The Problem with Football

On any given Sunday I’ll be downstairs playing video games where every few moments or so I’ll be distracted by loud screams emanating from upstairs.  It could be a guttural “yes”, perhaps followed by a gleeful laugh of indulgently gloating over a rival team, or a sharp “no” aimed at the television.  These verbal assaults are loud enough to cause inanimate objects to violently shudder or to cower in a corner weeping.  My wife is yelling at the television.  The dog, harried, has long since come downstairs to, in comparison, the soothing sounds of my video game slaughter.  Football has invaded my once calm household and my wife is yelling atavistically in an empty room.  I shrug, trying to ignore the cacophony, and indulge in my guilty pleasure of video game carnage.

There was a time, not too many years ago, when I was that frothing idiot spilling beer excitedly over touchdowns and spectacular plays while Adi watched me with no comprehension of football’s grasp.  The few years I spent in Philadelphia I temporarily converted to the city’s religion, the Eagles.  As it was Philadelphia the city loved their team loudly proclaiming their superiority and starting fights but they also turned on a dime over the players.  No one laid into Donovan louder than his own fans it seemed.  Eventually, sometime after moving back to New England, I stopped rooting for the Eagles after they hired Michael Vick.  This drew some confusion from other football fans.  They inquired as to the issue.  I said plainly I didn’t want to root for a team who hired a man who killed so many dogs.  They stated, correctly, that he had done his time.  I agreed but I didn’t want to root for the asshole.  Just because he spent time in jail doesn’t negate his actions.  They still happened.  It was not tabula rasa, those dogs still suffered and died.  They’d argue with no regard for my viewpoint (that I like dogs and people who aren’t jerks more than football) that I should get over it and root for my team.  And thus I uncovered some of the problems with football.  Football fans are dicks.

Football fans are great apologists.  As long as it’s their guy.  Teams are filled with so many rapists, violent spousal abusers, homophobes, bullies, child beaters, cheaters, liars, and unrepentant assholes you can easily fill a fantasy football team filled with convicted felons.  It would probably be a solid team.

So we have a bunch of football fans who forgive the atrocities of their players, this is not terribly uncommon form how we often treat actors and pop singers.  Maybe the league might take notice and stand above such pettiness.  Or not, probably not.  The NFL has a simple tactic.  Ignore it as long as possible and outwait the critics.  They seem to focus more angrily at enforcing players to make a certain amount of contractual appearances to the media than have players stop hurting people.  I am aware that being great at football does not automatically qualify a person to be a well-rounded role model but it would be nice to try.

A lot of football players end up penniless after they forget to change their spending habits after retiring.  It might behoove them to act a certain way so they can work afterwards.  I can deal with assholes, T.O. was a massive asshole.  But when he was on the Eagles he was my asshole (that sounds so much worse now that I’ve read that back).  But seriously stop being such merciless shitheads.  It will be awfully hard to become a spokesperson for  a company after sending unwanted pictures of your dick to random people… no… never mind.  Those wranglers look great I guess.

Not all the players are jerks mind you but there sure seems to be a bunch of them.  But that’s only part of the system.  Fortunately owners and coaches are above all that.  It’s not like they’d permit racism or ignore public outcry and keep a deeply offensive name for a football team.  Okay so maybe they might.  But it’s really expensive to change logos and print new items.  It’s not like the NFL teams are constantly updating their stores and fans are buying new version of jerseys… okay maybe they are.  The Redskins could make a positive spin by changing their name.  They could hold a contest for the new team name.  Gather a whole bunch of good press.  Hell, they could donate a whole bunch of money to Native American causes after raising money.  But fuck that, this is America and we like our football.

But that’s just one guy.  He might be alone.  Well, how about a revered football guy like Mike Ditka.  Yeah, he’s totally racist, maybe like racist light (only 46 calories but still filled with all that bitter hate you love) but still way more than acceptable.  Maybe it’s just me but espousing racism seems like a bad idea when there are walking human slabs of muscle who have been training to demolish other walking slabs of muscle walking around who might take umbrage at your unkind words.  These are very big dudes who get paid and rewarded to violently ram into other big dudes.  Did you know they are coming out with a new police procedural drama coming to a station near you?  It’s called “Mike Ditka Casual Racist.”

