44) Quentin Tarantino

You know that really, really annoying guy you accidentally became friends with that one night years ago because he seemed pretty cool at first, but you didn't notice his insufferable nervous twitch which has grated on you in the years since and to this day you haven't found a way to get rid of him?

The guy who won't stop talking with a disturbing, rabid, psychotic reverence about thousands of movies you've never heard of, much less seen? The guy who literally has seen every single movie ever made and wants to make damn sure you know it?

Okay, now imagine that same guy asking you to give him $12 so that he can prove it...

Daily Hated Day-Break: Hate Mail!

Every week, the workers in TDH's mailroom are bombarded with thousands of letters from our readers, all expressing their insane jealousy of the monumental, outrageous success of our site through the veil of bitterness, anger, and resentment toward the fact that Lilit and John are invariably right about everything they say.

We understand and appreciate your need to express your pathetically misguided opinions, and we don't want you to think your letters are unwanted or ignored*. So to let you know your voices are being heard, we decided to print one of them.

You're welcome

Ctrl+Alt+Del: A response to “Mac Week”


Let’s say you’re working on your brand new PC and try to open a .PDF document while listening to music, creating a PowerPoint, checking your email, online gaming a game and downloading some made-for-SciFi-Channel movie. Or, say you have an older PC, like one you bought back in November or something, and try to open Internet Explorer. All of a sudden the toolbar stops responding, your desktop items disappear, your mouse is jumping erratically all over the place and, like, a homeless guy dies in your living room.

Maybe he got stabbed.

Fortunately we have Ctrl+Alt+Del to make it all better. Del for “Delete” which deletes or “dels” things. Ctrl or “kertle” which is Greek for “allowing a user to select multiple files simultaneously.” And “Alt” which exists solely to be teamed with the “kertle” and “del” buttons. After you press those three keys you’ll know it’s working because it will (likely) open an additional window called “Task Manager” several minutes later! Maybe some day people will just accept that computer programs freeze and an OS will exist that’ll be able to just Force an application to Quit.



-George Freitag
[George Freitag is the author of incredibly celebrated blog in select European countries that is only viewable using a browser that, if you were cool enough, you would already know about.]



George,

We're pretty sure that your letter means that you agree with us and think we're great. There was a lot of technical-sounding stuff in there, but we take it that's pretty much the crux of what you were trying to get at. So thanks, but it doesn't really need to be said, does it? We know.

We know.

Love and hate,



-Lilit and John
[Lilit and John freakin' OWN.]



*They are. We just don't want you to think that, because we know how freakin' annoying you can get when you feel ignored.

43) Baldwins not named "Alec" (or "Adam")

We actually don't care how many crazy voicemail rants Alec leaves for his daughter. Why? Two words. Well...one word and a number:
"30 Rock"

And let's not forget the legacy of badassity and hilariousness that Alec has left in his wake (for the kids in the audience, see also "Glengarry Glen Ross", "Beetle Juice", and "The Cooler"). He has earned all-out TDH immunity.




His crack-addicted, flat-out annoying, and insufferable born-again Christian brothers (we'll let you figure out which one is which), however, need to do the world a solid and leave us alone. Remember when Superman split off in to all those weird pseudo-Supermen, and then Superman came back and all the other ones disappeared, never to be heard from again? Umm...well, Alec Baldwin is on TV every week now. Soooo....um......hint hint...

Also, we'd like to propose (should our suggestion make Alec feel all lonely and Baldwin-less) that he adopt the as-yet untennured Adam Baldwin to shore up the Baldwin base. Trust us. Everyone wins. But just in case, here's proof:

42) People who arbitrarily hate "Lost"

"Yeah...I dunno, dude. I feel like I really liked the concept at first. Like the pilot was great, and the first few episodes, I guess. But then it just sort of devolved into a soap opera. I dunno, I guess the writers just really lost it. No pun intended, or whatever. I don't think they really knew what they were doing. It's too bad. I mean, it could have been great. But I don't know. It's way overrated, dude. It's just not as good as everyone seems to think. But, dude, have you seen 'The Wire', though?"

If by all that you mean that "Lost" is fucking awesome always, then yes. We agree.


We are talking, of course, about this guy

41) Latter-day Weezer (i.e. Everything After the Green Album, and Even Then We're Reaching)

Remember how great "Buddy Holly" was? And "Undone-The Sweater Song"? And then remember how when "Pinkerton" came out and you sang along to every fucking word of the entire record and especially "Pink Triangle" when your boyfriend dumped you for a dude and thanked you for helping him realize something fundamental about himself?

Is Rivers Cuomo insane, drunk on his own self-absorption, retarded, or all three? Should we actually be amazed and impressed that there is a band (Weezer) who continues to prove itself capable of recording an album worse than the preceding Weezer album?


What's with these homies putting out shitty records? Why do they gotta front?

Or is the greater tragedy that Weezer started sucking circa the Green Album, that they kept sucking, and continue to this day to suck, even going so far into suckage that their newest album is dubbed "The Red Album" in a pathetic attempt to recall their glory days?

I think we all know the answer to that one. And we're not buying the Red Album either.

40) Apple Week: Steve Jobs

Overlooking the fact that the man looks comically like a badly thought-out Hollywood "villainous genius" character as devised by a committee of hack writers.







"Using my techniques, you too can be a pretentious, megalomaniacal douche."



Overlooking the fact that he bears not a small resemblance to the leader of some imagined yuppie cult that apparently considers lattes a sacrament and appears to believe we will all eventually live out eternity in a giant cube structure - resplendent with glass staircases and sleek, white, overpriced tech products with a shelf life of about a year -that looks something like renaissance images of heaven as re-imagined by a Cylon who took too much ecstasy while reading a book about Frank Gehry.



And entirely overlooking the fact that you are the annoying leader of the world's most annoying corporation...



Y'know, seriously: it's this kind of shit, Steve...







HHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!



GET IT?

Because she's POOR!!!!??!



I mean, sure, now that poor Starbucks barista -who works for minimum wage, shitty tips, has to wear a stupid green hat as she makes absurd drinks for ungrateful yuppies who hate coffee- will be forced to pay hundreds of dollars in medical bills, having been rushed to the ER thanks to that heart attack you just gave her, but MAN...those upper-middle class white people in the audience loved it. *LOVED* it. Priceless, Steve. Priceless.



Die.

39) Apple Week: Mice with one button

The "mouse" is so-called because it sorta looks a little like a mouse. Y'know? Those two buttons are like ears. And that long wire, it's sorta like a tail! Sorta! We know it's backwards, technically, but use your imagination! It's pretty mouse-looking, really....



But what exactly is this goddamn monstrosity supposed to be?







A yo-yo? Is that a yo-yo? A hockey puck with a tampon? What's happening here, exactly?



Oh, yeah, and what kind of sucker would need two whole buttons on their mouse? That's just absurd! I mean, sure, I use the right click just about all the time, but inconvenience is sooo much trendier.



We bet the next model of Apple's "mouse" will have no buttons at all. You'll have to move the arrow on your computer screen using nothing but a non-fat latte and your enormous ego.

38) Apple Week: Cute-looking "collectible" computers in a variety of colors

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,

Little boxes, little boxes,

Little boxes, all the same.

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they're all made out of ticky-tacky

And they all look just the same.





If The Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow" just popped into your head, shoot yourself.

37) Apple Week: Lies about warranties

The following is a true story:

[INT: Apple Store, Soho, 8 AM]







"Yeah, there's no one to look at your iPod right now," said so-called 'Genius'



"Oh, no," having-woken-up-at-6 AM-me said, "I was here for two hours yesterday, and there was no one to look at my iPod. And you said yesterday that if I came at 8 AM someone would look at my iPod. So there is."



"Oh," he said, "Hey, hipster looking guy who has bad hair and probably no friends but plays a lot of 'Warcraft' (not actually what he said), can you look at his iPod"?



"Yeah," said hipster looking etc. etc. guy.



"Okay," he said to me.



"Okay," I said.



"So what seems to be the problem?"



"My iPod is broken and yes I 'restored' it and yes you can try it too since I know you have to and here's my receipt and I have to be at work in an hour, so, y'know…"



"Okay, I'm going to have to try to restore your iPod".



"Sigh," I said.



"What?" he asked.



