The other night I was sitting around and watching some tape-delayed Olympic coverage, specifically the lady's gymnastic vault. At one point the commentators mentioned the wide range of ages in the competition, noting they went from 16 to 37. Obviously, it was that second number which caused me to perk up. I mean, 37 may not be old by normal, human standards but it is considered old in several sports and downright ancient in the world of gymnastics. Oksana Chusovitina of Germany had been competing in the Olympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games, meaning she had been at this for as long as some of her competitors had been alive. (It made her 5th place finish all the more impressive.) While waiting for her to take her second attempt the color commentators were throwing out all the random facts the interns in charge of research were able to find and among them was the nugget that Chusovitina had previously had a stamp released in her honor in her native Uzbekistan. (Chusovitina is a bit of a gymnastic nomad, have previously competed for Uzbekistan and Russia under the banner of the "Unified Team".) I have to say this filled me with a tremendous sense of camaraderie with the people of Uzbekistan, because I thought our country was the only one who wasted time making stamps of people.
If you think about it, in this day and age getting your own stamp is no longer the best way to celebrate a person's life or their achievements. "What's that? You're going to honor me by creating a one inch by one inch sticky picture that most people are going to attach to bills, which means I will be a reminder of how absurd their credit card interest rate is? And the entire time they look at me they will be complaining how this is the one company which doesn't allow them pay online? Plus, you say this honor goes hand-in-hand with the United States Postal Service, which only gets mentioned on the news when it is about to have massive layoffs and potential service cuts? Doesn't sound like much of an honor to me. What's that? I shouldn't worry about it because the only people who will even notice outside my family are creepy stamp collectors, which is a hobby that bird watchers think is boring? Well, with all due respect, I think I will pass." I feel like this is one of those things which was a huge deal when it was first being done but now the prestige of it has faded away as people find alternative ways to send packages and letters. Honestly, it is a little like getting a billboard with your face on it. Sure, it works, but it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
Part of the reason getting your own stamp doesn't feel very important is that it appears we have flooded the market. Look at the list of people who have been given a commemorative stamp. (And that is just the US. Apparently, not only can you get your own stamp in foreign countries, their standards are just as low as ours. Who knew?) The first thing I noticed was that the list is long and the second thing is that it is kind of all over the place. I'm not going to pick out one name versus another in terms of questioning who should have gotten their own stamp (I'll leave that for you to do on your own, as there are plenty of obscure selections to pick from). I'm just saying it doesn't appear you have to be widely-famous to get one. Apparently, there is a committee which meets every year and debates over 50,000 requests. They claim that it is very hard to get your own stamp, but the evidence would beg to differ. In some ways it reminds me of getting your own star on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame". Sure, someone else has to nominate you, but the thing which is really going to push you over the edge is being willing to pay for the instillation and upkeep yourself. Of course, the fact that you can make a stamps with any picture you want through about a dozen websites probably doesn't help the prestige level of the commemorative stamp, either. Any act of Congress which can be duplicated through pressing a few buttons in the comfort of your own home doesn't exactly inspire jealousy throughout the land.
This is the problem we face thanks to the internet - things which seemed like a big deal just 10 or 20 years ago now feel terribly outdated. Clearly going forward standards are going to have to change if they want to keep up. They say the only real qualification to get a stamp is that the person must be deceased - after that it is up to the committee to decide how much cultural impact you had. I'm going to contend it may be time to bend that rule, because celebrity status moves way too fast these days. People just don't have the long careers they used to, so if you want people to buy stamps they have to feature someone who is very hot at the moment. It would be in their best interest anyway. The Postal Service makes a lot of money through celebrity stamps, because people buy them and then don't use them. How many teeny-boppers would make their parents drive them to the post office to get a Justin Bieber stamp? Enough to cover printing costs, I can guarantee that. Not to mention that I'm sure a lot of these stars have egos and wouldn't want to be associated with a poor-selling stamp. They may buy a few sheets just to grease the numbers. (Who cares as long as the Post Office turns a profit, right?) I'm not sure if that will solve all of the USPS's problems, I just know that if they don't do something stamps are going to be collector's items the same way records are, regardless of who is on them.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
No Soliciting
When I was still working in radio, I would often get asked if I wanted to transition over to sales. I never seriously thought about it, partially because when you are part of the programming staff you come to see the salespeople are being in your way, as they always want you to do something special for their client. After years of having that "us vs them" mantra drilled into my brain, changing sides felt akin to treason. But, the main reason I never made the switch is that I know I would be a terrible salesman. Quality salesmen have a gene in them which recognizes when a client may be wavering and knows they should go in for the kill to try and finish the deal. That gene is totally it is missing from my DNA coding. Instead I possess the "Yeah, it's a big decision, take your time and get back to me" gene. That gentler approach may be more appreciated in some circles, but it won't help you reach your quota for that month. Still, I think that is why I appreciate the less-aggressive salesmen I encounter. I hate being upsold on a product I wasn't sure I wanted in the first place. But, the thing I hate even more is when people get up in my face even though I didn't show any interest in their product. So, as you can imagine, unsolicited calls to my house drive me especially crazy.
My home number is on the National Do-Not-Call List, and being on that list does exactly as much good you would expect from any service run by the US government. The list has all sorts of loopholes for companies to sneak through and so my phone rings all time the time with offers of services I did not ask anyone to call me about. The hot one lately has been the one offering me a free home alarm system in exchange for putting a sign on the front lawn. Since I know there is no such thing as free I ignore the offer. Normally that would be the end of it, except I'm the kind of patient person who is willing to wait through the pre-recorded message because I know some of them provide you with the chance to opt-out should you make it all the way to the end without hanging up. Here's the part which really pisses me off: I'll sit through the whole thing, hit the 9 button to opt-out of future calls... only to have them call me again later. Honestly, if these companies aren't going to follow through on taking me off the list than why do they even have it? Don't tease me with the thought that I may never have to hear from you ever again if your system doesn't actually know how to do that part.
