Why Can't Comedians Be Funny Anymore?

In the last week, we have seen two comedians apologize for telling jokes.  The first was Gilbert Gottfried.  He tweeted some harsh jokes about Japan from his Twitter account.  One read, "Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them." while a second read, "Japan called me. They said "maybe those jokes are a hit in the US, but over here, they're all sinking."  The latter I see as his attempt to acknowledge that he knew his jokes were going a bit over the line but in a funny way instead of an apologetic way.

When did we get to the point where comedians have to apologize?  I am not condoning what Gilbert said, but he's a shock comedian, and you know that that is what you get with him.  We've seen him do this for years.  He has been invited to so many roasts of other celebrities over the years for THAT reason.  He's hilarious, and more so when he says something outrageous.  

At the Roast of Hugh Hefner in 2001, he told a 9/11 joke.  He got booed and responded by telling the famous Aristocrats joke.  If you are unfamiliar with this joke, you discuss a rich family doing the most insane, crude, sexually explicit, craziest things you can, until the audience is thoroughly uncomfortable and then hit them with a punchline.

 Fired? Seriously, I Have Said Crazy Stuff Before

After his Japan tweets, he was fired as the voice of the iconic AFLAC duck.  AFLAC fired him because of the tweets and said Gilbert's thoughts and ideas did not match their own and even went further to say that his tweets were not funny.  Gilbert then issued an apology a little while later.  AFLAC had employed Gottfried since 2000.  So by firing him now, we get the clear message from AFLAC: Telling jokes about 9/11, those are ok.  Telling jokes about Japanese Tsunami victims?  Not ok.  How hypocritical of them.  They have issued a nation wide casting call for a replacement.  Do we really want anyone else playing the AFLAC Duck?

Next up on this week's apologetic comedian list is George Lopez.  He was joking about the B-list stars on Dancing With The Stars.  He made a stripper joke about Kendra, he made a "your a man" joke about Wendy Williams, he said Ralph Macchio wore a toupee, and he made a joke that Kirstie Alley was fat.

Only Kirstie took offense and blasted him for his joke.  He then apologized, but why?  Why would you apologize about making a Kirstie Alley fat joke?  Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and several other comedians have made the same jokes!  The video of what Lopez said about Kirstie Alley can be seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/george-lopez-on-kirstie-alley-pig-dwts_n_839753.html 

Jimmy Fallon has a bit on his show where he picks three people out of the audience to throw hot dogs in a celebrity cutouts' mouth, the most in wins a prize.  The one time I saw that game, Kirstie Alley was a cutout.  Clearly, her weight has not been off limits as a joke, and it shouldn't be.  She even had a show called Kirstie Alley's Big Life, in which she showed her daily life while on a diet to lose the weight she gained back after getting off the Jenny Craig program.

 I Am Not Even The One Who Drew This Arrow

Kirstie Alley shot back at George Lopez, saying that he hates women and should give back the kidney that was given to him by his ex-wife.  I don't really care what she had to say about this matter, but the fact that she went to a level of her own shows her hypocrisy.  She also made jokes about the situation on Twitter, so if she can joke about the joke, then the original joke stands.

Kirstie Alley is a former(?) coke abuser who is a fat, twice divorced Scientologist.  If she is off limits, that's just not fair to comedians.  Nobody who's a celebrity should be off limits in my opinion.  If you're on tv, in movies or any other kind of famous entertainer, comedians should always have free range on you.  People should really learn to laugh at themselves a little more, and take themselves less seriously.

Comedians shouldn't have to apologize for their jokes.  Whether a joke is crude and outrageous about a disaster or really goes over whatever imaginary line exists around a person, you shouldn't have to apologize for your opinion, especially as a comedian.  Yes, it's ok for the audience to boo, but in the case of George Lopez, his audience laughed hysterically when he showed that Geico commercial of the pig hanging it's head out the window.  Clearly his intended audience was his live audience, and they gave their laughs of approval.  End of story.

Do you think George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Andrew Dice Clay, Red Foxx or any other shock comedians have apologized for any of their jokes in their career?  These guys take a mic, and they go up there and they blast all kinds of people, groups and ideas, and they don't care how controversial it is.  They shouldn't care, because it is their job to entertain, and to get laughs.  There will always be someone who steps up to any comedian and says they crossed a line with them personally, and comedians can't be apologetic about it.  

