People We’re Done With

Brangelina Pittlie

OK, everyone else has less problem with Angelina and Brad than this picture being in this section would suggest.  But they are a symbol for all of the glory of Hollywood.  Everyone else has thought long and hard about this issue, and we are prepared to rant.  So, in this open letter of sorts, everyone else would like to put Hollywood on notice.  We are done with you!

First, let us rewind a bit.  Entertainment has been around since time began.  It all started with Adam and Eve naming animals in the garden (platypus?  kangaroo? –come on, just say either of them out loud 5 times, and you’ll know that they were having fun).  But it quickly progressed to actors in natural amphitheaters, jesters, and bards.  The funny thing is, for all of history until quite recently entertainers have been considered to be in the lowest ranks of society.

There are exceptions to this.  There are jesters who helped advise kings, and singers who changed the course of history.  But entertainers have always been seen as people who had skills that while providing usefull distraction, essentially create nothing.  Singers don’t create food, actors don’t create clothing or shelter, and jesters don’t protect your people from invasion.

This has somehow changed.  We know spend millions of dollars to pay an actor to play in a movie or a singer to dance around on stage.  We create giant statues to them.  We watch them honor each other on awards shows, as if they had cured some horrid disease.  We pay for television shows, magazines, and newspapers that are dedicated to reporting on who is dating whom and what breakfast cereal that Beyonce likes best.  Keep in mind that while we are consuming this…well let’s call a spade a spade…crap, they are telling us whom to vote for, what clothes to wear, and even how to wipe our butts!

We understand (to a degree) things like the grammys.  Many musicians have an amazing talent.  People like Eric Clapton, John Popper, and Aretha Franklin (we just picked some names) have amazing talent and it is good to celebrate that.  But for every one of them, there are just as many Chumbawumbas and Baja Men.  Go to your local bookstore.  Look in the music section of the magazines.  There are magazines that are only about the lives of the Jonas Brothers, and Hannah Montana…and not just a few.

Even more than this though, are the “actors.”  We use parenthesis because most of them are really actors.  Even those most of us enjoy, like Harrison Ford, simply play themselves in every movie they are in.  In Indiana Jones we see an older, unlikely-hero adventure type who barely makes it out of sticky situations while trying to survive.  If you change the hat and earth tone clothes, give him some black boots and a little white vest, and call the character Han, you have Star Wars.  In every movie he really just plays another version of Harrison Ford.

In fact, almost every box office goldmine actor or actress is the same story.  Basically, these people are really good at memorizing and repeating words that other people have written for them, and then pretending to do things.  Do they write their lines…nope, not usually.  Do they produce anything tangible…nope.  So, why do we love them so much?

They live in multi-million dollar mansions, wear clothes that we’ll never touch, go to parties with others like them, and spend their time mostly playing and wasting money.  And because they do that, we want to know what kind of food Oprah eats, how Sting likes to have sex, and what almost every star thinks about politics.  And then they complain that when people pirate their movies instead of paying them, or stop attending their concerts because they badmouthed our president in a foreign country.

Let’s run a rough comparison between everyone else, and Brangelina (actually, just Hollywood types in general):

Job

everyone else: Works every day except for 3 weeks of vacation in the summer
Brangelina: Works for about 3 months out of the year and vacations for 9 months

everyone else: Makes somewhere between $7 and $20 per hour
Brangelina: $11,500 per hour

everyone else: When we do a good job on a work project the boss slaps us on the back and says, “Well done!”  We are happy about this because we know we are paid to do an excellent job.
Brangelina: When they do a good job of reading what someone else wrote they get to stand up on national TV and thank people, receive a gold statue, have all of their peers celebrate them, maybe get a gold star planted in the sidewalk with their name on it, and get thousands of dollars in free gifts.

everyone else: When we do a poor job at work we get fired, have our pay cut, or get an official notice written in our file that punishes us.
Brangelina: They get to go on a talk show and tell everyone to go see the movie.  The talk show host pretends it is a good movie.  Their pay is unchanged.

everyone else: Works to produce things like cars, educated children, food, clothes, or puts their life on the line to protect their country.
Brangelina: Looks pretty

Family life

everyone else: Has a church wedding with a paid photographer, a small blurb in the local paper, and gets to honeymoon somewhere like Hawaii for a week.
Brangelina: Has a wedding on a Hawaiian island that is rented out solely for them, flies in all of their friends, has unpaid photographers in helicopters above them, and gets entire issues of magazines and television programs dedicated to the event.  They honeymoon for 3 months in all of Europe.