I get the same problem with my email. Due to a variety of reasons, I have five email addresses. I work really hard to keep one of them as spam-free as I can. If I have even the slightest hint a website might be shady I direct them to send all future emails to another address which is set up specifically so I can ignore it for long chunks of time and allow the spam to pile up. So, you can imagine my frustration when the one email address I'm trying to keep clean ends up with the most junk email of all of them. I think part of the problem is that it is a slightly common nickname for an email address which a lot of people use, only the numbers at the end vary. On more than one occasion I believe I have gotten email from a legitimate company and the person just entered in the wrong address. (For example, I'm currently getting someone's Match.com mailings and have no idea how to fix it. I don't know who this guy is but, no worries, because I've looked at his matches and he isn't missing much.) I will constantly block senders and opt-out of any list which gives me the chance, but it doesn't help. Half the time I'm pretty sure all I'm doing is convincing them to send me more mail, because at least they are getting a click-through, even if it is out of anger.
Ironically, the only place where my efforts to cut down on the amount of junk mail I get appears to be working is in my actual mailbox. I get a lot less physical junk mail delivered to the house than through any other source, but I have a sinking suspicion that has less to do with my efforts to stay vigilant and more to do with the fact that companies think it is more effective to send emails. [Sidebar: I'm not even sure that is true. At least with junk mail in my mailbox I will look at it for as long as it takes to walk up the driveway and throw it into the recycling bin. If it is a menu for a new restaurant I may even hang on to it. But junk email I delete without a second thought and never glance at anything passed the title of the email. It may be cheaper, but I don't think it is as productive.] The worst part is that the unsolicited calls and emails are only going to come more frequently, because this is an election year (hand to God, as I was typing this post I got a call from a political group) and (shocker) political organizations are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list. I don't know if these will help one party win an election, but I'm pretty sure if these guys worked in radio sales that industry would be doing a lot better.
My home number is on the National Do-Not-Call List, and being on that list does exactly as much good you would expect from any service run by the US government. The list has all sorts of loopholes for companies to sneak through and so my phone rings all time the time with offers of services I did not ask anyone to call me about. The hot one lately has been the one offering me a free home alarm system in exchange for putting a sign on the front lawn. Since I know there is no such thing as free I ignore the offer. Normally that would be the end of it, except I'm the kind of patient person who is willing to wait through the pre-recorded message because I know some of them provide you with the chance to opt-out should you make it all the way to the end without hanging up. Here's the part which really pisses me off: I'll sit through the whole thing, hit the 9 button to opt-out of future calls... only to have them call me again later. Honestly, if these companies aren't going to follow through on taking me off the list than why do they even have it? Don't tease me with the thought that I may never have to hear from you ever again if your system doesn't actually know how to do that part.
I get the same problem with my email. Due to a variety of reasons, I have five email addresses. I work really hard to keep one of them as spam-free as I can. If I have even the slightest hint a website might be shady I direct them to send all future emails to another address which is set up specifically so I can ignore it for long chunks of time and allow the spam to pile up. So, you can imagine my frustration when the one email address I'm trying to keep clean ends up with the most junk email of all of them. I think part of the problem is that it is a slightly common nickname for an email address which a lot of people use, only the numbers at the end vary. On more than one occasion I believe I have gotten email from a legitimate company and the person just entered in the wrong address. (For example, I'm currently getting someone's Match.com mailings and have no idea how to fix it. I don't know who this guy is but, no worries, because I've looked at his matches and he isn't missing much.) I will constantly block senders and opt-out of any list which gives me the chance, but it doesn't help. Half the time I'm pretty sure all I'm doing is convincing them to send me more mail, because at least they are getting a click-through, even if it is out of anger.
Ironically, the only place where my efforts to cut down on the amount of junk mail I get appears to be working is in my actual mailbox. I get a lot less physical junk mail delivered to the house than through any other source, but I have a sinking suspicion that has less to do with my efforts to stay vigilant and more to do with the fact that companies think it is more effective to send emails. [Sidebar: I'm not even sure that is true. At least with junk mail in my mailbox I will look at it for as long as it takes to walk up the driveway and throw it into the recycling bin. If it is a menu for a new restaurant I may even hang on to it. But junk email I delete without a second thought and never glance at anything passed the title of the email. It may be cheaper, but I don't think it is as productive.] The worst part is that the unsolicited calls and emails are only going to come more frequently, because this is an election year (hand to God, as I was typing this post I got a call from a political group) and (shocker) political organizations are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list. I don't know if these will help one party win an election, but I'm pretty sure if these guys worked in radio sales that industry would be doing a lot better.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
A Steamy Interlude
The old saying is that when you don't have anything else to talk about, you can always talk about the weather. But even with that in mind, I was reluctance to talk about the humidity we have been facing this week. Mostly this was based on the fact that I have already done a few weather-centric interludes. However, I'm also a little afraid to bring it up because every time I write about how hot it has been, the next week is even hotter. Still, this week I had a couple of things happen that caught my eye. This week we've been in a humid and rainy pattern. (Honestly, I imagine this is what the rain forests deal with every day, which is why I don't live there.) When we got a quick rain shower on Thursday, I figured another line of storms couldn't be that far behind and decided to dodge the raindrops to grab that day's mail before they arrived. While I was at my mailbox I noticed that it was so hot out my neighbor's driveway was literally steaming as the rain evaporated. I know asphalt tends to hold heat and it wasn't that hot out to everyone, but it simply confirmed that people had the right to be unhappy.
A little while later I was thinking of what day we should designate as the national holiday for the inventor of air conditioning (can you think of a person more deserving of a national day of recognition who doesn't already have one?) when I walked passed a window and noticed it was fogging up. The cold inside and the heat outside were battling it out with my window caught in the middle. For a second I was worried weather was trying to get me like some monster in a horror movie and I felt like Jake Gyllenhaal in "The Day After Tomorrow." This concerned me even more, because the fact I would acknowledge I have watched that movie means I must have been suffering from heat stroke. I'm aware some areas of the country have had it even worse, however I still I want it officially on record that Massachusetts has had enough of this weather pattern. I know it is supposed to get hot in the summer, but Mother Nature is being unreasonable.
