That's Enough Out Of You

Alright, that’s enough. I think that we’ve all had our fun and you can now fade into relative obscurity only to undoubtedly appear in a bankruptcy court five years from now. I’m sorry Mr. Jackson, but I AM for real and I think that you need to hang up your ‘bullet-proof hat’ and call it a career.

Don’t get me wrong, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” was great, I listened to that all the time, but since then? Well, save us all the embarrassment and go drown yourself in a pool of Vitamin Water. Your breakthrough record was scary, lyrically, musically and visually, but just about everything you have released since then is laughably lame.
An MC is supposed to evolve over time, a la Jay-Z and Nas, and stand for something important, make a statement. But Fiddy seems complacent to be stuck in some sort of money and tacky jewelry filled pit that he cannot get out of. As with any artist, when your career progresses, your creations should show signs of maturity. 50 Cent completely bypassed that idea and instead seems to be perfectly content with lazily churning out songs about money, girls and riches while simultaneously ‘beefing’ with seemingly everybody in the entertainment business.

The entire country, if not world, is in the midst of the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression. There was the whole ‘recession chic’ thing that happened and a lot of the art and popular culture reflects the fact that our monetary system is on the verge of complete collapse. It is interesting to see the ways that artists adapt to their surroundings and how they strive to make their products relatable to their intended target market and consumer. Not Curtis.

50 scoffs at your demands and continues to constantly rap about all of the money that he has and that you don’t. See “Straight to the Bank” and “I Get Money” for further examination. Hey man, nobody cares anymore. It isn’t impressive and frankly, it’s a little insulting having to hear you rap about this luxurious lifestyle that you lead, yeah, living in Connecticut is real hood. Give me a break dude.

Speaking of that, you are not hood anymore and you’re no more of a gangsta than I am. You are so disconnected from that corner lifestyle that it is borderline pathetic that you keep rapping about it. If you went back to South Side Jamaica Queens, by yourself, you would get robbed in a second. Or perhaps, even thrown down a flight of stairs again (go get ‘em Ghost!). You are not a Mafioso don nor are you even a low level enforcer who still lives with his mother. You’re a civilian, like us.

“I’m high all the time/I smoke that good shit/I stay high all the time/Man, I’m on some hood shit.” Yeah. Except you don’t. I read an interview with you and you stated that you don’t smoke weed and you just wrote that song for the hell of it, or something along those horrible lines. Are you kidding me? How are we supposed to believe anything that you say from here on out after you came out as a complete fugazi? That is so LAAAAAMMMMEEEEE. You criticize other rappers for embellishing on their own tracks, but here you are in print, claiming that you don’t smoke after writing that song. If that isn’t a hypocrite, than I don’t know what is.

Another piece of advice: stop these lame beefs. They’re awful. They’re played out. They make you look pathetic. Nobody cares about what you have to say about Ja Rule, The Game, Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Young Buck, Lil’ Wayne and whoever else ‘dissed’ you. Beefing in the media was once a fun and novel idea that drummed up free publicity for your upcoming record, but now it is just an afterthought, especially considering that you don’t do anything about it. Maybe if instead of putting all of your effort and focusing all of your attention on beefing with another rapper and concentrated on writing better raps, you could still be relevant.

In 2007, you stated that you would stop releasing solo albums if Kanye West’s album, “Graduation,” outsold your release, “Curtis.” When the records were released on the same day, head-to-head, you lost! Kanye’s record beat yours! Meaning that you should have dropped off of the face of the earth, because let’s face it, you cannot act, and we could have forgotten all about you! But no, as always, you folded on your promise and became even faker than you were before. Again, you’re so LAAAAAMMMMEEEEE. Not to mention that “Graduation” is far and away a much more superior record than your cookie-cutter, hip-hop happy meal “Curtis.”

So please Fif, call it a day. Thanks for “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” but your time has passed. We’ll see you later on, but hopefully not in concert.