These guys are all jerks but they’re getting paid a whole bunch of money.  It’s not anyone’s fault that they often end up with nothing right?  Except for the whole concussion and brain damage thing.  Linemen, on average, are around 300 pounds (the internet told me this so it may be true) and this 300 pounds wants to make you stop in your tracks like the go to jail card in monopoly.  Do no pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, go straight to fucking pain town with a side order of memory loss, internal trauma, shortened lifespan, and a host of other problems.  But they only get so often and not always to the head.  Maybe like once a game.  No, more?  Okay maybe like three times.  No?  Well why don’t you just tell me Virgnia tech study I found on the internet?

“Football players were struck in the head 30 to 50 times per game and regularly endured blows similar to those experienced in car crashes, according to a Virginia Tech study that fitted players' helmets with the same kinds of sensors that trigger auto air bags.”

Oh, that seems like a lot.  Also that whole car crash thing sounds pretty bad.  I wonder what they estimate the tackling force might be?  What’s that internet?  Oh it‘s only “1600 pounds of tackling force”.  That seems only moderately life threatening.

Thank goodness these same practices don’t permeate sports at a younger level like high school.  It would way worse for developing brains to absorb that kind of repeated trauma.  Or high schools could totally drop the ball.  Even when good coaches and trainers take care of their of their charges we still have a bunch of kids who cover up their injuries to continue playing as they fear they’ll lose their spot.  It’s not like getting a second concussion during a certain time period after your first could kill you.  Actually it can and it does.  Concussions are some scary shit and medical science still isn’t all that great about it.  We’re making progress as this issue is gaining more support but we are in the dark ages compared to other fields.

Okay so it’s really dangerous, especially for our youth athletes, it’s steeped in racism and violence but hey it teaches unity and how to be a team player.  Nothing else is bad about football.  Well there is the whole cheerleaders who are treated like shit.  These ladies are paid barely anything for the privilege of wiggling seductively on the field.  But there seems to be some change on the horizon for that due to some recent law suits.

But why do these scandals keep popping up and sliding out of our memory?  Young men are dying or shortening their lives in football leagues but little is done.  Maybe we shouldn’t allow football to expand outside the states.  But hey, what’s more American as of late than that all permeating sense of apathy?  Maybe America deserves the sport.

Ben

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/nfl-criminals-seattle-seahawsks-earl-thomas_n_6579402.html
http://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/chicago/mike-ditka-chicago-bears-quotes
http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a2954/4212171/
http://www.inreview.com/archive/topic/14556.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/31/170764982/are-nfl-football-hits-getting-harder-and-more-dangerous

Pokémon Confuses Me

The world of Pokémon makes no sense to me.  I get the logistics of the fighting, of the card trading as well as RPG battles and all that.  What I don’t get is why young kids are traveling around unsupervised engaging in battle with wild monsters/animals.  The world itself makes less sense than rules governing the battles.  The battles all have reasonably complicated but balanced/thought out rules.  You have different types who are stronger or weaker against other types.  They can be leveled, upgraded, get new moves standard role playing nonsense.  It’s the world that makes no sense.  The whole place seems to hinge on these battles.  That seems to be what drives the economy entirely.  And it’s left to the kids.  The only thing that rings true is some evil mafia like organization trying to control the whole empire and win by stacking the deck behind the scenes.

Other games in the genre are rather ridiculous, magic how silly, but they make sense.  I can accept a world with wizards and goblins but without some manner of internal logic to hold it together it moves from odd to outright creepy.

Take Final Fantasy.  They have had countless games, spin offs, plenty of mistakes, but they generally keep to some internal plot and logic that makes sense.  There is life outside the adventure.  People in the world run towns, do the smithy-ing, farming, raising cattle or breeding chocobo (ostrich horse hybrids with their own theme music).  There is monarchies and established governments.  Why does this matter, it’s made up you ask.  Simple.  Because there is no frame of reference.  If everything is different it’s incomprehensible and worse still really awful plot devices can come out of nowhere and fix any problem.  “Oh, you can just use this magic water conveniently over there but never mentioned previously to now to fix the king”.  Fuck you lazy writing.  Fantasy/science fiction needs some stabilizing presence so their audience can understand what’s going on.  That’s why in movies that take place in some other realm or world we have some idiot the other characters keep talking to.  The new guy who is a moderately acceptable plot device used to explain to the audience through them what the rules are of the world.  Better than some hastily written words flashing across the screen or a bad narration.  Wonder why so many heroes are young people who know nothing of the world they live in?  Or that the story starts with some dude with amnesia, or some new student, a new recruit, and so on (see Hellboy, X-Men, The Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and more).

