In watching the NFL playoff game on Fox yesterday, I saw their new football robot graphic, which reminded me of the old Fox football robot graphic. Man, I hated that stupid robot! The newer one is way cooler, although I really feel I must say that I think it’s cheating for him to use a shield: human football players don’t get to use shields, so it’s totally cheating for robots to use them. (Unless they’re too wimpy to play football with humans without using shields and weapons! Pansies!) And I might like the new one better because he’s moving and in semi-close-up, rather than standing there like a jerky jock show-off. But the old one: Argh! It was so annoying!
Well, it was annoying, that is, until they showed it playing an electric guitar (!). Yes, I know what you’re thinking: isn’t a stupid football robot playing guitar even lamer? Well, ordinarily, yes; but in this case, no. For you see, they had him playing a Fender Stratocaster (or a look-alike), and from the way they put it together, it was obvious that the guys doing the robot graphics for the football games had never played guitar or ever gone to see many bands play live (or else they were intentionally sabotaging the football robot segments)! Why do I say that? Well, it’s simply because from the relative size of the guitar next to the robot, it became obvious that the football robot, while seeming tough and big, was only about 4-feet tall. You see, the guitar was ridiculously large on the robot: kind of like a bass guitar on a tween-age girl. But this wasn’t a bass: it was a guitar! Which meant that the Fox football robot was actually shorter than your average tween-age girl.
Well, maybe that’s why they switched to a new football robot at Fox. In any case, the old robot couldn’t have been lamer until they added the guitar anyway, so he pretty much had to go because he detracted from the football games (having jumped the shark immediately upon creation). But when they added that ridiculously oversized guitar, all of a sudden, he became so-bad-it’s-good! But I’m still glad they got rid of him anyway and replaced him with a newer model. Because after all, until they shatter the illusion with this new model, we’ll probably all think the new one is at least big like a football player, so he'll seem sort of appropriate as a football mascot.
But you know, maybe a robot, being all metal and hydraulics and stuff, is way stronger than a real football player anyway, so he doesn’t need to be as big to be as strong. See what I mean? And maybe that’s why the old robot was a mini-mite anyway: to rub it in to humans that robots can conquer us easily, so we'll all be demoralized when the machines take over later this year. (Oh, and they're probably all going to be extra small and cutesy looking when they conquer us just to rub it in!)
But Fox, if you’re going to add a guitar to the new football robot, here’s some advice: make it a bass guitar instead of a guitar: that way, if it’s too big, at least it won’t look as ridiculous as it would if it were a guitar, an instrument that’s about ¾ the size of a bass to begin with.
Here’s the only picture I can find online of the Fox football robot with a guitar. It may not be the same guy, but you can still easily tell the guitar is way too oversized for that robot anyway:
