The Hero

This is a short story I wrote for my Creative Writing class last semester.  I got an A on it if that's worth anything.  The name of this story is The Hero.  It is not based on a true story.

            When I was six years old, my parents started going to church again, and I was enrolled in Sunday school.  On the first day, Miss Johnson told me about this guy named God.  He was an all-powerful being who had complete control over the world.  Everything God wanted was at his disposal.  But I could never really grasp the concept.  But then, one day, I realized why it was that I couldn’t fathom God. 

It was because I was God.

            I was nineteen years old and this quietish Chemistry major just kind of meandering through his sophomore year of college.  My hobbies were basically just video games, reading, and compulsively checking my Fantasy Football team.

            My discovery began on an early October Sunday.

            My roommate Brett was going against me in Fantasy Football.  And going into the night game, I needed David Garrard to get me sixty points.  Which meant something like six hundred passing yards and nine touchdowns, something along those lines.  I’m not sure if you’re a football fan, but those results are quite improbable.

            Brett was being quite irascible and I wanted nothing more than to defeat him.  But let’s just say that, along the course of the hour between the end of the late afternoon games and the beginning of the night game, I realized something.  I willed myself into manipulating the game.  That night, David Garrard threw for 607 yards and nine scores.  I needed the greatest game in the history of the National Football League from a painfully mediocre quarterback and it happened.

            Now, you’re probably wondering how I had this ability.  It’s really nothing too terribly fantastic.  But if I told you, then you’d know.  And maybe you would have to deal with what I had to deal with.  Sometimes, it’s best to be left in the dark—trust me.

            For the rest of the night, Brett pissed and moaned about what David Garrard had done.  He chalked it up to luck.  The next day before class, I confided in him.

            “Hey Brett,” I said.  “You know how David Garrard did that last night?”

            “Seriously, dude, you won.  It’s over.  Move on.”

            “No, no, but I want you to check something out.”  Then I sat at my desk while still looking back at Brett.  “What channel you wanna watch?”

            “I don’t wanna watch TV,” he responded.  “I wanna go to class.”

            “Just say a channel.”

            “ESPN.”

            “It’s probably on ESPN already.  Pick a different one.”

            “I don’t…Oxygen.”

            “Okay then, turn on the TV.”

            Brett then picked up the remote which was sitting on the top of the television and turned it on.  The Oxygen Network appeared.  To this, he replied, “Okay, so you thought there’s no way I’d say that and changed the channel when I was in the shower.  Cool.”

            Then I looked at the television and made the screen crash through and onto the floor.

            Brett abruptly exclaimed, “What the fuck was that?”

            I then willed the light off and then on again.  I nervously told Brett, “I have absolutely no idea how I’m doing that.”

            We then headed over to the Washington Building.

            “Do you know how to stop time?” Brett asked me.

            At first I wondered which specific hallucinogen Bret was using, but then I realized the question was not nearly as absurd as it seemed to be on the surface.  So I decided to give it my best shot.

            Instantly, the two girls walking in front of us stopped mid-stride.  The white noise of conversation ceased.  Yet Brett and I continued to walk.

            Brett was giddier than I had been during the previous night’s football game. 

“This is sick.  Completely fucking sick.”

Immediately, I interjected, “Okay, you cannot tell anyone about this.  If you tell anyone, I’ll make you forget about this.”

Brett grimaces.  “Okay, fine.”  Brett and I got to our class, the room remaining empty as we had arrived ten minutes early.

I saw the clock, the minute hand two whole numbers away from go-time.  Initially, I resigned myself to playing the waiting game.  But then I remembered that the waiting game sucks.  I glanced at the clock, meticulously moving the clock’s time.

Then, all of a sudden, Dr. Scott was getting ready to lecture.

“Okay, class,” he said.  “We’re going to read the article I assigned for you guys to read today.  I figured no one actually read it anyway so you guys are getting a break.”

Are you kidding me, I thought.  For once, I actually do the assigned work and now this happens?  I get to spend an hour talking about shit I already know?

No, wait, I can do whatever the Hell I want!  Fast forward an hour.  I thought I’d just keep that one to myself.

Brett and I walked back to our dorm after class dismissed.

“Why don’t you just speed through the walk back?” Brett asked.

I didn’t have a good answer.

“To Hell with walking!  If you can do whatever, why don’t you just get yourself a trillion dollars, a mansion, and Scarlett Johansson?”

I contemplated Brett’s question.  It was fair to ask—I didn’t know why, allowed whichever circumstances I would even remotely fathom, I was choosing this.

Then in the distance, I heard a high-pitched scream.  I couldn’t tell precisely what had happened, but the sound triggered an immediate reaction.  I dashed towards the noise and saw a slight blonde struggling on the asphalt against a muscular black-haired man.  The woman held tightly to a brownish purse.  The man had continuously smashed her frail frame.  Her injuries lacked any sort of grotesque visual appearance but she was clearly disoriented.

Twenty-four hours before, my best solution would have been to dial 9-1-1.  My more likely solution would have involved some combination of running and crying.  But all of a sudden, I felt inclined to help.  I felt inclined to intervene.  I felt inclined to be a hero.

I stepped forward and grabbed the attacking man, first with my right arm and then with both arms.  With the attacker fully in my grasp, I effortlessly tossed the man high into the air.  He flew far into the heavens before I lost track of him.  The blonde emerged from the ground, exerted a high-pitched scream of discernible joy and not the anguish of minutes before, and excitedly hugged me.

“Oh my God, I don’t know how to thank…how did you do that?” she excitedly asked while grasping for breath.

            I was flattered but also confused.  Nothing I had done seemed exceptional.  Sure, it seemed to defy gravity, but it also seemed to be so natural to me.

            Then I worried about the consequences of my actions.  If some guy you saw threw another guy high into thin air, would you tell anyone?  Hell, who wouldn’t you tell?

            “It’s not a problem, ma’am,” I replied.  “Just promise me that you won’t tell anybody.”  I didn’t wait for a response; I just walked away and ushered Brett to follow.

            “Why you so worried?” he asked.  “Can’t you just wipe away their memories?  You seem to have control over every other aspect of every other person’s life.”

            “Well, yeah, but I’m not really wanting to micromanage everything.  Who has time to deal with every little issue faced by everyone?”

            “Dude, fuck time!” Brett yelled, breaking off from the general calm of our conversation.  “Just stop time.  Choose to live forever, who cares?”