"I said, 'Sigh'", I said, sighing.



Plug, click, plug, whrrr, fifteen minutes, click, whrrrr, click, plug



"Your iPod is broken."



"Uh-huh. I have to be at work in forty-five minutes."



"Okay, that's just gonna be $60"



"Oh, no, actually, see, I have this one-year warranty," I said, pointing to the receipt, proving the warranty, "So it's not going to be that."



"It's a processing fee."



"I'm fucking what the hell sorry huh?" (Not actually said)



"Since your warranty is past the six-month mark, there is a $60 processing fee."



"That's fucking retarded" (actually said) I said, "How do you have to process reaching into the drawer full of iPods and giving me one?"



"It's just…"



"I have to be at work in half an hour," I said, cutting him off. "Here's my debit card".



"You should get Apple Care," he said.



"What the fuck is Apple Care?"



"It will extend your warranty two more years, and it will only be $70, and your processing fee will be waived".



"And, um, if I get Apple Care, and I bring my iPod in again, and it's broken, will I have to pay a processing fee?"



"No. Apple Care subscribers don't pay processing fees."



"Fine. I'll do that. Whatever. I have to be at work in fifteen minutes."

[SCENE]





An artist's visual interpretation of John's internal monologue

Daily Hated Day-Break: Revoke this man's license...

...to practice being alive.



Our incredible research team from TDH's This Has To Be A Fucking Joke Department came across this article for you all to read. It's from the New York Times, too, so if you tell people you read it, they might think you're smart.** You're welcome.

The New York Times: My Son, the Blogger - An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors

Though perhaps not as sinister as it sounds on the surface -"Here's some more Vicodin...just tell me the next model of the MacBook Air will have addressed the CPU-lockup bug and include a standard 160 GB hard drive. Say it. SAY IT!" - we would nonetheless like to hereby introduce Arnold Kim as one of TDH's least-favorite human beings in the world.

I mean, we're all in favor of people pursuing their dreams. We think that's just great. And, you know...other people's kidney problems? Whatever! There are tons of doctors out there for that!!

I just know that whenever I have to have surgery for a kidney infection, the first thing I think is, "Oh fuck, I hope this doctor doesn't also blog about Apple products, because what if details for the rumoured OS X Ocelot are leaked while I'm undergoing high-risk life-saving surgery. God, I will feel like such an asshole."

**(unless you're dealing with one of those people who only thinks you're smart if you read The New Yorker or The Utne Reader or foreign newspapers or some shit like that. Stay tuned. A potential future TDH post may will address this important topic)

36) Apple Week: The "Think Different" Campaign

You know what's even awesomer than following Apple's command to "think different"?

Thinking differently.


Because it's a fucking adverb.


This hippie and his imaginary frog friend are trying to indoctrinate your children to hate grammar

35) Apple Week: Self-righteous Mac users

Spending 2 grand on shoes? Stupid. Spending 2 grand on drinks during one really booze-soaked weekend? Embarrassing.

Spending 2 grand on some plain white computer that you can't hit "control alt delete" on? LAME. Spending 2 grand on this computer so that you can act like you're one of the cool kids, carry it around in a manila envelope that someone else mistakes for mail and ties up the line at airport security, and become a self-righteous blowhard who ostracizes others for daring to use the same computer programs as 90 percent of the computer-owning population? EVEN LAMER.

And don't say you have to have a Mac so you can edit that demo album you're working on. Everyone sees through that.



[No caption required. Person on left actually refers to self as a "Mac Genius". You can't make this shit up]

34) Apple Week: Justin Long

[To celebrate the release of the new $200 iPhone , to rub salt on the open wounds of all the people that bought the slower twice-as-expensive version last year, and to kick off an exciting year of bug discoveries and functionality complaints that will lead in to the release of the even cheaper, faster, and buggier iPhone one year from now, T.D.H. is thrilled to announce the launch of Apple Week!]

One thing Apple does really well is advertising.

So tell me, Apple advertisement: You're saying my choices in computer are...

-The guy from the "Die Hard" movie that nobody saw/cared about who is really only famous for being Drew Barrymore's boyfriend - a role previously played by such luminaries as Tom Green, Corin "Parker Lewis" Nemec, and the drummer for a band that put out one notable record, if only for the fact that it was essentially a mediocre Velvet Underground record released about 30 years after the Velvet Underground broke up.

