid spokesmen, giving many public speaking engagements warning people of the dangers of cramming inanimate objects up their shitter. 

Starring:  George Clooney and someone else that looks a lot like George Clooney. 
 
And as with most inspirational made for TV movies, you can clearly see that even though the main character is able to overcome incredible adversity of some sort there’s still something inherently depressing about watching a story about it in your slippers. 
 
I can’t wait to read some of the hate mail and/or comments I’ll be getting about this one.  Please direct all hate mail to xxxxxx@xxxx.com I never check that account anyway.

NFL WEEK SEVEN WRAPUP

by Ryan Meehan

For the most part week seven brought us some very poor football. There appears to be a little bit of controversy over what was said or what wasn’t said by Cliff Avril and Ndamokang Suh after they sacked Matt Ryan and it looked as though he was going to be injured badly. As fate would have it, Ryan is fine and Suh and Avril are getting blasted on the air and will likely face some sort of fines. Oh, and Vikings defensive end Brian Robison kicked Packers guard square in the crotch, there’s very little debate about that because it was captured on film. Let’s take a look at what else went down:

Bears 24, Buccaneers 18

This game was played in London, England and we gave the Brits a good product this time. Matt Forte is hands down the NFC Offensive player of the week, with 145 rushing yards and a touchdown. Cutler didn’t have a great day, but was able to run the offense well even though I’m sure he’s still not cool with all the play calling. Chicago almost let this one get away, thankfully Josh Freeman is still very much in the developmental stage of NFL quarterbacking. Devin Hester caught 4 balls for 46 yards, which should excite you if you’re a Bears fan because it means they’re trying to work him into the offense more. He can’t run a reverse to save his life though, maybe it’s too obvious the ball is coming his way.

Chiefs 28, Raiders 0

Yep, you read that right. I have to admit I had no idea this was going down. Oakland used both Kyle Boller and Carson Palmer, switching to the latter in the third quarter. Each threw three picks (one pick six each) and looked very shaky at best, and combined for a QBR of 19.8. The Chiefs are back to .500 but trust me, they’re really nowhere near that good. This is a rough loss for the Raiders because this is one that could literally destroy their whole year. Think about it: They got shutout at home by four touchdowns against a Chiefs team whose quarterback went 15 for 30 and passed for only 161 yards. They deserve all the shit that will be talked about them this week and then some. End transmission.

Broncos 18, Dolphins 15

To be brutally honest with you, even though Tim Tebow engineered a great come from behind victory in this one we didn’t really learn any new information about him. We already knew he was a tireless worker and wouldn’t give up, and that he is a born leader. Beating the Dolphins in overtime doesn’t really show me a whole lot. The biggest question mark here is why Tony Sporano decided to go for the two point conversion instead of the extra point, which would have won the Miami the game. I don’t give a shit what that chart says, if it’s a 6-0 game through three quarters and both teams are struggling to get across the field, you settle for having 13 points and you’re happy with it. I expect Sporano to be fired here sooner rather than later, and personally I think he’s trying to expedite the whole process.

Texans 41, Titans 7

I told you the Titans were toy. And I knew that once the Texans’ schedule eased up they’d be able to show people what they were truly capable of. I wasn’t exactly sure who Tennessee thought they were kidding besides themselves thinking they could actually win the division, even with the Colts playing as poorly as they have been playing. Arian Foster caught a screen pass that he took 78 yards to the house, proving that a running back that can catch short passes can end up being the most valuable player on your roster. Schaub shut a lot of his fairweather haters up in this one.

Browns 6, Seahawks 3

If you pay money to get into see a pro football game, somebody better score a touchdown. But then again, if you paid money to see the Browns play the Seahawks, I don’t really have a whole lot of sympathy for you to begin with. The stat sheet from this game is nothing short of hilarious. I was watching NFL Live earlier and there was a receiver from the Browns that caught a pass in Seahawks territory and the promptly got up and made the move all of the receivers are making where they mimic the official’s first down signal, only he did it in the wrong direction. That was pretty much this entire game in a nutshell.

Steelers 32, Cardinals 20

When Ken Wisenhunt wakes up this morning he’s going to have a lot of thinking to do. The Arizona Cardinals are 1-5 and it looks as if they are stuck with a quarterback that is in way over his head. Kevin Kolb is missing easy throws and looks very uncomfortable. He’s not exactly getting fantastic pass protection all of the time, but even when he is it still looks like he doesn’t have a very good concept of the overall pace of the game. The team as a whole is in a very rough spot when you consider that San Francisco is running away from the other three teams in a division where there’s absolutely no chance of producing a wild card whatsoever. Ben Roethlisberger had a hell of a day, going 26 for 39 and throwing for 361 yards. But this was a game that I expected them to win, and I’m sure they will find it to be more of a test next week when the New England Patriots come to town.

Packers 33, Vikings 27

As formidable as the Packers look in the win column, teams are slowly finding ways to expose their weaknesses but in the end it never seems to be enough. Minnesota controlled the first half of this game and the Packers had me legitimately worried. Aaron Rodgers completed his first 13 passes, and the fourteenth was placed perfectly in Randall Cobb’s hands but he dropped it. For the life of me I can’t figure out how Green Bay only scored 33 points here. They were behind the entire first half, but what I really like about the Packers is they remain calm when those types of things happen and end up on top. Christian Ponder made a couple good throws but overall he only completed 13 of 32 so he’s got a lot of work to do.

Jets 27, Chargers 21

It’s safe to say that the team that needed the victory the most prevailed here. Whereas this didn’t have to be a game that the Chargers expected to win, Rex’s Jets had to have this one and they were lucky enough to mount a comeback. The Chargers can afford this loss especially when you consider what happened to the Raiders. But they are going to likely keep it in idle and coast their way to another AFC West Championship. I heard a really, really dumb quote from San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers after the game. He said something along the lines of “For the last six months everybody’s been talking about how the regular season doesn’t matter, and now everybody wants to talk about the regular season all of a sudden”. Couple things about that verbal abortion: If you don’t play well in the regular season, chances are that you aren’t going to get to the playoffs to begin with. Also, the media is concerned with what’s happening right now…BECAUSE THEY ARE THE FUCKING MEDIA AND THAT’S THEIR DAMN JOB. If the playoffs were in progress right now, everybody would be discussing that. And for as much as these guys say that they ignore what the media is saying, they sure seem to be well-versed with what’s been said about them the second they start losing. And here’s another reason I don’t play fantasy football: Think about how many people benched Plaxico Burress this week instead of someone else. He would finish with three touchdowns on the day.

Falcons 23, Lions 16

And just like that, the Lions have lost two straight home games. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time considering the Bears are now red hot. I’m hearing some debate on sports talk radio today about whether or not the Lions are a dirty team. I don’t think they are necessarily a dirty team collectively but I think a couple of those guys (and yes, Suh is one of them) need to scale back the excessive celebration. It’s just a sack anyway, it’s not like it’s a Safety in the Super Bowl. I understand that some of them are pumped, but seriously…settle down. The real news here is that the Lions could be in real trouble as Matthew Stafford might have injured his ankle on the last series. (As of Monday night coach Jim Schwarz is saying he’s day to day) As for the Falcons, they have no real reason to change their gameplan. Give the ball to Michael Turner between 20 to 30 times every game, then split everything in the air between White (who made a hell of a touchdown catch Sunday), Douglas (who is a bit of a third wheel but is playing excellent football right now), and Tony Gonzalez (who passed Cris Carter on the all time receptions list and is now number two). Monday their coach Mike Smith gave them an entire seven days off due to their bye week next Sunday.

Panthers 33, Redskins 20

So Washington played very poor defense in this game. Looking back on it I can’t really say that this was even an upset. The Redskins aren’t nearly as good as they appeared to be a couple of weeks ago. And while they had previously been able to avoid the injury bug that had bitten other teams so severely, they’re in real trouble because they just lost leading rusher Tim Hightower for the rest of the year to a torn ACL. It’s a shame because he was having a great season. Now, let’s look at Carolina. Previously on the Cam Newton show, he had been putting up some great stats but not getting the Ws. Sunday he went 18 for 23 with no picks and they got the win. Go figure.

Cowboys 34, Rams 7

Rookie running back DeMarco Murray rushed for 253 yards against the Rams, which was a franchise record. While 253 yards is usually a pretty large number that you would expect to be a franchise record, remember that this is a Dallas franchise that in the past employed the services of both Tony Dorsett and Emmitt Smith. That’s the fascinating thing to me, that neither one of those guys ever had a game where they had that many rushing yards. The passing game looked to be spread around pretty well: Both Jason Witten and Dez Bryant had a touchdown. Other than that, nothing much to see here as I expected Dallas to win big.

Saints 62, Colts 7

I actually enjoyed watching this even though it was a blowout. The “Suck For Luck” campaign has started for sure. For a moment, I thought the Saints might actually make it to seventy. You know a game is getting out of hand in the middle of the season when a team pulls their starting quarterback before the third quarter ends. Drew Brees had 5 touchdown passes and passed for a measly 325 yards, and Sproles would have had a lot more than 88 on the ground if they had actually needed a running game. Marques Colston also have seven receptions, two of which were touchdowns. Hopefully Mark Ingram’s bruised heel won’t be a long term issue for the team in the weeks to comes.

Jaguars 12, Ravens 7

I have to take serious issue with this because Baltimore was my dark horse. Explain to me how this works: The Ravens beat the Texans, but lose to the Jaguars AND the Titans? I don’t understand that. Jones Drew had 105 yards and Scobee kicked 4 field goals and that’s all it takes to beat the team that a lot of analysts were saying was the 2nd best team in the league Monday morning? I’m very, very disappointed in the Ravens. I think age might be finally catching up with them.

Bonus Comment for the week:

Since “Suck For Luck” seems to be a popular tending topic on Twitter, I’ll go ahead and address it now. And now is a great time to address it because I don’t want this bullshit clogging up the internet week fifteen when we should be spending our time discussing good teams that are vying for playoff positioning. There are three teams that are currently winless in the NFL: The Colts, the Rams, and the Dolphins. The Rams can’t be the worst team because their schedule is pretty tough this year. And it can’t be the Colts, because even with Manning on the bench, they’re still a very talented football team that employs the likes of Dallas Clark, Dwight Freeney, and Robert Mathis. The Dolphins are easily the worst team in the NFL. They have no idea who they want to be their quarterback, they play like shit at home, and have one of the worst coaches in the history of professional sports. So at the moment, they deserve Andrew Luck the most. They certainly are doing their best to suck, that’s for sure.

We are East End Philadelphia and we don’t fuck around.

Meehan

NFL WEEK SIX WRAPUP

by Ryan Meehan
 
The NFL is unpredictable this year:  The Indianapolis Colts are 0-6 and the San Francisco 49ers are 5-1.  Thus proving that this is hardly an exact science and the playoffs are going to look much different than a lot of us expected. 

The team that suffered the most severe injury this week was the Oakland Raiders, who lost Jason Campbell for the remainder of the season due to a broken collarbone.  From everything I’m hearing today the Raiders are doing everything in their power to try and convince the Bengals to trade Carson Palmer to salvage their season.  Although I’ve thought that Cincinnati’s front office has been extremely stubborn with the way they’ve held on to Palmer, I’m flip-flopping here and saying they shouldn’t make the trade because of how similar those two teams are.  Think about it:  Both teams are 4-2 and it’s highly unlikely either of them will win their respective divisions.  That might mean that they’re going to be fighting for one of the two remaining playoff spots (the other one will likely be filled by someone from the AFC East) so it wouldn’t make a lot of sense from a strategic standpoint to essentially give Palmer to a team they might find themselves head to head with week seventeen.  I’ve also heard that they are going to take a look at David Garrard, but it’s going to have to be a very long and hard look to see both where his focus has been and how much weight he’s put on since the Jaguars cut him in August.  If that doesn’t work out they’re going to have to drop down to the next level and start surveying the Trent Edwards-type players and maybe even some CFL starters now that their season is winding down. 

Let’s take a look around the rest of the league and see what happened in week six. 
 
Patriots 20, Cowboys 16
 
Tom Brady did not have a great game in this one.  But as he’s done so many times, he led his team down the field with two minutes to go and left virtually no time on the clock for Dallas to retaliate.  There’s a certain awareness of the pace of the game that all of the greats have had.  Montana had it, Elway had it, and Brady’s got it too.  They only scored twenty points and he had two picks, but he always brings it with the game on the line.  Dallas really didn’t play poorly, but they were expecting to see much more disorderly defensive schemes than what New England showed them on Sunday. 
 
Giants 27, Bills 24
 
This was an awfully intense matchup from start to finish and thank God the Giants won.  The two long touchdown runs that the Bills had worry me not just because New York is prone to giving up big plays, but also because both guys ran into the endzone completely untouched.  But when the smoke cleared, the Giants were on top in the NFC East.  Ryan Fitzpatrick made a very key mistake late in the game throwing an interception to Corey Webster on a drive that could have very easily sealed the win for Buffalo.  The Giants’ problem here is you can’t always wait for the other team to make such an obvious mistake in order to set yourself up to win.  You have to actually go out and put yourself in position to do so. 
 
Packers 24, Rams 3
 
Other than the Jordy Nelson touchdown there was really nothing to see here.  I expected the Packers to win by more but a win is a win.  I thought the AJ Hawk thing was funny, flipping off his own sideline.  People need to lighten the fuck up anyway.  Coach McCarthy was trying to downplay the offense getting shut out in the second half, but I find it hard to believe that he didn’t give the whole “OK guys, we’re up by 21, let’s just make sure that nobody gets hurt here and still win.”  I’d give that speech, it’s not like the Rams could overcome a 21 point deficit against even the second stringers on a Super Bowl champion team.  And that Super Bowl champion team is the only undefeated team left in the NFL. 
 
Bengals 27, Colts 17
 
The Bengals are 4-2 and playing some good football behind Andy Dalton.  They won’t win the division I can guarantee you that, but at least they are giving the fans something interesting to watch.  The Colts seem to get worse every week.  Dallas Clark’s one handed touchdown grab was pretty impressive, but something tells me it didn’t really mean a lot to him.  And I’m sure the two late turnovers didn’t perk up his mood either. 
 
Ravens 29, Texans 14
 

Baltimore = Meehan’s Dark Horse.  It’s time for people to start taking the Ravens seriously.  Of course it’s their defense, we all know by now that’s their bread and butter.  But on the other side of the football, Ray Rice is slowly making himself a household name.  He’s a great all purpose back because he can run those short routes and break one for a twenty or thirty yard gain if the opposing team isn’t expecting it to be thrown this way.  If I was playing the Ravens anytime soon I’d certainly point that out in the film room as a lot of teams don’t seem to be taking note.  The rest of the league is doing almost everything possible to make sure the Texans are completely set up to succeed this year and finally take that next step and there they are stuck at .500 poised for yet another second half collapse.  Unreal. 

Buccaneers 26, Saints 20
 
Drew Brees became the first player to throw for 350 yards in 5 straight games, and Saints head coach Sean Peyton was hit on the sideline by one of his own players and suffered a fractured tibia.  I was shocked by the outcome of this game: a big loss for the Saints here against a team which I still believe they are better than.  I’m still not a huge believer in Josh Freeman.  Sure he threw for 303 yards, but his completion percentage wasn’t astounding and he didn’t make any extremely impressive throws.  It will be interesting to see how he handles the pressure of playing at Wembley Stadium in England next week against a revitalized Bears team.  The brightest spot for the Bucs was that they got 109 yards from one Earnest Graham who was starting due to a knee injury to LeGarrette Blount. 

49ers 25, Lions 19
 
Obviously everybody’s talking about the overhyped “confrontation” between the two coaches at the end of this game, but the real story here was the Lions losing at home where they have played very well as of late.  Frank Gore was able to do this week what Matt Forte couldn’t do agains the Lions last Monday night, rushing for over a hundred yards once again.  This might be a potential playoff rematch come January.  It feels as if I should have more to say here but I don’t. 
 
Falcons 31, Panthers 17
 
Atlanta needed this game very badly and they got it.  Michael Turner ran for 139 yards and two touchdowns and their gameplan was 60% rush and 40% pass.  It’s not a guaranteed recipe for success, but I think against mediocre teams that’s what they have to stick with for now.  Carolina keeps losing and Cam Newton is now leading the league in interceptions.  They definitely need more pieces around him to ensure that they’ll end up in the postseason at some point.  He did have a pretty telling quote after the game:  “At some point, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what can you do to make it better,” Newton said. “I’m doing a self-evaluation as we speak. It’s not the time that you point the fingers and say, ‘It’s his fault.’ It’s time that we as a team take ownership of ourselves.”  What he’s basically saying is “I can only do so much, everybody throws picks, I need a little bit more out of the rest of the squad.”  He does appear to like to throw to Shockey quite a bit, and Steve Smith is still Steve Smith, but without that two headed monster in the backfield that they used to have, that puts a lot of pressure on a rookie quarterback.  And the Falcons?  Zero turnovers. 

 
Raiders 24, Browns 17
 
One of the good things about having a reliable kicker like Sebastian Janikowski is that the opposition almost never expects you to run a fake field goal.  But that’s just what the Raiders did, and it worked.  As stated earlier, the Raiders lost starter Jason Campbell and replaced him with Kyle Boller, who threw for 100 yards but was unable to punch it in.  The jury is still out on Boller as an NFL starter, and there’s no way Terrell Pryor is ready yet so I’m sure they have plenty of phone calls to make this week.  Either way, the Raiders are doing a majority of their damage on the ground so they’re still in great position to make a wild card run. 
 
Steelers 17, Jaguars 13
 
Mike Tomlin didn’t seem too amped after the end of this one, and with good reason.  Pittsburgh should have won this game by WAY more than 4 points.  There was a strange moment in the late minutes of this one where Troy Polamalu made a great play and suffered what appeared to be a concussion, and some dumbass (I think it was Ryan Clark) came over and knocked helmets with him on the sideline.  Talk about friendly fire…yikes.  The Steelers are banged up in general and that certainly isn’t going to help.  As for the Jaguars, they’re going to make for an excellent punching bag for the Ravens next Monday night.  (And who the fuck scheduled Jacksonville to play on Monday Night Football anyway?)
 
Eagles 20, Redskins 13
 
Rex Grossman threw four interceptions (three to the same guy, Kurt Coleman) and was benched shortly thereafter for John Beck who you won’t become familiar with as soon as the Redskins sink below .500 again.  The Eagles had to win this game and although they didn’t play to the best of their abilities, they are starting to show some return on investment from some of those position players on defense, particularly Nnamdi Asomugha.  I read something really interesting about him this week – he has a condition called Deuteranomaly which is a form of color blindness that causes him difficulty when it comes to distinguishing between lighter colors.  (You’ll never get that five seconds of your life back)  But when you look at the numbers from this game, I’d think that Philly wouldn’t have won this game if Rex Grossman hadn’t done such a shitty job all afternoon.  They dominated in time of possession, LeSean McCoy rushed for 126 yards, and picked off four passes – you’d think that would add up to more than a seven point victory.  I can’t put my finger on it but there’s still something really wrong with the Eagles. 
 
Bears 39, Vikings 10
 
When Jay Cutler gets the blocks he needs, he can be a top-tier quarterback.  He got them ALL night in this one, and the Bears looked very convincing.  It was the absolute opposite of what we saw from the OL in the Monday Night game in Detroit.  Cutler made some really quality throws and just like that the Bears are at sea level again.  The Vikings on the other hand are a different story.  They benched McNabb and finally put in Christian Ponder who didn’t really look all that bad for his first time in a regular season pro game.  Now, I’m not sure if they put him in because the game was out of reach or because they thought that now was the time to make the change but from the way it looks I think they have seen enough of McNabb.  He didn’t throw a poor game, but he didn’t throw a great one either even though plenty of analysts were saying he played decent afterwards.  I’ve been saying Donovan’s career has been over since 2009 and I don’t know why teams continue to give him one more chance, but this is likely the end of the line for him and I don’t believe he’ll get another job.  While I’m laying into the dude, he isn’t a Hall of Famer either.  He also beats the shit out of his wife and he’s a horrible father.  I kind of made that last one up. 

Jets 24, Dolphins 6
 

I can’t think of a single thing that the Dolphins are doing right at the moment.  To say they looked flat would be a serious understatement.  Very predictable, and a bad game.  Tony Sporano = Corey Hart.  Jets got their passing game back but until it’s against a real challenger they aren’t stable just yet. 

Overall comment for the week: 

It may be out of place to point out something that something has become blown so far out of proportion, but I’d like to talk about the way the media has treated the misunderstanding between Jim Harbaugh and Jim Schwarz at the end of the Lions-Niners game.  It was really no big deal at all, and I say this for a couple of reasons.  First, these guys just sat and coached a game where for three and a half hours guys on the field beat the living hell out of each other, and you mean to tell me that one guy walking over to another guy and patting him on the back only to have the other guy go “What the fuck was that for?” was the biggest story of the week?  That’s insane.  The other thing that you have to remember here is that now more than ever coaches are younger and closer to the ages of those playing on the field.  A lot of them are only about a decade removed from the field so it’s easy for them to get so excited about a win in what was a very big game.  I just didn’t see the whole thing as being that big of a deal, but that didn’t stop ESPN from shoving it into our eyes and ears for the following twenty four hours.  The media gets a big fat fucking F for this one.  Between that and the coverage of FOX’s camera crew capturing AJ Hawk giving the middle finger to the sidelines, week six was more like a reality TV show than stack of football games. 
 

Let’s hope that next week is devoid of any such meaningless drama.
 
We are EEP.
 
Meehan

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU THOUGHTLESS AND WASTEFUL

by Ryan Meehan
 
Late Summer/Fall is here and that means that the weather will still be insufferable, road construction crews will be everywhere, and everyone will continue to be irritable in general.  Oh, and we’re right in the middle of wedding season.  As should be no surprise to anyone, I fucking hate weddings and with good reason. 
 
Now, I don’t have any immediate problems with the institution of marriage.  It seems like a very good idea:  Two people vow to spend the rest of their lives with each other, cohabitate, and pay higher taxes.  Sounds great to me.  But our society isn’t really intelligent enough to handle to concept of being dedicated to one person the rest of their life.  Aside from our 50% divorce rate in America, infidelity is a rampant issue.  I know plenty of married men who consider it a game to see if they can cheat on their wife and get away with it, and I know plenty of women who do the same.  

Maybe this is why the whole gay marriage debate is so frustrating to rational individuals.  If half of marriages fail anyway and there’s so much dishonesty amongst married couples to begin with, what the fuck difference does it make?  Everyone should have the right to feel awkward and miserable.  Let it be available to the masses. 

Back to the ceremony itself:  As if traffic wasn’t already bad enough, now every Saturday afternoon I’ll likely be stuck behind a limo occupied by some unspeakably hot woman blowing some four hundered pound software designer that she already has plans to cheat on as soon as they get back from the honeymoon.  Nevermind the driver just got over here from Iran, so he has no concept of how the whole “stop light” thing works.  Add that to the fact that one of those clunking cans they tie to the back of the car will probably fall off and slice my tire open, and you can see why I might be inclined to hate not just that part of the ceremony but the entire process.  
  
The biggest issue I have with weddings is the financial side.  Here we are in an economic crisis, where everyone is panicking their asses off, yet no one seems to have a problem wasting tens of thousands of dollars on an event that lasts mere hours.  I’m constantly hearing newlywed couples bitch and moan about how broke they are and how high their mortgage payments are just months after they spent twenty grand on what’s essentialy a kegger for grown-ups.  Maybe if they would have taken one of my helpful hint mentioned below they would have been able to use more of that scratch for a down payment. 
 
Here are a couple of ideas to save money if you do get married, so excuse me while I get all Suze Orman (or Jim Cramer if you hate lesbians) on your dumbass: 
 
1)  Do it in court like a normal person. 
Gals, your man does not want a big wedding ceremony.  If he does, he’s “just not that into you” if you know what I mean.  (That’s a PG-13 way of saying “he’s a faggot” by the way)  The more you spend on this moment, the harder it’s going to be to start your lives together from an economic standpoint.  Think.  The biggest price of the marriage should be the rings or the actual license itself.  If you want to do the rings you can, but just remember you can lose jewelry quite easily.  So if you’re clumsy give it a lot of thought before you drop 4 large on a pair of wedding rings. 
 
2)  If you can’t do it in court like a normal person, keep it small.
At least save what’s left of your remaining dignity by not making a huge issue of it.  Have the wedding in your backyard like a close friend of mine did.  He tells me over and over that he had no regrets and that he has nothing but fond memories of the event.  (He also didn’t spend a whole shit ton of money on it either)  This rule also goes for the hi-fi stuff that people want to tack on-No fireworks, none of that shit.  You ARE allowed to have a band at your wedding if they are inexpensive and don’t have a huge stage show with pyrotechnics.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire for more details)

3)  Plan on doing it inside because weather happens

Whenever I am flipping channels late at night I run into these “Bridezilla”-type shows where these silly gashes hire all of these expensive makeup consultants to ensure all of their mascara will be properly applied on their big day.  And of course they also want their wedding on the beach as well, yet can’t seem to ever put these two things together and think that their makeup might fall victim to the elements.  (But you’ll know when you see the tears race the precipitation to wreck her pretty fake face)  And the makeup is the least of your worries…a good healthy rainstorm will ruin everything about your wedding.  I’ve heard of people who want a wedding in a remote outside location that gives them no backup plan whatsoever.  And then when it starts raining they scream “WHY?  WHY?  WHY ME AND WHY ON MY BIG DAY?” And the answer to that is:  you’re just not very smart.  You should have thought about the fact that water falls out of the sky all of the time.  That’s a pretty big item to overlook. 

Summary:

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, perched right at the top is how people are obsessed with certain milestones in their lives.  High school graduation, college graduation, weddings, anniversaries, childbirth, retirement, et cetera.  Yet most of these people don’t write wills and don’t have a plan in place for when they pass away.  I blame vanity for this, because at all of those other points in their life I just mentioned, they can visualize themselves as how they will be seen by others.  They don’t care about their funeral because they won’t be able to react to other people seeing them, therefore it has no intrinsic value. 

When you’re dead and gone, people shouldn’t care how you looked on your wedding day.  They should care about what you’ve created and what contributions you’ve made to society.  Did you make people laugh?  Did you help someone who’s less fortunate become better at something that you were already good at doing? 

This is one that’s been stuck in my mind a lot lately:  If everyone had their own Wikipedia page, what would you want yours to look like?  Would you want the “personal life” section to be full of examples of domestic abuse?  How about your “professional history”?  If there was ever a great starting point to work backwards from, what your page would look like would be it. 

The point here is don’t get so caught up in whatever moment you’re involved in so much that you surrender your own principles for that moment.  I hear a lot of “Well, I usually don’t do this, but…” anymore these days.  Fuck all that.  Stick to your guns.  Sometimes you have to read between the lines, even if it’s tucked inside the second amendment.  If you’re going to believe in something, believe in it all the way. 

I guess on the bright side hurricane season is still going strong and that’s always fun to watch on television.  There will be plenty more hate on this website coming soon so stay tuned. 
 
We Are East End Philadelphia

Meehan

IT’s HIGH TIME ONCE AGAIN FOR SOME GRAPHIC HATRED

by Ryan Meehan
 
These introduction paragraphs are getting harder and harder to write without repeating myself and making all of these articles sound the same.  So fuck all that noise, let’s get to the things that are making me want to shave people’s eyebrows off with a belt sander this week. 

1.  The phone company continuing to print phone books

When are all of these people who can’t figure out how to use Google going to die off? And when was the last time you used a phone book for something other than to prop something else up?  There are stacks of these goddamn things at my apartment complex and they’re everywhere.  In the days before the internet skyrocketed in popularity there used to be only a couple of them were left lying around, now if they drop twelve off at a unit they’re lucky if two of them get picked up after a month. 

And I don’t want to hear anymore bullshit about how they have to be recycled a certain way as some of these tree hugging assholes would suggest.  If you recycle them, you put them in the recycling bin with everything else or you throw them away.  There doesn’t need to be a whole separate recycling procedure for phone books.  Of course, this entire mess could be avoided if they weren’t printed in the first place, but I digress. 
 
2.  Fast food companies on The Social Networking sites “wondering” what I’m doing this weekend

This is typically on a holiday such as Labor Day so that’s why it comes up.  Wendy’s caring what I’m up to?  Highly fucking doubt it.  The only reason that I started following any of these companies on Twitter to begin with was because I expected them to let me print out coupons for free food, but they never have.  And as for the people who really do answer seriously, well…that’s just plain sad.  “I’m going to go grab a number 4 later!!! OMG!!!”  These people shouldn’t even be on the internet in the first place, they should be in their car with the garage door shut and the gas pedal to the floor. 
 
Does the marketing department do anything but laugh at these pathetic people either?  You can’t sell me on the idea that they actually use this information for research.  Facebook and Twitter have now created these weird sort of forums where McDonald’s can ask a question about what everybody is doing and thousands of brainless douchebags will gladly surrender that information without even flinching.  And you didn’t think that the internet is going to backfire at some point?  Shit…

3.  Event invites on Facebook

Speaking of the social networking sites, there’s WAY too much of the event invites going on.  I talked with Weibel about this the other night.  It’s bad enough that my phone goes off whenever I get invited to one of these things (which I never attend by the way) but the fact that it creates a whole separate website for that page and that EVERYTIME ANYBODY POSTS ON THAT WALL I GET AN ALERT is way off the deep end.  If you’re really my friend then you’d know that I never go out, let alone go out to any of the inane bullshit I get invited to.  Enough with it.  Text me if it’s really important and then I’ll show up.  Plus, you’re going to use that Foursquare application to check in once you’re at the event anyway to let everyone know what an awesome time you’re having, so what’s the need for the event invite?

Additionally, there’s no need for a follow-up contact on these.  “So are you coming to my party or not?”  I don’t know…we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.  (But now that you’ve asked me that there’s no way we’re ever going to talk again so it doesn’t matter)  I don’t schedule times to hang out with my friends and this is no exception.  (See next complaint)  I’ve still never invited anybody to anything on Facebook and it’s highly unlikely that I ever will.  
  
4.  Anybody that tries to make definite plans and/or takes offense when you can’t make time to “hang out” with them

This is a huge one for me.  Whether or not I’m going to hang out with anybody now depends on several factors.  The most important of those being “Can I fit this into my schedule?”  If I can’t, I’m not going to be able to chill.  Period.  Additionally, almost everybody who isn’t on some sort of government assistance has to have two jobs and even I’m no exception to that.  They say things like “You work too much”  Piss off.  These are usually either unemployed people or soft motherfuckers whose feelings get hurt whenever somebody has to break their appointment to go get a pointless cup of coffee.  Get some more friends, a new hobby, or both. 

