What I’ve Learned So Far

Today is my birthday.  That fact triggers no negative emotion whatsoever.  I don’t feel as old as the calendar tells me I am.

That’s one thing I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older: I don’t feel the age I’m supposed to be.  At least not right away.  If someone asks me how old I am, “25” is the first number that appears in my brain before my conscious mind has the opportunity to override it.  When I actually was 25, the number was 18.

Aging—or, rather, feeling one’s age—seems to happen in fits and starts, not in an unwavering, mechanical progression from year to year.  One day, I’ll wake up and feel 36 or 41 or whatever age I happen to be at the time as the cumulative effects of moving to the next stage of life will have caught up with me at last.  I’ll think to myself, “Well, I guess I’m not 25 anymore,” and then I’ll feel that age for a few more years until sliding into the next phase.  For now, I feel 25.

I think I’ve picked up a few other lessons during my three decades of sentience.  And, even though absolutely no one asked, here they are:

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SitCombat: 1/19/12

30 Rock took the first SitCombat win of 2012, but Tina Fey and company didn’t have to tangle with Archer.

The much-anticipated return of the FX comedy comes after a strong run to end the second season, followed by a three-episode arc to bridge the gap between the second season and the third.  Fox seems to have committed to Archer more than ever, as the parent network has been promoting the show to a greater extent than I recall in prior years.

Don’t forget about the Office.  NBC’s venerable franchise is also new tonight as it tries to keep up with its seemingly-hotter competitors.

Who will win this violent battle to the metaphorical death?  Let’s find out. Continue reading

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The Bark Side of the Force

Things have been a little long-winded around here of late.  I wanted to try to accomplish two things with this post.  First, drop the Brow-o-Meter down a notch or two.  Mission accomplished.  Secondly, I wanted to see how many categories I could hit with a sub-hundred-word post about a single thing.

So, I found this forthcoming Volkswagen ad (Videos, General Culture) consisting of dogs barking the “Imperial March” (Music) from the Star Wars franchise (Movies) set to debut on television (uh, Television) during the Super Bowl (Sports).  Enjoy:

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Six Open Questions About Tim Tebow

If you can’t stand Tim Tebow, here’s the good news: This will be the last Tebow-related piece I write until at least August, barring some unforeseen incident involving a trade or the Rapture.

The bad news is that it’s going to be another long one.

The Denver Broncos’ improbable run ended Saturday at the hands of a Patriots team that dominated Denver in every phase of the game.  So, too, ends Tim Tebow’s storied season, but not without leaving several questions needing to be revisited sometime in 2012.

1. By what specific set of criteria, if one exists, may Tebow satisfy his critics?  Tim Tebow’s harshest critics—just like his strongest supporters—remain resolute in their opinions despite any evidence to the contrary.  But how many of his detractors can honestly say that he didn’t exceed the level of success they anticipated?  Recall that Denver had gone 5-16 in its previous 21 games before Tebow got the starting job for good in Week Seven of 2011.

I would wager heavily that the critics would have gladly accepted the following proposition back in October: “If the Denver Broncos win the AFC West and then win a playoff game with Tim Tebow as their quarterback for that entire span, then we can rightfully call Tebow a successful and effective professional football player.”

Yet, many of those same people will now say things ranging from “Tebow will never start another game in the NFL” to “Tebow is still the worst quarterback in the league.”

Tebow’s future seems uncertain at best (see below), but his critics have been very consistent in following up each defeat with proclamations that they’ve been definitively proven right in their assertion that he has no future in the NFL.  They’ve met his successes with temporary silence and eager anticipation of his next stumble.  I would like for someone on that side of the argument to list a set of criteria that Tebow could meet that would “prove” him to be a “success.”

That way, if Tebow wins ten games next season and throws for 3,000 yards, or, say, wins a couple of Super Bowls down the road (which I personally think would be very unlikely), these journalists won’t have to bother embarrassing themselves any further by continuing to move the rhetorical goal line such that Tebow could never cross it.

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The Return of SitCombat

I figured the season premiere of 30 Rock was as good a time as any to renew the weekly comedy showdown known as “SitCombat.” Archer comes back next week, so the opening contest of the year will be a one-on-one affair.

I would be irresponsible if I failed to mention two things in fairness to the shows that aren’t 30 Rock:

First, Archer had a very funny, three-episode “mini-season” that aired back in September.  The “Heart of Archness” episodes continued the writers’ hot streak from the end of Season Two.  I’ll take these episodes into consideration at the end of the year when I determine who won the 2011-12 season.  For now, suffice it to say that they did a great job of wrapping up the loose ends from last year and setting up what promises to be a terrific Season Three.

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An Abridged History of Pro Wrestling’s Ethnic Identity Crisis

Highlighting ethnicity or nationality to help get certain professional wrestlers “over” is a technique as old as the business itself.  The WWWF (later the WWF, now the WWE) used the origins of Bruno Sammartino (Italian), Spiros Arion (Greek), and Pedro Morales (Puerto Rican), among others, to help them connect with the corresponding segments of its New York fanbase.  Likewise, an actual Iranian dubbed “The Iron Sheik” could draw major business during a time when that nation held 52 Americans hostage.

The WWE admittedly relied more consistently on this particular trick of the trade when it was a regional promotion that ran nearly all of its major shows out of immigrant-heavy New York City.  But promotions all over the world used this tactic.  It’s a simple formula that persists to this day.  Santino Marella is an entertaining, some-might-say-offensive Italian stereotype.  Sheamus was touted repeatedly as the first Irish-born WWE champion in history.  Drew McIntyre (remember him?) incorporates the Scottish national flag into his ring attire.  Wade Barrett boasts about becoming the first English World Heavyweight Champion sometime in the near future.

