Thursday, February 26, 2009

High School Musical III

My baby girl freaking loves this franchise! I've no idea why it's called a franchise, either. McDonald's is a franchise, yet so is a series of movies? Even if said movies are owned by Disney? I've never cared for it, but my daughter has an appreciation for music that I couldn't give her, so there's some good that comes from it, I guess. I've seen all three of them; one and two a multitude of times, and we just finished watching part three. There's loads to dislike about part three, let me rattle the minor ones off in a run on sentence as quickly as I can. It's too long it's a typical musical where the players spontaneously break out in song it's the gayest basketball playing I've ever seen the plot is jumpy the songs really REALLY suck this time it felt like the writers threw something together at the last moment and even the actors seem burned out on the whole fricken thing. Now to the bigger problems I had with the movie.

It's the senior year for the characters. PLEASE dear Lord in heaven, the father, the almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen ... don't let them make College Musical I. These are supposedly 17 and 18 year olds. Throughout the movie, Troy and Gabriella are trying to find a moment's solitude, so they can mack. Well, not really. Whenever they do, it's the lightest most innocent little peck. Now, I know, tweens are their target demographic, which really means that first and second graders wind up being the fan base. I don't want my little cupcake watching a full on make out session with Troy grabbing a handful of ass or anything like that. But to the non innocent of us watching, it's such crap. You can't get through the movie at all without thinking, "if this were real high school, Troy would reach over ad naseum and get a handful of Gabriella's tiny lil titty." He was the captain of the All State basketball team, second year running. You know he'd have the world's hugest ego. She was a supposed brainiac, getting a full ride to Stanford University. In high school, she'd have felt shunned by the stuck up conceited "pretty girls" and would've been permanently planted on Troy's cock because of all the attention that being his boyfriend would bring her. She'd do anything and everything she could to keep that going.

The worst part of this movie, and I hope my daughter doesn't get this bullshit etched into her brain, is in the first song. They're playing the championship game, and (Dear God NOOOO!) the Wildcats are down like forty-some-odd points. Poor Troy, gets fouled, and the anxiety is getting to him. Gabriella stands up and sing-screams his name, "TROOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYY," and singingly (is that a word?) Troy informs her that right now, he can hardly breathe. Gabriella sings back, "you can do it, just know that I believe."

Troy sings back, "and that's all I really need," and proceeds to help lead the team to victory. Do little girls need to think that they're the main inner strength of a jock? Do girls dream of being a man's sole/main motivation in everything?

"He's winning the game for me!" Ummm ... bullshit. His focus is on the game, his mind is as far away from you as the moon is from the earth. Your support and/or belief changes the outcome of a sporting event not one iota. Do we really need to put the smallest inkling of an idea like this into impressionable kids' heads? Adult women thinking shit like this is bad enough.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

How facebook kicked myspace's ass, and other tidbits

Myspace used to be cool. It was customizable, so the need to create your own personal web page to put up your bio, resume, personal pics of you and the family, and your trunk novel, was over. It could all be put on myspace, for free.

You could connect to old friends and new, never having open the possibility of losing touch with someone because of a change in email. If your best friend in kindergarten kept up with their myspace page, you had a permanent connection to him or her.

Myspace kicked facebook’s ass in terms of popularity, too. Facebook was cryptic, hard to use and not self explanatory like myspace. Besides, everyone you knew was on myspace. There was no need to maintain TWO social networking sites. Many had accounts with both, but ignored facebook. Facebook eventually gained some ground with college kids wanting to separate themselves from high school students. I’m of the opinion that college kids only liked facebook because it was college trendy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the marketing department at facebook paid –er, donated, to college departments to promote facebook, maybe even requiring that students set up a facebook account. Mind you, I fear being sued so I’m definitely not making this allegation. I’m merely saying I wouldn’t be surprised if this make-believe story were true.

Myspace was riding the superior-in-every-way wave, much like Microsoft did before the internet became popular. Then came the media reports. Pedophiles were using myspace to find children to have sex with. I never actually heard of someone having sex with a child as a result of myspace, but there were loads of law enforcement officials saying that they caught many a child molester having accounts online and having children on their friends list. Suddenly, it became quite unpopular for adults to have myspace pages. It was obvious that myspace was fighting that stigma by featuring comedians, novelists, musicians and other artists on their pages. They had some success at keeping their popularity, for awhile, and it grew as a marketing tool for celebs promoting their next project.