Here’s a bonus tip for anyone you know who might feel emotionally affected by you not hanging out with them:  They’re never going to become anything and you shouldn’t even be talking to them in the first place.  Anyone who will tell you “You know, when you didn’t come out last night it really hurt my feelings” is a worthless fuckwad.  End of story.  There are no exceptions to this rule, ever.  If I can hang out I will, but if I’m tired that night I’ll jack off and pass out and it’ll be my decision in the end. 

5.  Observational Comics who mention something that’s debatable without thinking about why it might be debatable

If any of you were on the debate team in high school, you know debating is a lot like chess in that you have to always think one move ahead of the next guy.  Comedy is the same way in that you wouldn’t make a joke that ends with a question that can be easily answered.  I heard a guy use the following example not too long ago, which is fascinating because it seems like a really old joke. 
“So I went to a Mexican restaurant with my girlfriend the other day and the restaurant was called “Jalapenos”, but when I went to order something with Jalapenos on it, they said they were out.  How could a restaurant with that name be out of Jalapenos?”
 
Well, actually dipshit…you just answered your own question:  They just didn’t have any.  There’s no conspiracy against you, it’s a dried vegetable and they’re out.  And since they are out, what do you expect them to do: close the whole place down?  “Well, we’re out of the hot stuff so it’s shutters for us until the truck comes in on Thursday.  Everybody just go on home now.”  And how selfish do you have to be to think that they would even go to the store to get them for a guy who was a theater major in college and somewhere along the line decided that everyone in the world might think he’s funny because he doesn’t have a creative outlet anymore so he feels the need to be a standup comedian all of a sudden? 

You can also leave out the “with my girlfriend” part because if you have jokes like this we already know you’re alone.  Just say you were there by yourself and it will save you the awkwardness for both parties.  And you shouldn’t even be upset when this is giving you more shitty material to torture the other comics with, nevermind the crowd who is obviously bored as hell and that’s why they’re at an open mic in the first place.  

6.  Anyone who says “blah blah blah” to fill space during a conversation

I would honestly rather listen to an Australian guy say “and so forth” for an hour and a half than listen to someone fill space with this verbal abortion.  Didn’t we all learn how to summarize at some point?  What’s the use of telling part of the story and then leaving a majority of it out?  This also goes for “such and such” as well. 

This is Jerry Seinfeld’s fault for that “yadda yadda yadda” shit.  We are way too selfish as a culture to be able to use a space filler like this without somehow bending the story in our own direction.  “Oh, I guess I left out the part where I got drunk and ran over her dog”  You didn’t necessarily leave that part out, you just covered it up with “blah blah blah” so I would favor your side of the story and not think you are an asshole.  And you had to have known you were doing so, otherwise you wouldn’t have used that technique in the first place.  

I’m sure there are plenty more things that are bothering me at the moment but this is all I can think of for now.  Get out and do or fuck something interesting this weekend.

We Are East End Philadelphia

Meehan

THE TEN TYPES OF PEOPLE I HATE ON FACEBOOK

by Ryan Meehan
 
Facebook was one of those ideas that was supposed to enhance the way we connected with each other.  Instead, it’s turned into an addiction that allows people who shouldn’t even be allowed to speak to share their every thought.  First was the awful status updates, then they went and made a movie about it, and before you knew it my entire family was on the site.  I work at a cell phone company and when there is a tower outage you wouldn’t believe how many fifty year-olds come in here screaming that their Facebook account won’t load as if every one of their great grandchildren got their faces mangled by a boat motor. 
 
There’s a difference between use and abuse:  Use means you’re functioning; Abuse means that you’ve let it take over your life.  You can be a user and not be an abuser.  So without further ado, here are the ten types of people on Facebook that I cannot stand.  
 
1.  FarmVille or Mafia Wars Douchebag
 
Defining Characteristics:  VERY slow, sometimes unemployed or just underemployed

 

When was this stuff ever fun?  I certainly don’t remember any of these applications being so intriguing that I actually stopped what I was doing to play them.  If you’re going to play this shit, for the love of God please takes the feeds down off of the main page so I’m not informed about which days you’re super lonely and feel the need to fake farm. 

 

And as for the Mafia Wars, we probably didn’t need to let this go outside movies or television.  Goodfellas was amazing, Casino was great, The Sopranos was OK.  But when it started crossing over into video games it was too much.  Now it’s all over the social networking sites, and the people who are playing it are the last people that you’d expect to be doing so.  It’s always the fifty year old mom of three or the bunhead who went to your high school.  This goes for the survey takers too…that shit was OK in MySpace because you could at least fill the survey out, but now it tells people you answered a question about them when you DON’T fill it out.  What the fuck is that?

 
2.  Couple who breaks up every other day
 

Defining Characteristics:  Heavy Drinking, more heavy drinking

 

This is the couple who is constantly changing their relationship status only to change it again a day later and have the website inform you that they are “friends” again.  The same couple who had the police at their house at three thirty in the morning because they were wasted and started throwing kitchen appliances at each other, they love each other again all of a sudden.  These two people never seem to be on the same schedule when it comes to partying and because of it their relationship suffers dearly.  (And so does our attention span) 

 

I’ll probably never understand why people who mistreat each other so often find their way back together.  This is where all of the domestic violence comes from.  If he’s an asshole, why do you keep going back to him?  Is the sex that good?  And if she’s clearly insane, why prolong your own anguish?  I don’t get that.  And say you’re getting married…how do you plan with all of that shit going on?  The wedding’s on, the wedding’s off, then it’s on again.  You wouldn’t want your wedding planner to stick a shotgun in her mouth the week before your big day would you? 
 
3.  Left-Wing Extremist Guy Who Thinks Everything is a Conspiracy
 
Defining Characteristics:  Unemployed, smelly, liberal, predictable, doesn’t own their own vehicle and talks constantly about how great it is to not own a car but always needs a ride
 
9/11 was a hoax.  The government is archiving everybody’s status updates.  Where do these people come up with this shit?  And better yet, why are people so obsessed with wanting to believe it?  These are the people who think that they are the first to hear about anything that doesn’t add up.  They think they’re the only ones who have ever watched a documentary on a particular subject therefore they are an expert. 
 
And here’s another thing I don’t get:  Why is it that people who always feel that they are being watched by the government people who the government would never have any interest in?  If I worked for the CIA, I would be researching people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, trying to find out how they got rich so that I could apply the same techniques to whatever department I worked in.  Listen, the government couldn’t possibly care less about you or your “experimental” band.  Trust me, they give less than a shit about what you’re up to. 
4.  Guy Who Thinks He’s Buff Who Constantly Takes Pictures of Himself
 
Defining Characteristics:  Well-toned, poorly educated

 

Big shocker here:  I’m about to utter something extremely sexist:  Taking pictures of yourself is something only women do.  And no matter what you’re into, ONLY women do it.  We understand that you have a gym membership.  We also understand that membership costs a lot of money, but you need to understand I don’t want to see pictures of you with your shirt off. 

 

Now say that I was a woman.  Say that I loved nothing more than having my vagina stuffed with cock all day long.  Do you think I’d really be turned on by a guy who posted such pictures?  Probably not.  And if they were attractive and even somewhat interesting, don’t you think they would have found a girlfriend by this point? 

 
5.  Crazy Chick
 
Defining Characteristics:  Hung Up, Usually Unemployed
 

This is the girl with either “daddy” issues, or “ex-boyfriend” issues.  She’s chronically obsessed with how she was “wronged” in some way or another by someone, and instead of getting up and kicking life’s ass instead she’s been diagnosed with some type of “disorder” by some jackass doctor who’s now confined her to a life of being addicted to pain medication.  Sounds exactly like somebody that I’d never want to hang out with.  And what’s sad is that now she will never recover.  Those doctors and those meds have now also convinced her that she’s agoraphobic and can’t leave her own house. 
6.  Jesus Freak
 
Defining Characteristics:  Knows lots of bible verses and is not afraid to use them, Poor grammar otherwise

 

I am a Christian and I love Jesus.  However, I am not IN LOVE with Jesus.  For some reason, a lot of the uber religious people on this site can’t decipher the two.  They see Jesus as a mortal man instead of a supreme being.   I see Jesus as the type of deity that would hate Facebook.  Could you imagine having to roll out of your cloud every morning and decline all of those event invites?  Holy shit…

 

Now back to the “IN LOVE with Jesus” thing.  I certainly hope that no one is in love with Jesus, because that’s just messed up.  Although it certainly exposes the great lengths we’re willing to obsess about things, it’s also completely disgusting.  As a Christian, I find these nobodies repulsive.  Maybe “God Loves Everyone” isn’t such a great mantra.  I would like to believe that God is more selective. 

 
7.  Parent Who Feels The Need to Constantly Update Everybody On The Expulsion of Their Child’s Bodily Fluids
 
Defining Characteristics:   Bad at using condoms, Bad at making decisions, Permanently Stuck in Freud’s “Anal” Stage

 

This one is just downright nasty.  Never while navigating any of these sites have I said to myself:  “I wonder if so and so’s kid is pissing/shitting”.  Leave it alone.  I’m not exactly the type of person that seems to be impressed if you can change a dirty diaper.  Granted, I’ll never do it myself but I have no interest in doing it so I’m not going to hold you in a higher regard because you can fold a cloth of baby shit and then tape it shut. 
And this goes for anybody else who feels the needs to lecture us non-parents about how difficult it is to be a parent.  “Well, you don’t know how hard it is to be a parent…”  That’s right, I don’t…nor do I care.  You’re not a hero.

 
8.  Hell-Bent on Revenge Chick (See also “Crazy Chick”)
 
Defining Characteristics:  Watches a lot of reality television, hell-bent on revenge

 

This girl is very similar to “Crazy Chick” with the added bonus of being motivated by revenge.  She thinks that for some reason it will validate her existence (It won’t) if whoever had been previously out to get her comes up short in life or is unsuccessful in some way.  She will also take credit for anything that happens to her nemesis even if she had nothing to do with it.  Funny part is if you held a gun to her head she probably couldn’t tell you why she started hating the people that she does in the first place. 
 

