I don’t remember exactly why I started this blog six months ago. It probably had something to do with the fact that I’m a total show-off attention whore despite my introverted personality. (When I was in elementary school and I won any sort of award for making the honor roll or whatever, I’d high-step up the aisle, Deion Sanders style, to accept my award.) And it’s because I think I’m funny. Not life-of-the-party funny, but at least clever/erudite/witty/profane when I have the time to write and edit my material. And because I want to show the world that I’m right. About everything. Whether it’s grammar or football. I like to think I can make the world a better place by convincing people that they should hate what I hate.
Now, that’s why I started out. I had a little tiny wordpress.com site. Then a friend of mine from high school showed it to one of his co-worker who said he could host it for me (that co-worker is the man behind Movie Crematorium). So I bought the thingskevinhates.com domain name and started dreaming of fame and fortune. I imagined myself raking in the dough from a few ads on my page.* Of being a media pundit. Of holding court on various issues, with my opinion well respected by thousands of followers all over the world. And most of all, I dreamed of…a book deal.
Now, I suppose one could argue that a magazine column would be more plausible, but I don’t think you could get advances or royalty checks for those. So fuck that. I want a book deal. So many fucking blogs have book deals it’s ridiculous. This 2004—holy crap that’s a long time ago in the online world—New Yorker article details the start of the blogs-to-book movement, with an enterprising 27-year-old agent-in-waiting named Kate Lee working at International Creative Management and scouring the web for bloggers who could become the next best-selling author. This trend exploded, to the point where stuffwhitepeoplelike.com could get a $300,000 book deal. Six motherfucking figures. It’s funny stuff, don’t get me wrong, but $300k? The anti-hipster brigade is raking in the book deals left and right. LATFH has one. Stuff Hipsters Hate has one. I’ve done the whole anti-hipster thing, but there are so many other things in the world to hate: why should I limit myself? Continue reading ‘that i don’t have a book deal yet’
I could have a whole blog about how much I hate clueless drivers, but for today I’ll limit myself to one thing: not using turn signals! I can’t stand those morons who steadfastly refuse to use their turn signals. It’s stupid, it’s dangerous, and it pisses me off.
The other day I was driving on a four-lane road when a woman swerved in front of me. Not only was it a dangerous move—there was a lot of traffic and she didn’t have much space to pull it off—she couldn’t be bothered to use her turn signal. And just in case I was thinking about giving her a break this one time, ten seconds later she swerved back into her original lane, again without using a turn signal, and again, despite the fact that there was a ton of traffic. If you’re going to drive like a maniac and race through traffic, at least have the decency to use a turn signal so that I know to get out the way. Continue reading ‘people who don’t use turn signals’
One of the great thoroughly average things about facebook is the ability to be friends with people you barely even know/haven’t seen since fifth grade/don’t really know but have a lot of mutual friends/met once at a party or bar. It’s wonderful to know what these people think about health care reform, see their drunken escapades, and know how they’re doing in Farmville, but it can lead to awkward real-life interactions. When you barely know people it’s usually not too difficult to avoid them, but what happens if you have a facebook friend you barely know (or haven’t even met in real life, or haven’t seen in years) and you run into that person? Stare at them awkwardly? Keep your head down and look the other way? Hug them? Start up a conversation? It’s practically impossible to know what to do in such circumstances. So, I would like to propose a solution:
If you send someone you barely know a friend request and they accept it, it’s your job to acknowledge the other person’s existence should you run into them in real life. This acknowledgment may vary tremendously depending on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, personalities, and a host of other factors, and it may or may not involve a lengthy conversation, but at the very least it needs to be a look and a nod. The thing to note here is that it’s on the person who sent the friend request to initiate things. I absolutely hate when someone sends me a friend request, I accept (as I do for pretty much anyone I know or have a lot of friends in common with), I run into them and they say nothing. As I said, I’m not asking for a much here. A nod and maybe a quick “Hey, how’s it going?” is fine. If you want a more in depth conversation, that’s fine too. One time I ran into someone who had friended me and she explained who she was and that we knew each other even though neither of us could remember exactly where we’d met. (Where we’d met finally dawned on me a year or two later.) But after that we could run into each other and have a friendly conversation, as opposed to the awkwardness I feel when I see other people I barely know who aren’t willing to say “hi.” Continue reading ‘awkward meetings with facebook friends’
We’re just a few days away from my favorite sports days of the year—the first round of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament, more commonly called March Madness. Or The Big Dance. Those are the days when we see the big upsets, Cinderella trying to knock off Goliath (if I may mix my sports metaphors). The tournament is entertaining after that, but nothing compares to the frenzy of the first round. (Sure, if your favorite team is fighting for a title, I’m sure the later rounds are better, but the neutral fan is hungry for the cinderella stories, not the title contenders).
