Not So Favorite Things of 2013

By Ryan O'Connell on 12/20/2013 • ( 2 )

Positives & negatives. Pros & cons. Plusses and minuses.

Giddy Up America is nothing if not fair, if not put here to promote equal opportunity. With that being said, we’ve already gone through Giddy Up America’s favorite things that happened in 2013. It is now time for Giddy Up America’s list of not so favorite things that went down this past year.

10. Fantasy Football became increasingly less enjoyable

I’m not going to whine about injuries and how they hurt my teams…yes, teams…I’m one of those hopeless romantics/addicts who have multiple fantasy football teams. I don’t endorse it. I don’t condone it. I just do it. I had three teams this year. Only one finished with a winning record. As if they were my kids, I had a favorite team- a team I looked out for more, tried to provide for more, tried to nurture more. That team was not the team that finished with a winning record. I didn’t finish last, but I did finish close to last. But this brings it back to injuries and “I’m not going to whine about injuries” – I’m not. Instead I’m going to say completely devoid of emotion that injuries torpedoed my season. Running backs, quarterbacks recently traded for, tight ends. It seemed as if no position on the Jersey Shore Crabs was safe from the injury bug. And then there was under performing cornerstones- stupid Ray Rice. Every fantasy football team has cornerstones. To be successful, you need steady and strong production from those cornerstones. If you do, say if you had Peyton Manning, then you were made in the shade. If you didn’t, if you had Aaron Rogers, Rob Gronkowski, Future President of America Tom Brady or Rice, then you were in for an uphill battle. Fantasy black holes sucking up all the enjoyment and entry fees. I’ll be back next year fantasy football, but after that? Hard to say. Really hard to say.

**9. The Bridge goes from Most Promising New TV Show of the Year to Most Disappointing**

The Bridge debuted this summer- right after Mad Men and Game of Thrones ended and before fall shows started showing up. It was oddly enough, a bridge in television programming and dude, it started out strong. I became a devoted and fierce advocate of the show. The show’s creators talked about being influenced by The Wire and how The Bridge wasn’t going to be another cop show, but an exploration into the complicated worlds of Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. And for the first few episodes, that’s exactly what the show was. But then things started to shift and the train began inching closer to the rails before eventually falling completely off the rails. The Big Bad Guy of the show became Just Another Bad Guy- a depressed dude out for revenge. Everything that was interesting about the show got abruptly pushed aside. It became all about the serial killer and practically nothing about said complicated worlds. It became…wait for it…just another cop show. It Homelanded in one season instead of two. The season finale has been occupying space on our DVR since it aired and we still haven’t watched it. Probably won’t. We’ll most likely watch The New Girl instead. That show is hilarious.

8. iPhone updates take longer than iPhone batteries last

A few years ago I started to hate getting mail because the majority of it was bills. The sight of white envelopes was an automatic bummer. Fast forward to present day and the same could be said for iPhone updates. The notification that there is a new update for iPhone is the worst supposedly best news there is. Why the eff does it take so long to update the phone! And why do I have to remove everything from phone just so it can update? I spend hours and hours waiting for the update to happen just because one or two features are different. Dude, there is a direct correlation between the number of times I update my phone to the number of times I miss my old Nokia flip phone. At least with the flip phone, I could toss it against the wall in frustration with less concern.

7. Remixes of “Royals” take over the country

I lost count of how many remixes of “Royals” were out there after I heard four in one morning. And come on, a slightly different drum beat shouldn’t constitute a remix. Bush league. That song was going to get over played anyway. Remixes just sped up the process. I don’t know about you, but I got sick of that song mighty quick. It was like “Ho Hey” on steroids. Almost felt bad for Lorde, especially when the backlash started about her views about hip hop culture and her inability to relate to them. The shame of it is that her album, Pure Heroine, is pretty good. Lost in the shuffle I guess.

6. Alex Rodriguez just won’t go away…ever

This summer, baseball was rocked by yet another steroids scandal. This time it came from Florida and a clinic called Biogenesis. Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz and Johnny Peralta were among the players suspended for their involvement with the clinic, which supplied Performing-Enhancing Drugs to players. No one failed a test or anything. They just showed up in the clinic’s founder’s notebook. Every player suspended accepted their punishment and served their time. Well, except for one…Alex Rodriguez. ARod’s suspension was different from the others. He was hit with a 211 game suspension because his involvement was so much greater and shadier than everyone else’s. He then appealed. He then pleaded and proclaimed his innocence. He then cried out that it was witch hunt. He then pointed a finger at MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. He then paid people to support him outside his appeal hearings. He then stormed out of said appeal hearings when they weren’t going his way. He then…just wouldn’t effin’ go away. I’m sick of the actual sport of baseball being overshadowed by baloney like this. No one talks about the game anymore, just the controversies. ARod talked frequently about his love for the game of baseball. Well if he really loved it, he’d go away. He’d stop tarnishing the game with his clown shit antics. But he won’t. He’ll keep fighting. If he loses his appeal, he’ll most likely sue, citing an unfair appeal process- a process that has been 100% on players’ side since it’s creation in the 1970’s. He won’t go away. Ever. He is Major League Baseball’s plague, it’s drunken outrage, it’s spewing of homophobic slurs, it’s Chappaquiddick. Go Red Sox.

