THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 2

• Those Nextel commercials in which people use their neat-o Nextel walkie talkie phones to communicate, despite being in each other's actual physical presence. (There are three of these: a couple getting married, a job candidate negotiating his salary with his new boss, and a group of people at a business meeting.) I will never understand why some advertisers choose to accentuate the most annoying and alienating features of their products. Why would these commercials make me want to sign up with Nextel? Who is the target audience: people who already hold high-volume conversations on the bus, at the grocery store, and in the art museum, and now want the chance to become even more irritating by talking on their cell phones with people standing three feet away?
  
• The Village People's "Y.M.C.A." as the most inexplicable stadium anthem ever. Look at the lyrics! Don't you people get it? This song is about easy access to gay sex. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- but gay sex isn't what I want to be thinking about while cheering on the Rockies or the Broncos. (On a more local note: can we stop playing Todd Rundgren's"Bang on the Drum All Day" when my beloved Colorado Mammoth score? We can do better than that. My suggestions: 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready 4 This" or "Unbelievable" by EMF.)
  
• People who try to tailgate their way up the left lane of a busy highway. You know what I'm talking about. You're driving along your local interstate, both lanes are clogged and moving slowly, and some jerkoff in an Audi talking on his cell phone, (probably a Nextel), pulls right up behind you and rides your bumper, trying to intimidate you into changing lanes so he can... zoom 10 feet ahead and ride the next guy's bumper. I used to pull over for these guys, but now I say the hell with them.
  
• Any comic device that juxtaposes stuffy white people with hip, jive-talkin' black people, (or any other unbearably hip subculture, such as dudespeaking surfers, skateboarders, or snowboarders.) Hasn't this been beaten to death? Recent examples include Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in their awful movie Bringing Down the House; a McDonald's radio commercial in which a white man with a nasal voice "translates" for a rapper; and anything starring Martin Lawrence. Acceptable exceptions: the "excuse me, stewardess, I speak jive" sequence in Airplane!; Eddie Murphy's brilliant "Mr. White" skit on "Saturday Night Live"; and Herbert Kornfeld in The Onion.
  
• People who won't try sushi. "I won't try sushi," these people say, "because blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah." (I'm not a very good listener.) But it doesn't matter -- there is no good reason for not trying sushi, because sushi is delicious. Just because the fish is raw doesn't mean it's still alive, for chrissake; it's not like it's going to jump up off the plate and attack you. I would understand if a person said, "Sushi? I tried that once, and it was awful, so no sushi for me, thank you." But nobody ever says that. I have introduced several people to sushi, most of whom were apprehensive about eating raw fish, and all of them loved it, because everybody loves sushi who actually has the balls to try it.
  

+posted by Lawrence @ 11/05/2003 05:11:00 PM