            “I don’t know; I just want to take this gift, whatever it is, and not abuse it.”

            After we got back, Brett took his textbooks and notebooks and went to the library.  Much to his chagrin, I refused to do his homework for him.  In the meantime, I turned on the television to get my mind back to my old reality.  Here I was—this nineteen year-old kid who could make his life interesting for the first time yet I sat on my ass watching crappy daytime TV.

            A couple hours later, I started to fade away mentally.  And then, just as I began to dose off into sleep, Brett ran into the room and eagerly turned on the local news.  I looked up and saw the text headline: Superhuman fights off attacker, says Witness.

            “Holy crap!” I exclaimed.  “They’re gonna find out.”

            “I wouldn’t worry,” Brett said.  “The anchorman seems to think the witness is drunk or high or something.”

            “The next story they ran was about a high-threat hostage situation in Detroit.  Some guy had taken his kids and girlfriend to a hotel in the boondocks and held them at gunpoint.

            “How do you deal with this in the world?” Brett asks me.

            “I don’t know, man.  It’s messed up.  I mean, threatening women and children for some kind of Napoleonic complex bullshit…”

            “No, I mean, you’re some kind of effing perfect superhero or something and yet this shit happens and you don’t do anything.”

            Brett was right.  So I headed over to Detroit.  One second later, I was in the outskirts of Detroit and in the crossfire.  The kidnapper had a pistol in his hand and he panicked once he saw my arrival.  He pointed the gun immediately at my head and fired twice.  Now all logic would suggest that my brain would be obliterated and I would immediately be dead.  But I was fine.  The bullets ricocheted off of my head and fell peacefully to the ground.  I then approached the man, swinging my arm violently and pushing him away.  He then hit the ground, allowing the family to escape.  Immediately, I made myself disappear.

            From that point forward, I began to acknowledge that perhaps my destiny was in vigilantism.  With all of the injustice in the world, it felt absurd for me to take this talent for granted.

            A couple days later, I resolved a bank robbery in Denver.  Then I freed an innocent man off of death row in West Texas.  Then I took down a cocaine kingpin in Bogota.  But whatever happened, I made sure that I left the scene of the crime, took no credit, and kept my crime-fighting out of my private life.  I still went to classes, I still did my homework, and I still was an utterly awkward failure with Anna.

            Anna was a girl my age that lived six doors down the hall from me in my dorm.  She had long, light brown hair, stood five feet eight inches, and possessed an endearing charm which continuously made me shake when I was near her.

            “I don’t get the big fascination with Anna,” Brett observed one day.

            “Oh, come on,” I responded.  “You know Anna’s pretty.”

            “Well, sure.  She’s pretty pretty.  You know, for you.”  Brett then took a sizable swig from his bottle of water before continuing.  “Well, when I say ‘you’, I mean ‘you you’, not latter-day Jesus you.  Anna’s a cute girl but you can snap your fingers and have Marilyn Monroe in her prime all over you, if that’s what you want.  Why the Hell would you not at least make Anna want you?”

            “Don’t you see the conflict there?” I retorted.  “Sort of an unethical thing to make someone love you.”

            “Hell, just tell her that you’ve been solving these conflicts.  Even you being the nerdy little weasel you are with your mediocre-to-average looks, you could get pretty much any girl you want just by telling her the truth.”

            I paused for a moment before I said anything.  “You’re gonna think I’m on crack or something for saying this, but I think I could get Anna regardless.  I mean, we have a lot in common.  She loves the Beatles as much as I do.”

            “Oh, wow, she likes The Beatles.  Because liking the most successful band in the history of the entire fucking universe makes you two such kindred spirits.  You should ask her if she likes to drink water too.  Yeah, bond over water.  The two of you were clearly meant to be together forever.”

            I hadn’t really appreciated his blatant sarcasm.  I just walked out of the room and headed towards Anna’s room.  I had to say what I had to say.  And hopefully she would respond positively.  I knocked on her door and immediately realized that I had absolutely no idea how to talk to her.

            She opened the door.  It was late at night on a Thursday, so she was about to go to bed.  When I saw that she was donning a dark blue bathrobe, I almost apologized for bothering her and almost walked away, but I continued anyway.

            “Anna, we need to talk,” I said.  “Well, um, not so much we need to talk.  Um, er, I just gotta tell you something.”

            “Yeah, sure thing.  Anna ushered me into her room and pointed at a turquoise sofa in the corner of her room.  “Rachel won’t be back for a while so we can talk however long you need.  What’s up?”

            “Well, it’s, it’s, it’s not like it’s something that’s really super urgent or anything.  But I just, um, really wanted to ask you something.”

            She maintained steady eye contact with me.  “What?”

            I began to get a lump in my throat.  I took a deep breath and said, “You wanna go out for dinner on Saturday?”

            She briefly contemplated the question.  “Whaddayou mean, like go to McDonald’s or something with you and Brett?”

            “Well, no, that’s not really what I was going for.  I was thinking more like, um, we could go out to Delpiero’s and get some dinner or something.”

            Anna was silent in her initial reaction, but when she finally said, “Oh.  So you mean like a date?”

            “Uh, um, I guess you could, uh, call it that.”

            Anna took an uncomfortable breath.  “Look,” she said.  “I really do appreciate your friendship but, well, I just…I’m not really looking for a relationship right now.”

            This took the energy out of me.  But she continued.

            “I’d love to hang out with you on Saturday.  But dating’s not, it’s just not something that’s really on my radar right now.”

            Lacking the ability to convert my raw emotion into even the most remotely cogent statements, I simply nodded and contributed a few false sentiments.

            “Oh, no, yeah, that’s fine.  I mean, I wouldn’t want to risk our friendship or anything, either.  I’m glad to have such an awesome friend.”

            Of course, this was all complete bullshit.  If I had wanted to be just friends, I wouldn’t have said anything to preserve the status quo.  But instead, I got the pleasure of walking home to my dorm with my metaphorical tail between my legs.

            When I got back, I wanted to cry.  But I restrained myself.  It just seemed so stupid—I did anything I could to make Anna like me and then nothing was going to come of it.  I thought I’d earned her interest.  So I made it happen. 

I eradicated Anna’s memories of my humiliation.  And I made her love me.

I walked over to Anna’s dorm again.  She was much more receptive.  Then it crossed my mind how absurd and irrational that I had been acting.  Here, I could control everything in my life and I wasn’t doing a thing.