Ethnicity or nationality is sometimes used as a not-so-subtle way to play into the prejudices of pro wrestling’s fanbase.  In other instances, it’s used in a less-insidious manner to draw positive attention to one aspect of a given character.

Occasionally, though, when a promotion needs a specific flavor of competitor, the racial cupboard is bare.  As a result, wrestling has a tradition that runs parallel to its history of ethnic grapplers: Taking creative liberties with a performer’s heritage in order to mold him into whatever “type” is needed for storyline purposes.

Here’s a very incomplete sampling of memorable examples of this strange phenomenon in rough chronological order:

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What it Means to be the Best

The old adage about Ric Flair held that the Nature Boy was such a skilled in-ring performer in his prime that he could have a four-star match with a broomstick.

What I always liked about that aphorism was that it incorporated the notion that someone can be so disproportionately-gifted at a particular endeavor that he must actually find ways to up the degree of difficulty for himself.  Otherwise, his immense talent would obscure just how difficult the exercise would be for a person of normal ability.

Tonight’s Monday Night RAW featured the payoff to a long-running series of vignettes in the form of the return of Chris Jericho.  The vignettes were vague enough that they likely could have been attached to any number of people (e.g. Undertaker) had the WWE not been able to consummate a new deal with Jericho in the interim.  The spooky content of the teasers turned out to be immaterial to what we saw tonight — at least so far.

No, what we got this evening was a Jericho emblazoned with a gaudy jacket complete with flashing lights, myriad high fives and crowd interactions, and lap after lap around the ring to celebrate gleefully with fans.

Yet, from these unlikely elements, Chris Jericho somehow constructed the best heel promo we’ve seen in many months.

And he did it without saying a word.

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Best of 2011

This year began with me being bitten in the face by a dog and will end with me staring at a dwindling bank account and vowing to reform my questionable eating and exercise regimen before I suffer a coronary.

Yet, 2011 wasn’t all bad.

The one very good thing I did this year was create this blog.  I had toyed with the idea for some time, but I finally pulled the trigger for reasons I explained in the very first post on the Axis of Ego.

This is the 132nd piece published on this website.  That’s an average of about one new post every two-and-a-half days.  I’m happy the site has been that prolific in generating content during its first year.  Of course, since I was responsible for about 125 of the 132, the observation may be somewhat self-serving.

I present the following list of what I considered to be the best or most noteworthy items from the Axis of Ego in 2011.  A short explanation of each provides the rationale behind its inclusion.  I hope you enjoy one or more of these if you missed them the first time around.  Naturally, my anal-retentiveness compels me to list them in chronological order:

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Awkward Moments in Entertainment History: The Worst Sitcom Joke of All Time

Sitcom fans born during the last twenty years have no idea how good they’ve had it.

The ebb and flow of conventional wisdom changes the tone of the genre every generation or so.  The early days of television had fanciful or even escapist comedy storylines that were intended to be as stress-free as possible.  The stakes were intentionally low.  The most difficult “issue” dealt with on a program like I Love Lucy was whether Lucy would be able to get her fake white beard off before the movie agent visiting Ricky arrives at their apartment.

The prevailing conflicts on sitcoms of the 50’s and 60’s — to the extent there were any — were commonplace family and relationship issues that could never be confused with what we would call an issue-centric show today.  Politics went virtually unmentioned, as did anything within a mile of controversy.  Even a show like The Honeymooners depicted its lower-middle-class protagonists in a way that didn’t make the audience uncomfortable with the Kramdens’ socioeconomic standing.

As is often the case in popular culture, themes shifted quickly and dramatically to another extreme.  Television began to reflect the changes in our more tumultuous society during the mid-to-late-1960’s.  A UK program called Til Death Us Do Part signaled the beginning of something heretofore unseen on television: A comedy show tackling the most challenging topics of contemporary society.  Norman Lear purchased the American rights to the show, retooling it as the groundbreaking (and superior) All in the Family.   All in the Family was the first American sitcom to address topics like rape, racism, feminism, and homosexuality directly and bluntly.

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Spooky Action at a Distance

Teams of scientists working with the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced this week that the elusive Higgs boson has quite possibly been observed for the first time.  The level of certainty provided by the recent run of data isn’t sufficient to consider this a “discovery” as yet, but the early indications suggest a noteworthy shift toward confirmation of the existence of the particle that plays a crucial role in the Standard Model.  Namely, scientists believe that the Higgs boson is the “God particle” that endows matter with mass.

Confirming such a fundamental concept as “where mass comes from” would provide another exciting step forward in our understanding of the nature of the universe.

The Higgs boson is the last remaining predicted but unobserved particle in the Standard Model.  The Standard Model is sometimes referred to as a “Theory of Nearly Everything” in that it addresses many, but not all, facets of the laws of physics in our universe.  The Higgs boson is one portion of this model that is itself a component of a larger (but still incomplete) attempt to solve a scientific mystery spawned decades ago.

Contemplated by a layman such as myself, the field of theoretical physics may be understood as a science of reconciliation.

Limited technology, beginning with our own eyes, allows us to observe various phenomena. The rotation of the Earth.  Magnetism of certain materials.  Electricity via a lightning bolt.  As technology improves, we are able to observe and analyze an ever-increasing number of aspects of the natural universe.  One role physics plays is to explain not only what it is that we are observing, but also how these phenomena relate to one another and interact, especially when independent observation of them leaves explanatory gaps, or even contradictions.

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