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[kickdes]

Tour de Frak

Another Fourth of July weekend, another start to the Tour de France.  But c’mon, who really gives a shit anymore.

Maybe if you’re a Yank who doesn’t know any better, it became meaningless once Lance Armstrong dropped out, then became marginally interesting again when he got back in (un-retiring is for assholes), then returned to being completely pointless once Lance fucked off again.  It’s a bit like a comment I read recently about the late Clarence Clemons – people who cite Clarence Clemons as the greatest sax player of all time (to which Kenny G goes, WTF!) often can’t name another sax player.  I’m pretty sure it’s the same with Lance.  With all the stupid Lance worship, most folks couldn’t name another rider out other in the peloton.  So what’s the fucking point, really.

Thing is, the Tour has been utterly pointless for years now.  Before Operación Puerto, anyone who followed the Tour de France tended to have a bit of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink approach to the event.  We all knew what the fuck the riders and teams were up to, and somehow we were all OK with it.  The occasional rider got caught, got banned, but the show went on.  Underneath it all, we all believed that every single rider was hopped on something.  Everyone.  You’ve got to be a complete and blithering idiot to think that any human can ride 200 miles a day for six consecutive days a week – at speed! – for four weeks, and not be hopped up on something.  The only person on earth who can do that is Andy Dick after a week-long coke binge.  And he’d do it in a dress.

Anyway, no one gives a shit about the Tour de France now because there are no longer any interesting characters in the sport.

When Lance was racing with U.S. Postal, it wasn’t just about him.  Yeah, he beat cancer, he has one nut, whatever.  Yet, Lance couldn’t be Lance without the likes of Jan Ullrich, for example.  Without Seinfeld, Newman would just be an dull, fat postal worker.  Luke Skywalker would just be another whiny little bitch if it weren’t for his dad.  And as such, the Tour de France used to be interesting because you had heroes and villains.  Lance was the all-American comeback kid, Ulrich was the cold, methodical Teutonic machine.  Classic Rocky parallels here.  Rocky with one nut… and Drago with a bit of a coke habit.  And Lance beat Ullrich.  Then there was Alexander Vinokourov, the next Ullrich, the cold, calculating Ukrainian machine.  Once again, he fucked up and got busted.  Then Ivan Basso rose up as the heir apparent to Lance.  Like fuck, ’cause he got caught, too.  Basso was non-starter, done before he could properly get going.  No one gives a shit about Basso now.

But in 2009, it got marginally interesting – Alberto Contador forged to the front with a good and proper “fuck you” attitude towards Lance.  He was an enormously cocky douchebag.  He didn’t give a shit, he was racing for himself and no one else.  He wasn’t prepared to be Lance’s bitch.  And because he was the foil to Lance, I didn’t mind him too much – the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing.

But now Lance is gone.  Again.  Lance, who so quickly went from golden child of the sport to the biggest self-righteous asshole on the planet.  Lance, who is probably as clean as Lindsay Lohan, and basically shakes his single nut at the authorities because he know he’s outwitted the cops so far.  The fact I have no doubt in my head that he’s a sanctimonious douchebag who has been up to no good his entire career irritates me to no end.  He’s a dick and he’s gone now.

And since the Operación Puerto shake up, so has every other good/bad guy in the sport.  With no one to love or hate, it’s a struggle to give a flying shit about the Tour de France.  It was never just about Lance.  It was about the Ullrichs, the Bassos, the Contadors of the peloton.  Who the fuck’s going to step up to make you give a shit?  The three assholes who sprint for the green jersey?  I’ll bet not one of them is in a position to win the Tour.  The king of the mountain rider?  I, for one, fucking love climbing hills on my bike, and yet each year I couldn’t give a shit about who wins that polka dot jersey.

There is no one to root for, no one to give a shit about, no one to hate, no hero, no villain, no conflict, and that’s why in July, not a single fuck will be given by me for the stupid Tour de France.

[kickdes]

I want to drive "Cars 2" off a cliff

I’m one of those idiot adults who genuinely liked Cars.  Anthropomorphic iterations of my favorite inanimate objects?  Sure, why not.  It gave me a great way to connect with my elder kid – then 3 – as I was still fumbling around trying to figure out what the hell do I do with children (I’ve made marginal progress since then, about 0.05%).  He loved it, I fucking love it, and we went on to collect pretty much every fucking diecast model of the cars from that goddamn movie.  I’m not naive, I know how merchandising works, and I run headlong into it when it comes to my kids.  Whatever, I gotta do what I gotta do.

So, when we all heard about the making of Cars 2 a couple of years ago, naturally we got really psyched.  As psyched as kids can be about something they can’t really see yet (“Cars 2? WOW! Oh look, a shiny object over there…”).  Anytime a leaked still or a storyboard sketching made its way to the public, I’d show them to my kids.  I don’t know if I was doing to keep them psyched or to fuck with them.  Either way, the opening weekend came, and I was already having a dreadful feeling about the movie I couldn’t explain.  After seeing it, now I can – here’s why (spoilers, natch):

Pixar animators have likely started a cycle now in which live action filming will be fucked forever.  The rendering of textures of things like water and fire are absolutely bewildering.  You actually believe it’s real.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Their ability to animate life-like landscapes – and cityscapes alike – defy comprehension.  Yes, the animated humans are quickly coming, but they’ve still got work to do.  Watching Cars 2 is like watching the death of location shoots.  And if I start running out of reasons to go out to L.A., I’m gonna be pissed off.

It took them about five years to not be able to decide what kind of movie to make.  The first Cars movie was simple, straightforward, and made it really simple for kids to track with the story.  Here you’ve for some fucking spy caper wrapped up in some horseshit environmental agenda, with some semblance of a racing movie, further skewered with some horrendously disingenuous “just be yourself” message.  My younger kid actually got bored halfway through the movie.  How the fuck do you make a kids’ movie in which a 4 year-old gets bored halfway through it?