Over the decades the tournament gradually expanded; at first, only conference champions were allowed into the tourney. In 1975 at-large teams were added, and the tournament grew to 32 teams, then 40, then 48, and eventually 64. Now it’s at 65 with a largely irrelevant play-in game. 64 was perfect. No byes, no play-in games, just a perfectly balanced bracket. A few years ago they added a 65th team. The rationale at the time was that the NCAA had just gotten another conference (and thus another automatic bid), so expanding the tournament by one would keep the same number of at-large teams. Which is okay, I suppose. All it does is put an extra at-large team somewhere around the 11-12 seeds and bump the champions of the tiny conferences down a spot, putting the worst of them into the play-in game.
Now some people are calling for an expansion of the field to 96 teams. There are a number of arguments in favor of this, some better than others. The number one reason it will likely happen sooner or later is money. The tournament is the NCAA’s cash cow. In 1999, CBS signed an 11-year, $6 billion contract extension with the NCAA. That’s a lot of cash. And with that contract ending soon (2013), and the NCAA having an opt-out clause after this season, they may very well feel that more games (i.e. more chances for networks to sell commercials) could increase their revenues. There’s the possibility of a bidding war between CBS and ESPN, so it’d make sense to expand now instead of in the middle of a contract. Continue reading ‘expanding march madness’
I’ve been an American Idol fan for the last couple years, but some years I’m busier than others, and I don’t always pay a lot of attention to it. DVR helps, but between being busy and watching the Olympics, I’d put Idol on the back burner. I finally got back into watching it last week and I was less than impressed on a number of levels. The contestants weren’t great and neither were the judges. I think Ellen DeGeneres is hilarious, and I absolutely loved her 2009 commencement speech at Tulane.
But I’m not totally sold on Ellen as a judge. I love her jokes, but her comments on the contestant’s performance are often a little too nice. And what music background does she have, anyway? She’s a stellar comedienne, but that’s no qualification for this show. And Kara DioGuardi is still less than outstanding. She’s not bad, but she’s not great, either. The bottom line is that the two of them combined can’t replace Paula Abdul and her drug-addled ramblings. And once Simon leaves, I fear the show will be headed way downhill. I’m sure they’ll try to pick up some curmudgeonly Brit to replace him, but I doubt it’ll work. Continue reading ‘inconsistent American Idol judges’
Free agency season just started in the NFL, and as should be expected, the Saints have already lost one prominent player, linebacker Scott Fujita. The thought of even one piece from our title-winning team going missing has sent some Saints fans into tears. There are two groups of people: those upset at the Saints for letting Fujita go, and those upset at Fujita for leaving the Saints. Regardless of which camp you’re in (or whether you’re upset with both), you need to calm down and realize that football is about two things a) winning games and b) making money. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not. While Scott Fujita is a class act, stand-up guy who has been a great friend to the city of New Orleans, it’s clear that the ownership and/or personnel staffs and/or coaches felt that he wasn’t worth what the salary he commanded on the free agent market. And for Fujita, it’s clear that the positive aspects of playing in our wonderful city for the defending Super Bowl champions didn’t outweigh the millions of dollars more he’ll be making in Cleveland. I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be mad at the Saints or at Scott Fujita. Continue reading ‘people who are mad that fujita’s leaving’
First of all, let me admit that I’m a casual, bandwagon Hornets fan. When I was a kid, my favorite team was the Orlando Magic (because of Shaq), and after he went from Orlando to Los Angeles most of my interest in the NBA faded. Sure, I’d watch a game here or there, but I mostly preferred the college game. So much of the NBA play was dominated by isolation plays for the stars, as opposed to the ball movement of the college game. The refs let stars get away with traveling and carrying. The 24-second play clock led to an uninteresting, back-and-forth style of play, and outlawing zones struck me as taking away a big part of the game. I remembered when I was little and we almost nabbed the Timberwolves; the Times-Picayune even ran a headline that said “Got ‘em!” above a Timberwolves jersey. This was pretty exciting, aside from the minor detail that we did not, in fact, get the Timberwolves.
When the Hornets came, I wasn’t all that excited at first. I’d watch the occasional game on TV, but didn’t pay too much attention. Then in 2003 I moved to a new house and got DirecTV, which didn’t have (and still doesn’t have) Cox Sports TV, so I couldn’t watch Hornets games aside from the occasional nationally televised game. But then the Hornets got Chris Paul and returned to New Orleans full-time after a Katrina-induced exile to Oklahoma City. And they started winning. I had to been to a Hornets game once before (2004, maybe?) when my dad got some tickets from a work colleague. But I didn’t go again until I decided to go in March 2008, when the red-hot Hornets were fighting for the #1 spot in the Western Conference. They were playing the Bulls and entered the 4th quarter down by nine, but came back to win by eleven. Chris Paul had 37 points and 13 assists. I didn’t start attending every home game or anything like that, but clearly the NBA and the Hornets had some appeal. Continue reading ‘that Hornets games are not on DirecTV’