A little while later I was thinking of what day we should designate as the national holiday for the inventor of air conditioning (can you think of a person more deserving of a national day of recognition who doesn't already have one?) when I walked passed a window and noticed it was fogging up. The cold inside and the heat outside were battling it out with my window caught in the middle. For a second I was worried weather was trying to get me like some monster in a horror movie and I felt like Jake Gyllenhaal in "The Day After Tomorrow." This concerned me even more, because the fact I would acknowledge I have watched that movie means I must have been suffering from heat stroke. I'm aware some areas of the country have had it even worse, however I still I want it officially on record that Massachusetts has had enough of this weather pattern. I know it is supposed to get hot in the summer, but Mother Nature is being unreasonable.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Weekly Sporties
-The Major League Baseball trading deadline was on Tuesday. (Well, not really. Baseball allows all sorts of trades after the deadline, meaning it's not actually much of a deadline. Baseball is weird.) Anyway, there was a strange story which came out of Chicago a couple days later. The Cubs were looking to unload starting pitcher Ryan Dempster to a contender to save themselves some money and get some prospects for the future. Now, Dempster has been in the majors for more than 10 years and has been with one team for more than 5 of those years, which means he is allowed to veto any trade. Dempster wanted to be traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but they weren't offering what the Cubs wanted and he was eventually traded to the Texas Rangers. But before that, Cubs GM Theo Epstein took the unusual step of allowing Dempster to listen in as he negotiated with the Dodgers to prove to Dempster that he wasn't just lying to him about the quality of the Dodgers' offer. I have to say, I don't think I have ever heard of anything like this before. You'd have to imagine that was weird for Dempster, as the team he wanted to go to was probably sitting there trying to talk down all his high points and the team he couldn't wait to leave was trying to pump his value back up. Honestly, I'm not sure I would want to listen in on that kind of thing. But, I have to say Epstein's open-door policy is rather refreshing. Also, it got the job done as otherwise Dempster may have vetoed the move to the Rangers. I really don't expect this to start a trend, because Dempster is widely seen as a very professional player and I'm not sure how many guys would be willing to sit there and listen in. Still, I would have paid good money to find out what a guy like Manny Ramirez thought he was worth.
-As much as I like trading deadlines because it is another chance to think like a GM, my favorite part of any trade deadline actually comes the following day, which is when all the beat reporters start talking about all the deals which "almost" happened. For example, on Wednesday I was reading stories saying the Red Sox almost sent Josh Beckett to about 14 different teams. I just have to laugh at some of these reports, because I don't know how much of them are actually true. Honestly, for all I know some of these baseball executives are just throwing names out there after the fact to make it sound like they were working on potential deals when in reality they spent the afternoon holed up playing Angry Birds and other GMs don't call them out on it because of some kind of code of ethics. In some ways it reminds me of those kids in college who would spend every Sunday talking about the girls they almost hooked up with the night before, even though pretty much everyone knew they never left their dorm room. However, the guys I feel the worst for are the beat writers. You know they are aware how many of these rumors are probably complete nonsense, but they have to report them on the remote chance they could be true. No one wants to be the guy who heard something, didn't report it and then watched in horror as they are scooped by someone else. The trick for fans is to weed through the nonsense for the real substance. I just can't help but find this all terribly ironic, considering team executives are always chastising fans for making up trade rumors. Yes, fans' fake trades may be even more extreme, but at least they don't get put in the paper.
-On Thursday the USA men's team played Nigeria in basketball. The game was close... for a couple minutes, anyway. After that the US team decided that enough was enough, started paying attention and ended up blowing Nigeria out of the water by 83 points. (No, this win does not put the current squad on equal footing with the Dream Team. Those guys would have beaten Nigeria if they played today.) In the wake of this crushing defeat some people are accusing the US of running the score up and saying this is exactly the reason why NBA players shouldn't be sent to the Olympics. While I agree that jacking 3's when up by 60 in the 4th quarter was not the kind of sportsmanship the Olympics would usually try and pretend they care about (more on this point later), I don't have much of a problem with it. You can only play who is on the schedule and the US coaches did their best to minimize the damage, sitting the big guns for most of the second half. It is not their fault Nigeria doesn't play much defense and doesn't have the skills to keep up on offense. If anything Olympic officials should be going the other way and wondering how the hell Nigeria qualified for this tournament in the first place. Watching this I couldn't help but wonder about the state of International basketball. The NBA loves to say basketball is the most-played game in the world, even more that soccer, but watching Nigeria's team of 'professionals' I suddenly realized that they never say it is played well in any of these places.
-On that same theme, I was amused by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's stance this week when he said that the league plans to push for football to be included in the Olympics. This story comes up every Summer Games (mostly because the NFL can't stand being ignored for 17 days, even if it only happens every four years.) Again, I do not get the NFL's insistence that is a global game, because history has proven it is not. I think the one game a year they play in Europe has made it abundantly clear the rest of the world is not interested in our silly little game. Yes, the annual game in London is sold out, but I would contend the stadium is 80% full of ex-pats. NFL Europe was a failure and I have not heard of any urgency to give that league another try. Also, I don't know that America is all that excited about sharing our wonderful sport. We're extremely good at it and we don't care if the rest of the world wants to try it or not. Hell, we don't even accept Canadian football because they did "odd" things like expand the field. Goodell claims that the sport is played in 64 countries world-wide, which should be enough to get consideration for future Olympics. Alright, just because you have players from 64 countries on various college rosters, that doesn't mean they actually play football in those places. They might play something which they think is football, but I'm going to guess it comes up woefully short of the real thing. If you thought our basketball team made things look too easy, you can only imagine how lopsided a football game it would be if we sent professional football players to the Olympics. Goodell would be better off just making fake Gold medals, handing them out to the theoretical squad and saving everyone the time.
-Some people say the reason Goodell is so adamant about expanding the game globally is because he is worried the league has explored every revenue source here in the US. Well, it doesn't look like he should be too worried, because earlier this week the Cleveland Browns were sold for $1 billion. Now, due to a variety of reasons I have kept en eye on the Browns ever since they were reborn into the NFL in 1999. What I have seen in that time has not been pretty. They have been either unlucky, inept or at some points both - only making the playoffs once in that period of time. So, if the Browns are worth $1 billion than the league is doing just fine. The only thing to give Clevelanders pause is that the man who just bought the team currently owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns' rival) and while he will be required to sell that stake, he has previously claimed to be "1,000% Steelers fan". Initially, that sounds like he might have some split allegiances, except in other interviews that same man has said he has also been both a Cowboys and Colts fan. I'm pretty sure that, like most billionaires, this guy's only allegiances are to the things he owns at the time. Also, at least he wants to own the team, which was not always a sure thing about the previous owner, who had inherited it from his father. As long as the new guy is willing to spend the money this could be very good for the Browns, provided that he doesn't come in and start changing everything just because he wants to leave his own stamp on the franchise. Then again, considering where they are, maybe changing everything wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.