Beat It Loser

Oh Angelo, oh Angelo. Please do Philadelphia and the surrounding Delaware Valley a favor and leave. We will be so much better off and our mornings will be free of your tired and worn shtick. I honestly cannot think of a single positive attribute about you or your show (alright, you are a decent writer, but that’s about it). I would rather be stuck in a windowless room with no ventilation during a violent argument between Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher than have to listen to the complete and utter crap that comes out of your mouth every morning.

For starters, you are not from here. You have no connection to anything in this area and your clearly contrived passion and loyalty to Philadelphia sport teams is horribly pathetic and completely questionable. When I got my iPhone, I listened to you during my commute to work because I had an app that allowed me to do so (horrible mistake, thankfully after a couple of days, I realized why I never listened to you in the first place) and you were ranting and raving about the Phillies playoff run (2009). How can anyone with a brain listen to your show and take what you have to say seriously? YOU ARE A LIFE LONG YANKEES FAN! Everything that spews from that gutter between your nose and your chin has no merit and is the journalistic equivalent of having Bob Dylan write a review of his latest record.

Now, if you are a Yankees fan, whatever, I really could care less, that’s all well and good, go ahead and root for the team that you grew up cheering for, I seriously have no problem with that whatsoever. But no, in a lame radio stunt, you decided to proclaim your love for the Phillies and abandon your 58 yearlong loyalty to the Yankees. Oh! Even better, you had to include the always fresh and wacky idea of taking a lie detector test to prove this point, sadly I stopped listening to this segment before it started, but regardless, I’m sure hilarity ensued. I know Rhea Hughes will have my back on that one.

That is only one minute instance of your annoyance. You are not funny. You’re just not, so stop trying to be. What you think is witty and cutting edge and dumb and overplayed. You want to be Howard Stern, but you come off about as bloated as Howard K. Stern’s most famous client. “Oh, what kind of zany radio stunt are we going to do this year with the Wingetts, hey Rhea, aren’t they hot?”
On top of everything that you do on your terrible show, you have perpetuated the old and ugly stereotype of the typical Philadelphia sports fan being a complete savage animal when you brought those drunken assholes up to the NFL Draft in 1999 that ended up booing Donovan McNabb. And NO Angelo, he HASN’T gotten over it (I read that half-assed argument in your book).

I was seriously surprised that your show doesn’t have a smorgasbord of silly sound effects that play throughout; I mean after all, you have the always hysterical Z-list comedian Joe Conklin on all the time. “Oh! Conklin is playing at Bonner’s cafeteria this weekend? Sweet! He is really moving on up! This is like his Beatles Shea Stadium moment.” Give me a break, that guy is a total hack who only adds to the awfulness of your already terrible show. So, he impersonates local celebrity voices? Awesome, he is one step above a street mime.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about Angelo Cataldi is that he makes over $1 million dollars a year at WIP. Really? Even the idea of this bozo making that much money is enough to make me lose faith in all of humanity. I have never met a person who has said “You know, I like Cataldi, he is insightful, knows what he is talking about and most importantly incredibly funny.” His “humor” appeals to the lowest denominator and combine that with Conklin constantly calling in and the blocks of commercials any actual intelligent (using the term lightly here) sporting commentary probably takes up 0.01% of your time spent on air.

I really hope that your contract extension talks fail and that you are run out of town. You are an embarrassment to this fine city and it seriously blows me away that you have been doing this for over two decades. Good riddance I say, get lost and go back to Rhode Island. While you’re at it, be sure to take your moronic crew with you.

The Most Unlikeable Team In The NFL

Let me get this out of the way first: The Philadelphia Eagles are my favorite NFL team. Okay? I love them, simple as that. I watch them every Sunday (or Monday or Thursday) and follow everything that they do. Because of all of that, I have also developed a deep loathing for the entire front office, much of the coaching staff and a select few of the guys who suit up in the midnight green and run out of the giant helmet onto the field. I don’t want this to be the typical “Fire Andy” or “McNabb Sucks” post, but I am afraid that there may be some of those elements emanating throughout, so, my apologies if that happens, but I’ll try my best to avoid it.

