Honestly, Bumblebee trailer was quite awkward because it reminded me of a romance novel that I read a long time ago where its main characters had a scenes like those of Charlie and Bumblebee ughh.

Nowadays, every athlete is a manufactured product. That reminds me of asian soccer players, many teams hire popular asian players with the goal of getting great sponsorships from big brands. For example, once Son Heung-Min joined Bayern Leverkusen, the team reached an agreement with LG, but when he left, the brand stopped supporting the team.

 

Football players, boxers and pro wrestlers are the only athletes that take repeated head shots, and those blows don't diminish their intelligence, but subject them to CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy) brain trauma, which comes with a myriad of symptoms. Typically, when you hear a "dumb" athlete speak, it's got nothing to do with how many head shots they've taken, but how they were pampered and coddled through academics and life because they were physically gifted; the better you are at a sport, the less you have to attend class and you're pushed through school with grades that are undeserved and unearned. This is prevalent in the south. "Roll tide."

 

Yep, this used to seriously piss me off in high school. I played on the soccer team (I'd alternate between forward and striker) all four years of high school and we were constantly reminded that we needed to keep our grades up tp be able to play. We weren't a bad team as we'd won games at the district and regional levels, but soccer wasn't really popular if you follow me.

On the other hand one of my older brothers was on the extremely popular football team(also a district amd regional winning team) and him and other startes would regularly get "buys" for tests and grades. Because the football team was popular and brought in lots of money... they were constantly let off the hook when it came to academia and I'm also aware of at least two sexual assault cases that were swept under the rug as well. The level of special treatment devoted to some athletes is beyond disgraceful.

 

I don't like blues music. I fail to see whats so impressive about guitarists like Joe Bonamassa continuing the same old thing. Yes, I understand it was the basis for my favorite genres. Well thank goodness we made progress!

 

You just made it worse, now you're comparing professional adult athletes to children. Of course no one is going to brag about their child lifting that much weight because no child is ever going to be that strong. Children are inherently weaker than adults, we're born not even able to support our own body weight let alone anything else.

Even those little league players I guarantee no one is going to play as well as adult professionals.

I've never heard of a child who could jump up, dunk a ball, and hang off the rim even with the basketball hoop lowered to account for the shorter height of child athletes I've never seen a kid who could do that. I've never heard of a child who hit a base ball out of the park. Professional athletes do that almost every game. I've never heard of a child sinking a hole in one on a professional golf course. Mini-golf sure, those courses are much smaller, made specifically for kids hench mini, professional golf courses I don't even know how anyone can even tell where the hole is when it's freaking a mile away. There are people who lift weights for recreation but they do it at a gym with actual weights not on a run way with a plane.

Yeah that's true too. What's worse is this has been shown in a lot of movies like the Blind Side and Water Boy and I feel like I'm the only person who has a problem with athletes getting pushed threw school based solely on being good in sports... School is suppose to be about getting a gawd damn education not this dumb stuff. You'd never see a talented actor, painter, or musician being pushed threw school based solely on extra caricular activities. That only ever happens to athletes.

A lot the "arts" teachers generally won't let students pass without actually doing the work. But since most people seem to not care about the arts and over glorify sports so much people like me are kinda of out numbered.

Not sure if you ever watched Sliders but there was an episode where they traveled to an Earth where it's the other way around. Sports still existed but most people only cared about the arts and athletes actually had to work on their achedemics first or they didn't get to play. I'd love to live on that Earth. If I was them I would of said screw going home, I'm staying here.

 

I kind of understand your point, except a
professional sports season lasts for 16 games (minimum) for the NFL, 80+ for the NBA, and over 160 games for MLB, and those games are played at a breakneck pace. You can’t really compare the toll that type of long term play, and the associated preparation, to the relatively few completions of strongmen.

Also, interest in your thoughts on events like the NFL and NBA combine. Best athletes there bench press 225 lbs until exhaustion. If you put up 10 reps in 2 minutes, you’ve cumulatively lifted more than strongmen do. Some combine prospects do 30 or more reps.

 

Well, my opinion still stands.

If I want to see a bunch of guys put a ball through a net, which again: Not impressive to me- I'll hop over to the REC center across the street, and catch one of their games.
Maybe I'll even bring a 6-pack with me to relax, cuz I'll be pretty disappointed.

But if I want to see a semi or plane get pulled, or some freakish body sculpting, or 2 guys bloody each other up: I'll watch Strong Man, body building, and UFC. Much more entertaining.