-Back to the Olympics. There was a terrible controversy this week in, of all things, ladies badminton. In previous Olympics, badminton was a simple knock-out tournament. But for these games they changed the rules to a round robin tournament to determine seeding and then having the normal knock-out round start at the quarterfinal level. Going in, several team officials predicted doom and gloom, worried that players would tank matches to get better draws for the knock-out stages. Turns out they were right as four teams (two from South Korea, one from Indonesia and one from China) were sent home from the Games after appearing to throw their matches in an effort to get a more favorable seeding going forward by avoiding the best team for as long as possible. Now, I admit to only seeing the replays, but apparently in the moment it was really bad as the teams went from looking as though they had trained their whole lives for this to suddenly looking like you or I at a typical backyard cookout. (I guess their teams can at least take solace in the fact they are bad at playing poorly.) The crowd was understandably pissed because they had spent good money to watch this farce (we'll save the discussion of why you would spend money to watch badminton for another post) and Olympic officials were left red-faced. In my opinion they have no one to blame but themselves. When you change rules and leave a loophole which would actually give people an incentive to lose, you can't act surprised when a few of them do it. We fight this battle all the time in professional sports when people start losing to improve draft status. The Olympics just need to give those fans a refund and change the rules back to the way they were. People already think badminton is a marginal sport, they can't afford to have fans also question if the results are fake.
-Those expelled teams were not allowed to appeal their decisions, but I can only assume it was because they couldn't find an ATM. You see, in the Olympics, you have to pay for your appeal. Seriously. It is not even like they bill your country's Olympic committee at a later date - you have to have the cash on hand at that moment. I assume they do this so that countries are not constantly filing appeals based on nothing but pure spite, because we all know people get heated about this kind of thing. If they allowed that the Games would drag on forever. That being said, it doesn't look particularly amateurish, which is what the Olympics contends to be all about. No one actually knows how much an appeal costs, but rumors are there is a sliding scale in which appeals cost different amounts depending on the sport. (Boxing costs the most, probably because it is the most corrupt, as evidenced this week when an Azerbaijani fighter was knocked down six times in one round by his Japanese opponent and not only was awarded the round, but the fight. Reports later surfaced that Azerbaijan had offered to straight-up buy 2 gold medals for $9 million. Olympic fever, catch it!!) Still, at the end of the day the most important thing is to get the right results, which seems to happen more times than not. Even in the case of that Azerbaijani fighter the result was eventually over-turned, so the only people who lost are the people who tried to buy the medals and the boxing judges whose reputations were ruin (and considering they are boxing judges there wasn't much to begin with.) And if it costs a little extra, that's a small price to pay to forever be known as an Olympic medalist. You'd hate to lose your money and your medal.
-As much as I like trading deadlines because it is another chance to think like a GM, my favorite part of any trade deadline actually comes the following day, which is when all the beat reporters start talking about all the deals which "almost" happened. For example, on Wednesday I was reading stories saying the Red Sox almost sent Josh Beckett to about 14 different teams. I just have to laugh at some of these reports, because I don't know how much of them are actually true. Honestly, for all I know some of these baseball executives are just throwing names out there after the fact to make it sound like they were working on potential deals when in reality they spent the afternoon holed up playing Angry Birds and other GMs don't call them out on it because of some kind of code of ethics. In some ways it reminds me of those kids in college who would spend every Sunday talking about the girls they almost hooked up with the night before, even though pretty much everyone knew they never left their dorm room. However, the guys I feel the worst for are the beat writers. You know they are aware how many of these rumors are probably complete nonsense, but they have to report them on the remote chance they could be true. No one wants to be the guy who heard something, didn't report it and then watched in horror as they are scooped by someone else. The trick for fans is to weed through the nonsense for the real substance. I just can't help but find this all terribly ironic, considering team executives are always chastising fans for making up trade rumors. Yes, fans' fake trades may be even more extreme, but at least they don't get put in the paper.
-On Thursday the USA men's team played Nigeria in basketball. The game was close... for a couple minutes, anyway. After that the US team decided that enough was enough, started paying attention and ended up blowing Nigeria out of the water by 83 points. (No, this win does not put the current squad on equal footing with the Dream Team. Those guys would have beaten Nigeria if they played today.) In the wake of this crushing defeat some people are accusing the US of running the score up and saying this is exactly the reason why NBA players shouldn't be sent to the Olympics. While I agree that jacking 3's when up by 60 in the 4th quarter was not the kind of sportsmanship the Olympics would usually try and pretend they care about (more on this point later), I don't have much of a problem with it. You can only play who is on the schedule and the US coaches did their best to minimize the damage, sitting the big guns for most of the second half. It is not their fault Nigeria doesn't play much defense and doesn't have the skills to keep up on offense. If anything Olympic officials should be going the other way and wondering how the hell Nigeria qualified for this tournament in the first place. Watching this I couldn't help but wonder about the state of International basketball. The NBA loves to say basketball is the most-played game in the world, even more that soccer, but watching Nigeria's team of 'professionals' I suddenly realized that they never say it is played well in any of these places.
-On that same theme, I was amused by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's stance this week when he said that the league plans to push for football to be included in the Olympics. This story comes up every Summer Games (mostly because the NFL can't stand being ignored for 17 days, even if it only happens every four years.) Again, I do not get the NFL's insistence that is a global game, because history has proven it is not. I think the one game a year they play in Europe has made it abundantly clear the rest of the world is not interested in our silly little game. Yes, the annual game in London is sold out, but I would contend the stadium is 80% full of ex-pats. NFL Europe was a failure and I have not heard of any urgency to give that league another try. Also, I don't know that America is all that excited about sharing our wonderful sport. We're extremely good at it and we don't care if the rest of the world wants to try it or not. Hell, we don't even accept Canadian football because they did "odd" things like expand the field. Goodell claims that the sport is played in 64 countries world-wide, which should be enough to get consideration for future Olympics. Alright, just because you have players from 64 countries on various college rosters, that doesn't mean they actually play football in those places. They might play something which they think is football, but I'm going to guess it comes up woefully short of the real thing. If you thought our basketball team made things look too easy, you can only imagine how lopsided a football game it would be if we sent professional football players to the Olympics. Goodell would be better off just making fake Gold medals, handing them out to the theoretical squad and saving everyone the time.
