America's Prudish Nature

Hot on the heals (can a month-long gap be considered "hot on the heels"?) of my last sex rant, I come to you with a story (which of course inspired this rant) I saw a little while back.  It's a report about a family in Rahway, New Jersey that was forced to put clothes on a SNOW SCULPTURE after an anonymous complaint.

Can we please stop it with this ridiculous fear of sex?

I can't be the only one who sees the complete hypocrisy of the media.

We live in a country where MMA fights are broadcast on cable television, yet we still have an investigation from the FCC about a nipple that was shown for about half of a second SIX YEARS AGO!  The FCC calls the exposed breast "graphic and shocking".  Wait....I'm sorry....How in the hell is a breast graphic and/or shocking?  And it's more "graphic and shocking" than a guy getting his face beaten in on live television?

Commercials have demonstrated that it's okay to show as much of the top of the breast as physically possible.  TV shows and movie trailers can show the bottoms of the breasts.  Awards shows can zoom in on as much side-boob as they please.  And none of this warrants (not Warrant) a six year government investigation.  But show the forbidden one square-inch of nipple for a fraction of a second and you'll be demonized and portrayed as a detriment to society. 

And television is not the only place where sex is seen as a blemish on society.  Defamer has a long list of movies where the MPAA has either botched the rating or influenced the editing of a movie (which is censorship, I don't care how you defend it).  This kind of thing makes me irate.

Why would a movie like the Dark Knight (great movie) get a PG-13 rating?  Seriously MPAA? You think the Dark Knight would be appropriate for a 13 year-old?  But take three scenes riddled (seewhatIdidthere?) with dead bodies and replace them with two seconds of a topless woman and suddenly Christopher Nolan is a perverted maniac who has to make cuts just to get an "R".

So the message I'm seeing so far is that it's okay to show ridiculous amounts of violence as long as you don't use too many "bad" words or show a boob.

Let me ask the three of you who will read this a question:  Have you ever heard of anyone who was traumatized after seeing nudity in a film?  Even the ones with actually sex scenes instead of just a topless shower scene? I'm talking about mainstream, theatrical movies, not the films your uncle made in college.   I have never personally known a sex scene in a movie to cause anything more harmful than a little excitement or an awkward chuckle.  I've never seen anyone have to close their eyes so they didn't have nightmares about Kate Winslet's breast in Titanic.  But I have known many people, including myself, that find graphic violence hard to watch many times. 

Personally, I would much rather my son see breasts or a sex scene in a movie than see someone shot in the head.  I just cannot fathom how naked bodies can be so despised.  Let's be honest; everyone over the age of 12 is thinking about sex all the time anyway.

Is it just that the masses are all embarrassed that we're a sex driven society and we're always thinking about it?  Is that why we feel the need to condemn it publicly?

Or do some people honestly hate seeing the stunning beauty of the human body at its finest?

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

I apologize to anyone over the age of 25 for the title of this blog.  You will now need to go cleanse your aural palate with something less condiment inspired.  (For those of you who don't remember 1990, or don't have VH1, please see this)

What I really want to talk about is sex.  Specifically, why our government (and the Vatican) thinks they can stop teenagers from doing it. (Warning: this rant reads much better if you act like a 14 year old boy every time you see the words sex, aspect, or "doing it")

As usual, a news report has sparked my latest rant.  CNN recently did a report on the new health care bill.  I don't want to get started on the entire bill because I don't have 19 hours to type everything I want to say.  Instead, I will focus on one aspect of it that the American government has been trying to shove down our throats for decades:  Abstinence.  CNN reports that there is $250 million tucked away in the new bill to be used for "abstinence-focused" education over a five-year period.  Programs that qualify must "teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems". The obvious problem with this statement is that it's almost complete bullshit.  I say almost because they qualify their claim with the word "certain".  Condoms, when used properly, are incredibly effective at preventing most STDs and pregnancy.  I'm not sure what the exact percentage is but you're obviously reading this on an internet-capable device of some sort.  Go Bing it.  (Okay Microsoft.  I tried it and it just doesn't work for me aesthetically or audibly.  Sorry.  I think it may be because it just doesn't make middle school boys giggle like "Google it" does.)  And if you get someone pregnant while you're using a condom then you're either doing it wrong or your son will retire early from his carpentry career to become the David Blaine of 31 A.D. 

Let's try to think of another huge project aimed at our kids with plenty of government funding and media hoopla.  D.A.R.E. you say?  You mean the program to teach kids to "Just Say No" that actually taught kids how to say "Yes"?  Throwing money behind a clever slogan and hoping it sticks doesn't work.  If only we had decades worth of American history to learn from.   And playing the "I'm older and smarter" card sure as hell doesn't work either.  Just try talking to a five year old.