everyone else: Gets pregnant, has a baby, names it Jacob, goes to Sears photo center to have pictures taken, and works 10 times as hard to raise and provide for the child.
Brangelina; Goes to a 3rd world country to pick out the pretties baby, name the child something like “Orchidshine,” and someone gets paid several million dollars to release the child’s pictures, pays someone $7/hour to raise the child for them.  Their discretionary income is virtually unchanged.

everyone else: Gets married and struggles to stay that way.
Brangelina: Doesn’t bother getting married.  Has 4 or 5 relationships over a ten year period with various other stars.  The media celebrates each one as if they were the most wonderful couple in history, and treats each break up as “if it could happen to this couple, then what hope do any of us have.”

everyone else: Struggles each day to make it all work in order to bring a little joy to everyone around them.
Brangelina: If all they had was taken away tomorrow and given to people who absolutely need and deserve it, it would bring job to everyone around them.

People we’ve offended: Brangelina (yes, we know you work for some good stuff, but if you were really dedicated to social justice, you’d give away 98% of your income and still live in a mansion), anyone who buys “people” “Us weekly” or one of those type magazines, people who think the Osmond’s are worth thinking about, anyone who has ever said “Brangelina” without using it as a joke, anyone who reads things other people wrote for them and pretends to be someone else for a living, anyone who thinks that movie and music piracy isn’t a good idea, people who would still ever attend a Dixie Chicks concert.

Everyone Else’s Political Pygmalion Presents:

The Deathrace to the Whitehouse

So we know that it is the government’s version of the Kentucky Derby going on, and everyone has their own horse in the race.  This time around, it is a longer race than ever.  Hilary kicked things off by deciding that it would benefit her to start campaigning 6 months before the traditional start of the presidential campaigning season.  She was wrong.  But she did succeed in having a hand as a catalyst to several states moving their campaigns earlier.  Not a bad amount of hell-raising for someone who claimed a mere two month prior to have no intention of ever seeking the presidency.

But that isn’t our true beef.  People with obvious political manuevering for the sole reason of getting power isn’t anything new.  Neither is the extreme vitriol being aimed at members or the other party.  American does have a history of brutal political manuevering, although certainly less than some other countries.  What does seem to be new is that now with blogging, email forwards, and social sites like Digg.com every member of the public can now play in the mud.

This has become more pronounced than ever with John McCain’s choice of VP, Sarah Palin.  From the moment her name was spoken a hailstorm of accusations, ridiculous internet memes, and complete lies raining down the internet.  Obama and crew (meaning the Mainstream Media) took over a week to adjust to the surprise choice, but the bloggers, Huff-ers, Daily Kos-monauts, and Diggers were pumping out propaganda that made the National Enquirer look like Encyclopedia Britannica almost overnight.

Yes, Everyone Else knows that you don’t like Republicans, any Republicans.  Yes, we know that you think that putting an R next to your name means that you hate children, want to force everyone to go to church, and hunt down all homosexuals.  You (meaning liberal bloggers) are also wrong.  You are wrong in the same way that Obama is not a secret Muslim, and Democrat congressmen don’t want to secretly convince children to become gay.  The two parties simply represent two different ways of approaching government.  Do you really think that Republicans want to make children starve and murder homosexuals?  Of course not.

But if you’ve been reading the liberal blogs, you might think that is not the case.  For instance, did you know that Palin secretly did not have her most recent child, but was covering up for her daughter’s secret pregnancy?  You can tell this is true by a picture taken 2 and a half years ago.  Sarah also broke up the marriage of her husband’s former business partner by having an affair with him.  She also wants to break up the US government by succession, destroy the environment, and is a far right-wing maniac.

As maybe you guessed, all of this is not true.  In fact, it has all been clearly disproved.  But it doesn’t matter to many of the bloggers.  Veritas?  Que es veritas?

Goerbels once said (and no we don’t esteem him) that “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”  Unfortunately, some liberal bloggers take to that win-at-all-costs mentality, that says even a lie is OK if it hurts the other side.

Congratulations Kos-monauts, Huff-ers, and Liberal Diggers.  You are on the Wrong Side of the Issue.

Everyone Else’s Political Pygmalion Presents:

Everyone Else is going to be looking at political issues over the next couple months not from the position of the partisans, or the political parties’ talking points, but instead from the position of…well, you guessed it…everyone else.  Our basic point is that there is too much political debate these days that involve very little logic or truth.  Most pundits are just trying to see which attempts at demagoguery will stick.

A word about the controversial nature of debating politics: It’s no use flaming us when we say something you might not agree with.  Please do comment and debate.  The idea is that we hope (as we always do) that at some point we are going to say something that offends everyone.  Also, we don’t care that you might disagree with us, and frankly, your degree of irrational vitriol is inversely proportional to the validity of your position.