-OR-

-John Hodgman: the insanely funny author of the equally insane and funny "The Areas of My Expertise", frequent "Daily Show" commentator, and occasional "This American Life" essayist.


Hmmm...awesome guy or douchebag?...awwesomme guy or doooouchebag?....hmmmmm....

33) Clams

Clams are gross. They look kind of like withered vaginas and smell kind of like the sea, which kind of smells like a withered vagina.

But the worst kind of clam is a Scientologist. Scientologists are known as "clams" because whenever you ask them to explain fucked-up shit about their fake religion (what the hell is with that whole Xenu story, why David Miscavige is so short, why they're lying about the disconnection policy, etc) they "clam up" and won't tell you anything.

In short, clams bad! Scientologists worse!

32) Point-Counterpoint: John - "Scallions" / Lilit - "Carrots"

John:
Okay, first point: scallions taste like evil. They bring sadness and despair to all the things they touch; especially bagels. I don't really see what could possibly be worse than that.



Hi. We are evil.


Lilit:
Have you ever noticed how redheaded kids get called "carrot tops"? The tops of carrots are green, not orange.







John:
You mean like Colin Carrot? That guy sure talks a lot/is creepy....Though he is very sensible and dipomatic...


Lilit:
Yeah. Also, orange does not look good on me. Therefore, it does not look good in me.


John:
Okay...wait...how is that a response? Wait, shit...is this a blog-a-log? You know what I hate? The term "blog-a-log".

Lilit:
Fuck, yeah, me too. I can really get behind that particular hate.

John:
Right?! Okay, so...hey, I think we won!...or whatever happens when a blog-a-log is over. But the important thing is that we learned something today.

Hey I bet a lot of people reading this were waiting for us to make some comment about how we hate Carrot Top...

31) Tori

Wait, where did Jessie and Kelly go?

And how come nobody's even talking about them?

And who the frak is Tori?

And why is everyone acting like they know her?? And why is Zack talking like he's known her FOREVER?????

Oh, good: Kelly and Jessie are back.

Wait, so now where did Tori go?...


Tori's like "Hey, who are all these people? Oh, right...the cast of the show that I'm not in because I'm only make-believe"

30) People who condescendingly refer to bands only they have heard of

He or She: "Hey, what're you listening to?"

You: "U2"

He or She: "U2? Huh...really? You're still listening to U2? I would listen to them, I guess, had I not discovered The Subtraditionalists when I was, like, 11 years old, right around the time U2 stopped putting out decent records**. You know, a lot of people think that Down the Legpipe Wardrobe was their first record, when in fact they released the original pressing of Shorter than the Westerly Hurricane's Royal Majesty three years earlier, but it had gone out of print by then. I bought it before that, though, so I have one of the originals. A lot of people say that particular record is too derivitive of the first couple Racktondale Follies records, but I think they're missing the point that [The Subtraditionalist's lead singer] Sammy [McCallister] was attempting to express his post-adolescent depression and the declining artistry of album structure by ironically referencing a lot of the abstracted hooks and tonal shifts that Racktondale Follies pioneered, though obviously the sound was truly honed by early Ransom Trustfalls records, and by the first two EPs from Blue on the Tailfins and Supereight Oil Experiments..."

You: "Sorry, are you still talking? As soon as you said 'U2' I got distracted thinking about how awesome 'Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses' is..."

If you wish to avoid these people, it would be helpful to know that they will likely be drinking PBR, that you may hear them frequently using the word "vinyl" and qualifying it with the adjective "warmer", that they may also be talking about how much they love Vice Magazine because of the way it makes fun of hipsters, and that they look like one of these three people

**Editor's note: If you do the math, however long ago the person claims to have ceased listening to U2, thus suggesting that U2 no longer had been making "decent records", the number will invariably lead you to the year 1986, one year prior to the release of Joshua Tree. So, for instance, if he or she says, "When I was 11 years old", you can then be sure he or she is at least 33 years old presently, because he or she wants you to know that Joshua Tree does not count as a "decent record" without actually saying the words, in spite of Joshua Tree's universally agreed-upon awesomeness.

