The Boiled Sports Podcast Has Landed

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Gabcast! The Boiled Sports Podcast for May 20, 2009

J and boilerdowd get on the horn to talk about the future of the BS podcast series, why Notre Dame sucks, whether baseball or Indycar racing are more sleep-inducing, the outlook for Danny Hope and Boilermaker football, and lots in between.

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Happy One-Sixth of Your Year

And so we now get to deal with more than a month of holiday-themed commercials and jingles and print ads and incessant Christmas music and movies to the point where one wants to cap oneself. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy Christmas as much as the next guy. However, I like that it's only 12/25. Or only December. I don't like that it's now a two-month season and by the time it's over it feels like the South after the Civil War around here or Salt Lake City after the Olympic games. That is to say, spent.

It all really begins now right after Halloween. You go into a drugstore or mall in early November and there's Christmas shit everywhere. Christmas carols playing nonstop. But that's just the beginning. When I was a kid, a couple of New York radio stations began playing 24 hours of Christmas music from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day. Well, that's nice. I like that. It's sort of like the yule log but on the radio. Well, then some jackass had the bright idea to extend it to more than 24 hours. But it wasn't like we went from 24 hours to 48 hours or a week or something. No, we went straight to six fuckin' weeks of Christmas music. And, again, don't get me wrong. Hearing a nifty Christmas tune tucked in with other adult contemporary music is nice as you're driving home from work. But when radio stations change their goddamn format, as is the case of 106.7 Lite FM in New York the past couple of years, well, that's just a little bit ridiculous. You know when they went to 24/7 Christmas music this year? I'm really not sure because it happened so early, I wasn't even prepared to keep my ears open for it yet. I first noticed it on November 17. Do we really need five or six weeks of constant Christmas music? Who is in the mood on November 17? And, really, what ever happened to Thanksgiving? It's really just part of Christmas at this point. I remember as a kid they had Santa at the end of the Thanksgiving Day Parade and they always said the season officially began with that and I always remember us thinking, man, that's a long way off; how silly. But now it's begun even before Santa gets his ass off the beach at the end of August! How much longer before Christmas swallows up Halloween as well?

Back to the overload. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of Christmas commercialism has been the advent in recent years of those effing Lexus commercials. Oh, yes, you know the ones. The same goofy-ass jingle plays every year. It's very effective -- without even looking up at the TV I am immediately pissed off. This season, one of the commercials shows a haughty, well-to-do woman shopping online for random things, among them a sweater. Then she sees a Lexus and decides to get that instead. Must be nice to have that kind of financial flexibility. Either she's one of those housebound wives who have zero concept of what things cost, or her husband makes so much she doesn't even care. Or maybe it's a commentary on the nature of severely in-debt Americans. The very concept of buying your 35-year-old spouse a Lexus (as a surprise) for Christmas is insulting to many. At least last year they seemed to begin to realize the backlash they were getting and tried to poke a little fun at themselves. In one, the guy couldn't successfully do the red bow; in another, the husband puts the Lexus SUV next to the tree in the living room and when his wife sees it, she's more intrigued by how he got it into the house than the fact that he just gave her a $45K luxury sport-ute. They definitely need to continue in this direction or else people (led by me) are going to begin torching Lexus dealerships. I'll give you a freakin' December to remember, bitches.

The Poseidon (Lack of an) Adventure

Here at Bad Tivo! we watch crap so you don't have to. This week's bad television was The Poseidon Adventure on NBC. The adventure, as it were, featured such stalwart acting professionals as Steve Guttenberg of Police Academy fame, who plays a wayward novelist who is on the cruise with his wife and kids as perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his marriage. Yes, by all means, bring the kids along if you're trying to save your marriage. He also waits approximately five minutes before beginning to boff a masseuse on board the ship. Later, during a climactic scene, we're treated to Guttenberg's character stopping the proceedings as everyone's life hangs in the balance to profess his love of his family to his family. Uh, yeah, later dude. Time and place for everything.

Rutger Hauer (incredibly, he was available) played a Bishop who was traveling somewhere to do his holy duties and, evidently, the best way to get there was via a luxury cruise ship. Ah, yes, the sacrifices the clergy make.

Peter Weller, also known as Robocop, played the ship's captain but not for very long. He's among the first casualties of the terrorists. Oops, did I give some of the story away? Don't worry about it. I'm saving you three hours of your life that you'll never get back.