Now, I’m not saying revenge is a bad motivational mechanism.  I’m in favor of whatever will work for you, use whatever technique you like.  However if you end up living your entire life driven by something negative that happened in the past, then when you DO finally get the chance to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you’ll still be distracted.  
 
9.  Guy Who Posts a Thousand Videos a Night (See also Left-Wing Conspiracy Guy) 
 
Defining characteristics:  Drunk, Hammered, Stoned, You get the picture 
 

This is actually acceptable every once in a while.  If I haven’t heard a certain song or seen a certain video in a while I might be inclined to watch something like this.  But every night?  No way.  I’ll gladly check out the video for Cracker’s “Teen Angst”, which I got robbed of seeing a live performance of when I was in high school, but there’s no need for me to watch the new Lil’ Wayne video.  Some dude (yes, dude) the other night posted a video on the feed of Taylor Swift “rapping”.  That screams “Don’t ever message me”.

 

This could also be conspiracy theorist guy, and that’s a double whammy right there.  “Check out this one nut job’s theory on the Gulf War”…As I’ve stated before, the great thing about some of these websites like YouTube is that anybody can get an account, but the horrible thing about them is that ANYBODY can get an account.
10.  Stripper / Porn Star Who Posts Inspirational Quotes

 

Defining characteristics:  Massive cocaine problem, no high school diploma, just “working her way through college” 

 

Yes this is a little bit of stimulus generalization.  But let’s face it, not many strippers or adult film stars are very smart.  It’s not like when their looks fade they will be able to get an office job.  (They may however get a job blowing some guy who works at an office)  But then again after all, “The Constitution only guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin said that.  Or maybe it was Hitler.  It was definitely one of those two guys. 

 

Now, as for the porn stars themselves:  I just saw a movie where you blew fourteen guys next to a pool, don’t be hitting me with any Henry David Thoreau quotes:  It will never mean as much to the people who follow you as seeing the look or your face when that fifteenth guy shows up late for the shoot.  “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mohandas Gandhi – That’s funny, because on your website it’s pretty obviously defined as being triple penetration.  Can’t wait to see you on “Intervention”. 
Summary: 

 

What pisses me off most about Facebook is that the whole “status update” thing should be used just to say something funny.  That’s it.  If you don’t have anything funny to say, don’t speak.  We’ve heard every political angle imaginable by this point, seen every YouTube video, and if you read the right publications and do the right research, nothing you read or see on Facebook should change your mind about anything. 
 

Social Networking is supposed to be a tool, not a box for tools.  Post carefully. 
 

We Are East End Philadelphia
 
Meehan

RESPONSE TO ANTONY

by Ryan Meehan, In response to:

“The Internet might be useful for creating revolution, but all it’s creating in the Western world is more passivity, more disconnection. It’s a fucking nightmare. When I was 20 years old in New York City, do you think you walked into a coffee shop and saw 40 people staring at $2,000 purchases all made from the same company? And those are all the artists! I talk to young musicians now, and they’re just happy to be making records that get released. They don’t even consider that, in the old days, they could making a living by selling records. They don’t even get paid for their work. All that money just goes to Apple and they’re happy to just have people going to their shows. It just took two generations for Apple and similar companies to convince artists they don’t deserve to get paid and that they should just be grateful for the tools that Apple is providing us to make our work, as if we need them to make our art. It’s very, very fucked up.
I’ve stopped using the Internet, basically. I text, but I’ve whittled that down. I’m trying to just revert to a landline. I don’t want to live in computer time. The Internet doesn’t care if we’ve had enough.” – Antony of Antony and the Johnsons

To Anyone who is in on this thread:

I have to take issue with a majority of what this guy’s saying so the earlier we get started the sooner you can get back to whatever you were doing. 
 
The internet is the greatest technological development in your lifetime.  And, you’re child’s lifetime.  The internet is pretty much as far as connectivity will go.  I do understand how there could be some dark alleys.  I think Craigslist showed that the internet CAN be a horrible, horrible thing sometimes but for the most part, the internet is used to make our lives easier.  
 
Now usually, guys who make statements about technology in a negative light seem bitter, and I can’t help but wonder how many of them are just out to blame technology for something their cousin didn’t invent.  This same Antony guy who’s complaining about this probably owns an Ipod.  You know he does. 
 
iTunes is a great thing and all of thes guys complaining about it know it.  Since people were downloading so much music that it threw off Soundscan for a 41 month period, iTunes found a way to quantify how many songs by a certain artist were downloaded in the week period, and it worked beautifully.  iTunes lists everything you want to listen to in one simple playlist.  Is Apple making a ton of money off of this?  Of course they are.  But these same indie rock shitheads who are raising a stink about their music don’t seem to realize the fact that they SHOULD be lucky to have Apple plugging their music.  They ought to be honored that apple would even host some of the bullshit they put out because they never learned how to sell themselves due to being so “troubled”. 
 
Of course there will be people who plow on about the lack of funds received by the artists.  But here’s my question about that:  Since when have album and download residuals ever been a primary source of income?  Artists don’t make their money with downloads and record sales, they make it on tour selling T shirts and through their guarantee.  Those checks are miniscule at best.  No female is sitting in her loft with $0.33 on a Starbucks gift card left going “Wow, if I don’t get at least 335 more downloads, I’m not going to be able to pay the rent here anymore”.  Because if it gets to that point, she’s probably a stripper the next week no matter how many times her family calls. 

 

Look at Aerosmith.  They were playing under contract for a guy that wasn’t even working for them for over a decade which stipulated that he get 50% of EVERYTHING off the rack during that time period.  The guy made millions and he didn’t do anything.  So now we’re saying artists just all of a sudden started getting screwed and that we can wad that fact back all over the face of home computers?  The same home computers that we do everything on?  That’s just wrong.  And haven’t these computers helped these same artists stay in contact with their fans?   
 
Which leads me to another idea as to where the money’s disappearing:  The promoters.  I’ve always hated promoters.  They’re janky, slimy dudes and as a musician, there’s nothing that pisses you off more than having to meet one of these guys because they aren’t in any of the bands that are playing.  They get way too much money to do basically nothing and it’s not fair to any of the musicians and that’s where a lot of the money gets lost.  These promoters want to look like hot shit so they’ll book a band in Ohio for two nights, one in Cincinnati the next in Cleveland, and they will both be middle of the road semi-successful shows.  When that same guy could have saved himself by doing one night in Columbus on campus of one of the biggest colleges in the world.  Shit like this happens ALL of the time.  And it’s all the promoter’s responisiblity to avoid doing that because he’s playing with someone else’s money. 
 
And finally, with all of this discussion about how it’s technology’s fault, where is the blame being redirected away from the artists themselves?  What, so people figured out how to make records a better way and you’re so “old school” that you have a problem with it?  Don’t you ever consider (just for a second) that it might be “You’re not doing a good enough job songwriting”?  And this baffles me because even athletes (the most pretentious of all professions) are willing to at least admit when they’ve made a mistake sometimes.  You would never hear that from a musician ever.  Rob Thomas will never come out and tell you how shitty the new Rob Thomas album is.  And where’s the legislation that we’re supposed to be working on that says he should have to?  It’s probably still stuck in the system because they’re trying to finalize the fucking Napster hearing. 
 
Speaking of tech stuff, what is the music industry going to do in a hundered years when all of this “vintage” recording equipment REALLY starts to fry out.  Like when David Gilmour’s son requests it for some session and they kind of have to explain to him that there are no 2-inch machines left outside of Germany. 
 

It sounds to me like this guy is just looking for something to barrel into because he’s mad he chucked an empty beer bottle against his television.  Apple is getting music out there, let’s not be so quick as to go after corporations that are helping us live our everyday lives.  I though it was ridiculous when the Feds went after Microsoft.  Your computer is your friend!!!  You can use it to send messages to your friends, and book airline tickets, gamble on greyhound racing three states away, and YOU CAN STILL USE IT TO BUY MUSIC.  When Amazon’s stock starts to go down, that’s when I’ll be worried about the artists not getting “their” money. 
 

In the time being, I’ll listen to a record if I like it and I won’t feel any different about it.  Seriously, what difference could it possibly make?  If I “steal your album” online and I like it, we should both be happy.  If I buy it and it sounds like rhino semen, I get screwed because the artist still has my cash and you don’t see me in court suing the lead singer of Staind for everything he’s done in the past ten years do you?  I just don’t understand where it becomes their war on us.  If you’re good at what you do, we’ll come to the shows where you make most of your money, buy your merch and all will be well. 

 

But rest assured, if we’re standing outside by your tour van smoking before you guys take off, and all you do is bitch about Apple and how they’re stealing your money, when you leave, some guy in that circle is going to point out that you get to tour the country and play your music and see all of the wonderful scenery that this great country has to offer and you’re sitting here bitching about how iTunes has destroyed your life. 

 

And then someone else in the group will pipe up and go…”Yeah, fuck those guys” 
Meehan
East EndPhiladelphia Dot Word Press Dot Org

THE TEN TYPES OF BLOGGERS THAT CAN BURN IN HELL

By Jonathan Werner and Ryan Meehan

Well, we’re at it again. You need not bother pointing out the pseudo-irony of pointing out what is wrong with the world of blogs on a blog. Don’t get me wrong, in a vast majority of cases, blogs are a tremendous thing, but some of you are seriously fucking things up for the rest of us. Having said that, there are ten types of such blogs which need to go away…Now.

1)       “The Crusader”

This is the pontificating asshole who a) thinks they can save the whole world by using a keyboard and B) ironically thinks removing words from the language somehow solves the problem those words represent. I have news for you, “Mr. I’m going to save the world from the comfort of my laptop:” If you want to help the environment, spending a Saturday picking up trash along the highway will do a fuck of a lot more than putting a “Save the Polar Bears” bumper sticker on your Prius.

And as far as being the “language police” is concerned, doing things like stigmatizing the word “retard” for the sake of the self-esteem of those afflicted is ridiculous; as if the fact they can’t count their balls and get the same number twice has no effect on them. Words are just words. If you’re hurt by words, you’re going to be fucked should anybody ever throw a knife at you. The way the world seems to be headed, there’s going to be quite a few knives flying around in the very near future.

So consider yourselves warned, all you crusading retards…To prepare you for the upcoming “knife-throwing” era, we may just hide a few “offensive” terms in the following text. Don’t read further if you pussies can’t handle it.

2) Hip Hop Music Review Sites That Type How Urban People Are Supposed to Talk

“Yo, dawg!! Like, we’s be bloggin’ up in this heezy!!!” Eat a giant bag of rotting shit or anything else that will shut you the fuck up.  If you’re so “hood,” from where did you get a computer and internet access? You can call it stimulus generalization, but it’s highly unlikely that any of the people who would be able to give you a respectable opinion on hip-hop would have a computer in their apartment. Even if they did have one, it’s also highly unlikely that it hasn’t been stolen. Computers don’t have feelings of their own, but if they did, the spell check would probably want to commit suicide halfway through one of these assholes’ first posts. It would probably be so tired of having so many words that end in “a” added to its dictionary that it would just keep generating the phrase “Please kill me.”

 

J-Dub’s Bonus Note: As a black guy, nothing infuriates me more than dipshits who think it is cool to pretend to be black. It’s bad enough that too many black guys think it is perfectly acceptable to walk around looking like an outlet mall vomited on Homey D. Clown, the last thing is need some scrawny little Asian kid strolling up to me with his sideways hat, complete with tags hanging off of it, to blurt out “Whazzzup, G?” in that “no testicle,” high-pitched Chinese accent.

If you are a Chinese guy pretending to be black, you are a “Chigger.” If you are a white guy preteneding to be black, you are a “Wigger.” If you are a Mexican guy pretending to be black, you are the first, because I have yet to see one.

3) “The Cuddle Bunnies Fuzzy Duck Hour”

This is usually written by fat, suburban girls named Megan or Cindy who have led really sheltered, yet dysfunctional lives. It is all about happiness, sunshine, and other things which most people know are complete bullshit. We all know you write all this flowery crap because it is your coping mechanism from that time when you were fourteen and one of your uncles had some “boundary issues,” and your resultant love of Haagen-Dasz means no other white guy is willing to cross that border. Do us all a favor, take a night off from the keyboard, go down to a club in the city and get a hefty dose of black dick. It’ll do you a world of good. In fact, it’s the only reason they still produce Rohypnol.

I was going to address this in the poetry section below, but it fits here so I’d like to once again point out how fucking exhausted I am with hearing about people’s feelings. Here’s an analogy for you: “Life is like a shitty metaphor…it makes those of us who don’t have our heads crammed up our assholes want to kill the person who wrote it.”

4) “Look at how clever I am”

Yeah, so you think you are funny. I’ve got news for you, even though you have a degree in English Literature, any blog tagged with “humor” automatically sucks runny, grass-filled dogshit shit through a crazy straw. Even we’re willing to admit that we aren’t nearly as clever as we’d like to be. If we were, then we wouldn’t have to work for a living and we’d be able to write this shit in our underwear. Again, if we were that funny, do you think this would be on some 4th-rung blog that would have trouble getting readers if you printed it on Jessica Alba’s ass?

We could even screw that up, and not in the good way.

Instead, we write this shit while at our “real jobs,” as all that keyboard-pounding creates the illusion we a) are hard at work doing whatever it is we are supposed to do and b) give a frog’s watertight ass about whatever it is we are supposed to be doing.

So before you sit down in front of your keyboard to write another one of your bullshit “Dave Barry” rip-off pieces, stop to consider this: As I’ve stated before, the great thing about the internet is that it allows anyone from anywhere to get famous. Conversely, the horrible part of the internet is that anyone from anywhere can get famous (such as that parasitic dick-smoker Perez Hilton). The bottom line: As much as we’d like to say we support anybody who wants to become a writer, the truth most people who fancy themselves as writers really are just producing so much printed syphillis.

5) Any Blog About Poetry

Poetry sucks. I used to be a musician (thank God those days are over) and people love to throw that shit back in my face and say “Well you used to write music and lyrics are poetry…” and then I explain to them what it feels like to be wrong.

J-Dub was a bass player and a drummer who grew up to be an engineer, and he would be the first one to agree with my point that music is mathematics, pure and simple. There’s thirteen notes, there was thirteen notes yesterday, and there will more than likely be thirteen notes tomorrow. It’s all a basic mathematical equation.

Whether or not all of those indie rock douchebags would like to admit it or not, the same applies to lyrics. If the lyrics don’t have some kind of mathematical structure, then the music probably falls under the category of “avant garde” or “experimental”, which are just euphemisms for “shit” unless you’re in Mogwai or Sonic Youth. If all of my years in statistics and probability courses have taught me anything, it’s that 99.999956% of musicians have never been in either of those two bands.

What were we even talking about again? Oh, poetry, that’s right. I had almost forgotten. That might be because poetry is FUCKING POINTLESS. It’s not exciting, it’s not edgy, it’s not anything. The same people who get stoked about poetry are the same people who die from icicles falling on their head, and both sets of those people deserve it.

I was actually thinking about starting a website where anybody could submit their poetry and I would post it, only on one condition: That they start every poem with the phrase “As I am surrounded by my shitty poetry…” This would serve a dual purpose as either they would have to come up with something really creative to follow that, or they would realize they are throwing their lives away writing inane garbage.

6) Any Blog About Photography

If your blog is full of your pictures, and a picture is worth a thousand words, then why the fuck are you writing anything? Oh, because you want us all to you are the next coming of Ansel Adams. If you pictures weren’t shitty, you wouldn’t need to do that. Put that nonsense on Flickr and leave us alone.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing photographers out there. But photography is art, it’s open to interpretation. There’s no need to describe in detail what you’re trying to get me to feel. “I wanted the observer to see the delicate surface of the water to remind them of the fragility of life.” Hey dickbag, how about I look at the picture and decide what it means to ME? I mean, I’m the one looking at it right? Quit acting life such a self righteous dumpster muff and get back out there and take more pretty pictures for me to look at on the off chance that I might actually bookmark your website.

Meehan’s Bonus Note: There’s not even a need for Flickr. All of those other social networking sites allow you to post pictures, so delete the app from your phone, it’s only taking up space.) This is another one of those fields where there’s no need to advertise your blog, because if your work is good enough, you won’t need to promote it. Everyone will see that your pictures are great and you’ll make a lot of money. It’s called capitalism, get some.

7) “The Box Score Guy”

As a sports blogger, there is nothing I hate more than guys who write like they work for ESPN. Want to know where I can go read that kind of shit? ESPN! The world is dripping with “box score” websites…try offering an opinion or anything not being done by 90 billion other people.

I understand the sabermetrics stuff because it requires a lot of computing, but some of these assholes are just copying and pasting the basic stats so what’s the point? Just because you’re forming an opinion based on statistics doesn’t mean it’s right. Over the past twenty years there are hundreds of examples of situations in competitive sports where statistics end up not having any effect on the outcome. Even the Royals beat the Yankees every once in a while, and the law of probability says someday the Washington Generals will beat the Harlem Globetrotters.

8) “My Life is So Much More Interesting Than Yours”

Wow, so you were an Eagle Scout, you graduated from college at age 18, and last summer you climbedMount Everest. And yet, after all that accomplishment, you spend your evenings the same way I do, writing shit on the internet no one will ever read.

If your life is so fucking awesome, why isn’t your blog dripping with pictures of you getting blown by strippers two at a time at a time on your private jet? Oh, that’s right, because that shit doesn’t happen to you. The last time anything hot got near your crotch was when one of your microwave pizza rolls blew its load on you.

You live vicariously through the internet, the exact opposite of doing so in the real world which is why you claim to be such a badass in the first place. However the good news is not all is lost, that Eagle Scout badge is going to help after all. When you finally realize your life sucks as much as the rest of ours, that knowledge of noose-tying will at last be useful.

9) Role-Playing/Fantasy Game Opinion Blogs

Speaking of vagina repellent, this whole World of Warcraft thing has actually gone so out of control there are now individuals who have started blogs based on the ethics of how these games are played.

You’ve GOT to be fucking kidding me.

Sadly, this is not a joke. Look, if you want to play those games, that’s your business. Not to mention, your zeal for your chosen hobby should be admired. At least you aren’t being half-assed about it.

There’s just one small problem. YOUR HOBBY IS THE FUCKING STUPIDEST THING EVER! It’s even dumber that shoving your dick into an electric pencil sharpener. The only thing dumber than sharpening your dick is writing about sharpening your dick, unless it is writing about World of Warcraft while sharpening your dick.

In fact, perhaps you should write about this shit WITH your sharpened dick; at least that way you would be getting some use out of it other than when it ends up playing a game of “grease and grunt” with your role-playing buddy’s asshole. Of course, since you are used to a fantasy world, you can pretend that your secret gay sex isn’t gay as long as a) you don’t tongue-kiss and b) you both understand you are ONLY doing this because nothing with a vagina will come within 500 yards of you.

But I digress…don’t just trust my word on this, take a look for yourself. Forget about how stupid fantasy gaming is. Forget about the exceptional silliness of the concept of “ethics and etiquette” in a completely made-up world. Forget about the ear-raping music you will hear if you follow that link. To speak in this loser’s language: “…As webmaster of this cyberspace domain”, I grant you full authorization to go to this guy’s website and ruin his fucking day.  While you’re at it…check out the graphics!!! Not only is the resolution of the screenshots amazing, you can feel a little bit of yourself dying inside knowing that slowly but surely, content-specific material is disappearing everyday like so many dying brain cells.

10) One-Sided Political Blogs

You know that old adage: The two things you don’t discuss at a bar are politics and religion. The same rule applies to the internet. The reason these blogs tend not to work is because whoever administers it decides arbitrarily which posts he’s going to leave up and which he’s going to take down, thus defeating the purpose of an open forum.

In other words, if some guy makes a great point that the administrator can’t argue with, he simply doesn’t approve the comment and we never see it. Fuck that; what’s the point of having a blog if you are simply going to act likeNorth Koreaby simply censoring that which you don’t like?

However, if you think about it, that’s not any less fair than our current political system and may in fact be indicative of where we are as a society. However, you have to wonder how much these people worry about getting called out in front of their weekly traffic, which usually isn’t more than twenty people. Let’s be honest, how can you value the opinion of somebody who is such a complete pussy they can’t “man up” if somebody makes a point contrary to what they would like to believe?

Honorable Mention: Either of Our Blogs

Really, this is “best case scenario” for us.