How is it creepy you might ask?  Well for starters they let kids wander around the whole world by themselves, encouraging them to capture and enslave wild animals/monsters, and tell them to fight with people to progress.  I’m pretty sure most mature societies frown on encouraging kids to fight.  And they might be more than slightly obliged to oppose animal cruelty or risking your life capturing vicious beasts.

But only the Pokémon fight each other you state.  That’s right.  It’s also fucked up.  Is some ancient pact never referenced that means a Pokémon can’t attack some stupid kid.  And why is there no violence besides Pokémon on Pokémon violence?  You’d think in any society there is some conflict between humans that escalates to physical harm.  I’m not talking bar knifings or gangs of groin punching hooligans - watch out for the leather clad cock rockers – but it’s weird a place so inured to violence has it only in these strict confines.

Let’s encourage child endangerment.  Sure there is some weird law never stated that talks about Pokémon only hurting Pokémon but sometimes these creatures do outlandish enormous attacks.  Maybe there might be some repercussion.  They aren’t fighting in some vacuum.  It’s the reason in Dragonball Z they always flew out to some unpopulated area.  It’s the reason any super villain who wanted a chance with Superman would throw a bus of nuns at a bus of orphans to distract him.  But forget the weird monster battles these kids are wandering the world by themselves.  Never once are they chastised.  Rather they’re encouraged in sweat shop mentality to catch them all.  Is this their version of school?  I guess they might learn statistics, some strategic and critical thinking but that’s about it.  No history, no reading, no writing, just bullshit.

No adults do this even they could own at the sport and have all the power.  This is odd.  There are scumbags out there.  For every person who volunteers at the shelter there is some dickwad who cuts you off in traffic as they sip delicately from their overpriced premium coffee while flipping you the bird and listening to bad German techno.  You wonder why only kids can do battle.  Or maybe he kids are just stupid enough to do the hard work and capture the monsters and the adults harvest the fuckers for something else.  Maybe every time you bring one to the hospital there is some nefarious goings ons before they returned to you.  Maybe that’s why their always so excited for you to come pick them up.  Now I no longer trust vets as a side note.  Damn you crushing paranoia.

The game teaches that kidnapping and slavery are okay.  They totally aren’t.  I don’t know if every Pokémon has some Stockholm switch and they are chill with people forced into some magical sphere prison but it seems weird.  Worse still one Pokémon gets to just wander around freely with their trainer.  The rest can go fuck themselves.  Stay in your cage until I need you to beat the hell out of another one of your species.  And totally don’t rise up against us even though we robbed you of your freedom and use you for our gain.  It’s not like you have superpowers that keep getting stronger and we’re just flappy meat popsicles.  Seriously, why don’t they riot?  Maybe the magic ball just reprograms their brains.  In that case the poor wild Pokémon should organize and storm the cities and try to free their borged (borged is a word right?) cousins.

I have no comprehension of how their communication skills work.  These Pokémon only seem to communicate via saying their species name.  Not even their name their species name.  But they clearly understand their trainer’s wishes.  No Pokémon disagrees with your choice of attack, even its stupid, and does another one.  They clearly listen and comprehend, and sadly obey completely.  Why won’t you love me trainer, I do everything you ask!  More bewildering one of the monster/pets learned to speak our language.  Just one.  And he isn’t famous or praised for his rare ability.  Which muddies the water when thinking about individual personalities and self-awareness.  They can comprehend, they can learn but they have no yearning for anything but being controlled?

My caffeine addled brain is probably looking far too deeply into childrens’ programming but remember this is what the youth are watching.  This is the material that is in their heads as they begin to form higher thoughts like ethics, morals, and a right way to live.  While entertainment is never really to blame for kids’ actions it isn’t free from criticism either.  But most importantly it may be best for parents to understand what the hell your kids are ingesting.  Then again I wanted to be a Jedi when I grew up.  I don’t think the market has any opening for that and I have almost entirely stopped trying to move the remote control with my mind.