When we left the movie theater, I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the movie were.  Both of them, with no hesitation: “The guns.”  WTMF.  Is this Cars or Funnybot?  Literally, like Funnybot, there is a scene involving a pair of gatling guns and a mountain of spent shells.  Now, I’m all for violence in cartoons, I think it’s hilarious.  And it teaches the kids something.  I don’t know what, but look at how much Tom & Jerry we all watched and most of us turned out OK (I may be overestimating here).  Anyway, with Tom & Jerry, the violence was inventive, thought out, and screamed with variety.  In Cars 2, leaving much of the action to weapons is just fucking lazy writing.

Eddie Izzard was a complete waste in this movie.  Even the writers of the excruciating Ocean’s 12 or 13 knew how to squeeze in a bit of his stand-up references in the scripts (“Gunther?!”).  He had none of that.  Just a humorless wank of a role that might as well have been played by that Harry Potter kid – not Daniel Radcliffe, the ginger one whose name no one can ever remember, him.  Even someone like Michael Caine wasn’t given any nuggets to work with.  Would it be that hard to work in the line, “You’re a big car, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job. Now behave yourself”?

The new characters are completely unlikable.  The kids like the F1 car, Francesco Bernoulli.  And let’s face it, they like him because he’s an F1 car.  And they like an F1 car because their dad eats, lives, and breathes F1.   There were no really interesting cameos like the previous movie (except maybe Lewis Hamilton?  But he’s a bit of a dick, so fuck him).  As for the old cars, they made them complete douchebags.  It was basically the Mater movie, and how much Larry The Cable Guy can you listen to before you want stab your ears with rusty spoons?  Any affection you felt for the characters from the old movie goes right out the window after you watch how tepid and completely uninteresting they’ve become in this new movie.

They couldn’t get the cast to agree on how to pronounce “grand prix”.  Nothing shreds my ear more than listening to the Amurrcan pronunciation of “grand prix”.  It’s a fucking French word, pronounce it the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.  You’ve got half the cast pronouncing it correctly, and then you’ve all the Yank voice actors saying “graynd pree” the rest of the time.  Fuck off, learn to pronounce it correctly, and for fuck’s sake, Lasseter, put some effort into some consistency in the dialogue.  Lazy wank.

Of course, I know this won’t be the end of it.  My kids will invariably beg for all the merchandising, ask to buy the DVD the minute it’s out – even the 4 year-old – and then we’ll be subject to this whole ordeal all over again.  Oh, I can’t wait.

[kickdes]

Bacon on the side

Who knew that breakfast could be so confounding?  Did I say confounding?  I meant totally fucking aggravating.  While I was waiting for my breakfast sandwich at the deli this morning (egg and tomato on a plain bagel: so fucking awful – never get a breakfast sandwich without meat in it), two girls walked in, completely self-absorbed in some conversation which I’m sure made both of them dumber by the minute.  They stand at the counter, trying to decide what they want when someone else comes alongside and waits in line.  Because Dumb & Dumber couldn’t decide, the cook went to the next person in line.  She ordered, and the Dumb & Dumber got offended that they’d been “skipped over”.  They make a slight stink about it, but then Dumb begins to order.

“Can I have a bacon, egg, and cheese, on a roll?  With two bacon.”

“Two bacon?”

“Yeah, two…uhm, you know, pieces.”

“You want two pieces of bacon on the side?”

“Yes, two bacon, like strips, yes.”

“Only two?  If you get a side of bacon, you can get more pieces – it’s the same price”

“What?  I want two strips of bacon.”

“I know, I’m saying if you order a side of bacon you can get more, because it’s the same price if you get two or if you get five or six.”

“Oh, OK.  Then, can you put the two strips of bacon in the roll, and the rest on the side?”

“But you asked for a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll – that already comes with bacon.”

“I know, but I want two strips of bacon on my roll.”

“OK, I can make it that way.  Do you still want the side of bacon?”

Dumber steps in, “Can you just put all the bacon on the roll?  All five, six pieces of bacon?”

At this point, another cook hands me my sandwich, and I promptly leave before I literally kill everyone in the deli.  She didn’t say “please” even once.

[kickdes]

It ain't awesome 'til it's deep fried

A few years ago, I’m not sure why but a discussion around a frydaddy came up in email exchanges between a few friends and I. I don’t remember much of what was discussed – better than a 99% chance that it was all very, very stupid – other than how the conversation ended. One of us had gotten a frydaddy, and he offered this one bit of advice, “Guys, never ever deep fry a grape.”

When I picked myself up off the floor from the side-splitting laughter at the scalding carnage I imagined he suffered, I started realizing my good friend’s curiosity was only the tip of the deep fried iceberg. We as a people aren’t going to stop until we’ve tried to deep fry every fucking thing on earth.

At this point, I think I’ve grown to accept ridiculous things like deep fried butter, deep fried pizza, deep fried Mars bars, and anything else the fucking Scots have succeeded in battering up and submerging in boiling grease.

And because we as a country can’t ever let the Scots win at anything other than whisky and golf courses, here come the four deep fried horsemen of the American apocalyptic culinary nightmare.

Deep fried beer

Deep fried Coke

Deep fried Kool-Aid

Deep fried margarita

What the fuck is the matter with you people? This is why we can’t have nice things, America. What the fuck is this perplexing obsession with deep frying liquid? Fuck butter, at this point, I’m pretty sure the next step will be deep fried oil. Some fuckhead – better than average chance he’ll be from Texas – is going to find a way of taking a massive scoop of canola oil, and he’ll find some clever way to smother it in batter (presumably using a gun or something) and fry that shit up. It’ll be the biggest thing at a state fair, these shitheads will be all proud of themselves, and they’ll gorge on deep fried balls of cooking oil.

Mmmm, can’t you just taste that golden delicious flavor as it coats your esophagus in a warm, soothing glow? You can, can’t you, you sick pigs.

[kickdes]

I am the Cal Ripken of the most pointless streak ever

Maybe that title is a bit of an overstatement.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s an overstatement, but I like the way it sounds so I really can’t be arsed to change it.

In any case, about this most pointless of streaks.  Most people are able to boast of a streak – or streaks – that are worthwhile.  Baseball is full of ‘em.  But it’s not only relegated to pro sports, is it.  Shit, someone who’s been a vegetarian for any extended amount of time is on a streak.  A ridiculous, highly unnatural meat-free streak, but a streak nonetheless.  I’ve got other friends who have streaks, some bragworthy, some WTF-worthy: running around Central Park every day for 15 years plus, seeing every area Springsteen concert since the 1984, and so on.  So what have I got?