Now, without further prologue: The Wrong Side of the Issue – Global Warming.

Global warming seems to be today’s cause celeb.  From the ridiculous moonbattery of the neo-hippies living with no air conditioning (which is particularly bad, since they aren’t wearing deodorant to start with), to some extreme Right Wingers seeming to want to punish the evil earth for all of those natural disasters, the one thing that’s for sure is that everyone is talking about it.

Basically, the breakdown can be seen like this: The Liberals want to lessen pollution to as close to zero as we can.  Many are hoping that prices of resources will go up to the point where people will stop using them, and that the government will crack down heavily on businesses to reduce their pollution, often at staggering costs.  At the same time, global warming has become religion-like in its fanatical devotion, where any doubt of its power is to be met by instantly relegating the doubter to the eternal time-out corner.

Republicans, on the other hand, are handling the situation by either blissful head-in-the-sand policy, or for some odd reason, deciding to advocate cheap-as-free energy policies coupled with purposeful wasting.  Even typically level-headed Glenn Beck has been asking listeners to waste as much energy as possible in his “Carbon Onset Program,” in order to offset the savings from the Democratic National Convention in Colorado.

On this issue, both parties are on the wrong side, but the Repubs are more butts-up than the anyone.  Lets look at what we KNOW to be facts:

1. Pollution is bad!  We know this is a complete revelation.  But let’s just think about this.  Even if we did have an unlimited amount of resources, it would just be wrong to waste them.  This isn’t a difficult concept people!
2. We do have a limited amount of resources.  The fact is that at some point the world’s demand for things like oil (particularly oil) will be greater than the world’s supply.  The question of when that will be exactly is debated.  But the fact is that eventually this will happen.  When it does, there will be global fights over these resources.  Of course, this isn’t destined.  We could come up with technology to either switch to less scarce resources, or find ways to use less of them.  Countries that come up with these answers earlier will have to struggle less when the resources become scarcer.  Who in their right mind wouldn’t advocate for making this a top priority now.  It really isn’t more complicated than that.
3. We currently are paying a lot of money for something we absolutely need (oil) to countries that make no pretense over wanting our men, women, and children dead.
4. We also buy this resource (oil, again) and then we take it and burn it.  Yes, we burn it.  Now, if I said that we were going to have everyone in America buy an iPhone made in North Korea, and then put it in our fireplaces and burn them for warmth, we would seem crazy.  Yet, we do this with oil.  Oh, and yeah, did we mention that this creates a very unhealthy smoke.  Don’t doubt us on the smoke.  Have you ever tried to breathe the air in Beijing?
5. Whether or not the earth is getting warmer is really moot.  This is a pointless debate.  The reasons for being better stewards of the environment are stacked to the ceiling as it is.  The global warming issue is an obvious straw man argument.  Debating the temperature or thickness of the ice caps does not address the issue of wasting resources, creating unneeded pollution, giving money to our enemies, and putting us in a horrible position for future global competition.

So Republicans, you are on the Wrong Side of the Issue

Stuff we Noticed at the Olympics part 2

Maybe if they let the divers jump into the field, baseball might get some airtime.

As the Olympics draws to a close everyone else has been thinking about the spectacularly rated NBC coverage of this sports extravaganza.  If you’ve been watching as much as everyone else has, you have probably seen an enormous amount of swimming, diving, gymnastics, swimming, diving, gymnastics, some volleyball, more volleyball, and a few track and field events.  Of course, we know those are the only sports that are played in the Olympics, so that is fine…oh wait…what’s that you say?  There are far more sports than those in the Olympics?  Huh, who knew?

We understand the tension that existed between the US and Chinese gymnastics teams.  That needed to be shown.  Of course, there were also the highly rated US volleyball teams, and somewhere in there was some American swimmer that we hear was pretty good.  But shouldn’t NBC have at least acknowledged the existence of some of the other sports?

One thing NBC has done well has been their web coverage, where you can see just about any sport being played at the games.  However, before you fire up the generator and go online, most of these are filmed with the worst possible camera angles and have no vocal commentary at all, so they are kinda hard to watch sometimes.

But, their great website aside, where has their acknowledgement of the other sports been?  Now granted, usually the news focuses on those sports where the US is a medal contender.  But javelin and pole vaulting are not our greatest strengths, and diving certainly not.

Take this evening (Friday, August 22nd) for example.  Tonight is the bronze medal baseball game between the US and Japan.  Both of these are strong gold medal hopefulls.  Right now both teams are tied in the 5th inning.  You wouldn’t know that from the TV coverage.  NBC hasn’t mentioned it on broadcast TV at all.  Not even once, in fact.  Instead, they have spent the evening showing a diving competition in which the United States is not a real contender, Semi-final track relays, and a brief look at the Americans faltering in the pole vault.

