Get Incensed

Quien mas macho?

The Drudge Report carried the story this morning of how America’s Miss Universe candidate, Rachel Smith, got booed by the audience at the 2007 pageant in Mexico City.

I’m originally from Philadelphia, so I know a little bit about the fine art of booing. Citizens of my hometown once booed Santa Claus at a football game because the guy was too skinny and the suit didn’t fit. Mike Schmidt, arguably the greatest third basemen ever in baseball, was a regular target of Philadelphia fans.

There are some people who maintain that attendance at a sporting or entertainment event doesn’t give anyone the right to jeer at the performers. These people make an interesting point and many tiresome arguments but, let’s face it, they’re wrong.

Heckling and booing are privileges that come with finding a corporate contact that has access to tickets to your favorite team’s sporting event. If you buy the tickets with your own money, I believe it is your legal right to throw objects weighing less than seven pounds. It’s in the Magna Carta or something.

There are hundreds thousands a whole bunch of sports figures, celebrities and politicians that deserve to get booed or heckled. Start with the cast of The View, Hollywood Scientologists and the Congressional directory and, if you free-associate for 52 hours, you’ll be about halfway through the list of deserving targets.

But you do not, I repeat, do not heckle children, hospice workers or Miss America. (I’ll wait for an official ruling from Dear Abby, but my sense is, if you’ve donated over the basic gifting level, it’s okay to snicker occasionally during the Special Olympics … you probably can’t help yourself.)

Maybe I’m just being chivalrous here but I think all the contestants in the Miss Universe pageant deserve to be gawked at in silence or to polite applause. It’s enough of a hassle being pretty in regular life without having to deal with catcalls and verbal abuse during a beauty pageant. These girls probably get propositioned 35 times for sex acts just on the walk over from the hotel.

Having to parade around in a 1960s swimsuit at an elementary school talent contest is humiliation enough. The fact that anyone with any ambition has to sleep with the judges only adds insult to injury.

The booing was, at first, attributed to dissatisfaction with U.S. policies. The later spin was that the Mexican audience was just upset that Miss Mexico didn’t finish higher, even though Miss USA fell during her runway walk.

A quick look at the pictures shows that this is obviously a feeble attempt to excuse the boorish behavior of partisan audience as well as a perfect opportunity to include pictures of two hot young women in this blog.

Miss America is a ravishing, sensual beauty

Miss Mexico looks like she lost to Teri Hatcher for the last part on Desperate Housewives

Regardless of what you may think about America’s foreign policy, you shouldn’t take it out on a 21-year old girl from Tennessee - especially when you’re not sure that the votes are there to pass immigration reform.

booing, heckling, Miss Universe, Miss America, Miss Mexico, Teri Hatcher, Desperate Housewives, Philadelphia, Mike Schmidt, Mexico, immigration, foreign policy,

I want us to be more than just registered shoppers . . .

Just because I buy something and, under the duress of not being able to use your website, register my e-mail with you, doesn’t mean we’re “friends.”

I know I can count on you to remember my birthday, all major holidays and those special times when you need to reduce inventory. And I feel pretty confident that, unlike some of my other friends, you won’t call me when you need help moving or someone to co-sign a loan.

But don’t get all clingy and insist on calling me your friend. If I wanted a shallow relationship based on one small area of shared interest, I’d go to MySpace.

Here’s another clue that we’re not friends - friends don’t give friends fake e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

I know it hurts, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you. You’re spam. Your semi-annual clearance sale is sandwiched between an offer to improve my credit and hot grlrrrls just waiting to meet me. Actually, if I improve my credit, I think that would help me get more grlrrrls.

I have no problem being a “preferred customer” or a “registered shopper” or a “club member.” Even if “preferred” membership is available to anyone who isn’t currently incarcerated.

Even in my private (what’s left of it) life, I make a distinction between “friends” and “acquaintances.” Friends are people I’ve slept with; acquaintances are people I’m still trying to sleep with.

Which brings me to the only club I’d like to be a preferred member of . . .

Hugh, buddy, call me . . .

get incensed, preferred shopper, friends, Playboy, Hugh Hefner, friends with benefits, improved credit

No place to sit at Starbucks . . .

This morning’s rant targets are all those people who use not having had their morning coffee as an behavioral excuse.

You know the type … “I can’t talk to right now, I can’t even speak English before I’ve had my first cup of coffee for the day” or “Sorry I nearly hit you with my car in the parking lot - I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning.”