I have watched every Formula 1 race since 2000.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got some.  A 10-plus year habit of watching a fucking two-hour car race every two weeks from March through October.  On a whim, I turned on ITV one Sunday in March in 2000 and was instantly hooked on watching 20+ open-wheeled cars with wings fly around a track at 200mph for two hours.  I could barely tell one driver from another, one team from another, and yet I was riveted.

But let’s be clear here – I’ve spent the better part of these 11 years bitching and moaning about F1.  Everything pisses me off about F1.  The consistent inconsistency of the rules.  The perennial parade of incompetent drivers who couldn’t parallel park a Ford Focus but yet gain race seats because some rich fuck of an uncle who owns a chain of tanning salons in Peru and generously hands bags of cash over to shitty F1 teams.  The misguided technical philosophy that overemphasizes aerodynamic grip over mechanical grip.  The stupid forgettable teams that have come and gone.  It all fucking pisses me off.

And yet I can’t tear myself away from the sport.  My fortnightly weekend schedule is driven (ugh, pun not intended) by these races.  Even when I’m sick of how a race season is progressing, I still watch practically every lap of every race.  I can’t stop.  Somehow in my head, if I miss just one race, I stop being a qualified F1 fan.  Somehow I lose my ability to be knowledgeable on this insane sport.  Also, in my head, missing just one race would mean I’m a colossal failure.  Like that even makes any lick of common sense.   I can’t bring myself to stop this record of watching these races.  A record with which I can do absolutely nothing.  It’s not a skill, it’s not an achievement that anyone else aspires to, it’s not something that I can bring up in interesting conversation, and folks go, “Wow, that’s brilliant.”  Instead, I’d get quiet looks that scream, “What a complete fuckwit.”

It’s such a stupid streak to keep.

And when I look back at this stupid streak, and all I can imagine is me sitting in front of my TV watching a race one day – and being at the receiving end of an incoming ICBM – and muttering, “Oh, I’ve wasted my life.”  I don’t want to be Comic Book Guy.  The Comic Book Guy of F1.

[kickdes]

I like beer

I was in a bar at Harvard Square recently – the well-known, well-loved Grendel’s Den.  I hadn’t been to this place in about 15 years, since the missus was going to school in the area.

On two chalkboards – one behind and one above the bar – they have a list all the beers have they.  And a brief of beers that they don’t – Coors Light, Miller Light, Bud, you get the idea.  And the list ended with the phrase, “BASTA”.  Not knowing what it meant, I enquired of our skinny, bearded, saggy-jeaned super-hipster barkeep.  “BASTA, it’s a Spanish-Mediterranean acronym meaning, “Enough!”  Whatever, jerkoff.  ”Enough”, as in, enough with the piss-poor brews for the unwashed masses.  Of course that’s what it’d mean.  For fuck’s sake.

While I agree with the general sentiment of striking the Buds and Coors and Millers off this earth, I shudder to think of what I’m left with as an alternative.

And that’s because 99% of the beers out there are complete and utter shite.  Thoroughly undrinkable.

It’s just that the age of good and simple seems long gone.  Make it good, and make it simple.  I like a proper lager.  Just something simple, something not terribly foamy, something with a nice crisp bite to it, and something that’s yellow.  Not amber, not brown, not pale, not clear, not muddy, not red, not magenta, not mauve, not caramel, not black and fucking tan.

And I want it taste like beer.  Not chocolate, not oatmeal, not gooseberries, not apples, not lime, not honey, not bubblegum, not bread, not muffins, not cheese, not walnuts, not bacon, not clams, not anise, not mint, nothing but fucking beer.  I mean, what is it with putting extra shit into beer that makes it taste anything other than beer?  That’s like going into a store to buy a pair of sneakers and the sneakers come with a pashmina sown to it because they think you’d probably like that, too.  Fuck off.

Which means that if I order a beer that’s not fruit flavored, please don’t fucking put a slice of orange or lemon in it.  If I wanted a beer with fruit in it, I’d have ordered a fruit-flavored beer.  In which case, I wouldn’t have ordered it at all because fruit-flavored beers are for wankers who don’t like beer, and I fucking love beer.  Beer with no fruit.  So please stop forcing your rancid orange slices which your disgusting fingers have been fondling all night into my beer – just because it’s summer – asshole barkeep.

I don’t need my beer extra hoppy, whatever the hell that means.  Extra hops – what am I, the Easter Bunny?

And stop with the stupid fancy glass you insist on pouring my beer into.  Beer into a proper pint glass, thank you.  The sort with the slight bulge around near the top would be nice.  No fucking stemware for beer, you hear me.  Fuck you, Stella, Sam Adams, and whatever other fucking beer company that insists that their beer gets poured into these fucking ridiculous glasses on the pretense that they boost the flavor their beers or something.  Fuck you, if your beer needs a stupid-looking glass to be palatable, you’ve failed at brewing it right the first time.  What a crock of shit.  Pint glasses.  Full stop.

And about that pint glass, here’s another irritating trait amongst Stateside barkeeps – the consistent inability to fill that pint glass right to the brim.  These fuckers will fill the glass and leave about half an inch of space from the top.  What is that space for, assholes?  It’s a pint glass, you’re supposed to be serving me a pint of beer, if you don’t fill it to the top, you’re not serving a full pint of beer.  If I wanted 9/10ths of a pint, I’d have asked for 9/10ths of a pint.  Or they’d make smaller glasses.  But they didn’t.  They made pint glasses.  Fill it to the top, assholes!

Case in point, look at this fucking beer:

I know it’s a Leffe, and yes, Leffe is usually delicious.  But holy crap, everything about that beer right now screams asshole.

[kickdes]

Stupid things overheard at Fenway Park on Sunday

"I haven't seen a lot of classic movies.  Like all the Adam Sandler movies."

"Eiw, look at that sausage." - some girl upon seeing me eat a sausage-and-peppers sandwich

"You're not rooting for the Red Sox, are ya?", when I commented on how awful relief pitcher Tommy Hottovy was, who had pitched 6 consecutive balls right out of the gate, and had to have a speaking to.