I’d always wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower.  So I went.  I’d always wanted to coach an NFL team, so I took over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.  It all became preposterously simple to get everything I wanted.

Of course, I still did my good deeds.  I willed for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza.  I got running water in some sub-Saharan African villages.  As opposed to my initial reluctance, I embraced the celebrity.  I got on the covers of Time, Forbes, Sports Illustrated—I even filled in for Bono at a U2 show at Madison Square Garden.  And then I decided, you know, what the Hell, I’ll institute world peace.

And the fighting stopped.  The Sunnis and Shiites began to live in harmony.  Irish and Northern Irish lived in religious neutrality.  Everything on Earth began to strike an utterly perfect sense of equilibrium.  The entirety of the world existed as a singular, harmonious institution.

Now obviously I had full authority on my romantic life as well.  But I wasn’t some kind of raving lunatic who was out to treat every woman on Earth as some kind of conquest—furthering my progress with Anna was good enough for me.  Of course, I no longer had any particularly use for my Chemistry classes either.  I set Anna and myself up in a nice mansion in Beverly Hills.  For a time, the two of us really began to enjoy our newfound status as the industrious couple of billionaires who use their spare time to save the world from itself.  But God damn it did things get tedious.

I came back one day from checking in on the United Nations in New York, just to see if anything worthwhile was happening.  Not really.  The German and Polish ambassadors were talking about the international friendly coming up between their countries—as though this was the most pertinent thing for representatives from those two countries to discuss.

I walked into the mansion as Anna seductively sipped on a glass of dark red wine.  I can’t really explain what I did that got Anna to this point—I didn’t even like wine, I didn’t particularly find the act of drinking wine to be sensual, yet I somehow turned my ultimate fantasy into the clichés I had learned from Bond movies.  At this point, I had grown exceedingly bored of dictating what Anna would do.

“Hey Anna,” I said.  “Instead of going to the Golden Globes tonight, we should have a game night.”

“What do you mean?”
            “We can play some Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly or Life or something.  I don’t know; I remember in college that I always wanted to play with you.”  I paused, as I had realized how cheesy that sounded, how absurd my fantasies seemed in comparison to the lush and vast escapism that had emerged as a result of my absolute power. 

“I’m sure that sounds really corny,” I added.

“Heh,” Anna said half-heartedly before taking another casual sip from her glass.  “That sounds really cute, you know?”  She then began to laugh, not in a way which was overwhelming but in a way which still managed to dishearten me.  But she could clearly see I was dejected by her response, so she immediately backtracked.

“You know, sure.  Let’s play Trivial Pursuit.”

So I brought Trivial Pursuit to the table and we began to play.  Anna went first and landed on History.”

I read the question.  “What was the only state won by Walter Mondale in the 1984 United States presidential election?”

Anna gave a vacuous stare back at me.

“Oh, come on now, Anna,” I angrily added.  “You’re a U.S. History major; I know you know this answer.”

She took another sip.  “I don’t even know who Warner Mondale is.”

“It’s Walter Mondale!” I yelled.  “God damn it, I know you’re just playing dumb here!”

“Look,” Anna replied, “I know it’s Minnesota.  But no one likes the smart girl.  I had a 3.9 GPA knowing American history but it got me nowhere.  But now I get to live like this and so do you!”

“For God’s sake, Anna, don’t dumb yourself down!”  I was confused why the pretty, somewhat nerdy girl for whom I had fallen felt compelled to act this way. 

“Excuse me, I have to go the bathroom,” I said.

I didn’t but I had to get some time to myself.  But for all of Anna’s frustrating desire to act the way she believed everybody wanted her to act, I always did have one ace in the hole.  And just like that, Anna became smarter.  Not smart enough to beat me in Trivial Pursuit, but enough for a healthy conversation.

But as I lay in bed at night, after Anna had already gone to sleep, I pondered what I had done.  Initially, it was a matter of ethics, but since Anna was happy and I wasn’t hurting anybody, my worries over morality had largely subsided.  At this point, I was simply bored.

Like, I remembered how when I was eight, I discovered a way to break into the game code of my favorite computer game and I immediately started to win every time I played the game.  But then I stopped getting satisfaction whenever I won.  So I stopped cheating and instead, I just played it straight.

So like any computer game, I pressed the reset button.  Oh, how bored a God must be!  Thank God I’m a heathen, or I’d start to have some genuine sympathies. 

It’s like if you put Lebron James on the basketball court against a bunch of eight year-olds; he’d kick ass and maybe even enjoy doing so the first time, but eventually he’s just going to get tired of it.  Obviously he could move up to the NBA eventually, but what would happen if he was stuck in that same game forever?  You think he’d keep fast breaking and throwing it down on some four foot tall kid, or do you think he’d start shooting left-handed or closing his eyes or something.  You know, just to keep things interesting.  That’s what I wanted to do.

So I went back to before the fame, before the billions of dollars, before Anna.  Hell, I even went back before the David Garrard game.  A perfect world is perhaps too subjective of a term—we say we want world peace and infinite wealth and whatever else, but we say it with the absolute certainty that neither would actually happen, allowing their realities to never interrupt and ruin the fantasy.

Predictably, David Garrard had a somewhat average game and I lost.  This really wasn’t too bothersome—it’s just a game, after all.  Brett and I went to class and went through a boring lecture about an article I had already read.  And then we walked back to the dorm.

Again, I heard a scream and saw a slight blonde struggling against a man.  But this time, I did nothing.

The woman continued to scream.  Prolonged, loud, and blood-curdling screams.  How was I supposed to ignore this?  I knew, with absolute certainty, that I could stop this.

So I examined the situation and decided to stare at the robber.  Instead, I did not fight.  The man, a relatively young man in above-average physical shape, dropped the woman to the ground and began to clutch his chest.  He then fell, landing to the side of the woman he had been robbing.

“Holy shit!” Brett exclaimed before pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and calling 9-1-1.

And then we walked away.

13 Simpsons Moments That Still Make Me Laugh Out Loud

While The Simpsons is the funniest show in the history of television, it's easy to get tired of some of the gags after having watched the classic era episodes at least a dozen times each.  These thirteen are exceptions.  I apologize if the links don't work; as of posting time, they did.  I decided to rank these in rough chronological order because I don't really feel like ranking moments that make me laugh uproariously even after I should be long tired of them.

