Oh finally. Just a few more days and the miserable Olympics will finish. No more puff pieces on the nightly news about child mutants able to flip their bodies inside out while snapping Newton’s laws — all in the hope to win a gold medal in honor of their family’s dead mule back in Kansas. No more phony, I’m-sooo-aroused-by-the-Olympics chatter at the office. Oh did you watch so and so do something amazing last night and then cry when he got the gold? No, I didn’t! Now would you hand me the damn TPS report?!
Everything involving the Olympics (winter and summer) screams bullshit to me. Sappy, pretentious and boring; all brought to you this year by your friendly neighborhood police-state government — remember dissidents, there’s always a prison cell waiting for you in China. I don’t care about the athletes. So quit with the mawkish filler that is their life stories. For every Michael Phelps, there are 10,499 sorry-the-Olympics-were-last-week-and-I-completely-forgot-everything-about-them guys and gals. Give me my cougar-steroid chewing freak show of an athlete any day of the week. At least they’re interesting, especially when they go berserk and toss a bus full of school children down a ravine.
Nor do I buy into this “We are the World” propaganda. It’s a mockery of reality. Freakishly huge women from around the world can gather and toss 3-pound Frisbees everyday of the year and the world will continue to exist as a violent, soul-draining horror show. Global rivalries and politics aren’t absent from the Olympics; they’re just disguised as synchronized swimming and ping-pong.
Twisting a strand of shed dog hair and watching it unwind enthralls me more than watching the Olympics. They’re dull. Wow, that dude just swam across a pool real fast. Ahhh, that chick just ran in an oval real fast. Ohhh, that dwarf girl just did a back flip real fast. If I want to watch somebody swim, run, or do a back flip, I’ll watch the greatest moments of “Cops.” When my wife turns the Olympics on at night, I’m out like an unmedicated narcoleptic. Boom. Done. Dead. Fully rested the next morning. Saves me from the brain damage I’d receive from listening to the most inane sports broadcasting featured in all of the universe — and it comes around every two years like a herpes outbreak. I know there are dozens of sports to cover during the Olympics, but I could almost stomach the boredom of watching these competitions if it weren’t for the morons calling the action; give me a sloshed John Madden going full-retard any night. There’s a rumor going around these hacks NBC digs up for the Olympics are in fact robots programmed to only state the obvious while spitting out a minimum of 5 platitudes per minute (if they fail to meet the quota, John Tesh is placed in their stead).
Yet, it’s not just the Olympics that makes a media blackout seem like a good idea for my sanity’s sake. And I’m not speaking of “media” in the news sense. I mean Internet, TV, movies, radio, etc. Time to cut the power cords, close the blinds, bolt the doors, and break out Scrabble or something. The media has assaulted me in ghastly ways lately. Nowhere is safe. Case in point: True to my word in Star Wars: The Clone Wars last Friday. I gave it a chance and hated it more than cancer and the clap rolled into one medical diagnosis. Me not enjoying a Star Wars film is like John McCain not enjoying an episode of “Matlock.”
Speaking of McCain. He’s another reason why I feel like turning on the television these days will lower my I.Q. to a fatal degree. For some reason, presidential candidates freak out over Iowa’s seven electoral votes, which means a carpet bombing of campaign ads from May to November. After witnessing McCain’s superficial, issue-dodging, lowest-common-dominator advertising on both TV and the Internet (you know like the ads where he subtly hints that Barack Obama is both the Antichrist and, even worse, a club-buddy of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears), I’ve come to one conclusion: John McCain is a bitter old man and an asshat to boot.
Yes, I just called John McCain an asshat. Deal with it. It’s the truth. The man’s head is very far up his ass (most recent example, I’ve gotta make $5 mil to be considered rich in McCain’s book). Even worse than being a bitter old asshat, you should listen carefully to his simplistic — and often factually inaccurate — answers to reporters’ questions or bother looking up his abysmally low school records because you’ll realize something profound as I recently did: This man is dumber than George W. Bush. He’s an utter dim-wit. I half expected to see McCain standing outside a movie theater picketing Tropic Thunder last weekend — don’t get me started on that retarded, yes “retarded” is the only word that rings true here, publicity stunt (wow, you all made a big dent in that 5-day $37 million total, but at least you got what you really wanted – your name in the news).
Now before you go and slam me for trashing the petty tactics of Bitter Old McCain by using juvenile attacks, I’d just like to say that’s irony folks (plus I’m not running for President and I write a column called “The Shallow End”). This is what passes for political discourse these days, by both the average American and candidates from both parties.
The Olympics, politics and George Lucas’ focus-group created side-kicks (Ashoko Tano, worst Star Wars character… ever) are all about spreading the bullshit these days. Then you have the really annoying stuff like websites passing off the most asinine rumors as granite-chiseled fact. I know this is an old punching bag. But this particular rumor is cropping up on legitimate news sites and it’s why I’m tired of surfing the net along with watching TV or going to the movie theater lately. Please, if you see a website that passes off the Angelina Jolie as Catwoman or Johnny Depp as the Riddler rumors as anything other than pure crap (as this website has pointed them out to be), swamp the writer with hate mail. If you’re a hacker, find their credit card number and buy them something nice, like a platinum drool pan since I’m pretty sure the slack-jawed yokel needs one.
Sorry, Angelina Jolie is not texting porn-star Tera Patrick on tips for playing Catwoman. Why? There isn’t even a script for the next Batman film, much less ANY fucking casting going on! And please, I think Christopher Nolan can find someone much more talented — and less obvious (remember the surprise over Heath Ledger’s casting, anyone?) — than Jolie to play Catwoman, if he were to even sign up for a third film and even consider including Catwoman as a possible character! It only takes simple common sense to defuse such nonsense. This is the type of rumor manufactured solely for page views and suckers.
Yet considering plenty of people buy into the Olympics, probably enjoy Star Wars: The Clone Wars (just die Ashoko Tano, just die), will vote for Bitter Old McCain, and think Angelina Jolie has the Catwoman costume in her closet there’s obviously a lot rubes out there. Sadly, they’re the majority! I think it’s time to invest in a cabin located far from electricity and humanity. I’m going Amish. It’s the only way to stay sane these days.
