Category: The McBournie Minute

As we all know, later this week, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s a time to go home, see your relatives, remember why you don’t see them that often and eat lots of turkey. You watch the parade and at the end, Santa Claus comes out, ushering in the Christmas season.

Got that, sales people?

Listen, toolbags, you’ve been cramming holiday cheer down our holiday throats since before Halloween. You keep extending the Christmas season every year. Before too long, we’ll be breaking out It’s a Wonderful Life around Labor Day. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

That goes for you, too, radio stations that play Christmas music 24/7 for over two months. Give it a rest, no one wants to hear LFO’s version of “Jingle Bells”–at least not since 1997.

Fa la la la la you.

In Hollywood, adopting African children is out and divorcing your loser husband is in. Reese Witherspoon, Whitney Houston and now Britney Spears have all filed for divorce from their husbands.

Really, who cares?

It doesn’t matter, does it? Nothing in the world changes with that news coming out. Yet the country is obsessed with it. America is obsessed with celebrities the way high schoolers are obsessed with the popular kids. Remember them? They could say anything and it was funny, they knew all the other cool people and chances were none of them gave a bowel movement about you. Yet the school was always abuzz with what the popular kids were doing or saying.

The same is true today. American society is an extension of high school. We read about the cool kids in the tabloids and see them talk about why they are cool on the news. They often misbehave, but their status gets them off the hook every time.

One must wonder, if celebrities are the popular kids, what does that make the rest of us? I’ll see you in the cafeteria, save me a seat.

They first started appearing in 2004. You would drive around and see a red, white and blue ribbon magnet with “Support Our Troops” or a yellow one with a similar message. It was the beginning of a new trend in automobile fashion.

The problem is, almost no one ever displays them in the proper manner. Most people tilt their ribbon magnets sideways to about 3 o’clock so that the text on the ribbon can more easily be read. Some people even tilt it completely over on its side like a Jesus fish.

People, the curvy part goes at 12 o’clock, the ends go at 6 o’clock. If you can’t display it properly, don’t display it at all. They look stupid on their sides.

What’s worse now is that every single cause out there has their own ribbon magnet. POW, cancer, puppies with diabetes, etc. Buying these things (in most cases) does nothing for the cause it advertises, since they are made by private companies that employ Chinese workers to make them.

You stick them to your car to make people think about how concerned you are about important issues, without actually being concerned. If the cause you advertise is so important to you it would be more about the cause and less about you.

Get your magnets here.

Note: The McBournie Minute is a new weekly feature appearing Mondays.

Yesterday I was spending my Sunday afternoon doing exactly what every guy enjoys doing: shopping at Macy’s with the girlfriend.

One of the cleverest things about Macy’s is they have TVs outside the changing rooms on ESPN. They know guys are going to be waiting out there and want to keep then entertained. The entertainment I had for the afternoon was a re-run of the 2006 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.

These guys eat hot dogs for 12 minutes. One guy was wearing Ultimate Warrior-esque face paint. It was sponsored by Alka-Seltzer. Awesome.

I watched as American Joey “Jaws” Chestnut took on eight-time champ Takeru Kobayashi, who is Japanese. The crowd roared as Chestnut and Kobayashi went back and forth, one pulling ahead, then the other. I secretly cheered for Chestnut.

I was amazed more than anything about the fans of this sport. Aside from the fact that it’s a sport at all. There are leagues for this kind of thing. The contest was followed by another contest involving hamburgers, followed, of course, by figure skating.

Check out the hot dog eating contest.