Things I've Noticed

Trumpeting Fear from The Land of The Salty Lake

RW, up this week to Roundtable, is leveraging a very current event.  Some people in Salt Lake City became afraid, (make that very afraid), of something in a McDonald's.  Have a visit to his blog, Chasing Vincenzo to find out what this mystery object was.  Then feel free to comment with your thoughts on this sign of our times.

By the way, if you have a blog and think you would want to write a Roundtable post every 6 weeks or so and comment on and link to the Roundtabler of the week during the other weeks, email me and I'll hook you up so that you can join our esteemed group.  It's a great way to increase traffic and meet other bloggers in a virtual kind of way.

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Bachelor Reality Shows and Beautiful but Desperate(?) Women

I believe it started with "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire" and the agony continues with "Age of Love," which is this new show where a set of attractive 20-somethings compete with a set of attractive 30-somethings for the heart (and body) of a 30-something guy.  Am I the only one to have wondered why all these attractive women that could get a date just about anywhere, go gaga for one (usually dull) guy.  They fall in love, get jealous, have visions of family and marriage with this guy within two episodes.  Some of them even resort to name-calling and backstabbing.  I suppose this makes it entertaining, but these women are either great actresses or they have serious issues.  The women that lose end up in tears, thinking that their life is about over once the guy rejects her.  Maybe they just want to be famous, but I guess getting it at the expense of their dignity is OK.

And they put up with the guy dating and being intimate with many women at one time.  If only women not on the TV shows would be amenable to this.  What's interesting is how the one guy / many women show phenomenon seems to have more staying power than the one women / many guys format shows like "The Bachelorette".

If you enjoy the shows, keep having fun.  I don't want to stop anybody.  The only reason I might watch is to see how ridiculously attached the women are to the featured man, and of course to observe the attractive women who are dressing to impress.  (They tend to impress me too).  But I do wonder how many shows like this we can stomach.  There are only so many ways this set up can be spun to be considered fresh and unique.  Perhaps it's time to move on to the next better reality TV show idea.

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Quick Quote on Ladybugs

"I feel sorry for male ladybugs.  They must have an identity problem."

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Your Favorite Pre-VCR Childhood Memories

Beige is the new black.  And here he is in his blog Missives from The Beige this week asking us to dig up those great childhood memories of cartoons, books, toys that made us so happy.  If only things could work on us like that as we got older.  Anyway, have a visit to this week's Roundtable post and re-live the good old days by listing out the great entertainment of your time.  If you can, dig up some links to share with the rest of us.  We're not the only nostalgic ones, and lots of the others have time to put videos and pictures on YouTube and other sites.

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Cleveland Sports Fanaticism, Superstition, and Despair

So I've had some time to recover from the sweep that the Cleveland Cavaliers had to endure at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs.  Second place was never so embarrassing.  The whole amazing season for the Cavs has confirmed that despite my attempts to detach myself from sports and city pride, I'm still a bit of a fanatic.  As a Cleveland fan from the age of about 11, I have had to deal with so many losing seasons for not only the Cavs, but the Indians, and the Browns.  Even when these teams were good, they could never win a championship.  I shudder every time I hear about "The Drive", "The Fumble", "The Shot", and "Jose Mesa".  To be fair, I did experience an Ohio State Buckeyes NCAA football championship, but this is getting old.  I'm convinced God hates Cleveland sports teams.

Now that we've established that pro sports hasn't been kind to the teams I support, I need to confess that I still get excited rooting for "my teams".  It raises my blood pressure, puts me on edge, makes me happy or irritable depending on the outcome.  Add to that the fact that I become temporarily superstitious, (kind of like driving amongst bad drivers makes me swear when I ordinarily don't).  I actually wear certain clothes, change seats, turn the light in my living room on or off, or intentionally have more pessimistic thoughts in a kind of reverse psychology game I try to pull on sports karma.  Despite the fact that I'm generally rational and logical, I somehow get this temporary feeling that my subtle actions have a cosmic influence, a butterfly effect if you will, on the outcome of games for "my teams".  Team skill, coaching and experience have nothing to do with it.

I suppose to that I want some positive press for the hometown I love.  It doesn't matter where I live or move.  I always say that a real fan is a fan for life.  I know it's "just a game," but I and many many others somehow equate how good our hometown teams are with how great our city is.  I really wanted the Cavs to beat San Antonio partially because I despise some stereotypical things about Texas, like conservativism, wastefulness, over-religiousness, prejudice, southern 'justice', and guns.  Also, something about Tim Duncan bugs me.  But, the Cavs lost.