1. I Am Evil Homer--In the Season 4 episode Whacking Day, Lisa cites a moral objection to Whacking Day, a holiday in which Springfieldianites (this is the correct term) hit snakes repeatedly (I realize this was probably meant as a very elaborate sexual metaphor, but in the literal context of what happens, I'm talking about clubbing snakes, as in the scaly slithering kind).  Homer then describes the conflict between good and evil within all of us. Perfect voice tone by Dan Castellaneta and beautiful corny animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ABEQ4vfNGs

2. Worker and Parasite--In Krusty Gets Kancelled, before he's actually cancelled, Krusty the Clown's beloved "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoon is replaced by the Eastern European block's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite.  This is the result. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyxYdj9dGcI

3. Do You Want Some Brownies?--In Season 5's Cape Feare, Bart is on edge after Sideshow Bob has made efforts to murder him.  While in witness protection, Homer decides to offer some brownies to his scared son.  This episode has several notable gags (notably one in which Sideshow Bob runs into double digit numbers of rakes in succession), but this just kills me every time.  Best line reading in Simpsons history perhaps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-E5NaWlBuc&feature=related

4. Trambopoline--Bart's Inner Child is the only episode which gets two gags on my list (note: the episode was written by probably the man responsible for the most jokes in the history of the show, George Meyer), and this one opens the episode.  It's poor video quality but you shouldn't need HDTV to get this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKJ3GG6Ch04

5. This Bandstand Wasn't Double Bolted--I'm not even sure if this counts as a joke, but I can't help but laugh out loud whenever I hear guest star James Brown's reading of this pretty damn mundane line. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-oDWblIDbI

6. Box Factory--In Season 5's Bart Gets Famous (I'm not doing an official count, but probably a majority of the gags on this list were show run by David Mirkin, who was probably the best in the show's history at making fairly silly but outright hilarious episodes), Homer goes to a box factory where Bart was reported missing from a field trip group. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II3Wt22rDE0

7. McGarnagle--This Dirty Harry clone has appeared several times, most brilliantly in a movie Bart is watching in The Boy Who Knew Too Much while Bart faces a real-life moral dilemma about whether or not he should report what he knows to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD-LB9z6nxg

8. Rock Bottom--Season 6 gave us Homer Badman, an episode I say with absolutely no reluctance is absolutely brilliant from beginning to end.  As far as the best gag from it, I have to go with this.  The video isn't great and the volume is terrible, but as long as you can see the clock and hear it kind of, it's still good.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt5QqVlApBg

9. One Clown Per Territory--In the wildly underrated Season Sixer Homie the Clown, I find myself delighted beyond words by Homer Simpson's brilliant stupidity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4iW--G6mSI

10. Moe Lie Detector--Indisputably the most well-known clip I put here (note the view total), but my God this Season 7 Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 2 clip is hilarious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-TZ8Z5S9rI

11. Meat and You: Partners in Freedom--Lisa the Vegetarian from Season 7 is generally regarded a more heartfelt and semi-serious episode, and it is, but this Troy McClure educational video sums up everything insane about public school education.  I know the video's backwards, but who cares? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bps-xbo8wnA

12. Press Any Key--As far as I'm concerned, the best part of this clip from King Sized Homer isn't the title I gave the clip, but it actually comes later in the clip.  Whole thing makes me smile though.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwbAtJmMr9s

13. Le Grill--It's from the mediocre Season 10 episode Mom and Pop Art, but this Act One moment could be rightfully included in any episode from any era. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edLEI1op4Rg

The Best and Worst Walkup Songs in History

Lance Berkman has the best walkup song in the history of baseball.

Matt Holliday has the worst walkup song in the history of baseball.

There are certain rules regarding what constitutes a great walkup song (for those who know absolutely nothing about baseball, I will explain and say that I am confused but flattered that you're reading this unnecessarily detailed baseball-related post).  First, the explanation I promised--a walkup song is the song which plays when a batter comes to the plate and in most stadiums, including Busch Stadium in St. Louis, a pop (as in non-classical) song is played.

Now, players get to select, so I have absolutely no qualms about judging a player's choice.  The first rule is "Pick a good song."  The second is "Pick a song that fits the moment."  Lance Berkman passes both tests with flying colors with his walkup song, Johnny Cash's 'God's Gonna Cut You Down.'  For those unfamiliar with the song (if you've watched a television commercial in the last year, you shouldn't be), it's one of Cash's later songs.  The song is, first of all, a good song.  It's sparse, haunting, and takes full advantage of Johnny Cash's talk-singing style.  It has a fairly indescribable genre--it's listed as country, folk, and gospel by Wikipedia, but I would also note that it has distinct blues elements as well.  It's also heavier than most metal.  As far as I'm concerned it's his best song in the last 30 years of his career.

But the reason Lance's choice of Johnny Cash makes for a truly great walkup song is the way it starts and the way the song sounds and feels at Busch Stadium.  The song has a very heavy bass sound at the beginning, so when played at a stadium, you get not only Johnny Cash's borderline perfect voice but you also get the thunder of the minimalist instrumentation.  It's sort of the complete opposite of the Prince song 'Kiss' (which isn't to say one song is bad--both songs are in fact great) in that once all the bullshit was stripped away from the conventional production of the given icon, the results are freaking magic.  The lyrics also add a certain profoundness to the experience--when I was at a game earlier this year where Lance came to the plate with a chance to win it in the bottom of the ninth and I heard the line "You can run on for a long time, but sooner or later God'll cut you down", it felt like Lance was God and Antonio Bastardo was about to get cut down.

Matt Holliday, on the other hand, went the completely wrong route in picking a walkup song.  He went with the Zac Brown Band and 'Chicken Fried.'  Now, while the Zac Brown Band isn't particularly good (some people will swear they're immense talents, but these are the same people who said the same damn thing about Rascal Flatts a few years ago), they're far from the worst band in the world.  The reason they suck for making walkup music is several fold.  First, a large quantity of Cardinal fans have no effing idea who Zac Brown is. There are very few musical artists that everybody, regardless of gender, race, or age, is familiar with to at least a point of knowing a few songs.  The Beatles, Queen, Michael Jackson, the well aforementioned Johnny Cash.  Zac Brown Band, while popular with a certain group of people, have virtually no rapport with anyone over fifty or who are in a racial minority.  Even if people who otherwise listen to Lil Wayne aren't really listening to a ton of Johnny Cash, there's at least a level of respect.  Saying you don't like Johnny Cash is like saying you don't like Coca Cola--very few would say so, but if somebody says they don't like one of these two, I will immediately dismiss them as an overly cynical asshole.

