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April 22, 2005

Five Things I Hate, Plus Five More

There's a blog-tag kind of game going around the Internet, where you're supposed to name five things you hate that everyone else loves, and then pass it on to other people. I've avoided answering one of these in the past (I think it's a little blog-cliquey), but I answered over at AriGoesDown and then realized that, hey, I've got a lot of hate in me and I don't mind sharing it.

This is a narcisstic post and contains crude language (turning off my f-bomb censor), so unless you give a fig about what I hate and the vile language I'll stoop to in expressing that hated, move on the next post.

1. White Wine. I don't see the point of white wine. I don't know why people drink it. I don't care if you're supposed to have white wine with fish or light meat. To me, red wine goes with everything, and if it's too strong and overpowers the taste of the meal, so what?, you're still drinking red wine, and you ought to be pretty happy about that.

Let's be honest: white wine isn't even wine. It's a Bartles & James wine cooler but without that delicious "cooler" part, so I'm basically just drinking tainted water that tastes faintly of animal piss, unleavened by that sweetass pineapple/melon flavoring.

Red wine is real wine. It's the sort of wine you drink before fucking or fighting. White wine is what you have at Nice Dinner Parties where people discuss fine restaurants & the superior quality of BabyBjorn pappooses. I don't get invited to those parties, so I have no need to drink this vile swill, the white trash of the vinyard.

2. Talking About So-Called "Great Acting Performances." Although once in a while I will notice fine acting, I kind of hate having to discuss who did a good job of acting in a movie. If an actor does his job, I don't really notice him acting. He's just good.

I'm much more interested in talking about script or direction or cinematography or set design or hell, even costuming, if the costumes warrant it. As soon as people start to say "Jamie Foxx was amaaaaaazing," I begin counting down the time until the conversation dies out and we can talk about something more interesting.

To me, if you're talking about performances in a movie, you're talking about a bad, boring movie. If the movie was good and compelling, you ought to be talking about scenes and lines in it, or how it moved you or scared you. If you're intellectually dissecting the power of someone's performance, the movie probably failed its primary mission.

3. Edward Fucking Norton. I don't, on the other hand, mind talking about bad acting, and I don't get the Edward Norton "thing." I know a lot of chicks are going to say he's cute or whatever, but I hate him.

Some writers are "writerly" and you see their fingers clicking at the typewriter as you read them; too many cute fluorishes and too-clever lines. Well, Edward Norton is "actory." I can see his technique rather than his character.

Plus, no offense, he has that sort of distant and lost look in his eyes that I associate with serial killers and child molesters. He's an asshole, and I hope he gets caught with his dick in something nasty so they take his career away from him posthaste.

4. Spike Lee. So many people hate this guy I'm not really sure it's even fair to name him on the list. But I do grow weary of people insisting he's brilliant. Mainly guilty white liberals, usually women, are big on claiming he's great.

Why? Who knows. Just something you're supposed to say, like "we should pay teachers as much as doctors" or "I've been really meaning to read more Jonathan Franzen" or "well of course I'd love to go hiking."

Spike Lee is the most self-indulgent, cutesy-poo, archly "avant garde" director of glorified film-school student movies in history. He is such an insecure and egotistical prick he cannot for one moment let the viewer lose himself in the actual *story* without deliberately calling attention to himself through overdirection.

Not that focusing on his stories would help, because they suck too.

As someone once said, quite brilliantly I think (no, it wasn't me), Spike Lee is the first director in history to find a manner by which to star in a movie from behind the camera.

And what's the deal with him calling his movies not "A Spike Lee Film" but "A Spike Lee Joint"? Is that supposed to be cool? Just making up stupid words and using them to replace other words?

Okay, then you're not reading the Ace of Spades blog. You're reading the Ace of Spades kabob, boyyyyzzz! Now I'm cool too, right?

Asshole.

He's a douchebag and a dick and if I see him whooping it up at a Knicks game one more time I will hunt him down and skin him like an animal.

5. iPods. When these became necessary for thirty-plus-year-olds I'm not quite sure, but it seems to have happened over the course of the past year.

I used to like iPods... back when I was in fucking high school, and we called them "Walkmen." And yeah, I sure thought I was fuckin' cool, slippin' on my headphones, cranking that tasty Steely Dan Greatest Hits album up to nine, tuning everyone out... I did not think the girl could be so cruuellll...

But then, for the next, I don't know, twenty frigging years, I was quite capable of walking around and riding the subways without a Walkman. And so, as far as I can tell, was everyone else.

But now it seems that Walkmen-- which we were all getting along without quite fine until recently -- are absolutely needed if you are to function in everyday life.

Why? Who knows.

And yeah-- these carry a lot more songs than a Walkman, or even a "Discman," could. So what? Under what circumstances will you require listening to 1800 hours of music? Unless you're Richard Fucking Branson and you are, in fact, attempting to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon while naked from the waist down, you don't need a Super-Duper Walkman. So fucking stop pretending you do, and for the love of God, stop talking about the stupid fucking things.

You're all driving me fucking bananas already.

Hey, guys-- you know what else you suddenly need after getting along without for fifteen years? Trappers and of course Trapper Keepers. How the hell you gonna carry around your important memos and Motions to Compel Production of Documents without a good Trapper Keeper under your arm?

6. Movies About Fucking Retards. Every year or two, we are forced to suffer through the sappy commercial campaign for Yet Another Move About a Fucking Retard. They all suck -- every single one of them, with the possible exception of Charlie, but that was only good because they smartened up his retarded ass for half the movie -- and yet Hollywood keeps cranking these manipulative and vile pieces of shit out like clockwork.

First things first: these movies are all transparently Oscar-bait. No one acts in these movies because they "fell in love with the script;" no, these douchebags take a role in a retard-movie because they are almost guaranteed to at least get an Oscar nomination out of it. (Unless they play the retard like a real retard, as Sean Penn did in I Am Sam, in which case the film becomes too real and too painful to watch and so no one wants to acknowlege its existence.)

Next: They're fucking lies. They all feature "Magical Retards From Whom People Learn All Sorts of Wisdom and Insight Into the Joy of Life." The truth is, mental retardation is a horrible fucking thing, and I know this personally. Yes, of course, someone with this disability can be loved and loving and an important person and all that. But in my experience, the mentally challenged simply do not fucking sit around waiting to solve my life's problems for me by demonstrating their love of the "simple pleasures of life," like feeding pidgeons or having a gift at origami. To be perfectly frank, they're a bit of a handful and, there's no getting around it, their condition is a deeply sad one.

But goddamnit, don't all of these Magical Retard movies almost make you wish that you too were retarded, so that you could share in the wonderful gift of being severely mentally handicapped and emotionally stunted?

Fuck you, Hollywood. Dishonest, transparently self-serving, and worst of all, boring and shamelessly manipulative. No thanks, I will not be seeing House of D, even if David Duchovny begs me to on his blog. (Yeahp, he has one, and he's begging you to see it.)

And I don't care to see Robin Williams as a retard; quite frankly, I've seen him as a retard numerous times before: on Mork & Mindy, in Good Morning Vietnam, in Patch Adams, in Comic Relief I through XIII, just giving interviews on Jay Leno, etc. The man should not get an Oscar nod for playing basically a low-energy version of himself.

And, while we're on the subject, Robin Williams is not funny and never was. Yes, he was good in Garp, and okay, there was that one special on HBO where he made me laugh by doing the "gay San Fransisco voice" that, quite frankly, an awful lot of people can do; we just know we'll catch hell if we try. But apart from one movie and fifty minutes of decent (though not great) comedy, what the fuck has this sasquatch-retard asshole done to earn this kind of career?

Fuck you, Robin Williams. You suck, almost as much as Whoopie Goldberg.

7. Movies About Wise and Mysterious Black People Who Seem To Exist Primarily To Solve White Boys' Personal Problems. I can also do without this film genre, a smaller one to be sure, but almost as fucking annoying as the last.

