Category: Wednesday Whine
WEDNESDAY WHINE: That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy on American Idol
Here’s a whine about a person who annoys me to the core of my existence. He is a person who represents everything I hate about the state of music today. He is…
That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy on American Idol
Yes, I know his name is Adam Lambert, but that is the first and last time I will write it in this post, as I don’t want to give him too much publicity. So I’d rather call him That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy. I think it’s a fitting title for someone who has the potential of single-handedly making my head explode from his “singing” alone.
Normally I like to accompany my posts with a photo. It helps to be able to visualize what I’m writing about. Not this time. I’d rather move to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere and never use the Internet again before I see a picture of this wannabe on my own Web site.
When I first heard That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy sing on this season of American Idol, I thought there was no way he would make it beyond the initial stages of the competition. Now, I’m afraid that he has the potential of not only making it to the final rounds but possibly even winning, which would put his banshee-like vocal stylings on every radio in the United States. And even though I don’t listen to the radio anymore, I’d still be forced to encounter his sonic torture when wandering through, say, a mall department store.
This is the problem with American Idol. Even if you don’t like or watch the show, it still makes an impact in your life. You will hear the winners’ songs. Over and over and over. No matter how much you try to avoid them. So the outcome of the show has an effect on each and every one of you reading this. Consider yourself warned.
Worse than That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy’s I’m-going-to-take-every-note-in-this-recognizable-song-and-unnecessarily-make-it-two-octaves-higher-almost-but-not-quite-reaching-the-frequency-of-a-dog-whistle-so-humans-can-still-hear-it style of singing is his obviously-fake appearance. The somewhat recent teenage popularity of a hairstyle that was once known as a comb-over for balding men has not escaped Mr. Poser Guy, though he has taken it to new levels of suck by dying his hair with what I can only assume is tar. He is also clearly getting his makeup done by a mortician, attempting to hide his corpse-like skin. I imagine that before he had his pre-Idol makeover, he looked like your average fast food burger-flipper and decided that image wouldn’t cut it, so he grabbed the nearest copy of OMG! Teen Beat magazine (which may or may not really exist) and created an image for himself based on some bizarre blend of the Jonas Brothers, Fallout Boy, and the chain-smoking woman in her 60s who sold him the magazine in the first place.
But in the end, I really don’t care what he looks like. It’s the combination of the shrill of his voice and the fact that people actually somehow like it that drives me nuts.
So please, for my sanity, don’t vote for That High-Pitched Obnoxious Poser Guy on American Idol and keep his “music” as far away from my ears as possible.
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Cell Phone Dilemma
You may or may not be able to relate to this week’s whine, as it’s fairly specific to a situation I have been in for several years. I have a …
Cell Phone Dilemma
Okay, dilemma maybe too strong of a word but it’s at least a cell phone conundrum that I don’t know what to do about. Maybe someone reading this can help.
I have used T-Mobile as my cell provider for several years now. My wife and I currently share a family plan of some sort that ultimately costs just over $100 a month. It includes more minutes than we know what to do with as well as free nights and weekends.
T-Mobile’s service was great until we moved to Winter Garden where I’m lucky if I get one bar of signal. When we first moved here, we were locked into a 2-year contract, which has since expired. However, I have no idea what to switch to as it appears that every other carrier also has terrible service in this area. Moreover, I can’t reduce the number of minutes per month that I am paying for with T-Mobile without signing a new contract. But if I switch to another random carrier, I’ll have to sign a contract there too and I’ll likely end up being unhappy with them as well.
AT&T is supposedly installing a bunch of new towers throughout Central Florida, but I can’t seem to find any information as to where specifically. If I knew they were putting one near my house, I’d switch immediately.
Of course, then there’s the other issue of what phone to get. As much as everyone tells me to get an iPhone, I really don’t think I’d use it all that much. I am rarely in a situation where I’d need to use the Internet on the road and I generally just use my phone to make calls. So I think I’d prefer to just get a regular phone that I can get for free with a new contract.
However, with $99 refurbished iPhones available (and the new 3.0 iPhone software coming soon), it’s hard not to want to get one, even if I know I’ll barely use it. But if AT&T is terrible in this area (no 3G service here either), what’s the point?
So what’s my solution? Continue to sit around paying $100+ a month for terrible service hoping something better comes along? Switch to another provider hoping they’re better, but getting locked into their contract either way?
I have no idea.
