The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant needs to clear out the Rant vaults so we can start fresh with the new year. In fact, if we had our druthers, we would fire up the time machine and head straight to 2017 so we could skip all the presidential nonsense. We assume upon waking we would discover either: 1) People bowing down to our robot overlords; 2) People bowing down to Donald Trump’s hair, which turned out to be an alien controlling his body for the last three decades. Just biding its time, waiting patiently for America to reach the edge of the cliff and take over. Neither scenario would surprise us; both seem oddly superior to the real-life alternatives.
The Rant would also like to offer a compromise to those rushing about and insisting we use the term “radical Islamist terrorist” anytime someone a shade darker than Casper the Friendly Ghost and sporting a beard commits an act of violence or looks at them sideways. We will be happy to do so if you use the term “radical Christian terrorist” each time a white guy with a gun shoots up a public place. For the babies. Or the straight people. Or the beleaguered faithful. The term will be retroactive to the Klan, the United State military in the Philippines circa 1900, slaveholders, people distributing smallpox-laden blankets to Indigenous peoples, and civil rights opponents with fire hoses. Are we agreed? We didn’t think so. Now pipe down.
In Star Wars related mania, The Rant acknowledges the mad skills of Carrie Fisher who has had quite enough of people debating whether she has “aged well.” Fisher tweeted that her body is merely her “brain bag” and that “youth and beauty are not accomplishments.” Fisher was told to lose weight for the new movie and revealed she was pressured to get down to 95 pounds for the original series. Keep pounding the dark side Leia.
The Rant says all hail the Arizona Cardinals, currently the best team in football. Not only do they feature the league’s most interesting player off the field, Larry Fitzgerald, their coaching staff boasts a host of wily old guys regularly out-scheming all the other punks in the league. Head coach Bruce Arians (63) was long known as a quarterback guru, getting the best out of Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger. He could never get a head coaching position, but took over for Chuck Pagano at the Colts while Pagano battled leukemia. Arians did a magnificent job, but most thought him too old to take over a team full-time. The Cardinals took a chance and have never looked back.
As if to say, I’ll show you old, Arians has a staff featuring Offensive Coordinator Tom Moore (77) and Pass Rush Specialist Tom Pratt (79). Arians has reached the age where he could care less what anyone thinks of him and says whatever he wants. On the sudden accolades for his coaching ability: “It’s a short elevator ride back to the shithouse.” Coach on Bruce.
For years now, younger and younger people have been telling us they will save the world, shift the paradigm, magically solve the planet’s most vexing issues, generally through technology. As far as The Rant can tell, what we have mostly received in the wake of all this chest-thumping are faster downloads for cat memes and a dizzying array of platforms to post pictures of last night’s dessert. Thanks.
The Law of Amplification states that technology simply accelerates the outcomes of the people that employ it. If you are doofus, you will be able to disseminate your doofiness at ever increasing speeds and with greater efficiency. All the kiddies might do well to find some mentors with a few miles on the odometer to help them deploy all their shiny lines of code. The Rant will take plodding analog wisdom over supersonic digital idiocy every time.