5. Kanye keeps doing Kanye things

I’d elaborate on this, but Giddy Up America is a Kanye Free Zone. So I won’t. Watch this video of Rustic Overtones‘ playing “Sledgehammer” instead.

4. Patriots’ Tight Ends and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year

Two years ago, the Patriots seemed to have changed the face of football with their inclusion of not one, but two, dynamic tight ends. Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski exploded onto the stage in 2011 and nearly brought the Patriots’ home another Super Bowl trophy. With these two dudes at full strength, the Patriots looked unstoppable. But it wouldn’t last, though. Wouldn’t even last for another year. Both tight ends got injured; Gronk was eventually knocked out for the season. Then this past summer, Hernandez was just you know, charged with killing a guy. The Pats entered the 2013 season without either one of their tight ends with Hernandez keeping up with pen pals in jail and Gronk recovering from not one, but five off season surgeries. Gronk eventually came back and lasted all of seven week before tearing his ACL & MCL and was again, knocked out for the season. But hey, on the plus side, there’s still the Hoo Man.

**3. Rolling Stone puts one of the Boston Marathon bombers on the front cover**

Once Jahar Tsarnev was caught inside a boat in Boston this past April, it became time for the why. Why would he and his brother place and detonate two bombs by the finish line of the Boston Marathon? As a country, we needed to know this answer- for inner peace, to understand why people do the things they do, to try and prevent something like this from happening again. At the end of July, Rolling Stone came out with a well-researched, well-reported and very well-written story about Tsarnev. It was captivating and incredibly insightful. Rolling Stone editor Janet Reitman did a hell of a good job and her story deserved to be read by everyone. Unfortunately her story wasn’t just another Rolling Stone story in that particular issue. It was the cover story. In a space usually reserved for Miley Cyrus, Ron Burgandy, One Direction and more was Tsarnev, looking like as much of a pop culture icon as the others do on the magazine’s cover. Of all the images to use, that’s the one they decided to go with. People were pissed. I can’t blame them. It was borderline hero worship of a monster. There’s no way that picture should have been on the cover. No way at all. But what I felt was lost in all of the resulting hullabaloo was this: it was a great piece of journalism. My only hope is that once the furor died down, people took the time to read Reitman’s piece. If not, if they only complained and wrote angry letters, than that’s a damn shame. They missed out.

2. The United States’ suffers from leakage

Edward Snowden can’t seem to grow complete facial hair. He can however steal an assload of files and documents from his former employer, the National Security Agency, peace out to Russia and leak his stolen booty as he sees fit. I’m not totally cool with unchecked spying, but I’m also not cool with running from punishment, with not facing the music. Snowden did what he felt he needed to when he stole all those documents- apparently over a million, but then he ran. He ran to China and Russia and is now trying to run to Brazil. He lived in a Russian airport for almost a month. I think he’s a coward. I think he’s a hero, but on his own terms and I don’t think that’s cool. I also don’t think it’s cool to compromise national security, which I feel he’s kind of done so far, to prove a point. Come back to America, sir. Face the consequences of your actions. Then I think your point will be made more effectively. Until then, you’re just a pawn. That’s it. Be a man, Ed. Do it.

1. American politics becomes tragically absurd

The Fiscal Cliff. The Sequester. Government Shutdown.

Its sounds like the worst creative drink list ever.

2013 was not a banner year for American politics. It seemed as if every other week it was something else, something catastrophic that couldn’t be avoided, would cripple society, would do this, do that and ultimately do nothing. Calling it all a dumpster fire is an insult to dumpsters, fires and dumpster fires. Republicans worked their asses off to stop anything Obama tried to do, Democrats whined, and the Tea Party laughed in the dark corners like sinister witch doctors. Such clusterfuckery produced some profoundly terrible political celebrities- most specifically Ted Cruz, a freshman Senator from Texas. That whole Government Shutdown thing? Yeah, that was him. Why? Oh because he didn’t like Obamacare, and even though it had been made a law and deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court, Cruz was dead set on over-turning it. He even took to the Senate floor in September for a lengthy, but ultimately pointless (fake) filibuster in an attempt to stop Obamacare, which I should remind you, couldn’t be stopped because despite how many times Republicans called it a bill, was a law. Here, here’s some Ted Cruz quotes for you chew on for a second…

“The moon might be as intimidating as Obamacare.”
“Hardworking American families are struggling and their life has become harder and harder and harder. And madam president Obamacare is the biggest job killer in this country. The American people want to stop this madness and so do I.”
“When Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like green eggs and ham and they did not like Obamacare either. They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house or with a mouse. It is not working.”
“Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis. Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.’”
“Our current president won the Nobel Peace Prize. I think for waking up in the morning and brushing his teeth.”

And finally…

“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I Am.”

Thanks, Ted.

Here’s to 2013.