2014 Annual D-Bag Awards Part 1 - What Am I Doing?

Should I just give it up?  Should I quit this?

What the hell, Internet?  Did I become lazy?  Did I get a life?  Did I actually do work? 

20 blog posts last year.  TWENTY!

That’s abysmal.  I did 123 in 2008 and averaged close to 95-100 a year, until I hit a creative or ambitious wall with 2014.  Granted, 2013 and 2014 were pretty much bad years as my content will attest to.

In any case, I couldn’t close the book on 2014 without doing my annual D-Bag of the Year Award.  And if you’ve been keeping score, I kind of mailed it in the last two years as it is.

In years past, I would go through this tournament consisting of several rounds matching like nominees such as The Grim Reaper vs. Mother Nature.  

2014 has had its fair share of celebrity deaths like Mike Nichols, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Mickey Rooney, James Garner, Ruby Dee, Bob Hoskins, Sid Caesar, Casey Kasem, Shirley Temple, and Eli Wallach.  That was some of the Hollywood Old Guard.  The notable names connected to a younger generation of entertainment consumers included David Brenner, Bob Hoskins, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meshach Taylor, Harold Ramis, Jan Hooks, Maya Angelou, Christine Cavanaugh, Edward Herrmann, and Robin Williams.  That’s nothing compared to the lives lost through tragedies like what happened with airplanes overseas disappearing or crashing, deaths in Ukraine and the Middle East from war and strife, and deaths of police officers and/or alleged criminals like Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, or even my own backyard Pennsylvania with Eric Frein going all Rambo in the backwoods of PA after killing police officers.

But Mother Nature gave as good as she got plunging us into stretches of subzero temperatures with Polar Vortices, a late fall snowstorm in the Pacific Northwest and New England, cyclones, earthquakes, mudslides, landslides, and eruptions as well. 

I’ve also recounted in past years how various businesses promoted themselves with such great audaciousness, like Apple infuriating some of its consumer base with an automatic download and install of U2’s new album via iTunes, whether they wanted it or not.  There was also Hobby Lobby and the controversial Christian values trumps the ACA for contraception case before the Supreme Court.  Probably the biggest and most forgotten story was the NFL’s domestic abuse problem and how it quickly faded once the season got into full swing.

Then the business of politics always took a lot of the focus as nominees in the category would include people like Congress for constantly being a blight on the Democratic process.  Republicans for the ridiculous amount of time and energy wasted on trying to overturn the ACA, and immigration, and women’s rights.  The Democrats could not escape themselves as they completely dismantled themselves from doing anything during the midterm elections because they just didn’t care and it showed at the polls when they got walloped by the GOP.

But, I always found it easy to pick apart the individuals in my round up.  Chris Brown was an easy target as he was constantly finding himself being a royal d-bag, but this year he seemed to take a backseat to others.  2014 probably would have had me compare nominees like James Franco for being a creepy bastard with that underage girl over texting.   Shia LeBeouf would have been up there with his Joaquin Phoenix level meltdown, had that been real, declaring he was not famous, became the unknown comic, cut his own face for Fury, claimed he was raped during the filming of a movie, plagiarized a graphic novelist, and tried to mug a homeless man of Mickey D’s.  It could all be a stunt or he’s just drunk and off the reservation. 

NFL and the NBA all have players, owners, and commissioners who love to be douches.  The NBA had LeBron James, who went back to Cleveland, which made Cleveland look like such a whipped city because they welcomed him back with open arms.   Donald Sterling made the list this year after his much publicized remarks caught on tape by his “female friend” V Stiviano.  The NBA gave him a lifetime ban and forced him to sell the team which he fought.  In the end, justice kind of prevailed but the means to the end involved Ms. Stiviano being pretty much a d-bag in her own right.  