Let’s be honest, who the hell are either of us to be bitching about any of this? We suck just as much as you; the difference is we have the self-awareness to see that, and the balls to admit it. Meehan is just another educated white guy who is pissed off at the fact he bought the great lie that a college education guarantees you a bright future and copes with that by running up Olympic-level bar tabs, and J-Dub is just another broke-ass black guy who married a white girl with a “big backyard” who pays all his bills while he pretends he’s running his own business.

If you’ve read this far, obviously you have nothing better to do, but you are also not easily offended. Now stop reading shit like this, go find more people like you, organize, and fix the shit that has gone so totally over the edge in this country.

More importantly, Thanks again for visiting Dubsism and East End Philadelphia for more of the internet’s finest in advice on how to be undeniably fucking awesome.

-J-Dub and Meehan

5 QUESTIONS WITH JOSH DENNY

Hailing from Philadelphia, Josh Denny displays a unique brand of comedy that can carry no label. Described by many veteran comic greats as having a “cartoon mind,” you never know what you will get at one of his shows, whether a serious look at the ridiculous, or a totally ridiculous look at the serious.  Combining the perfect blend of East Coast Grit and Midwest Wit, Josh’s comedy is a hybrid both unique and genuine.   and, he’s our guest this week in 5 Questions. 

1.  Where is standup comedy as an art form heading into the summer of 2011?

Fucking Scary Man. There really are some pretty radical extremes out there. It seems like there are splitting factions in comedy right now, those that are trying to be creative and original, and those that are trying to be consistent and relate-able. I think the strongest comedians right now are the ones that can be both clever, yet still be relate-able. That’s what I’m trying to do anyway. I’m really bummed to see how a lot of comics reacted to the Tracy Morgan deal recently. So many “artists” were so quick to throw out an opinion of his comments being inappropriate. Better be careful, because that can happen to any of us at any time. I wasn’t at the show, didn’t hear it, but even reading it in text I thought it was pretty funny.

2.  Could you share your worst experience “bombing” and describe a little bit what happened and where it may have started to go wrong?

It wasn’t the worst I had bombed but it was the most memorable. I was doing an all black room in Minneapolis that was run at a local night club. I actually had a great open doing material that I knew would work, and I got a little too comfortable, and went off on this bit about hating the phrase “African American.” It was a classic example of getting in the pocket and letting your guard down, and I put a bit out there that wasn’t developed or ready. The crowd turned instantly, and I even got a 10 minute lecture from the host on the political correctness of the term. The problem was that I forgot to make it funny. A lot of times when we attempt to make a statement with a bit, or a part of our act, we can get caught up in the message and forget to lace it with well written jokes. It was a learning experience for me, just as it was probably a learning experience for Tracy Morgan and Michael Richards, and any other host of comedians that put their ideas or feelings out there before they were actually crafted into funny and ready.

3.  How would you describe the perception that most people have of a working comic?

It really depends on where you are in the country. When I was performing in the midwest and living in Minneapolis, my perception of a working comic was someone that toured and made a living doing shows, whether clubs or one nighters. Now living in LA, my idea of a working comic changed into “what are you writing, or starring in; how are you making it?” It’s a very humbling change. I went back to Minneapolis recently to do shows, and people were still talking shit about who was in with what booker, and who’s headlining, etc. None of that shit matters at the next level. It’s true in everything you do. No matter how good you are at something, there is always someone out there that will small you by comparison really quickly. You’re headlining Ohio? Call me when you’re on Conan. You’re on Conan? Call me when you’ve got a best seller like Jim Norton or you’re doing arenas like Louis CK. By the way, do you think that Jim Carrey or Robin Williams give a fuck about who’s doing arena’s right now? Too busy making millions on movies and winning awards. Or do you think Robert De Niro or Al Pacino have seen anything that those dudes have been in? At every level you get to, you have to stay humble keeping in mind that there is a world of people kicking your ass at the next level up. You have to truly decide if you want to stay a small fish in a big pond, or compete at the next level.

 4.  What’s the most annoying thing that you’ve had to deal with as a standup comic, onstage or behind the scenes?

You’ll usually hear about bookers or club managers or agents or the industry in this question, but my honest answer is the fucking comedians. I love comedy and HATE comedians. We’re so high on our own bullshit. By nature, comedians are condescending people, but it’s turned into this intellectual dick measuring contest bout who’s shit is more avant garde, or who is more ALT. I used to joke with my buddies in the old Verbally Vicious days that Alternative comedy meant “alternative to comedy = not funny.” As I’ve grown, I like a lot more comedy that in considered ALT, but some of the shit is just terrible. I can’t watch a lot of musical comics, or guys that talk about weird conspiracy shit, or guys that just shit on the regular stuff that everyone else likes. I’m a comedian, and I think I have perspective on people and the world, but I also like football and a good Nickelback concert from time to time. Most comedians are just way to sensitive for a guy like me. I’m originally from the Philadelphia area, so everything funny growing up usually resulted in someone getting shit on or their feelings getting hurt. I’ve actually made grown men pout from breaking balls in the midwest and in LA. I just don’t get that at all.

4 1/2.  What’s off limits when it comes to “dark” material for you?

Absolutely nothing. Just don’t do any material that you won’t stand behind if you get called out on it. I actually really hate SAFE material. If you go onstage and you talk about boring mundane bullshit like what your kids did today, or how annoying your wife or girlfriend is I might rip the piano wire out from the grand at the Improv and strangle you with it, 80’s guy.

5.  What’s going on with you Josh Denny in the next twelve months? Still trying to put out the “Album that just won’t take.” We’ve been trying to record my new CD for the past 6th months, and it just keeps getting messed up somehow. First recording in January I just wasn’t prepared for, we had a mediocre turnout, and did it in a less than ideal venue (too much bar noise, not a clean recording). I re-wrote a new 20 minutes in the last 6 months, and tweaked another 20 that wasn’t ready the first go. I had an ideal set in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago where we attempted to record the album and was psyched. Then the power went out in between first and second show, and we lost everything. I was so pissed that I completely half assed the 2nd show, knowing that we lost the album opportunity. I feel really bad about putting that shitty effort in for fans and friends on that 2nd show, but I hope if they’re reading this that they can kind of understand. In the meantime, I’m working on the next round of material and working on some film scripts that have been laying on my desktop for a year that need to be finished.

Make sure to check out Josh’s Facebook page for updates, and follow him on Twitter @JoshDenny. 

Once again thanks for visiting East End Philadelphia and enjoying more of the internet’s finest in user generated content. 

Meehan

TEN THINGS WE HATE ABOUT SPORTS

by Ryan Meehan and Jonathan Werner

There’s many things wrong in the world, which is why some of the things that should be right can offer temporary solace from those that aren’t. This is exactly why we here at First Order Historians are teaming up with J-Dub from Dubsism to offer a treatise on what needs to be fixed in the world of sports and the way it is being broadcast.

Make no mistake, we are in no way pretending we wouldn’t fuck up a lot of stuff too, but at least we’d be able to eliminate some of the really egregious shit which is happening now.

 
1. Spelling Bees

I can’t decide which is more disturbing, those little kid pageants where we sexualize nine-year olds or the thought process behind this. First of all, did you notice the winners are never American kids anymore? I don’t really need ESPN to remind me that our public schools have become little more than idiot factories because American parents have let them do so. The foreign parents still do things like (gasp) spend quality time with their kids so that they don’t grow up to be some vapor-brained sideline reporter (see #2).

Worse yet, take a close look at the concept…”OK, little (insert unpronounceable foreign kid name here), you are our best and brightest, so let’s put you in a contest where we can magnify the insignificance of not being able to spell a word nobody ever heard of into a pressure-packed nationally televised failure festival guaranteed to emotionally scar you for life.” Every kid (with the sole exception of the winner) in this intellectual “Bataan Death March” gets to have the greatest failure in his life up until that point happen on live television.

Don’t be surprised when the local police finds one of these with a freezer full of girl scout parts later on in life, because it will be our doing for making him spell “dismemberment” on national TV before he turned eight. 
  
2.  In game interviews with players and/or coaches
 
This shit has to stop.  Stop and think for a minute what an utterly fucking ridiculous concept this is. Imagine if we did this in other areas; take war for example.

ANNOYING SIDELINE REPORTER: “Excuse me General, but do you have any thoughts on why this surprise invasion isn’t going according to your plan?”

GENERAL: “Maybe because someone keeps telling the goddamned enemy our every move…until now (pulls pistol and shoots reporter in the face.)”

Since when does anybody think it is a good idea for sideline reporters to become purveyors of espionage? Does anybody think any coach or manager with any fucking brains is going say anything at all useful to the opposing team? That’s why I keep waiting for one of these stupid exchanges to go something like this:

ANNOYING SIDELINE REPORTER: “What are you guys going to do differently in the second quarter to prevent their smothering defense?” 

COACH: “Well, what we are going to do is make some serious adjustments, but if you think I’m going to tell you what those are so you can waltz your soon-to-be-sagging ass over to the other bench and tell those cocksuckers, you’re out of your fucking mind. (pulls pistol and shoots reporter in the face.)”

Well, maybe not the pistol thing, but you get the idea.

  
3.  Televised Poker

This has to be the only “sport” in the world where the announcers are way more excited about the competition than the competitors are.  They scream and yell constantly, which is crazy because they aren’t the ones who have hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake.  and as for the players themselves, they don’t even seem to care.  And if they don’t even care, then what’s with all of the sixty thousand dollar cameras recording everything like it’s the Super Bowl?  Another thing that pisses me off is they call it the “World Series” of poker which is a complete ripoff.  You’d think Major League Baseball would have had that trademarked, but if they didn’t I wouldn’t be shocked.  (Insert joke about Bud Selig dying here)
 
That being said, any competition where you can show up wasted in sunglasses is likely fixed.  It might not be, but the odds that it could be are very high.  And for everyone who is gambling on this, you are wagering on how “semi-pros” are gambling, which is a recipe for a mess.  Gambling on other people gambling is like letting somebody take advantage of you sexually while you’re in therapy for being molested in the first place. 

