Yup. This is another diatribe against the people who entertain us plebians. It would probably take me all day to blow off this steam, so I’m going to concentrate on 2 specific people that will represent 2 specific groups: Brad Garrett, the big brother from CBS’ “Everybody Loves Raymond,” will be Hollywood & Duce Staley, tailback for my Philadelphia Eagles, will be professional sports. Let’s tackle Duce first. Anyone who knows me knows that I bleed green and black from one arm and orange and black from the other. I’m a “homer” when it comes to my sports allegiances: Philadelphia all the way. Eagles for football, Flyers for hockey, and Phillies for baseball (not a big basketball fan, but I would root for The Sixers over any other NBA team). Getting back to it, I love my team. I love the players on my team. I will support them through thick and thin, but don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining. When an athlete is getting paid $2.2 MILLION for a season’s worth of work, don’t go crying to the press and tell your fans that you’re woefully underpaid. Duce has 1 year left on his contract and he decided to skip most of the pre-season to get management to cave and give him a big-bucks extension. Boo-fucking-hoo. You’re telling me that Joe Schmoe and Jane Doe really will sympathize with Duce’s $2.2 million poverty when they are making MAYBE $40,000 a year? The average income of the fans in the Philly area is less than $40,000 so I don’t think he’s gonna get a huge support-base over that gripe. He signed a contract. He signed a deal that said “We’ll pay you an ungodly amount of money so you can play a kid’s game once a week and turn you into a hero in your area” but he didn’t think that was good enough. I understand that NFL Football is a physically demanding game… not first-hand mind you, but it’s only logical that a 230lb running back getting hit and dragged to the ground by over 1,000lbs of humanity would hurt! Yes… careers will be shortened with all that contact, but that’s why they make more than they should to begin with. However, if you sign a deal and you’re not happy with it: Tough shit! You should have had it changed BEFORE you agreed to it! It’s like playing Scrabble and then changing the rules in the middle so you can put words in Esperanto instead of English. Point is that professional athletes are being paid GOBS of money to play games that kids are dying to play after school. These athletes are also getting paid tons more for endorsements regardless of what happens in their private lives. Ray Lewis gets in trouble associated with murder and he’s hawking videogames. Kobe Bryant is an alleged rapist and he’s telling your kids to buy sneakers and soda. Problem? Don’t tell me… I already know. The same thing happens in Hollywood. Brad Garrett recently held out for 2 weeks while his character had to be written out of the show because he didn’t like his salary. Is it a bitch to know your compatriots make more than you? Yeah, it does. However causing them to lose money isn’t helping your case any. This guy is crying because he was ONLY making $4 MILLION for a 22 episode season? That’s only 11 hours folks. 11 hours of television that we watch (well… YOU watch. I really can’t stand “Raymond.”) gets Garrett about $182,000 AN EPISODE. $182,000 for 30 minutes (actually 24 without commercials) of viewing time. Shit… at least Duce Staley has to put his body and career on the line when he takes the field… this guy has to act like an idiot for 24 minutes and he makes $182,000. Yes, I know preparation goes into the time as well, but damn! You pay me $182,000 for a half-hour’s work and I’ll fuckin memorize 500 words too! So he’s now going to get “at least” $10 million for his brilliant portrayal of an idiot. Yup… that’s about $455,000 for every 24 minutes you guys watch him on your televisions. Oh yeah… he also gets a percentage of the syndication profits. So what do you think would happen to me if I said to my boss “Hey. I’m not getting paid enough. I’m going to sit at home and pretend to be sick until you raise my salary.” I’d be unemployed before I got back to my desk… and my boss is only 20 feet away. Hollywood and professional sports seem to exist in a world where rules don’t exist. We spend our hard-earned dollars doing things that we’d rather NOT be doing to fork over to pampered assholes who complain that they are ONLY making $182,000 an episode or $137,500 a game. You want to pay people exorbitant amounts of money to do their jobs? How about teachers or firefighters or the police or medics and nurses? THOSE people deserve $182,000 for every 24 minutes of work they put in. Until Brad Garrett does something for humanity or until Duce Staley grows up a bit, then don’t fucking cry about your salary when you’re making more in a year than most of your fans will see in their lifetime.
