Five Things That Need To Go Away In 2010

T-Pain Auto Tune Insanity
The Super Bowl put the last nail in the coffin for this gimmick that is so overused in popular music that it has become a source of inter cranial bleeding. The premise of the Bud Light commercial updates the old “Wassup?” ones for Bud where a guy calls up his friends after drinking a Bud Light and begins speaking in T-Pain style. Auto tune and the voice box are overdone and just need to go away. Any number of artists today employ the auto tune method and it really shows in live performances. *cough*Taylor Swift *cough* Oh, come on. You explain to me how she can win all these awards, be named artist of the year, blah blah blah and she can’t effing sing live? It’s the magic of the studio and a mixing board is all I’m saying. Do you feel like I do? Yes, that was a nod to Mr. Frampton.

The UPS Whiteboard GuyThe first time I saw this doodler for the shipping company I thought Steve Perry found a new job since Journey decided to go with a Filipino YouTube guy that sounds like an Engrish version of….well, Steve Perry. And just in case I thought I was the only one who thought this… apparently someone was so confused they posed the question to Yahoo Answers.

The guy’s real name is Andy Azula and he is the creative director for an ad agency that was hired by UPS to do those commercials. When the commercials first began to air, the street magician style of drawing that ultimately revealed a UPS logo was kind of neat. However, after the first few ads, like anything else in this world, reality was wiped off the whiteboard and computer generated graphics replaced what looked like utter magic. Actually, according to an article on Slate, he does do the drawings, but they are redrawn in between takes to speed things up. What makes me want to see this guy get chased by the dry eraser is that we now know that he isn’t REALLY doing the drawing on the fly, so the magic is gone and now it’s not as catchy and cool.

Reality Shows
I will cry about this till I am blue in the face and then some. Of course, there is no way in hell I will ever see my dream come true. Not in 2010. Not in 3010. Reality shows are now a fact of life and they are like Walmart, taking over everything. How many shows and clones do we need? We all know reality television is fake, right? It’s professional wrestling that’s real, right?

With Jersey Shore being the latest show to capture the hearts and minds of idiot America, we have to realize that these folks are neither from Jersey nor are they even full blooded Italian, save Vinny, which is appropriately stereotypical. Ellen even tested these d-bags with a test and they flunked. Apparently, Snooki thought Canada was one of the original 13 colonies. Can we deport these idiots?

Shawtie / Shortie / Shorty
There are far too many songs with the term shawty in it. Nobody really wants to divulge WTF (Mandatory Internet slang quota reached) a shawty is and I really don’t care who is a shawty, if she’s out on the dance floor, has boots with fur, a fruity booty, or is like a memory in my head. Just stop it.

Reboots, Remakes, and Adaptations
This madness has to stop. Since Spider Man 4 fizzled, they’ve decided to reboot the franchise. We’ve got The Karate Kid which neglects the entire idea that Karate was a Japanese form of martial arts since the reboot is set in China. We’ve got a Nightmare on Elm Street remake with the guy from Bad News Bears playing Freddy Krueger. Highlander and Red Dawn remakes. We’ve got a new Clash of the Titans coming out, a Night of the Demons remake, We’ve got an A-Team movie, Johnny Quest movie, and a Smurfs movie. SMURFS!!!!!  I mean EFFING SMURFS!  And John Lithgow and Wallace Shawn are in it.  Didn’t y’all learn from G.I. Joe, Speed Racer and Transformers? You know what insanity is, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.   SMURFS!