Friday, October 12, 2007

Guest Blogging: Red Sox Monster, and video

I posted about the Indians and how hard it is to figure out their true talent at the Red Sox Monster. Yes, that's the site that brought you oodles and oodles of goofy baseball fan video this season. But Dan also posts these cool word-like things on the page too, ha, it's not just video. Check out his excellent article trying to figure out why a Red Sox fan was physically beaten, for example.

Oh, and let me flip a video onto the pile myself: it's Tobin Heath and Casey Nogueira (US U-20 soccer players) competing in a soccer ball trick battle. I've always wanted to get into one of these in basketball.


Eh, while I'm at it, a rant. I was watching Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman's scripted banter on Jimmy Kimmel Live the other night. And it made me think about how ideal stereotypes can go terribly wrong. Kimmel fits the stereotype of being a laid-back yet professional fraternity boy. Hypothetically, old people should think he looks like a nice normal boy, and young people should appreciate his edginess. However, to me he reminds me more of that guy at parties whose politeness and sincerity is a mile wide and an inch deep. This is more of the real Jimmy Kimmel personality to me:

Additionally, most skits on the show are based on an idea frat boys at 2AM think sounds really cool, but is actually quite lame in execution. Believe it or not, ethnic/elderly jokes done by ethnic/elderly people aren't funny to everyone.

And what about Sarah Silverman? (I'll get to sports momentarily, promise). Stereotype is she looks like the girl next door but says outrageous things like the guy next door. Man words with woman parts-great idea, right? But in actuality, that stereotype isn't that cool; think about it. You're shooting baskets or what not, a girl comes over to join you, and it's great to be playing sports with a girl. That is, until you realize that she drops an obscenity every time she misses a shot, and burps and farts on the court more than you do. That's not exactly what becoming "one of the guys" is about. (Per Man Law #4236, I'm not allowed to reveal the details, but it involves face paint, drums, fried rattlesnake, and merry-go-rounds). If said girl reacts that way when she misses a shot, how she would react if we would make a mistake on a date? So some guys tend not to go for that type of girl...then such girls wonder why "guys won't ask me out" when they try so hard to be one of the guys. Admittedly, it's a stereotype double standard of sorts. Guys say they want their girls to be more "down-to-earth", but they usually don't mean "earthy" per se. It's similar to when girls say they want to date a "nice guy". They don't mean a Boy Scout, they just mean "don't beat me and steal all my stuff while I'm sleeping like my last boyfriend did."

Anyway, bottom line is, the same "bait-and-switch" when it comes to stereotypes happens in sports, especially football. We say we want this feel-no-pain, throw darts, hard-living QB...and then we bash Brett Favre for using painkillers to keep up that image. We say we want super-intelligent coaches who only care about winning...and then we bash Bill Belichick for having no personality. We say we want these acrobatic wide receivers who celebrate in the end zone and want the ball really bad...and then we bash Terrell Owens or Chad Johnson for complaining too much when they don't get the ball, or over-celebrating. Frankly, what we think we want or say we want and what we actually want are two different things. The sooner fans and media realize that, the better.

3 comments:

  1. Three comments here:

    One, that YouTube of the soccer players going at it was very cool.

    Two, on the Kimmel vs. Gould video: I like Emily Gould, and the Gawker site. They are both highly entertaining. But part of the reason Jimmy Kimmel looks like such a dick in that clip is because Emily was woefully unprepared for her appearance on the show. Maybe she wasn't expecting to get attacked by Kimmel, but she must have known the topic, and she should have foreseen that Kimmel would harbor some resentment towards Gawker. It's a shame (and a bit misguided of Kimmel) to blast her for Gawker, when she's only been the editor there for a short while (take on Nick Denton next time, tough guy), but he comes off as a dick because, quite frankly... he was very well prepared to bash Gould and Gawker. And, to be fair, if she had been a guy (Denton again) getting thrashed in such a manner by Kimmel, it wouldn't elicit nearly as much sympathy as nice sweet Emily getting creamed.

    Third, on the athletic girl thing: Athletic girls are cool. I like sporty chicks - girls you can run with, or play some sports with (softball, soccer, vball, frisbee). I agree that foul-mouth girls are not cool. Those are separate issues. Just kinda sorting out the rant a bit, that's all....

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  2. Fair points, SML. Let me just chatter back to further confuse the issues, ha. (This is a flaw of mine; my explanations are worse than the original!)

    Oh, I cheerfully agree that Emily Gould deserved some bashing. But I just get the feeling from Kimmel that he really is uptight. For example, Sarah was playing with his cue cards during the interview, and he was insistent that she stop. I mean, you're interviewing your girlfriend, what do you need cue cards for? Because his whole image and persona is so built around being laid-back, I find the flashes of uptightness that still seep out to be very informative. I'm biased as can be on this, of course. I tried to like Kimmel's show for a while now, because I don't really like evening talk shows and wanted to appreciate one of them, and I just couldn't do it. So I'm bitter. :-p

    And as for sporty chicks--I love sporty chicks. Look at my Random Sports Crush entries for proof. :-) If Sarah Silverman were to suddenly clean up her act, she'd have to change the locks on her door to keep me away. (Kidding, Internet stalkerazzi police!). It's just that too often, sporty chicks try too hard to be one of the guys, to the point of out-guying the guys. That annoys me.

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  3. Why couldn't they find a park for the soccer tricks? It seems weird they would do it at a restaraunt..Like they were just sitting around and someone was like "here's a ball, go do some stuff"

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