Ben

The Problem with Pop Music

The first glaring issue with pop music is that at its basest level is pop boils out any nuance and risk in favor of appealing to a mass audience.  To get a large mass audience you aim for the lowest common denominator.  To do that you churn out predictable uninspired overproduced nonsense.  True artists will often eschew this tactic, and its potential hordes of money, to pursue loftier ideals of harmonic bliss.  But the urge to give in to letting money dictate you musical choice and not simply follow your inspiration is not limited to the pop genre.  A lot of people will find a particular demographic and exploit them.  Not because the musicians are just that metal, or really into soul, or what have you, but because it will make money.  I understand wholeheartedly and don’t judge this action.  It is simply consumable entertainment and the value is assigned by the listener.  But pop music is unabashed in it naked money grab and its simplicity.  More so that other genres.  It’s in the name: popular music.

Something interesting to point out is that some artists begin their careers as simply pop musicians and at one point manifest into purveyors of music that has depth.  A shining example would be the Beatles.  Not all of their music is wonderful or original (some seems to be blatantly lifted) or innovative but quite a lot is.  They cast off the boy band simplicity said a whole lot less about holding hands.

Current pop music seems to fall into a few reasonable tidy categories.

   I don't want you
   I want you
   I do what I want, isn't that awesome/Parents suck

The “I don’t want you” category is being filled to brim by Taylor Swift and her secret total private so no peaking notebook of breakups.  She’s the more vapid version of Adele.  You might argue that Taylor isn’t vapid.  You might try to point out that she writes her own music.  This indeed puts her above other pop musicians (not a enormous victory).  But lyrics like “we are never, ever, ever, ever [and it keeps going] getting back together” don’t seem so terribly eloquent.  Thoreau begged simplicity (however he did so by repeating himself three times) but this was not quite what he had in mind.  But still Taylor Swift does seem far and away the least likely to erupt into a pile of shapeless atoms as she has enough integrity to hold herself together at least.  Other pop stars seem likely to combust.  And her writing, while simplistic, at least follows some manner of logic.  Other songs hold only true that lyrics make sense if sung impassioned.  They ignore lyrics before and after hoping that the listener will as well as they merrily hum away or join in with windows firmly rolled up as they drive about.

Need some examples?  I’ve got a few.  I subjected myself to sitting through the horrors of pop music videos on Vevo to try and understand the lyrical content.  I came away with a deep need for alcohol and console myself for not taking an easier path in life like these soulless idiots (too harsh?).  Take the inane gibberish of Selena Gomez’ I love you like a love song.  Hey, remember when your English teacher told you never to use the word you are describing in its own description?  That title begs that Gomez didn’t.  Also real fucking original title.  What the fuck does it mean to love someone like a love song?  If it’s like this one its over in three minutes, uninspired and easily forgettable.  Not quite the impression I’d want to make regarding love and you can extrapolate the double entendres there.  Then there is the lyric, “hypnotized by your destiny”.  That sounds like something the Ultimate Warrior might say (i.e. insane).

But let’s not leave out Bieber’s crappy lyrics.

“As long as you love me
We could be starving
We could be homeless
We could be broke”

Why lead with starving?  Should it not be the opposite direction?  Broke often only implies not having money past bills and securing basic necessities.  Homeless is worse but you could have some food and prospects.  Starving, well that’s reasonably awful.  That view of love is nice but you can't subsist on an emotion.  Marriages break up over money all the time and that the lesser of those three things.  The whole song is a childish exercise that equates to puppy love/first love.  Here every emotion is raw and powerful.  The emotion so new and unknown is intense.   A mild attraction if it’s the first time can be confused with the power of love.  Here we see someone emotionally inexperienced.  That’s the problem with teenagers.  They have enough intelligence to piece together cohesive thoughts but enough emotionally maturity to be anything but annoying to those in another age bracket.

The “I want you” category has a bit more variety.  It’s full of the garbage our love is powerful even though we’re twelve nonsense, the barely hidden meaning ‘we should bang’ nonsense (which as an adult is rather uncomfortable to listen to young people sing), and the I’m better than the other person nonsense.

An especially ridiculous example of this is the song “Want U Back”.  I can forgive the texting vernacular in the title.  I can forgive the hypocrisy… not actually, nothing in this song, catchy as might be, is forgivable.  It is full of ad hominem and bullshit.  Insulting someone by saying you’re simply better is not a good argument.  She probably followed the Avril Lavigne school of bitchy cattiness.  But I shouldn’t insult Avril she’s dating the lead singer from soon to be playing in elevators band Nickleback.  No one deserves that fate not even hollow, fake brats (Gosh, I’m sunny today).