So, basically you’re trying to tell me that 150 milligrams of caffeine is the difference between you acting like a human being or acting like an antisocial idiot?

Any other chemical imbalances I should know about – like if you don’t have enough vitamin C you’ll lock me in a dungeon and sodomize me?

Excuse me if I avoid you for, oh … say, the rest of my life.

We all have bad days. But if your personality changes radically without a specific chemical substance, you may want to see professional help.

As a disclaimer, let me say that I drink copious amounts of coffee in a day - over half a gallon a day. I do, however, function quite well without it and don’t believe that most people would be able to tell the difference between when I’ve had my coffee and when I haven’t.

Except if you saw me type this post in under four seconds …

coffee, vitamin C, Starbucks, caffeine

“Aaaaaahhhhhh! Too many choices!”

Previously, in Freedom of Choice ….
Everyone loves freedom of choice but there’s a fine line between freedom of choice and sensory overload.

Leave it to marketing people to screw up one of the world’s simplest snack foods: potato chips. Slivers of fried potatoes with salt.

By the time I differentiate between baked, fried, plain, ridged or stacked in a can, I shouldn’t have to take a multiple choice test to decide if I want the taste of barbecue, mesquite, jalapeno and cheese, chipotle and lime or bacon and crystal meth.

This is a snack food. It’s not a wine tasting. Most of the time when you’re eating potato chips you’re either so wasted or so distracted you could put salt on a Post-It note and you wouldn’t notice the difference until your lips stuck together.

So, after spending an hour and forty five minutes just reading through the choices I have in the deodorant and snack aisles … I have even more choices to make before I get out of the store. Still to decide … the choice between paper or plastic; cash, credit or debit; or whether you want to get in the checkout line staffed by the emo chick or the white dude with dreadlocks.

And one last note for the old guy in the express check-out line who is always ahead of me … CARRY SOME GODDAMN CASH!

You’re not impressing me with your credit rating when you buy a box of Polident and a newspaper with your Visa card.

Here’s the new MasterCard commercial … Pack of Dentyne Ice: $1.25. New York Times: $0.50. Me whacking you upside the head with the plastic divider used to separate groceries: Priceless.

With 100 different brands of everything, it’s only a matter of time before a single supermarket declares for statehood.

All these choices and only 24 hours in a day. Frankly, I just don’t know how Mormons do it…

potato chips, Mastercard, Mormons

As Americans we love to do everything to excess.

We invented Las Vegas, the Hummer and DD breast implants. We invented fast food with the idea that you could grab a quick bite when you were pressed for time.

But that wasn’t enough. We had to super-size the hamburger and create a Whopper.

And then, when that wasn’t enough, Kentucky Fried Chicken announced that they would take everything they made and just throw it in a giant bowl for you.

Like some bad cartoon overload, the folks at KFC decided all That wasn’t enough, so about a month later they came out with an added bonus: the KFC bowl now includes a biscuit.

There are rumors that next month Taco Bell is going to abandon all pretense and come out with the Taco Bell Trough. It’s a long styrofoam trench that you can hook to the window of your car so that you and your whole family can just stick your heads in and gorge on meat, cheese and refried beans.

Everyone loves freedom of choice but there’s a fine line between freedom of choice and sensory overload. We passed that line about 10 years ago when every personal hygiene item got its own aisle in the drug store. There are 150 flavors of everything from toothpaste to feminine hygiene products.

Can we all agree that we don’t need 75 different scents of each brand of deodorant? We’ve got scents like Cool Breeze, Arctic Blast, Mountain Air, Icy Wave and Surf. You’re not describing a personal hygiene aisle; you’re rattling off the consequences of global warming.

This explosion of choice is the reason why old people smell funny - by the time they get ready to choose a deodorant, they’ve forgotten what it is they’re shopping for.

Even people in their thirties have to do interval training in order to have enough stamina to get from the Right Guard at one end of the aisle to the Axe Body Spray that’s 26.3 miles away at the end of the row.

Let’s be realistic - the choices of which underarm product to use should be limited to one section of shelves that is about the size of a small book case.

Picking out a deodorant shouldn’t be more complicated than gene splicing.

Here’s all the choice you need in deodorants: scented or unscented; Right Guard, Old Spice or Arrid.

Why? Because I still have to navigate the snack aisle … but we’ll talk more about that later today …

supersize, breast implants, deodorant, Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC, Taco Bell, Whopper, Right Guard, Old Spice, Arrid