Why Game of Thrones is So Damn Good

For the first time since Lost and 24 went off the air, I'm hooked on a TV show that's currently being televised, and I thought I'd take a second to talk about what makes it so good (for me). It's not the characters, it's not the epic fantasy setting or the big budget or the excellent adult acting or the snappy writing or the complex plot or the music or the surprisingly-good child acting (I grade child actors on a massive curve because children, including me, are idiots; still, this series relies on them quite a lot, and they don't disappoint). No, the biggest positive quality for me is the fact that this series is airing on HBO, and everything that that allows the show to do. It is an entirely different kind of television program than 24, or Lost, or Criminal Minds, or anything else that airs on public TV. This is my first exposure to it, and I very much like what a good show can do with the format.

The biggest thing is that when HBO puts a show in an hour-long time slot, you get an hour-long piece of television. There are no commercial breaks, and thus, no need to have a minor cliffhanger at the end of every segment so the audience waits through the commercials instead of flipping channels. The episode can flow exactly the way the director wants it to flow, building tension where he wants instead of where he has to put it. I never realized how much of a handicap that could be, and seeing a show without it is like watching someone who's just shed his training weights from ankles and wrists move around. It's so casually good.

Here's another huge advantage: Instead of 42 minutes in the hour, the director gets 57 or 60. That gives time for more plot twists and introductions and the like, but we also get more character development than you could ever pack into a network show. We get these wonderful, Stanley Kubrick-esque conversations where the characters can talk about nothing at all, reminisce over war stories or tell dirty jokes for awhile, and the audience can just sit back and watch as we wind around to the point of the conversation. There's nothing in this show that seems forced or too fast. Every conversation doesn't have to be filled with plot-specific stuff (stuff that isn't plot-specific yet, anyway), and every character doesn't have to talk at once. It makes world-building that much easier.

You know what else helps with world-building? Here's a sampler: Shit, fuck, boobs, sex, gore, and a heaping helping of REALISM.The camera doesn't shy away from gore, or nudity, or cursing. None of those would be possible on network television. But all of them are there, in abundance, in an HBO show. And far from being something to titter at (snork), they're actually a vital part of making Game of Thrones believable. This show portrays medieval life, in all its glory and all its filth. And by not shrinking from the more brutal or nasty or whorish parts of medieval life, Game of Thrones becomes intensely believable without even trying. It says "Here! Here is the world we are building. We won't sugar-coat it for you and we won't turn away. It's up to you to watch it grow. Or don't. Either way, here it is."

A lot of that spirit comes from the final piece of what makes the show so good. It's the directors who can take all those advantages I talked about up above and make them into something amazing. So let's take a minute to appreciate the directors, Tim Van Patten (Eps. 1-2) and Brian Kirk (3-5).* Here's some contrast: Remember the wiggling, jiggling camera of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Identity? Remember the frantic close-ups and all the other camera tricks that're supposed to make you feel like you're right there on the scene? I think that's the shittiest kind of directing possible. That's just called getting in the way of the story. Let the story tell itself, I say, and have the director get out of the way. Patten and Kirk have done that to perfection. They're letting the writing and the set design speak for itself, and letting the actors speak for themselves. They're just holding back and letting them act.

Here is one of my favorite scenes from this series. All the parts of this note-character building, good directing, extra time for conversations and all that-come together in scenes like this. Scenes like this are why Game of Thrones is so bloody good. (Sampler.)

It's just... I have rarely, if ever, seen anything like that scene on a network show. Game of Thrones tosses scenes like these off without trying.

Here's one more, my favorite thus far, and then I swear I'm done. Enjoy if it suits you. Myself, I highly recommend both the scene and the show.

*Daniel Minahan directed the sixth episode, which I haven't seen as of this writing.

Problems With the Pro Bowl (A Bit Late)

This is a familiar topic, so I won’t stay long on any one point. But the Pro Bowl sucks. It’s a joke. Here's what we should do to fix the many, many problems with it.

