Things Steve Loves: Billy Mays

What do you get when you combine the charm and beard of Al Borland with the entrepreneurial spirit of Donald Trump? You get Billy Mays, the father of the modern infomercial, a captain of industry, the purveyor of useless crap that sits in the garages and cabinets of millions of Americans.

Billy Mays passed away this morning in his home. The fumes from OxyClean won't be able to quell the tears of his adoring fans, nor will Mighty Putty be able to able to hold their broken hearts together.

We all have learned many lessons from this beautiful, beautiful man in his short time here on this earth. If you call in the next ten minutes you WILL get a free set of kitchen knives and sometimes in life if you wait...there is more.

But most of all, we have learned to take things little by little. Why undertake something all at once when you can do it with simple, little monthly installments (plus shipping and handeling).

You will be missed, William D. Mays, Jr. You are in a better place now, and we are stuck with that ass-clown Vince Shlomi.

Now YOU Can Be A Hater Too!

If you look on the right sidebar you will notice a new feature called "Are You A Hater Too?" Show your loyalty to Things Steve Hates by adding yourself as a Follower...all you need is a Google, Yahoo! or AIM ID. Don't worry, there aren't any updates or spam or anything; adding yourself is just something fun to do.

*****

Also, for a limited time you can upgrade to Platinum Level for a nominal fee of $29.99 per month! This package includes a Things Steve Hates T-Shirt, an exclusive Things Steve Hates bumper sticker or coffee mug, a Steve plush toy that names the things it hates when you pull its cord, and a lunch date with Steve, your favorite blogger, at a restaurant of your choosing!

PayPal is the preferred method of payment, although you can also send Steve a check made out to CASH (which stands for "Currently A Serious Hater").

Hurry, this offer expires at midnight tomorrow!

*****

Speidi

Well I didn't even know who Brangelina were until recently, but at least Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have accomplished some stuff throughout their careers. They have starred in a number of high-grossing films and are among the top of the Hollywood "A List." Now Speidi comes along and I have just gotta ask this question:

Who the hell are these people?

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag are NOT celebrities. They are famous for one reason, being friends with celebrities. Come to think of it, their "friends" Brody Jenner and Lauren Conrad aren't really even that famous themselves. One is the son of an Olympic athlete and the other has a show that no one over the age of 25 even knows about. But putting that all aside, the couple has been in the news alot this past week. A few days back Al Roker interviewed them about their experiences on the show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and the two parties fought and blah, blah, blah...there was a controversy that spread on internet gossip blogs and Yahoo! Homepages and whatnot. But the one thing no one seemed to notice is that I'm a Celebrity and The Today Show are both on NBC!

By creating this buzz and "faking" a fight between Speidi and Roker I'm a Celebrity gets its name out there and NBC gets to cash in, as the major networks are in their summer slump when most programs are in reruns. NBC's show becomes the watercooler program of the summer and Spencer and Heidi get their names in the news so they can try to land a gig on another reality show about nothing.

It's one big conspiracy people, and Speidi is the Jack Ruby of today. Of course, most of you probably have no idea who that is because you have been watching too much reality TV.

Stupid Awards

Back in the fall I had to write a speech for my government class about service or something like that. I worked on it for about 15 minutes, came to school, and read it into audio software in a voice that made me sound as if I were a drunk Ben Stein (just imagine for a moment what that would sound like...).

Well, imagine my surprise when this spring the VFW came to our school and presented me and two dozen of my classmates with awards certificates. According to this certificate I was:

AN OUTSTANDING SPOKESPERSON FOR FREEDOM

Which begs the question, just what the hell does that mean?

We live in a society where EVERYONE gets dumb awards for accomplishing nothing. Can't win an Oscar? Well try for a Golden Globe. Can't win one of those? People's Choice Awards! Still no luck? Well then you can be on Nickelodeon for the Teen Choice Awards and get a surfboard trophy from Ashton Kutcher or whatever tool-ish celebrity with a shag haircut is hosting the awards that year.

