Caesar's Bath

Here's the premise:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

I got it from reading Mattthew Yglesias. You can read his here.

Here's my list of five things that I don't really get. They are not so much examples from my specific peer group. They are more from my demographic at large:

Napoleon Dynamite - I don't get it. Maybe I do get it. No, I guess I don't. On a positive note I must say Jon Heder's character work is to be admired. I've seen him in interviews since watching the movie and I expected him to be ND-ish in some way. He'll go into the character at the drop of a hat, but when it's just him I see no relation to the character. So here's the question: why is this movie not funny to me? The thought of the things that happen in the movie are funny, yet everything little scene left me staring at the screen like it was that last sketch before the closing credits on Saturday Night Live. I know people who think the movie is hilarious and I understand it has a lot of devoted fans. I don't get it. It must be drugs. I don't indulge anymore; therefore I don't like Napoleon Dynamite. Is that it? Have you seen this movie? Did you like it? Were you under the influence of any psychotropic substances at the time?

Chris Berman - He's half-way tolerable when he covers football, but for the most part I can't stand Chris Berman. I actually think his nicknames are funny...the first time I hear them. I think Miguel Tejada They Come Tejada They Fall is possibly the funniest nickname ever, but it's not so cute when I'm trying to catch the highlights of an O's/Rangers game and Boomer has got to spit that mouthful out while giving the rundown on a particularly WebGem-worthy 6-4-3. Luckily for me Berman is usually just the football guy and I don't really watch a lot of football coverage. I just watch the games. Now it's baseball season and on Sunday night I was shocked out of my new baseball season glee when Berman hosted Baseball Tonight. He wore his goofy green blazer to commemorate that day's Masters Tournament. Ugghh. He also took up a good 10 minutes of airtime going on about how it's a tradition for him to wear the green blazer and a tradition for him to host Baseball Tonight on Masters day. He used the same jokes about how the blazer doesn't fit as good as it used to as he always does and I couldn't tell if John Kruk and the gang were just playing along with Berman or if they were genuinely pleased he was there. It seemed to me that they were annoyed with him interrupting their show. I know I was. Anyway, Chris Berman is alright when I can ignore him (November - March), but during baseball season he's just about the last person I want to hear call a game or see on my TV. He ranks just above Joe Buck and Time McCarver. Seriously, what's Berman's appeal?

Poker on TV – Since I’ve been saying something a little positive about each item I’ll start out by saying that the little camera that shows you the cards of each player has drastically improved poker on television. That being said, it only raised it from “I'll watch for two minutes at 3:30 in the morning before getting off the couch and going to bed because I just realized I fell asleep during Sports Center” to “Oh, look he just got an ace/king suited…maybe The Golden Girls is on”. I’ll watch a lot of bad sporting events on TV (I watched about 3 straight years of American Gladiators at one point…I was thirteen when that show started), but they do have to be sporting which in my opinion needs to include some kind of physical activity. I don’t even like watching my friends play poker, let alone complete strangers. If I want to see people in cheap clothes and silly sunglasses throw away money, I could go down to the convenience store and watch Cletus drop a twenty on some scratch-offs.

Moby – Where to begin? Even if I enjoyed his music, his association with Gwen Stefani would be enough to land him on my crap list. Something positive? It certainly was crafty of him to allow all of the songs from Play for commercials even before the album came out. It made him a very wealthy man. As for the actual music…I’m at a lost. I offer a very Seinfeldian, "Moby. What's the deal there?"

Expensive TVs – I’m probably the last person that needs to talk about buying superfluous electronic equipment, but I draw the line at taking out a loan for a TV. If you have the money, then by all means, but when and why did HDTV-plasma-72’’ flat screens become a necessity? I watch more than my share of television. I always have and probably always will, but I have never thought to myself, “I think I’ll spend $6,000 so I can sit back and get lost in Sam Donaldson’s pores from the comfort of my own living room.”

Scott? Mike? Steve? Anybody?

Forget Abner Doubleday

This is how I always imagined it happened.

Stop your steroid accusations 'cause I don't believe in touchdowns

It's nice to see someone out there calling timeout on the sanctimonious steroids in baseball hoopla. Congress should have been ashamed of themselves for holding those hearings if for no other reason than they only sprung into action because of a "book" that was "written by" Jose Canseco. How pathetic is that? Major League Baseball had just implemented a new steroids policy with new penalties. I'm sure the slightly tougher policies that were swept in after the hearings will make all the difference in the world. Thanks, congress. Although if this should somehow lead to them calling some hearings about football and that in turn leads to the NFL actually doing something about the health and safety of their current and former players, well maybe it will all be worth it. It would also cut out a full third of all Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel stories in any given season.

I'm a senator. I'm a lady doctor. I'm a senator. I'm a lady doctor.

Senate ethics committee doesn't want Republican Senator Tom Coburn to "practice his love" with women in Oklahoma. Has someone told the President about this? I'm sure he would stick up for Senator Coburn.