Who was it that first fucking thought this up? Who conceived the genre of "Magical Negroes Stepping Out of the Darkness To Help Troubled White Boys Understand and Conquer Their Own Fears and Flaws"?

For a progressive and liberal industry like Hollywood, this is a condescending kind of movie, isn't it? Do black folks really sit around dreaming of helping rich and handsome Matt Damon succeed in life? For God's sake, I can't even get an extra biscuit at KFC.

When Will Smith rings my door-buzzer to explain to me how I can finally make some crazy blog-money, I'll believe the conceit of this genre. Until then, fuck these stupid-ass movies too.

Radio, from two years back, was both a Magical Retard and a Magical Negro movie. Cuba Gooding Junior played a Magical Negro Retard who helped Ed Harris regain his love of life and of football... or something. I don't know. I didn't fucking see the stupid shit.

And neither did you. Kudos to you for that.

8. Slang/Catchphrases/"Hip Lingo" Past Its Expiration Date. Most people are like me. 80% of us are not hip and not trendy and not on the cutting edge of "The Scene," wherever that is (I'd go, but no one will tell me where).

So those of us in that 80% have to grasp something: By the time you hear some cool new slang or a funny catchphrase, it's almost certainly either played out or just about to become so.

So that means: Pick your spots, use your new pet-phrase quickly and effectively, and then stop using it. Forever.

The "ironic" use of hip slang, by the way, only extends the shelf life by a couple of months. In 1999, you could say "let's get jiggy with it." In early 2000, you could say "let's get jiggy with it" ironically, to show how unhip you were, and yet, by doing so knowingly, to show that you were actually still pretty hip.

By 2001, anyone saying "let's get jiggy with it," ironcially or not, was a fucking douchebag who needed to be put down like a cow with hoof-and-mouth.

And that leads to a bit of snark that I hate most among all others. Back when I was a lad, knee-high to a june-bug, we would say, after someone confided some embarassing or graphic detail about his or her life, "I did not need to know that" or, a little bit later, "A bit more than I needed to know."

Since that time, this obnoxious and unfunny "joke," if you can call it that, has evolved. People are just still determined to make this lame joke, now at least 15 years old. They know that previous ways of saying it are played out, so they resort to coming up with ostensibly new ways of saying the same put down. "A bit more than I needed to know" gave way to "Too much information," which briefly became "T.M.I.," and then, in its latest incarnation, became "oversharing," as in "That's... oversharing."

It doesn't matter if you come up with a new way of saying it: the joke itself is cliche. And it was never that funny to begin with. And a lot of cocksuckers were so eager to use this stupid joke that they would use it in inappropriate situations, situations where the person they're talking with is, say, explaining some embarassing medical condition. So you'd have some assholes, being trusted with the confidence of, say, their friend's chronic urinary tract infections, and rather than showing support, they compound the embarassment of revealing something like that just to get out their stupid fucking "Thanks for sharing...!" joke out.

Knock it off. The joke sucks. If you are really made uncomfortable by something someone just said, either say "I'm a little uncomfortable talking about that" or make a slight wince of the face, that face you make when you say "eeesh." That communicates your discomfort well enough without resorting to moronic cliched "jokes."

If you really feel you must make some small joke about it, if just to relieve the social embarassment of hearing something a bit too intimate, try something a little different and not as scripted, like "Don't let's get into that right now" or "Moving right along..."

Do not say "that's oversharing." Because if you say it to the wrong person -- like, for example, me -- you will find the next morning that a "homeless person" has coincidentally keyed the words "Stupid Fucking Jagoff" on to your car and defecated all over its interior.

Now that would be oversharing.

9. All Other Sports Except Football. It's a weird thing. I love football; I hate just about every other sport. Well, not hate. I don't mind their existence per se. I just don't like the fact that whenever I hang out with guys, or even girls, there's a 75% chance I'm going to have to hear about how Mariano Rivera really blew it in the last game.

Who cares? I don't. So why don't you ask me if I care before you drop this stupid shit on me?

A lot of women hate sports talk, and quite frankly, I'm right there with you ladies. I don't like boring conversations about something that, let's face it, doesn't even really offer much fodder for interesting analysis or opinion. Maybe I like football because it's the hardest sport to have a discussion about. All the football talk I have is pretty simple and brief: who looks good this season, who got traded where, and occasionally if the Giants should yank their current sucky quarterback for their second-string "quarterback of the future" who, everyone knows, will also suck. And suck hard.

On the other hand there's baseball, a game invented primarily to give uninteresting men something to talk about with other uninteresting men and thus perhaps avoid those awkward pauses during which homosexual coupling becomes a dangerously real possibility. Were it not for interminable discussions about slugging averages and on-base percentages, upwards of half the male population would be humping each other like rabbits in high rut.

Individual statistics come up in football, of course, but it's such a team sport that it's hard to say, for example, whether Kurt Warner was a better QB than Peyton Manning. Too much depends on the quality of their respective running backs, O-lines, and receiving corps. It's a futile question to try to answer, and so most people who aren't fucking insane don't bother trying, or only try for a minute or two.

Not baseball heads. Oh no. There are so many stats in baseball you actually can have a thoughtful discussion about whether Barry Bonds was a more valuable player than Ted Williams, and so baseball geeks insist on having them. Far too frequently and in way too much detail. And, alas, too often within my range of hearing.

And the other sports all suck too. Basketball is boring, hockey is both boring and hard to follow, soccer is just a bunch of jerkoffs running around in a field and occasionally kicking a stupid ball when it comes close to them.

And I'm tired of the expectation that, as a heterosexual male, I'm supposed to have an opinion about any of this nonsense.

Well, here's my opinion: it all sucks and is a big waste of time.

Except for football.

God, I hope Eli Manning really is the Quarterback of the Future we've been waiting for since Phil Simms.

10. The Shackling Myth of the So-Called "Female Orgasm." Look, angry feminist women basically invented this bullshit in 1971 to both achieve "equality" with men and also make us wigged-out all the fucking time about the one thing we actually enjoyed doing with them.

But there's no such thing. Never was. Doesn't exist.

I'm in my thirties, and if women were capable of achieving an "orgasm," don't you think I would have seen some shred of evidence of this by now?

But I haven't. Not once. Not a single woman.

I've seen no evidence of the "female orgasm." Nothing. Ab-so-lutely nothing.

But don't let's get into that right now.

posted by Ace at 01:16 AM

Comments

Ace - work on those filters. You're going to miss out out on some good stuff - like the ABC story I just zapped into my blog about a defense lawyer who is an "adult film" star.

ABC used the word (P)(O)(R)(N) in their URL and your filters are choking on it.

Posted by: Purple Avenger on April 22, 2005 04:24 AM

Female orgasm--
It's all there in the movies. You just gotta rent the right ones.

Posted by: on April 22, 2005 04:25 AM

As Christopher Hitchens says, "Wine is red".

Posted by: on April 22, 2005 04:44 AM

Oversharing, dude, oversharing.

Posted by: someone on April 22, 2005 04:46 AM

I'm pretty sure the orgasm thing is real Ace.

One time with my girlfriend, she convulsed pretty hard, and if I remember right, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a sneeze.

Posted by: krakatoa on April 22, 2005 05:14 AM

More to the point though, just what the fuck is the deal with Elvis Costello?

I'm driving back from picking up some Chinese takeout, one of his insipid little tunes comes on, and I turned it up to listen to it.

About halfway through the song I erupted with the all-to-obvious: "this is complete shit!"

Talk about peer pressure. He can't sing. He can't write. He can barely play guitar, and let's face it, he ain't exactly a looker... and yet somehow he is perceived of as some great talent.

Seriously... someone name a song of his that comes up even to the artistic and foot tapping level of the theme from Beverly Hillbillies. You. Can't. Do it.

But I turned up his song, all the same. Who was it that slipped me THAT koolade, cuz I got a couple of wiffle ball bats all picked out for your beating, and all weekend to work out my aggression.

