5 Olympic Events that are just plain stupid

When I was a kid, every Spring I couldn't wait for class 'Intramurals' which was our Elementary School's version of the Olympics that pitted one grade level against another for the privilege of owning a sweet blue, red or yellow ribbon (1st, 2nd & 3rd place respectively) with our name hand-written on it. It was a prepubescent battle of strength and wit akin to competitive patty-cake. I remember competing in some of my favorite events such as Tug-of-war, 3-Legged race and the Worm Relay (which I dominated) and day-dreaming of competing for the Untied States in the Gold Medal round. It was, of course, naive of me to consider a future as an Olympic Worm-Relayer...or was it.

Far be itfrom me, a self-confessed couch potato, to question the athletic hobbies ofothers, especially those that earn you free trips to exotic locales likeLondon. But there are certain athletic events (you can take your term ‘sport’and shove it) that are just too ridiculous to be true. To think that the 105members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sat down and voted toinclude these superior feats of strength, will and stamina is beyondimaginable.  Did I say strength, will andstamina? I meant unwatchable feats of clownish tenacity.  I imagine the IOC Inclusion Committeeconversation went something like this:

IOC President:  We propose new events that make runners intowalkers and hurdlers into pit-jumpers.

German delegation: Ja!

French Delegation: Oui!

Spanish Delegate: Si!

English Delegate: Cheerio!

IOC President:  It is passed!

So as youprepare for the 2012 London Summer Olympics, here are 5 sports that will mostcertainly be relegated to the all-important 2 A.M. time-slot on your localchannel.  In other words, if you’regetting home from a late-night bender, these are 5 Olympic Events sure to testyour facetiousness fortitude.

1. Race Walking

Yes, walking like you really have to go to the bathroom butare trying really hard to hold in the contents of your late night burrito, isan Olympic Event. Much like the retired denizens who stroll around yourneighborhood with 3 pound hand-weights and an expeditious gait, the sport ofwalking-really-fast found its way onto the Olympic medal podium… 56 YEARSAGO?!?! And our cold-war compadres, Mother Russia, have been dominating thissport ever since. I want you to imagine for a moment:  Communist Russia, whose proletariat policiesof forced labor, burdened its citizens into the jobs that they would performfor their country.  That means that youcould have been a 6 year-old child and woke up one day to a commander orderingyou into a future of Race Walking.”Wake up Kirrill. Now walk, don’t run, your lazybolskevik to the Olympic Training Facility. Be ready in 12 years. And eat yourgruel!” I imagine there are fates worse than this, but I can’t think of one atthe moment.

2. Steeplechase

How do I explain this without making it too complicated?  It’s a track race, with a few sporadic hurdles, one ofwhich has a water pit, and you do this 7 times. Ok, I guess that wasn’t that complicated yet I felt strangely ridiculousdescribing it. This event has been around since the inception of the modernOlympics, yet somehow it has only grown to prominence over the last decade orso. The lack of popularity amongst the Olympic enthusiast can primarily beattributed to the fact that it’s just really really stupid. In a note to theIOC, this writer has offered the recommendation that the inclusion of analligator, or other indigenous carnivore, would be of great benefit to thesport it holds so near and dear.

Oh yeah, and the Kenyans dominate it.

3. Trampolining 

Rememberwhen you were a kid and got your first trampoline and you were amped beyondimagination so you jumped on and began bouncing away but then found yourselfbored somewhere around the 3 minute mark? I imagine that sentiment is similarto what it’s like to watch so-called Olympians jump up and down on atrampoline. With such acrobatic moves as the Ball-out Randy, Kaboom and Three-QuarterFront Turntable, I could see myself initially intrigued but subsequentlywanting to punch myself in the face for wasting those three minutes when Icould have been much more productive watching some other, much more exciting, sport like Badminton. Wait…what?!?!