Forcing "Yankees suck" into their stupid "Sweet Caroline" sing-along.  That's just so pathetic and retarded.

Anything else spoken in that ridiculous accent.  "Hyeh's yeh cahd back", "How many byehs?", "Have a nice day."

[kickdes]

More shit that keeps me up at night

Wax museums. I don't get wax museums. Is the idea like, "I can't see the real thing, so let me pay gobs of money to see some shitty facsimile and still not see the real thing"? Has anyone ever left a wax museum thinking, "I've never seen Lady Gaga, but now that I've seen a wax replica of her, I'm all set"? I think wax museums should at least animate their wax figures. And have these characters do something the real life versions would never do: Napoleon in a race car, Beyonce vacuuming, Stalin in a beekeepers outfit. Tell me you wouldn't pay to see that.

Porsche 911s.

That is an absolutely ludicrous range of models for just one car. How the fuck do you choose? Which ones have a turbo? Which ones don't? Which ones have special suspension settings? How do you know if you want this bit or that? What a fucking ridiculous range.

American Apparel. Super-creepy CEO notwithstanding, I can appreciate a clothing company centered on simplicity. But with American Apparel, everything's almost a bit too simple. And there's that thing of overcompensating that simplicity with an overwhelming amount of ridiculously gratuitous porny ads. I've wanted to like this company for a while - the whole made in USA thing, the simple designs where a shirt's a shirt and socks are socks - but the whole thing's just pretty fucking ridiculous overall.

Asparagus. To be specific, asparagus and my digestive tract. How the fuck is it possible that I can have asparagus at lunch and if I go take a slash 10 minutes afterwards, I have asparagus pee? How the fuck does that happen? And it'd be one thing if I metabolized (is that the right term? fuck if I know) asparagus at lightning speed, somehow the asparagus stays with me for days. I've had asparagus pee three days after eating the fucking things. Again: how the fuck is that possible? In this day and age, it is not possible to genetically engineer an asparagus that doesn't produce asparagus pee? You'd think.

[kickdes]

I'm considering a move to L.A.

A few things that don’t suck about L.A.:

Car chases. Let’s take a span of about ten years of frequent visits to L.A. – I think I’ve only had two trips in which I didn’t get to witness a live car chase on TV while I was in town. Granted, most aren’t high-speed chases, more like casual cruises on the highway with about two dozen cops in tow. But that doesn’t matter – it’s still motherfucking car chases!

Bail bonds TV commercials. You know you’re fucking hardcore when there’s enough bail bonds business to warrant (I kill me) commercials on TV. But it’s even hardercore when these commercials feature kids! L.A. is so bad ass.

Porsche Panamera. Remember in “Get Shorty” when Travolta got everyone driving a minivan, quickly making it the voiture du jour for the Hollywood elite? That’s what the Porsche Panamera is today. There seem to be more Panameras per capita in L.A. than any other city. And before you give me grief, do fuck off, I love the Panamera. I’ve grown a fondness for four-door interpretations of modern classics. Top two favorite cars right now: Porsche Panamera and the Mini Countryman. I’ve got two kids to haul around now – fuck it, I need those back doors and back seats.

Pink’s Hot Dogs. A ridiculous hot dog joint so over the top, the hot dog itself is completely irrelevant. At Pink’s, the hot dogs are merely a vehicle for the gastronomical equivalent of a holiday party grab bag. No one gives a shit about the hot dog itself, it’s all about how wacky you can top that hot dog. On my first trip to this place a few years back, I figured “go big or go home”, so I ordered a hot dog topped with pastrami, chili,cheese and onions. I think I blacked out in the parking lot after that.

Doctors on the beach. Technically in Venice, but fuck it, it’s close enough.

[kickdes]

It's gettin' old, let it go

Star Wars.  It was quirky, I was kinda into it because I was happily living vicariously through my kid who is all Star Wars all the time.  But he’s six, and it’s his goddamn right to be all Star Wars all the time.  But all the other Star Wars shit that sprouts up in blogs every week – that’s getting a bit too much.  It’s time to calm the fuck down with all the quirky Star Wars shit.  It’s bad enough that the fourth day in May is now universally considered Star Wars Day.  But enough with the art deco posters, crocheted tauntauns, Death Stars made of cheesecake, VW Passat ads, and fuck knows what else.  There’s a reason we all hate Episodes I, II, and III – anything other than the original three movies is utter shit.

Pippa Middleton.  Stop it: she’s not that hot.  She’s a bit of a butterface, and she’s really not that interesting, is she.  Everyone’s banging on about how hot she is, her ass is this and her ass is that, when in reality, while she might be a London 9, she’s about a New York 5.  Puh-leeze.  If she wasn’t related to the girl who married a prince, there’s a better than average chance that you wouldn’t pay attention to her in a bar on a Saturday night before five Stellas.

Doctor Who.  If this isn’t the most improbable TV success ever, I don’t know what is.  How the fuck did this fucking show make it out of its first season.  It’s a ridiculous premise with incredibly shoddy production value, and like a pint of warm bitter, only the Brits have an appetite for it.  Ridiculously better shows have come and gone, yet this stupid show about wheeled trash cans with toilet plungers carries on for about 50 years.  What the fuck.  Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant cap the genius of “The Office” (I’m not acknowledging the stupid, unfunny U.S. version) and “Extras” to two seasons a piece.  And this Doctor Who shit gets regurgitated for five decades?  I repeat, what the fuck.

