Donald Sterling: Some Quick Perspective

(1) If someone ASKS to be recorded and is fully aware he is being recorded when he makes ignorant statements, it is neither an injustice nor "shady" to record said person.

(2) A private company taking action has NOTHING to do with your "First Amendment rights" or "civil liberties," even when that private company is your employer, who doesn't like something you said.

(3) The NBA is a FRANCHISE. Donald Sterling's ownership interest is nothing but a license, revocable by the licensor (the league) at any time, within the guidelines set forth in that license. A licensor is allowed to protect the reputation and monetary value of its brand as it sees fit.

(4) Sterling will be bought out. He stands to make a HUGE profit on the sale. Don't cry for him, Argentina.


(5) A "lifetime" ban imposed on an 81-year old man who is clearly not in the best physical condition isn't exactly 50 years here, people.
 someecards.com - Happy Birthday to someone young enough that a lifetime ban from the NBA would last for more than a couple years.}

(6) NO ONE (except maybe the NBA and NAACP) is arguing that it was fine and dandy for the NBA and NAACP to stand and watch this man's decades of racism and even honor and support him. But that doesn't negate the fact that it is a *good thing* that those organizations have FINALLY responded (even if those responses are probably more commercially driven than anything).



(7) I don't give two flips about the character and history of Donald Sterling's mistress. I don't think anyone ever assumes that a 30-something-year old woman with thousands of dollars of plastic surgery/enhancements who has changed her name to an initial and is dating a wealthy, racist, obese, married octogenarian is a highly moral and likable individual. She is a gold digger and has questionable ethics?? You don't say!! It still doesn't change the fact that this man is reprehensible and has been for a LONG time. He didn't have to be goaded or tricked into saying a darn thing.


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The Worst Part of the HIMYM Finale

Yes, I'm still mad about the How I Met Your Mother series finale a week later. I spent nine years investing in this show. It's going to take me more than a day to get over the disappointment. It would be like if Pop Culture Dad (who, BTW, I've been with less years than I was Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and even Robin) came home tomorrow and dumped me in an ugly and unceremonious way. Okay... It's not actually that dramatic. But the finale did. really. suck. y'all!

But you know what's the worst part of that horrible finale? We HIMYM die-hard fans have been defending our loyalty to this show for the last couple of years, and these bastards (Thomas, Bays, and the rest of the HIMYM writers) just punched us in the gut and left us lying in the dirt. It's been hard being a HIMYM fan, and now it was all for nothing.

Pop Culture Dad and I actually met towards the end of the first season of HIMYM. I was a fan. He was not. I quickly caught him up to speed and got him in the HIMYM fan club also. Our relationship grew and blossomed with these characters for five years. And then he dropped out. PCD just couldn't do it anymore. The writing wasn't as good as it had been in the earlier seasons. Ted was becoming increasingly more annoying (particularly his on-again, off-again obsessions with Robin). PCD got tired of them not just jumping to how Ted met the mother and getting over it already. Pop Culture Dad would occasionally watch an episode with me here and there, but many times, he would spend the episodes peppering scenes with an interjection of, "This is so stupid!", "Has this show been cancelled yet?", "I swear the only thing good about this show is Marshall and Lily!", "I swear... Ted is the WORST father ever! Why would you tell your kids this story??", and "WHY ARE YOU STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW??". There were a few episodes that proved the exception to Pop Culture Dad's I-Only-Watch-This-Show-When-You-Make-Me rule in the latter seasons: the Robin Sparkles episodes, the Slap Bet, and Barney's proposal to Robin. Pop Culture Dad isn't the only one who expressed these feelings; many people--all former fans--said similar things when they realized I was still watching HIMYM. Only a few of my friends loyally stuck around as I did. We were all disappointed with the ending.

So now what? We stuck around for nine years--the last few of them spotty and challenging--and we got nothing for the effort. All of the justifications we had made for this show have melted away. All of the naysayers have completely valid reasons for saying, "We told you so," and they were right (dammit!). I never thought I would be that chick who stayed in a bad relationship for years and years after all of my friends and family members kept telling me, "He's no good for you!" and I never listened, because I was clinging to the memories of happier days. But there you have it. I was. And I'm pissed that Bays and Thomas made that kind of fool of me!!

Sigh... But the relationship is over. It's dead (much like Tracy McConnell, RIP. Girl, R. I. P...). It's time to move on.

But first, maybe I need some more closure.

Despite our differences in the end, there are some things that I will always appreciate about How I Met Your Mother.

1.  I love that in a post-Buffy, post-Angel, post-Veronica Mars world, I got nine more years of Alyson Hannigan gracing my screen [and, from time to time, even got a glimpse of her lovely husband. Oh Sandy Rivers/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, how I adore you, too!]. But, let's face it. Even without HIMYM, Willow wasn't going to be absent from the small screen for too long, because Alyson Hannigan is a National. Fucking. Treasure, goddammit!
Aly, I know we're almost the same age and all, but you can totally be my mom, too!

2. While I can't credit HIMYM for Neil Patrick Harris's big comeback (that honor goes to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle), I can thank the show for keeping that momentum going, reminding me how much I loved Doogie Howser, M.D., and making magic cool again.

I know, hon. I feel the same way about Thomas & Bays!
Though, if I'm being totally honest, this is how I prefer to picture NPH.
And this has NOTHING to do with HIMYM.

3. Jason Muthafucking Segel.
Look, I know he was doing shit before HIMYM. But I never watched Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared until after HIMYM and every Jason Segel role in a movie since then threw me in the Jason Segel fan club. Seriously, the man can do no wrong... Er, scratch that. I watched This Is the End. And that shit was horrible. But Knocked UpForgetting Sarah Marshall; I Love You, Man; Despicable Me; Bad Teacher; Friends with BenefitsThe Muppets; Five-Year Engagement; This is 40... OMG. He was golden in ALL of it. Every last drop!

In addition to the fact that I am such a huge Marshmallow/Lily Pad fan (and they're only part of the entire series Pop Culture Dad still liked), I love, love, love that fictitious Marshall and I [and my #4] have the same alma mater, even though we would not have graced the halls at the same time [yes, people, I realize that this is fake!! After all, we're talking about a universe in which New York City has all of four minorities. Dahell...].


4. Brad Morris.
Hey, True Blood only airs during the summertime. So any time I can have an extra bit of Joe Manganiello on my television in various states of undress is a good thing.

5. Robin Sparkles. I would go to the mall with her today and any other day.


So... One would think with all these fond memories, the season finale wouldn't have stung so much. But one would be WRONG. Oh so very wrong.

These fond memories are exactly why the series finale felt like one huge, never-ending Slap Bet to the face. There was so much good about this show before it started sucking. And I could have even let the sucky parts go if the season finale had been worthy of even the mediocre parts of this show. But it was sooo very bad. It felt slapped together and rushed. We spent an entire goddamn season on Robin and Barney's wedding, only for the HIMYM writers to slap together 16 years of twists and turns into 44 minutes. It was so poorly done, you would think they were making it up as they were going along. It was a complete disservice to how they've built these characters over the years and how they've grown. Ted going back to Robin makes NO sense to anyone who believes in having healthy, adult relationships [OMG, they were SO toxic together. At least it was true to previous seasons in that Robin wanted Ted only when someone else had him and that Ted was completely Robin's puppy dog for some inexplicable reason. But did these people seriously not grow at all over two and a half decades of knowing each other??]. While I'm less broken up about The Mother (aka Tracy) being dead, since we all pretty much expected that even before the hints thrown out this season, the way her death was treated was so shoddy that I almost feel like they could have forgotten to write in the part where Ted meets her, and the net result might have been the same. Barney spent all these years growing as a man, only to turn back into a major douchebag (in his 40s, no less) the second that callous bitch Robin dumps him, only to then magically reform again the second he has a daughter [P.S. I am willing to bet money right now that the "Dad" in the new "How I Met Your Dad" ends up being Barney. But I refuse to watch another Thomas/Bays production, so one of you will have to let me know in a few years if that prediction was true]. You all already know how I feel about the children's reactions. And we never found out the meaning behind that fucking pineapple.

In co-creator Craig Thomas's infamous fuck you tweet to fans of the show, he says:
Of course, the irony here is that in a finale allegedly about life's twist and turns, it never occurred to the HIMYM writers that when your show goes on longer than anyone ever planned, the characters have developed in different ways from what you originally plotted, and the fans have fallen in love with different expectations (by your design, no less), maybe instead of rolling with an ending you taped nine years prior, you need to roll with the "twists and turns" and give your show an ending that makes sense in light of everything else that has happened over the last decade!
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HIMYM Series Finale - A Warning to Pop Culture Dad

OBLIGATORY SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers. If you haven't watched the show yet (and for some reason still want to) and have somehow successfully managed to avoid all the spoilers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ just to end up here, you can't say I didn't warn you. But why are you clicking on articles about the season finale of a show you haven't watched yet??

So as you have seen or read by now, HIMYM ended up being not so much How I Met Your Mother and more How I'm Pretending to Tell You a Story a About How I Met Your Mother So I Can Really Make a Case for Banging Aunt Robin... Again. 

It's only the woman who gave you life. Who cares about hearing about her?

Setting aside the utter bullshit of sticking with an ending the writers planned from season 1, even though it no longer fit the character development or what most of the audience (by every poll about this show in the last five years) wanted [a side effect of a show lasting two or three years longer than it should have], and putting fans through all the anticipation for nothing, here's my warning to a Pop Culture Dad:

If I die in the next couple of years, while our kids are still very young, and six years later (while they are still kids, mind you), you spend a shitton of time telling them some convuluted story under the pretext of telling them how we met, but it turns out it is really a story of how you were really in love with your ex-girlfriend/a friend of yours, I will f*cking haunt you until the end of time. Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching—and, more importantly, haunting— you. And her. 

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. 

Oh, and ignoring the fact that a Robin is probably one of the worst options for Ted of all of his ex-girlfriends if he just had to revert back to an old obsession, do Bays and Thomas really expect me to believe that even after six years the kids (emphasis on "kids") are totally okay with their dad dating their Aunt Robin?? REALLY?!?! 

Although I haven't lost a parent myself, I have known people who lost a parent early (and widowers who lost a spouse when their kids were young). Losing a parent seems to suspend that part of your childhood—you're almost perpetually (particularly during your actual childhood) locked in that state. While as adults, most people don't seem to have a problem with their parents jumping back out there, most kids don't seem to be okay with their parents jumping back out there while they're still young. And it seems to be worse when the widow(er) was actually parading their intended around their kids the whole time. Then it's more like, "So even when mom was alive/dying, you were in love with HER and BRINGING HER TO OUR HOUSE??" Yeah, I'm not buying that whole, "OMG! Yeah! Go for it! Duh!"

[side bar: Is it just me, or do Bays & Thomas seem to have an unhealthy obsession with a wife dying so a guy can date who he really wants?? Marshall's fantasy life, anyone??]

Pop Culture Girls, I won't blame you if your dad pulls this crap on you if I die early. It isn't your fault. You were young and traumatized, and he wore you down with a nine-year long story about nothing. For the record, though: Match.com. You don't need to sit through some crap story. We met on Match.com. Don't fall for this "How I Met Your Mother" crap. Now you know. 
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