4. Badminton

Badminton: the stupid game you got stuck playing in middleschool when all the big-kids had the basketball courts and the tetherball polewas taken, was indoctrinated in the Olympic Games during the 1992 BarcelonaGames. For the past 20 years, it’s hidden under the radar of much betterplayground games like Ping-Pong (excuse me - Table Tennis), racquetball and archeryand I’m pretty sure that in another 20 years I could write the same thing.

5. Synchronized Diving

It’s diving but with 2 divers doing the same thing at thesame time. Because witnessing just one diver doing their thing wasn’t enough, theydecided to make a team sport out of a very singular activity. With that said,why not include Synchronized Pole Vault, Synchronized Weightlifting orSynchronized Trampolining? What’s that you say…Synchronized Trampolining doesexist? Fuck me.

9/26/12

The Grammar Troll

The Internet is full of vivid and wonderful characters that are hidden behind a screen of limitless safety that’s tightly wrapped up with an ambiguous username. While this has led to a generation of idiots and racists that 'troll' the Internet looking to harass without fear of reprisal, a surprising changing of the guard has conspired over the past few years. A new breed of exasperated comment-stalkers called the "Grammar Troll".

The Grammar Troll loves nothing more than to scour the Internet looking for the improper use of a few words and then pounce immediately with their petulant brand of trolling humor. But don’t be fooled by the Grammar Troll - their ultimate understanding of the entire book on grammar and spelling ends somewhere around 6 words:

1) Than/then 2) your/you're 3) there/their

While there are literally billions of instances of subpar grammar and spelling on the Internet (ie, any comment section of any site), they keep their sights set small and look for the small inconsequential misuses of certain words whenever the chance presents itself. Facebook is literally full of snarky comments like: “*you’re not your…learn the difference dumbass” and “check a dictionary once in a while you donkey”.


So to the Grammar Trolls of the interwebs: let’s take a moment and pump the breaks on your (or is it you’re) internet proof-reading. In the end, it’s the meaning of the comment that slightly trumps your empty benevolence on the matter of proper wording and appropriate spelling. The internet has enough trolls, don’t be another one.

5 things Idiocracy got right

Chuck Rogers

On a number of occasions, I have referenced the movie Idiocracy as a means to highlight some of the dumber things that have transpired in the world that exists today. The grossly under-rated film by Mike Judge (of Office Space and Beavis & Butthead fame) prognosticates the world of 2505 where out-of-control breeding of earth’s IQ-challenged populace has culminated in the ultimate banality of lower intelligence. While this movie takes place another 493 years from now, many of Judges’ visions of a distant future exist today. Here are 5 things that are, unfortunately, already true. 

1. Stupid is as stupid does 

      The gene pool is completely dumbed down when stupid people have even stupider kids. There is nothing poor people, with little to no intelligence, love to do more than have unprotected sex with as many equally dumb people as possible.  There’s also nothing rich self-absorbed athlete’s love to do more than have unprotected sex with as many self-absorbed fans/groupies as possible.  

      When poor idiots and rich athletes aren’t busy knocking out their spawn, Middle American teens are busy rocking the reality TV circuit with their oh-so-tough lives of living off daddy while knocking boots with Cleetus from down the block. Each episode is watched by 3.8 million Americans who are, by watching, equally helping contribute to the dumbing down of society. By the time MTV air's Teen Mom 8 we can effectively signal the end of our society. 

2. The Emmy goes to, “Ow, my balls” 

      Future society’s favorite TV show is a prime-time program that is comprised entirely of scenes in which people get punched in the balls. 505 years earlier, Ow, My Balls was called Jackass. It garnered 24 episodes, 5 movies, 5 spin-offs and even a video game. 25 years earlier we watched Bob Saget host a plethora of clips involving object-to-gonad videos for our viewing pleasure on America’s Funniest Home Videos (eventually shortened to AFV for the syllable-challenged viewing populace).  Oh yeah, this show has been running for 23 YEARS!!!!! Fact:  we love watching people get hit in the balls more than any other single thing on earth.