Natalie Portman.  Let’s not hear from you again ’til that kid of yours is ready for college, how about that.  Is it just me, or did this girl crowbar her way into one in every three movies over the past year?  Enough already.  You’ve got gobs of cash from those shitty Star Wars movies, you really don’t need to say yes to every script that gets dropped into your mailbox.  I got over the Black Swan by the time you started to cry for the third time in that film.   Like fuck that was the best movie of 2010 (for that, please see “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”, thank you very much).  Since that movie, it’s been one hacky bullshit movie after another.  I was really hoping that this would be the last thing we see from you for a while:

Ex-F1 drivers racing in circles.  Good God, enough of this shit.  All thanks to that fat asshole, Juan Pablo Montoya, no less.  Just because his girth qualified him for stock car racing doesn’t mean that every other ex-F1 driver needs to have a go at NASCAR.  Going to and failing at NASCAR (which they’re all doomed to do) simply bogs down the reputation of grand prix drivers.  It makes Yanks think that grand prix drivers are rubbish.  Which is entirely untrue, unless your name is Felipe Massa or Mark Webber.  Which is what makes Kimi Raikkonen’s insistence to go to NASCAR after fucking around with the WRC that much more irritating.  Knock it off, Kimi – you used to be one of the best grand prix drivers on and off the track.  F1 hadn’t seen a beast like Raikkonen since the advent of his own hero, James Hunt.  I can’t see any other driver in the past 10 years who was marginally close to Kimi’s skill of not giving a fuck about the rules: getting loaded ’til dawn between races, dressing up in animal costumes during race weekends to hang with fans, taking part in contract-violating jet ski races incognito.  Kimi was brilliant in every way, right down to him Cylon-like interviews.  There was no other driver like him.  Not even close.  And now he’s fucked that up by associating with likes of Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve by driving around in circles Stateside.  What an asshole.

The girl in Glee with the large schnoz.  I don’t know what her name is, I’m irritated enough as it is for even knowing who this broad is.  God, am I ever sick of seeing her on magazine covers every month.  What makes her particularly annoying is her propensity to flaunt what she doesn’t have – a rack.  Put your retarded bird chest away, seriously.  It’s just stupid.  Who’s your publicist, Kate Hudson?  I have a chubby belly, you don’t see me running around pulling a “Situation” every time someone takes a photo of me.

[kickdes]

Sometimes it’s not OK to share

  Escalator steps.  This morning, I witnessed a mildly comical scene in which two blokes rushed for the same step on a escalator at Grand Central Terminal.  The grey-suited bloated attorney-looking guy huffing to the escalator to beat an equally large, bearded man in a hard hat and tool belt to get ahead in line.  The bloated suited man clearly underestimated his blue-collared counterpart and both men made it to the same rising step at the same time.  Neither one not willing to concede, both dummies mounted the step and squeezed together.  While neither looked at other, despite their proximity, the tips of their shoes were touching.  Both dummies, only a fraction of an inch from each other.  The escalator ride took maybe all of 10 seconds.  But that had to be the longest 10 seconds either of these schmucks experienced this week.  I hope they both contracted some airborne disease from each other for being a pair of stupid, unrelenting wankers.

Revolving doors.  Not dissimilar to escalator steps.  Another situation that can easily be avoided if some people weren’t such unrelenting assholes.  This time, though, it was me who was the asshole who mistimed his entry.  Typical sort of overdisplay of courtesy: I’m gesturing to my colleague to go through the door first, he’s gesturing that I go first, I insist, he insists, we both decide that this dance has gone on long enough and we both dive into the revolving section, we both make it, quickly realize what’s happened but can’t back out without causing serious injury to limbs.  I haven’t been stuck in such closed quarters with another dude since pledging my fraternity in college.

Shots.

This is a shot of Jameson.  Or at least, half a shot of Jameson.  It started life as a full, proper shot of the whiskey.  That is, until two people at the table decided to share a shot.  That’s right: two people, one shot.  What.  The fuck.

Entrees.  During one of my unfortunate business tripes to the middle of fucking nowhere, due to a crippling lack of options, I was forced to have a sad and lonely dinner at some shitty chain restaurant not dissimilar to a Crapplebees, but it was a regional joint and it was so shit that the people who get laughed at by Crapplebees turned around and laughed at how shitty this restaurant was.  It’s the sort of place that you can single-handedly blame for America’s obesity problems and you wouldn’t be wrong by any measure.  This was the sort of place that makes the French hate us even more.  But I digress.  As I’m working my way through the least poisonous thing on the menu (I think very humble burger), two dudes walk in with matching polo shirts.  The sort that companies give out to their employees, with the company name embroidered on the left chest.  And you guessed it – these two clowns ordered a couple of beers and shared a pasta entree.  What the fuck, dweebs.  No self-respecting dude shares an entree with another dude.  No exceptions, bitches.  No sharing entrees if you’re a dude.

This:

Nothing to see here, just a couple of burly dudes in matching American Eagle outfits sharing an iPad and watching a Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy on a flight to L.A.  Nope, nothing peculiar at all.

[kickdes]

Going out of your way to be a douche

[Just because I can, this has been posted from 36,000 feet, enroute to L.A. Suck it, it's a cheap thrill, I'm entitled.]

It takes massive Maybach-sized balls to park your over-the-top, overpriced S-Class deliberately next to a hydrant when you’ve got gobs of parking well clear of it.

This fucking guy is somethin’ else. Not only did he bogart the three-seater row with his stupid guitar, he played it the entire fucking train ride. When the girl next to him came aboard and sat down next to this self-appointed minstrel of the rails, he had the fucking nerve to lean over to her and ask if she had any requests! The fucking cheek. When she politely declined (far too polite, if you ask me – I’d have responded with a rather terse, “Do fuck off!”), he simply retreated and continued plucking away with his worst rendition of some awful shit like Dave Matthews Band or something equally horrible. What an asshole.

This fucking guy with the monkey tail beard, whomever he is. I believe this makes his right ear a monkey’s asshole.

[kickdes]

Made up words

Here are some words that need to be scrapped from use immediately.  Largely because they’re not proper words.  Just strings of letters fuckwits have crumpled together to make up syllables which make them think they sound smart.

“Deplane”.  Pretty much every other week I’m on a plane these days.  And every other week, some flight attendant will remind me of just how much I fucking loathe them.  ”Plane” is a noun.   Not a fucking verb.  ”DE-plane”?!  What the fuck do you do when you get on a plane?   Enplane?  What if you get on, come off the plane, then get back on it?  Replane?  Do fuck off, flight crew.  The only time it's alright hear the word "deplane" around any aircraft is if you see Hervé Villechaize in the vicinity.  But given that he's quite dead, there goes that loophole.