Problems with the Game

1.  There is no incentive for the players to go out and compete, or enjoy football. Everyone is acutely aware that they’ve been lucky to make it through the season without injury, and no one wants to screw it up at the end. Witness the last touchdown of this latest Pro Bowl, which featured the offensive and defensive lines awkwardly standing around while the play was still going on, not blocking and not rushing.

 

2. This makes for an absolutely awful entertainment experience. This last Pro Bowl had a final score of 55-41. You’d think that would be an exciting game to watch, particularly between the NFL’s elite athletes. Nope. It’s not good football, and frankly, it’s an embarrassment to the NFL.

Solutions: Eliminate the game altogether. Replace it with contests and drills that pit the players in position groups against one another; most acrobatic catch, playing touch football on the lawn, accuracy contest for QBs, whatever. Contests that are competitive and have little risk of injury would likely get a better performance out of the players. It could be like the NFL combine, but entertaining to watch. Turn the players loose on camera; joke around with them, let them relax. Bring in comedians to act as sideline reporters. Make it fun to watch.

Oh, right.

Problems with the Organization

3. The game was moved last year to in between the AFC/NFC Championship Week and Super Bowl week. This at least gives the NFL some entertainment in the dead time between the games, but excludes the Pro Bowlers on those teams (which is usually quite a few). What was it, ten Packers and Steelers who couldn’t go because of the Super Bowl? That hurts the game’s already low entertainment value.

Solution: Move that shit back to after the Super Bowl.

4. Andrew Brandt, former Packers negotiator and current contributor to the National Football Post, has described the “whisper crews” that hang around the Pro Bowl and tell players how their contracts aren’t big enough, their agents aren’t adequately representing them, how they could be doing so much better. This leads to problems with the teams, who have to deal with their best players coming back home disgruntled and asking for new contracts. After Nick Collins’ first Pro Bowl, he began two and a half years of quietly agitating for a new contract, which only ended this past offseason. And that ends up hurting the NFL’s public image by unnecessarily inflating the biggest player contracts.

Solution: Ban agents from attending the Pro Bowl as anything other then guests, and keep them away from the players. This is damn near impossible to enforce, but at the very least, it’ll have a penalty for the agents that do get caught which might provide some deterrence.

Honestly, who wouldn't like to see Drew Rosenhaus subjected to minor inconvenience?

Problems with the Selection

5. The selection process of the Pro Bowl consists of votes from coaches, players and fans. I can’t speak to the first two, but for the third group of fans, older and more well-established players command a disproportionate amount of the votes. Ray Lewis has made the last two or three Pro Bowls based on reputation alone. It’s not that he’s played badly, necessarily, but from what I understand he’s played pretty average. But he’s a big name, he’s marketable (has nationwide ad campaigns, another perk for well-established players) and he appears on the Sunday Night Football pregame skit. Other, similar cases aren’t hard to find. Packers fans remember Brett Favre making the AFC Pro Bowl despite a league-leading interception total, and Charles Woodson got the spot over Tramon Williams this year on national recognition.

Solution: Make the fan vote count less. Add GMs and scouts-you know, the people who are paid to watch and evaluate talent-to the list as a fourth category, and local beat writers as a fifth. They’re the members of the media most likely to be biased, but they’re also most likely to have an accurate opinion about the merits of the players, since they follow the respective teams as their job.

We miss you, Bedard!

6. Injury replacements make a mockery of the initial selection of the Pro Bowl. Legitimate injuries do keep players out of the Pro Bowl, but more often then not, players cite injuries that wouldn’t keep them from playing in a regular-season game to bow out of the Pro Bowl. The corollary problem is that quarterbacks who weren’t among the top three selected get to put “Pro Bowl” on their résumés. The combination of the two, again, makes a mockery of the practice of selecting the best players; in 2009, for example, the top three quarterbacks in the AFC-Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers and Tom Brady-either bowed out with injuries or went to the Super Bowl. Ben Roethlisberger and Carson Palmer, the first and third alternates, declined due to injury. That left Matt Schaub, Vince Young and David Garrard to represent the AFC. Eight AFC quarterbacks thus received Pro Bowl “honors”. Is that how the best players at a position should be selected?

