TTT Rocks the Mic Like a Vandal

You got a problem? Yo, I'll solve it. With an all new, all on time Three Things Thursday of course. For those of you who are new to this feature, Three Things Thursday is actually a service for my readers. Frankly, most of you can't be trusted to form your own valid opinions. Here I tell you what to think, so that you don't embarass yourself out there in the real world. This week, I tell you what to think about the Olympics:

Three things to like about the Turin Olympics

1. Italy - I seem to be an italiaphile, meaning I tend to like all things Italian (not “tend to have sex with all things Italian” you sicko). I see all the gorgeous vistas and buildings they show on TV between events and commercial breaks, and compare it to the parking garage I can see out of my window and a little piece of me dies. Not to mention that Turin is considered the “Detroit of Italy”; this is supposedly the ugly side. I’m sure it has been all tarted up for the Olympics, but it fuels my desire to go there like, right now.
2. Cross Country Skiing - Not the most telegenic of sports, but it can certainly be fun. There have been some ridiculously close races for medals so far, people skiing miles and miles only to have a home plate slide to the finish line decide their fate, its exciting stuff. I appreciate the sheer holycrapthatwasfast! essence of sports like downhill skiing and luge, but there’s something to be said about the winter’s marathon as well.
3. High m'f'n Def! - Have I mentioned that the Olympics are in High Definition, and that I am watching them in said High Definition? Because I am. And it is Beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the giant wad of cash I had to pay in order to do so. It is worth it though, you need the ultimate in image fidelity in order to pick out people in the background picking their noses.
   

Quitting is Not an Option

Quitting is not an option, but apparently delaying things indefinitely is kosher in these parts. It's not that I'm boring and have nothing to write about, it's just that I'm thinking, of things. I know not having anything to say hasn't stopped anyone from talking or writing before, sure, but I'm trying to be better then that. Mostly by not being anything at all.

Okay, so you don't buy that? I need a better excuse for not posting? Well it sucks to be you because I have one. A really good one. I had to -- hey, look at the puppy! OMGSOCUTE!!!one

My agent hard at work

Well that should answer everything. Oh, you were distracted? Well too bad, I don't repeat myself. Unless I was mumbling, I have a tendency to do that.

TTT Can Be Depressing

TTT (aka Three Things Thursday. I'm going to have to explain that until everyone on the Internet has seen the site. Like Rachael Ray and her EVOO thing) has arrived, without any doubt, despite my weeks absence. That's mostly because it's hard to have doubters when you don't have readers. Anyway, today's theme:

Three Things That Sucked in the Past Week

1. I had a car accident - Don't worry, I'm okay. I'm not great obviously, because for some reason my definition of great doesn't include having a car accident, but given all the things that could have happened instead I'm coming up roses. I'm going to do a longer post about this some month, but a list of sucktitude wouldn't be complete without it.
2. Winter Olympics ratings - I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for the Olympics. I like watching the ultimate moments of sports that I just barely know the rules to. However the 2002 Salt Lake and 2000 Sydney games were a low point for NBC's TV coverage. Twenty minute long human interest pieces followed by taped qualifying heats with an American, any American, instead of lower profile events that actually look interesting. Starting with the 2004 Athens games however, their coverage became less amero-centric (they actually played the anthems of other countries, something they completely avoided if possible in the previous games), cut down the human interest pieces to a reasonable amount and length, and added more coverage of smaller events, especially in their afternoon and cable shows. The Tourinino Games continued this, adding HiDef coverage with that. I'm scared that the low ratings will tempt NBC to go back to the old style of incredibly annoying coverage instead of continuing to improve.
   
3. All the blogs that updated in the past week - Sure, any blog's crappiness diminishes my blog, because I am involved in blogkind, but yeesh. Valentine's week is not a good week for blogdom, it gets a little angsty. It's a good thing the Olympics are on, otherwise I'd have no excuse and would be down in the muck with everyone else.

Three Things Thursday...Dead?

The theme for this week's Three Things Thursday is why people don't care about the Grammys.

...

Huh, I guess I can't think of anything. Not a single reason, bolded title and all, that I can think of. For once, I have failed you faithful reader, there will be no Three Things listed on this Thursday. When they ask, what Thursday is sadder then this one, they can reply, "None, none sadder."

Why We Don't Care About the Grammys

Oh sure, I'll bet plenty of people tuned in to watch the Grammys (sorry, 'Grammies' just looks too weird, it sounds like the award is sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch next to Grampies), but who's going to remember who won what in say, two months? I'm sure someone is going to commit it to memory now and recite it back in two months just to spite me, but the point still stands. It's fairly glamorous and gives people a good excuse to dress up, but the awards simply have no weight behind them. Here's why:

• Music is too subjective - People take great pride in having a 'weird' taste in music. When is the last time someone has told you 'Oh, I just like whatever music everyone else likes'? No, when it comes to musical taste people like to believe they are unique and beautiful snowflakes (go go go fight club!). Somehow these snowflakes are all supposed to bunch around one single song or album as the best for everyone, when each one has their own unique favorite song, and each one of those songs is on someone else's all time worst song list. If someone hates rap with a passion, a rap song getting song of the year won't get any respect from them no matter how well done or popular it is. Other fields like movies and books have this issue as well, but don't suffer as badly from the spread in opinion that music does.


