His bio states: “I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account.”

Yes, that pretty much sums it up.

This twitter account coupled with the spike in ratings during the recent NBC late night meltdown really proves only one thing: America is more interested in this washed up celebrity’s bearded, anti-corporate-television rantings than in his actual television show.

Good luck CoCo.  I for one do not feel badly for you at all, nor am I going to care that you are sitting in your Hollywood mansion crying your eyes out every morning in your huge cereal bowl.

But I’ll still follow you on twitter.

Not unless you are Greg McElroy of the Alambama Crimson Tide!!

Just in the most dramatic part of the game, when Texas scored a touchdown and 2 pt conversion that put them within striking distance of Alabama, we got a brief cut-away of McElroy before they sent it to commercial.  In this singular moment of drama in the game, this is what we got?

Didn’t anyone ever tell him that you never know when the camera will be on you?

The funny thing is the commentary that went with the shot… the commentators mention that he hasn’t lost a game since the 8th grade… then BAM!

See for yourself:

I will say, though, that I probably shouldn’t be insulting the quarterback who cracked ribs in the last game, and then showed up to play his heart out in the national championship.  I should be mocking the lilly livered Colt McCoy, who abandoned his team after a little sprain in his shoulder.  But I guess he really wanted a million dollar draft bonus over a national championship and respect.

You would be right.

Let me tell you, though, Glee and I have a strange, love/hate relationship:

Love: The music.  The mixing is fantastic, the arrangements are (on the whole) really good.  It’s fresh and catchy and downloadable.

Hate: The promotion of the stereotypes.  This reinforces the concept that queens, freaks, misfits, and homosexuals are the only ones who belong in a high school choir or drama program.  This just isn’t the case.  I know a lot of normal, heterosexual people who enjoyed drama and choir in high school.  They also ran track or played basketball or did cross country.  Yes, there were some like me who insisted on doing choir, drama and band – and yes we’re the ones responsible for the stereotypes seen on this show – but I just want Choir or Drama to be cool enough where it’s not such a big deal if a football player, like Finn, can also be in the choir.  It’s not outside of the realm of possibility.  After all, very few high school football players actually ever amount to anything anyways go on to college or professional football.

Love:  Sue Sylvester!

This is quite possibly the best character to hit the small screen in recent memory.  She is dirty and clean.  Sinister and righteous.  Holy and evil.  She is right and she knows it.  She is up even when she’s down.  She isn’t afraid to kill to get what she wants, but can do it with a smug smile and wink.  I love love love Sue Sylvester.  It is absolutely worth suffering through the campy parts of Glee just to see her grace the screen.

A few of her best quotes:

This is what we call a total disaster, ladies. I’m going to have to ask you to smell your arm pits… That’s the smell of failure. And it’s stinking up my office!

You think this is hard? Try being waterboarded, that’s hard!

It is my strong suggestion these two students be hobbled.

Let me be the one to break the silence. That was the most offensive thing I have seen in 20 years of teaching and that includes an elementary school production of “Hair.”

I’ll often yell at homeless people: ‘Hey, how is that homelessness working out for you? Try not being homeless for once.

Schuester! Yeah? I’ll need to see that set list for Sectionals after all, and I want it on my desk, warm from the laminator at 5:00 p.m. And if it is one minute late, I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat, and then, on some dark, cold night, I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face.

I have reasonable confidence that you will be adding revenge to the list of things you’re no good at — right next to having a marriage; running a glee club; and finding a hairstyle that doesn’t make you look like a lesbian.

Never let anything distract you from winning. Ever.

In case you didn’t hear me laughing my butt off all through those quotes, let me make it perfectly clear: WhiteEyebrows seriously hearts Sue Sylvester!

Hate: The writing.  Well, more specifically I hated the way the writers completely threw away all the conflict and suspense they had built through the whole first season.  Any conflict that can be resolved with one scene, or worse, a few lines of dialogue wasn’t done right.  They had the chance to make something of Will’s divorce, Quin’s pregnancy, Sue’s Cheerios, Will’s job, the wedding – but too quickly wrapped everything up in a nice little bow in under 1/2 an episode.  It just didn’t have the proportional wind-down that justified the season long wind-up.

Bottom line:  I’ll probably get sucked into season 2 of this mess.  Sorry everyone, I’m now outed as a Glee fan.  But this doesn’t in anyway change our friendship, right?

The snot rockets and spitting took a back seat to Kennedy and Roosevelt.

However, the Phillies won and the Series will continue.  (Arg!)

My boy BennyBoy (who astutely provided us with the video clip yesterday) and I got into a lovely conversation about the state of baseball.  Benny is a die hard sports guy, and is rooting for the Phillies.  Why?  Because NY has won enough.  I’ll let him explain more in that guest post he promised (right? right? give it to me!), but will sum it up by saying – there needs to be a salary cap in baseball, and George Steinbrenner needs to have a personal financial crisis.

