Metaphorically Stinking

It's a Faceoff! A rumble so rough it would make the Sharks and Jets look like . . . . um . . . like, well two weak things that fight each other. You know, like the Sharks and Jets do. Like . . . oh! I got it! Like a sick cat and a two-legged dog. Yeah, that'll do for a metaphor, won't it?

A few weeks ago (sorry for the delay) the Daily Universe brought us "round one of 'The Faceoff' a monthly feature in which Ben Carter and Jens Dana (two friends with opposing views on everything possible) will discuss campus issues." Opposing view on everything possible? It's true! For example, Ben thinks that they really are friends and Jens doesn't.

I appreciate that the Universe is trying to "mix it up" and "keep it fresh" and "highlight the fact that there are a myriad of things BYU students can be disagreeable about." What I appreciate most of all, though, is the fact that both Ben and Jens employ some pretty lousy similes in their first pargraphs.

Today's Faceoff topic? FOOTBALL!! We'll carefully weigh both sides, decide which one is the more heavy and bloated with funny laguage usage and the decide the winner! Get ready cause here comes ...

Ben: "I'll be up front. I don't like football. For various reasons, I've tried to like it. (Here it comes!) Like Lisa Simpson's future fiance trying to enjoy her family as novelty, as camp, as kitsch, as cautionary example. Nothing works."

Wow. Way to reference an obscure episode of a show creating a simile that a dubiously small percentage of your readers will know, Benny! (Tangent: Yes, I have seen that episode and did get the simile)(But still...).

Here are some of my suggested replacements:

"Like the time that the dad on the show ALF unsucessfully tries to explain to his neighbor that ALF is a short, hairy, ugly great-aunt who is visiting when he glimpsed ALF going into the kitchen. In the same way, I unsucessfully tried to like football."

Or

"Just like the time the Holodeck on the Enterprise went crazy (ok, one of the times) and Captain Picard sees what the future would be like if something happened or didn't happen (or something like that), things in the universe would be really crazy if I liked football."

Alright Ben, go to your corner. And don't spend too much time wondering exactly how Jens got his name in the first place, because away he goes!

Jens: "Earlier this season I overdosed on chagrin (which he bought cheap off a street dealer from UVSC, a kid just oozing with chagrin) when one of my fellow editors (name withheld for her own protection) confided in me she's never been to a home game at LaVell Edwards Stadium (perhaps she can pass the time watching the Simpsons with Ben).

"I consider myself pretty tolerant, but as a guy who's been to every home game except one, (here it comes!) I couldn't help gawking like she was a feature story on 'Ripley's Believe It or Not.'"

I enjoy the thought of Jens, wearing a blue wig and the blue 'B' on his chest bleeding through his sweaty T-shirt, coming home from another home game, yelling "Goooooo Cougars!!" to noone in his apartment then plopping down to watch Ripley's Believe It or Not. I also wish that Jens had been drinking a soda when his editor friend told him that she'd never been to a home game so that he could've comically sprayed it all over her, or better their editor-in-chief as he walked by. And if there was recorded laugh track, all the better.

The Faceoff verdict: Winner, BEN!

Ben's simile was definitely the worse so he is therefor the simultaneous winner/loser-thingy. Granted both Ben and Jens randomly referenced TV shows, but for randomness, Ben definitely had his head in the game! That might have been a computer or video game in his particular case, but definitely the clear winner!

And why am I worried about giving the victory to Ben and not Jens? Because as a rabid sports fan, if I get on Jens' bad side, he'll probably tear my Faceoff.