The song is absolutely horrendous.  It treats the boy as a thing.  She only wants him because another person has him.   The aforementioned boy was supposed to be so ruined after the breakup he couldn’t bear the sight of another female.  She only wants him as a lifeless husks incapable of feeling anything besides pain and remorse.  Also the lyric “You didn’t think this through” just points to the sheer ego of the singer.  It’s said with no shame.  You dumped this guy and he got another girlfriend.  He didn’t think it through because you say his new ersatz girlfriend isn’t as good as you.  Yeah, I think he should stay with this ‘worse’ girlfriend.  But this echoes the mentality of instant gratification and ego.  I’m better simply because I believe so and because I’m better I should have what I want now.  The fact that I don’t have this now is unfair and that’s why I’m mad.

For the “I do what I want, isn't that awesome/Parents suck” genre it’s awful and unbearable to anyone but kids.  The reason being what kids think is cool is bucking authority, insulting authority but doing so in relative safety without expectations of repercussion.  You know, the world no one lives in because it’s an immature fantasy.  This is reasonably harmless and is the younger idiot brother of songs about real rebellion from people/bands like  Bob Dylan, Rage against the Machine, Pearl Jam and others.

The our love is powerful is almost cute so I won’t really muck it with it as much.  It’s still childish but that’s because like all the rest it’s aimed at teens and tweens for their obsessive consumerism.  There is always a few gems in the rough but they are more often than not overshadowed by bad behavior.  The industry seems to reward rather than punish bad behavior.  This is where the adults come in.  To us these teen aged and young twenty somethings are jokes.  They are ill mannered disasters to be mocked.  This exist for our derision and to watch garbage like the E! Network and poke fun at them.  While secretly we wish to indulge in some of their lifestyle.

They are the worst of us and they are a fantasy.  A way for us to live out a desire of being blissfully ignorant.  Of being animalistic and needy.  Full of false unearned and unconditional bravado.  So many are worshiped blindly.  Are they the problem or are we the problem for enabling them.  Would they have been such disasters of role models before our attention and money or did it ruin them?

The perfect case study is the evolving train wreck of Miley Cyrus.  She had inklings of this disaster in motion earlier but her notoriety has skyrocketing with her MTV gyrations.  He last two music videos were awkward attempts at sexy.  Her twerking with a giant bear costume is nothing short of confusing.  Her predilection with showing us her tongue is frustrating.  Her immense need for nudity and attention to her body is rather unnerving.  Put your bits away Miley.  I’m sure your male fanbase has grown by leaps and bounds.  More importantly for the love of all things good  put your tongue in your mouth.  You were licking a sledgehammer.  That is not sexy, it’s unclean and gross.  It’s too bad your father is too consumed by you churning out small mountains of cash to be concerned with the fact you’re having a slow flaming psychotic break in front of America.  It’s entirely possible she’ll shave her head, have multiple failed marriages, and a bad reality television show like another house of mouse star.

I hope you are proud of yourself Disney.  You’ve unleashed your unholy army of witless teenage sex symbols to slowly lower the IQ of a generation of Americans.  Maybe it’s our fault for letting it happen but dammit Disney you should have know better.

Ben

Wrestling, the Male Soap Opera

I made fun of my wife for liking soap operas.  Mostly because they’re awful.  But there is a reason for them to be bad and there is, much to my chagrin, a real reason to like them.  Part of the reason they’re bad is that they have to make a couple hundred episodes a year and they are an hour long (around 44 minutes with commercials and intro) so that’s a lot of time to fill.  Even with the amount of characters they have to keep track of it isn’t easy.  That’s why there are so many Twilight like pauses of “intense” stares.  I put intense in quotes because I understand that’s what they are trying to convey intensity but most of the time I see bad acting or someone with bowel discomfort.  Kirsten Stewart didn’t invent bland bad acting with three possible emotional responses she just borrowed it from “The Bold and the Emotionally Vacant”… maybe not the name of the show but I actually prefer the honesty of it.  So some of the acting is bad on purpose to fill space, so we can forgive that.  The directing isn’t great because there a significant amount of crappy intertwining plot lines that they keep cutting between.   They do this to, again, fill time but also to slowly build the amount of tension.  But nothing fucking happens.    If you are familiar with Dragon Ball Z it’s kind of like that.  Ten episodes of buildup and one of actual culmination of action.  It’s like story foreplay.