But I digress.  When I hear 'Chicken Fried' come on, I become instantly annoyed.  Hearing the jangly-for-novelty rhythms doesn't make me excited for the impending at-bat, it just makes me wanting the Holliday at-bat to end so I can be excited by Lance Berkman.  Now, admittedly I'm not a huge country music fan and obviously I'm not a Zac Brown fan, but that's not to say that every song I like would make for good walkup music.  The following artists that I like would be terrible for walkup songs--Pink Floyd, The Doors (with any song other than 'Break on Through'), Lynyrd Skynyrd (it's been done, it's not good), The Police (this is my favorite all-time band I'm talking about here--their music doesn't work for exciting, visceral pump-up jamming).  It's not that these bands are bad--it's that for the environment, it doesn't work.  A lot of people love the Sex Pistols, but it doesn't mean the first dance at their wedding is 'Holidays in the Sun'.

A few memorable walkup/bullpen entry songs.  Chipper Jones and 'Crazy Train' (a complex song overall, but whose utterly simple intro is the part of the song that everybody knows and loves).  Mariano Rivera and 'Enter Sandman' (heavy guitar riff, a song title serving as a de facto message).  Trevor Hoffman and 'Hells Bells' (it's pretty damn simple--a slowly ringing bell sounds cool).  Johnathan Papelbon and 'I'm Shipping Up to Boston' (good intro, he's in effing Boston).  Mark McGwire and 'Welcome to the Jungle' (a great memorable opening, the appropriateness of him picking a song by constant drug users).  Lance Berkman belongs in this class.  Matt Holliday needs to go back to music selection school.

15 Acts That Should Be in the Rock HOF

The Pretenders, a band that released one really good (though not great) album, died off within the next couple of years, and had a few more mild pop hits with multiple new backing bands that Chrissie Hynde had the gall to call The Pretenders.  They were first ballot Rock and Roll Hall of Famers.

Basically, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a joke.  EVERYBODY gets in.  Neil Diamond is in the HOF.  Three of the four Beatles are in twice.  Eric Clapton is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame THREE DIFFERENT TIMES (and it wouldn't stun me in the least if someone decided to make a case for one album supergroup Derek and the Dominoes to get their own entry).  Yet somehow, there are at least fifteen more acts that deserve to be in (Note: Six of these 15 are not currently eligible for induction, though I suspect that at least one of them will not get in).  By my watch, these are the categories under which most Hall of Famers fall and why they belong where they do.

The ZOMGods
Certain individuals deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, but unless they were categorized solo artists or side men, it won't happen.  Here are three bands that deserve to be in the Hall on their own merits, but who have indefensible snubs as individual.

First is Rush, an insanely popular and influential (granted, mostly of pretentious prog metal crap, but influence is influence) band.  With their admission means the admission of Neil Peart, one of the most popular drummers in rock history.  While he is the most overrated lyricist in history not named Jim Morrison, his chops on the kit are pretty tough to deny--even if you're like me and think he's a step below John Bonham and Keith Moon, he's still pretty damn good.

Second is guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughn (for the record, I would induct Double Trouble as well, in the same way that Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell got in with Hendrix).  Even if you just ignore the virtuoso effect, the guy makes good songs.  Unlike, say, Yngwie Malmsteen, who just rips off jaw-droppingly difficult solos, Stevie Ray has intricate and beautiful guitar solos in songs like "Texas Flood" and "Pride and Joy" which are utterly listenable.  This isn't to say that building great guitar skills into pop success is something SRV invented, because he didn't, but everyone else who did it as or more successfully (Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, etc.) are in the Hall.  As should Stevie.

Third is Flea, by far the most talked about bassist of my lifetime and probably the most heralded since at least John Entwistle.  His band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, seems like they should be in the Hall for the same reason Genesis, a stylistically opposite band, is.  Both bands began very much attached to a subgenre (funk-rock with RHCP, prog with Genesis) and then altered, though never completely abandoned, the style to make popular rock.  Although I don't think an album has ever dropped out of the public consciousness for as much as hype as it initially got as Stadium Arcadium, the Chili Peppers belong in the Hall.

"See You Later, Innovator"
Title lifted from the Arctic Monkeys, whose Hall credentials are still very much a work in process (don't laugh: I refuse to count a band out of the Hall of Fame until they're at least a decade old--nobody knew who the hell Fleetwood Mac was until they totally changed their lineup a decade into their existence).  But anyway, these are three bands that OWN their genre.  And if you invent a genre that could even loosely be put under the rock and roll umbrella, you belong in the Rock Hall.

First is Deep Purple, widely considered along with Led Zeppelin (in) and Black Sabbath (in, but after way too long of a wait) to be the godfathers of heavy metal.  As far as I'm concerned, Sabbath is the only truly heavy metal band of the group, Zeppelin are actually the band that took the lead from The Rolling Stones and The Who and invented modern hard rock, and Deep Purple are the innovators of speed metal (think Iron Maiden or even Metallica).  And this isn't a Velvet Underground (in) situation where everyone know they're influential but most people don't know any songs by them--Deep Purple created arguably the most famous riff in rock history and has a couple more songs ("Highway Star", "Hush") that every self-respecting fan of rock and roll knows.  Jesus, Hall, put them in already!

Next is a band who, I'll admit, has one big negative, and that is Public Enemy.  Now Public Enemy is great and even ardent metalheads, who I consider to be the most generally closed-minded of rock fans, admit PE is great.  But is Public Enemy a rock band?  No, but Johnny Cash isn't a rock musician either and he's in the Hall.  Johnny Cash is in because he epitomized the rock and roll attitude--he was fiercely independent and was influenced by the genre (his later rock covers of Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode are among his best work since the late 1960s).  In the same way, Public Enemy takes the lead from The Sex Pistols and serves as an abrasive, adamant, and exciting force.  Run DMC got in, and one of the big factors leading to their (deserving) induction was their performing with Aerosmith--Public Enemy did the same thing, but they just happened to do it with a less popular, more scary band (Anthrax).

Third is a band who I'm not even going to advocate for because they will get in upon becoming eligible--Nirvana.  Nirvana will get in.  Bono and/or Michael Stipe will join Novoselic and Grohl on stage.  A nice time will be had by all.

Kings of Pop


Some rock bands are too damn popular to ignore.  Let me note that popularity alone isn't enough.  For instance, I excluded Journey because while very popular, they had little to no influence on music--they combined a lot of the popular styles of the time and made a listenable group of songs as such (this is a reference of course to Steve Perry era Journey, not to be confused with the preceding era in which Journey made albums which were somehow equally terrible while remaining inaccessible).  These are bands who sold a ton of albums, had pop hits, yet still rocked.

Number one is somebody I suspect will get in--Guns N' Roses.  Though short-lived, GNR acted as a buffer between Poisonesque hair metal and the early 90s alt-rock boom.  Original lineup only for induction, please.

Steve Miller, for such a hit-maker, seems to get an insufficient level of respect from the industry.  It's easy to say that his music isn't that original, but did anyone capture the space rock of "Fly Like an Eagle" in a pop song before?  Pink Floyd maybe, but Steve Miller combined the trippiness with great melody.  Besides the pop hits, Steve Miller has some underrated stuff from the Summer of Love.  Is Steve Miller really considerable less innovative than Tom Petty (who I'd say is better, but really didn't make anything too ridiculously groundbreaking) or Bob Seger (who, as I've said in previous entries, had brilliant and underappreciated work before completely selling out, but is best known for semi-generic roots rock)?

There's really only three New Wave bands you have to mention--Blondie (in), Talking Heads (in), and The Cars, who should be in.  Blondie was more popular and Talking Heads were more innovative, but I'll be damned if The Cars weren't better.  Among the bands who have acknowledged the brilliance of Rik Ocasek are The Pixies, who aren't in (I'll put them as an honorable mention) yet for some reason are given the benefit of the doubt.  Yet The Cars aren't.  Does making pop music necessarily mean you're making bad music?  Listen to their self-titled debut, which is one of my ten favorite albums ever and I will fight anyone who disagrees.

Other Side of the Ponders


To keep it simple, here are three bands that would be in the Rock Hall of Fame if the voters were British.  They're damn good, they're damn innovative, and they won't get in.

The Cure are the only remotely goth rock band that everybody knows.  And they made enough hits ("Boys Don't Cry", "Love Song", "Just Like Heaven") that they should be in.  But they won't be.  Maybe it's because of the almost uniform terribleness of the recent bands influenced by the look (though I must say, not really the sound) of The Cure.  It's a shame, really.

The Smiths are the definitive gods of British alternative rock.  Other than The Beatles (in, for the record), The Smiths had more of an influence of Britpop than any other band, and even the American alternative rockers like REM and Nirvana were influenced by The Smiths.  A complete lack of American pop hits, however, probably eliminates them from contention.

Oasis is an interesting case.  But in the United States, they're probably just a bit too middling to have a chance.  Acclaimed?  Kind of.  Influential?  Kind of.  Popular?  They had one really big hit.  But since they're one of my five favorite bands ever, I had to include them.  I'm pulling for a reunion at the 2019 Hall inductions.

Game Changers


Kiss is a band who did something basically unprecedented--hair metal, whether you like it or not, wouldn't have existed without Kiss.  Besides being obvious innovators in stage production and costumes, they were one of the first true arena/stadium rock (as a genre) bands.  I don't even listen to Kiss, but how can a band so important not be in the Hall of Fame?

Nine Inch Nails, not yet eligible but I would guess they're getting in (and by they, I mean one person), was influenced by Prince and did crazy multitrack recordings.  Besides Nirvana, no artist of the 90s spawned more ripoff acts than NIN.  Not gonna keep arguing since Reznor's getting his due soon enough.

Rage Against the Machine belongs in for being the most overtly political rock band ever.  This isn't The MC5 showing vague anger at the 1968 DNC or the Sex Pistols proclaiming a desire for anarchy not based on the actual political science theory but based on Johnny Rotten's desire to yell things.  Rage Against the Machine was probably the best aptonym in the history of rock.  They scared a LOT of people in the era when I was starting to get into rock and roll, so I'll always have a special place in my heart for them.

The 97 Club

When you make a bunch of music that people like, use the fame and fortune you've acquired to become a decadent and self-destructive twat, and get yourself killed at the age of 27, you're revered as a hero.  When you make a bunch of music that people like, maintain self-discipline, and continue to make music and tour even when you aren't quite what you once were because you care enough about your fans to give them more of what they want, you're mocked as uncool.

Folks, this is insane.

For those of you who spend less time on Wikipedia than I, the 27 Club is the name for musicians who died at the age of 27.  The most notable members of this group include Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Robert Johnson (Clapton tells me he's good), and the guy from Canned Heat that I assumed was actually an unattractive woman until I was probably a sophomore in college.  What do these people (and by these people, I mean the three that you have seen more than two pictures of in your life, lookin at you 'Picture of Robert Johnson in a black suit and fedora holding his guitar') have in common?  They're musical icons, of course!  Each of these men have impressive musical resumes, to be sure, but they're also viewed as almost God-like figures (or in the case of Jim Morrison, scratch out the words almost, like, and figures when making reference to Oliver Stone).  Not a lot of people enjoy this reputation--I would argue that of the ten most insanely revered rock stars ever, these three are at least in the top ten if not the top five.

But while these men deserve acknowledgement, why do we as a society celebrate dying at 27?  Morrison and Hendrix died because of drugs; Cobain died because of a suicide that he was even more directly responsible for.  I know Pete Townshend wrote "I hope I die before I get old" in 1965, but the old bastard is still performing!  Why is it a virtue to freaking die at or before your creative peak?  So you don't tarnish your reputation by touring forever like the Rolling Stones?

Now, I've mentioned The Rolling Stones in several blog entries before because frankly I find them to be more fascinating cultural institutions than The Beatles.  The Beatles are fascinating because of the way they were famous in the 1960s, but the Stones have toured constantly since the 1960s and have had enormous highs and lows during the time period.  But part of the fascination is that the Rolling Stones have been largely irrelevant for almost thirty years.  Let's put it this way--if you look up the Artist Essentials of the Rolling Stones, the newest song you will find on the list of 25 huge Stones hits is "Waiting for a Friend."  This song was released in 1981.  I was negative-eight.

The Rolling Stones, though by all accounts quite a stage presence given their advanced ages (I haven't seen them live, though there was still definite charisma in Shine a Light), are no longer a great band.  They just aren't--their live performances can't compare to the best live bands of today or even to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, who although not contemporaries might as well be by revisionist standards.  But in what way does a few decades of mediocrity matter?  Maybe you don't want to shell over a couple hundred bucks to see a man old enough to be your grandfather strut around stage singing about how he can't get no satisfaction, but it's not like if you look at videos or listen to records of them in the 60s or 70s, they aren't evoking the same youthful exuberance they did at the time.

Several bands are going a lesser Stonesy path (lesser not because they aren't trying, but because they're younger bands and inherently aren't comparable to their elders).  The aforementioned E Street Band has had a few lesser hits in the last decade ("The Rising", "My City of Ruins"), but nobody's confusing these songs with "Born to Run."  U2 got back on modern rock radio with "Get On Your Boots", but it's not even as good as "Discotheque", much less "Mysterious Ways" or much less "Sunday Bloody (F***ing) Sunday".  But you know this already.  I don't like The Boss enough that I wanna pay a lot of money to hear him play maybe a couple of songs I like, because while I'd love to hear him do "Pink Cadillac" or "Cover Me", I know the odds of this realistically happening are extremely low.  I don't wanna pay to see him play, but a lot of people do.  If you're 35 today and were born in 1976, you were thirteen when the E Street Band broke up and therefore probably never saw them play in their original run.  But because they care enough about their fans to keep on plugging along, you can go see them today!

So I want to offer a challenge right here and now.  Rather than spend the next couple days as most will, talking about how the legendary 27 Club has added another legend lost too soon, let's start the 97 Club.  I like the idea of being able to take my children to a Rolling Stones concert when Mick, Keith, and Charlie are 97 years old--they might be in it for the money, but Goddammit, I'm a Rolling Stones fan and I want to see that concert.  I don't care if they aren't the same band that was frightening my grandparents in the sixties; I'll give them credit for every year they soldier on out there.

The Five Most Overrated Days of My Life (So Far)

I am nearly twenty-two and a half years old, and I've realized two important things.  One, there are certain benchmarks you're told throughout your life are important.  Two, most of them don't matter at all.  They are merely artificial barometers of your life, considered important not because they actually matter but because they're experienced by everybody.  Also experienced by everybody--breathing.  Since I've yet to marry or have children, I won't claim these are the five most overrated days of any life, but here's my list to date of days that don't matter.

5. First Job--To people who experience their first job, usually while in high school, it's considered a big landmark because, well, you make money.  Which is nice, even though the average high schooler doesn't really need to spend a ton of money.  But the reason it's overrated is because it's actually the first steps to you becoming a boring and jaded person like everybody else.  In fact, the worst thing that could happen at your first part-time job isn't that you suck at it so bad that you get fired, but rather that you're so damn good at it that you make the brilliant decision "I'm going to focus more on this than I will on school."  The fact is the most lucrative of jobs to a high schooler is paltry to almost all adults.  Work experience is good, but it's actually quite dangerous for your life if your first job sets the foundation for your future.

4. First Day of High School--I was convinced in middle school by teachers and by parents and by others of this sort that the first day of high school matters.  Why?  Because high school matters, of course!  High school is, after all, the best time of your life.  While this may have seemed true when this expression was founded (in an era when the only real alternative to education was going to war), how many people really consider high school the best time of their life?  Everybody is awkward; people are pretentious assholes about how much money they (their parents) have; you are literally told when you can go to the bathroom and when you can go from room to room.  Barring a prison sentence, high school shouldn't be the highlight of your life.

3. Graduation Ceremonies--They get more overrated as they go along because they're equally useless.  This isn't to say that the act of graduating is useless--it isn't--but to hear people give cliche-loaded speeches about following your dreams and working hard and being the future isn't going to change anyone's life.  For instance, when I graduated from high school, my commencement speaker (I won't say who it was, but it was either a notable alumni who created a strong remedy for malaria which is used today in sub-Saharan Africa, or it was my superintendent) told us we were the future.  Okay.  Does anyone think anyone heard that and all of a sudden felt compelled to turn their life around?  "You know, I was gonna take my diploma and then go shoot heroin in the woods for the rest of my life, but I think I'm going to go to law school now."

2. 21st Birthday--There are essentially three types of people when it comes to drinking alcohol.  Type One drank well before they were twenty-one, so turning 21 wasn't really a new thing, other than you can now buy alcohol in a bar and pay way too much for it.  These people had no problem finding a highly responsible adult to purchase alcohol for them.  Type Two didn't drink and still doesn't drink once they turned 21--turning 21 is even more irrelevant for them.  Type Three only started drinking upon turning twenty-one, in which case the odds are fairly good you don't care enough about drinking that your 21st birthday was a legitimately significant life milestone.

1. Prom--Here are the differences between going to prom and just hanging out with friends of yours.  If you go to prom, you will have rules enforced by the same people who make you do pointless BS all day for four years.  If you don't, you can pretty much do as you wish.  If you go to prom, you must dress up.  If you don't go, you can dress up if you want, but there is no mandate.  If you go to prom, you get a solid dinner.  If you don't go to prom, you can go to get a far better dinner and for far less money than the fifty bucks or so you dropped for a prom ticket.  Prom exists as a money gouger because it's "tradition", just as owning human beings as property was once considered tradition in the American South.  I'm not saying people should necessarily skip it--just don't expect it to be the peak of your life.  Because a majority of the people you see there you will never see again in three weeks.

Ten Biggest Sellouts in the History of the Galaxy

10. Nicolas Cage--Part of the legendary Coppola family (and by legendary, I mean Francis Ford Coppola is legendary), Nicolas Cage began his career in fairly good movies like Raising Arizona while playing weirdos which matched his natural awkwardness.  Guys make careers out of this, like Sean Penn.  But the devilishly handsome Cage apparently saw a movie star in the mirror, so rather than making Leaving Las Vegas types of movies, his career now consists of being the relative bright spot in terrible movies with insane premises (National Treasure 2, with Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight and Helen Mirren, has as many Oscar winners as The Godfather; make sense?).

9. The Rolling Stones--The band who has probably made more songs I consider absolute all-time classics than any other, I don't fault the Stones for getting worse in their older age because I'm pretty sure that had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have made a Bach tribute album by 1973 and would have done a duet with ABBA at some point as well.  But, seriously, a band that was just about the coolest thing ever when they came out is selling their music to be used by Microsoft.  They also have a shitload of merch available (I don't blame KISS for this, because KISS did not sell out: they were merely designed to be a brand more than a band).  Worse though was their willing self-censorship during their tepid Super Bowl XL halftime show (and the fact that the band that made "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" played "Rough Justice" instead).