-Some people say the reason Goodell is so adamant about expanding the game globally is because he is worried the league has explored every revenue source here in the US. Well, it doesn't look like he should be too worried, because earlier this week the Cleveland Browns were sold for $1 billion. Now, due to a variety of reasons I have kept en eye on the Browns ever since they were reborn into the NFL in 1999. What I have seen in that time has not been pretty. They have been either unlucky, inept or at some points both - only making the playoffs once in that period of time. So, if the Browns are worth $1 billion than the league is doing just fine. The only thing to give Clevelanders pause is that the man who just bought the team currently owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns' rival) and while he will be required to sell that stake, he has previously claimed to be "1,000% Steelers fan". Initially, that sounds like he might have some split allegiances, except in other interviews that same man has said he has also been both a Cowboys and Colts fan. I'm pretty sure that, like most billionaires, this guy's only allegiances are to the things he owns at the time. Also, at least he wants to own the team, which was not always a sure thing about the previous owner, who had inherited it from his father. As long as the new guy is willing to spend the money this could be very good for the Browns, provided that he doesn't come in and start changing everything just because he wants to leave his own stamp on the franchise. Then again, considering where they are, maybe changing everything wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.
-Back to the Olympics. There was a terrible controversy this week in, of all things, ladies badminton. In previous Olympics, badminton was a simple knock-out tournament. But for these games they changed the rules to a round robin tournament to determine seeding and then having the normal knock-out round start at the quarterfinal level. Going in, several team officials predicted doom and gloom, worried that players would tank matches to get better draws for the knock-out stages. Turns out they were right as four teams (two from South Korea, one from Indonesia and one from China) were sent home from the Games after appearing to throw their matches in an effort to get a more favorable seeding going forward by avoiding the best team for as long as possible. Now, I admit to only seeing the replays, but apparently in the moment it was really bad as the teams went from looking as though they had trained their whole lives for this to suddenly looking like you or I at a typical backyard cookout. (I guess their teams can at least take solace in the fact they are bad at playing poorly.) The crowd was understandably pissed because they had spent good money to watch this farce (we'll save the discussion of why you would spend money to watch badminton for another post) and Olympic officials were left red-faced. In my opinion they have no one to blame but themselves. When you change rules and leave a loophole which would actually give people an incentive to lose, you can't act surprised when a few of them do it. We fight this battle all the time in professional sports when people start losing to improve draft status. The Olympics just need to give those fans a refund and change the rules back to the way they were. People already think badminton is a marginal sport, they can't afford to have fans also question if the results are fake.
-Those expelled teams were not allowed to appeal their decisions, but I can only assume it was because they couldn't find an ATM. You see, in the Olympics, you have to pay for your appeal. Seriously. It is not even like they bill your country's Olympic committee at a later date - you have to have the cash on hand at that moment. I assume they do this so that countries are not constantly filing appeals based on nothing but pure spite, because we all know people get heated about this kind of thing. If they allowed that the Games would drag on forever. That being said, it doesn't look particularly amateurish, which is what the Olympics contends to be all about. No one actually knows how much an appeal costs, but rumors are there is a sliding scale in which appeals cost different amounts depending on the sport. (Boxing costs the most, probably because it is the most corrupt, as evidenced this week when an Azerbaijani fighter was knocked down six times in one round by his Japanese opponent and not only was awarded the round, but the fight. Reports later surfaced that Azerbaijan had offered to straight-up buy 2 gold medals for $9 million. Olympic fever, catch it!!) Still, at the end of the day the most important thing is to get the right results, which seems to happen more times than not. Even in the case of that Azerbaijani fighter the result was eventually over-turned, so the only people who lost are the people who tried to buy the medals and the boxing judges whose reputations were ruin (and considering they are boxing judges there wasn't much to begin with.) And if it costs a little extra, that's a small price to pay to forever be known as an Olympic medalist. You'd hate to lose your money and your medal.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Messing With Memories
It's kind of a quiet time for movie releases. The big-budget, guaranteed money makers have already come and gone and the films designed to troll for Oscars are still a couple weeks away. What that leaves you with is kind of a mixed bag of what's left over. August is a good time to sneak out those movies where the studio isn't quite sure how well they are going to perform, but figure they may as well throw them out there while most people have the time to go to the movies or are looking for a way to escape the heat. Typically this is when they release what are known as "summer movies", which is a back-handed way to categorize a movie as possessing a lot of action but not much plot. That is why it is no surprise to see the re-boot of "Total Recall" come along right about now. This is another one of those movies where no one was vehemently requesting Hollywood give it a do-over and yet they did it anyway. (The original one is only 22 years old. It can't even rent a car.) Considering all the other movies which could and should have been given a second chance before they got this far down the list it was an odd choice, which might be why the reviews aren't so favorable. However, while I'm in no rush to see (or even rent) this latest incarnation, at least I can see why they would want to give it a try.
A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a website where you could play old video games. At first I was excited at the thought of breaking some of my old Nintendo records, but when I fired the games up I wasn't nostalgic - I was bored. Call it some kind of evolution, but when you get used to playing a video game where the controller has 12 buttons on it suddenly playing a game which only asks you to navigate between two isn't nearly as exciting as it was when we first tried it. It can be the same with movies. Yesterday we talked about how I fear that movie critics are holding old movies in such high regards just because they came out so long ago, while at the same time they haven't watched these movies in so long that they may be recommending something they themselves wouldn't want to watch a second time. Well, nerds can be just as bad (sometimes even worse) when it comes to their sci-fi flicks. (Say whatever else you want about them, nerds are loyal.) "Total Recall" is one of those action movies from my childhood that I hold with fond memories. After all it had space, gun fights, car chases and a chick with three boobs. What wasn't 14 year-old me going to love? However, as much as I enjoyed it at the time I haven't seen in over a decade because I am simultaneously terrified to watch it again, as I'm pretty sure that seeing it now will ruin those memories.
Some things in life are best left as a memory and sci-fi movies from the early 90s may very well top that list. I can not tell you the number of movies I loved as a young teenager, have gone back to watch years later and come away thoroughly disappointed. Honestly, the technology just wasn't far enough along to support the stories and while it was good enough for the era, I fear now that I've seen what computers can generate the movie will look like a bunch of guys trying to fool us with puppets and low-budget graphics in front of a green screen (which is exactly what it was). Face it - reality doesn't exactly make for an enjoyable movie experience. That is why I think it could be for the better that they just gave up and "re-imagined" the story. This way they can try again with technology which will be better suited to the vision they probably had the first time around. After all, I've previously stated that the only two reasons to remake a movie is if the first one was a tremendous flop due to either poor acting/editing or if it was a sci-fi heavy movie that just couldn't be properly done with the technology of the moment. Clearly, "Total Recall" fell into that second category, so now that things have come a long way it is probably about time for them to give it a second try, leaving the original to stay safely preserved in our minds.