“Pre-board”.  Another air travel gem.  Arguably one of the stupidest phrases ever uttered by someone in uniform: “We’d like to pre-board parents with small children”.  Do you even fucking understand what the prefix means?  You’re not fucking pre-boarding anyone.  Pre-boarding is what I’m doing right now: standing at the gate, stupid.  Standing: that’s what pre-boarding means.

��Incentivize”.  Brilliant marketing wankery.  It’s such a lazy yet crafty way to sound so fucking smart about something.  Just add the “ize” suffix to some multi-syllabic noun, and voila, you’re big and clever.  Every time I hear someone in a meeting say shit like “incentivize” or “dimensionalize” or something bullshit wankspeak, I want to punch them in the throat.

“Preventative”.  Holy fucking shit, this isn’t a word, it’s cheating at Scrabble with two extra tiles.  The word is “preventive”, fucknut.  What’s mind-blowing isn’t the proliferation of the word in pedestrian vernacular.  It’s the fact that it’s actually accepted verbiage in some highly-regulated companies (e.g. pharmaceuticals, etc.) – you see it in their ads, their press releases.  Way to go out of your way to perpetuate poor grammar and make people think that you have a stutter.

“Online”.  Not in the digital sense.  But in the single file sense.  What the fuck is wrong with “queue”?  It’s a great word.  It’s proper English word, one syllable, but it rocks four successive vowels in it (OK, two, but you get what I mean)!!!  Even standing in line is correct to say.  But “online”?  Where the fuck is this line on which you’re supposed to be standing?

“Offline.”  Again, not in the digital sense.  Another bit of business wankery referring to a side conversation to be had at another time and place.  ”Let’s take this offline.”  No, let’s take this term and stab you in the eye with it.  That word does not mean what you think it means, Vizzini.  The only reason we even have that fucking word “offline” is because we needed something to mean the opposite of “online”, again, in the digital sense.  Where is this fucking line from which you want me to get off?  Fuck you and your lines.

The poncification of food.  Not a word, per se.  The missus has been heading up the organization of her high school class reunion of late.  One of the venues provided her with a catering menu.  Apparently, in some effort to poncify themselves, they’ listed such culinary delights as “breast of chicken”, “fillet of salmon”, “prime rib of beef”.  Are you fucking shittin’ me?  Listen, separating the animal and its cut with a conjunction doesn’t mean you get to charge me a 50% premium for that same shitty dried out piece of chicken which I invariable know will taste like the sole of Doc Martens with a slight lemon zest.

Shit of bull.

[kickdes]

Poor Colin: Putting the “low” in Lotus

There is no love lost between me and Malaysia - I left that stupid country ages ago for a lot of reasons, albeit, to the detriment of my ability to be close to family (who are not stupid). And it seems that select folks in that country - not everyone, just a distinguished few - take every available opportunity to further affirm my decision to get the fuck out of Dodge. How that peninsular hasn't crumbled into the South China Sea under the weight of all the stupidity from these people is beyond me.

Right near the top of this list are the people behind arguably the most loathsome F1 team in recent memory, Team Lotus. The team are an idea born out of egomaniacal greed and an unbridled exhibition of ill-educated thinking. A group led by some Malaysian cut-rate airline boss who decided that he needed have his ego stroked at every turn so what better way than to blow a ton of cash on a multi-million dollar grand prix team. This is how cut-rate this whole operation is: the entire aesthetic of the brand is ripped-off from Virgin. Everything. But props where props are due - this asshole was crafty enough to negotiate a license to the Lotus name from Lotus Cars. While it chapped my ass to no end that some bullshit team had now sullied what I consider the good name of Lotus, it was what it was, and the damage was done. Lotus were being represented in F1 by some cut-rate team (to go with the cut-rate airline) who had absolutely nothing to do with Colin Chapman's legacy. Team Lotus, the F1 team, haven't produced a single road-going car despite their namesake, they have contributed fuck-all - technology or otherwise - to the famed Lotus car company. They have NOTHING to do with the real Lotus - Lotus is a name slapped on a registration form filed in Knightsbridge to allow this stupid team to put two extremely shitty cars on the F1 grid every fortnight.

But the straw that broke the camel's back came this week when the Lotus F1 team bought Caterham cars. Here's a breakdown of the clusterfuck.

The late great genius Colin Chapman started Lotus Cars in 1952, and proceeded take part in F1 with his Lotus racing team in 1958

The Lotus Car company as we know it today are owned by the Malaysian car company, Proton, which bought it in 1996

In 2010, Air Asia bought an F1 team and entered the competition. They licensed the Lotus name from Proton, raced under the name "Lotus Racing", and used Lotus' historic green-and-yellow livery. Beyond that, the F1 team have nothing to do with Lotus. The team race with Renault engines. Renault are also competing in F1.

For 2011, Lotus Cars decided that they're done being spectators and want back into F1. But instead of going all-in with the Air Asia F1 team (Lotus Racing), the decided to buy into the Renault F1 team. The Renault team are renamed Lotus Renault GP. Thankfully, they don't run the green-and-yellow livery also; instead they use the black-and-gold livery based on the John Player Special tobacco sponsorship from the '80s. Are you fucked in the head yet? They've opted to paint their cars the color of a now-defunct former sponsor in the sponsorship category (tobacco) that is now banned from the sport.

In April 2011, Team Lotus F1 (the Air Asia-backed race team) bought Caterham Cars. Caterham's flagship car, the Caterham Seven, started life as the Lotus Seven in the late-'50s, designed and built by Colin Chapman. That's right, it was a Lotus. Which eventually got sold off to Caterham in the '70s. And now this fake-Lotus F1 team have bought a not-quite-Lotus carmaker in a desperate bid for racing legitimacy.

Are you tracking this colossal clusterfuck of stupidity? Are you sufficiently fucked off yet? I know I am. Two Lotus racing teams in F1. Both running Renault engines. Two fuckwit companies engaged in the pettiest of transactions over a stupid name. Both teams are dragging each other to court over the Lotus name. There's no doubt that the Air Asia assholes are banking on losing their case - so if they can't use the Lotus name, they're banking on being able to use the Caterham name in F1. What a fucking joke. A joke that can be traced all the way back to Malaysia on both sides.

