Caught Without Makeup vs. Know Your Facts Deathmatch in 3D

OK. Let’s take a quick moment for a reality check. I want everyone out there to take and raise their hand up to eye level. Now, looking directly into your palm I want you to take and use as much force as possible to drive that palm into your face. Once the burning and stinging sensation wears off, continue reading.

Feel better? Good.

First off, I am not the greatest looking individual. I’m sort of a cross between Greg Grunberg, Duncan Sheik, and Paul Giamatti’s beard. Now, as much as I am the first to admit that I would not ideally be the first you see in the morning when you roll over in bed, I am confident that I could give a shit what people think about my looks in the long run. And as far as my level of intelligence is concerned, well that’s debatable but I’m pretty sure I could a majority of people’s kiesters in bar trivia or Jeopardy. Still, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I need to build a huge backstop on my head for all the crap that flies over it, so that it stops and falls in for absorption.

However, when are people going to realize that everything you see in photos or on the Internet or your local 11:00pm news is spun for sensationalism and attention grabbing from the masses? Unless you are looking at a live feed from everyday life you are never going to be given the entire truth about any given situation. Case in point, those tabloid photos of stars without their makeup.

We’ve all seen them while standing in line to purchase our industrial size tub of Chunky Monkey. Right? [crickets] You’re standing there hoisting up your Dugger Family Size package of bacon and waiting for the cashier to get one of the burly guys from the back to load it back into your cart and you catch The Star or The National Enquirer promoting pictures of the awesomely beautiful and flawless complexion of the hottest celebrities caught without any makeup putting them into the reject pile for submissions to PeopleofWalmart.

Oh my, there’s Angelina Jolie without her hair done or Sofia Vergara without makeup. Oh my, they look like normal people. EEEEK! Get that hand up again.

Nine times out of ten the person that took those pictures handed their editor, or whoever they submit that stuff to, a pile of pictures taken in succession from that few minutes of time. Then the person making the decision will rifle through the selections looking for one that captures the worst possible angle and pose. They could be jogging and everything and out of breath, giving them the appearance of being worn and tired. The person’s head could be cocked in such a way that their skin pulls a bit. Their eyes could be half opened or in mid blink. Their mouth could be just relaxing after a cough. Hell, that picture could be of someone who just sneezed and all of their facial muscles are pulled and twisted. The point is that they are looking for the worst possible image to support their claim. Meanwhile, if you were to see that person a split second later, they look totally fine.

I realize it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that makeup does account for 50% of the celebrity’s good looks but understand that the media is looking to sell a story, garner readership, and be provocative. They are going to do whatever it takes to make that picture look as bad as possible. In the day and age of waning newspaper subscriptions and competition with Internet News outlets everyone is more than willing to sink to a new low to get a better viewing or ranking.

Don’t believe me? Swing the pendulum the other way and do a search on Magazine Cover PhotoShop Disasters or the like. Remember the hip issue on that cover of W magazine with Demi Moore?

Here’s another pet peeve of mine, the man on the street interview. The Late Night Talk Shows and media outlets do these from time to time to test the common man’s/woman’s knowledge of simple facts. You’ll see this happen whenever those facts get called into question by someone famous or important and should know better.  A prime example would be from Super Bowl XLV, where Christina Aguilera flubbed a line or two from the National Anthem. The bigger travesty of that telecast was letting Fergie attempt to sing Axl Rose, but that’s another story.


After the debacle in Dallas, a local news affiliate went out into the street and asked everyday people if they could recite the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. Surprisingly, we were shown that a majority of people interviewed were unable to correctly sing or speak the lyrics. How long do you think those segments last? 30 seconds? A minute? How much tape do you think they’ve collected on the subject? How many interviews did they do? Chances are they interviewed a hell of a lot more than they showed in the segment. Then the editor gets a hold of the raw footage and weeds out the boring ones or the majority of ones where people got the words right, focusing on the clips that appear funny or sad, from the perspective of national patriotism. Then they splice together something that would be enjoyable or at least somewhat funny and voila, American Idiots on parade.
Do you really think that the American Idol auditions are solely made up of atrociously bad singers for the first few weeks? No. There are probably a bunch of people that had no talent and nothing that made them stand out as a train wreck that never made it on air. It’s not that they were any better but they didn’t play well to attracting an audience on television. After the first season of American Idol the producers probably realized that for every Kelly Clarkson that sucks in viewers for the whole purpose of the show, there could be ten William Hung types that could suck in more potential viewers just for the spectacle of bad singers. Hell, people even audition just to be train wrecks and camp up their performance to try and get some screen time in the hopes they’ll become famous for being so bad.