Part of reason I can’t make fun of Adi is due to accidentally watching and following a soap opera.  At UPS I took my lunch around the time of a soap opera.  And it was always on in the background.  The silly inane prattling wormed its way in.  Bit by bit I caught myself paying attention.  Actually knowing who the character were.  All incidentally.  Incidentally is also how I ended up watching the stupidity that is professional wrestling.

Wrestling is not a product an intelligent adult admits to watching without a twinge of shame.  It has ridiculous story lines, an inherently flawed premise, twigs with engorged/enhanced front bits, needless (sometimes) violence, and generally very base subject matter.  Also its wonderfully contradictory.  There is such an air of hetero male superiority but at the same time we’re watching grown men who are shaved, oiled, in small amounts of spandex, aggressively grappling each other in attempts to force each other to the mat.  Another odd hypocrisy is the new bullying campaign the WWE is heading up.  While I commend them for helping kids by talking to them about the real dangers and effects of bullying I’m still confused.  I’m confused because it’s coming from pro wrestling.  This is the programming where two guys insult each other for twenty minutes before hitting each other.  And not like ‘you suck as a grappler,’ no, it’s ‘your momma’ jokes and worse.  So the guys who put on insult fest and smacking each other are standing against bullying.

But logic is not the strong suit of wrestling.  Remember this is a business where a guy who is 190 pounds can beat a behemoth of 350 pounds. That essentially doesn’t happen.  And yes you can make the argument that skill levels the playing field.  But both these men have presumably trained for a while.  You don’t pull people off the street and say get in the ring.  So giving up that much weight and winning is a wee bit beyond the whole willing suspension of disbelief.

The way I found wrestling was a friend of a friend was intensely passionate about it.  He would stop whatever he was doing and rush to the set to watch.  It was on in the background.  We made fun of him for it but we slowly gravitated to the couch and watched.  Week by week we started paying attention and stopped making snide comments.  Then it happened.  We were cheering, we cared about the fake wrestlers wins and losses.  The silly story lines and the sillier belts.  Then I realized ‘hey, this stupid wrestling thing is kind of fun.’  And it was.  And there have been gladiatorial references made and with good reason.  A crowd of spectators cheering around an arena with large sweaty men beating each other in combat.  And there is evidence that in many gladiator bouts they were entirely faked with false bloody ending.  Obviously it isn’t always a good a idea to kill half of your performers.  It might be more economic to simply stage the destruction and death.  Unlike gladiator bout anyone nowadays who argues that wrestling isn’t fake needs to grow up.  And yes I agree that you can’t fake falling off a ladder and you can’t fake it when you actually get hit.  But if wrestling was entirely real these men and women wouldn’t be one camera every week after the ‘beatings’ they take.  Unless of course you are talking about the indie wrestlers.

The independents are where most of the active wrestlers are.  You’ve got all the young talents looking for a break and the older ones who are winding down their careers.  The problem with the indy leagues is often times the wrestlers do silly dangerous things.  Like backyard wrestling jumping off house roofs though flaming tables kind of things.  There is reason why there is the airing of warning before pay per views.  But young men tend to ignore that warnings and severely hurt themselves.  In the indies they take is further.  I watched a documentary recently called Card Subject to Change about the independent wrestlers.  I was a little bit disgusted by the lifestyle and violence.  You had one young man living too hard and fast who hit rock bottom from drugs.  After close to a year of jail time he left with body near ruined, face bloated and muscles turned flabby.  A young man in his prime close to fame cut down.  Then you see him broken but optimistic on his reemergence and sincere hope to rise again.  But his second (or perhaps a number higher) overdose would not have him come back.  Then there was the dangerous Necro Butcher self proclaimed hick.  The name should warn you to his standards of safety.  I’ve seen horror movies without blinking but the human atrocities I saw this man inflict and go through made me a bit ill.  I won’t detail them here but that kind of mentality is what turns a fun possibly family friendly entertainment into something ugly.  Can I blame him for abusing his body to make money, not so much, but can I blame him for encouraging more dangerous stupidity into an already dangerous profession, yeah, yeah I can.

So why is wrestling the male soap opera?  Let’s compare the similarities first and then we’ll add the maleness.  Months long intertwining plot lines and many characters?  Check.   Silly storylines with not particularly good actors?  Check.  Lots of camera time for the attractive males and females and some camera time for the less attractive comedy characters?  Check.  Backstabbing, character revelations and surprise twists  – in wrestling it’s called turning as they go from face, good guy, to heel, bad guy, and vice versa – as well as the ultimate question who is sleeping with who.  Check.  The maleness in wrestling come s from well the overwhelming violence and the de-emphasis on story versus hitting.