Lotus was a brilliant brand, built up by an engineering genius and at some point, it actually stood for something good and wonderful and inspiring. Now, it's a fucking punchline thanks to two Malaysian companies, who have pulverized it to dog shit. Dog shit laughs at the Lotus name in F1.

I weep for Colin Chapman. The man was decades ahead of his time, and he proved to be one of the single-greatest innovators in past 100 years. He built a remarkable marque and he built brilliant cars - both on the road and on the race track - to back it up. And this is what his legacy has been reduced to. Fucking hell. Sorry, Colin.

[kickdes]

300 ways to hate this car

So let me get this straight: the New York Auto Show rolls around like it does every year, and just like every year, it’s a hacky festival of some of the dullest shit known to man and no one – NO ONE – seems to have the balls to do anything about it.  Do I have that right?  Got it.  Bravo.

I’m not entirely clear why I fucking bother with my love for cars anymore.  It’s all shit now.  Yes, I give a shit about things like multi-clutch systems, paddleshifting gearboxes, screaming V10 engines (RIP V10s, I hate that you were just a fad), and all sorts of clever shit that go into road cars as a result of motorsports (thanks to some bizarre curiosity I can’t explain, I’m still waiting for the continuous variable transmission to catch on).  But let’s face it, when it comes to a new season of new car shit, we’re all judging books by their covers.

Which is why the Chrysler 300 seems have taken the least amount of work to go the furthest to annoy the living shit out of me.  First things first: let’s establish the fact that I have, from day one, believed that Chrysler are complete shite.  Apart from the Dodge Viper, this retarded car company have put more effort into underachievement than almost any other company I can think of.  Everything from Chrysler is shit.  Go ahead, I fucking triple dog dare you to name one fucking product from this stupid company that can’t easily be trumped comfortably by a foreign competitor.

By no means does this suggest that I think the other Yank car companies are any good.  95% of Yank cars are atrocious.  And I need to work really hard to figure out the 5% that aren’t.

And with the 300, they’ve plunged to new depths of automotive sewage sediment.  And here I thought that the 200 that they boasted in the Super Bowl was the single-most bloated expression of vacuous bravado: they actually wanted us to believe that Eminem, hip-hop extraordinaire, was driving around in some criminally-awful sales rep car.  Some tepid piece of shit that’s managed to excited a population of precisely zero, a car you wouldn’t even know existed if you weren’t forced to rent it at an area Avis because they don’t stock Razor scooters.

And here at cusp of the New York Auto Show, Chrysler unapologetically launch the 300.  A car with a thoroughly embarrassing near-term past: playing the part of as a very poor and completely laughable Rolls Royce Phantom knock-off.  In that fine knock-off tradition, they’ve now set their sights on blatantly trying to mimic another foreign marque to create yet another humiliating facsimile: Audi.

If you ever ran into anyone even partially responsible for bringing the Chrysler 300 to market, would ever stop punching him in the face?  This car is so thoroughly derivative from a styling standpoint I’m actually offended.  Not as a person with any equitable stake in the company, but as person with a functioning pair of eyes.   What the fuck, you creatively bankrupt set of underachieving perennial losers.  If nothing else, I’d like to thank you for two things:

For unintentionally living up to your “Imported from Detroit” bullshit asshole tagline in your advertising creative

For serving as the Hyundai of America

Hyundai: that’s another company that deserves to be cockpunched repeatedly.  If I were Germany, I’d fucking invade Korea already.  On grounds of good taste.  It’d be a fucking breeze, too, I’ll bet.  How fucking dare you take some cut-rate piece of shit car, and throw a Mercedes front end with a BMW rear end on it, slap on a name with Biblical connotations as if that would exonerate your transgressions, and think that you can call it a day?  How fucking dare you.  How dare you perpetuate the idea that the Far East is only ever good for embarrassingly shoddy knock-offs.  (Granted, I do concede that this last point may actually be true – and I have the crappy watches to prove it).  And the fact that these guys have turned the art of knocks-offs into a quantifiable business model seems to give permission to all these other car marques – like Chrysler – to simply put their pencils down and go, “Fuck it, let’s just ask a class of kindergarteners to draw us a copy of that European car and have them take it down to the factory.  And if we hurry, we can still make happy hour at Applebee’s.”

And I’ll bet that’s exactly how this Chrysler 300 was born.

[kickdes]

Thanks for sinking my Battleship, Hasbro

Battleship.  I never get tired of playing Battleship.  That’s a proper classic game, isn’t it.  So unlike other so-called classics like Scrabble or Monopoly.  What a colossal waste of timet those other game are.  Battleship mixes gamesmanship with the joy of blowing shit up, and more importantly, it doesn’t take the better part of three weeks to finish a game.  I’m hard pressed to find another game of this caliber.  Maybe Jenga.  But with that, you don’t get to blow shit up repeatedly.  With Jenga, big blow up = game over.  Fucking buzzkill.

I love Battleship enough to want to teach my kids how to play it now.  That is, if I can find a game set from which we can play.  Have you shopped around for Battleship lately?  I have.  It doesn’t exist anymore.  At least not in the form that you know and love.  One of my kids is now sort of at the right age to start learning the agony of defeat and that life is not all hunky-dory-lightsabers-Lego-spaceships-winning-awesome.  At some point, he’s got to learn that life can suck.  Especially when I brilliantly sink his carrier and frigates repeatedly.

So last Christmas, we bought him what we thought was some clever new-fangled version of Battleship.  I think it’s called something like a “U Build” version (what, has Prince gotten a part time gig working brand names for Hasbro now?).  The kid loves Legos, and this game is supposedly based on some Lego brick elements.  You actually got to customize how the battleships got built – how fucking cool is that?!  Christmas day, we tear open the box, and he goes straight for the tiny brick pieces – you know, the tiny pieces that get left on the floor at precise points in the house a week later so that you’ll step on them every fucking day so that you’ll scream at the kid to pick his shit up and the pieces will still find your open sole to stab…!

