Adidas’ 2010 Star Wars line of footwear are only about 10 years too late

Hello all. Gabe here, figuring that a 3-month hiatus is long enough and gee, maybe it’s FINALLY time for a blog post, eh? So let’s do it up right with a Star Wars story. Never a bad idea.

Thanks to wildammo.com, interested consumers now have a sneak peek into Adidas’ planned line of Star Wars shoes that will be released a few at a time throughout 2010. Variations include the ‘TIE-fighter’ style —

— the ‘X-wing pilot orange’ style —

— the ‘Stormtrooper’ style —

— the ‘Darth Vader’ style —

… and a few others, including a Yoda style, Han Solo style, and an AT-AT style. Looks like the shoes will be roughly $100 a pair, give or take a few bucks.

As a longtime Star Wars fan, this is great. Look at those TIE fighter shoes, yo! Got the TIE pattern on the sides and everything! Fantastic. What a great line of shoes!

And also puzzling. I mean, let’s think about this from a marketing standpoint for a second. Looking at these shoes, who are these (and for that matter, the vast majority of shoes) marketed towards? Kids. What KID is going to look at those orange numbers up there and think “Oh, I’ve GOTTA have those!”? Not really sure, because if memory serves, Return of the Jedi was the last Star Wars movie to show anyone in those orange jumpsuits and that was 1983. So the only people that those shoes are going to hold any meaning for are the 35+ crowd.

Then there’s the “stormtrooper” ones. I don’t mean to unleash my inner SW nerd, but what am I looking at here? What’s I’m looking at is a couple of SANDTROOPERS who have been airbrushed to look like a couple of burnt marshmallow troopers and then here’s a couple of pearly WHITE stormtrooper shoes. Something doesn’t jive there. Yeah, those shoes are pretty spiffy but who else is starting to get the idea that the guys in charge of marketing these things don’t know the difference between a Star War and a Star Trek?

That’s nothing, though, compared to the supposed ‘Darth Vader’ line that look suspiciously like a pair of black sneakers that you could buy at the local Payless. Am I blind? I’m sitting here looking at them and I don’t see a single distinguishing characteristic that screams ‘Darth Vader’. What am I missing? Just because they’re black doesn’t turn them into Darth Vader shoes. Ok, I think the tongue might have a pic of Vader on it, as I sit here squinting, but the angle in which they were photographed is so terrible that I can’t tell. Isn’t that something that the marketers might want to make obvious to prospective buyers? You know, that they can SEE what it is they’re ordering? The Force is not with these guys.

I think the real problem here, besides the fact that the marketers clearly ran out of ideas so they had to make a quick Target run and pose some $4.99 action figures with their $100 shoes, is that half of these selections are totally lost on their key demographic. Sadly, 9-year-olds who are all into Star Wars right now only know the feeble prequel trilogy and the abysmal Clone Wars cartoon. They don’t know a Han Solo from Pokemon. There are no AT-AT’s in the prequels, no orange jumpsuits, no TIE fighters. So at least half of these shoes are really only going to be bought by 30 to 40-year-olds trying to get hip while living out some nostalgia at the same time. And since my generation is wise to George Lucas and his never-ending merchandise cash grab, I can’t see this turning out too well. Also, let’s face it – the mere existence of the Prequel Trilogy and laughably-atrocious Clone Wars cartoon have sucked much of the cool out of Star Wars. Episodes I-III didn’t build upon a great universe. They filled it full of stupid. If these shoes had been released in the late 90s, when Lucas re-released the original trilogy in theaters, they couldn’t have put enough sweatshop children to work quickly enough to meet the demand. Now, these shoes will probably come out to a resounding ‘huh, those are pretty cool….I guess…”

That being said, I’ll take a pair of the TIE fighter line, size 11s. 🙂

The Schadendude gets 1000 Visits!!!

Just wanted to thank my regular viewers of The Schadendude – today the site hit 1000 visits! I know it’s not that big of a deal and that more successful and ‘known’ blogs get 1000 views in about an hour, but seeing as how this is just my quaint little blog, I think that’s pretty swell.

Thanks again for stopping by, everybody. You’re awesome. 😉 Tell your friends and ask them to stop by. Me needy even more visits. more. More. MORE!!!!! Later, all. 🙂

AT&T – go die in a fire.

Leora and I each have iPhones. On the day that we bought them, we were pretty thrilled to have the coolest phone on the market. But there was one thing, just one, that made me pause when we had the financial opportunity to get them – AT&T.

The very first cell phone that I ever had was through AT&T, like 10 years ago or so. It was a small, silver, flip-top phone and I was stoked to finally be part of the cell phone community. Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long, seeing as how my phone was the worst piece of crap that I’ve ever tried to speak into — calls dropped constantly, just horrible. When I complained to AT&T about it, they said they’d be happy to send me another phone once I sent them mine. Not a better phone. Not an upgrade. The same phone. So that’s when I said ‘screw you’ and went to T-Mobile. I said I’d never, ever go back to AT&T.