8. Steven Tyler--For those unfamiliar with the work of Steven Tyler or Aerosmith, it's basically like The Rolling Stones but slightly worse.  Slightly worse made them one of the best bands of the 1970s, mind you.  And they had some decent fun rock songs when they made a comeback in the late 80s.  And then they recorded "Angel."  And then Michael Bay (a pure moneymaker from the beginning, like KISS, who is ineligible for this list) threw money at them for the awful power ballad "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing".  And then, in order to leave no doubts in the minds of the world that he's the reason Aerosmith sold out, Steven Tyler joined the judging panel on American Idol.  It's a sellout move so bad that even Kid F***ing Rock (an honorable mention for the list, but he wasn't good enough to begin with to justify listing him) has chastised him.

7. Christopher Nolan--Most directors, as they get more experienced, do bigger movies, and this itself is not a sellout move.  Some guys like Scorsese go from nice little neighborhood art movies like "Who's That Knocking At My Door" and use new funds to make "Goodfellas."  Others, like Nolan, go from making arguably the greatest movie of the 2000s in his debut with Memento to Insomnia to, um, Batman movies?  To his credit, his Batman movies are the most acclaimed of the group, but to his fault, they're still midnight movie types of releases which cater primarily to those under the age of 25 (David Fincher makes these kind of movies, too, but at least he's never spearheaded an advertising campaign used to exploit the death of one of his stars).

6. Flavor Flav--Let's put it this way: My mother knows who Flavor Flav is, but there is a zero percent chance she could name the group where he got his fame.  This probably has at least something to do with the fact that Flavor Flav is by far the second banana in Public Enemy, but Flavor Flav I can guarantee has a far higher Q rating than Chuck D, who wrote and was the primary performer on pretty much every Public Enemy song that wasn't "911 is a Joke", a song which I maintain somehow improved when Duran Duran covered it because Flavor Flav is that much of a hack.  But being a hack doesn't make one a sellout because at least hacks can try to do well.  Doing multiple VH1 reality shows makes one a sellout.

5. Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney began his political career as the kind of Republican I would consider voting for--socially moderate, relatively conservative fiscally, and generally sane.  Except arguably for the issue of abortion, where his insanity came from being too liberal (he claimed when running for governor of Massachusetts that he was more pro-choice than Ted Kennedy).  One would think that after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the GOP would seek out a candidate who can seduce independents with the ability of Obama, and late 1990s Romney would be a tremendous example of this kind of moderate.  But instead, he has flipped many positions, ran away from his UHC plan, and has somehow become less popular as a result of his insincerity, hurting Romney's status as a sellout because he wasn't even good at it.

4. Jaenene Garofalo--Garofalo, for those of you who do not know (she's probably the least successful person on this list, so you get a pass if you don't know), is a marginally talented actress/stand-up comedian who is best known for being a sanctimonious bleeding-heart liberal that even left-leaners such as myself can't stand.  But while I can't stand her, I always had tremendous respect for her gumption--unlike most of the politically correct society, she was willing to take a stand for what she believed in.  So what's the ideal job for a lefty?  Why, acting on 24, the conservative wet dream of a show based on unsubstantiated notions like "torture has, at some point, worked" and "the best military-style approach isn't strategy but is rather just running and shooting when you see anybody".  She has even admitted to selling out by doing 24, but she still did it.  Self-awareness counts for something, but not much.

3. Bob Seger--If you are not familiar with Seger's songs "Ramblin Gamblin Man" (there's a decent chance you know this one) or "2+2 Is On My Mind" (less popular, but far more prolific in terms of having alternate spellings for the song title), consult YouTube or some other music player.  Pretty damn good, right?  The former song being along the lines of a Rolling Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival classic.  The latter being even heavier, a slightly more mainstream version of the kinds of music being made in Seger's metro at the time by such greats as The MC5 and The Stooges.  Now listen to "Night Moves"--or don't.  Now, making awful music meant to appease the masses is common, but what makes Seger stand out is just how much effort he makes to keep you from listening to his late 60s works with The Bob Seger System.  Note that Bob Seger, an extremely popular musician who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has his first SEVEN albums out of print.  He doesn't get higher because I have a soft spot for "Her Strut".

2. Alex Rodriguez--It's hard to evaluate sportsmen as sellouts most of the time, especially in baseball, because it usually consists of a case like Carl Crawford, who not only got more money from going to Tampa Bay to Boston but also got on a far better team with far better fans and far more long-term job security.  But to claim Alex Rodriguez's departure from Seattle was based on anything other than money is utterly asinine.  He left Seattle, a very good baseball team with a solid fan base and a new stadium opening, for Texas, a last-place club with fickle fans, an ugly stadium, and 252 million reasons to show up.  He could have settled for being a big fish in a small pond in Texas, but then he realized that even when he was putting up MVP-caliber numbers, one good player isn't enough to make the playoffs and manipulated his way to New York.  Formerly one of the most liked players in baseball in the late 1990s, A-Rod now enjoys a reputation as one of the sport's whiniest stars.

1. Will Smith--The best actor of the many rapper-turned-actors (I suppose it's a balancing act where if your'e an awful rapper, it helps your thespian skills), but has had a propensity for being in awful, awful movies.  I'll give him credit for Six Degrees of Separation and Ali, but his movies tend to be innocuous fluff or enormous action movies.  Which is what makes him arguably the biggest movie star in the world.  It's one thing if you make mindless entertainment like I Am Legend, a miserable corruption of a solid story by the way, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, a non-actor whose best movie remains one in which he barely speaks (The Terminator).  But Will Smith has talent; he just happens to completely ignore it.  Yet for some reason he is given a pass--I've even seen people call him the greatest African-American actor working today.  This is frankly laughable.  Denzel Washington was willing to play an insane cop in Training Day.  Samuel L. Jackson has almost always played complex characters.  Even Morgan Freeman, who normally plays saintly characters (or occasionally God), played a kidnapping cop in Gone Baby Gone.  Though Will Smith is almost certainly richer than these three far more accomplished actors.  I leave you with this statistic: Will Smith has never appeared in a Best Picture nominated film; John Cazale appeared in five films in his life, three of which won the award and the other two of which were merely nominated).