Cliché Football Movies

Dear Hollywood,
Please stop making movies about football. I mean seriously, every movie about football that can ever be made has already been made twice.Nobody thinks the ragtag bunch of misfits have a chance at the championship, but then they overcome their differences and against all odds...they WIN, gaining the respect of their hard-nosed coach and the opposing team. Wow, I totally didn't see that coming...not!

The world does not need any more movies about football. From The Waterboy to The Comebacks, The Longshots, The Replacements, The Longest Yard, We Are Marshall, Varsity Blues, Jerry Maguire, Gridiron Gang, Any Given Sunday, Remember The Titans, and countless others, football movies are nothing but cliché.

Speaking of clichés, the world already has plenty of superhero movies, computer-animated kids' movies, and movies based on TV shows. Now if someone could please stop Adam Sandler, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Paris Hilton, and Jennifer Lopez from ever standing in front of a camera again, the world would be a much better place.

Thank you,
America

I am not the only one who feels this way:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14468942/
http://www.epinions.com/content_255049174660?sb=1
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-most-overused-sports-movie-cliches-821739.html?cat=19

Doublespeak, Jargon, and Other Crimes Against the English Language

Maybe it's a sign of the times, but it seems like the movement towards more politically correct language is spinning out of control. I don't have a problem with calling people "disabled" instead of "crippled" or "retarded." That's certainly a less hurtful way of describing their condition. It's the words that don't need euphemisms in the first place that bother me.


Today, words and phrases that are not even offensive are being "sanitized" to sound more pleasant than they really are. We no longer exercise at the gym, we exercise at the fitness center. We don't use banks, churches, or schools anymore. Instead we use financial institutions, worship centers, and learning centers. We don't live in neighborhoods, we live in communities.

In the business world, euphemisms are even more prevalent. We don't have layoffs, we have workforce reductions, outsourcing, downsizing, and displacement. We don't have problems, only challenges and opportunities. We don't have failures, we have deferred successes. We don't wish each other a Merry Christmas, we wish each other Happy Holidays.

I think these modern sugar-coated phrases are bullshit. Is it really necessary to sanitize words like "bank" or "school?" Saying things like "financial institution" or "learning center" is what people do when they try to sound smarter than they really are. I'm all for calling a spade a spade. If you can say something in two words instead of five, do it. Be clear and simple.

The other thing that's been bugging me lately is the explosive popularity of cutesy, mashed-up, hybrid, two-point-oh words that people are making up. Take for example the word "staycation," which is a short version of the phrase "stay at home vacation." I understand that because of the current economic situation, lots of families are still taking time off from work but aren't traveling out of state this year.

Call me old fashioned, but I wouldn't ever tell anyone I was taking a "staycation." I'd call it staying home and saving money. I'd call it not fucking going to Disneyland this year because the economy is in the shitter. Staycation? Give me a fucking break!

Another god-awful mashed up word is "ecopreneur," which refers to an environmentally-conscious entrepreneur. Boy, I couldn't take anyone seriously with a title like that! Then of course, there is the practice of "hypermiling" to conserve fuel when driving. How about slowing the fuck down and driving the speed limit?

I wish people would stop making up such ridiculous names for things that do not need them. It's getting annoying. For more words that disgust me, check out my previous post entitled Language I Loathe.

Stupid Naming Conventions: Cell Phones

Today, cell phones can do everything from snap pictures to play music, go on the web, and even open and edit business documents. They have full keyboards that swivel, flip, and slide open in every way imaginable. To make these new phones even more appealing to teens, college kids, and hipsters, cell phone manufacturers began giving their phones names.

Just look at the Razr, the Rokr, the Chocolate, the Shine, the Instinct, the Secret, the BlackJack, the Scoop, the Cookie, the Lotus, the Renown, the Behold, the Saga, and the ubiquitous BlackBerry. This is a trend that's really, REALLY fucking stupid and I wish it would stop before it gets even more out of hand. These names are almost as generic and inane as colognes and fragrances at the mall.

How could you ever tell someone that you got a new phone called "the Chocolate" and not feel stupid and embarrassed? What a dumb name for a phone! What a dumb name for anything other than a bar of chocolate! I'm just waiting for them to come out with a phone called "the Cliche." Better yet, the perfect phone for me would be called "the Critic," if only it made fun of all the other phones with stupid names. I would rather have a phone with an esoteric naming system like "A-100" than a retarded name dreamed up by some marketing executive.

Phone manufacturers: stop naming phones after random nouns in the dictionary. Seriously.

I am not the only one who feels this way:
 http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/05/the-futurist-where-all-these-cell-phone-names-are-taking-us/
 http://betanews.com/2009/02/04/does-a-cell-phone-s-name-spell-its-success/
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS131854+03-Feb-2009+BW20090203
https://web.archive.org/web/20081208211128/http://blog.gsmliberty.net/cell-phone-musings/cell-phone-names-gone-wrong/