Posted by: krakatoa on April 22, 2005 05:26 AM

krakatoa -

*dueling-glove slap*

suh, i demAND satisfaction! this slanduh will not go unanswered!

I will name TEN such songs:

"Watching the Detectives"
"Accidents Will Happen"
"Radio Radio"
"Oliver's Army"
"Two Little Hitlers"
"Love for Tender"
"Dr. Luther's Assistant"
"Big Sister's Clothes"
"I Hope You're Happy Now"
"American Without Tears"

It's true, he's been jumping back and forth over the fabled shark of late. But he had a good run back in the seventies and early eighties. With a few isolated good songs thereafter.

On another note (ba-dum): can anyone hook me up with a live link for that "When the Man Comes Around" video from election time? All the paths I find lead to the same page, which is no good.

Something that classic can't have just disappeared, can it?

Posted by: Knemon on April 22, 2005 05:42 AM

Top drawer, especially the iPod bit.

Re the female orgasm, I'll clue you in on a little secret: Let her indulge her Ed Norton fantasy and you're home free.

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on April 22, 2005 07:05 AM

hey ace - has "jumped the shark" entered the category of obsolete slang yet?

Posted by: Knemon on April 22, 2005 07:13 AM

Trapper Keepers. Brilliant.

And, yes, shark-jumping needs to be consigned to history's dustbin of discarded lies.

Posted by: Finn McCool on April 22, 2005 07:30 AM

What do I hate?

Dude, you don't have enough fucking bandwith (yeah, the number is approaching a bazillion)

I would love to gunt punch people that love:

1) TV "shows" -- specifically the jerkoff-guy-in-the-flannel shirt that is hooked up with a too hot for him female on those lame CBS sitcoms

Are they trying to subliminally tell fat-fucks that "HEY -- IT'S OK TO BE AN UNFUNNY FAT FUCK --- YOU STILL HAVE A CHANCE TO PORK JAMIE GERTZ!!"

please

#s2-5) Jim Nantz, Frankie Muniz, Andy Openface (man I hate that cocksucker), & Oprah.

Why can't anyone call bullshit on Oprah's career? She started out as a trash-tv sleaze merchant like the rest of them...but now is above the fray because she'll occasionally overpay at toll booths?

fuck her. fuck them all.

Posted by: sonofnixon on April 22, 2005 08:07 AM

You must REALLY hate that movie, 25th Hour then. Both Spike Lee and Ed Norton for that one.

But Spike Lee hates what he calls "The Magic Nigger" in movies too.

Posted by: Moonbat_One on April 22, 2005 08:17 AM

word to your mother

Posted by: Dave in Texas on April 22, 2005 08:20 AM

Did you see Primal Fear? Norton is amazing in that. I also really liked 25th Hour, despite it being a Spike Lee production (I have a whole theory that Lee does better with white people movies and Quentin Tarantino does better with black people movies).

And I love Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand. They taste like summer. Maybe we'll drink a couple of bottles on Saturday with the dual purpose of thinking up a name for the show and showing you that white wine has its appeal.

Posted by: Karol on April 22, 2005 08:58 AM

This is why I liked "White Men Can't Jump". No Magic Negro and no 'tards. Just a pair of guys fucking each other around until they learn to be a little more discreet about fucking each other around so they can both pretend it ain't happening. Which is what white guys have to do if they want to stay alive.

Of course that hideous Rosie troll was in that. I would love to get her out behind the horse barn and crush her head with a shovel. Fuck yes.

Oh, and Prince. That fucker is lost on me. Reminds me of a cockroach. Chicks that dig Prince, that think he's hot? I have no chance with them. I am like the anti-Prince.

Your show should be called Hoist the Black Flag.

Posted by: spongeworthy on April 22, 2005 09:11 AM

I've seen no evidence of the "female orgasm." Nothing. Ab-so-lutely nothing.

Duuuuude, you must be lousy.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 09:12 AM

another thing I hate...

Chicks with big racks who don't get my jokes.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 09:18 AM

Your show should be called Hoist the Black Flag.

Hey, that's pretty cool.

Posted by: Bob on April 22, 2005 09:22 AM

Well, I have been with lots of chicks--I mean lots--and I never saw one come. Of course most of them were scared out of their wits (for good reason, as it turns out!) and I guess it's difficult to bust one when you are beginning to realize you have made a serious mistake like getting in my van.

Posted by: spongeworthy on April 22, 2005 09:22 AM

How about Host The Black Flag?

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 09:22 AM

Re: did "jump the shark" jump the shark?

I kept wanting to write "jump the shark" i that entry, to say that other catchphrases had jumped the shark, and then I realized the world of hurt I was looking at if I did, so I kept avoiding it.

Has jump the shark jumped the shark? I don't know. A lot of people say it has, but I find it a very useful expression at this point. It's not cool or hip or funny anymore; it's just useful, like the word "trousers" is useful.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 09:25 AM

That is some wonderful hatred.

I have a feeling, though, this is like that "Supervolcano" show. The initial eruption is only the beginning...

Posted by: Slublog on April 22, 2005 09:26 AM

The Magical Retard and Magical Negro bits were brilliant! And to tie them together with that nauseating Radio was the icing on the cake (yes, I admit, I saw it...or my kids did - I just happened to be in the room at the time). Ace ol' boy - you need to do a full analysis and exposition on The Hollywood Universe: Deluded, Pot-Smoking, Bullshit Magic Plot- Conveniences That Only Liberals Would Believe; or, you know, something like that.

Posted by: Iggy on April 22, 2005 09:28 AM

damn, great list

if i have to hear anymore gushing about f@#$ing ipods i'm gonna go insane

and i wonder how long the list of "magical" crap movies would be? you could practically write a book

Posted by: johnny on April 22, 2005 09:30 AM

Geez you're a touchy and judgemental bastid.
Guess none of us are as nice as we used to be.
Question;
What about the guys with their pants falling off their ass and their underwear showing? Do you want to slap them silly or is it just me, getting old and cranky? Does it matter if its nice underwear, or does that actually make it worse?

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 09:32 AM

Or maybe Hoist the Black Fag!

Though I imagine there would be some concern about inciting lynch mobs from the bluenoses.

Posted by: spongeworthy on April 22, 2005 09:35 AM

Chicks with big racks who don't get my jokes.

What a coincidence! One thing I hate is anonymous voices who can't take jokes!

Boy, I betcha that Ed Norton could make a woman scream...

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 09:35 AM

Excellent, thought provoking hatred Ace. Don't believe in the female orgasm thing either. What would be the point?

One thing I hate is these little high school bastards who play shitty rap music through 80 inch sub-woofers so fucking loud that, even though they're twenty cars behind me at the light, every fucking loose connection in my car is vibrating like a mother fucker and the fillings in my teeth feel like they're going to fall out.

Now get the fuck off of my lawn!

Posted by: compos mentis on April 22, 2005 09:44 AM

Ace:

I hate people who think that baseball sucks. Baseball haters should shampoo my crotch. It's the one true perfect sport, but I wouldn't expect some NFL troglodyte to understand that.

"Jumped The Shark" has jumped the shark. The next person who says it to me is getting a crowbar to the shins.

Reality shows. This is proof that there is no God -- no loving God would allow these soul-destroying, pointless, aimless, wastes of time to get on the air (and yes, that includes American Idol).

Snotty twentysomething lefties. Kid, you don't know shit. It's not your fault; you haven't lived long enough to know shit yet. But your world-weary contempt for everything most Americans believe in is not only irritating, but indicative of a mental shallowness that you can only pray you grow out of before you reach the age of thirty.

Someone who calls tea "chai". I hate that shit. It's pretentious as hell.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 09:44 AM

Boy, I betcha that Ed Norton could make a woman scream...

Absolutely. Why else do you think Trixie put up with him?

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on April 22, 2005 09:54 AM

Ok, as an over 30 person, I'm gonna defend that iPod thing. When the kids are screaming or fighting or whining, and I just Can't Take Them Anymore - nothing cures the sole better than that iPod. Plus, my husband will do the dishes listening to his crappy music on it, and I don't have to hear it. Don't tell him I said that, because he has discovered the mythical female orgasm.

