[I wrote this on November 3, 2010, but forgot to publish it. Meh, it's not that stimulating, but enjoy]:

I’m as pissed as a tea partier at Christine O’Donnell’s Victory Party. Not because of Tuesday night’s election results; they sucked, but whatever, I’m ovah it. Rather, I’m pissed because of the awful election returns coverage.

As soon as I got home, I turned on NBC—it’s no secret that Brian Williams is the most trusted name in news in my book. My friends—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski—had braced me for some amazing coverage across the networks of NBC. And I was pumped. But what did I find? Mario Lopez. Ugh. For those of us that consider watching election returns a sport—and I absolutely do—Tuesday night was horrible. My grievances below.

• Biggest Loser: NBC decided to push their coverage back an hour so we could watch the latest episode of Biggest Loser. Are you surrious?? I know everyone likes to point at one thing and say “This is what’s wrong with America”, but fo real: THIS is what’s wrong with Ehmurrika…that we’d rather watch clinically obese people try and do exceedingly easy tasks like climbing a flight of stairs than see where our country is headed politically.
• Chuck Todd—where you at? One of the only reasons I turn to the networks of NBC—aside from Brian Williams’ glorious tan—is to see Chuck Todd’s brilliant commentary. That man is a genius. And yet for some reason, he got like 20 seconds of airtime. Come on–the man who’s normally on TV throughout the day, from the Today Show to the Nightly News and everything in between (including his own show)–and you pick tonight of all nights to give him the night off? Ugh.
• Where were the charts? The graphs? I need graphics, people! And I’m not talking about CNN’s holographic bullshit. I’m talking about moving pie charts and bar graphs engulfing the commentators and taking over the studio. Instead, I got a hologram of the Capitol building. Useless…utterly useless. Come on people, what am I supposed to do: listen to you?

The Disney Vault. It could have been a beautiful place: fields of grass, a never-ending chorus of some of our favorite songs, and Bambi’s mother, alive and well and basking in the golden rays of the sun with her beloved son.

But in a cruel kowtow to American capitalism, Disney didn’t choose this path. They close a steal barricade and twist the comically large lock at the end of their commercials: “Get it before it goes [dun dun dunnnnn...] back in the vault.”

What goes on behind those close doors? I’m still waiting for the Jane London Dateline Special–I’d even settle for a congressional investigation led by the esteemed Michelle Bachmann–but in the meantime, I might as well let my (terrifying) imagination run wild.

Ebenezer Scrooge, as played by Academy Award Winner Daffey Duck, leads you down a dark hallway, his torch flickering. You pass by an emaciated Aladdin, gnawing at the remains of what I suspect to be his monkey-sidekick, Abu.

Next comes a locked door, with only a sliver of eerie red light creeping out beneath the door. Suddenly, you hear the distinct cry for help of what has to be Belle, her melodic voice muffled by what I imagine to be a gang of handicapped pirates straight from Captain Hook’s boat, having their rough way with her. Daffey explains that the enterprising Mrs. Potts has organized a brothel in this cruel underworld, and instantly, all my doubts about the deceptiveness of Angela Lansbury are validated.

Another room, another horror: Mowgli, from the Jungle Book, and his gaggle of feral African creatures, passed out on the couch watching reruns of CSI and Law & Order, the remnants of drugs littered around the room. And not even classy drugs like cocaine or ecstasy….no no, the metallic smell that can only come from burning meth and empty bottles of oxycodone strewn about make it clear that these wretched souls have ingratiated themselves with some of Western Appalachia’s best, as they claw at the pot marks on their faces.

Then, you arrive at the end of hallway: steal bars separating you from a faint outline of those two iconic circular ears, barely lit by Daffey’s flickering torch. Mickey’s turned around in his cell, and you grab the torch from Daffey and run to the bars:

“Mickey, is that you? Say it isn’t so, Mickey!”

Without turning his body, Mickey turns his head a complete 180 degrees. There’s just a blank expression on his face, his face even whiter than normal, and as he opens his mouth, a terrible demonic voice comes out:

“What an excellent day for an exorcism.” Then he just spews fluorescent green bile on your face, like a horrible Nickelodeon game show.

In honor of Ramadan coming to an end this week, I decided to dig up my own experience with Ramadan while studying abroad in Senegal, a Muslim-majority country in Africa. Just a note, in Senegal, the festival of “Eid” is actually called “Korite.” Or so I think; I didn’t really put too much research into it…

Sky Waitresses In Action.