Bryan Brown plays a hotshot Hollywood producer/director who is on board with his new, young Hollywood trophy wife. Bryan Brown, you may recall, played the wise, older bartender opposite Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Toward the end of that movie, Brown blows his brains out which, in hindsight, was very symbolic in terms of how his career turned out. Now he's playing roles that make the audience want to blow their brains out.

Another noteworthy actress involved was Alex Kingston, late of ER. She played some sort of British intelligence agent, cold as ice and predictably, Britishly tight-assed. I wonder what goes through her mind when she gets a script like this.... "Yeah, you know, I can do a cold, by-the-book, uptight bitch. I've been one my entire life and I'm really rather homely, despite every attempt to make me attractive. Plus, my mortgage check is due."

The ship has terrorists on board and one Homeland Security Marshall, played by Adam Baldwin. The terrorists are able to set off one bomb that puts a large hole in the boat just below water level and on one side. The result is that the ship begins to list and then, inexplicably, capsizes. At least they mention in the movie that this is kind of, I don't know, impossible. At one point, the blonde genius that Guttenberg's character is nailing says, "Oh my god, we're upside down," a soundbyte designed, conceived and delivered 100% for the promo. However, when you see it in context it's kind of funny. I mean, it took until the ship was completely upside down, your belongings were now on the ceiling, you were now on the ceiling and you're tripping on chandeliers to realize that? Guttenberg replies with the equally as brilliant, "Cruise ships don't capsize." Oh, okay, that settles that. It's probably just some temporary problem with gravity, then.

At another point, we see Baldwin, the homeland securiy agent, poking around with the ship's head of security who, as it turns out, carries a gun. After Baldwin shoots dead a terrorist and leaves to find another one, he leaves the security chief with the dead criminal and instructs him to "secure the area." Then, we never see the security head again. I don't know if we're expected to just assume he died whe the ship capsized or perhaps I just nodded off for a few scenes (entirely possible), but this seemed like a horribly gaping hole. I know it doesn't affect the plot (what there was of one, anyway), but still. The guy had lines and was apparently one of only a few armed people on board. Why just leave him on the cutting room floor? It was a three-hour movie; I can't imagine they cut much out.

Anyway, as I said, the ship capsizes which is so utterly ridiculous it's hard to fathom. Just like 10.5, NBC's earthquake miniseries a couple of springs ago, it's apparent that nobody does any research whatsoever at NBC to see if the crap they're slinging could ever happen under any circumstances. An ocean liner, to put it simply, cannot do what the Poseidon does. For one thing, when a 100,000+ ton ship turns on it's side, all that weight is now crushing on the above-water windows and walls, etc. If that's not enough to crush it, it's certainly enough to damage the ship so as to let in more water and thus, sink it almost immediately. Then, once the ship is upside down, for some reason it doesn't fill with water. The truth is, any holes or broken windows would be letting in water and the amount of pressure from the ocean water might just increase the size of any holes brought about by broken glass doors, etc. Thus, the ship would quickly head to the bottom of the ocean. In The Adventure, they are able to last overnight and into the next day before the ship sinks, predictably, just as the survivors get off.

In fact, the ship is upside down by about the one-hour mark. Which means we have two more hours of "adventure" within the ship, which mainly consisted of bickering about what to do and how to escape. There's the obligatory obstacle-man, who refuses to follow those who are pressing to get to higher (now lower) ground. He tells people not to go and they end up drowning as a result. There are the nice crew members whom we come to like, only to see them die untimely deaths. One guy, a waiter captain it would seem, has a giant metal object crush him in a flaming kitchen (it looked like it might have been a cooking hood of some sort, or maybe a ventilation system -- either way, it looked like it hurt). Another guy, some sort of relations officer, made nice with a lot of the adventurers only to be knocked down some sort of vent shaft by rushing water, falling into the abyss and presumably to his death with the expected "ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!" And the final ridiculous death was by the blonde masseuse whom Guttenberg had just recently boinked. At the end they, naturally, have to cross a catwalk over some sort of raging inferno below. The catwalk collapses and she claims she's not able to hang on to what now looks like a ladder (imagine a collapsed catwalk hanging down but with bars) and so she very pointedly lets go and falls into the flames. Guttenberg's wife gives him a classic look of, "Serves you both right." Or maybe it's "See, that would never happen to me -- I'm so cold, I'd put out the flames."

As it turns out, seven of them are saved and the rest go down with the ship. Sadly, NBC executives are not among them.