Now, tell me more about this Trapper Keeper ... how much stuff does it hold??? 'Cause, I got a lot of pencils.

Posted by: carin on April 22, 2005 09:55 AM

Neighbors that live to groom their fucking lawn like there are no other fucking priorities in life.

Bob, Arnold Palmer is not going to drop from the sky and give you a gajillion dollars and eternal life as a reward for your lifelong stewardship of the grass.
No. You have actually been wasting a large portion of your life on maintaining 3/4 acre of tiny leaves. You stupid shit. Even a toy train hobby make more sense, and toy trains make no fucking sense.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 09:56 AM

What I hate?

Old drivers.

Yeah, I know that will be me someday, but nothing gets me more frustated than missing a light because the blue hair in front of me is taking 5 minutes to make a left-hand turn in her land yacht of a Buick, Lincoln or whatever.

Or when you're driving in some light snow and the person ahead of you thinks it's a friggin' blizzard and is driving approximately 1.5 miles per hour. Hey, if you can see pavement, it's NO BIG DEAL!

Posted by: Slublog on April 22, 2005 10:01 AM

Baseball? The perfect sport. Think about it. For half the game, you stand out on a grassy field. The other half you sit on a wooden bench watching the other guys on the grassy field. Perfect....

The reason baseball is so enamored by stats is that there is nothing else interesting about the game. Really. Do the test. Take a stopwatch to a game and just time the amount of time one single players runs. It's less than a minute mostly. The perfect sport for a lazy turd.

Posted by: Tim on April 22, 2005 10:01 AM

Nicholas, if I was about 3 months younger I wouldn't get that joke.

And Ace is right on one thing; baseball STINKS. It pi$$es me off when the 50,000th rerun of Law and Order is pre-empted by a pack of spitting crotch-scratchers...and I'm not talking about "The Simple Life."

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 10:03 AM

I feel I can speak as an expert here, because I know nothing about baseball, don't even know what information the stats refer to, and have watched only one live game in my entire life.

Baseball is so slow and boring it staggers the imagination. It is so boring that it makes me angry.

I can't believe some people actually damage their children by taking them to games and forcing them to pretend they had a great time.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 10:13 AM

The thing that kills me about MLB baseball is that it's 98% dull as fuck punctuated by occasional flashes of athletic excellence. I really enjoy watching the highlights montages of the day's baseball games. It's like those "1001 Cumshots" pornos but with more jumping.

But I cannot watch more than one pitch of a regular game without my mind drifting towards something else. . .ANYTHING else.

Posted by: tachyonshuggy on April 22, 2005 10:20 AM

I don't get the "Trixie" joke myself, but then, I've tried to avoid Ed Norton movies.

Now, tell me more about this Trapper Keeper ... how much stuff does it hold??? 'Cause, I got a lot of pencils.

Oh, not all that much, really. The trappers are pretty thin and can only hold an essay or two of high school length (three to four pages, tops).

But see, they TRAP papers inside, unlike your old school folders, so those three or four pages you have in there are staying in there.

I think the Trapper Keeper, in its later, more refined incarnations, held lots of pens and pencils and magic markers and maybe even a calculator and a pencil sharpener. It was. Da Bomb.

Posted by: on April 22, 2005 10:21 AM

Yeesh, all the baseball haters out there! Too many years of overhyped, televised sports have ruined your appreciation of the finer things. Since you hang out at ace's, I forgive you.

And I second the guy who hates the atomic subwoofer driven hip-hop you hear coming out of some cars. And I also hate people who piss away $15K on a premium soundsystem in some crappy Honda Civic or Dodge Neon. Or people who spend $5K on spinner hubcabs for some high-mileage shitbox, but can't be bothered to fix the muffler. Assholes.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 10:21 AM

Oh Monty. You poor thing.
Your father brought you to baseball games, didn't he? Maybe he even bought you a glove...and played catch with you in the yard?
*SOB*
You poor, sick bastard. You can't help it.
He did this to you.
Look, its not his fault. He didn't know. His father did it to him too.
If you can learn to control yourself, you can break the cycle.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 10:27 AM

Heyyyyyyyyyy, 'hoist the black flag' is not bad at all.

Posted by: Karol on April 22, 2005 10:27 AM

Baseball should be played by young boys up to the age of 14 or so. Then they should stop. That would put a real dent in our overpopulation problem of overpaid fat-ass guys in tights. Man I hate professional baseball. It even sounds stupid--like "professional tiddlywinks".

Posted by: rho on April 22, 2005 10:29 AM

ACE - Right on the Money, eerr, except for the female orgasm. I haven't yet met a woman I couldn't make come, and I can't really feel satisfied during intercourse unless I've made her come beforehand (unless of course it's tampon time) - there's nothing like it down there afterwards from an insertion perspective - the contractions are amazing and can milk you home with no thrusting required. Maybe I've been lucky - the other strange thing is that not of these women know how (or care) to give head. If only God put the G spot in the back of their throats, hmmm?

Baseball is almost as useless as cricket - we ar in the sports interregnum before Sept.

Posted by: IBPAYNE on April 22, 2005 10:32 AM

Great piece of misanthropy. You've earned the right to adopt the Mencken quote on your masthead.
I was watching TV with my sister in the mid-80's when I commented "not another hooker with a heart of gold movie." She shot me a withering look as though I were some heartless conservative. The movie wasn't "Klute" although that qualifies. Do you think there's room for that genre in your critique?
As Katherine Hepburn said of acting: "It is the most minor of gifts, and not a very highclass way to earn a living. After all Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four."

Posted by: tom scott on April 22, 2005 10:34 AM

Monty,

I with you on your list. While I like football, baseball is about as perfect of a sport as there is. Meanwhile, soccer sucks, and hockey is just soccer on ice. Did anyone actually miss the NHL season?

And reality shows do suck. I don’t want to hear about Richard from Survivor or Trista and whoever’s wedding or who Donald Trump fired last night. The only good that has come from reality shows is that they’ve helped to cure my TV addiction. I should be grateful to them for that at least.

Snotty twentysomething lefties: beyond contemptible. I work for a university, and these people constantly write illogical, yet obnoxiously self-assured editorials for the newspaper. They seem to think they know it all because they got an “A” in their freshman intro to poli sci class, where the only requirement was that they parrot their professor’s idiotic leftist opinions. The only consolation I have is that at least half of them will grow up and realize how ridiculous they were in their youth.

Other hatreds: MTV. Why do people still watch a music channel that doesn’t play music? Plus, they’re largely responsible for propagating reality shows.

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen: Why are these two famous? Can anyone even name anything they've been in other than "Full House"? Now I’m supposed to be concerned because one of them has anorexia or something. Who cares? Don’t 90% of Hollywood actresses have anorexia? They’re like Paris Hilton. They’re famous, but no one knows why.

Posted by: Jason on April 22, 2005 10:42 AM

No. It is evil. It jumped .... ahhh!! I can't even bring myself to say it!!

It's so over, it makes over look new again. It joins the long list of words and phrases that can only be said ironically, like "the little woman" or "flim flam" or "gobsmacking."

The Phrase That Must Not be Named must be destroyed! Sharkus Jumpus Delenda Est!!!

(But a pirate-themed show name is not half bad ... just "The Black Flag" perhaps?)

Posted by: Finn McCool on April 22, 2005 10:45 AM

Well, since people are taking this chance to name things they hate, I'm going to too...

Reality Shows -- in fact, television in general is rotten. There's not a single show I watch anymore, and if the kids didn't like Cartoon Network and Disney we wouldn't be wasting the money. Also, this clip...

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/worstclips2.html

...really demonstrates that today's television is targeting a degenerate audience.