And I gotta say this about steroids:
I don't give 2 shits if body builders or strong men use steroids, because athletes in other sports ALSO use them, so to single body builders and strong men out isn't fair- lots of athletes across the board do it.
There're high school and college athletes who also use'em, it's not just professionals- they've become such a wide-spread thing that I could probably walk into any gym and BOOM! I bet that guy knows where to get'em…

Plus, it's their bodies, their choice- it's not our business to tell'em what to do with it- and quite frankly I love the results- so if they wanna keep taking them, then I say fuck it: let them. It's top notch entertainment.

Also, trying to stop steroid use is like a cop saying he wants to catch every single criminal on the street: It's an unrealistic goal.

Of course- you can screen the participants, test them before every event, and try to consistently stop it- but that doesn't always work. People find ways around it.

You can try to shame them from doing it- expose them to the entire world, yank their medals and records away, cut off all their sponsorships, and ruin them like Lance Armstrong- but there's always gonna be somebody else coming up who's also using them- like pulling weeds.

I think we can all agree that steroids aren't going anywhere, and sure, everybody's entitled to their own opinion- but realistically it's like: Well people aren't gonna stop using'em just because YOU don't like it.
It's a personal decision, and there's always gonna be somebody doing it- it's not going away- and if it's not going away, then as a spectator I say fuck it: let'em use it. More entertainment for me.

 

Out of curiosity, do you lift weights as well? What do you do for exercise or physical recreation?

 

I’ve lifted weights in the past, and did MMA training- just for 1 year- wanted to see what the media fuss was all about- and boy...you wanna sweat buckets and lose weight fast: MMA training will do that easily.

Right now, due to arthritis issues, I’m just doing my treadmill in my basement after work- turn on some South Park and walk for 2 episodes. Sometimes my wife and I will walk around the neighborhood.

 

I thought you said you don't understand why people would lift weights because it hurts?   No way you could do that for a year and still not understand or say something like that. r/quityourbullshit.

You got to keep your story straight man.

 

You misunderstood dude- I did the MMA training for a year.

I lifted weights in military school- because they made me do it every day after classes.

 

I’ve seen The Departed about ten times and each time I find myself trying to do mental gymnastics to make Matt Damon’s character the good guy. It only works if I pretend they are actually in a bad translation of Infernal Affairs. And I think Mark Whalberg’s character was the other other other bad guy but haven’t been able to make that one work yet.

Ted is a very guilty pleasure.

And speaking of gymnastics, I worked with the stadium crew in college. Got free entrance to all sporting events, which was great in and of itself. Those people are some out of this world athletes.

 

The Curse of Oak Island is one of the most boring shows I’ve ever watched- but my wife is OBSESSED with it.

We’ve been binge watching it today, and I seriously don’t give a DAMN if they find anything....

“Where should we dig next?”- My f-ing eyes, with a dremel drill- that’s where you f-ing dig next. I can’t take this show!!

 

I don’t have your life experiences, or any one else’s, but I’ve never seen athletes get by just because they were good at sports. Maybe done the bare minimums, but it’s not a requirement to excel in the classroom to play sports, only to pass. Has it happened in the past? Yes, but more recently it has been stamped down because of this older perception. I have seen teachers and coaches fired for treating athletes preferentially, athletes ruled ineligible for entire seasons or arrested for crimes ranging from minor to major (some minor ones which would have not been a big deal for their non-athletic counterparts, but for them it destroyed their prospects), careers derailed (professional and athletic), reputations ruined, and schools’ accreditation pulled at the high school and college levels. Bottom line is they are student athletes and if they don’t make the grade, they won’t play, and schools have learned they get burned for doctoring grades. While grade altering may have happened years ago (The Waterboy being a terrible example because it a satire, and The Blind Side being a good example of what the NCAA actually does, but a terrible example for your argument because it did an excellent job of showing how Michael Oher was passed from school to school academically before he ever played a down of fooseball - which is an entirely different discussion on how teachers and schools fail our students), several high school athletes lost scholarships because of the actions of adults just a few years ago. It’s what the NCAA Clearinghouse is for and they are pretty rigid in their enforcement of academic standards. A quick sidebar on sports movies, perhaps ‘The Program’ would have been a better argument builder for you. Have you seen it?

The other thing I’ve seen at both levels is that the four big sports - football, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball - pay for a lot of everything else. Want to help out band? Have a good football team because football makes money. A good enough football team will get you on ESPN for premier high school games, and that makes a TON of money. Want to research at a college level? The best universities have good sports teams across the board (UF, UGA, USC, Auburn, THE Ohio State, UM, UT). Sports pay for lots and lots of stuff that are not sporty.

 

That's kinda of part of the problem. Arts programs get funding cuts because so few people seem to care about them while athletic programs never see budget cuts. This literally forces art programs to have to support themselves in order to keep running at all. One of my friends started Unicycling for the Arts which is literally a charity to keep arts in schools. Something you'll never see happen for Sports.

