Crank and JJ in the dog house

The other day, Crank and JJ's daily dumbass centered on a couple in Britain who spent $10,000 in plastic surgery for their bloodhound, Junior.  The spiel went along the lines of what normal person in their right mind would spend that kind of money to make their bloodhound look less of a bloodhound by tightening up the dog's skin with a face lift and tummy tuck. 

Here's a quick challenge question for you: what is the difference between Crank and JJ and reporters on The National Enquirer staff?  Answer: reporters for The National Enquirer at least make up their own creative lies out of nothing.  They don't take a real story and lie about it.

After hearing the story as joked about by Crank and JJ, later in the day, another one of our critics heard the story reported on another radio station, 107.1, The Duck.  Their story contradicted the story as told by Crank and JJ.  Sure enough, a local paper in Britain also contradicted Crank and JJ's version of the story.  Some key points:

• The sum total paid over two years was $15,000, not $10,000.
• The couple did not shell out this money.  Their pet insurance did.
• The surgery was not for cosmetic reasons.  The dog suffered from a rare genetic defect that caused excessive bagginess of the skin.  The face lift was to prevent the dog from going blind.  The tummy tuck was to remove excessive skin that had become infected after having a large growth removed from the stomach.

We understand Crank and JJ are entertainers trying really hard to entertain morning commuters.  We don't expect perfect reporting with every fact exact.  $15,000, $10,000, big deal.  minor discrepancy.  Crank and JJ are entertainers, not reporters who have to have every fact correct.  The other two facts to the story, however, are important and central to their claim that the couple were dumbasses for providing plastic surgery to their dog.

Insurance wouldn't have paid for the surgery if the surgery were for cosmetic reasons only.  Obviously, the dog suffered medically and needed attention.  The couple should've been heralded as responsible pet owners for having the foresight to obtain pet insurance.  Even if they had paid for the operations out of their own pocket, they should be heralded as responsible pet owners for getting their dog the necessary medical treatment to prevent the dog from suffering.

Now that Crank and JJ made dumbasses out of the couple by outright lying about the reasons for giving their dog a face lift and tummy tuck, we seriously question the validity of any of their daily dumbass reports.  They've lost their credibility as news gatherers, but gained credibility as lazy entertainer wannabes.  If you're going to make up the daily dumbass, at least be creative enough to come up with one out of your own imagination.  Don't take a real story and omit the facts just so you have someone to make fun of.

Daily dumbass? Nope, dumbasses of the year.

Out of the five original critics, two of us are left and occasionally tune in.  Overall, we are happy to see WZBH clean up their programming style and the addition of a woman deejay is refreshing.  Then there's the morning show....

JJ is a domesticated version of Matt, but a lot smarter. 

"Smarter?" you might ask.

Yes, smarter.  He plays the part of a goofball who stumbles over words larger than two syllables.  We figure he's either really dumber than an oyster or he's smart enough to play the dumb oyster role to get away with saying just about anything.  Fortunately, he takes fifteen minutes to get to a point and we usually switch stations after two minutes.  Only ocassionaly will we suffer through the full fifteen minutes.

We've been disheartened the last month or so with Crank and JJ's subtle gay slurs and their definition of a real man.  Like we said before, the thirty-something duo are trying to pass themselves off as high school locker room jocks.  They succeed with conveying that image about as well as Madonna pulled of acting like a virgin or Newt Gingrich pulls off being a moral, upstanding conservative.  Crank and JJ would be a Hell of a lot funnier and more entertaining if they acted like the thirty-somethings they are and not the 16-18-year-olds they wish they were.

But that's not why they earned the dumbasses of the year.  They earned the title because of their report on today's daily dumbass.  In case you missed it, today's daily dumbass was some gaming company that launched a promotion of a new game by sending copies into space.  The copies were tagged with a GPS system and the idea was when the games came back to earth, fans could track where they land and get a free copy.

The first copy fell in a protected virgin forest high up in a 150-foot tree.  Fans hacked their way through the protected forest, cutting down many trees along the way and started hacking at the old tree.  They were promptly arrested.  Crank and JJ could not understand why the fans should be arrested for cutting some trees down.  Trees, after all, would grow back so no harm done.

Crank and JJ expressed today's self-centered attitude prevalent among those under forty.  The forest was not only protected, but it was a special forest.  It was a virgin forest.  Very few virgin forests are left in this country.  We all have grown up in the scarred landscape of less than a hundred-years-old and many people probably figure our forests today are what our settlers seen when they first arrived.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

A virgin forest is five hundred, even a thousand-years-old.  It has never been clear cut to the ground and has very few, if any, invasive plants growing in it.  It's as close to what the settlers saw when they first came to this country as we'll ever see.  Cut it down and the invasive plants take over and the forest withers away.  It would take many centuries of careful management to get the forest back to where it has been for the last five or ten centuries. 

