Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Profits

I so wish that more news outlets, especially radio, had made a bigger deal out of this.  Rap and R&B has officially entered a new phase of hipocrisy.  We all knew that entertainers were moving into "mogel" status by mass marketing and cross-advertising themselves through music, movies, perfume/cologne, clothing, etc.  This is an ever sharpening contrast to their songs, at least the ones who profess to be "real," whatever that means.

Well, Jay-Z has taken the next step towards killing the art form that he made popular.  Ever heard that song "Forever," by Chris Brown? I am sure you have if you listen to the radio.  Well, the line "Double your pleasure, double your fun, and dance forever..." (Yes, that's the hook) is actually an advertisement for Wrigley's Doublemint gum.  JayZ has an advertising company that has an agreement with Wrigley's to write songs to be used by popular artists to advertise for Wrigley's products.  There is nothing wrong with profit and advertising, although I think it is too common.  However, this seems to me to be the ultimate sell out and very disappointing for someone who is considered to be the "don" of Rap.  I hope others agree and I hope that people who love his songs understand that they are clearly being manipulated by someone they, I think, trust to "stay true to the music."

Look forward to more Wrigley's songs from Julianne Hough, Ne Yo, and Big Red. What a joke. 

I'm scared, 'Sarge.

We are all son, we all are.

These words came to mind as my family and I watched portions of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, especially the opening drum scene.   I first have to say that I am totally impressed with what I saw and I don't think the world has ever seen anything close to what the Chinese put on last night.

However, Matt Laurer, being diplomatic as ever, said something to the effect of "this may cause viewers to be apprehensive," stating that the drummers were asked to smile, "which takes the edge off and softens it a bit."

Smiling or not, that opening drum scene scared the crap out of me.  Poor Charlotte, mouth agape, clung to me in awe and terror.  My friend Andrew, who has much more of an idea about the Chinese psyche and their love of the collective over the individual, would probably have more insight into this, but that seemed to be something that China probably loved when they saw it, as 2008 guys did a near perfect stepsing routine.  

I see the Sigs doing a mock opening ceremony at Stepsing 09.

Anyway, I think the world collectively held its breath during that routine.  I don't want to begrudge the Chinese their history and art, but I felt that most of these opening ceremonies, and ESPECIALLY the drum scene as a statement that both says "Look at how unique and cool we are, we're not as bad as you think," and also saying between the lines, "I just want you to know how strong and intimidating we can be."

I really was thinking that this is the modern equivalent of parading tanks, troops and nukes across Tienanmen (sp) square in front of a huge picture of Mao.  I couldn't get that image out of my head.  It was simply a more modern and disguised showing of their collective strength and that really scares me.  

Discuss.

19 million.......roubles?

What's with these Russians?  Arugably their best player in generations, Andrei Arshavin, has performed admirably on the world stage and the Ruskies are pricing the guy out of his dream move!  

At the height of his fame after Euro 2008, Barcelona, the team Arshavin supported as a boy, offered 15 million pounds for the player, a great sum for an attacking midfielder/supporting striker in his mid to late 20's from a league where it ain't that hard to score.  What happened? 

His team wants like 19 to 25 million pounds! That's a ridiculous amount of money for an admittedly promising, yet ultimately untested player like Arshavin.  

Will Tottenham be the ones to pick him up? They have been seemingly pursuing him all summer and now need a good supporting striker to replace Keane.  They have also loosened the purse strings this summer on attacking talent. T'ham at one point seemed to be pursuing Pavyluchenko as well, but a similar extremely overpriced value was put on him, killing the deal before it started taking off!

It is well known that the Russian football league is the playground of some very wealthy and greedy Russian dudes.  It is also well known that it isn't the most competitive league in the world.  These guys clearly don't care about the good of the russian game.  With as much promise as their national team showed this summer, one would think that those teams would be happy let their players move to a bigger stage.  That level of competition only helps those players get better, and it allows the spotlight to shine on other talented players and pave the way for their careers.  However, preventing your relatively unknown players who have a chance to hit the big stage from getting there, simply out of purely greedy desires, is a real shame.  19 million pounds is a lot of cash for any team.  The issues with Arshavin's value clearly isn't "if we don't get this price, we'll lose money or we can't pay our bills."  It's a matter of the degree of profit.

Over the last few years, transfer prices out of Russia and eastern Europe have been a big stumbling block for players to move abroad.  A few years back, CSKA made a great run in the champions league, but none of their players were purchased, seemingly a natural outcome of such a good run.  Why?  Too expensive.

Jo recently came to Man city for 18 million pounds - however, he's a true striker, Brazillian, and has scored in over half of the games he has played in - an unbelievable feat.  Likewise, nery castillo came to man city last year from the Ukraine and had to buy out his own contract to do it! On top of that, a tidy sum was paid for his services.

This is all to say that if you are a relatively minor league (and one where you have to play in other leagues' off seasons because it is too cold to play in your country from october to april), you should allow your players to move on and populate other leagues.  If they are successful, more teams will look at you in the future as being a real source of talent.  At some point in time, you will become a league where others will want to play, not just a feeder for bigger teams. I almost want Arshavin to stay in Russia, as I don't want them to be rewarded for their greed.   

Technology...Love me Back

I love some new technology. I was reminded of this when I watched Wall Street this week and Gordon Gecko had this Robot that served drinks to his guests!  I always thought those robots were hilarious, even Rocky Balboa had one.

In spite of my love for the machines that add to my uber-convenient life; lately they haven't been loving me back.

Last week, i hit a curb with my wheel and now my car literally drives diagonally.  How do I know this? I know this because Courtney's car broke down on Friday.  I had to jump it off twice in a suit in 100 degree weather so that we could take it to the Lexus dealer.  We put the car seat in my car, so I drove the broken car to the dealership.  While driving, I noticed in my rearview mirror that, while Courtney was driving my car in a straight line, the car is tilted like 5 inches to the right! It's hard to explain in words, but it is a weird sight.  

For the rest of the weekend, we all shared the Jetta, which was kind of fun since we were literally crammed in there.  What was not fun was the fact that my car has black leather seats and one AC vent that doesn't work.  I'm pretty sure that I have been sweating nonstop since Friday.  

One benefit to being stuck inside all weekend was the fact that we finally got digital cable back! We had been doing without for some time in an effort to save money for the house, but in an obvious and shameless ploy to prepare for the upcoming football season starting in 2 weeks, I brought back the digital cable.  The nice men came and set everything up for us on Saturday, and kicked it on our couch while their intense sweat made a person-shaped stain.  All of this would have been worth it if the cable had actually worked! Charter cable reminded us of how much they suck.  Our DVR hasn't worked at all, half the channels never showed up until today, and now the sound doesn't work and we have to wait until Thursday for a another sweaty guy to come out and fix everything.  I know that on August 16 this will all be worth it, but right now i'm losing faith.