Excruciatingly long pauses before contestant selection or elimination on reality shows

Now, I love me some reality TV. Not all reality TV (nothing Kardashian-related or Real Housewives of [Insert City] on my DVR), but at least half the shows I watch are unscripted (in theory anyway). Aside from guilty pleasures Kendra and Campus PD, I like a lot of the competition shows – So You Think You Can Dance, The Voice, and Project Runway in particular.

Which is why…

 
You can imagine…

That I…

 
Really hate…

…

…
 
Excruciatingly long pauses…

before contestant selection or elimination on reality shows.

For example, here’s how it typically goes on SYTYCD (other reality competitions are similar) – host Cat Deeley recaps the performances of three couples at a time. After sending away the obvious winner of the group, she is left with two couples. She tells them that one couple is going home. The couples are each shown, looking sad and scared and on the verge of tears. Cat flirts with opening the envelope, looks at the what is written on the card inside, says something to the effect of “and the couple going home is…” Cut to another shot of each couple, escalating dramatic music, and cut to commercial.

When we return from commercial, she reminds us (like we forgot) that one of the two couples is going home, we see the couples have their heads buried in each other’s shoulders at this point like that’s going to prevent them from hearing the outcome, turn up the volume on the dramatic music… and then she finally reads what’s on the card. SERIOUSLY?!?!!? Painful, overly dramatic, and completely unnecessary. It’s like, yes advertisers, I’m going to keep watching the show regardless of where you insert your commercials. Why are you trying to make me so miserable? It’s just going to make me hate your product or not even notice you at all since I’m fast forwarding through all this manufactured drama on my DVR. Just show me who wins/gets eliminated and get on with it!

Cyclists who ride next to one another when there’s not a bike lane

Now, I know there are a lot of Southern California motorists who, while driving anyway, HATE cyclists. They hate that cyclists get in their way when they’re trying to turn right on red, they hate when cyclists cut across lanes like a car to turn left (even though it’s totally within the rules of bicycle riding), they even hate cyclists riding nearly in the gutter when there’s no bike lane because the lane is too small for them to drive around. Surprisingly, I am not one of those people (I know, right?!). How can I hate a cyclist for reducing their carbon footprint along with traffic by not being another car on the road, not spending over $4 on gas, and getting exercise all at the same time?
 
What I am supremely annoyed by, however, are the cyclists who ride side by side. Cyclists are supposed to ride single file, not next to each other. Aside from the fact that side by side riding is ILLEGAL (yup, I just looked it up to check), it really does jeopardize both their as well as drivers’ safety. Now, maybe I am more sensitive to this now that I’m in San Diego. While there were a fair amount of skinny, shaved men and women riding around in their Lance Armstrong-wannabe jerseys and pointy aerodynamic helmets in LA, their numbers are nothing compared to SD. I hardly want to drive through North County on Saturday or Sunday mornings because there are packs and packs of cyclists riding together like they’re training for the next Tour de France. And the problem is, they ride side by side, like they’re going to pedal their bikes right up the ramp of Noah’s ark or something to make more cyclists.

Here’s the deal, cyclists riding side by side – buy some walkie-talkies, or put your cell phone in the pocket in the middle of your back you use for Clif bars and use a Bluetooth headset, so you can ride one behind the other and still get your conversation in. Then you can even draft off one another, just like Lance!

Weather reporting in Southern California

Now, San Diego has always been known for its ideal climate, one of the main reasons the metropolis is also known as “America’s Finest City.” San Diego is one of the top ten best climates in the Farmer’s Almanac, and one of the two best summer climates in America according to The Weather Channel. Although not quite as temperate, conditions in San Diego’s neighbor to the north, Los Angeles, are not too shabby either. Both cities are characterized by warm, dry summers and mild winters. More than half the days each year are above 70 °F, and the region has low rainfall as well. As a result, the forecasting of weather is less diverse than in cities with more varied conditions, and meteorologists struggle to come up with synonyms for “beautiful,” “glorious,” and “picturesque” to describe a 10-day forecast that reads sunny and 72 °F.

These feelings of inadequacy are already made apparent in the way news stations name their weather segments and tracking mechanisms. Here in San Diego, ABC has Pinpoint Weather Interactive and Pinpoint Doppler Live, while CBS has Microclimate Weather. On its website, NBC has a section that displays 26 interactive maps showing everything from current dewpoint to lightning strikes. Why, might I ask, do we need a permanent map on the NBC weather page for lightning strikes? They occur how many days out of the year? We might not even get a single lightning strike in some years!

That’s why, when a little rain, wind, or fog enters Southern California’s atmosphere, the men and women who report the weather to us each day can scarcely conceal their excitement, and the coverage of the rainfall, wind speeds, and fog density is just a tad bit overstated.