Yes, we agree the gaming company is the daily dumbass.  What responsible corporation would send their trash into space to fall wherever it may fall?  The decision makers at the company should be arrested for littering and abetting the destruction of a protected forest.  The fans of the game were rightly arrested.  None should get a slap on the wrist by paying a fine and doing some community service.  All should be hauled off to jail and the key thrown away.

Crank and JJ have cemented their title as dumbasses of the year for defending the fans who valued a game over natural beauty and are well on their way to vying for the dumbasses of the decade.  Competition for that title is stiff, though.    Madonna and Gingrich are giving them a run for their money.

 

JJ is a blonde female

Let's get one thing straight.  The five of us at the Critics Page are in agreement that public personalities who rely on stereotypes to make a point or a joke lack the creativity, mastery of the English language, and intellectual depth to be called anything other than wannabes.  Thankfully, we have noticed a trend with Crank and JJ to move away from using stereotypes in an attempt to be funny or make a point.  There have been a couple of "slip ups" that were more in the gray area of the definition of a stereotype - mostly concerning the notion of a "real man" - but certainly nothing blatantly offensive as was the staple of the old Matt and Crank show.  For that, we thank Crank and JJ and applaud WZBH for making the overall tone of the programming at the station more palatable to a diverse audience.

After listening to the Crank and JJ show the last couple of weeks, we decided to have fun with this review and use stereotypes to drive home the point of why using stereotypes is not only offensive, but can lead to erroneous conclusions. 

Q: How do you keep a blonde busy for hours on end?
A: Ask her which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Yes, that's a real joke and perpetuates the myth that blondes, specifically female blondes, are airheads. 

The other day, Crank made a comparison to the daily dumbass who set himself on fire and fell out of his deer blind to his death to the chicken and egg question.  Did the fire kill the man or the fall?

JJ asked, dumbfoundedly, what did the chicken and the egg have to do with the story of the hunter.  For the next five minutes or so, listeners were treated to JJ's inability to comprehend the chicken and egg question as it related to the daily dumbass story because he never heard the chicken and egg question before in his entire life.

There you have it.  Proof JJ is a blonde female.  He only let the question go because a commercial break interrupted him.

Still not convinced?  We know, based on another stereotype, that women take ten minutes to tell a two-minute story.  Listen to JJ give his daily dumbass report.  Today, the two-minute story was about a guy arrested for hitting his girlfriend, who slapped a bottle of pills out of his hands thinking he was trying to commit suicide.  He was trying to commit suicide by overdosing on what he believed were sleeping pills, but the reason he earned the title of daily dumbass was because the bottle of pills he tried to OD on was a bottle of Flinstone vitamins.  Like it would a woman, it took JJ more than five minutes to get to the point that the sleeping pills were Flintstone vitamins.

In fact, two of us at the Critics Page usually never find out who the daily dumbass is and why because we switch stations before JJ gets to the point, much like we tune out our wives when they start telling us a story.  Too many words to say not much of anything.

So there you have it - proof JJ is really a blonde female. 

And, hopefully, a lesson of why no one should rely on stereotypes to make a point or be funny.  We're pretty sure JJ is not a blonde female despite fitting the stale and false stereotype.



Listeners are still wasting their time

Dubbed the Worst Show or not, Crank and JJ have chosen the wrong noun to describe what happens in the morning.  "Worst" is debatable, but we object to "Show".  Show implies something memorable.  There's been nothing memorable on the Crank and JJ's show since we last posted a little over a month ago.

"So what warrants this post?" you might ask.  Simple.  Two of our critics listened to two days of rants against male European fashion invading this country.On Thursday, they prefaced the topic with typical sexist remarks of a "real man" works hard and the woman cleans the house.  A "real man" has no need to start wearing women's clothing.

Our two critics brushed the segment off as an exception to their normally innocuous programming (based on what little all five of us actually listen to now-a-days) and reassured themselves Crank's wife and JJ's "significant other" would be thrusting scrub brushes in their hands when they got home as punishment for making such pre-adolescent remarks about women.

But we should've known how insecure little boys really are.  Today, they carried the topic further so they could get some gay bashing time in.  If you're a little boy getting slapped around by your woman for every little thing you say or do is wrong, it is perfectly understandable why you would turn around and lash out at others you erroneously believe you can slap around.

Hard cold facts.  Most people on Delmarva couldn't find Europe on a globe much less know what the latest European fashion is.  In fact, most people on Delmarva don't care where Europe is on a globe much less what the latest fashion trends are.  European fashion trends invading America might warrant a one-liner comment and then move on.  It's a non-issue ranked right up there with Hollywood glamor and what that Chinese gal did while sewing the jeans you're wearing right now.

We're convinced Crank and JJ are not sexist, racist, or homophobic.  We are convinced they are little boys trying to be men.  Real men haven't a clue what the latest fashion trend is, much less what the latest European fashion trend is.  Perhaps if their women weren't slapping them around so much at home, they'd be a little more secure in who they are and what they are doing.  And then maybe Delmarva would be treated to the highest rated "Worst Show" ever recorded.

Threesome with Oprah and Barbara

We found a new toy. Best of all, it's priced right - FREE! We reviewed the show we're making fun of here, Crank and JJ's debut. Yes, you might have noticed "Coffee Party" as the creator. You got us. We're playing around before launching our next webventure. Periodically, we may still mosey over here to poke some fun at our favorite bigots.

Another nightly dumbass

Tonight's nightly dumbass is not one, but two people.  Bet you think we're going to name Crank and JJ again, huh?  Nah, that'd be too easy.  Tonight's nightly dumbass, or should we say, dumbasses, are two of our own critics.

Morbid curiosity got the better of them and they decided to tune Crank and JJ in.  They were happy to report that the segment, "Acoustics at eight", has gotten even closer to playing at eight.  At eight-twenty, listeners were treated to a crappy studio song played acoustically crappily. 

But our two dumbasses listened to more than a crappy song.  JJ's daily dumbass was an eighteen-year-old out of Scotland who stabbed his girlfriend to death because she didn't make garlic toast to go with the spaghetti dinner.

Normal, intelligent listeners were probably listening to another station or their CD, but if they happened to be tuned in, no doubt they would fail to see the humor in the tragic story.  The young man probably had serious mental issues, like being bipolar or something, to stab his girlfriend thirty times over garlic toast.  He's certainly not a dumbass by any stretch of the imagination.

Listening on to Crank and JJ's banter, the listener becomes keen to why they would think this murder was worthy of making fun of.  JJ made it quite clear that if your woman doesn't do what she's supposed to do, two black eyes is ok to get her in her place, but murder is not.

Domestic violence and spousal abuse is no laughing matter.   Sure, we know how their defense of their brand of humor would go.  "We made fun of a serious situation to get people talking about these serious issues."

That's the defense being used by a hair salon in Canada for their ad depicting a well dressed man holding diamonds and standing behind a fashionably dressed woman poised on a sofa and flashing a black eye.  The caption reads, "Look good in all you do."  (story)

The owners of the hair salon defend the ad as their attempt to get people talking about a serious subject.  Funny.  Most hair salons design ads to get people to come in and get their hair done.  Instead of people finding the ad thought provoking, they find it insulting and demeaning to women and a wink to the boys who slap their women around.

By the same token, most listeners probably expect Crank and JJ to entertain them on their daily dumbass report with quirky stories of people doing really dumb things that make us laugh.  Killing a young woman is not funny for any reason.  Encouraging spousal abuse and the notion that men should keep their women in line with physical violence, if necessary, is not funny, by any stretch of the imagination.  It also is not an effective method to get people talking about a serious subject.  It is an effective method to convince some listener(s) out there that it's ok to slap their woman around because she's been getting out of hand lately.

Sadly, WZBH chose to air clips of the segment throughout the day to promote the new show.  WZBH must enjoy its reputation of being probably the third most bigoted station on Delmarva.  At least two conservative talk show stations has them beat.  WZBH is trying really hard to steal that title from those two stations.

So how does all this make our two critics the nightly dumbasses?  We've listened enough to know that WZBH may have changed the voices, but the daily doses of bigotry is what WZBH wants to promote.  Today, our two critics held out high hopes that yesterday's programming was a fluke and, instead, learned it only gets worse.  Any dumbass could've figured that out within the first week of The Worse Show Ever with Crank & JJ airing.  Our two critics still aren't convinced that it will only get worse.  The other three of us are.

Tonight's nightly dumbass

Since JJ can't give us the nightly dumbass that so entertained us weeknights, we thought we'd fill in.  Tonight's nightly dumbass is not one, but two people - Crank and JJ.

Let's back it up a bit.  We rarely listen to the morning show.  After our initial excitement and hopes for an entertaining show, we ended up with a toned down version of the old morning show.  The personalities are a little bit more likable than in the old format, but bigots are still bigots and bigotry as humor is a bygone fad of almost forty years ago.  It just plain ain't funny no more.

We listened once, last week.  We were amused at the segment, "Acoustics at eight" that came on at five til nine.  The critic writing to you likes the acoustic segment, having somewheres in the neighborhood of seven CDs of acoustic versions of songs by popular bands. 