We are being deceived at every given turn by the media and it’s all for the sake of ratings and rankings. The more we accept the media at face value the more we are able to be lied to about the more important things that occur. Even the more *cough* legitimate *cough* news sources employ these tactics but we think that they’d be above those practices so we believe them with more blind faith. FACEPALM YOURSELF INTO CLARITY AMERICA! Before it’s too late.  Now, let's get back to former 80s music stars wrestling while bad CGI monsters take over low budget movies!

What In the Hell Happened There?

So, Pittsburgh lost the Super Bowl on Sunday. Let’s face it. Besides the actual game, there were all kinds of fail throughout the entire event.

First off, the weather played havoc with anyone trying to navigate their way around the city. Now, being from Pittsburgh, I am used to driving in the snow and ice. If it’s snowy, I’ll take my time. If it’s icy, I will probably stay home, unless I am at work or already out. However, living in and around this city comes with certain expectations and given circumstances.

When it snows, I expect to add a good 20 minutes to my drive. Whether it be all the people who suddenly go, “Oh my Gawd, yinz are crazy for driving dahn the parkway in the left hand lane. Imma gonna pull over on the burm and wait it aht, n’at.”

The given circumstances are that when it even threatens to snow around here, people will go all bat shit Snowmageddon crazy, stocking up on bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper in case they get stuck in their house for the morning. Think I’m exaggerating? Try going to Giant Eagle to get one thing whenever there is A: Threat of snow or B: Impending Steelers game.

The other given circumstances are that whenever I finally get onto the parkway, everything will slow down before I reach the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. There are two to three lanes and a lot of on ramps merging commuter traffic into the chute that heads towards the tunnel. It all slows down and everyone jams up the parkway fearing that the tunnel monster will get them.

Now, being in the South, the snowfall is not as much and they aren’t prepared to handle a lot of snow and ice. However, what I cannot understand is why after three years of seeing National news about snowy and icy conditions in states like the Carolinas and Texas, no one has gotten wise and started planning for these kinds of conditions. Maybe they ought to think about getting some real salt or brine and trucks to treat the roads instead of magnesium chloride and sand. Maybe Jerry Jones or the NFL could have seen that perhaps there could be the possibility of snow and planned ahead. Then again, the road conditions were just previews of coming attractions.

I’m sure everyone is aware of what happened before the game started, so I won’t dwell. There were thousands of people standing in line for hours, urinating in line due to no accessible bathrooms. The queuing structure was worse than at the DMV and available gates were closed due to falling ice from the roof. Once again, a little forethought would have been good here. Then people who paid for tickets found out that the seats they paid good money for were deemed unsafe. OK, when exactly did Jerry Jones get the word he’d be hosting the Super Bowl? When did the NFL find out? And, why were these issues not addressed up until game time, forcing thousands to either take temporary seating somewhere else or not at all?
To the NFL’s credit they offered to reimburse the angry ticket holders. To their discredit, they are only reimbursing them for three times the face value. That doesn’t take into account the loss of pay from work, airfare, hotel accommodations, travel, and the fact that most people in those seats did not pay face value. Oh, and they get a free ticket to next year’s Super Bowl. Well, how many of those people were there because they were rooting for a particular team? Who knows if Green Bay or Pittsburgh will be in the Super Bowl next year? This has been updated to include ANY Super Bowl of your choice including round trip airfare.  That's about as good as it will get.  If it were me, I'd wait until either your favorite team or one of the big markets like Indianapolis or New England gets in and then sell them at a premium.

Next we had Christina Aguilera mess up the National Anthem. I can say I’d forgive her because it is a bit nerve racking to think of how many people are watching you. It’s also very hard to sing when you hear the echo of your voice back louder than what’s coming out of your mouth. Still, she kind of flaked and didn’t sound all that great. And, it didn’t help that half the people watching were thinking, “Wow, Cyndi Lauper sounds different, doesn’t she?”

I’ll get to the game in a bit, but I want to point out that the half time show, in my opinion, sucked. Let’s take a look back on the last two Super Bowls Pittsburgh played in. For Super Bowl XL, The Rolling Stones did the half time show. In Super Bowl XLIII, it was Bruce Springsteen. This year, we get the Black Eyed Peas and Usher, with special appearance by Slash. It sounded horrible. Whoever let Fergie attempt to do Sweet Child of Mine should be shot and then shot again. She even tried to do the Axl dance. Hell, she looked more like Axl than sounded like him. It was painful. And shame on Slash for selling out and doing this. In my mind you would have had two better options in this case. One would have been to get those wacky glee kids to do it or get another rock act. I guess it doesn’t bode well for Pittsburgh when you don’t have a rock and roll legend performing the half time show. My thoughts for next year, The Clarks. Hell, the last really great half time show I watched was Prince in Super Bowl XLI.