So next time you see a wrestling fan before you make fun of them… nah, just make of them.  Wrestling is stupid and people who take it too seriously are most definitely in need of reminding.

Ben

Law and Order

Cop shows piss me off for a number of reasons.  The main reason being why a television show pisses me rather than a movie is that cop shows try and mask themselves as reality driven.  While they aren’t trying for the same gritty reality there is still a degree of reality  in the movies, if not there wouldn’t be things like gravity or character consistency.  Sadly, there are movies that defy both those simple truths.  But we accept some falsehood.  There is this ‘willing suspension of disbelief’.  With a cop drama we are made to assume the actions taken by the actors are meant to truly mimic reality.  They play up interrogations, trials and plotline ripped from the headlines.  When I think plotlines ripped from the headlines I think lazy writing  cashing in on poor attention spans and sensationalism.  They treat it like a good thing.  This one point of contention but not where I grow weary and or angry.

Law & Order is really more famous for its' ‘dunt dunt’ noise than anything within the show.  It’s a device that serves as a cut.  Which is actually kind of cool and it works..  It’s a sound cue to acknowledge a change in place or time.  Cuts take place every time you move from one shot to another.  Normally these cuts seem seamless even though we are using multiple angles and points of view in one scene.  There are reasons why it works and how they interact and they are based on our perception and visual cues.  Things like eye line match and shot reverse shot are built in filmic devices we just naturally understand and accept.  The transition between scenes is handled through the traditional fade out and loud ‘dunt dunt’ sound effect or non-digetic sound (digetic = inside the film world, non-digetic = outside the film world, so a radio is digetic music while a character’s theme is non-digetic).

What the show tries to do is realistically take a forced plot and have detective instigate a crime interrogate suspects and hand off to District Attorney’s office who then prosecutes the case.  Now there are obvious things we as an audience are built to ignore.  If there is meant to be total transparent reality these would all be normal looking people.  There would be no one who looks like a leading man or leading woman (looking at you Mariska Hargitay) and more importantly those DA’s would have more than one case going on at a time there wouldn’t only be focused on this one case in every damn discussion they have.  Obviously with selective use of film time we can assume the character are doing other things during their off screen hours but these guys never seem to be doing anything that isn’t immediately plot A related.  A lot of stories tend to have another plot, a plot B (often times a romance) to round out the story and give more options for scenes to go.  This way a scene could be about plot A or plot B.  So it’s like a cop show having two crimes at the same time not interrelated.  As it is a narrative those crime scenes would tie back together but you can’t do that every show.  Cop shows try to replace the plot B with witty banter.  Witty banter pisses me off for different reasons.

If we work with the premise these shows are meant to mirror reality the things that aggravate me and are so egregiously incorrect are as follows in no particular order:

• Interrogations
• Crime scene investigations
• Court room antics

Here is a simple reason why the interrogations piss me off.  All the rough and tumble interrogations assume their targets, assume half of these people are wholly innocent and are in no way criminals.  Not relegated to the crime, not holding information back.  Just people who happened to be blamed for one reason or another.  Now think back to the actions of these fake police people interrogating them.  There cool and flippant attitude.  Constant one liners and crude demeanor.  Violent outbursts and inappropriate conduct.  Imagine those things aimed at a shit ton of poor innocent people who don’t deserve to be there.  And yeah the police depending on the city on city can be truly awful at interrogations and yes they can coerce people into admitting wrongdoing they didn’t commit but this often comes out eventually and the case is overturned.  But the bullshit TV cops do is okay because we sympathize with that character and we know they are on the right side and they’ll get their man.  Reality doesn’t work that way.  Cops have specific lines they are meant to follow.  And they usually do.  The egregious violations are not the normal way of things.  IN films the cops get their badges taken away and they have to act outside the law.  Even though they aren’t trying as much to be realistic they do a better job of being realistic in a sense.  Odd how that works.

Crime scene investigations anger me because it’s obvious TV writers read a chem book once and based a bunch of half assed ideas of that.  Hey he was stabbed with a  corkscrew because of the blood pattern.  Enhance!  Enhance!  Enhance more!  No image can enhance and cleaned up as much as those shows allow.  Oh and crime scene guys don’t do investigation.  They give notes to the detectives you know the guys who are trained for investigative work.  Fuck you CSI and your bullshit.

