It's Just a Joke...really

ESPN has made a politically correct move and suspended one of its reporters for statements he made about a female colleague on the air. Supposedly, he made negative comments about the outfit she was wearing, and after that the heads at ESPN went nuts. The commentary has been all over the place since then, with people either saying it's much ado about nothing, ESPN overreacted, or Kornheiser should be fired, skewed and napalmed with extreme prejudice.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it brings up a subject I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and that's the whole idea of comedy and humor.

Years ago, when I was in the service and out of the Academy, I was required to attend a basic training unit (I attended a lot of them as part of my assignments while working for CID and CI). I remembered I was in this battle of wits with this really stupid PFC. He was trying to insult me, and my response was to take every insult he waged, agree and then use an additive process to show how he was now contradicting himself. By the time I was done, he looked really foolish, wanted to fight, and let's just say that the situation did not end well for him.

BUT right after that, and because of that, it got me to thinking about humor. I was a very flippant young man at the time. I was quick to use a cynical response to unarm an opponent, and much of my humor was directly insulting in some way. At the time, I thought that was what constituted "funny".

Well, at that time, I made a decision because I felt really dirty after that conversation because even though EVERYONE was laughing with me, they were all laughing AT HIM, and something didn't seem right about that. I began to see humor as something that could be very negative. After that day, I made a vow to avoid ever using negative humor that hurt someone else. I no longer found it funny, and therefore, I would no longer try to gain favor for using that style of humor.

What I discovered is that there are very many people who ONLY know that type of humor as "funny". As I was reading through the responses to the Kornheiser story (the guy who made the stupid comments about his female colleague), I started to notice how many people would say something like: "you people don't understand humor, so leave him alone", and all I could think was that perhaps a lot of people don't understand humor. The ability to poke fun at someone else's expense should never be considered funny to an enlightened community, yet there is so much of that type of behavior in our society. From political pundits to late night talk show hosts, negative humor is used so much at the expense of other people. Oh, we justify it by using such comments as "he's a public person" or "he or she should have known better". But in the end, it's humor that comes at the expense of another individual.

One solution to this problem for me back then was to think through each attempt at making a joke. How I used to do this was think to myself, "would everyone find this funny, including the subject of the humor itself?" If the answer was no, then it wasn't funny to me. It took me many years to cement this into my psyche, but it was something that had to be done because I was no longer finding insults or negative commentary to be funny. I don't even find it funny when it is done by very good comedy folk; I tend to be the only one in the room who doesn't laugh, and I have come to a comfortable understanding that I'd rather be that person than the one who joins in with them.

Unfortunately, very few people agree with me. Or they agree, but in the end they practice a different processing when it comes to such humor, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

What I'd like to add to the interesting part of this observation is that I do succeed in creating a lot of humor on a daily basis, both in my writings and in person. But it's never negative towards an individual. Oh, it may still by cynical and biting at times, but there's never a person sitting in the next cubicle, thinking "I wish he wouldn't use me as the brunt of his jokes all of the time."

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LOST vs. President of the United States: LOST wins

Turns out that President Obama was going to give a state of the union on February 2, which in case you don't know, also happens to be the date that LOST is going to premiere its first episode of the final season. I think he finally realized that when it comes down to it, the people wanted LOST a lot more than it wanted a speech from the president. So, he decided not to go up against LOST.

There's a much bigger issue here that's not being addressed, and that's the fact that the President of the United States had to change the date of his speech because people actually believe the network premiere of LOST is more significant than his speech. Kind of tells you something, doesn't it? In the beginning, I was going to make this big criticism of the American people about this, but then it also got me thinking. Why would LOST be more important to them than the president giving a speech? Perhaps it has more to do with the realization that the affairs of state are becoming less relevant to the common person so that such a thing might actually happen. I mean, I think about myself, and honestly, I don't really care all that much about what's happening nationally these days, when I used to care a lot. And the reason I don't? Because it really doesn't have anything to do with me, and if you really think about it, it probably never will. Oh, we can make arguments that somehow it's significant, but it's about as significant as the wars of Louis XIV were important to the common person of France. Yeah, it's important, but it's not really.

And that's my thought for today. All I can say is that I'm glad that LOST isn't going to be postponed because of this speech. I'd rather watch the show. Sorry. That's just how it is.

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Sex Doesn't Sell--in movies

According to a "ground-breaking" article by CNN, they've discovered that sex doesn't necessarily sell when it comes to movies. This is one of those few articles that is missing an appropriate "no duh" at the end of it.

This is an example of one of those stories that gets written because someone has taken a slogan and then decided that the evidence doesn't match the wordage of the slogan itself, mainly because the slogan is just that, a slogan. Also, the slogan is appropriate to a completely different vehicle, and the reporters are trying to play the game of "lookie what we found!" when in reality they found that their lack of research equates to a stupid story.