Why no mention of baseball?  Isn’t that the national pastime?  Agreed, baseball takes much longer than a quick relay, but they could at least show clips.  This doesn’t seem to make much sense, but then again, not much does anymore.

Meet the Olympians part 2

In our continuing look at the heroes of the Beijing Olympics, everyone else will today highlight the other female Olympic gymnastics powerhouse.  That is, of course, the women from America.  We don’t have time to cover each one, but we will look at the top 3:

US Olympian Shawn Johnson

The first is Shawn Johnson from Iowa.  Shawn is excited about being in Beijing for the Olympics, and hopes to get the gold.  She enjoys giving superficial Tepee hugs to her friends, wearing pony tails, and generally thinks she is better than others.  “I am in the Olympics because I am better than you,” she recently said in a general statement to other Americans.

US Olympian Bridget Sloan

Next is Bridget Sloan from Indiana.  Bridget is excited about being in Beijing for the Olympics, but knows that she is completely forgettable.  “No one is supposed to remember me after the games,” she told our reporters.  “Even though I look exactly like the other girls, I am only there to make it look like there are more than 2 girls on the team.” She enjoys giving superficial Tepee hugs to her friends, wearing pony tails, and generally thinks she is better than others.  “Even though I won’t win anything, I’m still better than you.  I will marry a really rich guy, and then someday I’ll get pretty fat, but I’m better than you,” she said.

US Olympian Nastia Liukin

Finally, we have Nastia Liukin.  Let’s face it, she’s just like all the others, except a little taller, with not so cute a name.  Even though her family isn’t originally from the US, she still feels quite at home in Texas.  She enjoys giving superficial tepee hugs to her friends and wearing pony tails.  When asked what she’s passionate about she told our reporters, “Well, I’m supposed to say gymnastics, but really I’m more obsessed with hurting my parents for having named me Nastia.  Do you know how much I get made fun of for that?  ‘Hey, come over here and let’s do the Nastia…hahahaha.  I plan to get them back by becoming really slutty when I get a little older.”

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People we’ve offended: OK, we do apologize for this one, to all of the US women’s gymnastics team.  See the joke is that they all look like cookie-cutter white girls.  And the whole tepe hug and pony-tail thing is really obnoxious.  And come on, everyone has thought about Nastia’s name.  But we hope these girls never read this, or if they do, we hope they can take a joke.  Actually, we’re quite proud of them.

Meet the Olympians

Today everyone else will continue our wildly popular series highlighting the excitement of the Beijing Olympics.  This is the first in a series of exposes we will do on the Olympians themselves.

We think it is important that all of us now get acquinted with the Gold Medal winning Chinese Women’s Gymnastics team!

16 Year old Yang Yi-Lin preparing for the Pommel Horse

First is 16 Year old Yang Yi-Lin.  She has been into gymnastics since she was 3 years old in 1995, according to a Chinese Olympic spokesman.  According to her official biography from Xinhua, Yi-Lin was born to a humble farm family in 1992 and her first words were “I want to go away from you Mom and Dad and be trained to destroy the decadent Americans by doing a lot of twists and flips in the air.”  Kids say the darnedest things.  But with her childhood behind her, 16 year old Yi-Lin is singularly focused on Olympic gold.

16 year old He Ke-Xin

Next comes young powerhouse He Ke-Xin, also 16 according to her official passport.  Ke-Xin is most excited to be at the Olympics because she gets “to see the pretty colors, and my coach says if I do well he’ll buy me a pony,” she said at a recent interview by everyone else’s crack team of reporters.  She’s very nervous right now,” said her official handler, Wang Chi-yun, adding, “Please no more pictures of Ke-Xin in her jam-jams.  She needs her nappy poo.”

16 year old Yu-Yuan

Finally we have Floor Excercise expert Jiang Yu-Yuan.  Not much is known about Yu-Yuan, and the reclusive Yu-Yuan is not prone to giving interviews.  But everyone else did manage to get a chance to meet her 2 days ago just before she began her competition, where we were able to snap the picture above.  When asked about her chances in the competition, she responded “da!” and pointed to a bottle full of milk sitting nearby.  We don’t know much Chinese, but that must have been a powerful statement of national pride or something.  Her handlers, visibly unhappy about our interview, ushered us out.  “We don’t know what the problem is.  She’s 16.  She doesn’t like to talk about it.  She can’t talk now because she’s probably busy talking on the phone and dating boys, or worrying about acne,” said her handler Xi-Yoon.  When asked about her total lack of teeth, her handler quickly notified security, and we were sent out.