It's not just Hollywood either...Al Gore "invents the internet" and BAM! Nobel Prize. What happens when you pee on an electric fence and your heart stops beating? You get a Darwin Award.

Why don't we all just stop accepting awards that mean nothing. After all, you aren't that great...that's why you are reading this blog when you could be out helping orphans or curing cancer.

Follow my example the next time you get a stupid award: a $3 trophy I was awarded for accomplishing absolutely nothing has been made into a hood ornament, was sitting at the bottom of a pool, and is now in twelve pieces in the middle of a parking lot after it was flung over a fence with a long net.

The saddest part of this whole story is that I know someone is out there reading this, ready to give me an award for destroying a trophy in the most creative way.

When I Try to Act Cultural: A Story About Soup and Stupidity

So as my friends out there will attest, I am a pretty cosmopolitan guy; I speak Spanish fairly well, I know all kinds of facts about dozens of cultures and peoples, and I have many friends from all parts of the world.

However, this does not change the fact that I am a sheltered white boy from the 'burbs of Northern Virginia.

Not too long ago, I was driving around with a friend, looking for somewhere to eat. She wanted TGI Friday's. I wanted ethnic food. So after wasting a gallon and a half of gas, we ended up at some hole-in-the-wall Peruvian place in a crappy shopping center.

Upon walking in, my friend and I got a few stares from the waitstaff and the customers, all of whom were Latino. Yup, we were the idiot gringos who were going to embarass ourselves by trying to speak Spanish and acting like we knew a thing or two about the food we were going to be served.

Here's where the story gets good:

So the menu is mostly in Spanish, and I wasn't really hungry, so I just ordered a random soup. Five minutes later, our waitress came and put the stinkiest, strangest looking soup in front of me. It smelled like poo.

But I could not refuse it! I am Steven, the worldly, cultural kid who knows how to say hello in ten different languages! My hubris got the best of me, and I dipped my spoon into the soup and pulled up the rubberiest piece of chicken I had ever seen.

I had a few bites of the chicken, and boy was it bad. I didn't even want to know what the big rock-like thing in the middle of my soup was. We left the place and I thought to myself, "Boy, that was the worst chicken I had ever had in my life. Could it have been pork, perhaps?"

Well thanks to the miracle of the Internet I looked up the soup the next day and lo and behold, it was neither chicken or pork.

It was made from cow's stomach, and that big rock thing was a hoof.

World: 1 Steven: 0

The moral of this story: You can't change who you are, and I'm just a white boy from the 'burbs.

Alternate moral: Four years of Spanish do not qualify you as an expert on Latin food.

Popsicle Stick Jokes

The best part of summer is not watching your drunk friends shoot out their eyes with fireworks on the 4th of July, although that is always something to look forward to. No, the best part of the season is the food; burgers on the grill, corn on the cob, and especially popsicles.

Now I don't know about all of you, but there is nothing better than beating 100 degree weather with a refreshing red, white, and blue firecracker popsicle that makes your lips and tongue look as if you have just downed a bushel of blueberries. However, there is one thing I really hate about popsicles.

The jokes.

We all know the drill. After tearing off the wrapper you read the little words on the stick of wood that somehow, in some way, form something that resembles a joke.

Where do books sleep at night?

After your face and hands are completely sticky and covered in a mixture of high fructose corn syrup and Yellow Dye #6, you look down and get the answer:

Under the covers.

Here's a joke I ran into last week:

Why is it hard to iron a rhino?

Because it's all wrinkly

Who the hell writes these things? Is it the people who didn't get the job at the fortune cookie factory? Is it Dane Cook?

Apparently it's hard to iron this guy...

AP Tests

For all of you out there who have been asking me why this blog has had no new content in the last week, you finally have an answer:

AP Tests

Do not worry, however. In just a week my tests will cease and with nothing to do for the rest of the year this blog will be better than ever. So in the meantime, feel free to look through past entries, give me some comments about what you think needs improvement, and anything else you want.

-Steven