So I guess the American government looks pretty dumb trying to cram the same message down childrens' throats for decades.  But if they look dumb then how does the Vatican look?  They have woven anti-condom rhetoric into their demonizing of sex for just as long.  Despite the fact that allowing their missionaries to hand out condoms in the African villages they visit, or allowing their congregation to use them, would almost certainly cut down on the spread of AIDS and other STDs.  No amount of preaching is going to stop people from having sex.  Surely the Vatican must know this.  And yet, they would rather allow people to pass STDs around than to have them use protection.  That must take a level of dedication that I wasn't aware was possible.  Dedication to belligerently maintaining that their solution is the only way.  But I guess they've gotten pretty good at that in the last couple of millennia.  The same CNN report from above also states that a "January 2009 study in Pediatrics found that religious teens who take virginity pledges are less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active, and just as likely to have sex before marriage as their peers who didn't take pledges."

Just to recap:  Preaching abstinence doesn't work.  Virginity pledges don't work.  Making sex seem dirty and taboo doesn't work.

Why does it seem like giving a fourteen year old boy internet access and plenty of free time is a better option than any of these?

I didn't really hope to accomplish anything with this rant but I think I did.  It has made me even more adamant that my kids will be taught that condoms will be readily available when they're ready and more importantly, masturbation is a great thing.  You can't get an STD from it.  You never get rejected.  It causes no emotional drama.  I'm not saying I have all the answers (far from it) but who knows how many lives these simple things could have saved?

Tiger Woods

Here goes nothing....How arrogant is this motherfucker?!?!  First, he holds a "press conference", in Florida,  while the Accenture Match Play Tournament is going on, in Arizona.  He reads three words at a time, making Obama sound like the Micro Machines man reciting a tongue twister, and then doesn't take any questions from the press that he hand picked.  Then a few weeks later he tosses out some five-minute interviews where he comes up with new phrases for "I'm sorry.  Please love me again."  And now he's going to do his first "real" press conference on Monday, April 5th.  Hmm, what else is happening that day?  Not much.  Just MLB's Opening Day and the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Game.  Yeah.  Does he honestly think anyone in the sporting world would voluntarily go listen to his morally castrated ass talk about moving on, or whatever bullshit he's going to say, when those other events are going on?  Short answer: No.  It's going to be pretty difficult for these reporters to write their piece on Tiger's new-found open honesty or "steely resolve" when their audio recording of the press conference is muddled with the Indians game that was streaming from their laptop in the background and the Duke v. Michigan State game on the TV in front of them.  Mickelson, Ogilvy, and Nicklaus are speaking the next day.  Could he not speak on the traditional day?  I guess not.  I'm sure that would detract from the inevitable media frenzy around him.

Speaking of the media frenzy, Tiger is doing one of two things right now regarding Jesse James.

1. He's sending trucks full of thank you cards and booze.  Because the only thing that makes an anal/waitress/no-condom obsessed serial adulterer look good is a tattoo/Nazi obsessed serial adulterer who cheated on America's sweetheart.

2. He's plotting revenge for stealing the thunder from his tell-all book.  That's the only logical place for Tiger to go now.  Say he returns to golf and dominates (which he probably will), he's still going to catch flack for the rest of his career about something that happened OFF the course.  But if he (and by "he" I mean his ghost writer) pours out his soul in an autobiography that focuses on his "troubled" years, then he can be allowed to move on.  But unless he becomes a super-villain or cures cancer, he's still going to be know as the guy who dominated golf while cheating on his wife with 47 different chicks.  Let's be honest, even if he becomes a super-villain who also cures cancer, the adultery will still makes its way into the conversation.  That's just how the media works.



Let me just say that Tiger Woods doesn't owe the public anything.  If he doesn't want to ever talk about anything other than golf for the rest of his life, then he should be allowed to do so.  What goes on in his personal life is 100% between him and his family.  I honestly don't want to know.  I can't stand the people who feel that it's their right to know what went on.

Let's back up for a minute.  When someone completely and utterly dominates something (sports, music, movie, etc.) there are generally two camps.

The first camp loves said celebrity.  Even if they don't enjoy that celeb's team/songs/movies.  They celebrate watching one person make other people look terrible at their own job.  This camp splinters when a scandal hits.  Either toward denial or camp number two.

The second camp hates said celebrity for the same reason that camp one loves them.  They are making everyone else look bad and it brings down the whole sport/genre/industry.  These are the people who lap up every once of coverage during the celeb's public shaming.

There is a third camp that genuinely likes the person but that's usually only until that person gets traded or puts out a bad album/movie....or cheats on a Swedish model/Miss Congeniality.


Lessons for today's rant:

1.  Fame sucks sometimes
2.  If a past transgression becomes public, at least act humble
3.  If you don't cheat on your wife, you can't get caught. 