Cell phones -- Wow, HOW did rude, self-centered ADD-affected adults EVER survive without them? Cell phones have ONE good purpose: emergencies. Maybe they're good for finding out what your hubby wants for dinner. What they're NOT good for is keeping you company in the check out line or holding loud 20 minute conversations about the boil you just had removed. They're also not good for making business deals in the middle of a pedicure, you pretentious dorks, because despite your desperation it does NOT make you look o so important to the plebes. The Earth WILL spin without you when you're making a trip to the gas station or buying a frappucino, so turn that dang thing off and do something productive, like, I don't know, pulling your head out yer azz.

Baseball -- nothing more to add to Ace's assessment.

Lip collagen -- The only thing worse than a woman with too much lip showing is one who does that to herself INTENTIONALLY. Yeah, men think it's sexy but honestly, you might as well lust over raw liver, AND the liver would be more organic (and certainly more intelligent than any woman who overbloats her mouth). Go slobber over Jessica Alba and Angelina Jolie, you superficial morons. A Barbie doll has less artifical enhancement.

Hollywood liberals -- I can't say more than has already been said over the years, and yet I can't say enough about how much I really really HATE actors who don't know when to STFU.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 10:48 AM

I'll second cell phones. How did a everybody get so damn important that they need to be on the phone constantly? Hell, most of the time, I consider phone calls an unnecessary hassle.

Posted by: Jason on April 22, 2005 10:52 AM

I second the hatred for "chai." It's closely related to my hate of overly-elaborately-named Starbucks drinks like "grande soy vanilla nonfat latte, lightly buttfucked," but it's a whole different category of hate. One is just pretentious, but the other is both pretentious and vaguely New-Agey, in that "I'm a suburban white person who thinks everything associated with India is automatically just so amazing and spiritual" way.

Yoga sucks too, for the same reason, and for its faddishness and exhibitionism. Oh, look at you, carrying your yoga mat with you all day. What, they don't have mats at the friggin' studio? Oh, look at you, coming to the field in the park where I'm just trying to get some sun and read a book, and ostentatiously doing yoga poses in a conspicuous location so everyone can admire how flexible you are. Next time I see you I'm going to walk over and ask you to try and suck your own dick.

And a woman told me she had an orgasm last year, but I don't believe her; I think she just peed on me and made up a cover story because she was embarrassed.

As Tucker Max says, "The sex was great. I came."

Posted by: Alex on April 22, 2005 10:55 AM

Ace, I'm calling you on #10. It's just a thinly-veiled attempt to score some. You'll be collecting young lovelies who will "prove" to you that the female orgasm does exist. Happy research to ya!

Posted by: dano on April 22, 2005 11:01 AM

No, that's the point of my frequent suggestions that I'm gay.

Can I be "Turned"?

Well, maybe. But you're really going to have to make some serious effort.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 11:05 AM

bbeck, spot on with the cell phones.
That situation is bad and getting worse. Monday I had three people in here (retail store) all yammering away. They won't get off the phone, they won't give up their spot in line, and they won't do business either.
They just stand there, talking, and looking exasperated that the line isn't moving.

As a store owner dedicated to providing the highest quality of service (I'm not kidding), all I can do is walk away and help the next person in line who isnt rude.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 11:11 AM

Spike Lee is the most self-indulgent, cutesy-poo, archly "avant garde" director of glorified film-school student movies in history.

cutesy-poo? are you sure you're a guy? I mean with all this gay talk and then using words like "cutesy poo"? Makes you go hmmmm...

Posted by: tinkerbelle on April 22, 2005 11:12 AM

Sports exist to drink beer with and yell at the players from the other side.

Football is too cold and too noisily stupid to do this in a comfortable and civilised manner.
NBA is indoors and completely out of the question - friggin NBA dipstick fans....

Baseball, however, is played in the sunshine and the beer is always flowing from the nice guy who always comes around every inning if you give him a nice tip.
'Pastoral' they call it, which means the ahole Yankee right fielder whose name I've forgotten by the 8th inning can easily hear my new nickname for him.

You think Terrel Owens can hear my informed opinion of him if I yelled it at a football game? I think not.

Baseball good. Ipods good.

U2 sucks.

Posted by: Barbula on April 22, 2005 11:14 AM

bbeck:

Whoah, I forgot cell phones. Everytime I see some dork yammering on a cellphone while standing in line at the store, my hands get that old crowbar itch.

And God save me from chatty teenage girls with cellphones! Urge to kill time -- the shrieky giggles, the continuous oh my God exclamations, the complete indifference to the rest of humanity: girls should be imprisoned between the ages of eleven and sixteen and never allowed to see daylight.

The same goes for the idiots who take gameboys to movie theaters and then play the damned things during movies! Some kid was doing that a few weeks ago and I demanded that the usher throw the little punk out. I didn't pay ten bucks just to listen to some dork playing Donkey Kong Country because he was bored by the movie.

And finally I hate "status Moms". You know the kind: they have SUV-sized double-deck strollers, and Junior is decked out in Baby Gap clothes. Mom decided to have a designer kid at 35, and probably had a caesarean because she "didn't want to lose her shape". These women travel in packs, and seem to take perverse pleasure in blocking aisles in bookstores, grocery stores, discount stores with their huge fucking strollers. Then they give you a dirty look when you complain. These moms are also cellphone abusers. Their pastel clothes and luxury minivans enrage me.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 11:23 AM

U2 sucks.

That's not right. "Zooropa" and "Pop" were terrible albums, granted, and "The Joshua Tree" is overhyped but overall U2 has cranked out more quality music than say, Radiohead or Nirvana - two highly overrated groups who have been called "genius" far too many times.

In fact, here's another hate of mine - calling musicians "geniuses" when they put a couple of good pop or rock tunes on their albums.

Posted by: Slublog on April 22, 2005 11:25 AM

Ace, you're going about it all the wrong way. If you want to bring your woman to orgasm, just take her shopping.

Posted by: Blain on April 22, 2005 11:28 AM

I hate the entire escalation of superlatives, where you're not complimenting something unless you call it "brilliant" or "genius" or "timeless" or whatever.

Let's de-escalate all this bullshit and call things what they usually are -- "good," "solid," etc.

And let's bring back the old meaning of "Fine," meaning, well, "quite good." "Fine" now means "crap;" if your lady tells you dinner was "Fine," that means she hated it and you didn't spend enough money and you're going to be humping your fist for a week.

But "fine" used to be a word indicating quality, and I guess it still is, if you're a dork who collects baseball cards or comic books, but everyone else seems to use it as a put-down.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 11:37 AM

I hate when the Hollywood crowd describe each other as geniuses. "Oh, so and so, he's a genius!" " Watch what he does in this scene. He's a genius!" None of you are fucking genuises, for crissakes!

Posted by: on April 22, 2005 11:39 AM

Oh, ace beat me to the punch.

But, I forgot to add that I hate movies based on comic books. Or, do we call them graphic books now?

Posted by: on April 22, 2005 11:43 AM

More hates:

People who turn nouns into verbs. "I'll message you later." "I'm going to productize that idea."

Teenager tattoos (especially lower-back tramp stamps on women). I may be in the minority here, but defacing your dermis with badly-drawn flowers, skulls, or pseudo-tribal designs doesn't make you cool or interesting. In fact, given the risk of hepatitis, AIDS, or fungal infections, it just makes you dumb. Also: that design you thought was so hot at 16 will probably seem a lot less hot when you're 36 or even 26, but it will be a lot more expensive (and painful) to remove the tattoo than it was to have it put on. I think parents who let their kids get tattoos have rocks in their heads.

"Sports drinks" or "flavored water". Actually, bottled water in general. Since when should I have to pay a frigging dollar to get some drinkable water? If I can't get drinkable water out of the frigging tap, then the municipality owes me some tax money back. If you want flavored water, put some Kool-Aid mix in it. If you want a "sports drink", put some electrolyte salt in your water. It's better for you anyway, and costs a lot less.

$150 sneakers. No way am I going to spend that kind of money on shoes unless they are dress shoes made by an English craftsman somewhere in the Midlands and will last long enough for me to leave them to my children. Otherwise, $30 is tops for shoes.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 11:53 AM

Monty,

You keep knocking 'em out of the park.