That being said, what is up with this guy?

Joe Girardi is like the LaVell Edwards of baseball: tough, unbreakable exterior.  Do you see the cutaways of him in the dugout, with his eyes hidden under his cap and his evil, angular jawline?  He just looks like a guy you wouldn’t want to mess with, or meet in a back alley somewhere in Jersey.  He might even be related to the devil himself.

Joe Girardi is much more intimidating than Charlie Manuel, who appears to be chewing so intently, you’d think it was basic life support for his mother – or what was keeping the neurons in own brain from taking a permanent break.

Go Managers!!!

After A-Rod had gotten on base, they did an EXTREME close up (again, remember that we’re in high definition here) and at the perfect 2 seconds that his big round face was plastered against my 100″ viewing area, he put his finger up to his nose and launched a HUMUNGOUS snot rocket out of the other nostril.

I had to go check the carpet below the screen afterward to make sure there was nothing to clean up!

His mother must be sitting at home just shaking her head.  Didn’t she teach him more manners than that?

(p.s. I tried in vain to find a screen shot of this online.  I wish wish wish I had been recording it…)

Update:

Thanks to BennyBoy, we have this awesome video of it:

Did we decorate our house?  No.

Did we dress up?  No.

Did we have to give away some of the good candy?  Yes. (But I saved most of the Kit Kats)

Did we have any teenagers come and take candy by the handfuls and put it in their pillowcase?  No.

We turned off the light at 9:15, watched the game through the top of the 6th inning, and went to bed.  (Without setting our clocks back, nor informing the sun to not come and wake us up as if it were Standard Time, rather than daylight savings time.  But I won’t complain about that, since the extra hour has allowed to me to catch up on blogs and write this blog.)

I hate baseball.

I know hate is a strong word, but I really don’t like it a lot.  It’s SOOO long and boring.  Moreover, it is NASTY!  Does everyone in Baseball have some kind of mouth problem where they have to spit every five seconds?  Especially when the camera is on them?  I realize this is from a long history of chewing tobacco, but even those who don’t chew anymore still find necessary to spit every few seconds.

Spitting in high def is extra nasty, too.  And so are the nose hairs hanging out of the team manager’s nose that you can also see in high def.  I’m now starting a campaign to revert MLB to standard def coverage.  If you would like to join me on this, please enter your credentials in the comments area.

Take this story for example.  It’s not news, per se.  It doesn’t chronical an event or inform the audience what’s going on, but it’s important information which adds depth and color to the stories coming out of Afghanistan.  It reminds us that we are not just lackadaisical observers of the world, we are participants in it, and it affects us and our human relationships.  It makes the war a little less foreign and sterile.

Kudos to you, NPR, for having the bravery to not pander to the nauseatingly regurgitated copy of the cable news and bringing us fresh, human insights into the human side of the news.

This story is of a man who pays the price of his addiction over and over again.

Listen to Richard Farrell read his essay below.  It’s three minutes of your life you won’t regret.

As a Sesame Street fan from my cradle, here is quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen on the internet all week…

I’d like to continue this conversation by pointing out that the internet has been going through a dramatic change.  In the technology industry we call it “Web 2.0″, but no one really knows what that actually means… so let me try to explain what this is and what I see it doing to our society.

First, a little history:

• The internet started as an information resource.  The web was just online advertising.  Businesses simply posted information about their business, product, or services.
• In the next phase of the internet,  it was all about transactions – buying and selling stuff online.  You would get the information about a product but then also be able to purchase it and have it shipped directly to you.  Think Amazon, eBay, and all the other eTailers.
• In “Web 2.0″ the experience totally changes.  Now besides getting information and buying it, you find the community around a product.  You read other customer’s reviews on it, find the recommendation for the cheapest reseller of it, and then purchase it.

Web 2.0 is the shift away from a controlled message from the site owner and moves toward a collaborative, community approach, where content comes from the users of the site themselves.  (After all, what is a better way of getting site loyalty than making everyone who goes there a part-owner?!) Web 2.0 is all about the user. We make connections online to like-minded individuals.  We create communities of friends and coworkers.

Blogging itself is perhaps the epitome of Web 2.0.  Users run their own site and post content as they please which everyone can view and comment on. (Hi Mom!)

But there is another oft-ignored phenomenon of Web 2.0 – channelization of the internet.

What is Channelization?  Think TV.  Parents hate TV because it is a device they have no control over that their children mindlessly plug themselves into.  You tuned the set to your favorite station (or channel) and just let it feed you content for hours on end.  It is the ultimate time-waster, but super entertaining and enjoyable!