Collapser-In-Chief

Well, the first show to be canned has already happened and it was Head Cases, starring Chris O'Donnell and Adam Goldberg, whose schtick is just to be the really annoying guy with the nasally voice in pretty much everything he's ever done. Hard to believe this retread of the tired, old Odd Couple plot didn't work! One's straight-laced and compulsive! The other is wacky and crazy! And they're forced to work together! Oh, the shenanigans and hijinks! Not.

However, Head Cases hasn't gotten nearly the amount of attention from its parent network as Commander In Chief has gotten from ABC. Yes, Geena Davis as the President. But only because the male Prez died unexpectedly. I suppose it's an interesting strategy; pick a VP who will force potential assassins to think, "Well, if I kill him then she becomes... wait, that's not fair!"

Here's why Commander In Chief will flop. The only thing it has going for it is the gimmick of a woman being President. Once we get through an episode or two of Donald Sutherland smarmily telling her to resign (which is asinine, in and of itself -- yeah, a Prez just died; let's further mess with things by having the VP resign), then what will we have? Well, since she's clearly the focus of the show, it won't be like The West Wing, which focused on the various lives and tasks of the President's staff. Commander in Chief is not going to last long. Especially if Geena Davis has to carry it by dealing with all the possible ways in which it would be weird to have a woman be President. It would get old, trust me. But you know why it won't get old? Because it will be cancelled pretty quickly, despite the heavy promotion.

Flag! Not Funny!

Hey, you know, can somebody please let the ad people responsible for the Miller Lite campaign where the "referees" flag people for drinking something other than Miller Lite know that it's kind of...well, how can I say this... umm....stupid? Not funny? Annoying? Queer? Retarded? Obnoxious? Channel-turn-inducing?

It started out with referees busting into everyday situations, like a guy in a bar or people are a party and someone would do something with another beer and the ref would flag him for it not being a Miller Lite. Okay, this was the high point of these commercials and it was a meager high point. They weren't all that funny but they were at least marginally clever. Well, now we're to the point where they're showing referees-in-training and the expert Miller Lite refs pontificate about what's needed to be...whatever it is they're supposed to be. But they are stone-faced serious when they do it, like that's supposed to be hil-ar-ious. Well, it's really not. It's painfully stupid. So please stop it.

That is all.

Raahhhhhnnnchhhh

With all the horrendous commercials on television these days, there are still -- fortunately -- a few that make me rewind the TiVo to see every time.

The Ranch Tooth -- This is for a Wendy's Ranch Chicken Sandwich and I absolutely love it. Instead of a sweet tooth, the guy has a "ranch tooth." The best part is it's a giant tooth that is always sitting near him going "Ranch, ranch, ranch, ranch, ranch..." When the guy bites into a sandwich and the ranch tooth is satisfied, he says, rather orgasmically, "Raaaahhhhnnchhh." It's great.

Tag Body Spray -- Have you seen these? Some are better than others but they all feature chicks going berserk when they get a whiff of a guy wearing this body spray. The best one, by far, in my opinion is the one where the kid arrives to pick up his date. He looks to be about 17 or so and the girl is upstairs getting ready to go out (in fact, if you slow down your TiVo you'll see a shot of her pulling on her jeans over her suggestive red panties and super ass -- it's pretty racy, which is why it's probably only on late at night). As the kid walks in, the mom (who is fairly attractive as well) smells his allurring scent. She turns and walks towards him, saying "I like your hair like that." The kid looks nervous and says, hesitantly, "Mrs. Drake?" To which she replies, "Call be Bonnie." She's now mere inches from him and thrusts her chest (and considerable rack) forward, such that a button pops off her shirt. She puts on the fake, stripper "oops" look and, indeed, says "Oops." It's terrific.

Bacardi & Cola -- Okay, these spots look like they were pulled out of the 1970s. Two smooth dudes are at a party in pretty much every one. One is a white guy with a 70s porn moustache (he's "Bacardi") and the other guy ("Cola," as it were) is black. There's always something involving dippy, scantily-clad women (starring as objects; I bet these commercials are a hot topic in the classrooms of women's studies and media schools and other such places that take life way too seriously) and once the situation is resolved the jingle is, "Ba-cardi! And Cola! They get the job done!" In one, they introduce two chicks to another friend, "Diet Cola," and it's a black midget! How great is this? It's like 1970s Saturday Night Live, making fun of race, disability and the objectification of women!

Tiny House -- The Geico commercial. If you haven't seen it, I don't know where you've been. But go here and choose "What we've done" and then Geico. Let me just tell you that several of my friends have started saying "This is kinda awesome..." about all sorts of things.

On another day, we'll cover commercials that suck. But for right now, I don't have that kind of time.