The other day I was in my car and had the radio tuned to a Mariners game. In between innings, a commercial for Monster.com, the employment website, was aired. In the spot you hear the voice of a young Alpha dog male who works for a company that hires its employees through Monster.com. He was blabbing on about his dynamic company when he gets to the money segment, which is “if we beat yearly expectations, the whole company goes to Vegas, not just the brass, but the whole company all the way down to customer service. Our motto is we work hard so we can play hard. That’s what we’re all about.”

Can I please say that the “Work Hard-Play Hard” maxim is the most retarded phrase in the English language and needs to be retired immediately? Listen, the only people who work hard so they can play hard are athletes because playing a game is their job and if they want to excel at it they have to work hard (except in baseball, where you can be a 300 lb pork rind eating chain smoker and as long as you’ve got sufficient movement on your curveball you’ll have a job). Oh, the handful of people who play board games like chess and Scrabble, professionally. But those people are seriously weird and are neurochemically incapable of having fun anyway.

Now, I grew up on a farm in Illinois and I worked my ass off. After sundown, I never had the energy to play hard. I just wanted to eat Doritos watch Laverne and Shirley reruns. Now I live in the big city, as sequestered away from manual labor as much possible and my current office-based motto is work as little as possible, play a moderate amount, and deal with the occasional existential crisis that results. It's maybe not the optimal approach to life, but it's still better than working hard and playing hard because I'm not tempted to use that phrase. Young execs who “work hard so they can play hard” need to go back to high school where that brand of superiority might have some cache. Please keep it out of my real world, though.

And Vegas? What’s with people and their love of Vegas? If I have to hear one more quote from that movie Swingers I think I’ll barf. Yeah yeah, I know I know, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” And to that I say Thank God! I’d rather be moderately amused in Paris than “playing hard” in Vegas anytime.

“W.H.I.V.S.I.V.” is also the new motto for the Vegas tourist board. They’re moving away from the family angle as it doesn’t generate enough money. But, before the tourist board becomes to attached to the phrase, let me suggest another: “Las Vegas, playground of the uncreative.”