29) "ATM Machine" and "PIN Number"

Abbreviations are awesome. They help us to be more efficient, saying or writing something in less time. Take "ATM," for example. ATM stands for "Automated Teller Machine," and is a much quicker way of saying you have to go get some cash. However, saying "ATM Machine" means you're too dumb to know what ATM stands for, and therefore should lose your abbreviation privileges.


He's saying "Why do you keep getting my name wrong?", in Japanese*

And while we're at it, "PIN" stands for "Personal Identification Number." So...

*probably. Or maybe Chinese. It's definitely Asian.

Daily Hated Day-Break Quiz: Where to drink

We're not getting in to who did what when, but suffice to say that one of the editors-in-chief of TDH may or may not have gotten a ticket for drinking in public yesterday (and all we're going to add to that is that it may or may not have been among one or more of the female editors of this site whose name may or may not rhyme with "elite")

So to commemorate this ridiculous non-crime against nobody for which one of our editors-in-chief will now have to set aside a portion of her substantial weekly paycheck from the countless number of dollars this particular site rakes on a daily basis, we have devised a short quiz to test your knowledge of alcohol laws. It consists of one question.

Q: In which of the following countries is it possible to get a ticket for consuming alcoholic beverages in public?

a) The United States of America (where at least you know you're free...)
b) England
c) Scotland
d) Wales
e) Ireland
f) Canada
g) Switzerland
h) Germany
i) France
j) Italy
k) Austria
l) Australia
m) Spain
n) Belgium
o) Sweden
p) Norway

(hint: it's not "k")

28) James Blunt

Crimes:
-Perpetuating already-rampant overuse of word "brilliant"

-Running under categorically false assumption that merely possessing ability to rhyme words such as...
"pure"/"sure"
"man"/"plan"
"face"/"place"
"do"/"you"
"eye"/"by"/"high"
...qualifies an individual as a "songwriter"

-Making John Mayer seem downright gifted by comparison*



"My hair is disheveled, which is how you can tell for sure that I'm an artist. Also, my lyrics rhyme."


*Okay, we said that out of anger. John and Lilit hereby promise never to say things we don't mean and can't take back.

27) Chinatown on trash day

Think back and remember the grossest thing you've ever smelled. Maybe a corpse? Or your mom's succotash? Or that time you had to clean up after a bukkake movie?

Now multiply it by a hundred.

Then walk through it while you're in a cute outfit and on your way to a party.

That's Chinatown on trash day.



For whatever reason, this kind of thing sitting every five or six feet in a black plastic bag all day on the side of the road in the blazing sun in 95-degree weather doesn't produce a pleasing scent

26) The fact that "thesaurus" isn't a kind of dinosaur

Because, really, how much better more meliorative would the world be if we could all keep giant brobdingnagian 23-foot-tall pets who would quietly watch TV with us, scare off/devour potential thieves purloiners, AND serve as a handy utilitarian writer's scrivener's reference guide vade mecum?



Certainly more meliorative than the one - with the Bush administration, Paris Hilton unendurable hebetudinous slatterns, and no dinosaurs - that we're stuck with, that's for sure.

25) People who pronounce URL "Earl" and not "You-Are-Elle"

The internet is hard! Just look at all those blogs and pictures and widgets. It really is a complicated series of tubes, isn't it?

Well, The Daily Hated is here to help you clear up one of those confusing things about the internets.

The term "URL" stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." That's a fancy way of saying "place where a thing is on the internets." It is pronounced U-R-L, or You Are Elle, if you like your definitions with a side of Legally Blonde. This is an example of a URL:

http://www.thedailyhated.com

An Earl is a dude who believes in karma. His name is pronounced "Earl." Here is an example of an Earl:




Earl does not like being confused with a website. I mean, how would you feel if I walked up to you and said "Hi, Daily Hated, what's up?"

Big TDH News!

Don't you hate having to type ".blogspot" all the time?

Well, good news. TDH's new URL is:

http://www.thedailyhated.com/!




That's how much we love you. That's a full NINE fewer characters you'll have to type to get your daily dose of irritation.

You're welcome.