All pictures were taken at the Beijing Olympics

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People we’ve offended: 12 year old girls on the Chinese Olympic team, the Chinese who probably would have won the girls gymnastics competition even if they hadn’t used underaged girls, the Chinese who have put on a great Olympics so far despite their goal of winning at any cost, people who take gymnastics seriously

Letter to a Distracted Driver

Dear Madam who we saw driving on the freeway this afternoon,

First of all, we know your conversation was very important.  We could tell by all of your gesturing into the air as you drove.  We are also quite aware that you are a very important person.  You clearly informed everyone else on the freeway of this by the fact that you continued your conversation despite creating a traffic hazard for the rest of us.

But let us lesser mortals request your consideration on this particular matter.  We know you have a Bluetooth headset, because you proudly parade it around when you are shopping, talking to others in person, and even while at dinner.  We are confused then, as to why it is you drive with your phone held up to your ear.  Perhaps you should try swapping the times you do and don’t wear your headset.  Yes, yes, we know that you paid a fortune for it from the AT&T store, and you want everyone to know how special you are.  But please just know that no one is impressed by this anymore, and the other people you see laughing it up at the table across from you in the restaurant, that’s us.  We are laughing at you.

But all of that is away from the actual point of our letter.  You see, the heart of the matter is this.  Unfortunately, you are a horrible driver.  I know it hurts, but the sting of any rebuke is the truth.  You are lucky that you live in such a free society that doesn’t have restrictive laws, because any less benevolent society would beat you with rods and give you a skateboard to travel on.

All of this is made much much worse by the fact that you are chatting away to Helen or Tom, or whomever it is, and are completely oblivious to everyone else on the road.  If you are as wealthy and important as you would lead everyone else to believe, hire a driver and chat all you want.

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People we’ve offended: people who drive while talking on the phone, people who wear their Bluetooth headsets everywhere, people who don’t realize that others exist

Keifer Sutherland, the Man with the Golden Voice

Keifer Sutherland, the Mel Blanc of commercials

OK, we like Keifer. We aren’t too uppity to admit it. We liked the Young Guns franchise. We even liked 24, until it got too formulaic and predictable (have you ever noticed that the characters with the cheaper Nextel phones always get killed off early—check it out).

But even as much as we like him, we have to admit one thing: like many famous actors he never really plays anyone other than himself. Yes, we like him, but he is perpetually Keifer, just in different cirmcustances, and always in his Batman-esque rasp. Do we really have to half-whisper everything Keifer?

So, with his trademark sound it is not surprising to hear him voicing-over all over the place. But geez! Does he really have to be the voice of every commercial? Really? Hey Keifer, Vince Vaughn is on the phone, he wants his summer ‘04-’05 over-exposure back.

And now we better go before Dennis Miller sues us for steal his schtick.

Stuff We Noticed at the Olympics

Like everyone around the world, we’ve been watching the Olympics. So far it has provided us with quite a lot of exciting moments. But this evening we noticed something that the television commentators have not mentioned. Everyone else has.

Why in the heck is the American girls beach volleyball team wearing white bikinis? OK…OK…we know it is beach volleyball and bikinis are expected. Most of us really enjoy seeing girls in bikinis, especially jumping and giving each other special volleyball congratulatory pats (as can be seen in the President Bush picture that the politi-tards are blowing out of proportion, cause yeah, we get it, you hate Bush). But white? Did someone not put two and two together when contemplating the particular properties of a white bikini when making that decision? Well, most of us will enjoy that strange decision, which would have been less of a problem if it were being worn by say, the Swedish or Irish teams, but in this case just kind of makes Americans look like the shameless people that everyone else already thinks we are.

Motards in the News!

An Atlanta woman began a campaign to change the city’s “Men Working” construction signs after she got caught spray-painting the letters “WO” in front of the “men” part. The story is here.

After getting caught doing this, she started a fight to get the nations highway signs to be gender neutral.

There must have been a loud hosanna ringing throughout Heaven. Of course we are being sarcastic. Everyone else is convinced that as a reward she should be allowed to repaint all the nations signs herself, and then can be the woman working behind them, just to make sure the work crews are gender balanced.

This is the sign of the end of the world, we are sure.

Just to answer the question: a “motard” is what happens when a retarded person and a moron breed. It’s a hybrid thing, and this lady is a perfect specimen.

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People we’ve offended: ugly women who are bitter and want someone to pay, feminists, feminazis, people who took this lady seriously, people who see discrimination in ridiculous places and want to fix it by making everyon equally miserable