Over the last year, I’ve found myself on quite a few Virgin America flights—or as I prefer to call it, Fly-Over America (Seriously, look at their flight map: it’s every elitist Democrat’s dream: they connect all the important cities—SF, New York, DC, LA, Seattle, etc.—and just fly over the rest of Real America).  They’ve got a pretty nice setup: mood lighting that makes you feel like you’re in a club, in-flight entertainment centers at your seat and relatively good food. But one thing that I’ve noticed more and more over the past few months is the sassiness level of their flight attendants. Just because you have your own TV show now doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole; I mean, it’s on the CW for crying out loud. Sassy flight attendants aside, Virgin America is by far my favorite airline.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we move on: the name “flight attendants.” In my opinion, it exaggerates their skill-set. Really, they’re more like waitresses—waitresses of the sky, if you will (and I will). Yes, I’m sure they have some sort of “training”, but at the end of the day, the most difficult thing they’ve ever done for me is slip me an extra bag of warmed nuts (“eww, gross—he said nuts”).

“But waitress isn’t a gender-agnostic title, Chris.” Exactly, my friend (and good use of agnostic, I’m going to write that one down). I’m sorry, some jobs are better suited for a woman (sewing, cleaning and midwifery) and some are best suited for a man (financial services, law, engineering, executive management, the list goes on and on and on). Sky waitressing falls under the former.

Disagree? Well let’s think about one of the most annoying sky waitresses of them all: the gay male flight attendant. Lisping through the in-flight announcements like a nail grinding down a chalkboard, I cringe every time I hear him tell me to fasssten my theat belt. “Go back to your assistant manager position at American Eagle,” I say, “they’re having a BOGO and your presence is critical.”

The only thing more annoying than the gay male flight attendant is the elusive straight male flight attendant. As sure as can be, he’ll get on the PA and announce “the gorgeous Rebecca and Ginger-Anne in the back of the plane, wave your hands girls.” Have you ever turned around and looked at Rebecca? Nine times out of ten, she’s far from attractive, and pretty much all the time, she’s rolling her eyes at the unwanted sexual advances of her counterpart. Male sky waitresses? No thank you, I rest my case.

Where was I? Oh yes, sassy sky waitresses. The last couple flights I’ve been on, some geriatric EFL-passenger inevitably gets up while the seat belt sign is on (don’t worry, I will dedicate a whole post to incompetent airline travelers, I mean really—just because you don’t speak English doesn’t mean you can’t read a fasten seatbelt sign, it’s icon-based).

“Attention passengers, the fasten seat belt sign is on. Please remain in your seats. I repeat, you should be in your seats at this time.” If that’s not the most passive aggressive request, I don’t know what is. Don’t bring the rest of us into this, Rebecca, we all can see who you’re talking about. There’s only one person standing up in the whole plane, and it’s an 85-year old Filipino grandmother. Furthermore, if she can’t understand the fasten seatbelt sign, do you think she can understand your request? No, she can’t.

Just one example of their sassiness, I could provide more upon request, but this rant has already gone long enough.

Anyway, I guess I would probably be sassy too if I spent my days shuffling a plane full of 150 disgruntled, borderline-obese, extremely incompetent people across the country everyday. But at the same time, I didn’t sign up for that job: they did.

This is a guest post by my friend, AJ Brown. We went to the Vancouver Olympics together with a few other friends. I think he does a good job capturing our anxiety about the upcoming London Games:

London, you’re on thin ice. No, I’m not talking about the decline in the pound or the financial impact on airlines due to the Volcano in Iceland.  I’m talking about the two individuals that you introduced the world to this week: Wenlock and Mandeville.

Wenlock and Mandeville

You chose these white-before-Memorial Day-Gumby-wannabe’s-with-pickle-claws-for-hands characters to be your ambassadors to the world? In the words of Seth and Amy – really, London?!?!

First, Let me give you some background as to why I am so passionate about this subject.  As my friends can attest to, I am a rabid Olympics fan. If the Olympics were a certain latina popstar, I would probably kill her in her house after stalking her for weeks because “I loved her too much” (oh yea, this is my first guest blog post and I made a Selena joke – I’m just keeping it real for you, folks).  Needless to say, the Beijing Olympic Games were the equivalent of a two-week long orgasm for me, narrated by the maestro of NBC Sports, Bob Costas.  Need a reminder of why Beijing was so great? Well, let’s start with this:

Bejing Opening Ceremonies from Youtube

Seriously, I have never seen a better argument for communist rule than the Opening Ceremonies.  Think you could get something like that to happen in the West? No way! Rampant obesity would prevent us from fitting into a tight space like that, and I’m pretty sure Glenn Beck would spin it as Obama’s attempt to hypnotize the world into accepting bestiality as the wave of the future.  That being said, let’s be honest – China did it better.  I am sure the president of the London Olympic Committee poured himself a stiff drink, turned on a cold shower, got in, and had himself a good cry while rocking back and forth after seeing the Beijing opening ceremonies.

