I typically keep my BYU football banter over on my Thor’s BYU Board site and separate from the Word, but worlds are colliding today because this is a topic that I feel compelled to address.

Why is Max Hall smiling?

I’ll tell you why: because he’s a moron.

Most of you, Word readers, are probably already familiar with the events of this last Saturday, in which rival collegiate football teams BYU and Utah played their annual game (if you can call it that).  It was about the ugliest game I’ve ever watched, marred by a ridiculous number of penalties for personal fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct.  A friend of mine said it well when he told me that we really didn’t get to see which team was better at football.  Too true.

Well BYU came out the victor in a 26-23 overtime result, but the story continued after the game when BYU quarterback Max Hall elected to speak his mind to the press with regard to the Utah football program.  He later issued an apology for the way in which his comments “came out” (and I love that they just came out that way, because he’s not at all responsible for forming the words in his mind and then directing them through his larynx and out his mouth, right?), but this whole thing reaffirmed for me something that I perceived when Max Hall first took the field three years ago: this is one arrogant kid.  He’s got a lot of talent in the game of football, don’t get me wrong, and at times I’ve been very impressed with his skills, but as his collegiate career winds to a close, I can tell you one thing: he will not be missed.  He’s a choke artist who can’t handle the pressure of a big game, who played like an absolute chump in the Utah game, forcing his defense to stay on the field pretty much the entire second half and do all the work, then claims “We deserve this.  We played our guts out,”  and who then sets his rabid ego loose and starts spouting off about how classless Utah is, etc. etc.

Well Max, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

How’s that for fresh content, Gee-rant?

So I watch American Idol.  There are a lot of people around my office who try to ridicule me for admitting that (all of whom I’m convinced watch the show in secret themselves), but in my opinion, the show is pretty entertaining, especially at the beginning when you get to watch all the lunatics who just want to get on TV.

Well I think I’ve about had all I can stand of the show after last night’s episode, in which the eight wildcard hopefuls were selected by the judges.  Here’s my issue: if the producers of the show were even thinly masking their shameless ploys for ratings in the past, they’ve stepped right out into the open now by picking Tatiana Del Toro as a wildcard possibility.  She is quite possibly the single most obnoxious, ridiculous, annoying person living on the planet today, and the fact that the judges continue to advance her through from round to round can only mean that they know how annoying she is, and that America will watch because they can’t stand her.  Good quality singers got snubbed from the wildcard round last night so this girl could go through and Idol could boost its ratings.  In my opinion, that pretty much obliterates the credibility of the show and the claim the judges make so often over the course of each season that “This is a singing contest.”

Yeah, right.

It’s a selling contest, plain and simple.  The judges have used the word “commercial” about the contestants enough this season already to make the price tags plain to see.  I have no problem with that part of it, it’s the shameless ploys for ratings that drive me nuts.  So pay attention, Idol: your ploys are backfiring.  The annoying people you put through are so nails-down-a-chalkboard grating to my nerves that I can’t stand to watch anymore.  If Tatiana gets through to the top 12 tonight, I’m done with the show for good, I swear it.

Also, on a side note, I think this year’s crop of contestants pretty much stinks.  It’s gonna come down to Danny Gokey and Lil Rounds for the finals, that much is as good as scripted.  The group of people that performed last night was awful for the most part.  And does anybody notice a trend with the judges?  Jorge Nunez was okay, but not phenomenal, but the judges lauded over him like crazy because he’s “living the dream,” coming from Puerto Rico to Hollywood and all that.  Scott MacIntyre (the blind guy) seems like a genuinely nice guy, and with the piano he’s good, but his voice alone is really not that spectacular, but Kara actually said, “You move mountains when you take the stage.”  Huh?  Move mountains?  Really?  It just seemed all a little too affirmative action to my taste. Even Danny Gokey, whose voice I like, seems to be getting a lot of play because of his story, his wife having recently passed away and all.

So if it’s really a singing contest, let’s stick to the singing.  That’s my final word.