Sometimes when a sequel is about to come out, whichever cable movie channel that has the rights to the first story will start running it on a loop as a way to drive up interest. Now, despite my blessing for this sequel I have to recommend that whichever movie channel has the rights to the original "Total Recall" doesn't go airing it 4 times a day because people are either going to question why they need to go see this reboot (not knowing the plot is not the same) or be so scarred by the realization that the movie which they had held in such high regards was actually a piece of crap that they get a sour taste for the franchise. [Sidebar: the fact that the new one is rated PG-13 is also not a good sign for me. The original was Rated R. I know this rating opens it up to a wider audience, but people my age who grew up with the 1990 version are not going to be excited about a movie where people are saying "damn" and "hell" just so they can make it passed the censors.] Ultimately, whether or not this re-boot was a good idea will come down to the box office numbers. Keep in mind this movie is all about a man who tries to implant a fake memory and finds out his actual memories have been replaced. Ironically, if it is a flop it will be whatever studio executive thought this was a good idea who will really need to have his brain scrambled.
A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a website where you could play old video games. At first I was excited at the thought of breaking some of my old Nintendo records, but when I fired the games up I wasn't nostalgic - I was bored. Call it some kind of evolution, but when you get used to playing a video game where the controller has 12 buttons on it suddenly playing a game which only asks you to navigate between two isn't nearly as exciting as it was when we first tried it. It can be the same with movies. Yesterday we talked about how I fear that movie critics are holding old movies in such high regards just because they came out so long ago, while at the same time they haven't watched these movies in so long that they may be recommending something they themselves wouldn't want to watch a second time. Well, nerds can be just as bad (sometimes even worse) when it comes to their sci-fi flicks. (Say whatever else you want about them, nerds are loyal.) "Total Recall" is one of those action movies from my childhood that I hold with fond memories. After all it had space, gun fights, car chases and a chick with three boobs. What wasn't 14 year-old me going to love? However, as much as I enjoyed it at the time I haven't seen in over a decade because I am simultaneously terrified to watch it again, as I'm pretty sure that seeing it now will ruin those memories.
Some things in life are best left as a memory and sci-fi movies from the early 90s may very well top that list. I can not tell you the number of movies I loved as a young teenager, have gone back to watch years later and come away thoroughly disappointed. Honestly, the technology just wasn't far enough along to support the stories and while it was good enough for the era, I fear now that I've seen what computers can generate the movie will look like a bunch of guys trying to fool us with puppets and low-budget graphics in front of a green screen (which is exactly what it was). Face it - reality doesn't exactly make for an enjoyable movie experience. That is why I think it could be for the better that they just gave up and "re-imagined" the story. This way they can try again with technology which will be better suited to the vision they probably had the first time around. After all, I've previously stated that the only two reasons to remake a movie is if the first one was a tremendous flop due to either poor acting/editing or if it was a sci-fi heavy movie that just couldn't be properly done with the technology of the moment. Clearly, "Total Recall" fell into that second category, so now that things have come a long way it is probably about time for them to give it a second try, leaving the original to stay safely preserved in our minds.
Sometimes when a sequel is about to come out, whichever cable movie channel that has the rights to the first story will start running it on a loop as a way to drive up interest. Now, despite my blessing for this sequel I have to recommend that whichever movie channel has the rights to the original "Total Recall" doesn't go airing it 4 times a day because people are either going to question why they need to go see this reboot (not knowing the plot is not the same) or be so scarred by the realization that the movie which they had held in such high regards was actually a piece of crap that they get a sour taste for the franchise. [Sidebar: the fact that the new one is rated PG-13 is also not a good sign for me. The original was Rated R. I know this rating opens it up to a wider audience, but people my age who grew up with the 1990 version are not going to be excited about a movie where people are saying "damn" and "hell" just so they can make it passed the censors.] Ultimately, whether or not this re-boot was a good idea will come down to the box office numbers. Keep in mind this movie is all about a man who tries to implant a fake memory and finds out his actual memories have been replaced. Ironically, if it is a flop it will be whatever studio executive thought this was a good idea who will really need to have his brain scrambled.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Feeling List-Less
If you stop and think about it (though I really must advise that you don't), there is nothing more useless than any article titled "The List of the Greatest ____". It doesn't matter what the topic of that list is going to be, reading it is going to be a waste of your time. You see, every human brings their own bias into play anytime items are put into order. It could be as simple as the order at which things are packed, but every one will have their preferred way of doing it. There are some people out there who think shoes should be the first item put into a suitcase while others insist pants should be relegated to the bottom of the bag, because depending on your destination you may want to change into flip-flops as soon as you get there. (These people are stupid. It is clearly shoes first. Who can even argue this?) So, that list is nothing more than opinion. The worst place for lists like this may be in the sports world. Not only are sports fans notoriously biased towards their childhood heroes, they are also insanely stubborn. Trying to talk a sports fan out of a position they have held since they were 10 years old is like trying to get a statue to shift positions. At this point, I don't even argue "best players" anymore, I just try to get it down to five players and then agree that the order is subject to personal preference (and even that is a struggle). It is all heart, no brain. Still, I think I prefer that style to the way the second-most annoying group of list-makers (movie lovers) operate.
Every decade a UK Magazine called "Sight & Sounds" polls a group of directors, critics, producers and other movie enthusiast to determine what they believes to be the "Greatest Film of All-Time". This kind of poll is exactly what the insular world of movie-makers love - the chance snottily praise old, foreign movie while simultaneously feeling as though what they do needs to be taken seriously, instead of the insanely sweet gig it actually is. In reading some break-downs of the list you can almost hear the critics patting themselves on the back for only having two movie made in this century on the list while largely ignoring comedies, as though including those would take away from the gravitas of this exercise. Anyway, in every one of the previous polls completed since 1962, "Citizen Kane" had come out on top. Now, I never totally understood the praise for "Citizen Kane" but I figured they were taking into account the cultural impact (the poll makes it clear that you don't have to vote for what you think was the 'best' movie of all-time, just the 'greatest', which is a rather subjective term) and let them have it. Since I wasn't around when it was released I couldn't really argue the point. However, in this particular poll, "Citizen Kane" was dropped from the number 1 position and had to settle for runner-up. (You can see the entire list here.) The new "Greatest Film of All-Time?" Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo."