You cannot say that Andy Reid is a terrible coach, because he isn’t. Since coming here in 1999 as a relatively unknown commodity, he has developed into one of the most consistent coaches in the league and you can always pretty much pencil him and his squad into the playoffs each year, give or take. However, as a game day coach he is awful. Flat out awful. He is a stubborn man who refuses to change his game plan no matter what the playing conditions are or what the opposing team is doing to the Eagles out on the field (Hello Cincinnati and Oakland!).

We also cannot forget to mention that he is the creator of football and knows every single thing about the sport, well aside from having a running game, a full back, a kick/punt returner and an undying faith in Reno Mahe. Now granted, he has addressed many of these issues (except for that pesky running attack) but it is always a season too late. But seriously, Andy did invent the sport and scoffs at your press conferences and stonewalls you from questioning him. I know, I get it, who cares about what he does at press conferences? It’s just that it is so infuriating to hear him clearing his throat, coughing and having to “put the players in a better position.”

And it doesn’t look like Andy is going anywhere either, at least not for the foreseeable future. If I understand correctly, I think that as the team's executive vice president of football operations, he is basically in charge of his own employment status meaning that he has a bit of the ability to determine if he should stay or throw his own ass out on the street. What? That is just a microscopic part of the entire problem with the front office of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner are the ones who are most deserving of this seemingly endless tirade. Their pomposity, sensitivity and general arrogance are so off putting that it is hard to root for these guys. I understand that the NFL is a business and that being a cut-throat is viewed as a positive attribute, but the Eagles are like Gordon Gekko’s even eviler twin brother.

There is no loyalty and there’s a Pacific Ocean’s worth of disconnect with the fans, you know, the people who are giving them their money. Hey Jeff, you are not the “gold standard.” Salary cap wise, sure you’re the kings of staying under the cap, but championship wise, you have nothing.

Now, the Eagles had their chance for the better part of this decade and while they have gotten close and sniffed the Lombardi Trophy in 2004/05, they have always failed to deliver. They had Eagles fans salivating and obsessing over a parade down Broad Street and establishing themselves as one of the all time great teams in recent memory, but sadly I think that window is closing.

They’re not even the Buffalo Bills, at least those losers got to the Super Bowl four times instead of losing to the Rams, Bucs, Panthers and Cardinals. I love that the Phillies are on the verge (that is, if they haven’t already) of taking the throne from the Eagles as the city’s most important and favorite team. Although they would never admit to it, it must have killed the Eagles when the Phils won the World Series in 2008. And to pour some Mortons on that gash, they allowed the men and ladies in red into Lincoln Financial Field to watch the WFC’s victory speech from the ballpark. Aside from the sting of watching the team in pinstripes from across the street win a championship, one that the Eagles were supposed to do, the idea of Phillies fans storming the Linc to see a victory speech must have killed them. That parade down Broad Street was a giant, red middle finger to the Eagles, which was delightful in all regards.

I know what’s going to happen to, the Eagles will go on their typical late November/December tear, either winning the division or at least a wildcard spot in the playoffs, only to lose in either the divisional round or the NFC Championship game (again!). You can count on this every year; it’s like the rising tide. They become more and more unlikeable by the week and they really make it hard to get behind them. So yeah, I’m hypocritical in the sense that I will still watch them and pay for their merchandise, which only adds to the problem, but what other choice do I have?

The Titanic Theory

Remember the movie “Titanic?” Of course you do, I just had no other way of starting this post. If you haven’t heard of it, eh, well, you’re an idiot. I’m not saying it was a great movie, but it wasn’t as bad as its detractors made it out to be. It was a mammoth display of star power, technology and earnings, it was, titanic (har har).

