And now for the snorting beer labels story

Usually I use this forum to discuss, rant, yell about, issues in the news that are just sitting there weighing on my mind. This may not quite fit in that category, but I just don’t get it….When did the fact that something is cold become a selling point for anything other than a ski resort? Driving along Route 95 today I notice an ad for Bud Light featuring beer bottles turned upside down with the caption ”Flipping Cold”. Not “It tastes good”, or “You’ll get hot chicks in bikini’s” or even “Bud……Weis….eeeeeeer” with some weird-ass talking frogs on a log. Isn’t the fact that beer is cold a lot more dependant on the temperature of your refridgerator? So I get home and turn on some reality show about a tennis player picking a girl from a group of 20 year-olds and 40 year olds competing against each other (it’s a really odd phenomenon on this show. All of these attractive women, but there is something quirky about every one of their faces. Like a nose pointing too far upwards, or too much teeth, or they are just a bitch) and I grab a beer. And thank God I checked the label, for the mountains had turned blue!, assuring me that my beer was, in fact, cold. Whew. That was close. So as I sat down I wondered “If the label turns blue when it’s cold, is it scratch n’ sniff as well?” So I spent the rest of the evening looking as if I was snorting crack off a beer bottle watching tennis players chase hotties thinking of the next Maytag commercial that tells me how good the fridge tastes. I can’t believe I just snorted a beer label. I think it went to my head.

And now for something completely different......

I just spent the last hour reading literally hundreds of submissions to the editors of a new website that should, hopefully, be up and running soon. Many were intelligent, funny and generally engaging; some were just brutal. In any event, I have come to one conclusion: It is far easier to respond to another’s opinion than to develop your own. In my years of writing, I have come to see, although begrudgingly, that there is more than one right answer to everything. No one starts off knowing this. As a child, everything our parents say is fact, until we realize how we were lied to about the whole Santa Clause debacle (yeah, finding out when your 7 years old from the 4 year old next door that Santa doesn’t exist really sucked. Thanks, mom. I just lived that down yesterday). It’s not until years later that we see, not only that there is more than one way to think about a topic, but that more than one is correct. But so often instead of doing the research, gathering facts, and coming to a logical conclusion on one’s own, we look for the first opinion we see and decide whether we agree or disagree with that opinion. So is an opinionated person one that has an opinion about a topic, or someone that has an opinion about another opinion? (I know that just set some record for the use of the word opinion, a fact of which I will get about a million editors reminding me.) It is far easier to critique a conclusion arrived at by another, which usually takes a matter of seconds to do, than to develop a good, valid opinion on our own. The opinions I respect don’t begin with “I think….” but, rather, the words “I have concluded….” presumably after much thought and research. (By the way, for the purposes of this blog, I am my own editor. I know I suck at it, and that is why in my other life I have a professional handling it. We have heard from a few volunteers for the position, and you may be getting a call soon, but not that so-called editor that called me an “ass-clown.” What’s that about? Ass.) Perhaps this explains the popularity of a Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. We enjoy either loving or hating them and the opinions they spew, but would never take the time or, perhaps, even care enough to think of our own. I think this might also explain the popularity of religion. How many, in the search for the answers to all the great questions of life, have even read the bible? Wouldn’t we just rather pick whatever opinion of the book we like best and sign up? How different would are life be if we stopped asking what others thought until after we considered the issue ourselves? What would we believe if there was no religion, but just the bible, prayer, and are own conclusions? And so I come back to reading all of these submissions. Try making me think. Not about how ridiculous or stupid or uninformed my opinion is, but give me something worth replacing my opinions with. I don’t need to be told how stupid I am. You write something worth reading, and I’ll come to that conclusion on my own.

Place your ad here!

I must say I am amazed at the replies to some of my posts, but glad to see so many opinions out there. But regards the media and what is aired, lets make one thing perfectly clear: The audience ALWAYS decides what is broadcast. What is aired has nothing to do with decisions made by editors, producers or authors. Why are there Paris Hilton stories all over the place? Because we will watch. How is that known? Because just 3 months earlier, we watched the Anna Nicole Smith story every waking moment. Television stations are run by advertisers, no one else. In order to get an advertiser to buy time, a station needs ratings. To get ratings, they will use whatever tried and true means necessary. The ones that try something new are either called geniuses or are fired, depending on the outcome. What makes the steroid issue so interesting is that it DOES NOT PULL IN RATINGS. ESPN in the past has aired more than one 30 minute special on the topic; NOBODY WATCHED. News organizations can air Hilton and Lohan clips endlessly because it is well known they will get ratings. To say someone cares about a topic denotes that it moves them to a particular action. In the case of these no-talent tabloid stars, people are moved to watch, as indicated by the increase in ratings. With the steroids issue, no one is moved to watch, no one has stopped watching baseball, no one has stopped buying tickets. When the subject is broached on a radio talk show, it lasts for about a minute because no calls come in on the topic. Steroids in one of the few issues I can recall that is forced fed to us, slipped in between items we do care about (sports scores or Hilton stories), and provides the perfect time to get that second cup of coffee in the morning. While a normal reply to “I am sick of_________” is to turn the channel, steroids is the exception to that response. Show me the advertiser that wants his commercial to run during the “performance enhancing drugs” special, and I’ll change my opinion.

Thank you all!

I want to take a moment to thank all that have replied to the posts either here on the blog or through email. We are working to get the new site up and running and all of your articles will be read as we search for the best talent out there. Just remember that we are not necessarily looking for a reply to one of my posts but rather a completely different look at the topic. Try to write as though you never read my original posting, and put a spin on it that is unique, and, most importantly, convincing. We have been amazed at the amount of replies, and we look forward to finding that work that will stand out for the website. Thank you!

Just shove the needle in my a** already

This never ending issue of steroids in sports has been shoved down my throat now for at least the last 2 years. Every major news network runs almost hourly stories on it and ESPN is running this nonsense like a stock ticker. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with the media reporting the news, even if it is as insignificant as say, a Paris Hilton story. But there is one huge difference between the steroids “scandal” and the Hilton joke; people care about the Hilton story. Every network ran, not only the story of her prison sentence, arrest, release, re-arrest, re-release, and mother-daughter hug; but also editorials on the internal debate to run those stories at all. The fact is they HAD to run this garbage. Why? Because we CARED. Why? I have no idea. All I know is that everyone I know was talking about it, and not just women and the gay community. On the golf course you hear “What do you think of the Paris arrest?” and at the gym “Do you think they over did it with the sentence?”. Everybody cared. There is no rhyme or reason to it, we just all love a train wreck, and this was it. The problem with the steroids thing is this: NOBODY CARES. Have you watched a major league game recently? The stadiums are packed. TV ratings are not just up, but WAY up. Barry Bonds was voted a starter by the fans in the All-Star game. While the media keeps gagging us on this steroid nonsense, we are busy changing the channel to watch Lindsay Lohan drive into trees. If these player want to keep sticking a needle in their arm and watch their heads blow up to the size of watermelons and their balls looking like M & M’s (the plain ones, cause those peanut ones are huge. Have you noticed that? When did they get so big?), fine. I don’t care. Just keep hitting balls out of the park, and I’ll keep watching and buying tickets. But to all those media outlets that want to keep running this crap the fact that I could care less won’t stop them. But eventually this will: No one else cares either.