This result produced an emotion in me that normally only comes around when a baseball player is voted into the Hall of Fame (another process in which the voting population thinks far too highly of themselves) after being on the ballot for 10 years. I'll grant you that sometimes a guy has to wait a year or two based on other people up for debate, but if he hasn't made the Hall after that I'm left to conclude he isn't worthy of induction. After all, it is not like his stats will suddenly change 8 years into retirement. The same principle applies in this situation. It is not like "Vertigo" was re-released in the last couple of years with 10 minutes of previously unseen footage, nor was "Citizen Kane" digitally remastered to appeal to a younger audience by making Rosebud a laptop. They are the same movies they have always been, so what changed for the first time in 50 years? I know they expanded the number of voters for this year's poll, which can only lead me to one conclusion: too many people voting a new way just to appear different. There is nothing worse than a voter who feels it is their job to "mix things up" as a way of justifying their inclusion in a poll. I assume this is why insanely popular movies like "Wizard of Oz" or "Casablanca" were excluded - any one would vote for those films. It takes a real 'film buff' to think "Man With A Movie Camera" is the 8th Greatest Film Of All-Time.
Look, I will grant you that people have the right to change their minds. My own personal list for the Greatest Movies of All-Time is constantly-shifted based on my mood, how high-brow I'm feeling that day and the last time I caught "Shawshank Redemption" on TNT. (In thinking it over, my personal list of the Greatest Movies of All-Time would not excite many critics. There would be a lot of comedies, buddy-action flicks and sports movies. Also a lot more movies from this century, because I don't think old automatically equals good.) The difference is that I will concede that my list is personal and filled with the movies I like to watch. I can't help shake this feeling that a majority of these voters don't actually like these movies, they have simply become convinced that what they have come up with will change the way films are made. It is the same self-importance which resulted in "The Artist" winning the Best Picture Oscar this year - too many voters think Oscar winners also need to make statements and don't just pick the best movie which has come out in the last 12 months. It is almost as if they are afraid that voting for the most popular movie that year is a faux pas which would get their voting rights revoked. Honestly, if that is they way they are voting I would almost rather they go the sports-fan route and dig their heels in, never allowing their minds to be changed. At least that way we would know they were voting with their hearts, which is better than voting while trying to impress your peers.
Every decade a UK Magazine called "Sight & Sounds" polls a group of directors, critics, producers and other movie enthusiast to determine what they believes to be the "Greatest Film of All-Time". This kind of poll is exactly what the insular world of movie-makers love - the chance snottily praise old, foreign movie while simultaneously feeling as though what they do needs to be taken seriously, instead of the insanely sweet gig it actually is. In reading some break-downs of the list you can almost hear the critics patting themselves on the back for only having two movie made in this century on the list while largely ignoring comedies, as though including those would take away from the gravitas of this exercise. Anyway, in every one of the previous polls completed since 1962, "Citizen Kane" had come out on top. Now, I never totally understood the praise for "Citizen Kane" but I figured they were taking into account the cultural impact (the poll makes it clear that you don't have to vote for what you think was the 'best' movie of all-time, just the 'greatest', which is a rather subjective term) and let them have it. Since I wasn't around when it was released I couldn't really argue the point. However, in this particular poll, "Citizen Kane" was dropped from the number 1 position and had to settle for runner-up. (You can see the entire list here.) The new "Greatest Film of All-Time?" Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo."
This result produced an emotion in me that normally only comes around when a baseball player is voted into the Hall of Fame (another process in which the voting population thinks far too highly of themselves) after being on the ballot for 10 years. I'll grant you that sometimes a guy has to wait a year or two based on other people up for debate, but if he hasn't made the Hall after that I'm left to conclude he isn't worthy of induction. After all, it is not like his stats will suddenly change 8 years into retirement. The same principle applies in this situation. It is not like "Vertigo" was re-released in the last couple of years with 10 minutes of previously unseen footage, nor was "Citizen Kane" digitally remastered to appeal to a younger audience by making Rosebud a laptop. They are the same movies they have always been, so what changed for the first time in 50 years? I know they expanded the number of voters for this year's poll, which can only lead me to one conclusion: too many people voting a new way just to appear different. There is nothing worse than a voter who feels it is their job to "mix things up" as a way of justifying their inclusion in a poll. I assume this is why insanely popular movies like "Wizard of Oz" or "Casablanca" were excluded - any one would vote for those films. It takes a real 'film buff' to think "Man With A Movie Camera" is the 8th Greatest Film Of All-Time.
Look, I will grant you that people have the right to change their minds. My own personal list for the Greatest Movies of All-Time is constantly-shifted based on my mood, how high-brow I'm feeling that day and the last time I caught "Shawshank Redemption" on TNT. (In thinking it over, my personal list of the Greatest Movies of All-Time would not excite many critics. There would be a lot of comedies, buddy-action flicks and sports movies. Also a lot more movies from this century, because I don't think old automatically equals good.) The difference is that I will concede that my list is personal and filled with the movies I like to watch. I can't help shake this feeling that a majority of these voters don't actually like these movies, they have simply become convinced that what they have come up with will change the way films are made. It is the same self-importance which resulted in "The Artist" winning the Best Picture Oscar this year - too many voters think Oscar winners also need to make statements and don't just pick the best movie which has come out in the last 12 months. It is almost as if they are afraid that voting for the most popular movie that year is a faux pas which would get their voting rights revoked. Honestly, if that is they way they are voting I would almost rather they go the sports-fan route and dig their heels in, never allowing their minds to be changed. At least that way we would know they were voting with their hearts, which is better than voting while trying to impress your peers.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Attitude Is Ageless
If there is one thing the octogenarians all over the world have it common, it is that they love to complain about the youth of today. It doesn't matter their country of origin, they can't wait to give you their unprompted opinion on how kids today are just too self-involved and could learn a thing or two from their generation. And, on the whole, I would tend to agree with them. I not only think that some kids today are rude, I find some of them to be crazy-rude. However, I often wonder if it isn't that they are ruder, it is just that we are more aware of it because we are more aware of everything these days. Teenagers might have always been rude by nature, but you only had to deal with a few at one time. Thanks to the internet it could be that we're just exposed to more of them at one time, which makes it seem as though it has never been this bad. After all, you don't have to look much further than your typical social networking site to understand why it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if some teenagers were given a slap to the back of the head and got knocked down a peg or two. However, I contend you could very easily make the same case for any number of people of all ages. Just today I was given two quick reminders that people can be rude at any age.