We used to go to the internet only to seek information.  We would find the information or make our transaction, and then we were done.  Now, we are shifting toward ‘plugging in’ to the internet as we did the TV.  We now go to the internet to seek informational entertainment.

We get that information entertainment as serial feeds from certain sites.  Blogs are serial feeds.  We then aggregate feeds into things like Google Reader or iGoogle.  We can see a ‘Live Feed’ from Facebook or Twitter of everything our friends are doing.  We read blogs which are just personalized, serialized soap operas of people’s lives.  We poke and prod and voyeur ourselves into other people’s worlds.

TV was more harmless because you were a passive observer of the content.  You sat back and were fed, but could choose to tune out at any time without batting an eyelash.  Because of the dependency of Web 2.0 on the user to be the content generator, the channel will effectively die without you.  This increases an importance and an urgency to our participation in the web, and creates even a stronger addiction to it.

The internet is becoming smarter, too.  Now you can set up all kinds of ways to get just the content you want.  Just want news from the conservative rags?  Just want to know what Billy or Sally is doing all day long?  Want to read everything WhiteEyebrows is thinking?  Just subscribe, tune in, and lose yourself in the content of the day.

Not only can you create your own channels of information, but you can hyper-personalize your channel to fit only that which you are most interested in.  This is evidence that even though the world continually expands, our minds and worldviews continue to narrow. We, by choice, limit our exposure to that which we are comfortable with and the chances become less and less that we will ever be exposed to things outside of our comfort zone.

I’m not saying this is all bad, just making an observation of the trend that we seem to be following.  I certainly don’t want you to discontinue following my little soap opera here on WhiteEyebrows.com.  In fact, why don’t you ‘Web 2.0′ yourself and comment already!

We were discussing… uhh.. God… and related subject matter (in other words I have no clue what the context of the discussion was) when this lady – out of the blue – raises her hand and reminds us that the ‘real battle’ is having accurate information as to what is really going on in the world, and that the wickedly-liberal-Satanically-run-news-media is always just trying to lead the world into a moral black hole.  Then, in the same breath, she admonished us to rely on her favorite conservative ‘news website’.  (Turns out, the website is just a political action website, using cherry-picked propaganda from past church leaders.  So instead of even talking about current events, she was really just pushing her political agenda at church…. UGGGGG…)

Well, she had me at the first part.  Yes, we should be distrust the media!  We should approach each story asking ourselves what editorial position the reporter is taking, considering what content they have exaggerated or maybe even omitted.

The second part of her comment is what revealed her narrow-mindedness.  She stated categorically that we should distrust the media, but then encouraged us to trust ONE PARTICULAR media outlet.  Umm… isn’t that something like telling someone all drugs are bad but then going and lighting up a joint, telling them that it’s OK because it’s the ‘good stuff’?  It reeks of hypocrisy.

Just because a particular new outlet jibes better with your thinking doesn’t automatically make it correct, making all others errant.  I mean, what if you’re thinking is wrong? (Perish the thought!)

Let me suggest an alternative.  How about consuming media from many different outlets, from many different perspectives? Doing this, you can gain a broader perspective of the problem, synthesize what you’ve heard, and come to YOUR OWN conclusion as to the truth (or your opinion) on the matter.  Yeah, it’s more work.  It requires you to think for yourself rather than simply accept someone else’s shrink-wrapped, sound-bited perspective on the issue.  But isn’t it worth the work to have your own informed opinion?

The real question is: where is the truth?  Well, honestly, you won’t ever find the truth of anything by just reading one person’s viewpoint.  The real truth lies between the written lines.  You can’t trust a single human source to tell you the uneditorialized, unspun, uncommentaried truth on any matter.  Consider how often you tell someone a story without putting your own perspective or opinion into it; never. (Ever seen the movie Big Fish?) We automatically edit out details or glaze over parts that aren’t compatible with our telling.  That is just how we work.

So, expand your horizon.  Read The Huffington and The National Review.  Read the Times as well as the Journal.  Watch CNN and Fox News.  As I’ve stated before, become a connoisseur of media, just as you are of fine foods.  Taste of a wide range, judge each according to its merits, and abandon the unworthy.

I just hope you didn’t miss this stunning performance…

Really… it’s no fair that the women have different events than the men.  Plus, they get to wear cute little hair accessories.  I say, “Equal Gymnastics Rights for Men!”

(Thanks, Erika for sharing the hilarious video)

But for all of the Olympic staples (the music, the rings, the McDonalds sponsorships), nothing surpasses the ubiquity of Bob Costas.