Law room battles anger me because well the legal knowledge of a couch potato  is shitty so the writers only have to give some semblance of truth and they ignore, sadly, true and correct legal precedent.

But that is the world of fiction.  What truly anger me is the law and order grievances around us.  The interrogation techniques we see in these shows used in real life; on our own soldiers, or on own school children.

Now we all know about the horrors of places like Abu Ghraib but I figure we can talk on that briefly anyway.  Now Abu Ghraib’s issues were so prevalent they leaked.  And not just a little leak.  They have an entire wiki page built for torture and prisoner abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

In the article it talks about prisoner death by torture and prisoner rape.  The rape was not prisoner on prisoner rape, like here in the states, but detainer on detainee rape.  I mentioned prisoner on prisoner rape in the states because quite alarmingly the occurrence of prison rape is so prevalent it inflates rape statistics so that is more common for a man to be raped than a woman because of the amount of that sexual violence happening in our prisons.

The quote “war is hell” is true.  The kind of psychological twisting that goes on is not normal.  It warps people.  Strong willed people too.  And the people we have in warzones are kids.  You say eighteen years olds aren’t kids but to me that’s too damn young to be thrust into such horror.  And this unhinging can lead to the dehumanizing of the enemy.  People were shocked by the picture the casual disregard of their humanity and dignity.  I wasn’t.  I was depressed and saddened but not surprised.  War is ugly.

Even if these picture didn’t leak out we would eventually, one would hope, learn about these atrocities through the Freedom of Information Act.  But don’t bet on people consistently following through with the letter of the law on the Act even damn time.  The cynical part me can’t expect those types of secrets to be unearthed easily or on schedule.

Now these are acts of cruelty to people identified solely as the enemy from the get go.  What about Bradley Manning suspect in the wikileaks scandal.  Now he was charged on 22 counts included aiding the enemy.  Aiding the enemy is not so a good thing to be hit.  Treason is not so good.  Below is our definition and punishment of Treason.

“Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

You’ll notice it says treason is punishable by death and then the or bits.  The lesser possibility is a minimum five years imprisonment with a fine at a minimum of ten thousand dollars.  So treason is somewhat serious.  Now you can imagine that this should be handled delicately as it would be in the middle of a media frenzy and the armed forces acting inappropriately would only make the leaks seem like a good idea.  Fortunately the armed forces couldn’t give a damn about logic and probably tortured the shit out of Bradley for close to a year.  Close to year of isolation and psychological and physical abuse and torture.  Good job armed forces way to make America proud.  Sarcasm!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

But, you say to yourself, that was justified as this man, if he is guilty (stupid if statements and jurisprudence) , could have put  America in harm’s way.  Okay, you heartless bastard, how about traumatizing a young school girl and coercing her to give up private information without consent from a legal guardian all because of some insults.  And yes young girls are fantastic with using insults to make people feel insignificant.  Not that I speak from experience.  Ahem.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-10/us/us_minnesota-student-privacy_1_school-counselor-school-house-gate-facebook?_s=PM:US

Privacy is a big issue now.  With the pervasiveness of the internet as the new media and medium we need to guard ourselves from the new ways upon which bad people will steal or misuse our private information.  There are safe guards for things like PHI through HIPAA (private patient data) but there are a lot of loopholes when it comes to other information on the net.  All the shit we dump into Facebook is being leveraged somehow to make money.  Facebook doesn’t make all its too much too count money from ads alone.  In this age there is a glut of information and content.  Sifting through that and extracting data is of worth.  Gathering information is of worth.  Protecting your rights isn’t monetized in worth like the other two.  There is no payoff for privacy rights.

This is stated in the lawsuit accordingly to the article linked:

“The girl was called to a meeting with a deputy sheriff, school counselor and an unidentified school employee, the court documents states.

There, she was "intimidated" into giving up her login and passwords to her Facebook and e-mail accounts, the lawsuit says.”

So a minor was ambushed in a sense by authority figures.  And wrongfully coerced into divulging private information.  I think this goes a bit beyond the realm of vengeance for nasty twelve year old girls taunts.  The girl’s nastiness is not covered in the article.  I would think she is foolish above nasty as this is not the first time she had been caught speaking out on Facebook against school employees.  But this a very bad showing for Minnesota public schools and for educational professionals in general.

So I guess this Law & Order breaking the rules because we feel like it might actually be more realistic than I’d like to admit.  Dunt Dunt!

Ben