Then, against all odds and reason, AT&T gets the iPhone contract. So here I am: I’d been with T-Mobile – they were great. I moved to Sprint when I got with Leora because that’s what company she was with – they were pretty decent. Then we switched to Verizon, because their phones were cooler and they were a bit cheaper. And then the iPhone comes out and, dammit, we wanted iPhones. I’m not too comfortable with jailbreaking stuff because I’m not that tech savvy. So if we wanted iPhones, I had to go back to AT&T. I knew they sucked. Sucked hard. But we REALLY wanted iPhones. And we made the switch.

We did that six months ago, just a bit after the 3G came out. Almost immediately, I noticed a problem. Leora and I live almost literally in the middle of Denver. You might have heard of it – there are 2 million people living here. So it’s not as if I’ve been living in the middle of the Kalahari and I’m about to make a ridiculous complaint. We live in the middle of the one of the biggest cities in the midwestern United States. So, inexplicably, I noticed that I was having network problems at home. That is, in and of itself, a problem. I’m a stay-at-home daddy and am here 98% of the time. I NEED to have a phone that works. If something happened to Natasha, how in f*ck’s name would I call 911 if I have no service? When I had Verizon, it was incredibly rare if I had anything less than five bars. I NEVER had a dropped call, NEVER couldn’t connect to a call, NEVER had crappy reception. When I switched to AT&T, that was the end of that.

I don’t recall a time that I’ve ever had ABOVE three bars. It’s usually one bar. And several times a day, I have no service at all. At least once a day, I have to reset my iPhone just so that I can fool it into searching for service again, because I’ll pull it out of my pocket to make a call and it will be completely off the grid. Leora constantly has to log onto Facebook from her office to see if I’m online, just so she can tell me that she’s been trying to call me for the past half hour. And I’ll look at my phone and it’s just sitting there – no received calls, no anything. What if something happened to me, or to her? I really don’t know, because we can’t count on our only real link to each other when she’s off at work. That’s scary. And Leora and I pay $150 a month for this. Oh hell no.

Today was the last straw. I was needing to get in touch with Leora at work about something. I pull the phone out of my pocket – no service. I reset it – it searches for the network – no service. I reset it AGAIN – it searches – no service. By this time, it’s a good thing that we don’t have a cat because I’d be kicking it across the room. Finally, after the third reset and about 10 minutes, it feebly picks up one bar of service. I call Leora, give her the message I needed to give her through clenched teeth, hang up, and immediately dial 611. AT&T, your ass is mine, beotch.

I went through the automatic menus, pounding ‘0’ at every opportunity, until I reached a person after about 5 minutes. Her name was Tamika and she sounded about as tired and soulless as you might expect somebody who makes $5.50 an hour answering phones all day would. I was civil at first, giving her all the information that she required. I told her my problem, that I constantly have to struggle to make calls; that even when I DO get through, the network drops the call half the time; that even if it DOESN’T drop the call, then I can’t hear who I’m talking to or they can’t hear me. I asked her why it was ok that Leora and I pay them $150 a month for pitiful-at-best service. She gave me the same pointless customer-speak blather that’s probably on 8-foot-long laminated banners in her crappy little office – “i’m so sorry about your issues; i understand your frustration, etc. etc.”

This was about 15 minutes into the call. She put me on hold while she “checked my account” (i.e. took a coffee break). She came back after about 5 minutes and told me that she had checked my coverage area and said that it was ‘moderate’. AT&T has 4 coverage types. ‘Moderate’ is the second worst. The only thing worse than ‘moderate’ is ‘none’. I asked how that was possible in the middle of a city with 2 million people. She apologized and said that she would forward the issue and put in a report to their “technical division”. I’ve worked in customer service for over a decade and I know “we hope that you go away now and stop bothering us about your stupid little problem” when I hear it. I got angry. Here’s a little rough excerpt of how the next minute went …

Me – “So you’re pretty much telling me that we’re paying you this money and nothing is going to be done.”

Tamika – “As I said, sir, we’re very sorry about your problem. I have forwarded this issue to the technical division and they will attempt to rectify the situation.”

Me – “That means absolutely nothing to me. Nobody’s going to do anything about this. I’m not stupid. As I told you, I’m a stay-at-home dad. I’m home all the time. And I need my phone to work AT HOME. What about that do you not get?”

Cubicle Drone – “All cell phone companies are the same in that we can’t guarantee what level of coverage you will receive with our product. All cell phone companies will tell you that.”

Me (enraged) – “Hold on. Did you just say that you are in the business of taking my money for a phone, taking my money for a service, and you can’t GUARANTEE THE FRIGGING SERVICE? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME?!?!?”

Minimum Wage Sally (ignoring me) – “As I said, we can’t guarantee the service in all areas.”

