There Are Too Many Roller Skaters In Commercials & I Don't Want To Be On A First-Name Basis W/Airline Pilots

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, it’s a Tuesday edition of The Gripe Report!

Now, Tuesday can finally have its own feel… a feeling of gripey-ness…

So, this will be the new day for The Gripe Report, which I think is very exciting. People have been saying for years that Tuesday is the new Friday. Which would then make Wednesday the new Saturday, and so forth.

Now let’s get this Tuesday gripe fest rolling!

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

I usually don’t get too topical in the Gripe Report (we do that with a side of jokes on Saturdays in The Punch-Up) but I want to talk about a problem I have with something that has been in the news quite a bit: airline pilots.

It’s not a problem with the pilots themselves, it’s a complaint that has more to do with the airlines.

A couple of weeks back, I flew up to Pennsylvania on Breeze Airways and while the flight was pleasant, I realized Breeze does something I’ve noticed with other low-cost carriers like Allegiant and Frontier.

What am I talking about? This:

"Just a quick message from the flight deck: this is Captain Mike, I’ll be getting you to your destination with the help of First Officer Brad…"

Must we go first names here? I don’t like the idea that the pilots are just supposed to be on a first-name basis with me.

If I hear, "This is Captain Keith…" before takeoff, I want off the plane. (Getty Images)

It’s way too casual for my comfort. I want Captain MacClusky and First Officer Van Horn flying this bird, not Scott and Tim.

I just feel safer if I’m at least presented with the illusion that the dude flying my Frontier flight with the Otter on the back flew a couple of successful missions during Desert Storm. That doesn’t need to be true, I just want it to be a maybe, and no pilot with superior accolades would ever go by their first name.

Captain Seth? Is this an airline flight or are we taking a guided pontoon boat tour around a lake?

Let’s just go with last names for pilots. It makes everyone (read: me) much more comfortable.

When adapting a best-selling book into a movie, why not change all the parts that made people like the book? (Getty Images)

Movies Based On Books

William is checking in this week with a gripe about movies adapted from books that change everything people liked about the book in the first place:

Why do movies based on books always change key plots or storylines? The books sell millions of copies and the people who read the books want authenticity. Not a story that meets some damn check on the box or changes the whole damn dynamic that made the book great.

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Hollywood has become shockingly lazy. At this point, most movies are adapted from something whether that's a book, comic, video game, hell, there was a movie based on emojis.

So, there's not much of a drive for creativity… unless that means bastardizing the source material, in which case they'll go crazy.

In fairness, sometimes this works. Take Stanley Kubrick's The Shining for instance. That movie famously deviates from Stephen King's books so much that King himself hates it (although, given the way King's brain has been eaten away by Trump Derangement Syndrome over the years, I'm not sure how much stock I put in that.

Still, it's a great movie and it kind of became its own work.

On the flip side, you've got something like Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

I love the original Alan Moore graphic novel, and the movie stays perfectly faithful to it… until the climax at which point it tells Moore to pound sand and goes rogue.

(Spoilers ahead, but at this point the book. is 40 years old and the movie is like 16, so if something gets spoiled it's on you.)

In the book, the climax involves a giant squid monster being teleported into New York City, which it then destroys.

Despite following the graphic novel to that point, the Snyder version, that squid is replaced by a nuclear explosion.

From a storytelling perspective the ending works, but imagine being a fan of the book and sitting there thinking, "Alright, it's almost squid time," only for Snyder to say, "Like hell it is."

I don't get this. Fortunately, the Watchmen HBO miniseries (which is a sequel to the graphic novel and I really enjoyed it) retcons this, but not all works are so lucky.

I'm with William. If you're going to adapt a book, adapt the book. I get that sometimes little changes are needed, but not massive plot points.

If you want to get creative, how about writing something brand new?

I have to assume that these two women are gearing up for some kind of commercial shoot. (Getty Images)

Roller Skaters In Commercials

I believe I've mentioned it before, but my favorite genre of gripes are the ones that I've never really thought about before, but as soon as I hear them, I can't help but notice it all the time.

V has one of those for us this week:

Commercials with people roller skating. Not rollerblades. Old-time 4-wheel roller skates. 
GD pharmaceutical commercials 
Car commercials 
Where the F are all these roller skaters?

I have never seen one ever. 
I even lived in California once and never — not once — saw GD roller skater.

Stop stop stop the myth of roller skaters.  

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The great myth of roller skaters. 

There's Bigfoot, there's the Chupacabra, and then there's roller skaters.

This was not on my patterned Gripe-dar (Gripe radar), but as soon as I read this message, scores of pharmaceutical, Coca-Cola, and I think a few old iPod ads came flooding back to me.

What is up with roller skating?

I can't recall the last time I've seen old-timey 2-by-2 roller skates outside of a designated roller rink or in a commercial ever.

I've seen people ripping it up on rollerblades like it's Venice Beach circa 1993, but I've never seen roller skates.

Maybe it's just one of those things that flies under our noses and we never notice it, sort of like how you rarely see your neighbors bringing in groceries.

So, this then begs the question of why Madison Avenue feel like the best way to promote a product is to have people roller skating? How has not a single ad exec raised their hand and said, "Hey, uh, I don't think anyone does that… like, ever."

I mean, it does look pretty damn good on camera. Anytime that video of the pack of old guys cruising around a roller rink pops up, I have to watch it. 

Don't lie: you watched that at least three times. 

So, maybe there's some truth to it. If done right, roller skating can be mesmerizing even if absolutely no one ever does it in real life.

Could a portable toilet be the answer to all of your problems? Of course not, but it might help with one or two of them. (Getty Images)

We've Got A Fix To A Moving Gripe

In our last edition of The Gripe Report (which was a Hall of Fame-worthy entry), we talked about the pains of moving.

One of these was movers always having to use your bathroom, often with disastrous results.

Well, David has something of a solution:

As it relates to the people asking "can I use your bathroom?" There's a solution for this. Just like portable urinals, Amazon also sells portable toilets. You pour 5.8 gallons of water in one part of the tank and you can buy deodorizer with it. it lasts for 90 flushes then you have to refill it. Look it up on Amazon.

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You had me at "portable toilet."

I like this idea, but I have some concerns. When I have movers come, I try to keep them happy by picking up some drinks and tipping.

This way, they're as careful with my stuff as possible.

However, I feel like if one guy's stomach was gurgling thanks to some Wawa coffee, and I said, "Sure you can use the toilet; it's that contraption sitting in the middle of the garage," they might be inclined to "accidentally" drop a TV or my framed autographed Conan O'Brien poster.

I think we should all just agree as a society to let movers use our bathrooms, but if they rip a deuce within the first hour, we deduct 50 percent from their final tip. All you have to do is plan better. If you can make it to minute 61 and you've got to pay the band, hey, s--t happens. I get it. But maybe plan coffee/breakfast burrito consumption and preliminary bathroom breaks a little better so we don't run into this scenario.

Having said that, I kind of want to have one of those portable toilets around just in case of some sort of plumbing emergency…

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That's it for this week's edition of The Gripe Report!

Moving forward, you'll find it on Tuesday afternoons, which I think seems like as good a time as any to complain.

In the meantime, if you've got a gripe, be sure to pass it along to me!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com