3. And the Oscar for best movie goes to….ASS! 

      The 2505 movie simply titled, ASS, won every single Oscar that year. It was the heart-wrenching tale of an emotional decent into questionable morality through the eyes of a blameless child. Just kidding, it was 120 minutes of a person’s ass on screen. Similarly, Twilight won every single MTV Movie award that it was nominated for this year. It was 117 minutes of this face: 

      Fun fact: Mrs Team Edward is the highest grossing actress of 2011. Dear God, please have somebody kick me in the balls (and Make sure Bob Saget is narrating).  

4.  Language has deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inter-city slang and grunts

      Read the comment section of any website and you'll recognize that this hybrid already exists. Comment sections seem to exist solely for uber-racists to spout off mispelted commants bout there luv of Hitler bak yonder n how d Tytanik wuz fak-sunking by aliem jewz 2 cova up the holywud fak-shiite mune-landing hollowcaste. Or something like that. 

      Stupid YouTube Comments

5. Meaningless court cases are public spectacles.

      It’s cost over 150 million (or the amount of child support Antonio Cromartie will pay in his lifetime to cover his 12 bastards) in taxpayer dollars to cover the investigation and trials of the Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds steroid-based perjury cases. And what did 150 million dollars get the taxpayers of America? They were both acquitted of all charges except one: being really huge assholes.  

Chuck Rogers 6/29/12

Terry Crews - still awesome in 500 years

Tupac killed Rock & Roll

Tupac killed rock & roll.

The Holographic revolution that will destroy music as we know it

I always thought the death of rock & roll would come via some unexpected new musical trend: gangsta rap boy hands, Justin Bieber as the 4^th member of the newly reformed Hanson or as a disco renaissance proving it really was just too good to ever die. What I never expected was the death of rock & roll to come via a dead west coast rapper reincarnated as a music festival hologram. So yes, you read the headline correctly: Tupac Shakur killed rock & roll.

Holographic Tupac

Coachella, April 15, 2012 – During a set by Snoop Dogg we, as a music loving nation, bore witness to the Tupac Shakur hologram who graced the stage with his Doggness. The repercussions might not be instantly recognizable but give it time, you’ll understand soon enough.

When I was 6 I lost my best friend. His name was Hamkey and he was my loving 3 year old hamster. At the time I would have done anything to bring Hamkey back to this world so I could continue watching his tireless journey on a hamster wheel. An upcoming Tim Burton movie, Frankenweenie, posits a similar notion that it’s better to love and hold onto, then it is to have love and lost. Ten years after the death of Hamkey, I experienced another bout of loss when I sat in the Denver airport and learned that Kurt Cobain had taken his own life. I obviously didn’t know Kurt (or watch him run an endless sprint on a metal wheel) but through his music I felt an unexplainable connection. Not as a morose teenager who is lost in a strange and cruel world but as an artist who helped me discover a world of music beyond Motley Crue and Def Leppard. In both the case of my childhood hamster and my pre-pubescent fanhood, I could imagine nothing greater than having those beings back in my life.

For the 18 years since, I’ve never had any reason to question this notion until digital Tupac happened. It took me a couple weeks to really process the notion of bringing back a dead artist and making it seem, via modern technology (James Cameron’s special effects studio - Digital Domain), that we are actually watching the artist live and on stage before our very eyes! What if the Fab Four were back! What if Duane Allman brought back his oh so sweet slide guitar to the Allman Brothers! And what if Cobain, sans self-inflicted gun wound, joined Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl back on stage in Seattle to play what could possibly be the largest reunion concert of all time.  Luckily I trust the living counter-parts of these artists to say a big “Fuck you” to this idea but what’s to stop the Hendrix family, who still fight over his music rights to this day, to sell his music rights to the NFL and Jimi's Woodstock performance of the Star Spangled Banner happens in front of 85,000 fans (and televised to millions more worldwide) at the New Orleans Superdome for next year’s super bowl?