Honestly, what does this guy do during the odd numbered years?  You never see him anywhere until the Olympics, where he busts out of television hibernation to do hours upon hours, days upon days of anchoring the NBC Olympic Sports desk.

How does this guy do it?  I’m pretty sure they have to go get him out of mothballs every other year, because he is completely unchanged from year to year as well.

Also, a peculiar thing… he hasn’t aged in the 16 years I have recollections of him.  Hmm… is Bob Costas… an android?  Something is not quite right here…

Oh yeah… and Go USA… #1 #1 #1

For the past couple of days, I have been getting sick. It’s really not a violent “I’m going to die” sickness, but anyone who knows me really well, knows that I have absolutely no patience for being sick. My life should be discomfort-free, in my estimation. So when I get sick, I have to go through all the phases of grieving, with a blind-rage step added in.

So I’m sick, and can’t breathe, which also means I couldn’t sleep last night. After trying everything I could imagine to get comfortable enough to drift off (including having the King’s Singers lull me away with a comotose rendition of MLK: “Sleep… Sleep Tonight… and may your dreams be realized”)

As a last resort, I gave up, went and laid on the couch, and turned on “War Plane”, the PBS documentary I had recorded earlier that day. (If I’m going to be up, I might as well be spoon fed some kind of useless knowledge.)

I was dead asleep in 15 minutes.

Last night on 60 minutes, they devoted an entire segment to yet another story on how Uncle Albie is going to save us all from the “Global Climate Crisis.”

I swear I saw that same story like 3 months ago. Does he have some kind of appearance contract with CBS?

But whatever… causes are awesome. I think everyone should have at least one…

Here’s the part that absolutely floors me: Uncle Albie honestly believes that everyone in America, nay, the world, now acknowledges that global warming is caused by humans.

“There’s still a lot of skepticism about whether global warming is man made,” Stahl remarked.

“I don’t think there’s a lot. I think there’s…” Gore said.

“Well, there’s pretty impressive people… And they say: we don’t know what causes it and why spend all this money till we really know,” Stahl said.

“I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off,” Gore said.

Uhh… I don’t think so. It’s this kind of head-in-the-sand mentality that makes me doubt the very premise of your cause. There are plenty of fair minded individuals and scientists who aren’t jumping up and down in your bandwagon, Mr. Gore. Probably at best, it’s a 50/50 split. If you can’t acknowledge the simple fact that there are many, many people who do not agree with you, then how can we begin to accept the dogma that you are preaching?

Now here’s where a cause becomes an obsession. Crazy Uncle Albie (appearing with wife Tipper… so now they are ‘the Gores against global warming’) is now launching a $300m ad campaign to raise awareness so that (in his words) by the fall presidential campaign, this is the only issue the candidates are talking about.

<sarcasm>Wow. I’m totally stoked for that campaign. </sarcasm>

P.S. As I have repeatedly stated in this blog – living green is good. It’s good for your pocketbook, for the country’s foreign relations, for the environment, for everything. I’m just saying, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Which brings me to today’s subject, coolness.

Growing up, I was never really considered a ‘cool’ kid. In elementary school, I was kind of an all out geek; big Smurf glasses, relatively good grades, sucked up to all the teachers, terrible at sports, and generally awkward.

Then one day, I found out I could sing. This eventually led to me singing in a school assembly (drat those talent encouraging elementary music teachers). I’m pretty sure this made me a more famous nerd, but still not cool. My teachers thought I was quite special, but other students just looked at me as some kind of weird, red-headed, whiteeyebrowed singing freak. (I’m not sure if I actually had white eyebrows back then, because (as I’ve noted before) I didn’t actually discover my white eyebrows until I was 15.)

Then I went to middle school. My family moved between my 6th and 7th grade year, so I was starting fresh; new school, new town, new friends. I ditched the Smurf glasses and got contact lenses, which was probably the only outward change I had. But I think the way I saw myself actually changed. I started to figure out how to be funny and make others laugh. I started being more confident in myself in spite of my quirky personality, my ability to sing along with Sarah Brightman (in her range), my slight lisp on my S’s, and my affinity for useless knowledge and facts no one cared about.

Perhaps my ‘coolness’ peaked in the ninth grade when I successfully ran for a spot on the student council. (I attribute the success to my brilliant marketing campaign “I Want You” with the Uncle Sam on it)

So here’s my Theory of Modern Coolness: confidence. It’s owning who you are, no matter how awkward or different. It’s learning to be comfortable in your own skin.

The biggest misconception associated with attaining coolness is that coolness = conformity; that somehow you have to do what the other cool kids are doing, wear what they are wearing, and talk like they are talking. While this is the way that people often achieve acceptance or fit in with the cool kids group, the truly cool kids stick out. They are unique and different…

..Just look at the Fonz.