Literally

Everyone knows how much I like to rant on seemingly pointless and inconsequential aspects of life. Well folks, a recent TV commercial has riled up the Oceanliner’s engines, and now I can’t stop this banter from coming out. I get mad when I see things on TV that make no sense. It makes me want to sit down with the people that write these horrible scripts, come up with these awful ideas, and allow them to fly across our national airwaves. I want to shake these people and scream at them,

Are you serious with this crap??? Do you actually find this funny, witty, poignant, hard hitting or amusing??? Or is this some kind of sick joke and power satisfaction that you can succeed in putting this garbage on TV???

Part of me almost hopes it’s the latter, so that at least I know people don’t actually believe in some of the stuff they come up with, say write and produce. These terrible ideas can turn into shows, movies, services or products. There are countless examples of them all where you think,

This is lunacy. How many people had to approve of this terrible idea before it was official? This idea should have been killed the moment it was thought, and somehow its now real? How did this happen?

The most recent blood pressure raising example is a commercial for the esteemed online car store, Vehix.com, and their newest gimmick, the “video test drive”. This where you can log on to the site and watch a video of someone else driving a car from the drivers perspective. We can debate the worthlessness of this feature another time, but now let’s move on to the commercial.

It opens with this middle-aged woman sitting and hanging the trunk of her car with a really stupid looking hat on and she says

You can go to Vehix.com and literally take a test drive with their video test drive tool

Unh uh honey, no. It doesn’t work like that Vehix.com. A literal test drive would be exactly that, a person getting in the car and driving it. A video test drive is a fairytale; there is nothing literal about it. It’s completely fake. It is the exact opposite of a test drive in fact; watching a video on your computer instead of physically driving a car. Later in the commercial they cut back to the bowling hat lady and she says,

You are practically in the car.

You can’t get away with Busch league garbage like that Vehix.com. You can’t offer a literal service and then not offer it and instead provide a proxy. Other companies can’t and won’t do this. Imagine if a sky diving operation ran a commercial like that;

Come check out our website where you can use try our “sky dive video approximation” and literally be skydiving!

Or this:

Hey there! Welcome to BrazilianFartFetishPorn.com, where you can literally get laid! You can practically feel the farts hitting your face!

Sorry, but the world doesn’t work like that Vehix.com. The only thing that can be determined for sure from that commercial is that the marketing people at Vehix are literally retarded and that credibility for their company is practically nothing.

Wheeeuuu. Glad to get that out of the way. Now onto random sports thoughts of the week.

After the NFL Draft, I went back and checked out the first rounds of years past, both as a matter of curiosity and to see which prospects panned out and which were horrific failures. The most interesting thing I stumbled upon though was how freaking loaded the 2004 first round draft class was. It’s mind-boggling. The following list of players were all taken in the first 32 picks back in ’04:

Eli Manning

Larry Fitzgerald

Philip Rivers

Sean Taylor

Kellen Winslow

Roy Williams (the WR)

DeAngelo Hall

Ben Roethlisberger

Jonathan Vilma

Lee Evans

Tommie Harris

Will Smith

Vince Wilfork

Steven Jackson

Kevin Jones

Ben Watson

It’s a staggering list. Two of the three quarterbacks taken in the first round have won Super Bowls. The other (Rivers) has been to the AFC Title Game. 13 of them have gone on to the Pro Bowl, including 8 of the first 12 selections. I don’t know whether there was just more talent coming out of college that year or GM’s just had a great year of tabbing the best players, but it was a loaded first round. I wish it turned out to be like that every year. Then GM’s could maybe convince the public they know what they are doing.

Puzzling Judgment/Use of Resources Note of the Week: The Thursday morning front page of ESPN.com featured side-by-side pictures of Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett with a caption that read “Good to be Home”. The story was about how the Lakers and Celtics are both 12-0 at home during this year’s playoffs. It’s quite puzzling then at the pictures they chose to run with of KG and Kobe:

Could ESPN have picked two more awkward pictures? I hink not. Kobe looks like he is about to cry. In fact, it looks like the last thing in the world he is thinking about is the game he’s actually playing in. KG doesn’t look very graceful either, with a pose that looks like a cross between him bullfighting and pinching out a loaf. It’s just a little odd to me that out of the thousands of pictures ESPN had at their fingertips to put alongside that story, that this is what they chose.

Women’s Sports Note of the Week: Anika Sorenstam announced earlier this week that she is retiring from the LPGA at the end of the season. The Oceanliner wishes her well as she leaves the game after having an illustrious career. While reading the story related to her retirement on ESPN.com, I was shocked by one paragraph midway through the article,

Sorenstam dominated women's golf like few others, especially during a five-year period when she won 43 times and finished among the top three nearly 70 percent of the time. But for all her achievements -- the only woman to shoot 59, winning 10 majors and one of six women to complete the career Grand Slam -- she became most famous for testing herself against the men.

I was stunned at how shallow and insensitive the ending of that paragraph was. To demean Sorenstam’s great career with a jab at her being more famous for playing one tournament with the men than kicking ridiculous amounts of ass on the women’s tour. Maybe it’s because I’m a sports nut and know how good she is on the LPGA Tour, but I had honestly forgotten about her appearance at the Colonial in 2003. The first thing I think of when I hear Anika Sorenstam’s name is her sheer dominance on the women’s golfing circuit, then her text message friendship with Tiger Woods (where they would jab at each other for every major they would win), and then the fact that she kind of looks like a mouse. To me, the fact that she competed against the men is the last line in her bio, as a kind of anecdote. Certainly not the watershed moment of her career. Not in my mind at least.

That paragraph angers me for another reason; that the story is attributed not to a single writer but just as an Associated Press Story. It is one thing if an opinion piece made the case that Sorenstam’s defining moment was playing against the men in 2003. At least there it’s one person’s opinion and they can defend it. This anonymous AP story writes the paragraph as if its fact and that nothing can be done about it. It’s inappropriate and a coward move. I’m definitely not the biggest proponent of women’s sports, but this was a cheap shot.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope everyone out there is doing well as glorious summer approaches. As always, give me a shout if you are going to be in the DC area and we can chillax. Until next time though, stay safe, keep it real and stuff your sorry’s in a sack.