Tattoos on teenage girls: This was cool for about five seconds. Now everyone has one and it's not so cool anymore, is it? This goes for guys too, but especially for girls and their ubiquitous lower back tattoos.

Another hatred: Saturn automobiles. Did someone pass a law somewhere that bad drivers could only purchase these plastic dork-mobiles? Or is it that bad drivers are simply drawn to them because they are supposedly "dent resistent". For those who drive Saturns, why don't you just put a "Student Driver" sign on your car?

Posted by: Jason on April 22, 2005 12:03 PM

Ace, you're going about it all the wrong way. If you want to bring your woman to orgasm, just take her shopping.

I don't care that much.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 12:10 PM

NFL are the only pro games I can watch. Baseball is a great game, but the whiney-asses, greedy bastards, steroid users, and Yankmees have ruined it for me. Not to mention it costs me half my life's savings just to take the wife to a game. NBA is full of juvenile, deadbeat dad thugs who don't even play by the real rules of the game any longer.

Hate Spile Lee. Always have.

Agree with the tattoos thing as well. If I need something else to look at when I'm back there, I'll have the TV on so I can watch football.

Don't get the nose ring thing either. Looks like a booger hanging there.

Can't drink tap water. Don't trust it. Although I realize that some of the bottle water I'm drinking is probably straight out of the fucking Gangis river. Mmmm, rotting corpse flavoring!

Posted by: compos mentis on April 22, 2005 12:11 PM

This "Things I Hate" bit has legs. It could be the basis for more than one post. Maybe a regular series of posts. Maybe an entire blog. Comedians have built their entire careers on this sort of thing.

Posted by: Finn McCool on April 22, 2005 12:18 PM

This meme has my name written all over it. Weekend project. Hard work narrowing it down to ten things. Thanks!

I love the orgasm comment mostly because it encourages all the men to profess that they are adepts at inciting the female orgasm. Maybe they could hold man-camp clinic for you?

Posted by: Jennifer on April 22, 2005 12:19 PM

The PacNW lacks the electrical capacity to list the things I hate in a coherent fashion.

Top hate is likely people who drive like FUCKING RETARDS ON CRACK. get OUT of the left lane if you're doing the speed limit. And if you're NOT doing the speed limit on a residential street, your skin should be removed with a dull soup spoon over the course of three days and salt poured over the bloody pulp of flesh that remains.

Let me just say, ace, that this is some of your finest work.

Seriously.

"Cuba Gooding Junior played a Magical Negro Retard who helped Ed Harris regain his love of life and of football... or something"

made me cry. Sure I was laughing, but tears were coming out of my eyes.

and i like sweet white wines (Spetlaeze Reisling) because I don't like wine.

Oh, a good cab with a steak, sure. but can't stomach the crap elsewise

Posted by: hobgoblin on April 22, 2005 12:21 PM

Ace, do you remember Chef Justin Wilson, the old southern boy who made possum stew and spoke of his affinity for squirrel meat? His feelings for white wine he made clear, and while presenting a fish dish (catfish, I believe) he said "I drink red wine with fish. Hell, the fish don't care what wine you're drinkin'."
(I'm in the wine industry, by the way. Red only, and not that pussy pinot noir!)
As for category #7, start paying closer attention to commercials. Who's the bad guy breaking into homes in home security system commercials? Who's the stupid boss needing enlightenment? Who's the lost guy in the supermarket that picks up the wrong product, and needs to be shown the error of his ways? (ETC ETC ETC) White hetero dude.
And who's always there to be the hero?

Posted by: Uncle Jefe on April 22, 2005 12:23 PM

Well, this thread is about things we hate but others like. I hate "Remember personal info" and I assume our host just fucking loves it since it never works right.

And lower back tats are pretty cool until your 12 yr old girl comes home with a rider on a bucking bronc inked between her sacral dimples.

Posted by: spongeworthy on April 22, 2005 12:24 PM

You're right on the Saturn thing Jason.

-and have you paid attention to VW drivers? The Golf, the Jetta- doesn't matter. These people zip from lane to lane, weaving in a mad dash to get to the same fucking traffic jam everybody else is headed to.

Subaru drivers are the exact opposite. These are the timidest drivers in the world. These are the people who stop at the end of a highway on-ramp instead of merging, causing you to lock up your brakes and skid to a stop 1/4 inch from their bumper.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 12:30 PM

Norton gets the props he does due to the "Sevigny" effect, wherein a plain looking actor/tress confuses the audience into thinking they're acting the fuck outta that role cause otherwise 'why would anyone put that mug up on the screen?' Particularly profound amongst hipsterati subset, wherein any trace of geekness/unconventiality in appearance is made a fetish of.

Posted by: Ray Midge on April 22, 2005 12:35 PM

I have an iPod but I don't poke it in my ear. I have that thingy on the top that transmits it into my car radio. It works great when I take those 11 hour trips from I-Dee-Ho to Vegas, to do Mr. Paul Anka's lighting.
Books on tape... music... it's all good.

Posted by: Man of Substance on April 22, 2005 12:36 PM

lauraw,

Subaru drivers are teh SUX0RS.

Every godforsaken liberal puke here drives one of these "i'm too cool to have a truck that can really go in the mud, but I like to pretend I go into the "woods" where the roads are bad" pieces of Japanese excrement. And they all---ALL---have a J F'n K bumper sticker, one random liberal puke sticker ("defend america, defeat bush!"), and a fucking smelly moron-dog permanently affixed to the passenger seat (and the dog's giving directions, from what I can tell)

Fucking Subarus! Cocksucking liberal motherfuckers.

Posted by: hobgoblin on April 22, 2005 12:36 PM

Hey, don't make fun of stupid dog co-pilots.
I have one of those.
But of course, i drive an actual pickup truck.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 12:40 PM

I claim the Idaho Exemption on Subaru's, I love mine. There are a zillion of them here and not many liberal bumperstickers. Mine has 200k miles and runs great in all weather.

Posted by: Man of Substance on April 22, 2005 12:41 PM

laura and Substance,

Mix a Fucking Subaru and a retard-dog with a Portland Assmunch Liberal and you have a positively toxic mix of absolute stupidity.

Problems with any of the three in isolation may vary.

Posted by: hobgoblin on April 22, 2005 12:48 PM

People who think that drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism.

It's not; it's a sign of having spent the entire working week in the company of a bunch of foolish, twittering shits who make every waking hour an agonizing nightmare simply by being living, breathing human beings.

For those of us who have no social life and like it that way, there's nothing like booze to take the edge off.

Posted by: Andrew on April 22, 2005 12:52 PM

Ace-- thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on April 22, 2005 12:52 PM

lauraw,

"Bob, Arnold Palmer is not going to drop from the sky and give you a gajillion dollars and eternal life as a reward for your lifelong stewardship of the grass.

LOL.
And this:What about the guys with their pants falling off their ass and their underwear showing?
Who wears underwear?

As far as baseball goes, it is beautiful.

Of this I am certain.

And yes, the game should be only played, at most, until you are in your early twenties when at that time, you have thrown too many fastballs at your roommates' heads (known as "chin music") and have seriosly torn your rotator cuff in more than one place, and you should get back to studying, or working, or anything other than, "Hey, wanna play some fast-pitch?"

And Ace,

No white wine?

Pity, this.

You need to get out more, and to better places.

With regard to movies, I never go. Problem solved.

Posted by: MeTooX on April 22, 2005 12:52 PM

lauraw,

I reread your "pants falling off" post.

I get it now.

Yes, that's annoying.

Posted by: MeTooX on April 22, 2005 12:55 PM

Volvo drivin' hippies.
Worst of the worst..

Posted by: Uncle Jefe on April 22, 2005 01:06 PM

Ace, you're going about it all the wrong way. If you want to bring your woman to orgasm, just take her shopping.

I don't care that much.

Now we all know...Ace is a selfish lover! The line starts in the back, ladies.