The NFL produced great d-bags this year like Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice, who were suspended for domestic violence, and supposedly Roger Goodell has “top” men investigating it.  Saying Roger Goodell is handling the situation when it comes to bad behavior in the NFL is like saying Wyle E Coyote is this close to catching the Roadrunner with whatever ACME gadget Amazon Prime just delivered him.   Also with bad behavior, Pittsburgh’s LaGarrette Blount and Le'veon Bell kicked off the season with a rollicking ride in Pittsburgh, while high, missing the team flight and getting pulled over by the police.  It seems a moot point when Bell has been one of the biggest play makers for the Black and Gold, and Blount, after getting less than an acceptable amount of touches, walked off the field and into the locker room, finally being cut by the team and resigned with his former employer, The New England Patriots.  He was happy to be home and Pittsburgh was happy he was, too, I guess.  Still, it’s a move that could be interesting IF and ONLY IF the Steelers are forced to face down their only playoff demon left in the Patriots.   Still, Blount was a d-bag for being a whiny bitch and pretty much a problem child that needed spanked.  If Blount rolls over Pittsburgh in a playoff rout, it isn’t enough to call for the heads of Haley and Tomlin in Pittsburgh.   Christ, people have been calling for them in week 1 and now the own the AFC North.  By the end of the season, another famous d-bag, Ndamukong Suh, finished out his year by stomping on Aaron Rodgers, leading to a suspension, which was appealed and turned over in another great moment by Roger Goodell’s mantra of cleaning up the league.   But then again, I have watched all of five minutes of NFL football this year, taking a much needed breather from all the hypocrisy and thuggish behavior that product has included.   So, it’s really a tossup in sports, but there are no losers in that division. 

Much has been made about women’s rights and the treatment of women this year.  The constant politicizing of women’s right to use contraception took center stage with the Hobby Lobby debate and springing off the Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice stories was the catcalling video “10 Hours of Walking In NYC as a Woman”.  It showed the “reality” of what a woman goes through walking around and being accosted by men of color in “various” NYC neighborhoods.  I use quotes because the 10 hours of footage was not presented in full for viewing.  When taken to task by Slate, the producer said (paraphrased), “White Men catcalled her too, but they were too far off camera or the sound was ruined by a siren.”    That footage was somehow not included.   So, I include the producer of this, not for pointing out the reality of what women go through, but because he did it piecemeal, contextualizing it.  And speaking of being a d-bag towards women, how about Artie Lange and his tweets about Cari Champion?  Or, better yet, the allegations and retraction (apology) by Rolling Stone over the story about campus rape at UVA.  And how about this, as innocuous as this is against women, Justin Bieber managed to piss all over women and the holocaust by writing “Anne Frank Was A Great Girl, Hopefully She Would Have Been A Belieber” in the guest book at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.  That is far worse than those two cancer kids snogging and GETTING APPLAUSE for it in the same house from The Fault In Our Stars.  I jest because I loved the book and the film and thought it was a bit of a WTF moment which made me laugh.  Finally, the invasion of privacy, and sexual crimes against female celebrities due to iCloud hacks calls out a more philosophical question of what constitutes a sex crime?

But no individual’s d-bag story could have topped the one that pretty much crushed a lot of us 70s and 80s kids’ childhood memories when it was reported… A LOT, that Bill Cosby has had a long history of drugging and sexually assaulting women.  Since there have only been allegations and no actual charges filed (I Think) against Cosby and I wish it not true because I have adored the career of Cosby from his stand up to Fat Albert, from Picture Pages to the Cosby Show.   But, there is a hell of a lot of smoke to not think that maybe we should call the fire department. 

In the last segment I usually throw a giant generalization towards something like Me or the Media or Humanity to truly level the playing field in who I think is the biggest d-bag of the year. But one d-bag seems to challenge the faceless nameless category and this year it’s Hackers.   Hackers have been all over the place this year.  First off we need to realize that none of our information is safe.  Hackers hit every category this year.  We have business with all of our credit card and banking information hacked from Home Depot and Target, and NYC Taxi and Limo company.   The cloud was hacked and tons of pictures and videos were stolen from famous and non-famous account holders in what was called The Fappening and The Snappening.  Sony was hacked and emails detailing everything from pay inequality to what people really think of Angelina Jolie was shared.  Online gaming sites like XBOX Live and SONY’s PSN were hacked and kiddies opening up their new PS4s and XBOX Ones on Christmas morning couldn’t go online and shoot each other in the face, leaving them to face the brave new world of actually interacting with people face to face.  And then there is the supposed Sony hack by Kim Jong Un and his legion of TRS-80 hackers a la WarGames who threatened terrorism if The Interview was released.  Frankly, that movie should get its own award this year because I think this was an inside job by somebody looking to boost the hype over watching this film, not actually North Korea.

So, where does that leave us?  We’ve talked about sports and politics and business and celebs and technology in regards to who is the biggest d-bag of the year.  But what could possibly trump all those nominees? 