What did it in for myspace, you ask? The fricken Mob Wars bullshit application. Before anyone starts accusing, I’ve earned the right to call it bullshit after becoming a number one capo with billions in the bank and owning more beach front casinos than the U.S. actually has of coastal real estate. Every surf and turf restaurant, surf board and bikini retail shop, and sail boat rental store in the country would have to close down to make room for my 5 star casino, but what do I care, I’m the “gahdfahduh”. I’ll kill ‘em all, it’s just business.

In the mob wars and mafia apps, you grew strength and could only win battles by having a larger family. People addicted to the game had no choice but to make friends with complete and total strangers. I found this requirement super odd; myspace was now encouraging kids to make friends with potential child pee-pee lickers. To use the appropriate internet lingo, WTF? Myspace converted itself from being a social networking site, to being a gaming site and in the process, opening the pedophile portal. They pulled it off it quick, too. Suddenly, what was supposed to be friend’s bulletins was nothing but inundated notes by complete strangers bragging about their new condo being built, or their plea that you join their mob. Join as you like, but that didn’t stop the flood of bulletins. Now, I’m not keeping up with friends, not finding out that the kid I shared my Oreos with in elementary school’s favorite bar drink is some weird Goldschlager and Peach Schnapps concoction. All I see when I log in is whiney pleas for me to join their crew. Something I’m pretty sure isn’t done in the real life cosanostra (I say that with authority too, I’ve seen the Godfather trilogy dozens of times).

Personally, after realizing the monotony of the game, I removed the app, and deleted the 200+ friends I’d had purely for the sake of the game. But even then, my regular friends seemed to stop posting bulletins and blogs, and the only proof I saw that they still actively visited their myspace page was their “please join my mob” bulletins.

So now, facebook is the big boy on the block. As a nerd, I see a war coming. Not a conventional war, mind you, nor one involving a gangster app that lets you virtually chop your coworker into bits with a machete. A war of the social networking sites. I’m reminded a lot of the instant messaging “wars”. First, there was ICQ, followed by AIM, then Yahoo joined in, and eventually, Johnny-come-lately, also known as Microsoft. Some downloaded and used all instant messaging software, but some got fed up and stopped using them altogether (Dad!). Then the consolidating software arrived, that let you use them all through one interface. None ruled supreme. Right now, there’s myspace, facebook, yahoo360, tagged, twitter, yearbook, plaxo, and others. Microsoft will have one out soon, no doubt.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Pay the respect

I had a blog, when I was trying to find my fortune as a budding entrepreneur. I was a bit of what's called an "abysmal failure", but I blogged about my tribes and tribulations in that pursuit.

I really enjoyed blogging though, and made some online friends in the process. After being figuratively beaten down and left for dead, I find myself gun shy in the whole entrepreneur dream, and happier with my line up in the rat race. It's comfortable here in rat-race-land, with my warm blankey. So I've been left stuck with no subject to blog about. No meat for my potatoes, if you will. No up for my down, no Tom for my Jerry, no Doritos for my peanut butter sandwich (like you don't eat it that way).

So after being referred to a hucking fillarious post by my friend fishy girl, the inspiration hit me to blog about whatever the hell I feel like, whenever the heck I feel like doing it. I thought about calling my blog "mindless ramblings of a fat guy" but after reading another post on the redneckmommy's blog where she referred to a "fat man in a bunny suit", I thought "THAT'S IT!" like Lucy telling Shroeder he was playing the right version of Jingle Bells.

So here I am, blogging anew. I have a feeling I'll blog often, but as they say, assholes are paved with good intentions ... or something. Be forewarned though. If I wind up finding it funny that a skin tag on my nut sack that resembles Abraham Lincoln, I'm going to post about it.

Also note, "Fat Guy in a Bunny Suit" is a self deprecating title, I'm cool with that. But following fishy girl's example, I need names to refer to my kiddos, but fat boy and fat girl ... not good names. Fishy girl uses "Nemo", "Sunny" and the like. Suggestions are welcome.