Solution: Twofold. First, make the top three players the only ones that officially receive Pro Bowl honors. Everyone else gets put on the docket, should they replace injured players, as a first or a second or whatever alternate.

The second part of the solution is more of a general one. Eliminate the pretense that this is a football game along with the game itself. Try a year without an actual game and see what happens. In its place, have skill competitions: who can throw the farthest, who can run and dodge the fastest, who can dunk a basketball. Make it fun. If you do that, I predict you’d see a lot fewer players bowing out due to bogus injury. The NFL doesn't have to mount a huge marketing campaign, but instead of asking players to risk their bodies for a meaningless game, why not sell it as an opportunity to relax and hang out with fellow elite players (in Hawaii no less)?

In place of the football game, have these drills. Play seven-on-seven, because that’s basically what the game is anyway, right? Invite some lucky high school kids out to the Bowl to hang out with NFL players and learn some techniques. Bring some well-known comedians in to host the thing. Make it fun to be in, fun to watch and a good story for the media to cover. High school kids, perhaps underprivileged, hanging out with the people who are the best at their position in the whole world-what’s not to like?

The Best Insults From Around the Internet

I got bored in class and happened upon a random "10 best" page, which had this wonderful insult that is now my all-time favorite, "May the hairs on your arse turn into hammers and beat your balls to death!"  Naturally, I started looking for more vulgarities, and found I had this massive collection of insults from a dozen different places. (This may be the most exhaustively researched post I've ever done.) Without further ado, I give unto you... THE BEST INSULTS OF THE INTERNET.

We'll start with Hollywood: the top 100 Hollywood insults of all time!

My particular favorites from there:

“You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English giant twerp scumbag fuckface dickhead asshole!” –Otto, A Fish Called Wanda

You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!” –Wizard of Oz, to the Tin Man

“You’re an emotional fuckin’ cripple, your soul is dogshit, every single thing about you is ugly!” –Marcus, Bad Santa

“Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” –The Principal, Billy Madison

“I want to tell [his boss] what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged spotty-lipped worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is!!” –Clark, Christmas Vacation

“You’re the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you!” –Ugly to Good, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

“I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” –The Frenchman, of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Calvin & Hobbes also had a really good one. “Slippin’ rippin’ dang fang rotten zarg barg-a-ding-dong!!”, yelps Calvin's dad, after dropping a huge Christmas present on his foot.

International Insults

Awhile back, cracked.com made a list of "The Nine Most Devastating Insults From Around the World" (and a jillion more besides). These aren't what they thought were the worst ones, but they're my favorites off the list. Apparently the Balkan states are just out of their goddamned minds (apologies to any Balkan folk I know)...

“A thousand dicks in your religion!” -Arabia
“You unsightly hunchbacked leper queer!” –Bulgaria
“Fuck the 18 generations of your ancestors!” –China
“Grandfatherfucker!” –Iceland
“Let your mother recognize you in a meat pie!” “May your wife give birth to a centipede so you have to work for shoes all your life!” –Serbia
“Brush your teeth, my dick will be inspecting soon!” –Romania
“Piss into a transformer” –Finland

Captain Haddock

If you're at all familiar with Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, you hopefully have a deep and abiding love for Tintin's irritable friend, Captain Haddock. Haddock is a sailor, you see, and sailors are supposed to have a salty tongue (swear a fuckalot). But this was a kids' comic, so what Hergé did was to go to a dictionary and just look up the most ridiculous words he could find, and throw those in as made-up curse words. It was wildly successful and also hilarious. Here's a few of my favorites:

"You infernal impersonations of Abominable Snowmen!" -to interfering detectives
“Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!” –all the time
“Antediluvian bulldozer!” –to the Yeti
“You four-legged Cyrano!” –to an anteater
“You dunderheaded coconuts!” and “You addle-pated lumps of anthracite!” –to Muslims on pilgrimage
“Gibbering anthropoids!” –to a bunch of monkeys
“Slubberdegullions!” –To the Incas*
“This thundering herd of Zapotecs!” –the people of Borduria, a made-up country
“Dictatorial duck-billed diplodocus!” –referring to the ruler of Borduria
“Pirate, ectoplasm, coelacanth, vulture! Body-snatcher, Ostrogoth, Vandal!” –shouted through a megaphone at a retreating slave-trader
“Confounded rattletrap tin-can contraption! Take that, you slot-machine, you!” –to the engine-room telegraph of a ship, right before attacking it with a hammer.

There's a full grouping of all his insults by story here, or if you prefer, somebody's put together a random insult generator.


The Mug of Infinite Insult

On my last birthday, I got (among other items) a mug with a multitude of Shakespeare's insults that he included in his plays. Some of my favorites:

“Beetle-headed, flap-eared knave!”
“I do desire that we may be better strangers”
“Poisonous bunch-backed toad”
“Mountain of mad flesh”
“You rampallian! You fustilarian!”
“Not so much brain as ear-wax.”

Changing centuries completely, Chris Kluwe of the Minnesota Vikings tweeted the other day (it's not quite an insult) about going to see a film with his beloved. "Going to see True Grit with the wife. It was the only movie we could agree on. #everythingshewantstoseemakesbiliousvomitexplodefrommyeyes” -Kluwe. Also, funniest modern insult for me: "It looks like her face caught on fire and someone put it out with a hammer."

Autres Insults Internationales

As you may have discerned by now, I like the more creative insults that aren't just "fuckface" or "dipshit". Round two of the international insults comes from something other then Cracked; apparently the Australians are creative as shit (and use "as shit" a lot), while the British are too stodgy for long phrases. Here's a couple more related links.

“May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat!” –Irish

The title says it all: http://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2014/06/30/may-your-urine-burn-you-cowardly-goat/

The Manderin Profanity Wikipedia page is hilariously extensive and is worth checking out. A few of my favorites include jiào nǐ shēng háizi zhǎng zhì chuāng (叫你生孩子长痔疮) – "May your child be born with hemorrhoids", and the aforementioned cào nǐ zǔzōng shíbā dài (肏你祖宗十八代) = fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation.

I also have to say that maybe nobody does surrealist insults better then Australia. In fact, after seeing this link, I'm not sure anyone does any insults better then Australia.

"Fuck your father while he's still in your grandmother's pouch!"

A few highlights:

“May your ears turn into arseholes and shit on your shoulders.”
“May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!”
“He couldn’t organize a fuck in a brothel with a fist full of fifties.”

Whether or not you follow video games, there are few better examples of the vulgarian's art then the Australian creator of Zero Punctuation. This guy does the most profoundly obscene reviews that have ever been voiced or animated. I don't know a thing about modern console gaming and I think it's hilarious. I can't input the videos because they aren't on YouTube and Blogger can suck in some ways, but here are two of the best ones: Resident Evil 5 and Halo Wars. (Skip ahead to 2:00 in Halo Wars; for some reason, the company he works for put a cameo from another reviewer in front that isn't nearly as good.)

Closer to Home

I'll leave off with one last insult, obtained from a highly scientific survey. Me, to the room at large: "What's the best insult you guys know?!" Tadd: “Whoremouse! Douchecanoe! Cum-guzzling twatfuck!” -Tadd**

*“A slubberdegullion is a slobbering foul individual, a worthless sloven, a pigpen, a jeeter, a tramp, an uncouth slob, a disgusting draggletail, a torpid and tawdry tatterdemalion.”
**Slight dramatization.