Pomp (Culture) And Circumstance

November 11, 2008 | Comments (0) | by Rich Funk



Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to Pomp Culture, a Thunder Matt's Saloon joint. For those of you who migrated over from the now closed TMS, we thank you for your continued support and donations. For those of you finding us for the first time, hopefully we'll give you enough reason to keep coming back. You can stop by any time to get your fill of celebrity sports picks, movie reviews, and maybe even a douchebag joke or two sprinkled in!

If you punch "blog" into Google, it shoots back at you with 3.4 billion results. So what makes this one any different than all the others? That's a great question! And what's the answer you say? Ummm...what's that behind you?

So yes, we've officially shed our label of being a "Cubs blog" and are now basically an "everything blog". Since about half of us are North Side fans, I'm sure Cubs news will seep into our posts, but the fact that we now have fans of the Oakland A's, LA Dodgers, Tampa Bay Rays, Arizona Cardinals and Utah Jazz among other teams on board, shedding an allegiance to only one team seemed like a good idea. But as we know, not all ideas that seem good on paper actually work out. Don't believe me? You should, you son of a bitch. Here are a few examples just off the top of my head:

The 2008 Detroit Tigers as a World Series Pick

The Hype: The Tigers were on the upswing anyway, with some solid pitching and a monster offense. Now drop in perennial MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle "Watch Me Pull A Bret Saberhagen And Only Be Good Every Other Year" Willis, and you've got a trendy pick for the World Series.

What Went Wrong: Everything! The Tigers came out of the gate pressing and promptly lost their first 7 games and 10 of their first 12. After showing some signs of life late in the season, the wheels fell completely off and the Tigers finished last in 2008. The Kansas City Royals have filed a lawsuit against the Tigers for trespassing on their property at the bottom of the division. Natch.

Crystal Pepsi/Zima:

The Hype: Regular Pepsi and beer had come as far as they were ever going to in the early 90's. Naturally, the next progression was to make them both colorless. The idea behind Crystal Pepsi was that it tasted just like regular Pepsi, but it was clear! Holy shit! So why not drink a regular Pepsi then? Um, regular Pepsi isn't clear, dumbshit. Besides, what's the best regular Pepsi could pull out for their commercials, some child molester with one glove? Crystal Pepsi's gonna drop a little VAN HAGAR ON YOUR ASS!

As for our good friend Zima, yuppie males asked themselves this question every weekend: How can I enjoy the girliness of a nice, tall Bartles and Jaymes without looking like the wine cooler-drinking pansy that I know I am? Why not make it clear? I still get me fruity drink, but with the lack of color, no one will ever know what I'm drinking! My alcoholic beverage will just blend into the background! What's that you say? I can drink it straight out of the bottle or out of a wine glass? Sign me up!

Zima was basically the "white people" of alcoholic beverages. Don't believe me? Check out this commercial! EVERYTHING is white!

What Went Wrong: Crystal Pepsi tasted like the ass end of a dolphin. Somehow Zima was even more girly than drinking wine coolers. Although Zima was discontinued officially earlier in the year, its bastard cousin, Smirnoff Ice, still lurks on college campuses across the country waiting to get countless sorority girls blackout drunk.

Back To You

The Hype: Another recent example, Back To You was a sitcom that was on last year. Fox basically took the star of two of the greatest sitcoms of all time (Kelsey Grammer) and paired him up with a star of one of the other most popular sitcoms of recent memory (Everybody Loves Raymond's Patricia Heaton) in one of the most generic settings you could think of (a newsroom). Throw in Executive Producer Christopher Lloyd (Great Scott!) and the immortal Fred Willard, and you've got a recipe for success, right?

What Went Wrong: Nope. With all these high-profile showbiz types involved, apparently there wasn't enough money left over to hire decent writers. Some may say that the writer's strike partially killed this show, but when you can't win your own time slot against America's Next Top Model, Deal Or No Deal and the criminally unwatched Wife Swap, you aren't going to stay around long.

Virtual Boy

The Hype: With the smash hit that was Nintendo's Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was the next step in the evolution. While most game systems had to fake a 3D environment on a 2D screen, the Virtual Boy looked like a giant Viewmaster that could make the graphics 3D by adjusting what you were seeing to each individual eye.

What Went Wrong: Nowadays, $180 isn't a whole lot for a state of the art video game console. But in 1995, it was a hell of a lot of money to drop on a relatively unknown video game system. Take the Game Boy, then strip out all the fun games, the ease of use and the portability, and you're basically left with a fancy Atari that attaches to your skull, only not as much fun. The Virtual Boy is still considered Nintendo's only failure in the home video game field.

Electing George W. Bush As President

The Hype: His dad was President. He seemed like a cool guy, especially compared to the boooooring Al Gore. What's the worst that could happen?

What Went Wrong: Too many things to list here, but I suspect that the majority of Bush's time in the Oval Office went something like this:

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