Worse yet, thanks to televised poker, every shithead in America with two cards in front of him thinks poker couldn’t exist without his vast knowledge of it. First of all, Texas Hold ’em is the “skim milk” version of poker. Pretending to be an “expert” at this game is like pretending to be a gastroenterologist because you guessed what color your morning turd would be. Not to mention, thinking you can beat guys who play poker all the time because A) you can beat your buddies from work and B) you watch TV is just taking the express train to Empty Wallet City. Just you because you punched a drunk in a bar once doesn’t mean you could take on an MMA fighter and not get your balls handed to you. Not to mention, betting gets a lot tougher when the guy on TV isn’t telling you which cards everybody is holding.
 
4.  Outside The Lines
 

Everyday for a half hour in the afternoon, my ESPN turns into absolute dogshit.  (I mean, moreso than it already is…) For those of you who aren’t aware, Outside the Lines is a show where they do all of these in depth profiles on athletes and former athletes, and issues that are hot topics but not necessarily a part of the daily news feed.  If you want to check it out, it’s on Monday through Friday at 2PM Central.  Monday they’ll be discussing the issue of concussions in the NFL.  Then Tuedsday, they’ll have an ex-NFL player who suffered from a concussion talk about how he had no idea football was such a violent sport when he was drafted and handed millions of dollars to put on a helmet and run headfirst into other people wearing helmets.  Wednesday’s show will just be a video mix of the clips from Monday and Tuesday’s show.  Thursday brings yet another tearful interview with Garret Webster about the tragic death of his father, and then on Friday Bob Ley will just show up in a diaper high as shit on painkillers and piss himself until they cut to commercial.
 
Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration.  And for the record I’m not unsympathetic towards players who have suffered from concussions, I’m just using this as an example to show how the producers of this show just recycle the same seven topics over and over again.  How many times can they discuss the rampant corruption in college athletics that we all know goes on anyway?  How about another show dedicated to Title Nine?  Or perhaps the subject of hazing that takes place on high school football teams?  We can never talk about teabagging enough can we?
5.  Danica Patrick
 
Hating Danica Patrick is easy. It has nothing to do with the fact that she’s finished a lot of races in the top ten in the Indy car series.  It has nothing to do with the fact that the talk about her switching to NASCAR full time from IndyCar has taken up way too much of the sports broadcasting landscape. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the fact that as a “hot babe,” she is monstrously over-rated. Sure, she’s good looking, but if you went into one of the good bars near a big college campus on a Saturday night, you will find at least 20 chicks you’d rather fuck than her. Danica is only “hot” because any chick is going to look better when you surround her with nothing but fat, sweaty, 50-year old guys.

The real reason to hate Danica Partick can be summed in one web address: Godaddy.com. The miserable ass-loafs that run that company subjected all of us to one of the worst advertising campaigns in American history. Somehow, they thought that giving teenage boys across the nation a crippling case of blueballs was a perfect approach for marketing a company that sells domain name hosting and web programming.

It’s an approach I like to call “Cinemax goes to Pre-school.” It’s a classic bait-and-switch deal that works like this: They hook you with a television commercial featuring Danica or any number of other perfectly fuckable bimbos which brings “suggestive” to the “trouser button popping” level, then they tell you to go to their website to view “unrated content” (wink, nudge). Just about the time you are looking for a tube sock in which to fire some knuckle children, you realize you would find better wacking material on Barney the Dinosaur’s website.  Don’t pump up the tires if you ain’t gonna drive the car, Danica. 
 

(Editor’s Note:  During the completion of this article, Barney the Dinosaur was killed in a less-than-tragic bus accident.  He will not be missed…) 
6.  The NFL Lockout
 
Since the NFL is my favorite sport, it’s hard for me to not put this one on the list.  A lot of people say that sports is just a game, and that’s true, but trust me:  When you get up the first Sunday in September and you realize that there’s no Sunday NFL Countdown, no pregame shows, and FOX is showing the television edit of “Scarface” for the eight thousandth time, you’ll want to gut your eardrums with a tomato corer WAY before you hear Sosa say “YOU (freaked) ME!!!  YOU (freaking) LITTLE MONKEY!!!”  I’m not sure how many people realize how serious this really is just yet. 
 
That being said, the NFL lockout hinges on the millionairres versus billionares argument, which is silly because Coors has signed a contract for the next 5 years making them the official beer sponsor of the NFL.   So, basically, it’s up to Pete Coors and when all is said and done both sides are fighting about how much money they will make, they have to be able to get both sides of the argument on the table and admit they can’t figure it out.  I’m sure both sides will argue that there’s too much money to be lost if they cancel the season, but as long as they both argue that said money is theirs we’re not going anywhere.   Fucking bullshit. 
 
7.  Less Reporting on the Economics of Sports

The current primary example is this whole “Mets/Dodgers” saga. Who the fuck cares…honestly, does anybody care about management fighting with each other about shit that everyday sports fans don’t understand?  All I know about the Mets is that Bernie Maddoff’s name has been mentioned a lot lately in that circle, and that can’t be good.  Fine with me, the Mets are never going to be the most popular baseball team in NYC, so I say “good riddance”  The Mets will always be the second biggest baseball draw in that market. Fuck them.  Don’t care.  Let CNBC cover the financials.
 
At least with the Dodgers I can pray for an earthquake.  I heard a radio host describe it best:  It’s almost as if there’s this family of confused children that are the Los Angeles Dodgers and their parents got divorced, so uncle Bud has shown up to try and fix everything and it hasn’t worked.  And of course he couldn’t fix shit, because he’s Bud and is scared to make a major move.  Fuck the Dodgers too. 
 
8. Skip Bayless

If you’ve ever worked in a non-union business which reduced its workforce, then you know who are the first people to get laid-off or pushed into early retirement. The people who get clipped aren’t just the ones who don’t add any value, they are the also the loudmouth, pain-in-the-ass types who exist only piss off everybody around them. If Skip Bayless worked in a factory, his ass would have been shown the door long ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the power of saying controversial things for purposes of drawing attention; that’s the model upon which the entire media revolves. But there’s a big difference between controversial and simply being a contrarian ass-burger. Skip, we all know you hate LeBron James, and we all know this week is like Mardi Gras week for LeBron James’ haters, but your petulant “I told you so” festival is going to cause me to give you to a 5-gallon Napalm enema, then fire a flare gun down your throat.

Bonus helpful hint to everybody who is over sixty years of age:  We can tell when you’ve had plastic surgery done.  It’s really, really obvious.  If Skip Bayless were in the same room with Kathie Lee Gifford and you cracked both of their skulls together (And if you were in that situation, you’d better…) there would be enough embalming fluid on the floor to run a funeral home for half of a decade.  You guys aren’t fooling anyone.
9. More People Who Actually Know About Sports

This should be the biggest “no-brainer” on the list. If you are paid to talk about a particular sport, then perhaps you should know something about it.  I don’t mean that every baseball announcer should be able to name the starting line-up of the 1987 Minnesota Twins from memory, but they should be able to explain a simple concept like why you don’t fucking swing at a 3-0 pitch.

While we are at it, there is no exemption for ex-jocks in this department. Just because one played a game doesn’t exempt them from becoming a complete dead-skull once somebody puts a microphone in front of them.  (If you’ve ever seen any footage of Jerry Rice or Emmitt Smith’s TV work, I’m sure you know what we’re talking about.)

Oh, and one more thing…no more “Ken and Barbie” types either. I can get that on absolutely every other network. Sports channels should only be populated with people who can talk intelligently about sports. If I want a smoking hot blonde who is so obnoxious I want to shove my dick in her mouth solely because it will shut her stupid ass up, that’s why I have Fox News.

 
10. Sports Programming in General

This is for those networks who forgot they actually have the word “sports” in their titles. Half the time, you would be hard-pressed to guess that’s what the “S” stood for in “ESPN.” The point referenced in #4 on this list only scratches the surface of this problem., See while some neck-tied shitwad is wasting my time blathering about a problem we are never going to fix, this “sports” network could be showing me, oh maybe a FUCKING SPORTING EVENT! They are never called the “Uselessly Blabbing About Sports Networks,” they are called SPORTS NETWORKS!!!

Here’s some specific suggestions for starters:

• No more nine-hour marathons of the same taped episode of (insert sports news show here). There are entire networks dedicated to that, and they do it live.
• No more radio shows on television. Whoever thought of that idea should be tried as a war criminal. The sole exception is the Dan Patrick Show, and even that should just be turned into a television show.  (Editor’s note:  Anybody inChicagoor the Quad-Cities, this program is available on Comcast SportsNet Monday through Friday) 
• More actual sporting events – you can tape-delay the less popular ones for those dead time slots. People who really want to see them can set their DVRs. But at least they could see them, unlike now. But just show sports, period.
• Stop pretending sports are popular just because the network has an agreement to cover them…I’m looking at you, ESPN and WNBA…

• And last but not least, no more of the strongman competitions.  That shit is so ridiculous simply describing it in print seems fake, but here’s an example of how stupid this is:  Several years back, I was flipping channels and I ran across this guy screaming at the top of his lungs.  It wasn’t a shot of his whole body, just his face.  I said to myself “He has to be in the middle of a deadlift or something like that.”  Then they panned out to the whole shot and he was holding these huge axes up so that they were touching these metal bars on each side of him that were level with his head, and I almost died laughing.  What fucking practical purpose would this ever serve?  First off, the likely reason why we haven’t seen this lately is because there’s no way it could be safe, and I’d hate to be the one guy standing next to him that gets an ax dropped on his foot.  Second, as mentioned earlier, we don’t need another competition where we are reminded of how inferior Americans are.  We get it:  The Scandanavians can lift weights better than we can.  Additionally, if you are in a situation where you would be holding double edged axes, you probably won’t need to be worried about how long you can hold them above your man-tits, you’ll be throwing them at whoever invented the time machine that sent you back to the age where you would fight with such prehistoric weapons.  Neither the surviving members of Mayhem nor the programmers of the original Castlevania would find this even somewhat amusing.  And plus, this isn’t a major organized sport, and we already have major organized sport where a bunch of steroid goons compete for attention, it’s called baseball. 

Remember, not only are the bullet points just “for starters,” the same can be said for the entirety of this list. I get that there are a lot of improvements to be made, but Confucius once said “even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” If I don’t see a step toward a solution, my first step might be putting one of my size 12s so far up your collective sports network ass you will be flossing with my shoelaces.

Once again thanks for visiting East End Philadelphia and Dubsism to enjoy more of the internet’s finest in user generated content. 
 
Meehan & J-Dub