Betty White restores some sanity

As pretty much everyone has heard by now, a young Marine got the clever idea to make a YouTube video to ask Mila Kunis to be his date for the Marine Corps Ball. Mila accepted and it was one of those cutesy moments everyone loves.

A female Marine, hand-to-hand instructor(?), followed up with her own invite via video for Mila's co-star in their new movie, Justin Timberlake, and he accepted as well. Not sure if it was because she was cute (she was) or it looked like she could make him cry like a baby if she wanted to (she looked pretty tough). After all, Timberlake dated Jessica Biel for a while I think, and she looks tougher than most guys I know.

Anyway, it was all one of those great moments in clever thinking history. Then some smart-ass decided to send Betty White a similar invite.

*groan*

And I'm thinking -- here we go, now it's going to be invites for Kathy Griffin, Snooki, and every other D-list celeb jokers can think of to invite to this thing.

Fortunately, Betty had the smarts to gracefully decline, and hopefully that put an end to this nonsense. And if that didn't, I'm hoping the Commandant stepped in and put a stop to it. The Marines are pretty touchy about their image and this could have gotten ugly pretty quickly.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Sometimes I think imitation is more the sign of a weak, lazy mind. There are times you just have to give it up to the guy/gal who beat you to the idea, you know?

Years ago, some college kid was looking for a way to come up with the money to help with his tuition. He got the idea to make a webpage where he could sell advertising space for one dollar a pixel. He called it The Million Dollar Webpage. It had a million pixels and you could buy a one pixel ad for a buck. Pretty neat. He got tons of publicity, did some tv, and I think in the end he made around a half-mil with the page. Very cool.

Naturally, pixel ads popped up everywhere after that. Everyone tried to jump on the idea and it simply didn't work. The original was clever and unique and the rip-offs seemed just like that -- rip-offs.

It's the same way with music. The rage over sampling for instance. Some musician (and I use the word loosely) samples another artist's music/lyrics because he/she can't come up with anything original on their own and tries to pass it off as artistic or an homage or some weak explanation other than the truth -- they don't have the talent to write their own stuff.

I remember back in the 90s perhaps, there was group called de la Soul that had their moment in the sun. And I'm watching this interview with them, and the guy's asking them about their name.

The one dude's name is M.A.S.E. And I'm thinking, maze, like corn? No, it's M.A.S.E., as in Making a Soul Effort. Uhh, yeah. Okay.

The other guy is Trugoy the Dove. Okay, some obscure language thing, right? No, the guy says he really likes yogurt, so he just spelled it backward for his name. Seriously?! That's the best you could come up with?! Why not just call yourself Jeff, you know? I mean, that's just stupid.

Look something like Will.I.am doesn't come along every day. He lucked into or had that spark of inspiration and it worked out right for history. If you have to force something about yogurt into your name, maybe you ought to just leave it alone.

Like I said, a mark of a weak/lazy mind.

But anyway, thanks Betty, for bringing the sanity.

Update:
And just like that it continues. Linda Hamilton responded to the Marine who issued the invite to Betty White, that she would be pleased to accompany him to the Ball.

*groan*

Someone please, stop the madness!