 
And by “just a tad bit overstated,” I mean “completely and utterly out of control.” Where else in the country does a storm expected to drop up to three-quarters of an inch of rain in some (read, not all) areas over the course of a week receive a special title or designation? Well, in Southern California, “Storm Watch [insert year]” galvanizes the headlines as eager reporters use words like “torrential downpour,” “heavy showers,” and “violent precipitation” to describe a couple hours’ worth of drizzle and cloudy skies.
 
Also, because weather anchors in SoCal have such little to talk about, at times they even resort to taking events that are not weather and calling them weather. Dagmar Midcap (weirdest name ever) can be seen on a commercial in San Diego saying that she enjoys keeping San Diegans up to date on the weather that matters to them, including fires and earthquakes. Um, last time I checked, Dagmar, neither fires nor earthquakes were counted among Earth’s weather phemonema. While wildfires may occur as a result of hot, dry, and windy weather conditions, this does not mean the fire itself is “weather.” Earthquakes are seismic event caused by rupture of geological faults, volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear tests. Both are certainly natural disasters, but neither are themselves weather. And Dagmar, a paid weather reporter for one of the top three networks in San Diego, should not be captured in a frequently replayed advertisement promoting herself saying that they are.
 
Of course, I say all of this at the beginning of 2012, the year in which the world ends according to the Mayan calendar. Which means I might be paying just slightly more attention to STORM WATCH 2012 as we approach December 21^st than I otherwise would.

Republican Primary Coverage and Candidates

It was recently brought to my attention that it has been awhile since my last blog entry. Presumably because living in San Diego and working from home means I have a lot less to complain about. However, not wanting to disappoint you, my loyal readers, here is your first opinion piece for the month of February.

First of all, news coverage of the Republican primary candidates started WAY too early. As early as February 2011, a number of the suspected and stated candidates were involved in a discussion about the Islamic community, and why the party had lost nearly the entire demographic during Bush II’s reign. By the time we reach the first Tuesday of November 2012, it’ll have been nearly two years since the media started reporting the goings-on of various Republican headliners. Ridiculous! That, and the CNN smartphone app sends out excessive amounts of “breaking news” alerts, the majority of which are entirely unnecessary. Until the Republican candidate is actually nominated, or maaaybe when the field is narrowed down to the top two candidates, does any news about Republicans deserve to be delivered to my mobile.

Secondly, the pool of candidates is a big joke. The Donald was even considered a candidate at one point! About half of the people in the early debates were complete unknowns, with the caliber of the rest being extremely questionable. Here are some facts to consider about some of the more “well-known” contenders, past and present:

Still in the running:

Mitt Romney – people give Barack Obama a hard time about being an elitist; the President made just over $1 million in 2011, while Romney made over $60 million. Talk about being out of touch with America! That, and he is Mormon. I have no issue with the religion, but I just can’t see down-home Protestant and Catholic middle Americans voting for someone who thinks that he will become the God of his own solar system when he departs from this Earth.
Newt Gingrich – sleazy bastard. His first wife was his former high school geometry teacher, ew! He then divorced her after having an affair with a woman nine years his junior. He married and then divorced his second wife after having an affair with a woman twenty-three years his junior! Secrets, secrets are no fun, secrets, secrets hurt someone. We don’t need another Nixon in office.
Ron Paul – WAY too old… they say the presidency ages you ten years, and he’s already 76. That, and he’s a racist, having been quoted as saying the following:

-       “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

-       “…even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For “the animals” are coming.”

-       “Opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions.”

-       He voted against making Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a holiday, saying “Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual “Hate Whitey” day.”

What a fucking idiot.

Rick Santorum – has eight children, the youngest of whom is three years old and disabled. More power to him for raising a disabled child, but the dude is obviously far too busy to run his household AND the country at the same time.

Drop-outs:

Rick Perry – racist AND homophobic; leases a hunting camp called “Niggerhead” and is quoted as saying, “there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, and your kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas.”
Jon Huntsman – a big quitter, in the race for all of seven months and two primaries. Also Mormon.
Herman Cain – how can you take this guy seriously when his most famous political slogan, 9-9-9, makes reference to pizza advertising? And not even that of his pizza company!
Michele Bachmann – Sarah Palin disguising herself by not wearing glasses.
Gary Johnson – announced his campaign on Twitter. After he dropped out of the race, he switched to the Libertarian party. How’s that for loyalty?
Tim Pawlenty – refers to himself as T-Paw. Enough said. 

And we still have seven more months until the 2012 Republican National Convention, scheduled to take place the week of August 27, 2012. Definitely going to have to uninstall my CNN app.