But you know what? London shouldn’t have been nervous.  We all get it – Beijing had something to prove and the resources and political control to pull it off. It’s like the ugly kid who comes back to school after summer break with contacts, no braces, and an extra 20 pounds of muscle – yea he looks good, but he’s still not one of the cool kids.  Everyone has acknowledged that Beijing set the bar WAY too high, and no one expects London to top it.

But by no means is this an excuse for you to half-ass your way to 2012. For starters, you put a bad taste in our mouths with this:

London 2012 Logo

After I stopped seizing and broke out my Cracker Jack decoder ring, I figured out that this was supposed to represent 2012.  You realize that 2012 games will take place in the year 2012, not during a 1982 mall concert featuring Tiffany, right London? You should be trying to convey international peace through competition and sport, but instead you went for a throwback to “I want my MTV”.  Let’s do a quick comparison to Beijing, shall we?

Beijing logo

The Chinese language doesn’t even use letters, yet their logo is easier to understand than yours! And come on, you are given a clear color palette: green, black, red, gold, and blue. What is hard about that?  I was really willing to forgive you for this slip-up London.  You haven’t hosted the Games since 1948, when male chauvinism was still considered a sport and people swam in full-body suits (sidebar: we’ve really come full circle with that, haven’t we?). I considered it a small mistake, but then you had to come out with these fools. You can do better! You’re a small city, but a great one, too. You’re the city of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles (cue “Love Actually” soundtrack), Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham’s left foot. David Beckham’s right foot, come to that! The west it pulling for you, so don’t let us down!

This is your final warning, London.  798 days and counting…

In case I haven’t already told you one thousand times already, I’m going to Vancouver for the Olympics tomorrow. This will be the first in a series of posts about the Olympics, get ready…

Last week, Ralph Lauren announced the official U.S. Olympic Team Opening Ceremony outfits; here they are:

Gee, thanks Ralph Lifshitz for phoning it in. Sweat pants, a puffy jacket and worker boots: I’ve actually worn that outfit before, but it was on my way to the college cafeteria for a brunch detox after a night of excessive binge drinking, not as I present myself to the world. In fact, I wouldn’t even go to the library dressed like that (though I was one of those people that used to get dressed up to go to the library). You took Olympic athletes, specimens of man in peek physical condition, and transformed them into outlet mall hookers. Needless to say, I’m really disappointed.

Let’s disect, piece-by-piece:

1. Hooker boots: seriously, black leather boots with bright red laces? And not just for men but for women, too? What are we trying to say here?
2. Workout sweats: don’t just slap a “2010″ on the leg and call it a day. I’m all about functionality and utility, but this seems a bit overboard. I mean, this isn’t a warm-up suit, these athletes are parading around a stadium with over one billion people watching, presenting themselves to the world. Lets show a little class, please?
3. Poofter jacket: like I said, outlet mall hooker. And I’m all about obnoxious branding (I own my share of Big Pony Polos), but this is taking it to the extreme: the Polo Pony is bigger than the Olympic patch on the other breast.
4. Chunky cable-knit turtle-neck sweater: those don’t look good on anyone, let’s moveon.org. Not to mention the fact that this cream white sweater completely clashes with the egg-shell white sweat pants. And I can’t help but think how hot these athletes must be, wearing a thick sweater under a down jacket.
5. Pattern knit-cap: the light at the end of the tunnel. If only they used this cap as the inspiration for the rest of the outfit, we might have had a look to be proud of. But it’s not.

Anyway, I’ll be watching on Friday night from a bar in Vancouver!! (It starts at 7:30PM on NBC)

A response to this Huffington Post article.

Taking a middle of the road approach to the news doesn’t mean that you present a topic and have two unqualified people from each side scream at each other for five minutes with limited interruption by the anchor. That approach is something closer to having someone else do your job for you.

Just because CNN divulged itself from taking a political side doesn’t mean it should have divulged itself from journalism, which seems to be their approach. There will always be two sides (or three or four) to every news story, but just because there are doesn’t mean that each side merits the same amount of air time.

It is the journalists’ responsibility to investigate and present the facts behind a story. At that point, if the story merits a partisan response, only then should outside input be included. And the partisan responses should be included in a moderated fashion; no one gains anything when commentators are given a soap box to spew talking points, unchecked by the facts. If a journalists wishes to include outside remarks, they should be responsible enough to hold these commentators to the truth. It’s one thing to have someone else do your work for you; it’s another thing to ask an unqualified partisan to do your work for you.

I stopped watching CNN not because it became too middle-of-the-road but because they were so concentrated and obsessed with that middle that they failed to present the story effectively and truthfully.
More on CNN
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost