Creativity is King

First off, I’d like to give props to my colleague Elvish Freshly (which I assume is a reference to a LOTR character who fought alongside Legolas at the Battle of Minas Tirith) for breathing some life into this place. Things have been pretty quiet lately, mainly due to the fact that in these economic times…blogging during work results in less of an increase in productivity than one might think. But I’m going to make my presence known as much as I can, even if it means blogging on weeken–uhh…weeknights.

Anywho, on to the meat and potatoes. Without a doubt, 2008 has been an interesting year. A lot of crazy shit has gone down this year–from our first black president to the crazy fluctuations of our economy to the Minnesota Vikings making the playoffs for the first time since 2004. As is always the case, certain things got big upped this year that probably shouldn’t have, and certain things didn’t get nearly the attention they deserved. For the purposes of this post, I am gonna deal with the former. (And I will save the latter for my next post.)

So, without further ado and in no particular order…here are the 10 most overrated things of 2008, as decided by me. And by proxy, the whole of Creativity is King (but not JG Customs because of the opinions of us lowly bloggers do not necessarily represent the opinions of JGoods Customs as a whole).

The Office.

Generally speaking, I’ve always liked “The Office”. I saw the UK version first, and thought it was brilliant, and after a shaky first season, I think the American version has done pretty damn well for itself. However, there is no doubt in my mind that has been one of the weakest seasons since the show began airing. It’s still good for at least a couple decent gags a show, but the consistent laugh just are NOT there (see: Seasons 2 & 3, or any season of “30 Rock”).  Dwight still has his moments, and Creed is ALWAYS money, but the whole Jim and Pam thing is tired and stagnant. They will inevitably break up at some point in the near future (bring Roy back?!) and then get back together and all that back and forth nonsense that goes with it. Boring. The good news is this: I know how to fix it all. Here’s what you do: somehow kill off all the characters (except for two of them) in a hilarious manner. Then, have those two characters start their own business and slowly bring new people into the mix. The two characters that I am speaking of are obviously Creed and Andy Bernard. Dear God will the hilarity ensue. So much hilarity.

New York Football Giants.

So they’re 12-4. So they won a Super Bowl last year. Big whoop. Wanna know how many times the Minnesota Vikings have beat them in the past 3 years? 3 times. That’s right. Every time we’ve played them. Yeah, they may have been playing their JV squad yesterday, but we also beat them last year, when they won a Super Bowl. Ipso facto, the 2007 Minnesota Vikings could have won the Super Bowl. Think about THAT. People talk about the Giants like they’re football gods or something…but I got a news flash for ya, Walter Cronkite…they aren’t. Need I remind anyone that they managed to lose to the Cleveland Browns 35-14 in Week 6? Or that they’ve lost 3 of their last 4?? The Giants are a regular ass team that managed to get a bunch of wins this season. (See: Tennessee Titans.) Disagree with me? Well, see if you still do when they lose to the Falcons on Jan. 11.

Facebook.

I’ve heard that people still argue which is better: Facebook or MySpace. I think it’s pretty obvious Facebook makes MySpace look like a fucking dingleberry convention…but to be honest, that’s not saying much. Outside of college, Facebook is actually pretty useless but for TWO (count ‘em) reasons: 1) stalking ex-girlfriends and 2) trying to make people think you’re more awesome than you really are with any updates you make to your profile. Whether it be pictures, music, movies, etc…all you’re trying to do is impress other people with how cool you’d like them to think you are. Same reason why you tag yourself in some pictures and untag yourself in others. Don’t get me wrong…I’m just as guilty as any other Joe Sixpack (what up Sarah) walking down the street. But eventually the shit gets boring, and once you are done using it as a means to get in the pants of chicks you went to high school with…it goes downhill pretty fast. And then you’ll just visit it 4 times a day, as opposed to your normal 17.

Saturday Night Live.

I didn’t wanna use the above picture for this one, as it highlights the one thing that was consistently great from SNL this season, but it’s the only picture I found. So fuck it. And yes…Tina Fey as Sarah Palin was awesome, and not overrated in the least. She was funny and totally spot-on. But other than that…SNL was as streaky as they have ever been. You can count on two good skits an episode. That’s it. “Jizz in My Pants” was good stuff, no doubt. But remember what the Digital Short was the week before that?

Exactly. Anywho, there are still signs of life every once in a while (fucking LOVE me some Jean K. Jean), but SNL still has a long way to go to get back to the unbelievable consistency of years past. And Tina Fey ain’t on that show no more.

Damien Hirst.

You know how VH1 does those “Best Week Ever” and “Best Year Ever” shows? This guy right here is having the Best Year Ever. Don’t know him? Learn yourself. Hirst is the guy who made that skull with all the diamonds on it. The guy who preserves animals in formaldehyde and sells them for millions of dollars. The guy who is 43 years old and can essentially do whatever he wants with whatever he wants and sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Now that’s some creative freedom a dude can get behind.) That thing in the picture above? Sold for almost $20 million. If this guy is the best artist alive right now…then fucking a, get me a large tank of formaldehyde and some dead beavers. I got an idea for a piece of artwork I’m going to call “A Woman’s Nether Regions Anthropomorphized: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Poon”. Opening bid is $7 million…do I hear $7 million?

Ed Hardy.

If you own, have owned, or ever even considered owning a piece of Ed Hardy clothing, you’re a fucking douchebag. No ifs. No ands. No buts.

Generation Kill.

Picture this, if you will: a 7-part miniseries, airing on HBO, created by the mastermind behind “The Wire”, and about the Iraq War. Fucking titty balls, right? Wrong. Before I go any further, let me just say: I love “The Wire”. I fucking love it. If it came in food form, I would eat it. If it came in liquid form, I would shower in it, even if the liquid form was some sort of waste product. “The Wire” puts everything that has ever been on TV to shame. However, the Iraq War is fucking stupid. And it was a mistake for me to think that Eddie Burns and David Simon could turn a stupid fucking war into an awesome series. This got almost universal acclaim, and I guess I can understand why. It is a very in-depth, detailed look at 1st Recon division and their role in the war. If that sentence (and ONLY that sentence) interests you a great deal, go out and see this series. Beyond that sentence though…there ain’t much. Guys drive around in HumVees and accidentally kill civilians and talk about things you wouldn’t expect soldiers in wartime to talk about. That’s it. I just summed up all 8+ hours of this series.

Kige Ramsey.

Just Kidding. YouTube Celebrities.

If you visit Deadspin on a regular basis, you know who that guy is. If you do not, don’t worry about it…just view the above as one of the awesomest self portraits ever taken. (What are those in the background? Where is he? What’s going on?!) Anywho, I feel like “South Park” has kind of already covered this, but I feel like it needed some reiteration. YouTube is a great site, as it has introduced me to the following two videos: this and this. (I’ll play the hypocrite for a second and just say that I would hang out with ANY of these people if given half a chance.) However, all these countless people trying to gain célébrité via making stupid YouTube videos and hoping they turn into internet sensations have gotta stop. For God’s sake…do it the old-fashioned way, dammit! Either get internet famous completely on accident or make a sextape (NSFW…or any other place).

P.S. I have no problem with Kige Ramsey or YouTube Sports. He just made the best opener for this topic.

“Swagger.”

Without a doubt, the most overused term of 2008. So much so, in fact, that it is now completely devoid of any meaning. (I’m also including “swag” along with this. Just an FYI.) I liked the song with Jay-Z and T.I. and all those other swaggeriffic rappers, but this shit’s gotta stop. “Swagger” means nothing now. As soon as there are t-shirts about it…that means it’s dead. (See: BustedTees’ entire site. So many good jokes that can’t be used anymore. Bring a tear to my eye.) Anyway, UrbanDictionary lists 19 different definitions for “swagger”.  A sample usage from that site:

Ryan: “Denzel Washington has swagger in all his movie rolls”
Phil: “You can’t forget about Al Pacino! He had swagger all over in Scarface!!!”

Also:

“Hariyama used Swagger!”
“Salamence is confused!”
“Salamence used Aerial Ace!”
“it’s Super Effective!”
“Hariyama fainted!”

I may not know what movie rolls are (flour, yeast, butter…DVD packaging?), but I really feel like this whole “swagger” movement is over. Come up with a new term for ‘09. Might I recommend “superciliousness”? (It even has a fucking MONEY abbreviation too!)

As in:

“Eh, dawg, eh! Diddy is supercilly sick wit it! I heard he and Cassie are knockin’ boots!”

Barack & Michele Fist Bump

That Barack Obama being elected president is gonna be the end of racism.

This is slightly more serious than any of the above, but that don’t make it not true. When Obama got elected (suck it Republicans…that shit still feels good), there were all sorts of people talking about how this was a changed America, and race didn’t matter anymore, and all that feel-good stuff. Simply put, that ain’t the case. I DO think Obama as president will result in a somewhat better racial understanding, but give me a break…when the above occurred, some dumb bitch on Fox News called it a “terrorist fist jab”. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Whether it’s out in the open, or whether it’s buried deep down, we’ve still got a LONG way to go before the United States is cleared of all racist mentalities. The shit’s a problem and we still got a ways to go.

Uhhh…zoot alors!

(Pictures courtesy of wherever I jacked them from.)