Aside from the overall cheesiness and the fact that it was essentially a centuries-old love story lazily retold with the ship’s sinking serving as a mere backdrop, I have a major issue with one of the prevalent plot points and themes. I hate when the media and the entertainment industries try to paint poverty and the lower class as these free-spirited and care-free folks who know how to have a good time and are much wiser than their wealthy counterparts. This notion is not only an insult to those struggling to survive with minimal income, but a slap in the face to anyone with a brain.

In “Titanic,” they present the aristocratic upper class as stiff, boring and generally mean spirited. In contrast, they portray the poor people as these dancing goofs who know how to have a good time and are able to not only survive, but thrive while wallowing in poverty. This has been done in many films and countless musicals and I cannot believe that the world hasn’t caught onto the phoniness of this idea. Musicals love this sort of conflict because it can allow for a song and dance scene that incorporates some sort of choreographed trash can and street sweeper scene.

I challenge you to find a single homeless person or someone living paycheck to paycheck who wouldn’t want to trade places with someone who is financially well off. It’s completely ludicrous to believe that a person begging for change at 30th Street in the freezing cold with rain water seeping into their pores initiating the start of pneumonia would not like to trade places with the well dressed man making his way into the Comcast Tower to sit in his warm, plush leather chair behind an oak desk in front of a wide window in a corner office overlooking the city.

It is a juvenile concept and is mockery of the lower class. Now, some would argue that the upper class and the rich are constantly arguing about expenses and vacations while simultaneously going through the excruciating process of seeing which day care is the best for their child to attend once their class day is finished at whatever private and forward thinking elementary school they attend. Trust me, these are the problems that someone at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale would love to encounter. Worrying about what to do with the abundance of money that you have multiplying in your Swiss bank account is a much better problem than wondering if you will be able to place food on your table or if you will have a job tomorrow.

Please, stop trying to force feed us this completely false idea of the lower class being these jolly people who know how to have a better time than their wealthy brethren. It’s moronic and kind of reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit. Everybody wants to have money and nobody wants to be poor, no matter how glamorous the mainstream media strives to make it out to be.

Megan Fox: American Downfall Darling

As a 24-year-old heterosexual male, the past two years have essentially demanded that I be infatuated with Megan Fox.

Whether it is the cover of Esquire (really guys? come on) or the plastering of her body and face on every page of Maxim, FHM, Stuff, Blender, whatever, take your pick of those that are still in existence, society seems hell bent on making her out to be some sort of sex-symbol rebel akin to early 1980s Madonna or even the fetish queen herself Betty Page. Well world, I am not buying it and damn me to hell if I say it (even though Deadpsin and KSK’s Drew Magary said it first) I don’t find her to be all that good looking and frankly cannot see myself getting along with her.

Alright, I obviously have no idea what she is like as a person, but if she is anything like the manufactured phony that she appears to be in her countless photo sessions and horrible movies (which, granted, I have never seen, but who cares anyway) I could see myself preferring sex with a cheese-grater than having to spend time with her.

Kind of like “The Matrix,” I just don’t get it. I really don’t see why people think she is the sexiest person to ever sexy in the history of sex, I just can’t comprehend that and cannot wrap my head around that notion. She is the poor, white trash version Angelina Jolie and from what I’ve seen of her in her terrible movie trailers, she can’t act her way out of a broken prophylactic. I don’t know, she looks kind of dirty and used and the tattoos aren’t doing it for me either.

What I find even more annoying about Fox is that I think that she realizes what she is doing and is laughing all the way to the bank. The New York Times is running an article about her in their magazine section and it goes on to hypothesize that she knows she will turn heads by saying what she says and posing how she poses. The public wants it and she will give it to them, killing, in the process, any sort of hope, glimmer or shred of talent that is just begging to free itself from her most-likely venereal infested insides.