What makes pro sports so important is the morale boost it provides a city.  And few cities need this boost more than Cleveland especially with its depressed economy and after it has  been the butt of so many jokes for so many years.  It's actually a very liveable and nice city.  In fact, The Economist ranked Cleveland higher in this respect than many cooler cities.

In baseball, the Indians are doing well this year and they might make a run at the World Series.  (Some Cleveland fan somewhere will now blame me for a new Cleveland sports / Things I've Noticed jinx).  Once when I was in Las Vegas, I inquired about betting on every team except the Cleveland teams to win a championship.  In essence, I wanted to buy a Cleveland championship.  Apparently, they don't do that sort of thing in Vegas so it's back to the drawing board.  Maybe I should pray more.  I just hope a Cleveland team wins a championship before I die.

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Recall Some Dates You'd Rather Forget

Suzanne just had to do it this week for the Roundtable post.  She is making us dig up our worst dating experience, although they're probably the best ones to read about.  I've had my share, in fact more than my share and I talk about one horrid dating saga over the course of a weekend.  If you're interested, head on over to Suzanne's blog Perfecting Procrastination and read... and contribute.  It would only be fair to share in the miserable memories.

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Quick Quote on My Hair

"My hair is so flat; it's style-proof and fashion-free."

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The Arrogance of Today-ness and Entertainment Taste Insecurity

I'm watching a VH-1 Special on sensational soft rock songs and observing the commentary on most of the artists reminded me of something I've been wanting to write about for some time now.  The smart-alec celebrity commentators are funny, but they have a smugness that's interesting.  This attitude stems from the notion that everything old and pop sucked (with few exceptions).  These songs by groups like Hall and Oates were ones that most of us liked at one time, or they wouldn't be hits.  At what point do we all abandon the fact that these were great songs for their time?  And more importantly, why do we do it?  I have a collection of music including artists such as Mariah Carey, The Go-Gos, Foreigner and a bunch of other groups whose songs I'm proud to own, but ones for which other people make fun of me.  I would understand if the people who make fun of me for it never liked it, but I always say that if I believe that a song is good, that means I'll always like it whether its critically acclaimed or not.  Is it "taste in entertainment insecurity" that drives others to change their mind about the songs?  It's either that or the fact that we outgrow music in some way.  I can't explain that phenomena.  Nobody has outgrown their taste for the Mona Lisa, or Andy Warhol.  Perhaps its based on level of greatness.  Critics and awards can proclaim greatness, but I proclaim it under my own terms for my own use.  Only "great" songs go on my MP3 player.  TV shows and movies are considered differently too.  "Growing Pains" and "Who's The Boss" are downright cheesy and appear low budget in some ways, (perhaps due to the bad acting), but movies seem to age better and more frequently become classics, although we'll pay to watch crappy movies just because of the star factor or because everybody else is watching them and we don't want to be left out.  So the lesson to be taken from this post is to not be so sure that what you like today is all that great.  Somebody is sure to think it crappy in the future, and sometimes for good reason.  But then, if you really like it, just ignore their opinions.  It's your MP3 player and you should do with it what you want.

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The Soundtrack of Our Jive

Stephen is taking a cosmic approach to his Roundtable post for this week.  Remember the 70's when NASA launched two Voyager space probes and they put gold records on it with the sounds of the earth?  Well, where's the payback?  Either the aliens haven't found it yet, or they have and they weren't impressed enough to call us or stop by.  So, over at his blog Serenade in Green, Stephen is asking you to comment with what you would put on a mix tape version two for intergalactic communication.  He will be the judge and jury as he will decide what goes on the final version.  The playlist will be posted on Monday so be sure to check back there.

Also, if you're reading this, you are a possible candidate to join the Roundtablers.  You get to comment on the Roundtabler of the week's Thursday post and your turn to post comes up once every couple of months or so.  You get traffic to your site, join a fun group, and grow smarter and funnier each week.  As Stephen puts it, "All you need is a blog, a brain, and a well-stocked bar -- Read all about it and contact one of us for more info..."

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Quick Quote on The Morning

"It's better to stay up late because nothing fun happens in the morning.  (Well, almost nothing.)"

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