So while he proceeds to build these battleships, I’m tasked to put together the game board.  Game board?!  About this fucking game board – whatever happened to the large clam shells that opened, with the transparent grids on both sides?  Your ships were laid out on the bottom, and you used to the upright panel to mark your hits and misses.  Simple, no brainer, worked like a charm.  Well, it turns out that this “build it yourself” version of Battleship doesn’t limit the “build” part to just the ships – these fuckers make you build the game board itself… out of fucking cardboard pieces.  No more plastic clam shell gameboard.  It’s all CARDBOARD!  What sort of bullshit is this?!   “U Build” is apparently a euphemism of “Here, you put this together ‘cause it’s a piece of shit and even we can’t be arsed.”  Fuckers.  And there’re no holes.  The ships justs sit on the cardboard so that if you so much as sneezed, your ships could shift position.  And you need a whole ‘nother contraption to keep score.  Utter bullshit.

But what the hell, we give it a college effort.  Put the thing together – not only does the whole cardboard contraption collapse if you so much as frown at it, apparently these new customizable battleships come with new rules on how you play the game.  Suddenly, you need a degree from Annapolis just to figure out a fucking board game.  God, I hate this thing.

It doesn’t take long for the kid and I to pack it in, blow off this stupid game.  Undaunted, I begin my quest to find the good ol’ Battleship game that I fondly remember.  First stop, Target.  Nothing.  That’s alright, it is but one store.  I get home and Google the shit out of Battleship.  Why Google the shit out of it?  Because apparently, it doesn’t exist.  It’s like it’s been wiped off the face of the earth entirely.  After fruitless perusing of online retailers, I head to the Hasbro site and soon realize that these motherfuckers DON’T MAKE regular Battleship anymore.  They have this bullshit “U Build” version, and some other assy version which looks like an upright Chinese Checkers board.  Which, from the reviews I read, works about as well as the Red Sox offense.  It’s an astronomical failure of a reinvention of something that worked perfectly well twenty years ago.  And I don’t care about some miniature travel version, I don’t care about some fancy electronic version that lights up and makes noise.  All I want is the simple, basic, original Battleship game.  You know, the nothing-wrong-with-it-in-the-first-place version.

The only place I can find any remnants of the old Battleship?  Ebay.  And fuck that noise.  I won’t even touch a handrail on a subway, there’s no fucking way I’m buying someone’s used boardgame off Ebay.  God knows where the hell those battleships and pegs have been over the past twenty years.

So, where does this leave me?  Or the kid, for that matter?   Truth is, I’m more bent out of shape about this than the kid, natch.  He doesn’t know what he’s missing.  Battleship is just something that didn’t work out, and there are a ton of other things out there to entertain him.  For me, the loss of the good and proper, old school Battleship is like someone remaking The Godfather with Justin Bieber as Michael Corleone, then flooding every movie channel with this glorious remake, but not before destroying the original.  And they expect you to a) forget the original ever existed, and b) like this new masterpiece.

Fuck you, Hasbro – congratulations on the successful childhood-killing campaign you’re on.

[kickdes]

Three for Thursday

People who think they’re too cool to capitalize.  Typically these  “faux-eccentric types” are the ones who feel like they have license to do this.  You know, the sort who think that crowdsourcing isn’t just asking the unwashed masses to do your shitty work for you (it is).  Good job on dive bombing your bar of creativity by thinking that simply not using your shift key qualifies you as being “inventive”.  Or simply exploiting your sheer, unbridled laziness by cloaking yourself in some pretentious veil of cool, that you’re above the rudiments of punctuation. Here’s a clue: none of it’s working, and you’re coming across loud and clear as some illiterate dickhead.  Not one person is impressed.  So knock it off, doucheface.  Using proper punctuation is as basic as brushing your teeth.  It’s not that hard.

Tedious, self-aggrandizing Facebook updates asking you to spread a “cause”.  It typically involves some long-winded, self-validating bullshit paragraph about some bullshit that you, as the reader, couldn’t give a shit about, and then it ends with some pathetic plea to have you repost that stupid update.  “If you agree, please post this in your update.”  Oh, for fuck’s sake – WHY!?!  Who gives a shit if I agree with that stupid shitty paragraph you cut-and-pasted in your update.  Do you really give a shit if I agree with that stupid statement which you were too lazy to even come up with your own so you just cut-and-pasted it from some other retarded lemming’s Facebook update?  If I were shallow-minded enough to repost that shit you posted on your update, would it make one lick of difference to anyone?  That’s right, it fucking wouldn’t.  So, WTF, you mindless lemming.  “Post this on your update if you agree that cancer is shitty.”  Well, of course cancer is shitty.  What’s that request supposed to do – guilt me into the belief that if I don’t post that retarded paragraph on my Facebook status, I actually believe that cancer rocks?  Fuck.  Off.  I have half a mind to post this who paragraph in my Facebook update.  “If you think your friends are retarded for posting stupid shit on their Facebook updates, please repost this load of bollocks.”  Go on, I fucking dare you.

Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  I don’t give a shit if this comes more than a month after the event.  It’s retarded.  St Patrick’s Day is only meaningful on St. Patrick’s Day.  March 17.  Two days after the Ides Of March.  That’s it, no other time.  There’s no St. Patrick’s Day season, like you do the Easter season or Christmas season (which apparently starts right on Labor Day these days).  The day before St. Patrick’s Day is completely meaningless.  As is the day before that (fuck the Ides Of March, just ask Julius Caesar).  There’s no festivity after St. Patrick’s Day – the way Boxing Day only exists because Christmas Day does.  So St. Patrick’s Day is one day and one day only.  The fact that the city of Hoboken are retarded enough to think that it’s perfectly fine for them to throw some stupid St. Patrick’s Day parade some two weeks before the actual event – especially being a mere five miles from the actual site of a good and proper St. Patrick’s Day Parade – on the actual fucking day! – shows just what a bunch of retarded douchebags have been wandering Hoboken all these years.  The only redeeming thing about this stupid annual tradition of celebrating an event well in advance of the day of the event is that the drinking and debauchery is completely fucking out of control.  The fact that this stupid parade made the news this year because of the city’s efforts to curb the drinking and debauchery, only to lead to record-levels of drunken madness, may be the only reason to validate this otherwise completely retarded event.  Next year, I want a car fire and someone driving a fire truck into the Hudson, Hoboken.  Otherwise, no more stupid St. Patrick’s Day events.