See Part 2

This Parent's Perspective: Response to Nerdist On Retailers Selling M-Rated Games

Right off the bat, I am going to say this.  Your Mileage May Vary.   I am not your kid’s parent, and you are not my kid’s parent.  What I am about to say is going to totally misalign with your views and that’s OK.  This is merely the perspective, and really an opinion, on how I am raising my child who happens to love playing video games.

Last week, Nerdist: Play published a story about retailers’ selling M-Rated games to underage kids.  It talked about how the author watched a kid buy The Evil Within and how to deal with that occurrence.   The question asked was “Was there anybody in the wrong for what happened?” 

The response?

No. 

Why? 

Because parenting.

While I agree in the hypocrisy of saying a kid, today, shouldn’t be sold a game for which I clearly would have bought and played at a young age as well (circa 1987), I also have to say with complete awareness of how clichéd it sounds, “It was different in my day.”

Let’s flashback to the 80s when Atari and NES were the big names in video game consoles and look at this further.

As a young kid, I had a vivid imagination.  I knew there were no such things as monster under the bed or vampires or zombies, but my mind could certainly conjure up something more viscerally disturbing than anything Stephen King, Clive Barker, or even David Lynch could put on paper or screen.  Quite frankly, what you couldn’t see scared me more than what was actually shown.  I saw Poltergeist and Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, and Evil Dead 2 at a young age and those films scared the piss out of me.    Hell, the scenes in E.T. where the government scientists descend upon Elliot’s house were the stuff of mindmares when I returned home from the theater to a darkened house.   But, I survived.  I watched Die Hard in the theater and I was only 14 at the time.    So, while my imagination was overactive when it came to coming up with scare worthy thoughts, it didn’t spill out into the real world with me stringing up and torturing neighborhood animals or other children.  I did not become Ed Gein or Buffalo Bill.  Why?  Because my parents still had a grasp of what I was out doing and even though I did watch those scary movies… and *blush* I did sneak a Playboy or Hustler from another friend as well as rent low budget R Rated movies like Galactic Gigolo from my local video store when I couldn’t find something salacious on HBO at 2 in the morning.   I think I turned out fairly normal as an adult.   And, I have a 7 year old daughter who clearly shows signs of evil genius which means my parents failed me.   I was most likely going to follow their lead raising her.

Here’s the thing, though.   The amount of material available to me in the 80s is a far cry from what there is now.  Yeah, I did see my fair share of nudity, violence, and drug use on film and television and other media, but the level of “depravity”, as some would call it, were ridiculously tame compared to stuff today like The Human Centipede and The Evil Within.   Now, that’s not to say that the same genre of movies or video games were available in the 80s.   After all, I Spit Upon Your Grave was made in 1978.  Custer’s Revenge, an adult themed Atari 2600 game, was made in 1982.   The difference was that there was no real easy way for a child like me to get ahold of those items when I was a kid.  Furthermore, Custer’s Revenge, while a depiction of nudity and sex between a man and a woman was still rendered in all the glory of Atari graphics, so it’s laughable if not even recognizable.    

It was just a different time when we were preteens in the 80s.   It was a time when Married With Children, The Simpsons, and Beavis and Butthead were deemed too hot for TV.  The amount of jaw dropping luridness seen in those shows was about as shocking as an exposed ankle would be to someone in the 1970s.  This was only 30 years ago, people.  We now have Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead on television.   

That’s the difference.  Today’s level of realized creativity has exponentially multiplied as has the manner in which to depict it.   It would be no different than reading H.P. Lovecraft in the 60s.  So, I ask, which is worse, the imagined horror that had to be filled in with your brain reading Lovecraft, or seeing a depiction of his work on screen today?   The availability of that work is also mainstreamed.  The Internet has a wildfire mentality that has yet to be controlled and parents are still catching up to and combatting the circumnavigation of such restrictions over what their kids shouldn’t see.    My own daughter has accidentally rented movies OnDemand, albeit nothing bad.  Yet, I give a decent amount of leeway like my parents did.