Posted by: tinkerbelle on April 22, 2005 01:32 PM

Wow, this thread has grown...I second the idea that ace make this a running feature on the site. We are all such a splenetic bunch of bastards that the well would never go dry.

Volvos are the ultimate liberal-dork car. I think you have to provide a Democratic voter registration card before you're allowed to buy one, and even then only when it's accompanied by one of three other pieces of ID: a) a membership card to the Sierra Club, b) an ACLU membership, or c) a University Professor's ID. (Saabs come in a close second; they only require Democrat affiliation.)

I hate Old Navy commercials so bad that I refuse to shop there, and I view people who do shop there with distrust. The same goes for The Gap. (And Buckle, and Zumiez, and Hot Topic, and...)

And I hate free agency and the designated hitter rule. The DH rule just turned pitchers into worse pansies than they were already. At least the National League got rid of this foolishness. If you pitch, you bat, dammit. If you're gonna throw at someone's head, they oughta have the same opportunity against you.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 01:38 PM

It's funny. Shortly after the election there was an article that compared liberals and conservatives on their preferences for various things, including automobiles. Liberals were more likely to drive Volvos and conservatives were more likely to drive Jaguars. Ironically, they're both owned by Ford now.

Another thing I hate that everyone else seems to like: Sponge Bob Squarepants. And not because he's gay, but because I watched the show once and found it immensely unfunny. Margaret Cho unfunny, even though it's supposed to be funny, I'm told. Also, his voice is excrutiatingly annoying.

Posted by: Jason on April 22, 2005 01:54 PM

More dislikes:

The trend in media to render words meaningless by using them in the wrong context. Example: "hero". Everyone is a fucking hero nowadays. Oprah lavishes this word on everyone. "Welcome my next guest, a real hero, who had the courage to confront their eating disorder". WTF? Heroes carry people out of burning buildings. I also can't stand when military personnel who fuck up are called heroes. "Welcome Bob, he got shot down, tortured, and paraded on international televsion denoucing all that is holy. " OK, I feel terrible for them. I respect them and honor their service. But, the sheer act of getting trapped behind enemy lines does not turn you into a hero. Heroes vanquish the enemy, save lives, return lost bags of money. Everyone else is decidedly NOT a hero.

The Wiggles. I hate the fact I didn't come up with this schtick first. They are like the highest paid performers in Australia. Bastards. They probably get to keep the cool clothes too.

Ice cream cakes. I don't get this. I want BOTH real cake and real ice cream. Separate but equal. Don't mess with perfection. Nuff said.

Those huge pet food stores. What the hell? Since when do we need 40 different choices for cat food? Grocery stores used to be small, dark, and unplesant. You went in, got your shit, and got out. You hated the whole process - and this helped to keep it mercifully short. Now, shopping is "an experience".

Someone else metioned this. The whole stupid white male meme on tv. Have you noticed how all comedies on TV portray men as stupid? You have the fat, stupid man who is kept in line by his hot, superior wife. Ha ha. Look at the stupid, bumbling man. ha ha. (King of Queens, Yes Dear, World According to Jim, Everybody Loves Rayomnd, Hope and Faith, George Lopez, ad naueum...) Last time a leading woman was portrayed as stupid was probably Edith Bunker. God I hated that show too.

Broadcast networks attempting to make more, new anchors into "stars". They just read a freaking teleprompter. Let it go. Have you seen all the glamour shots that CNN is doing with Aaron Brown, their morning show crew, the bitchy court TV lady, etc. Unfortunately, Fox News is doing this shit now too. On their website, you can watch the TV commercials for all their anchors. ??!! Why do anchors need TV commercials? Why on earth would I want to watch them?

Stock analysts who recommend a stock after it has gone up. Or who downgrade after it has fallen. Thanks for nothing dipshit. Anyone can pick a stock reactively. I want stock picks before movement happens. So...you know... I can actually make a heap-o-money.

Ceiling fans. Take all the ugly of a chandalier...and slap a fan on it. Now you have a big, honkin major appliance mounted on your ceiling. Takes up all the visual space and just looks ugly. Get central air.

Posted by: TheShadow on April 22, 2005 02:12 PM

(Spongeworthy sounds like a rapist.)

Ace, women DO have orgasms. Sounds like your technique needs a little tweaking (or maybe you've been with the wrong women.)

Posted by: Pat on April 22, 2005 02:36 PM

Pat, you are making me cut on myself again.
I know I should stop, but its the only way to get rid of the pain.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 02:48 PM

Pat,

If I really hadn't been with any women nice enough to fake orgasms for me, I certainly wouldn't have put it on a public blog.

I'm not *really* retarded, you know.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 02:51 PM

...because, you see, when people don't understand sarcasm, or humor, or satire, and then post completely serious comments about it, it makes my every nerve ending scream in anguish.

And then I have to cut myself, to localize the pain and release it.

Posted by: lauraw on April 22, 2005 02:52 PM

I know the topic is "things you hate that most people like," but it's still nice to see that at least a couple of commenters share my general distaste for tattoos. I've always thought of them as the equivalent of graffiti on a building: it may be creative, clever, even brilliantly done and beautiful in its way, but it still uglies up the building somethin' fierce.

There's nothing hip or especially clever about getting a fashion statement driven into your skin with electric needles. Tats make me think of old guys who got a hula girl tattooed on their forearms back in the Sixties when they were in Nam, but now the ink has faded and the image has blurred and the tattoo looks more like a gecko got mashed into their skin. Not a sexy train of thought, I assure you.

On a completely unrelated topic, Monty is absolutely right about those obnoxious Old Navy commercials. Whose idea was it to put together an ad campaign that seems to be targeted at ignorant, downwardly mobile gay men with no fashion sense, and then keep it on the air for the better part of a decade?

Posted by: utron on April 22, 2005 02:54 PM

Women sportscasters in the NFL, NBA, or MLB.

No offense, ladies, but seeing some blowdried young cupcake trying to act like she gives a crap about A-Rod's batting average or Albert Pujol's sore hammy is just sad. I want to see a decent female sportswriter first because that'll prove that they know fuck-all about the sport they're (supposedly) covering.

Does this make me a pig? I guess so.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 02:55 PM

laura,

I got it.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 02:55 PM

Monty, I do knw what you mean about "status moms" but I call them "officer's wives." Man, I can't tell you how many times I went to an officer's wives' meeting and wished I'd stayed home and drilled a hole in my head instead.

I also can't BEGIN to tell you how very happy I am that online shopping has killed Tupperware parties and all their spawn. I went to a billion of them until one day I put my foot down with my friends and said, "I'm NOT going. If you want money from me, just ASK ME FOR IT!" Which sort of explains my lack of popularity in the Housewife Circle.

Oh, and while we're semi-on the subject, I don't hate SUVs but I DO hate their drivers. Morons. It seems that every time I'm trying to make a left turn, an SUV will pull up next to me for a right turn...and the driver just HAS to pull it up SO far it blocks my view so I can't see both lanes. I have to wait until the jerk turns so I can see if the street is clear. I drive an Impala -- it's perfect for my needs, it has 4 doors and a huge trunk and gets 35 mpg -- and SUV drivers don't need to block my view in order to see over my car. But they do, either out of arrogance or stupidity. Strangely enough, most van and truck drivers don't do that, it's the SUV folks. Hey, if you want to drive a car that handles about as well as a harnessed elephant, that's your choice, but you should be just a little aware of the effect your mammoth has on other vehicles.

And going back, I'm glad to see others speaking out about cell phones. I've had two incidents just this week with cell abusers. One was in Walmart; the guy in front of me in line talked on his the ENTIRE 10 minutes I was next to him, including the checking out portion. He didn't say one word to the clerk and just swiped his credit card without acknowledgement, signed his name, and took off, still yakking. Ack, that's just WRONG. Another was at a gas station near a busy street, and I heard someone screaming. I turned to see a woman on a cell phone, filling her tank and shrieking over the phone so she could be heard over the traffic. You have GOT to be kidding me! REALLY, what is WRONG with these people??

