How I met their mother and wasted nine years

Ok so I didn’t really waste nine years. Actually I don’t remember when I started watching the show “How I Met Your Mother” but I am sure it wasn’t until around season 3 or 4. Maybe even later when it stared airing on reruns in syndication in 2008. Either way I was only invested in the show once I learned there was an end planned in the near future and I realized how funny Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) was on this show.  I mean COMEON he was great in the Harold and Kumar movies but getting to see a true role model on TV each week was awesome. I am still looking for that life sized Storm Trooper he had in his apartment. But I digress…

So as the ending was becoming more obvious over the last few seasons I started watching semi-regularly, then after about two episodes I realized how much I hated the main character, even though I knew the ending centered on the Ted character finding the love of his life and growing old and having kids, I secretly wished he was going to get run over by a bus or a piano drop on him once he met “the one”, that was the ending I wished for every time I saw a shooting star.

Inside jokes and running gags aside the show at least had four out of five lovable characters and there was the hook on who would Ted end up with. The ending of this show (SPOILERS) was the biggest let down in my TV watching since they cancelled House and Lie to Me within the same year.

The ninth and final season started out and each following episode built upon the wedding weekend of two of the main cast – Barney and Robin. Eventually Ted’s future wife is introduced and it is clear early on she is the one, now all we have to do is see Ted meet her and we are done. After a few flash backs, flash forwards, and some loose ends involving a line of past part time characters that have come and gone over the past near decade, we get to the end. BUT WTF!!???Q?Q?Q??Q?Q

Somewhere at the end we find out that in the longest running story of “how we met” Ted finally finishes telling the kids how he met their mother, and BAM we are told that she already died. Meeting her took nine years, in two minutes he had two kids, a decade went by, she died, and another number of years passed. Now all of a sudden his kids are saying “Dad obviously you are telling us that story because you have the hots for Robin – oh yeah somewhere along the last 30 minutes or so of the last episode there was a weird left turn where after Barney and Robin got married (the whole premise for the entire ninth season ) they divorce and Robin goes off to live her life jet setting from reporting assignment to assignment and the rest of the gang just moves forward same as before (except Ted is now married and popping out kids, then watching his wife die).

Somewhere in that last episode I actually started liking Ted for just a second – his story was finally ending and all the pompous grandstanding whiny sad puppy dog goody goody aww shucks BS he spewed for nine seasons was finally at least coming to an end and a happy one, then the writers of the show go and kill off the one thing that was good and associated with the Ted character and that was his future/past wife. Then in a whirlwind last two or three minutes Ted rushes off to profess his love for Robin, the same chick by the way he dated back in season one or two and again in three or four and pined over back in seasons five through nine until finally letting go and meeting the one.  Wheeew let me catch my breath.

Ok that is it, apparently there is an alternate version to the ending and it will be on the DVD, however I can saw I wouldn’t buy that crap. I think alternate endings are great when you actually try to do it right the first time. However I may be boycotting all works written by the team that delivered that suck fest of a show.

So if by chance this blog lasts the eugenics war and the rise of the machines and humanity has a rebirth and one of you finds an archive of old shows. If “How I Met Your Mother” is one of them, go ahead and watch it but you’d be better off watching Gilligan’s Island, - at least you don’t get sold on a happy ending.

Generation -" Y" don't you go Eff yourself

Wow haven’t done this in awhile. Not for lack of desire, but mostly I have a dog I can rant too now so I do not need this outlet. I also spend 45 hours a week give or take 14 minutes, sitting staring at a computer screen while the voice in my head screams DRONE DRONE DRONE – DO MY BIDDING… Then I spend 45 minutes to an hour each way in traffic hell. Yeah yeah wherever you live is worse….sure I agree, my opinion is that wherever I am is the worst traffic in the world and I am sure if I were honest with myself I would admit there are far worse places than being behind M**&*ER F(*&#&g “My student is a student of the freakin millennium of Studebaker Middle school” stick family, George Mason Alumni, License plate FRQ 1234 (made up to protect the idio….I mean innocent)….where was I? Oh my chest hurts even just reliving the traffic in my head. All I know is my life is going to be a lot shorter unless I find another commute or a job on a beach somewhere (preferably both).

So why oh why did I come here today? Ah yes. I am on a number of private group Facebook pages and usually I blow off much of what is said or I agree and share some of the funny stuff. But today I was reading a post from a guy who is..lets say – in the Navy (as a random profession) and he is- lets say a senior enlisted guy as a random thing to be. He was venting about how todays generation of Sailors (and kind of by association the entire current generation) is an “entitled” generations. I am not immune on thinking that some – or many – that have come behind me have had it easier. It is after all a different world. I mean take the iPhone alone. If I had that when I was 20 and working all over the world, I could have packed a lot less crap. I would have loved to carry something to read, my favorite 23,859 songs, a way to keep in touch with friends and family at any time, and access to the internet (which did not exist for the public when I was 20 so it would have been REALLY amazing to have that). I mean COMON!!! How nice is it to be able to google “is Kim Kardashian’s ass real or fake, or how long can a Narwhal whale submerge before needing to come up for air, or best denture cream – whenever you want, even at 2:35 in the morning on a Tuesday. So yeah today’s kids have it easy.

Ah but here is the catch. It hit me. A kid who was lets say in 7^th grade in the Fall of 2001 is what? About 25 or 26 now? So some kid who was still trying to figure out how to talk to girls, probably still had more GI Joe posters in his room than pics from his older sisters Vic Secret catalog or the SI Swimsuit edition, goes to school one day and if he was anywhere but maybe Lancaster PA, his teacher turned on the TV and he watched his world change on a nice warm sunny Tuesday morning.

Where is 25 year old Dane or Danielle? What if that kid is now in the Army or even Navy? His or her whole life we have been at war. Sure it is not an every day thing on the news and to be honest I don’t think it needs to be. I don’t think we have to be reminded every day at 5:30 news by Peter Jennings or Lying Dan Rather on losses or gains or political infighting on who is to blame….and to be honest if you are reading this and realize “hey I have not heard much on the war in a while”. Well let me tell you – March was the FIRST month since it all began that there were no casualties. Second there are elections scheduled for both Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming weeks and months. Who did that? Well sure some old Generals and maybe an Admiral or two with some politicians maybe, but the back breaking work, the hard crap – was done by 18-29 year olds for over a decade. It was the washed up folks who already had their families started and who had stared saving for the future, had a mortgage ect.. who had already had their years of slipping into  strip clubs that were off limits, or doing keg stands, or waking up in a strange room, town, or county and not really remembering how they got there. See it was the people who had the fun that were making the decisions robbing those who were missing out on their time “that generation”.

It is true this only applies to a very small part of the population. WAIT stop there!!!! Lets use another example, what about that same 25 year old. During that spoiled me me me childhood, he or she may have had to move because mom and dad lost their home, or had to do with out because mom got laid off from the auto plant and dad lost his job as a hair dresser. Not saying that others have not had their challenges and hard times just that you should walk a mile in that other persons moccasins.

Ok I am done for now.  Here is Mort on what to expect on tomorrows commute.