The rich get richer
Lull of The Rings
I got an IM from a friend of mine last night that read “I’ve come to the conclusion that you are the only person I know who doesn’t like The Lord of The Rings.” That may not be the exact phrasing, but it’s close. So I don’t like The Lord of the Rings… big deal! Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the greatest tome ever written. There are much more brilliant writers than Tolkein… maybe Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Hemingway ring a bell? When you spend 15 pages describing a tree… there’s a problem there. I’ve read some pretty long-winded things. I’ve read some indescribably boring things, but luckily they were never long-winded AND indescribably boring. Then I made a pact with a pal of mine: He would read Harry Potter and I would read Lord of the Rings. Wow did he get the better deal!! I am going on black-and-white record by stating (and bolding): J.R.R. Tolkein is the most boring author I have ever had the torturous misfortune of reading. I got through The Hobbit only barely. I then picked up The Lord of The Rings trilogy in 1 book (for those that don’t know, The Lord of The Rings is kinda like Star Wars… 3 movies with different titles under 1 heading. LOTR consists of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King) and started reading it. Ugh. I pride myself on being about to read about 70 pages an hour if I’m at a good clip. That translates to a little over a page a minute so that’s a good speed. Fast enough to zip through a book, but slow enough to enjoy the taste instead of gulping it down and missing pertinent facts. Well I think I read about 70 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring and it took me almost 3 MONTHS to get that far! I suffered through those pages just to get to where I was because I told Wade I’d read it. Hell… I gave up after that. I mean… it took me forever to get through Tom Clancy’s The Bear and The Dragon, but I knew there was a payoff for me in that Clancy has not disappointed. I had already completed The Hobbit at that point and remembered that I wasn’t all that thrilled about the ending to that either. Well I understand that I’m whipping it out and pissing on a large group of Tolkein-lovers, but this is my opinion… so deal with it. Just in case you’re preparing a flaming missive about my intelligence level saying “You’re not cultured or smart enough to understand it,” first remember that I did graduate from college with a Bachelor of the Arts in English with a concentration on Literary Studies. I’ve read some of the greatest written works man has produced. I’ve read some of the most COMMERCIAL works man has produced. I feel I have the right and privilege to offer my opion on that. If you’d like to know what I thought about the movies, then I’ll continue by saying that the first one put me to sleep in the theatre. For those of you who know me, that’s a shocker. I never fall asleep in the theatre. Movies are my life. I’ve seen some bad films that I’ve watched through (to this day the only film I’ve ever walked out on was Gung Ho with Michael Keaton and a bunch of Japanese people), but I can’t say I’ve slept in any. Hell, I make fun of people who do!!! So when I say that the first movie bored me to sleep, it did! My girlfriend at the time The Fellowship of the Ring came out on DVD bought it and made me watch it with her. She made me promise I wouldn’t fall asleep and I said “Ok.” Well I suffered through it and made it, but when the movie was over I looked at her… the Tolkein-lover that she is… and SHE was asleep on the couch! Boy was I hot! I still haven’t seen the second movie. I keep hearing how it’s better than the first movie, but when I hated the first movie, will a continuation of the same plot with the same characters REALLY help any? I haven’t liked Sean Astin in anything but The Goonies and Encino Man, so I’m not a big fan of his. Elijah Wood is a dork. Viggo Mortensen IS the shit, but so is Robert DeNiro and I hated 15 Minutes. The only character I actually liked in the first movie, some guy played by Sean Bean, died at the end, so why bother watching the second film? I will probably get around to seeing it and the last movie (due out in December of this year) at some point, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to hurry. In conclusion, I’d much rather read the phonebook than anything written by Tolkein and I’d rather watch the entire first season DVD collection of “Friends” before seeing that damn movie again.