Sigh. I finally broke down and bought a couple of cell phones a few weeks ago because my daughters are old enough to babysit themselves and I wanted an emergency way to contact us. I got the cheapest ones I could find and I didn't even want THOSE. I still haven't even activated them yet and I won't until I absolutely have to.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 03:03 PM

In re the discussion viz the female "O":

I was recently divorced but my ex and I still get along pretty well. She confessed to me a while back that she really only had an O about one time in every five, but claimed to have one every time so I'd feel better. It was a nice thing to say, but now I'm paranoid: how do I know?

It's a terrible conundrum if you're the kind of guy who gives a crap whether the lady "gets there" or not. With guys, it's easy: it happens every time, and it's obvious when it does. In fact, it's the whole rationale behind the act. But this seems not to be the case with all women. I've heard "Well, it felt good anyway" or "Not all women have them". (Why don't you just drive a knife into my pancreas?!?)

I think you ladies ought to install a buzzer or a light or something so we guys can know if you had one, when you had it, and how powerful it was. It's only fair.

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 03:05 PM

I love my cellphone, I just hate every other nimrod out there talking on his. The other day, the guy ahead of me in line was supposed to be paying but he couldn't because he was talking on the phone (and being a man, he can't do two things at once.) IT was PAINFUL to stand there.

Posted by: carin on April 22, 2005 03:08 PM

Hee hee. Ace, people aren't getting your Climax Joke because they apparently are ready to believe you're that inept.

OH, and as for the tattoo thing: Craig Kilborn once told a joke that was bitingly TRUE. He said, "If you're dating a woman with a tattoo on her lower back, you should take the number of men she's said she's slept with and multiply it by a factor of 5."

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 03:09 PM

Monty, the problem is easily enough solved. Just sit back and ask the woman to show you one. ;)

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 03:15 PM

Monty, the problem is easily enough solved. Just sit back and ask the woman to show you one.

I been barking up that tree for almost twenty years.

Maybe they find the videocamera off-putting....

Posted by: Monty on April 22, 2005 03:18 PM

Let's take a vote. Anybody else really want women to stop faking? You know, so we can come to work the next day with tongues the size of Tim Duncan's sneaker?

Fake on, ladies. I have an early train.

Posted by: spongeworthy on April 22, 2005 03:23 PM

Let's do it. Let's have some sex.

Posted by: Pat O'Brien on April 22, 2005 03:27 PM

"If you're dating a woman with a tattoo on her lower back, you should take the number of men she's said she's slept with and multiply it by a factor of 5."

Uhhhh... I sorta do that with non-tatted girls, too.

Posted by: ace on April 22, 2005 03:37 PM

lol@Monty.

And geez, Ace, you must know some real $luts.

I'd have to tell you MY number of conquests as a fraction, lol.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on April 22, 2005 04:27 PM

Monty:

People who turn nouns into verbs. "I'll message you later." "I'm going to productize that idea."

Does that make you an antiverbengizationalist? I like words that have made the nounverb transition a few times. Makes them look distinguished.

Posted by: Anachronda on April 22, 2005 04:50 PM

you are all killing me with this stuff. this is all new to me. I don't do this for a living.

Telemarketers. I'm sayin, when Congress finally got off their collective asses and got around to creating the do not call list, I actually thought they had done something right. but nooooooooo, some assholes can still call you. "I'm collecting money for... " "would you like to support"? or worse, the ones outside our nation's shores they can't block. God damn them all to the 5th level of hell! These sons of bitches will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Oh, and I hate mushy broccoli too. Yech.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on April 22, 2005 05:31 PM

Thank you; I haven't laughed that hard in weeks. That's the key, man, tell us what you really think.

Posted by: Alex on April 22, 2005 06:10 PM

Okay, this post was very funny, but it got me thinking about things I hate.

People who still use checks in stores. Nothing burns me more than waiting for some dimbulb to fill out their stupid check in the grocery store. Technology is obviously optional for these people - we have ATMs everywhere, credit cards, debit cards, etc.

But noooo...these people HAVE to use checks.

Posted by: Slublog on April 22, 2005 06:28 PM

Quick one for Hobgoblin - I owned a Subaru Brat and took in into Death Valley, the Chocolate Mountains, Anza Borrengo Desert, Baja, and Moab Utah. Other than low wheel clearance, it was a real trooper.

1. Along with the Magic Negro, the Profound Retard, you have to include the "Women and Minorities" are always Wiser than Men film and TV Convention. With black women, in the hierarchy, wisest of all....which certainly bugs the single black Mom with 5 kids and no education living in a ghetto hovel to no end. "Why cantz I be phat city???"

2. Do-gooders. It could be a anti-gun wussie, it could be the person at the other table in a restuarant that sees your babe ordered swordfish and loudly observes "As long as some people remain uneducated about how we are endangering species, restaurants have a duty to ban veal and tuna and swordfish." It could be someone observing you chucking a newspaper in the trash and saying you can save them and recycle....ripping their lungs out would be too kind...

3. Ridiculous body sculpting and plastic surgery. How about letting two insanely evil chimpanzees do the body sculpting and facial surgery? Its cheaper, with equally attractive results. Guys with 20 pieces of metal in their face. I'd like to throw them in a MRI machine, just to see what happens..

4. Big fake tits, which deserve their own category. Some men like this, but once they go out of all symmetry, it's as ridiculous as Andrew Sullivan writing about how attractive he finds liposuctioned men with fake pec enhancements and ass cheek implants.

5. On female orgasm. Who cares? They make their bods into such a hard thing to get, condition it on material rewards...they frankly lose any say in getting the Big O unless they put out 3X a day, and cheaply. My advice is do your thing as you wish, and if they are still pissing and moaning about "incompletion" toss them a vibrator and tell them you are going to have a beer and watch a 6-month old football game you taped.

Posted by: Cedarford on April 22, 2005 06:50 PM

Ace, i can't believe no one has mentioned it yet. But i hope you the chronic urinary infection gets better. I hear they hurt a lot. :P
But seriously, between you, Ken, and Candy i don't think i'll have anything to write on my damn hate list. Wheaton had blogs, you have ipod, Candy had Jon Stewart - i got " bloggers who write quickly and better than me"
I like Norton's work - but i actually find his stare cold, not cute. As far as sports go - Soccer is cool in my book, must be the European in me.
As far as "reatrd" movies go i agree- but i liked what's eating gilbert grape - the only time decaprio was actually good (oh shit i'm talking about acting).

Posted by: Petitedov on April 22, 2005 07:08 PM

Great job, Ace. Between you and Carin, I was inspired to do my own Top 5 List, most of which I realize were already covered in the these comments!

Two of my nominees are the whale-tail thong wedgies, and the "cell-phone bubble" which seems to protect cell phone users from having their conversations overhead by anyone else...or not.

And then there is the venerable classic: Lift The Damn Seat.

On the sports thing, though, until you've watched a rousing game of Lacrosse, I don't think you can arbitrarily condemn ALL other sports. And curling. Oh Baby.

Posted by: Partisan Pundit on April 22, 2005 09:50 PM

I always figured those lower-back tattoos were so that you'd have something to look at while you were doin' her over the back of the sofa.

Which leads into the female "O" thing -- it's probably more common if they're conscious...

Posted by: cthulhu on April 22, 2005 09:57 PM

I was inspired by your hatred, and did my own list.

I limited myself, but there's probably a lot more bile waiting to be released.

Posted by: Slublog on April 22, 2005 11:45 PM

Most of these lists of what I like or what I hate are just too fucking stupid too comment on. Who gives a shit whether you like or dislike baseball or are too inept to make the woman that occasionally shares your bed scream like a banshee because you just happened to find that magic spot.

I love my freaking iPod. I am not saying that because I care whether you like it or not, just because sometimes I am a craky old fuck who likes to escape from the world and music is a fabulous way to do it, especially when the unit you use is so small you don't even notice it is around.

Posted by: Jack on May 20, 2005 06:26 PM