We listened again, today, and the "Acoustics at eight" segment came on somewheres around eight-thirty.  Amusement has now transformed into befuddlement.  Are there any clocks at the station?

Last week's daily dumbass was a man in Oklahoma who fired his gun at fire fighting helicopters dipping into his pond to fight the wildfires in Texas.  All five of us are in agreement that the man should've been the daily hero and JJ and Crank the dumbasses.  All five of us agree that anyone - and especially government employees - who doesn't want an ass full of buckshot had better ask us before stepping foot on our land much less helping themselves to the resources we own on the land. 

How hard would it have been for the fire fighting commander or local sheriff to pick up the phone and tell the landowner they needed his water to fight neighboring wild fires?  Oklahoma is also in a severe drought.  What if the man relied on that pond to irrigate his fields or water his livestock, wouldn't you expect him to shoot first, ask questions later?  If that pond goes dry, he could lose his livlihood.  Who's going to pay his bills then?

Again, we can't stress it enough.  Do your homework and think outside of the box before making yourself the dumbass.

Today's dumbass was not one, but three people holding up the express checkoout at the Walmart while Crank and JJ were trying to get through the line as quickly as possible. 

First person up - an old lady who paid by <gasp> a check.  There goes that subtle bigotry.  What did her age have to do with how she chose to pay?  Oh yeah, old people are feeble and slow. 

All five of us at the Critics Page have shopped at Walmart and have paid by check.  There's nothing to fill out.  You hand a blank check to the cashier, the cashier feeds it through the machine, which takes less than ten seconds, and then you sign the electronic pad facing you.  Either Crank and JJ are telling us that Delawareans are more backwards than we give them credit for or they completely fabricated the little old lady paying by check.

Second person up - a Mexican who chose to pay with coins for one portion of his order, and a twenty for the other portion.  Again, there goes that subtle bigotry.  What did his ethnicity have to do with how he paid for his order?  In fact, we're willing to bet that while he was probably Hispanic, most likely Latino, he probably wasn't Mexican.  We fully expect that analysis to go whoosh right over Crank and JJ's heads.  Bigots have a hard time understanding that people with brown skin speaking Spanish does not automatically equate to Mexican.

So he shopped for two people.  One was poor and had coins to pay for the order.  The other was rich and had a twenty to pay for the order.  Whether one person pays for both orders separately or two people are ahead of you paying for their own orders, the time standing in line is the same.  And since none of us at the Critics Page are rich like Crank and JJ, we do consider payment in coins as cash payment.  Between paychecks, we're always paying in coins.

Third person up - Mom.  Bashing women through Moms is a favorite pasttime of JJ's.  He'll never bash men through Dads, but he loves to bash women through the incompetent Moms.  What was her stupidity?  Asking the cashier about two different types of cigarettes and which one had more cigarettes. 

Yes, JJ, every smoker and many nonsmokers know there are twenty cigarettes to a pack, no matter which brand.  Every smoker and many nonsmokers also know that a pack of camels isn't the same amount of cigarettes as a pack of Virginia Slims.  Try really hard to think about that one.  We have confidence that you can tell us why both packs have twenty cigarettes, but both packs don't have an equal amount of cigarettes.

Since we are convinced that the first shopper was made up, or at least the story was embellished like a good fish tale, we have our doubts about the other two shoppers, too.  The story was a good yarn to bash the elderly, Latinos (specifically Mexicans), and women.

But that's not why we award the nightly dumbass award to Crank and JJ.  They get the award because they chose to shop at Walmart and support both the Chinese economy and Chinese worker at the expense of our American economy and American worker.

Not a good enough reason?  Don't fret, there's more.

We've noticed the younger generation, particularly those under thirty-five, are impertinent and impatient seekers of instant gratification.  We can thank the Internet, drive thrus, and express checkout lines for the ingrained attitude of instant gratification among the snot-nosed, bratty younger crowd.

Not fun when the group you belong to is singled out for ridicule, is it?  Sad truth is that those of us over thirty-five have more patience, understanding, and compassion for others who operate at a bit slower speed than the seekers of instant gratification. 

Still not good enough reason to award Crank and JJ the nightly dumbass award?  Yup.  There's more.

You both were shopping at Walmart.  If you want prompt service and speed, shop at a high end store where the clerks will annoint your feet as they take your money and usher you out the door.  You shop with poor people, you get treated like poor people.  Shop with rich people, you get treated like rich people.  Very simple equation.  You both were the dumbasses for being in a hurry because you didn't plan ahead of when and where to shop to get the service you think you deserve.  The truth is you deserved the service poor people get and that's what you got.  Dumbasses.