I’ve moved!

My blog is now at http://thingskevinhates.com. If you’ve been kind enough to link to me, please update it to the new site, where I’ll have plenty more of the same hatred you’ve come to know and love.

misused apostrophes

It seems like half of the apostrophes I see are used incorrectly. People get confused, I think, because they aren’t able to understand the difference between a plural and a possessive, and they get caught up in a tangle of s‘s and apostrophes. A plural means there’s more than one of something. In that case, you almost never use an apostrophe. The only exceptions, basically, are when you’re dealing with something that’s italicized (such as a book title, magazine title, non-English word, etc.), when you’re dealing with abbreviations that have periods in them, or in a few words or phrases where it’s become standard (“do’s and don’ts,” for example).

bad clock management #2

I watched the Saints’ win over the Falcons. After the Falcons turned the ball over on downs with 1:49 left, I thought, “I realize they can’t quite run the clock out, but with an 11-point lead the Saints should kneel on the ball and then punt on 4th down. I realize this is one of those things where people are going to say, “Kevin, you’re only saying this because of what happened.” Well, that’s true; had the Saints run for a first down, had there not been an injury, had there not been a fumble, no, I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now. (I’d still be right, though.) But I definitely thought the Saints should have taken a knee. And my dad said the same thing when I talked to him after the game, and I checked a few message boards and saw at least one more person agreed with us.

halloween

Now, I don’t mean this as a personal attack against those of you who enjoy Halloween. But it’s not my cup of tea, not at all. It combines a couple of big things I don’t like with a very small number of things I do like. And besides, it’s on a Saturday this year, and it’s very hard to drag me away from my house on a Saturday during the college football season.

Things I don’t like about Halloween:

The costumes. Now, lots of people have amazing, hilarious, clever costumes. But if you’re going to do Halloween right, you have to have a costume. You look like a tool if you don’t, and if you just half-ass it you still look like a tool. So partaking in Halloween requires three things: creativity (to come up with a great costume idea), hard work (to actually pull said idea off), and a certain degree of exhibitionism (because any costume is ultimately a plea of “Hey, look at me!”). I’m pretty lacking in all three of those areas. I’m always amazed at the costume ideas people come up with—all sorts of things I’d never think of. And the amount of time, money, and work involved in pulling off a good costume is way too high. And, despite the fact that I have a blog, and despite the fact that I do like to think of myself as a very, very, very minor celebrity, and despite the fact that I do enjoy performing (an exhibitionist hobby if there ever were one), I don’t need the attention that comes from the perfect, outrageous, intelligent costume. And the problem with Halloween that you need to have some sort of costume. At least with Mardi Gras you can just put on one of those striped purple green and gold rugby shirts and leave it at that. But with Halloween people are gonna judge you if your costume isn’t good. So why bother?

hipsters

I feel kind of conflicted writing this. Because I don’t hate all hipsters. And the term is a horrendously nebulous one, anyway. And it’s difficult to mock hipsters without becoming one—their movement is so obsessed with irony and putative non-conformity and feelings of superiority that just pointing out their faults makes one a sort of hipster. And because we’re all hipsters to some extent. You’re reading a blog entry about hipsters, for fuck’s sake. And even worse—I’m writing one! While researching for this I went to urbandictionary.com and the 2nd result for hipster is: “You, for reading ironic, pseudo-intellectual dictionary entries on the word ‘hipster.’” Touché, my friend, touché. And so much of the hipster mocking that goes on (LATFH being the prime example with stuff white people like operating in a similar vein) attacks a ridiculous straw-man version of hipsters. I feel like the examples I see every day are easy enough to mock, so why bother with an exaggerated paragon of the stereotype?

the lack of baritone roles these days

When I drag myself to an audition for a musical, chances are I’m singing something that’s fifty or more years old. And the director or someone else on the casting panel will be surprised that someone my age would pick something that old. It’s because I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE! There have hardly been any good roles or songs for baritones and basses in the past thirty years. In the golden age of the musical, back in the days of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Bernstein and Jule Styne and Frank Loesser and so forth, shows usually had a good mix of roles. You’d have a leading man role for a baritone—a John Raitt or Alfred Drake or someone like that—a juvenile second lead for a young tenor. And there’d usually be a mix for women as well, maybe a nice soprano role for the romantic lead and some good character roles for altos, or maybe a nice belty Ethel Merman role. Sometimes the altos complain, but even then, they’ve got a whole nice song for it. And these days, I think it’s the sopranos who have more to complain about than the altos as far as female parts are concerned. But everything for men now is tenor, tenor, tenor, with maybe a few character parts for basses and baritones.

the nfl overtime rule

There are about a thousand different ways to deal with a tied football game. You can leave it tied, as was the rule in college for many years. You can let the teams alternate possessions starting at the 25 or the 10, as is the case now in college and high school. Neither of these solutions is ideal. The current college and high school system eliminates the importance of field position, punting, and the vertical passing game, while placing a heavy premium on turnovers, field goal kicking, and two point conversions. And obviously, ties must be avoided in the NFL playoffs. But either of those proposals is a huge improvement over the NFL’s joke of a playoff system. In fact, just about any system would be an improvement. It is far too easy for the team that wins the coin toss to march down the field, kick a field goal, and win the game without a single possession for the other team. Of six NFL overtime games this year, three have been decided by a field goal on the opening possession.