Buy Or Don’t Buy

I don’t follow college football (that’s why happens when you have a foreign father and went to college at a school with no team), and I possess little-to-no analytical knowledge of the NFL, but still! I’m going to be live-blogging the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft, starting in about…oh, 15 minutes. Why?

1. Everyone loves the draft. No matter who you root for, you can imagine that whoever your team picks is going to be AWESOME. I mean, just look at their college highlight reel!

1a. If you have a bad team, the chances of getting an AWESOME player are even higher! Or if you have a good team, you’re probably only one player away from winning the Super Bowl!

2. It’s in prime-time this year! (That changes nothing, but just go with it.)

Ready? OK! Pumped? Me too. I even spent all last night making some images that can go with this post. I hope you all can enjoy them.

» Oh I’m buying this…

I mean there kinda really were a lot of unresolved questions:

-Was the White House rebuilt?
-Did Randy Quaid survive?
-Does Jeff Goldblum have other things to say with his hands?
-Are there other black pilots?
-ARE ALIENS REAL?!!?#!!!

Here are my re-purposed slogans for ID42 and ID43:

We’ve always believed we weren’t alone. Pretty soon, we’ll wish we had more alone time to get done those errands we put off.

THESE extraterrestrials don’t want to phone home…They want to text.

EARTH Take a good look. It could be your last. Ha. Made you look.

Don’t make plans for August. It is really hot.

The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has been answered. Next summer… the question will be re-posed and hopefully answered in a different context.

Enjoy The Superbowl. It May Be Your Second to Last (Superbowl Promo)

On July 2nd, they arrive on vacation. On July 3rd, they strike gold at a strip joint. On July 4th, we fight back against sex tourism.

On July 2, 2011, the aliens came. On July 3, 2011, the aliens saw and struck. On Independence Day 2011, the human race will CONQUER ONCE MORE WHAT ONCE WAS THEIRS ONCE.

(h/t: coming soon)

Unlike most of the shows it shares a network with, ABC Family’s “10 Things I Hate About You” is good, clean and fun*, a 30-minute bubble-bath of squeaky shiny teens and their squeaky shiny problems.

*A roundup: “Greek” is good and fun, but hardly clean; “Ruby and the Rockets” is clean and fun, but never good; “Make It Or Break It” is clean and good, but rarely fun; and “Secret Life of the American Teenager,” given that it is absolute shit, is not good, clean nor fun.

But after flicking to “10 Things” during a commercial break in “Chuck” last week, Sara and I unexpectedly witnessed this: undoubtedly The Most Offensive Scene in Basic Cable History:

What????

While I would also accept nominations for the climax of ‘Scott Tenorman Must Die’ and any ‘Previously on “Secret Life”‘ montage, those at least have reason to exist. This? Plopped down in the middle of an otherwise-innocuous episode, this scene is like finding out your favorite restaurant serves rat meat. Intentionally.

I’m kidding a little bit, but I would still like to know the thinking behind this development. Who decided that a heartwarming series about a man trying to prevent his daughters from having sex needed more broad racial caricatures?

While I dial the PC Police, readers, let me know: What do you think is The Most Offensive Scene in Basic Cable History?

That, in itself, is a miracle, don’t you think? No? I have to sell you on this?  Okay.

• And I quote “Magic everywhere in this bitch”
• And I quote again: “Fuckin Magnets, How Do They Work?”
• They are wearing clown make-up… and the one guy is a fatty! Hilarious
• ICP fans (like this guy)
• This:

Whether it was by the hand of irony, post-irony or of ‘The New Sincerity,’ the term ‘guilty pleasure’ has been stripped of much of its meaning recently, to the extent that I can’t remember the last time I heard it used correctly. Too often will people use it when they really mean ‘lame thing I enjoy ironically’ or ‘popular trashy thing that everyone likes.’ I was starting to worry that true guilty pleasures no longer existed when, in a period of extended underemployment, I saw a commercial that allayed all my fears. Behold, a video so inappropriate to enjoy that I feel like I should alert my neighbors every time I watch it:

30 seconds of children dancing and talking about changing their clothes, while an adult voice tells them to “shake it.” Dear Lord.

But the animals are so cool and friendly! And the music is so catchy! You’re damn right I know all the words:

Baby let me show you how to do this

You got to move it

You’re doing fine!

Ain’t nothin’ to it

You got to move it

C’mon and groove it

Shake it! Shake it!

My head and my heart are at war because of Garanimals. There is no way this can end well.

[UPDATE: Five minutes ago I found the original song and am pleased to report its video is much less pederast-y:

Now I can relax!)

This past weekend’s episode of SNL was just alright, but it did include this funny parody of home security systems ads:

However, it would have been even funnier if Sara hadn’t shown me this clip from Target Women six months ago:

Obviously it’s not fair to assume that Saturday Night Live stole the sketch; Target Women, after all, airs on CurrentTV. (What’s that? Exactly.) But it is still a sad little reminder that, in this season of SNL, all of the best moments have just been been retreads of previous ones.

Or, “How A Cliché Changes Its Usage, In Five Easy Steps”

I: Status Quo

November 4, 2005:

What’s more important: talent, coaching, or swagger? These quotes may help you decide. Each tells us something important about that magical gait.

[...] FOX’s Adam Schein, on the Cowboys’ rout of the Eagles a month ago: “Finally, swagger and aggressiveness from the Dallas Cowboys.” Maybe the nefarious Cowpokes swiped it from the Eagles. Or maybe Barry Switzer just misplaced it in the team offices a decade ago.

Chris Harlan, Beaver County Times, on Monday’s Steelers-Ravens game: “Ray Lewis was wearing jeans, but the Ravens’ swagger was still there.” It’s a key ingredient in upsets, and stars like Lewis can horde it for five years after a Super Bowl win and project it telepathically from the bench.

Pro Football Weekly’s college scouting report on Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder. “Plays with a sense of urgency. Very confident. Has a swagger.” It can be spotted by trained scouts, who no doubt watch for signs of it at Senior Bowl practices.

[...] This is serious stuff. [...]  With the exception of some rookies in tight situations, all football players are confident. Swagger must be equivalent to super-duper-ultra-confidence, not to be confused with cockiness, which we all know is bad.

II: Appropriation

August 8, 2007:

No one on the corner has swagger like us

Hit me on my burner, pre-paid wireless

We pack and deliver like UPS trucks

Already going to hell, just pumping that gas

III: Mainstreaming

September 6, 2008:

No one on the corner has swagger like us

Swagger like us

Swagger, swagger like us

Mr. West is in the building

Swagger on a hundred thousand, trillion

Hey yo, I know I got it first

I’m Christopher Columbus, y’all just the pilgrims

IV: Watering Down

August 7, 2009:

And now the dudes are lining up, ’cause they hear we got swagger

But we kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger

V: Self-Parody

January 5, 2010:

According to the Kansas City Star, [Justin] Bieber says, “I have a swagger coach that helps me and teaches me different swaggerific things to do,”

Yes! There’s more: “He has helped me with my style and just putting different pieces together and being able to layer and stuff like that.”

Study Questions:

1: What does the word ’swagger’ mean today?

2: What does the concept of ’swagger’ mean to you? What did it mean to you five years ago?

3: Are there other clichés that have had their meanings changed or obfuscated over time due to their usage in popular culture?

BONUS: Where does this line from Sufjan Stevens’s ‘The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us’ fit into the timeline?

All of my powers, day after day

I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed

Please submit your answers in the comments.

We get it. Kurt Cobain was an icon. He was a major player in the grunge movement and proponent of teenage angst back in the 1990s. But he’s dead. He died back ‘94. But for some reason, people keep doing things to his memory that just… miss the point of “who he was.”

The latest: Kurt Cobain on Ice!

Is it just me, but does that skater kind of look like Mel Gibson?

It is apparently “Talk in Third Person Day.”

No.

If you do this, I will first lose respect for you then despise you for the rest of the month.