The comedian is better when the comedian has free range.  I would say outside of outright racism for no reason, there aren't any other lines that shouldn't be crossed or at least toed.  Comedy is much better when the comedians are thinking less about how they're offending and more about who they're making laugh.  So stop apologizing, and keep telling jokes.  If we can learn to laugh at ourselves, we're all better people for it.

And Really, Who Can Hate On A Guy Who Can Make Seagulls Laugh???

Who Really Needs THAT Many Batteries?!

Every time the remote control doesn't work, or my daughter gets some new toy, it usually means looking for batteries.  If I don't have batteries, this means going to the store to get some.  The problem is that lately, I have noticed that they no longer sell batteries in two or four packs.

Look at the picture of the Walmart display of batteries above.  It's got eight packs, ten packs, twelve packs, sixteen packs, even a twenty pack.  This is great if you are going on a four thousand mile drive and your only mode of entertainment is a Sega Game Gear that ran on six batteries, which drained in about three hours back in the day; but not if you are any type of normal person with standard electronics from 2011.

I remember the days back in the 90's when I would buy batteries for my Tiger Handhelds(remember those?), or for any number of toys I owned that ran on batteries.  It was really easy, just go to Walmart or any store and get a two pack of batteries, sometimes a four pack if necessary.  About $2.00 and you had your fully functioning toy at last.

Now, it's IMPOSSIBLE to find a small pack of batteries.  The smallest pack I could find contained six batteries, and was not sold in the display.  It was being sold as one of those last second hot items people grab when they are already standing in line on the aisle waiting to check out.  On the main display, the smallest sized package I could find contained eight batteries and cost $5.97.

I recently had the batteries in the remote to the main television in our house go dead and was in need of a pack.  My daughter doesn't really have any toys that she plays with regularly that run on batteries and I own no electronics that run on standard batteries, nor does my wife.  So I just needed a two pack, but of course, I can't just buy two.  Batteries are not like potato chips; I can certainly just have one.

I don't know when Duracell, Energizer, Rayovac and all the other battery companies got together and decided that batteries would no longer be packaged in any form other than massive unnecessary overload.  The only place I can find a two pack of AA batteries is a convenience store, and they are always off brand that will last all of twenty minutes.

Since this is 2011, I figure they would understand that most of our stuff runs on lithium batteries or has some sort of internal, rechargeable component.  This means we use far less standard AA or AAA batteries now.  So, this repackaging idea of forcing us to buy eight batteries in a single purchase could be to sell more batteries they know we don't need and wouldn't have normally bought.

My mom said she has to buy batteries for things at her job, and she said she has also had issues with not being able to buy smaller packs of batteries.  The woman who was working checkout at Walmart told me that you can sometimes find batteries in a four pack on the aisle if you're lucky, but that she hadn't seen that type of pack in a while.  

The whole idea that you can't just walk into a store and buy two or four batteries is ridiculous.  Most people buy batteries out of necessity for a newly purchased item, or to make an existing item work again.  Unless you are stocking piling for the apocalypse, nobody needs to purchase eight batteries at a time.  We just want our remote controls to work!

Rebecca Black Vs. America: The Worst Lyrics Ever

I have been listening to music all of my life, and one song always stuck out above all others to me as having the worst lyrics ever. That song was by written the band America, and is called "Horse With No Name." This song has some of the most awful and pathetic writing you will ever see in a song. Lets take a look.

First of all, in the first set of lines you get such great writing as "There were plants and birds, and rocks and things." Then you have amazing lyrics throughout the song such as "The heat was hot" and "Under the cities, lies a heart made of ground." This guy must have been drunk or high when he wrote those lyrics; otherwise he's just a terrible writer who seriously needed to invest in a thesaurus.

However, this song appears to have been written by Shakespeare when compared to a song I was made aware of this week.  That song is sung by Rebecca Black, a thirteen year old girl who signed her first record deal with an indie label called Ark.  The song they gave her to release was called "Friday" and has become an internet sensation for all the wrong reasons.

Like me, most people realize that this song is astonishingly atrocious, from the lyrics to the video and the quality of singing itself.  It is drowning in a sea of auto-tune, which doesn't help the nasiley singing of Rebecca Black; it only amplifies it.  Now, lets take a look at some of the lyrics of Exhibit A.  I really can't just pick out parts of the lyrics because they are all terrible and should be taken in full.  Here is the amazing writing of someone at Ark who should be fired immediately.

7am, waking up in the morning/Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs/Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal/Seein’ everything, the time is goin’/Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushin’/Gotta get down to the bus stop/Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)
 
Kickin’ in the front seat/Sittin’ in the back seat/Gotta make my mind up/Which seat can I take?/It’s Friday, Friday/Gotta get down on Friday/Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend/Friday, Friday/Gettin’ down on Friday/Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend
 
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)(x2)/Fun, fun, fun, fun/Lookin’ forward to the weekend

7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway/Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly/Fun, fun, think about fun/You know what it is/got this, you got this/My friend is by my right/I got this, you got this/Now you know it

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday/Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)/We-we-we so excited/We so excited/We gonna have a ball today/Tomorrow is Saturday/And Sunday comes after...wards/I don’t want this weekend to end

So there you have it.  I chose not to include the rap lyrics in the middle because we all know rap is ridiculous and nonsense anyways.  These lyrics are so bad, it's hard to dissect them because to discuss them here would mean that I would have to be under the assumption that they were written to have an actual point, which they clearly were not.  Whatever music career this girl was aspiring to have, this one track right here will ruin her chances, maybe forever.  Besides the need to remind us of the order of the days of the week, she also loses the ability to speak proper English.  The entire song she mostly uses correct English, then slips into ebonics for no reason in the line "We-we-we so excited."  I have no idea why this is necessary, or what purpose this would have in any song other than the fact that this is the culture rap has created.

When looking at the video, you notice that the video is as ridiculous as the lyrics itself.  There are many questions we have while watching it.  If you take it as an attempt to be a real video, the following questions arise, at least for me:  Why is she wearing more makeup when she wakes up than when she is off for school?  Why does she skip school?  Why is she riding on the back of the car like that?  Why does she say the girl on her right is her friend but not the girl on her left?  If she is already sitting down in the car, why is she still singing about which seat to take?  Where does she live where 13 year olds can drive cars and have a house party?  Why is there random rap in every teenager's song these days, and furthermore, why does the guy have to randomly rap about what vehicles are around him? Why is there a stage in the backyard with lights, why is she standing on it, and why is there a random string behind her in all the shots of her standing on the stage?  What is that string doing?

We may never get the answers to these questions, but we can all confirm for sure that this song is the worst song of all time, with the worst video and the worst lyrics.  This has far surpassed America's Horse With No Name in the worst lyrics category; at least America's song had some sort of point, even if we couldn't figure out what it was from the indecipherable words.  YouTube helped a lot of people get a buzz they never should have had in the music world.  While it worked out for Justin Bieber, it will fail this girl more than she can ever realize.  This video has 14.5 million views as of now, and most of the comments are purely negative reactions.

With today being Friday, one can only imagine how many people will be playing this lame song and laughing at it.  I am sure there are those who think they actually like this song, but it will fade like all things of this nature eventually do.  It just can't fade fast enough.  MTV needs to bring back that show where they retire songs forever.  In fact, they need to amp up that episode and murder this song.  It definitely does not deserve to live to see another Friday.

Why Can't People Think For Themselves Anymore?

So I have noticed over the last five years a huge influx of people suddenly showing concern for politics that never in their life cared for such things.  Most of these people are clueless about the reality of issues in the world, and instead spew out things as fact that they "heard" from a "source" or a "friend" or television.

If you haven't noticed, many Americans are intellectually lazy.  Test scores and grades are lower than at any time in the last 50 years in the US.  Kids care less and less about what is going on.  On Yahoo, the top three trending searches right now are Howard Stern, Muhammed Ali and Lindsey Vonn.  That's what our society holds important.  Meanwhile, Japanese earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis have ravaged millions of people's lives.  It's not over either; a nuclear power plant located along the coast of Japan is on the verge of a complete meltdown of Chernobyl proportions that could destroy life in that area for decades.

The media has a lot to do with how people see the world we live in.  From CNN to Fox News, media has spent a good portion of the last ten years turning the real world into reality television; over sensationalizing the news and hyping up the stories they know will garner them better ratings.  Some of these networks just flat out make up stories that don't exist, purely for ratings.  From Dan Rather not doing his homework on a Bush story leading to his dismissal from CBS, to the many times Fox News has created their own stories to poke at the left they disagree with, we see it as a recurring theme.

The problem with what this has created, is that this has created a society of people who believe things are going on that simply are not going on, or are twisted around in such a way to make it look unnecessarily evil.  It is egged on by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Ed Schultz, Andrew Breitbart, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh and others.  While we may see shreds of ideas we personally believe in in some of these people's work, we should not take the full volume of what they say and believe it as our own solid opinion.

People should be able to form their own opinions about politics, news events, religion and other matters of personal belief without needing to be injected by the needle of media serum.  If you can't, then shut up because nobody wants to hear you go on and on in a college class or at a church service about how X is causing Y to the outcome Z without a shred of evidence or truth beyond what you think you heard on a radio show or tv station.

My friend just today posted on Facebook about a fellow student in a college class trying to explain Socialism and basically explaining Capitalism to a T.  If you don't actually know what you are talking about from your own independent research from unbiased sources such as scholarly works and encyclopedias, don't speak.  It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.  That is one of my favorite, and truthful quotes of all time.  

Another problem that arises from riling people up with beefed up news stories to garner ratings is that you create a society of people who become caricatures of the extremes of the ideas being discussed.  Voltaire once said "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."  This quote is 150% true to the core, and the media is doing a great job of creating minions of their own bidding.

CNN in particular has really gone the opposite direction from where they used to be.  They used to be a legitimate, 24 hour news network, reporting stories with almost no bias and always having people from both sides of a discussion input on the topic.  Now, they have created a new format after Rick Sanchez was fired for his anti Jewish remarks about Jon Stewart. 

They have retooled their afternoon show to resemble a ridiculous variety show with cute little names for each segment like "Reporter Roulette".  Instead of presenting the news in a legitimate fashion, they present it as if it is appearing on MTV.  It loses all of it's legitimacy at this point and becomes nothing more than a reality show.  They even have a new feature where you can vote on what story of three choices you want to see, and most of these stories are serious stories, not just fun stories.  It seems ridiculous and really turns me off to see.

So remember, if you get your news from television or radio, do your own research and read some legitimate works on the subjects before you decide to make someone else's opinions on a discussion you don't understand your own opinion.  It would make this a much more pleasant country to live in and a much more intellectually free society.  If you can't do that, just shut up and talk about sports.

Is Walmart Turning Every Holiday Into Halloween??

It's almost that time again that every drunk person loves best:  St. Patrick's Day.  I myself do not drink, and it seems like this holiday is only popular for one reason; alcohol consumption.  Despite the fact that this holiday occurs sometimes in the middle of the week, it never fails that people will still get completely plastered.  The city I grew up in even has a Pub Crawl downtown where every place sells beer for just $1 if you have a special cup.

Anyways, my gripe on this post is about Walmart.  Walmart is evil, we all know that.  I am still very guilty of shopping there because it's just easy to do, and any small businesses that may have been competing with Walmart are long gone from this area anyway.  I have noticed something over the last several months that has me scratching my head.  As I was walking by the front area of the store the other day, I noticed this set up(pictured above).  That's right, hats, wigs and accessories.  Yep, Walmart thinks you should dress up for St. Patrick's Day.

Furthermore, they did the same thing for Independence Day, Christmas and even Valentine's Day.  Around Valentine's Day, Walmart had a setup for cupid clothes, bow and arrow sets and wings.  Here's my question: Is Walmart trying to turn every holiday into Halloween?  My answer is yes, without a doubt.  It has become apparent that it is now Walmart's goal to get us all to dress up for each and every holiday.

I guess this makes them money, and they would do anything to make a dollar.  They must be thinking that they can capitalize on each holiday in a Halloween sense, because at Halloween we all have so much fun dressing up in costumes and parading around like lunatics.  The problem here, is that once you turn every holiday into the same basic idea, they will all become stale.

Each holiday that we celebrate here in the US has a unique quality about it that makes it fun for us.  These are mostly commercial qualities and aspects that have little to do with the original meaning of the holiday itself; nonetheless we have fun with them in these ways.  We give candy and cards on Valentine's Day, drink on St. Patrick's Day, set off fireworks on the Fourth of July and give presents at Christmas. 

In fact, in some aspects, Walmart is trying to mix all of the ideas of each holiday into one corporate blitz that they unleash each holiday.  They now have cards for each holiday, not just for kids but for adults.  They also usually have special candy, cakes and desserts for each holiday right up front.  If they could find a way to sell turkey to the masses on President's Day, Arbor Day, Earth Day or Labor Day, I think they would put 100% effort into it.

We don't need any added corporate melding and deflection from the original intentions of the days themselves and what we like to do for each one separately.  While dressing up for Halloween is a lot of fun, that is what THAT holiday gives us to do; that is what makes Halloween special.  If we started doing this for each holiday, it would become an over-done exercise, and Halloween would really lose its most redeeming quality.  Cut it out Walmart, just sell your $5 t-shirts for each holiday and leave the dressing up to Halloween.