• There are too many of them - In order to bridge some of that gap, the Grammys sectioned themselves into billions of little categories in an attempt to appease everyone. Instead it just dilutes the award. So a band won "Best New Male Rock/Alternative Song by a Group or Band that Sounds A Little too Close to Pearl Jam for Comfort", big whoop. I'm sure it's some musician's dream somewhere to win the BNMRASGBSALCPJC when they make it big, but the rest of us have no interest. For every category that sparks any interest for you, there are 300 that don't. The Grammys themselves have realized this over the years; this year only showing the absolute broadest categories and showing more performances then awards. Of course this cheapens the awards that aren't shown on TV.
• Individual taste is narrow and deep, collective taste is broad and shallow - Like any good compromise, the Grammys don't leave anyone happy. Think back, was there ever a year when all of your favorite songs and artists were nominated, let alone a year when they all won? Despite the protests of the millions of people that claim "I actually like a little bit of everything...except country", most people have a very narrow set of musical characteristics (not necessarily genres, but it could be that too) that they enjoy. Chances are that if you're enthusiastic about a band or just music in general, some of your favorite songs are either not by mainstream artists or not songs that got any radio airplay; they're flat out not popular, yet that doesn't affect your enjoyment of them.
  The selections of the Grammys however don't, can't, take that into consideration. The fact that they are voted on by groups of people, and the probability that the group is made up of diverse panelists instead of like-minded individuals, eliminates the chance for anything but more popular and mainstream songs being selected. While that may sort of satisfy a portion of the viewing audience, it's not really going to fully satisfy anyone and still leave a lot of people mad.

That said, Alicia Keys looked really good, and any excuse for that is fine by me.

The Ellipses are History! ... Huzzah!

The ellipses before each of the titles was starting to get on my nerves. It's one of those things that are cute originally but annoy you as your exposure to them grows, like Britney Spears. The titles will still be in the 'second part of a sentence starting with Dev Says...' format, it's just that the redundant punctuation will be gone.

...Bollywood + Fight Club. Wait, What's Rule No. 2 Again?

All I can say is, this is what happens to Fight Club when Bollywood gets their hands on it. Watch the videos, please, words simply don't do it justice.

When watching the first trailer, the first thought is "Wow, this is the stupidest remake idea ever conceived by humankind", and in a industry like the movie industry that loves to cannibalize it's past, that's saying something. However by the time you get through Music Video No. 4, you'll wonder why such genius hasn't revealed itself to us sooner. I think I just involuntarily preordered the DVD.

Go go go Fight Club! You got to go Fight Club!

...I Forgot to Mention Something

This new title rhymes too. Sorta. Almost. Is there any reason not to have a half-rhyme instead of a no-rhyme title? I didn't think so.

Oh, had I realized the sheer number of blogs that have used that same title for a blog post as my last post, I wouldn't have done it. I apologize for how derivative that was. I would go back and change it, but then this paragraph wouldn't make any sense, and we don't want this paragraph to look silly now, do we? *

*Yes, I realize I could just delete this paragraph too, but then that would be a huge waste of typing. I made a footnote and everything, that's historic. First blog footnote ever. We can't lose that.

...The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog!

So if you've been following the blog for months and months and -- well I guess there's only two months, you may notice a change in the blog's name. The blog used to contain my actual name, which was fairly unique, and I was feeling hamstrung by the possibility that if I posted something that was potentially controversial or risqué, months or years from now a friend or job interviewer could potentially type my name into Google and come across it and get the wrong idea. Those close to me and those with a mean internet detective streak will probably be able to put the pieces together easily, but hopefully this prevents me from being too easily googlable by the public at large.

I originally was going to make this a more personal blog, to keep people in my life informed with what goes on with me, so I didn't care if people came across it. However I discovered that I'm pretty much as bored with myself as everyone else seems to be, and that I really don't enjoy talking about my personal life. That's probably why I haven't even made a post about my personal life yet, despite supposedly being the reason I created it. For the most part I don't particularly care what I did and who I met today, and I don't think you will mind if I spare the mind numbing details. That's why this blog has been more broad (advocate's word) or pointless (critic's word) then your average personal blog, my heart was never set on the original plan.

Plus, I'd like to have the option of lying about things in my life and not dealing with any of the consequences. I may do the more personal site later on, but it won't be referenced here, and will probably be only half as awesome.

Oh, and if you don't know my name now, you will never (never never) know it. (No you won't! No, no you won't!)

I know I should be above altering songs from the 80's to taunt my supposed audience, and yet...I'm not, apparently.

...Three Things Thursday has Arrived!

Here at the I Says blog, the founding member has been considering running a weekly feature. Something to keep the (2) people reading coming back more then once maybe. Something that was alliterative, because having things that start with other letters is stupid. From this comes the genesis of Three Things Thursday. In the future it may come on Tuesday, or not at all, but frankly you won't care either way.

This was going to be Ten Things Thursday at first, but somebody

Oh hell naw!

was feeling litigious. Without further babbling, The Three Things Thursday Theme Today:

The First Three Things I Thought on the First Thursday

1. A tonload of people are going to be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, but the cool people are only watching it for the commercials. The really cool people are watching it in order to better formulate insults about the intelligence of the previous two groups. Those really cool people will then be hit by a bus, and will totally get how ironic that is.
2. I don't understand how crack is illegal, but Civilization 4 is freely distributed in stores worldwide. The game has a damn alarm built in to remind you to go to sleep. Otherwise you end up playing it until the sun comes up and goes back down again. Civilization may actually become the downfall of civilization.
   
3. I'm taking wagers on how long this feature lasts, unless that's illegal in which case I'm not taking wagers on how long this feature lasts. Which means I still am, but now I just have plausible deniability if the Feds come knocking. I'm just kidding websurfing law enforcement officer, (no, I'm not) these odds are for entertainment purposes only! (they aren't, -130 for less then 1 week, +120 for 2 weeks or more) It's a joke! (It isn't) Seriously! (Liar)