Which brings me to this: I hate when people say “Who cares? They’re making money?” It’s people like this that allow Nickelback, Jeff Dunham and Paul Blart to literally build houses out of solid gold and keep warm in the winter by hosting money burning parties. Is there no integrity? Have we grown so numb to any sort of character and plot development that at this point we are satisfied and willing to see Michael Bay blow'd up stuff good, blow'd up stuff real good accompanied by Megan Fox frolicking along in her typical PG-13 rated attire that shows just enough skin to get middle and high school aged boys to melt in the seats?

In short, I just do not get America’s fascination with Megan Fox. I can’t see it. I know that I will be ridiculed for making such a bold proclamation (I can see the word “gay” being tossed in my general direction), but I feel as if this needed to be said. There are plenty of other women out there are more attractive than her and most likely much smarter than her as well. She is like a wax figurine whose flame is slowly diminishing and will merely be an afterthought occasionally mentioned along with the vampire craze (more on that later) on some incarnation of “I Love Whatever” on Vh1.

Get Over Yourself

So, The Huffington Post unveiled a new Sports Section this week. What a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Here we have Arianna Huffington, the egomaniacal yin to Matt Drudge’s yang, spouting poetically about the game changing sports coverage that her modestly named blog will provide. Of course she has to toss in some cringe-worthy puns in a lame attempt to relate sports to politics so that her snobby readers can understand what the hell is happening to their beloved “news” site and why the barbaric and dimwitted subject of sports is being posted alongside such luminaries as “Carrie Prejean Threatens To Walk Off Larry King” and “Separated At Birth: 10 Politicians With Famous Lookalikes.” Some notable items from Huffington’s introduction include: “This politician really needs to swing for the fences if he hopes to win Iowa,” “It's the bottom of the 9th -- time to send Bill Clinton to the Hill to twist some arms,” and “the case against Saddam is a slam dunk!” There is nothing more annoying and phony than a person who doesn’t care/know anything about sports suddenly becoming Howard Cosell because they feel as if they have to, not because they want to. Ugh.

Okay, so what I am really doing here is kind of laying down the groundwork for the overall awfulness that is The Huffington Post. I stumbled onto the site in the summer of 2008 when the presidential election was just getting underway and at first, I was kind of impressed. Here I am, a pretty liberal democrat who agrees with the majority of the articles and sadly the people posting in the comment sections. Cool.

Then after a week or so, I realized that the entire site is essentially a leftist version of Fox News, the HuffPo community’s sworn enemy (along with Rush and Palin). They spew the same type of hate filled rhetoric that they slam those on the opposite end of the political spectrum for doing. God forbid if you have a differing opinion from any of the sheep who blindly post in the comment sections of an article on that site or if you do not bow down before the Almighty Arianna and kiss her rings. I know that internet commenters are a whole other animal, but on this site you will encounter some of the most self-righteous, holier-than-thou people on the planet. I would love to introduce these loons to Drudge’s loons at a Pot & Kettle Convention.

Back to Queen Arianna, Ruler of the Internets, a complete hypocrite, who according to the internet bible Wikipedia, was a “right-winger” “who supported Newt Gingrich's revolution and Bob Dole's candidacy for president in 1996.” What?! That blows my mind! How did her political ideal$ and ideology change $o dra$tically and $o dramatically fa$t?

Now, we haven’t even broached her privileged upbringing and luxurious lifestyle that she currently leads. How are we (or more specifically, the idiot commenters) supposed to take this woman seriously? She is like the white bread homeboy living in his parent’s McMansion out in West Chester that raps about how tough his life is and what the mean streets of the Thornbury Hunt development are like. She has no idea what it is like to be a member of the lower class or even the middle class and I doubt that she would like to experience either. Give me a break you fraud and go back to your private jets, money grubbing television appearances and keep feeding your minions sensationalized “news” stories from your greasy palms.