When she was two years old, she faced the mortality of humankind when we lost her grandmother to a brain hemorrhage.   There was such a close bond and we didn’t sugarcoat the information.  She saw her in the hospital, hooked up to life support.  She watched her go through chemotherapy the past year.  She was well aware of the world of doctors and illness and what can and may very well happen to others she loves.    Shortly after that ordeal she became very interested in fact that her grandfather and I would play video games to pass the time (Keep him busy).  And, because it was such an easy controller, we played the Wii.  Titles ranged from Call of Duty to Big Game Hunter to, yes, House of the Dead 2 and 3.  And my own kid sat there and watched us play it.   She was fascinated by it, not scared.   One day, I had flipped to Comedy Central and Ghostbusters came on.  She immediately latched onto it and enjoyed it.   She became a huge fan and I decided to use it as a teaching moment about the difference between reality and fiction.  I grabbed my DVDs and we watched the behind the scenes stuff as well.  She watched how they made the ghosts.    I simultaneously demystified the movie magic I so adored as a child in the hopes that she could understand that these things were entertainment and not scary.    She enjoyed a lot of my movies from childhood.  She loved dinosaurs, so we watched Jurassic Park and The Lost World.   Clearly the child could differentiate between movies and real life.  She had an understanding of what was going on and it neither scared her nor scarred her.  She saw me playing Minecraft and loved the creativity.  She just started playing Fallout 3.   She keeps bugging me to get Skyrim.  She has joined me in creating videos on YouTube and solo played.   She has a knack for entertainment and humor that I never had at her age.   She’s hilarious.   Like I said, my parents ruined me. 

But I do monitor what she does, to a point.   I won’t let her watch me play Grand Theft Auto, at least with the sound up.  Then again, the subtitles don’t help so I am careful.  I won’t play Last of Us in front of her.  I won’t let her watch The Walking Dead or play other games that I feel may be too close to realistic depictions of violence or gore because I know she has that same level of imagination that I had.  I recently played Gone Home, which I realize has no scary imagery in it, but it does unsettle me every time I hear a noise in the game.    So, I pick and choose which level of stimulation she is exposed to.  And, like the video from Nerdist says, even if Target doesn’t sell the kid the game, they can go watch a walk through of The Evil Within on YouTube with full gore and burning children.  How is it any different?  

Should the retailers care about selling M-Rated titles to underage kids?   Yes, they should.  I know.  It’s the parents’ responsibility to police their child’s actions concerning such items.  Well, should a bartender serve a child alcohol simply because it’s not their responsibility to police the child?  Should a 7-11 sell them a Playboy or a pack of cigarettes?  No.   And I’m not cool with retailers selling my kid M-Rated games.    While it’s not their job to police my child, it is their responsibility to not contribute to the delinquency of a minor.    If I so deem it acceptable for my kid to play a game that is M-Rated, then I will buy it for them.  And while I don’t necessarily agree with the rating system for movies and video games, I will make the final call for the time being, because I am the parent.  The Evil Within may be 13+, at best, I don’t know.  Kids today can handle a different amount of that kind of stimulation than in the 80s.   Would I be pissed if Target sold my kid an M-Rated game?  Yes, in theory, but probably not, depending on the game.  I would make sure I found out why it was M-Rate before my kid got deep into it. 

As a parent, I am the first and last line of defense when it comes to my kid’s wellbeing and I am doing what I can to educate and prepare her in that sense.  We have far too many more things out there that can harm.  They are more widespread and more easily attainable than when I was a kid.    This level technology that has exploded in the past 20 years is simply moving faster than we are.  We did not prepare ourselves when it dropped into our laps.  Sometimes I think we opened a Pandora’s Box of issues when the Internet became available but there’s no way to stop it.    However, there does need to be a buffer in place to handle the little things.    Every little bit helps.   To be overly sensitive about it helps no one.   Being a douchebag about censorship is just as bad as being one about freedoms and civil liberties.     In the end, you are the one that has to deal with the Fallout.

Ouija, Tetris, and other So Bad Let's Make Them Movies About Games

Battleship was merely the tip of the bad idea iceberg set to run aground and destroy us.   There is a Tetris movie in the works and this Fall, Ouija slides its way into theaters.

So, I thought.  Why not beat the machine to the punch.  Here is my list of the SO BAD LET’S MAKE THEM MOVIES BASED ON GAMES

Christopher Nolan’s Reversi
Hungry Hungry Hippos 2: The Purging

Martin Scorcese’s Monopoly with Daniel Day Lewis playing Rich Uncle Pennybags

Joaquin Phoenix stars in UNO, a film by Spike Jonze

Judd Apatow’s Ants in the Pants

Russell Crowe squares off against Christoph Waltz in Terrence Malick’s RISK

Quentin Tarrantino’s Grindhouse double feature Trivial Pursuit/Scrabble

Rob Zombie’s Candy Land

Liam Nesson in Sorry!

Michael Bay’s Perfection