Sadly, even with the added benefit of the DVR, I still found myself being peppered by social commentary rife with assumed moral superiority by the most socialist, most permissive, least moral people in the world.

Take, for example, the weepy tirade given by Dustin Lance Black, the writer of the gay-fest, Milk.  I won’t even re-print it here because it doesn’t deserve the press, but suffice it to say that he won the hearts of Hollywood with his tearful hopes of one day falling in love and getting married…to a man.  Ugh.

My favorite line of the night though, and most indicative of my point, was from Tilda Swinton during the presentation of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  First, let me preface by saying that the format for the major award presentations this year was a sickening exercise in sychophantism.   With five nominees in each category, the Academy decided to have five previous winners arrive on stage to introduce this year’s nominees.  But it wasn’t just introductions, it was a love-fest of elitist drivel, speaking of the art of acting and the performances by each nominee as if they had done something actually significant.  You would have thought that they had saved Africa (a favorite, though rarely-visited pet preach of the celeb-elites) by the sheer force of their acting.

Anyway, during one such moment, Tilda Swinton was introducing nominee Marisa Tomei, nominated for her role as the stripper love-interest of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Now, brace yourself: you are about to be so deeply moved with elightenment and higher understanding as imparted by Hollywood that you will never consider strippers in the same way again.  Said Swinton, “[your performance] showed us that a stripper needn’t ever take off her dignity with her clothes.”

Is that a choir of angels I hear?  Yes!  I see clearly now!  Strippers are dignified, beautiful creatures who never have drug habits or STD’s!  Poor strippers!  They have been so misunderstood!  All this time I thought they just got paid to remove their clothes; but no.  They are here to teach us about dignity.

So, anyway, on the whole, the show was actually very boring, what little of it I actually watched.  The production as a whole was seriously the worst I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.  In the past, under the skillful control of such great hosts as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, we would at least be served by a healthy dose of “are we really taking ourselves this seriously?”  But such was not the case this year.  The excuse given was that, in such troubled economic times (and don’t think that’s not a “hate Bush” message thinly veiled), it wasn’t socially conscious to do a big production, so they had to tone it down.  The reality is, Hollywood lost a TON of money this year so they just had to return to the “sell Hollywood” motif, which they certainly tried to do.

As host, Jackman had little face time, with a couple of big musical numbers mixed in, which only revealed that he actually can’t sing that well and, in my opinion, dropped his stock almost as precipitously as the Dow Jones in recent days.

So, to summarize, it’s not like I really expected much different, but this year was exceptionally appalling with its obvious anti-Proposition 8 agenda and willful encouragement of moral degradation.  The end result is that I’m actually, finally pretty much ready to boycott Hollywood for good.  And I mean that literally, I’m ready to leave Hollywood behind, eliminating it entirely from my experience, in exchange for good.  It’s ever more apparent that the two are becoming mutually exclusive.

I guess I could mourn the absence of witty commentary in this post with deeply-rooted primal screams.  Or at least Motley Crue’s totally awesome rock anthem Primal Scream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25qiZy7vmqY

Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• I don’t know if I’m more disturbed that such a comeback as this was ever conceived, much less carried out, or that it was actually voted by the viewers to the number one spot on VH1’s top 20 video countdown this weekend (which my wife was watching, not me. I discovered this entirely by accident, I swear, and it was not a pleasant discovery.)
• I love the “Roll Credits” intro, designed to make them look all rich and buff and hot and popular. I also enjoyed how the whole video had hot women hanging all over them. I said to myself, “Self, that is just like real life!”
• The song is really, really lame.
• Donny Wahlberg is really, really lame. I can’t stop seeing him as the creepy kid in his tightie-whities from The Sixth Sense.
• *Barf!* Oh…excuse me…I just…*BARF! BAAAAAAAAARRRRRRFFFFFFFF!!!!!*
• What the heck demographic are they supposed to be appealing to? Thirty-somethings who loved them when they were an actual boy band, as opposed to their current state of man-band, or has-been-band?
• Let me reiterate: *BARF BARF BARF!*