pride goeth before the fall
Oct. 6th, 2008 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time."
- Robin Williams
September and October are my favorite months of the year. It's the time when the weather turns brisk, which is my favorite kind of weather. It's the time of year when dresses are phasing out and tall leather boots are phasing in. It's a time for both ice cream and hearty soups. And it's the time when baseball is winding down and football is winding up.
I watched a lot of sports this past weekend. (I earned a furlough from J. after indulging her on an early Saturday morning shopping excursion and before single-handedly cooking dinner on Sunday.)
For the most part, it was glorious. Not the outcomes of the various games, necessarily, but the sheer volume of competition. Because let's be frank: in both baseball and football, there's a lot of downtime. Persistent television puffery, endless huddles, interminable waits between pitches (not to mention pitching changes); it's unbearable.
(I feel a little spoiled complaining about this, because we're talking about, like, 40 seconds between football plays and 20 seconds between pitches or something. You'd think that a normal person could handle these modest delays. But the issue is the ratio of nothing-to-action. Most football plays only last five to ten seconds; a single pitch lasts -- what, a second or two? Five seconds if it's a hit? Watching sports for the action is like eating Cookie Crisp for your vitamins and minerals -- they're in there, but you have to be patient. Also relevant is how that time is filled -- usually with the inane blathering of moron announcers whose sole qualification is either (a) retiring from sports with only minimal brain damage or (b) being spawned by an existing announcer. These quacks make Sarah Palin sound like Emily Dickinson.)
So it's nice to have options, and the ability to switch to the other game(s) when the one you're watching starts to drag. But every now and then, all of the commercial breaks line up. And every time, it's the same commercial for the same product.
Viagra. I swear, from the volume of Viagra commercials currently in circulation, you would think that erectile dysfunction was a burgeoning epidemic on the scale of the black plague. "Oh no! The baby boomers are having trouble with their hard-ons! Somebody find a cure! Preferably before they go to some weird spa with twin beachfront bathtubs!"
I swear, if I have to watch one more commercial for boner pills, set to a bastardized version of an Elvis Presley semi-classic and featuring some dashing, mildly weathered actor who looks like he just fell out of a golf cart. I don't care about their boners, I don't want to know about their boners and frankly I hope these self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, self satisfying seniorish citizens get painful erections that last so long they have to be buried in pup tents
And this is only the least objectionable of the middle-aged wang-centric pharmaceuticals. Flomax? Cialis Daily Use? Natural male enhancement? It is as if my weekend entertainment is being sponsored by my Yahoo! junk mail folder. The operative phrase when watching sports has gone from "ooh!" to "eww."
Now I know why the Internet and text messaging have become the communications medium of my generation -- because the boomers haven't figured out how to use it yet -- and the Bigger, Better Boner industry haven't yet penetrated it.
- Robin Williams
September and October are my favorite months of the year. It's the time when the weather turns brisk, which is my favorite kind of weather. It's the time of year when dresses are phasing out and tall leather boots are phasing in. It's a time for both ice cream and hearty soups. And it's the time when baseball is winding down and football is winding up.
I watched a lot of sports this past weekend. (I earned a furlough from J. after indulging her on an early Saturday morning shopping excursion and before single-handedly cooking dinner on Sunday.)
For the most part, it was glorious. Not the outcomes of the various games, necessarily, but the sheer volume of competition. Because let's be frank: in both baseball and football, there's a lot of downtime. Persistent television puffery, endless huddles, interminable waits between pitches (not to mention pitching changes); it's unbearable.
(I feel a little spoiled complaining about this, because we're talking about, like, 40 seconds between football plays and 20 seconds between pitches or something. You'd think that a normal person could handle these modest delays. But the issue is the ratio of nothing-to-action. Most football plays only last five to ten seconds; a single pitch lasts -- what, a second or two? Five seconds if it's a hit? Watching sports for the action is like eating Cookie Crisp for your vitamins and minerals -- they're in there, but you have to be patient. Also relevant is how that time is filled -- usually with the inane blathering of moron announcers whose sole qualification is either (a) retiring from sports with only minimal brain damage or (b) being spawned by an existing announcer. These quacks make Sarah Palin sound like Emily Dickinson.)
So it's nice to have options, and the ability to switch to the other game(s) when the one you're watching starts to drag. But every now and then, all of the commercial breaks line up. And every time, it's the same commercial for the same product.
Viagra. I swear, from the volume of Viagra commercials currently in circulation, you would think that erectile dysfunction was a burgeoning epidemic on the scale of the black plague. "Oh no! The baby boomers are having trouble with their hard-ons! Somebody find a cure! Preferably before they go to some weird spa with twin beachfront bathtubs!"
I swear, if I have to watch one more commercial for boner pills, set to a bastardized version of an Elvis Presley semi-classic and featuring some dashing, mildly weathered actor who looks like he just fell out of a golf cart. I don't care about their boners, I don't want to know about their boners and frankly I hope these self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, self satisfying seniorish citizens get painful erections that last so long they have to be buried in pup tents
And this is only the least objectionable of the middle-aged wang-centric pharmaceuticals. Flomax? Cialis Daily Use? Natural male enhancement? It is as if my weekend entertainment is being sponsored by my Yahoo! junk mail folder. The operative phrase when watching sports has gone from "ooh!" to "eww."
Now I know why the Internet and text messaging have become the communications medium of my generation -- because the boomers haven't figured out how to use it yet -- and the Bigger, Better Boner industry haven't yet penetrated it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 02:42 am (UTC)but never sell your camping gear. just in case.
Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-07 02:19 pm (UTC)Re: Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-07 03:51 pm (UTC)Re: Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-07 07:41 pm (UTC)Re: Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-07 09:53 pm (UTC)Re: Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-07 09:53 pm (UTC)Re: Time between pitches
Date: 2008-10-08 03:17 pm (UTC)