Me – “I’m not trying to make calls from the top of the Himalayas. I’m trying to make calls from my home in the middle of Denver. If something happens to my daughter, and I’m resetting my phone 3 times to make ONE PHONE CALL, that’s perfectly ok with you, huh?”

Douche – “I’m going to put you on hold while I check something for you.”

At this point, my BP was probably in the 180/120 area. Good thing she gave me another 10 minutes of hold time to calm down a bit. I had been on the phone with AT&T over a half hour when she came back. Now, when you’re on the phone and somebody places you on hold, there’s that minor expectation that some breakthrough will have been made when that person re-enters the conversation. When you’re on hold after making a complaint, there’s also that minor expectation that an offer for restitution will be made. Holy shit, was I way off.

Tamika – “Can I get the last 4 of your social?”

Me (rant mode) – “You know who I am! I’ve been on the phone with you for a half hour. Why are you asking for basic information this far into a phone call? It’s 4723. Now that that’s out of the way, what are you going to do to help me?”

Tamika – “We’re just trying to establish a pattern of issues with your coverage to log for future reference. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Me (rant mode, cont.) – “Future reference? I’m completely uninterested in future reference. I’m interested in the present, and what your answer is to me paying you $150 a month for the worst service in the phone industry….(it was here that I went on a 2-3 minute ever-escalating diatribe about AT&T and my vow to never return after my first experience but giving in when they got the iPhone contract. I’m not the type of person to act on my anger, but by the end, I must admit I was at near-shout level).

Tamika – “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. What else can I do to better assist you?”

Me – “Get me a supervisor, because you’re useless.”

After this exchange, I was put on hold for TWENTY FIVE MINUTES. It was that kind of hold where you gradually realize that you are engaged in a battle of wills. I knew that on the other side of the line that Tamika and whatever douchebag supervisor was around her StarTek this afternoon was staring at the light on her phone, hoping that I would hang up and the light would go out and the problem would be over. But I didn’t crack. I plugged in my iPhone, put the call on speaker, and stared it down like a grizzly bear. I watched it and watched it, trying my best to send psychic insults through the ether. I unplugged it and took it with me when I checked the mail, giving it contemptuous looks out of the corner of my eye as I walked back to my apartment. 35 minutes…40 minutes…45 minutes, and then finally a soft hiss of static and FINALLY I was going to speak to a supervi….

Nope, Tamika again. And she had a solution for my problems.

Her – “I spoke to our coverage supervisor and we’ve got some troubleshooting tips for your phone. Do you have another line from which to call us?”

Me – “What? No, this is my only phone. I have no lanline, I have no other cell phone, I have no rotary phone, I have nothing except this phone! That’s one of the first things that I told you. This is my only way to communicate with the outside world. This phone! ”

Her – “Because I would need you to speak from another phone while I walk you through these troubleshooting tips.”

Me – “I just told you that I DON’T HAVE ANY OTHER PHONE! Do I need to dumb this down for you? This is my ONLY phone!!!”

Her – “Ok, sir. I heard you. I think that if you are able to call us later that we might be able to help you with a potential phone problem.”

Me – “There isn’t any problem with the phone. I can drive a mile down the road and have full bars. The problem is your network. The phone is totally fine. I’m not going to waste another hour of my life to go through pointless troubleshooting tips when the NETWORK is the problem. You told me that we live in a ‘moderate’ coverage area, which is only slightly better than ‘none’. And yet I still have to pay $150 a month? You won’t do anything to help me. I know that you can’t give me a discount, but I know that supervisors could. But you won’t let me talk to one, even though I ASKED for one! That’s ridiculous. What happened to you finding me a supervisor to speak to, like I ASKED?!?!?”

Her (deflecting) – “You live in a ‘good’ coverage area.”

Me – “Excuse me…what did you say? You told me earlier in this call that we lived in a ‘moderate’ area.”

Her – “No, I didn’t sir. I said you live in a ‘good’ coverage area. You’re the one that said ‘moderate’.”

(*boom*)

Me – “Lady, I hope that this call is being taped and that your supervisors that actually give a shit about their customers review it, so that they can see how you LIE to your customers!!!! Thanks for nothing, dirtbag.”

*End of call*

AT&T, die in a fire. I know that I only get modest traffic on this modest little site of mine. But I wish I could get a million hits on this one. You blow goats. And you know it. But you don’t care, because you know that if people want iPhones, they’ll go through you to get them. You and your swiss-cheese network and the uneducated pathological liars working for your “customer service” division. How in God’s name did you get the iPhone contract? Do you have pictures of Steve Jobs molesting small children or something? Maybe if you had thrown me a bone, given me a discount, let me talk to someone who didn’t sound like a robot permanently set to ‘bored and uppity’, then I wouldn’t be writing this. But you didn’t. And yeah, MAYBE 50 people will read this, but that’ll have to do. Because there’s only one thing worse than bad customer service and that’s arrogant, not-give-a-shit, customer service. I hate you, AT&T. I hate you. Burn in Hell, you thieves.