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Online Menus Without Prices
I get a lot of takeout food. With a whole bunch of brand new restaurants right down the street from my house, it’s tough for me to hold off from just grabbing a quick and tasty meal instead of bothering with cooking. When it gets close to dinner time, I find myself browsing through nearby restaurants’ web sites, trying to decide what to eat. More often than not, I become incredibly frustrated at the restaurants featuring…
Online Menus Without Prices
Why are restaurant food prices such a secret? Do they want to surprise you when you get there, hoping you’ll pay whatever they charge? “Oh you ordered the ribeye steak. That will be $529! Ha ha!” Or is it that they think their prices are so high that if you saw them online you’d decide not to order at all?
Here’s a round-up of many of the sit-down restaurants that exist near my house and whether or not their online menus show prices:
- Longhorn Steakhouse – Prices: NO
- Chili’s – Prices: YES
- Mimi’s Cafe – Prices: NO
- Urban Flats - Prices: YES
- Cracker Barrel - Prices: NO
- Romano’s Macaroni Grill - Prices: YES
- Panera Bread - Prices: NO
- First Watch - Prices: NO
- Bonefish Grill - Prices: YES (Only on the downloadable PDF version)
- Carrabba’s - Prices: YES
- Outback Steakhouse - Prices: YES
- Beef O’Brady’s – Prices: NO
That’s half of the online menus with no prices and half with prices. When there are that many choices, it’s easy for me to want to go with one of the restaurants that actually shows their prices online, as that way I can make my dining decision based on what I want and how much it will cost. If I have no idea how much my dinner is going to cost, I’m very reluctant to get it.
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Please listen carefully as our options have recently changed.
As if calling a company and trying to navigate through their impossible-to-navigate phone tree isn’t bad enough, it drives me nuts when the first thing I hear coming from the other end of the line is…
Please listen carefully as our options have recently changed.
No they haven’t. They’re exactly the same as the last 50 times I called to complain about your terrible service/product/whatever. You’re just telling me that your options have changed to make sure I listen to every recorded word in your system.
Maybe you want me to hear an advertisement for some new product of yours that I don’t want. Maybe you want me to get so annoyed with being forced to listen to your phone tree that I just hang up and don’t bother any of your representatives. Or maybe you just want to pretend like your options have changed so I don’t just start mashing buttons in hopes of reaching a real person instead of dealing with your stupid recording.
It doesn’t really matter what your reason for putting this “our options have recently changed” message is because it’s ALWAYS there. It’s about as helpful as having a Walmart greeter tell you as you enter the store, “Please browse carefully as our inventory has recently changed.”
By having this message always play, it essentially means nothing. You might as well just have it say, “Our options changed at some point over the last decade but we’re not going to tell you when. Most likely you’ve already heard our most recent options but go ahead and waste your time by listening to them again. It doesn’t really matter because once you find the option you’re looking for, we’re just going to ‘accidentally’ hang up on you anyway.“
TweetWEDNESDAY WHINE: Inconsistent HD Switching on TV
After being sick a week, I’m playing a bit of catch-up here, so I’m going to post this and five more posts in rapid succession today. I was reminded of this/last week’s whine last night while watching Wheel of Fortune. Regularly, on this and many other primetime television shows, I find myself annoyed by networks’ ability to have…
Inconsistent HD Switching
If a TV show is available in high definition, I watch it in HD. In fact, I try to avoid standard definition whenever possible. At least once a week, however, the choice between SD and HD is out of my control as a show that is supposed to be aired in HD is inexplicably broadcast in SD. Sometimes there will be a message scrolling across the bottom of the screen letting viewers know that there is some technical difficulty that is preventing the network from displaying the HD feed, and I can live with it in these situations. However, more often than not, it’s obvious that someone at the local network office has simply forgotten to flip the magic HD switch.
Last night’s episode of Wheel of Fortune was the one that I attended a SeaWorld Orlando taping of back in December. There, I had a chance to interview Pat Sajak and Vanna White and walk amongst the camera crew for the duration of the taping. I had a wonderful time at the taping and really looked forward to seeing the final product on TV. Unfortunately, WFTV, the local ABC affiliate, forgot to flip the HD switch last night, even after Jeopardy was shown in HD. It left viewers like me stuck with watching the SD feed instead. It even said that the show was in HD at the beginning of the show, despite the truth. Very frustrating.
Even more annoying are times when part of a show is broadcast in HD, it goes to commercial, and then returns in SD, only to flip-flop between SD and HD throughout.
Some day, all programming (including commercials) will be in HD and this won’t be a problem anymore. But until then, if anyone out there works for a television station, can you please stop forgetting to flip the HD switch?
Tweet