So, why do people say "sex sells" if it doesn't sell in movies? Because it sells in advertising. That's where the wordage gets the most play. Beer commercials are a great example. Guys drink beer, girls show up wearing almost no clothing, and then profit! Girl wears sexy lingerie, other women watching the commercial see it and then go out and buy lingerie expecting to be as sexy as she is, and then profit! Okay, the second example is an example of misleading advertising (as was the first) mainly because I think most of those commercials are designed for guys who then turn to their girlfriends/wives and then try to get them to wear the sexy lingerie, and then somehow profit entails, but the results don't somehow come out the same.

And that's the beauty of sex sells advertisement. Almost always it creates a fantasy that is unattainable for all but women who happen to be sexy lingerie models. Guys aren't going to end up with her. Sorry, but she's dating some rock star that makes gazillions of dollars and wouldn't give you the time of day. Average women aren't going to look like her; let's face it...there's a reason she makes millions of dollars to pose in her underwear.

Which brings us back to the original topic, and that's sex sells imagination in movies. When does it ever sell? Well, I can think of a few examples. "Mr and Mrs Smith" was a movie that was definitely a sex sells kind of movie. It had two of the hottest stars in movies, both sexy to people of practically both genders interchangeably, and that sold that movie well. I'd venture that Transformers benefited from several sexy stars, although I personally never liked the movie or the stars of it, but I'm commenting on movie trends, not on my own wants and desires. If this was about my own wants and desires, every movie would have Shania Twain running around in lingerie. Come to think of it, every movie with Shania Twain in it regardless would improve 90 percent of the movies regardless of what she was wearing. And she could sing the soundtrack, too. Hmm, must consider this for a future post and column.

But I digress....


Some other movies that do well with sex selling in their movies are, well, for simplicity, porn. I mean, let's face it. If you are interested in sex in movies, then you really can't go any simpler than that. So, why don't more guys just watch porn instead of watch movies that are sexually suggestive? Well, if the guy wants to get his girlfriend/wife to watch it, well, that's about as close as he's going to get.

But the point is that this article that CNN wrote is more about trying to dislodge a theory that no one is making. I haven't gone to a movie yet because I was interested in a sexual theme of the movie, ever. I've seen some pretty damn sexy movies over the years, but I went to see them because of some other reason. So the idea that sex sells is really limited to advertising and porn. I think the enlightened people just don't want to admit it. To make a movie that is nothing but sex is really either making a porn movie or a soft porn movie, and anyone who has watched the latter has begged for that two hours back in their life.

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Fox News and the White House War Against Fox News

You know, I don't doubt that the White House has it guns out for Fox News, as there's always been an antagonistic relationship between the left and Fox News, but one thing I found really demeaning was how Fox News chooses to engage its customers in this debate. Take the following poll they listed here:

I'll include the poll here so you don't have to go to their page.

You decide:

The White House is still attacking Fox News, 10 days after its original comments. Why?
They want to shoot the messenger
They don’t have a good case to make
They confuse News and Opinion
I don't know

In case you haven't noticed, the option of "Fox News is out of line" doesn't show up. You either get to choose "They want to shoot the messenger, they don't have a good case to make, they confuse news and opinion or I don't know". If this was a scientific study, which it obviously is not, it would get laughed out of academia and science in general.

If Fox News really wants to complain, perhaps it should stop skewing its surveys so that there's nothing for the White House to complain about in the first place.

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It's been said that in divorce a husband can often give up half of all that he owns

Well, it appears a farmer in Serbia did just that.

BELGRADE, Serbia - A Serb farmer used a grinding machine to cut in half his farm tools and machines to comply with a court ruling that he must share all his property with his ex-wife, local media reported on Thursday. For more, go here.

Some people take things WAY too seriously.

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This just in--Young cheerleader killed and the media won't hype it with video and sensationalism!

Sorry, they do intend to hype it with video and sensationalism. Good job, CNN. The video can be seen here. Apparently, if the story is put into context, a young 16 year old African-American girl was killed by her former boyfriend who is now married to another girl from school. The fact that she was a cheerleader is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the story whatsoever. So, does anyone believe there's any other reason for referring to this as CNN's titled: "Slain Cheerleader's married lover charged" than an attempt at generating traffic to CNN's site where they have breaking video coverage of a reporter who is essentially stating that a young African American male may have killed his former girlfriend and set her car on fire?

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We had an earthquake this evening

I believe it was a 5.6 earthquake, and it happened while I was at speech and debate practice. Marlin had just poked his head into the room where I was holding practice on some individual events, and then the world started to shake. Emily thought it was the static from the television behind her making a strange noise. The quake lasted a few moments, and then my equilibrium was off for a short bit.

It had been a long time since I had been in an earthquake. Not that I've missed them, but at least it didn't do any damage of which I have been informed.

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