Love and Hate,

-John and Lilit

24) Uggs

I used to think there was no shoe as ugly as the Ugg. I was very quickly proven wrong. First, by the various pastel Uggs where the shoe started appearing in lavender and baby blue. Then the Ugg with the rip-off toe section so you could show off that pedicure you got in the middle of winter.

Now, I present to you the ugliest shoe in the history of the world, the result of an Ugg getting drunk and having sex with a Croc:



The Crugg.

Daily Hated Day-Break!

Bored at work? Play our special Daily Hated workplace distraction game, featuring a story we're sick of hearing about involving people we can't freakin' stand!

Which caption belongs with which image? Good luck!



1) "You're my fucking soulmate, Madonna! My SOULMATE!"

2) "Hey, what'd I say?? Where are you going?? Wait, is that Lenny Kravitz over there?"

3) "Put me down, lady! Where's my mommy?? My mommy is over there!!! She's walking away!!! Mommy!!! Come back!!!! This lady is scaring me!!!!!!!" (translated from African)

23) Dane Cook

co·me·di·an
–noun

1.	a professional entertainer who amuses by relating anecdotes, acting out comical situations, engaging in humorous repartee, etc.

2.	an actor in comedy.

3.	a writer of comedy.

4.	any comical or amusing person.

Most people who don't meet at least one of a full four conditions to qualify for a job don't get hired for said job. Sorry, but we didn't see "We couldn't get Ryan Reynolds to appear in Employee of the Month or Good Luck Chuck" on that list. Must be our mistake.

Unless that stream-of-conscious riff on Burger King was supposed to be funny.

But, it wasn't, right?

Because...

22) Starbucks: The War on Reason, Language, and Coffee

So "small", "medium", and "large" become "tall", "grande", and "vente". So the "small" is "tall" (which, last time I checked, is sort of like something that's true, only the opposite). And the rest is Italian.

So a word that Italians devised to make fun of Americans, which suggests that Americans drink a watered-down version of espresso and call it "coffee", is given a sophisticated-sounding Italian name, "Americano", so that Starbucks can sell watered-down espresso and people think it's sophisticated and Italian.

So Starbucks somehow made it possible for an individual to spout a sequence of upwards of 12 made-up nouns and adjectives and somehow, 8 minutes and $12 later, a drink that may possibly contain some traces of caffeine but would not, by any objective standard, qualify as coffee (or belonging to the coffee family) shows up on the counter, and you leave Starbucks, sipping, satisfied, on your Vente Non-Fat Double Iced Mint Mochaccino With Whipped Cream, being sure to voice to the nearest individual willing to listen how much you love coffee, how much you couldn't live without coffee, and you thank god for Starbucks, because, let's face it, it sounds better, classier, and more socially acceptable than saying how much you love and thank god for Dairy Queen.


Mmmmm...ice cream. Classy, classy ice cream.

21) The Grammys

As far as the hierarchy of prestige among major awards goes, on one side we have the Nobels, the Pulitzer, and the Peabody.

Stick the Oscars and the Golden Globes somewhere in the middle.

But at the bottom, in descending order:

-World's Best Uncle
-The MTV (fill in the blank) Awards
-The Daytime Emmys
-Employee of the Month: Hollywood Video, Beloit, Wisconsin
-The Adult Video News Awards

and finally
-The Grammys


Sadly, the man shown at center in this picture is not, in fact, holding his award for "8th Place Runner-Up in the Semi-Annual Jordan Knight Impersonation Contest"

Pretty much, as soon as Baha Men, John Mayer, Maroon 5, or the Fergie-d incarnation of Black Eyed Peas wins something, that thing loses all credibility.

20) Emperor Palpatine

It's not the unsightliness of your appearance or the creepy, slithery, snake-like hiss of your voice.




It's not that you flooded the galaxy with despair, hopelessness, and a bleak, industrial landscape.

It's not our general aversion to the dark side.

It's not that you ruthlessly murdered countless millions, including all the innocent citizens of Alderaan, whose voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

It's not the creepiness/possibly intentional sexual innuendo of statements like "His compassion for you will be his undoing. He will come to you and then you will bring him before me".