Over the following weeks, the talk settled down, we made our jokes and we went back to talking about American Idol and who the snarkiest judge is. Then it happened…my worst nightmare.  Queen announced it would be joining the digital resurrection (the new and apparently much cooler name for hologram) game and will make Freddie Mercury appear on stage with them in London on May 14. We like to throw out the term ‘Pandora’s Box’ anytime something we hate becomes overly cool but this truly is the defining moment in the opening of digital resurrections’ Pandora’s Box. Freddie Fucking Mercury, dead some 20 years, will be ripped from his slumber in the heavenly cloud that holds musics greatest artists, to play a concert beyond his will. 

Now imagine all the record execs of the world, sitting in their little offices on the penthouse level of some tall building in some major metropolitan city, surrounded by many leather-bound books and rich mahogany bookshelves (I imagine them all shorter, fatter, less funny versions of Ron Burgundy) plotting their next money-maker. Sure, Greatest Hit albums are still selling, they have a line of t-shirts at every Target in the country and movie studios still pay handsomely for rights to use their songs in the credits…but there’s always more to be made. Specifically: a cheaply produced, quickly designed and exact digital replica of their artist could be used in a worldwide tour, making millions upon millions more, with barely the lift of the finger. And Charlie Concert-Goer would just eat it all up.

Nirvana - New Years Eve 1993/94

But the money aspect of this emerging concert revolution isn’t even what is truly wrong about this all. It’s the loss of meaning the artist once held. In death, all painters’ works become infinitely more valuable but in music, their songs/words/images become that much more meaningful. The world recently lost an amazing artist, director and human rights activist in Adam Yauch. What was the first thought you had when you heard the news? Was it that Tibet lost one of its greatest activists, that music lost one of its greatest rappers (and bassists) or was it, “Damn, I never got to see them live!” Don’t feel bad, that’s the first thing I thought. But, for better or for worse, that’s mine to bare and I’ll have it forever. But it’s also what makes me sit on YouTube for hours on end watching old Beastie Boys videos and documentaries while reminiscing on that sophomore summer when a friend first introduced me to the B-Boys via a dubbed tape of Check Your Head (just kidding RIAA, please don't sue 14 year old me). It’s this emotion that I find more fulfilling and endearing then it would be to settle my mind with a chance to see a digitally resurrected MCA play with the Beastie Boys again so that I can say, “Sweet, I finally saw them. I can cross that off my list”. The same goes for Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Every year on the anniversary of his death, I’ll stumble upon an article reminding the world of this fact and next thing I know, I’m re-watching the 1993 New Year’s Eve concert they performed while I was stuck, against my will, babysitting. That evening as I put the kids to bed, I stared, completely transfixed, as Cobain took a crowd of over 50,000 and brought them into his world through his music. This was the last live moment I shared with this band as it was only 4 months later that Cobain was gone. Having his image back on stage in concert would only seek to destroy this lasting and meaningful memory that I’ve enjoyed for almost 20 years.

But let’s forget about ourselves for a second. What if we could truly tap into the spiritual being of these artists who have passed? What would they say knowing they were being used to fill the pockets of billionaires who are playing off the emotions of a nostalgia-loving society who would do anything to see something again that once made them cry with audible emotion, that once made their heart skip a beat when the big buildup to the final chorus happened, or once brought joy in the creation of a mixed tape they made for their best friend when they were 12. I would like to imagine that it would bring a middle finger and some choice expletives.

So this is my plea: please don’t destroy the souls and memories of the artists who have, in some way or another, touched our souls and gave us something to care about, something to brag about and something to be connected to. I know the dollar is louder than my little plea, but for the sake of rock & roll as we know it, I hope there is somebody out there to hear it.

To Tupac – I would like to apologize. You didn’t really kill rock n roll, you were just another pawn in the music industry game that’s been played for decades. Be sure and collect your holographic soul when you pass ‘GO’ but please...leave the $200.

To Hamkey – I miss you bud. I’m glad I never stuffed you like I asked Mom to.

To Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, John Lennon, Skinny Elvis…I fear for your souls. And I promise not to attend your concert at the Garden next year.

But I hope you sell lots of shirts.

Chuck Rogers

5/12/12