Arts programs were almost cut from schools entirely just a couple years ago, at least in the State of California. All the funding for those programs were being funneled into Athletics.

The government seems to have this weird issue if something is making lots of money to increase it's funding which it doesn't need because it already makes tones of money. If something is struggling then they cut funding more causing it to struggle more than it already was.

The same goes for schools in general. Schools with higher test scores get the most funding while schools with lower test scores get budget cuts. I don't why they give aid to programs and schools that are already succeeding and cut funding to everything that could actually use the support. My high school was actually one of the best in the state and you know what they do with all that extra money they don't even need... every year they throw out perfectly good computers and other equipment that is basically brand new, nothing wrong with it, and replace it with the latest model. Meanwhile schools who aren't doing so well are still using outdated text books and machines from 30 years ago.

Oddly enough even though I went to such a good high school I can't say the same for my elementary school. Even the food was bad, literally prisoners are fed better. We got I Macs when I was in 6th grade and that was literally the only year from K-8 that they ever got anything new.

My dad also worked at the High School so we were able to get new computers for free every time the school decided to throw them out. Sure they were a year old but that's better than the 7+ year old computers that the Elementary school had been working with. Those things were so old basically all they could do was Microsoft Word and Organ Trail. No internet access, no paint, just basic as hell.

Maybe other places are better at balancing the budget towards things that actually need it but from my experience, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. The only thing that could really fix this problem is if money was actually spent on things that actually need it instead of going oh well the Drama isn't doing well again this year well let's cut it.

When I was in School, Drama ran for three periods a day, two Beginning Drama Classes and one Advanced class. You had to pass threw Beginners first to get into the advanced class. At some point after I graduated, there was no beginning and advanced, it was all just one Drama class. There was only one period Drama was taught. I went back as a speaker representing the theater I worked for at the time expecting to be there a whole day speaking in front of three different classes. Nope, just the one in the morning and then I was done. The good news was I got to go home early but it still bothers me that things have gotten that bad that three classes were combined into one.

I don't think schools need to buy new sports equipment every year when they already have perfectly good equipment. If something breaks down and needs to be replaced, sure, but there is no reason for needless spending on something that doesn't need it. Meanwhile when we did Camelot, our costumes were plastic doller store armor and the set left half of back stage exposed so I had to run down a flight of stairs, threw the green room and up another flight of stairs just to get to the other side of the stage without being seen by the audience.

I'd rather see the Arts get new equipment, because they need it, than to see Sports continue to waist money on things they don't need. And I have not really seen sports pay for anything that wasn't sports related. If they did that, they'd be giving that money to other departments rather than replacing perfectly good stuff with the exact same stuff they already had. Oh look the grass on the football field is getting a little tall, should we mow it? Nope, we're going to put in all new grass. (That is not a joke, that actually
happened) Meanwhile in Theater, A spot light went out last night, we need to replace the bulb. You have two spot lights don't you? Well yes... Then use the other one. But we use both of them at the same time, you can't follow two actors with one spot. Figure it out. WTF all I wanted was a light bulb?

 

Flash animation is ugly, safe and sterilized. There's no individual style to it, no heart and no charm. Its like looking at rows of lawns in a home owners association ruled neighborhood, as opposed to a wild field or expert's garden.

 

Cilantro tastes like soap and is disgusting.

 

I didn't like Black Panther that much. I love T'Challa, Shuri, Okoye, and the rest, but the actual movie was pretty boring to me.

 

You know, I actually really loved the movie, but I can totally see where you're coming from, too.

I just saw It, which was raved about, and it indeed was interesting. I even started the thread for that movie. However, I don't care much for horror, because few, if any, horror movies are things I find thrilling. I find It and other horror films more weird than anything. They're oddities more than scares for me.

 

Some of my favorite horror movies are the slasher movies of the 70s & 80s like Friday the 13th & Nightmare on Elm Street. Occasionally a kill comes that has me squeamish but never once do these movies scare me. Yet I still love them and go back to them time and time again despite how cheesy, over the top, and bad they get as they go along and Jason is one of my all time favorite fictional villains. What I come for in each of these movies are the kills, seeing what kind of over top gore fest they are going to bring to the table and never once I'm disappointed always entertained. I love It though and it all comes down to Pennywise, Bill or Tim they always bring something to the table whether funny or frightening. I actually want to see more slasher movies in the modern day they seem to have faded but I do have Halloween 2018 to look forward to I guess.

Though I have to admit am I one of the few that actually find the Paranormal Activity movies frightening? I know they are normally looked down upon but I absolutely love them because they still frighten me, well at least the first four did. I'm usually not a big fan of supernatural horror but these and the Conjuring series are some of the few I like.