Top Five Things Lamer than the Indians' Offense

The Cleveland Indians were shut down for the second consecutive night.  They are 6-1 in games in which they have scored a THIRD RUN.  They are 6-8 overall, meaning that there have been SEVEN games in which they have scored TWO OR FEWER RUNS.  That's fully HALF OF THEIR GAMES.  That is really, really, really, really bad.

I wanted to describe the Indians' offense as The Lamest Thing in the World, but alas, I was able to find at least 5 things lamer.  However, these things aren't a LOT lamer, and in some cases we're splitting hairs.


5) Dr. Gregory House

Greg House is a miserable SOB, and seeks to make you feel the same way.  Although he is very smart and very competetive, the fact is that a blood clot in his right thigh resulted in muscle death, causing him constant pain and making him walk with a pronounced limp.  If this isn't a perfect description of the Cleveland Indians, their front office, and their fan base, I don't know what is.

4) Strawberry Shortcake

I am 45 years old and my oldest son was born in 1993, so I have seen my share of children's programming.  "Thomas the Tank Engine" was simply horrifying.  Based on a series of pontificating Victorian-era stories by a REVEREND, they laud the virtues of blind obedience and hard, thankless work.  The man in charge is Sir Topham Hat, fer crine out loud: the man looks like Mark Hanna or J.P. Morgan.  Also, Percy was a schmuck.  "Pokemon" was better: although it wasn't really like the game and often made no sense whatsoever, James from Team Rocket paved the way for the mainstream acceptance of open homosexuality on television.  "Digimon" was simply flat-out weird, with a surreality and snarky translation that resulted in one of the least sensible films ever created.  The soundtrack was good, though.  Richard Scarry videos were educational and sloooooooooooooooow.  They did feature Lacey Chabert, later on "Party of Five," as the voice of an animal of some sort.  I want to say a hippopotamus.

Anyway, my daughter is 7 and has a wide variety of nonsense to choose from, from the good ("Backyardigans," which features excellent choreography, although I am not clear as to how Tyrone, a moose, puts on a pullover sweater) to the inane ("Imagination Movers," in which a character as dumb as Scott would have died from lead poisoning or ingesting rat poison by now).  "Strawberry Shortcake" is a franchise reboot that features everyone being named after something sugary and using the word "berry" instead of "very."  I don't necessarily object to the lesson-teaching: every episode essentially boils down to "Don't be a jerk," but addresses a specific facet of jerkdom like "being selfish" or "cheating on your taxes."

But the show is lame.  Lame, lame, lame.  It just feels so damned FORCED.  The puns.  The names.  The artificial conflict.  Everything that happens in Saccharine Landing or wherever they are just grates on me.  Admittedly, I am not their target audience.  But shouldn't you make a show that will allow an adult to remain in the same room?  It's lame.

(For more on children's programming, consider reading an older post, ostensibly about a 6-3 loss to Colorado.)

3) The first half of the 2008 Redskins-Browns game

This had something for no one.  If you were a Browns fan, you were appalled.  If you were a Redskins fan, you were ashamed.  If you were a football fan, you turned this off as fast as you possibly could.  There were no points.  There was no point.  It was astonishingly bad.

The Indians are incapable of astonishing me at this point, so this was lamer.  I wrote about it anyway.

2) The Conan-Jay Late Night Flap

Does anyone watch ANY of these shows?  Really?  I mean, is this 1986?  I literally don't know a person who watches "The Tonight Show" or "Late Night" or "George Lopez Is Not Funny as a Talk Show Host" or any of those things.  My friends tend to watch sports, or "The Daily Show," or their DVR.  This is as alien to the generation after mine as a Mike Douglas - Merv Griffin throwdown would have been to me.  Who the heck cares?

Also, Conan O'Brien has a strangely-shaped head.  I think he is somehow related to Placido Polanco.

1) Stephen Hawking