Copyright Rant 2.0

This link will take you to an article talking about how BMG, Beyonce's label, has just removed music videos from Beyonce's official YouTube channel for copyright infringement. I cannot confirm how many videos were on the channel before this happened (it's my damn ears that keeps me away) but it appears only one actual video is still up.  I'm not going to go into a long, drawn-out, math-filled rant about how ridiculous this is.  Because that's pretty obvious.  I'm simply going to ask some questions and get out of the way.



How does Beyonce putting up her own videos cause harm to BMG?

Would this not be considered incredibly cheap advertising?

Why would a company want to hinder their artist from reaching new fans?

The Ridiculousness of the RIAA

I just read yet another article about how file-sharing is destroying music and movies.  This gem of a quote came from the walking.....well....there's really no concise word for hypocritical, ego-maniacal, over-hyped, self-important, blow-hard, douchebag....I guess I'll just call him by his name (which I'm sure is his real name) Bono.  I would rather listen to Bozo sing Bavarian creme pie opera for about four days straight before I would voluntarily listen to Bono spout his earth-shattering revelations about saving the world.

He claims that file-sharing hurts the creators and gives huge profits to the ISPs.  Did I miss a part of the conversation where people were paying their ISPs for the music they were illegally downloading?  How does someone downloading, say, a U2 album, turn into profit for the ISP?  That part of the statement is ludicrous (not Ludacris.  I'm sure he's one of the affected artists).  But the portion about artists being hurt is more debatable.  I understand that it would be taking the MASSIVE 5-10% per CD profit that they might see, eventually.  But that's not the only way artists make money.

Let's do the math.  You buy a CD for $15.  Crazy price, but roll with me.  Let's say the artist gets 10%.  That's $1.50.....before taxes and God knows what else. (Check out this blog post by Steve Albini, the producer for Nirvana's In Utero album.  10% is probably being super generous unless they've already sold a ton of copies.)   Multiply that by 1 Million downloads, and subtract the taxes, and you're right around $1 Million being supposedly taken from them.  But suppose that 10% of these people really enjoy the music and want to support the artist.  That's 100,000 people.  Some of them may use P2P as an on-demand radio; scanning through albums to see if they like it and then heading to Best Buy or iTunes to buy the album.  We'll get to these people in a moment.  But let's say they don't even do that.  Let's say they go with the "Screw them.  I already have the music.  Why would a pay for it again?" mantra.  What happens when the person wants to see the artist live?  Or have a great concert t-shirt?  Are they going to be able to log onto The Pirate Bay and download a ticket?  Absolutely not.  Let's get back to the 100,000 on-demand radio people.  Of the 100,000 file-sharers, let's say 1% actually go see the artist live.  I'm assuming tickets would be around $30.  (Way, WAY, low for some artists, I know.)  That would be $30,000.  Not a ton of money but's it's $30,000 more than they would have seen if that evil, malicious file-sharing scum hadn't illegally obtained the music.

Let's back up for just a second.  The music and movie industry likes to pretend that every illegal download equals one less sale.  Get real.  You're telling me that someone who downloads the entire U2 discography (I'm sticking with the metaphor here) would have bought all 12 "mind-expanding" masterpieces?  I think not.  More than likely it robbed them of four or five of their most popular songs from iTunes.  So rather than robbing the artist of $180 per discography (12 albums at $15 a piece), they're realistically losing about five bucks.

I don't want to sound like someone who doesn't care about the artist.  As a musician myself, I think about these things quite often.  Ideally, each artist would be well compensated for their art.  But if I had to choose between getting screwed out of money by a huge conglomerate-style record company and having someone who might actually care about the music getting it illegally, I would honestly take the latter.  If we take one last look at the math we'll see that the artist could actually come out better that way.  1,000 album sales might net the artist $80 or so.  But if two people, out of 1,000 illegal downloads, buy $30 concert tickets for them and a friend, that's $120.  Probably a net of $100, maybe $110.

Obviously, the record company might not want to finance the recording of another album if the artist didn't bring them money.  But if a band became popular through this newest iteration of bootleg cassette tapes then they would make plenty of money for the record company through other means.  I'm obviously speaking in ideals here.  But I honestly don't see this as a huge erosion of the music industry.  If anything else, the record companies have spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to shove the next big thing down our throat, whether we want it or not.  Is it any wonder that album sales are down when the Black Eyed Peas won THREE Grammies this year?  THREE?  What a joke.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:  The sky is not falling.  The bottom has not fallen out of the music sales barrel.  Pirates are not ruining the music industry.

Support the artists, give us better music, and give us more opportunities to legally obtain that music.  This is my request for the music industry.

I eagerly await your unified and unanimous response.

Love, Andy