The first one occurred as I was driving down the street to do a quick bit of business. I passed a woman dragging a young girl in one hand and a dog on a leash in the other. I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or oblivious, but both the girl and the dog were having trouble keeping up. The dog was having an especially hard time because it had to go to the bathroom. I know this because for the 20 seconds it was in my line of sight I saw the dog twice try to run far enough ahead of the woman to create a window where it could pop a squat. When those didn't work it ended up dropping its poop dead-center of the sidewalk in mid-stride. Not only did the woman not stop to pick up her dog's deposit, she didn't even break stride as she continued down the street, pretending not to know her dog just took a human-sized dookie on the sidewalk. Now, I'm well aware that cleaning up after your dog is the biggest drawback to owning one, because it is not like you can ever get them to potty-train. Also, if you indulge your dog every time it stops to smell something your walks will take hours, which means at some point you just have to pull them along. However, this woman had to know her dog wasn't smelling everything just to pass the time and had to go. And just because it is not fun to pick up a poop doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I mean, everyone has to use that sidewalk and there is supposed to be some kind of social contract. This woman was definitely old enough to know better.
My second example happened less than 10 minutes later. After concluding my business I was heading back to my car at the exact same time as the woman in the car parked next to mine was getting to her vehicle. Since she was moving a little slower I figured I would get out of her way as quickly as possible and hopped into my car. I had just turned the key in the ignition when I heard a loud thud on my passenger-side door. I turned my head to see that this woman had swung her car door open so far that she had hit my truck. Now, despite our best efforts, I think we have all accidentally done this at one time or another. In fact, it was probably just bad luck for the woman that I happened to be in my vehicle at the time. So, I was willing to be sympathetic. However, her reaction was what was rude. Had she given me a concerned look and mouthed 'sorry' I would have completely dismissed it, because it is not like she dented my door. However, she didn't do that, as she looked much more concerned for her door than for mine. Then, after first trying to avoid eye contact, she shot me the dirtiest look, as if it was somehow my fault that my car had been within swinging distance and I should have known better. I know it is human nature to go on the attack when you can't think of a good defense, but you can't run into an inanimate object that was already there and then blame the object. Even a teenager wouldn't try that move.
The simple truth is that how rude a person is has nothing to do with their age and everything to do with how they were raised. If you are allowed to be rude as a kid you will be rude as an adult. The only difference is that when humans are rude as kids they seem more obnoxious because the rest of society doesn't think they have earned that right just yet. We'll give more slack to someone older because we assume they have had some kind of experience which has made them that way, which isn't always the case. If anything it should be the opposite reaction, because there is still time to turn those kids around. There is nothing sweeter than a sweet old lady, but nothing worse than a grumpy old man. Our elderly citizens can actually be even more obnoxious than the children, because they have been this way for even longer and have almost forgotten how to be nice. The only difference is that people just don't have the stomach to call them on it, because no one wants to get caught yelling at an elderly person. It doesn't matter what they said to provoke you, you will look like the bad guy to anyone arriving on the scene, so you keep your mouth shut. Lucky for them, at least one person involved was raised correctly, so thank your parents for that.
The first one occurred as I was driving down the street to do a quick bit of business. I passed a woman dragging a young girl in one hand and a dog on a leash in the other. I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or oblivious, but both the girl and the dog were having trouble keeping up. The dog was having an especially hard time because it had to go to the bathroom. I know this because for the 20 seconds it was in my line of sight I saw the dog twice try to run far enough ahead of the woman to create a window where it could pop a squat. When those didn't work it ended up dropping its poop dead-center of the sidewalk in mid-stride. Not only did the woman not stop to pick up her dog's deposit, she didn't even break stride as she continued down the street, pretending not to know her dog just took a human-sized dookie on the sidewalk. Now, I'm well aware that cleaning up after your dog is the biggest drawback to owning one, because it is not like you can ever get them to potty-train. Also, if you indulge your dog every time it stops to smell something your walks will take hours, which means at some point you just have to pull them along. However, this woman had to know her dog wasn't smelling everything just to pass the time and had to go. And just because it is not fun to pick up a poop doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I mean, everyone has to use that sidewalk and there is supposed to be some kind of social contract. This woman was definitely old enough to know better.
My second example happened less than 10 minutes later. After concluding my business I was heading back to my car at the exact same time as the woman in the car parked next to mine was getting to her vehicle. Since she was moving a little slower I figured I would get out of her way as quickly as possible and hopped into my car. I had just turned the key in the ignition when I heard a loud thud on my passenger-side door. I turned my head to see that this woman had swung her car door open so far that she had hit my truck. Now, despite our best efforts, I think we have all accidentally done this at one time or another. In fact, it was probably just bad luck for the woman that I happened to be in my vehicle at the time. So, I was willing to be sympathetic. However, her reaction was what was rude. Had she given me a concerned look and mouthed 'sorry' I would have completely dismissed it, because it is not like she dented my door. However, she didn't do that, as she looked much more concerned for her door than for mine. Then, after first trying to avoid eye contact, she shot me the dirtiest look, as if it was somehow my fault that my car had been within swinging distance and I should have known better. I know it is human nature to go on the attack when you can't think of a good defense, but you can't run into an inanimate object that was already there and then blame the object. Even a teenager wouldn't try that move.
The simple truth is that how rude a person is has nothing to do with their age and everything to do with how they were raised. If you are allowed to be rude as a kid you will be rude as an adult. The only difference is that when humans are rude as kids they seem more obnoxious because the rest of society doesn't think they have earned that right just yet. We'll give more slack to someone older because we assume they have had some kind of experience which has made them that way, which isn't always the case. If anything it should be the opposite reaction, because there is still time to turn those kids around. There is nothing sweeter than a sweet old lady, but nothing worse than a grumpy old man. Our elderly citizens can actually be even more obnoxious than the children, because they have been this way for even longer and have almost forgotten how to be nice. The only difference is that people just don't have the stomach to call them on it, because no one wants to get caught yelling at an elderly person. It doesn't matter what they said to provoke you, you will look like the bad guy to anyone arriving on the scene, so you keep your mouth shut. Lucky for them, at least one person involved was raised correctly, so thank your parents for that.
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