Now, the saddest part, the game. Whatever your thoughts are about the Steelers’ performance remember that Green Bay was a hell of a team. People will want to string up Ben Roethlisberger or Bruce Arians or even Mike Tomlin, that’s a given. However, look back at the playoffs and you’ll see that we snuck into the Super Bowl on luck. We played a horrible first half against Baltimore and a horrible second half against New York. That kind of luck is not going to cut in the big game.

Ben
Ben had a hell of a season, having to come back from being out four games due to the suspension. He then did what he had to do to win the other games. Now, there is usually no one else I’d want to have running a two minute drill with the game on the line, but seriously, relying on him to pull off a win in the last two minutes is no way to play.

Overall
Turnovers and penalties killed us and it’s hard to rebound from that. Ben threw one real interception and someone got a piece of his arm on the first one. Mendenhall protected as much as he could have but Clay Matthews hit him in the sweet spot causing the fumble. The defense showed moments of rattling Rodgers. You could see him getting antsy and the defense was getting in his head but they never followed through. If they could have rattled him more, he could have made some mistakes. Some will blame Troy for being a no show. Troy was there and made plays to keep Green Bay from extending the run. He wasn’t his usual Tasmanian Devil self. Shame.

Truth is Green Bay wanted it more. It was their time. Aaron Rodgers is a good quarterback and he’s getting his shot. Ben will get to the Super Bowl again and Pittsburgh will get their seventh Lombardi. This year just wasn’t in the cards. We rode a luck filled train and couldn’t deliver when we needed to.

I was pissed because we keep making the same stupid penalties. I’m not even talking about the helmet to helmet stuff that plagued us in the beginning of the season. I’m talking about offensive penalties that march us backwards five to fifteen yards at a clip. My biggest issue is with Chris Kemoeatu. For the past few weeks he has been responsible for a lot of the penalties. Holding, personal fouls, the works. Someone needs to get on his ass about causing a 15 yard penalty when field position is in short supply. He had one personal foul right in front of the official. WTF?!?!

As fans, we feel a more elevated level of frustration in Pittsburgh. We put way too much emotion and stake into a football game. After the loss I wanted to punch a wall, kick a puppy, draw a mustache on a work of art, burn a couch, and take out my 45 and shoot into the air while screaming “ARRRRRGGHHH!” Point Break style. And we get bent out of shape after the game.

We can’t watch the NFL network or ESPN because we are constantly reminded that the other team won. We go back and replay the scenario in our heads. What if Ben throws to Heath instead of Wallace during that last drive? What if he didn’t under throw Wallace? What if Aaron Smith would have played? We replay and dissect and over analyze and rationalize and bargain and we come up with the same conclusion. Then we start the process over again. We look at the calendar and start crossing off days until training camp. Then we hit rock bottom and begin looking forward to the Pirates. That’s when we really need an intervention. We’re passionate and committed and a little bit insane over our love for our team. When we don’t win we expect the ground to open up and swallow whoever we deem responsible.

This year’s Super Bowl was just a big old cluster frack and the whole season was pretty much the same way. Goodell needs to go or get a reality check. He says the fans want an 18 game season. Do we really? If you take a look at this last season and see how far into the depth chart Pittsburgh and Green Bay had to reach to string together an offense and a defense to play on Super Sunday I think the answer is clear. Hell, half of the Packers were already in the locker room before half time due to injuries. I think we, as fans, want a great season full of excitement but we don’t want to see the practice squad out on the field during the playoffs because everyone is injured. 16 games are fine. The playoff structure is fine. It all works just the way it is. If you want to change something, get that CBA done and get some consensus on the rules and enforce a league wide standard instead of saying “Well, he’s a different type of quarterback, so he needs more protection.” I call B.S. He’s a professional athlete that signed up for this. He should be taken care of just like any other person in his position. What’s good enough for a Brady should be good enough for a Vick or a Roethlisberger.

That’s all I got. Let’s go Steelers. 2011 is a new year.

Twerrible Towel Spins When You Tweet #SteelerNation

Once again proving that low tech and high tech have a place in the universe together, someone has come up with a way to turn Twitter into a more useful tool.

The folks over at http://www.twerribletowel.com/ have hooked a laptop, an old fan, a hand, and a Terrible Towel together and made something full of win.

If you go to Twitter and tweet anything with the hashtag #SteelerNation, or the lesser accepted #SteelersNation, the magic happens and causes the Terrible Towel to twirl. There’s a lot of math involved, I’m sure, but just trust me, it works.

So, let’s go Steelers and get Tweeting Steeler Faithful!

P.S. Make sure you spell Terrible with a ‘W’ or you won’t get to the right site.