It's not that you deliberately played both sides of an artificial war of your own devising in an effort to promote and solidify your own political influence and power; not that you were all "Oh, look at me! I'm just a nice, trust-worthy senator from Naboo who just wants what's best for everybody, rah rah rah..."; not that you manipulated young and impressionable Anakin Skywalker, leaving him confused, desperate, and conflicted and leading him to the dark side of the force; not that you murdered Mace Windu, wiped out the Jedi, and dissolved the Senate.




It's just that, well, we just don't like you. Because you're kind of a dick.

19) The View

The premise: get four women from different backgrounds together to have a coffee klatsch and discuss issues relevant to women today.



The execution: get three professional comedians and one former reality 'star' with no discernable broadcasting ability to talk about the latest sex survey, promote Barbara Walters' latest media offering, and spew Republican talking points, and when you hire an award-winning former talk show host to revive your joke of a show make sure you fire her and then never mention her again.

18) VH1's obsession with nostalgia

A-Ha. Rubik's Cubes. Q-Bert. Atari. The Goonies. Swatch watches. Smurfs. Snorks. Punky Brewster. Duran Duran. Knight Rider. SIMON. Tron. Rainbow Bright. Shia LaBeouf-less Transformers. The days when VH1 and MTV aired music videos.


Swoon.

Yeah, we loved the 80s, too.

And we also loved "I Love the 80s".

But just as "The Real World" started off so well but eventually mutated MTV into the "Offensively Unnecessary Reality-Shows Starring Unbearably Self-Important Wastes of Human Flesh Network" it is today, so did "I Love the 80s" turn VH1 into the peddlers of forced-nostalgia they are today.

The 80s? Great! The 70s? Meh. The 90s? Too soon.

But Christian Finnegan waxing nostalgic about that crazy thing Lindsay Lohan did last week? Remember that? Wasn't that crazy and great and...?

Okay, now we just don't care.


Yawn.

17) Lee Greenwood

Today is the 4th of July, Independence Day, when Americans unknowingly celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence with barbeques, parades, beer, fireworks, and, in many cases, music.


Lee Greenwood wants to tell you about a country he loves: a place called "America", where everybody's happy and women wear pretty shoes and cook up meatloaf and nobody ever gets sad or divorced and everybody's free to do as the Good Book says and babies and pie and white people and...

Jingoistic flag-waving Americana has given rise to some great music, like "America the Beautiful", "Appalachian Spring", and "Stars and Stripes Forever", all of which occasionally do fill us with a warm and fuzzy sense of civic pride and unity that makes us forget about the downsides to America (READ: all the things this blog is about).

And then, of course, America has to go ahead and give us "God Bless the USA", the Lee Greenwood-penned creepy borderline-fascist country-pop-propaganda piece/musical atrocity to which we are all invariably subjected every 4th of July and/or whenever our government decides to bomb something.

And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, this happened:



Happy Independence Day!

16) The Hogan family (but NOT "The Hogan Family")

Let it be known first and foremost that Jason Bateman - and anything with which Jason Bateman chooses to be involved - is immune from our blog, and, yes, this includes "Teen Wolf Too", that annoying song from "Juno", and "The Breakup"



Not immune from our blog, however, is the actual Hogan family. Or, well, the shattered fragments of what was once the Hogan family, but which is now a botoxed forty-something bottle blonde matriarch who dates 19-year-old boys, a son who committed manslaughter, and a sad former Pro Wrestling champ who thinks its perfectly okay to put lotion on his grown daughter's bare ass.

And - perhaps saddest of all - no Jason Bateman.

15) Fallout Boy and Eve 6

There should must be a test a band must pass before they earn the privilege of naming themselves after references to such perenially awesome things as "The Simpsons" and "The X-Files".

And, frankly, had this test been in place, it is doubtful that Fallout Boy or Eve 6 (both absolutely in the conversation for, let's say, the "17 Worst Bands of All Time" list) would have qualified as good enough to warrant naming themselves after references to "According to Jim". But a band can dream.

A band can dream.


The members of The Thorne-Smiths (at left) and 412 Maple Street (at right)

14) Clay Aiken

Because everyone knows the best way to prove you're not gay is to artificially inseminate some fifty year old chick and walk around with a k.d. lang haircut.