Late last night I wrote about my writers’ group’s dinner with Phillip Margolin. I’ve given it much thought since then, and I think I understand why success just seems to rain down on some people, and other people chase it frantically and never catch it, kindof like a dog chasing it’s own tail, or a dog chasing a stuffed rabbit at the dog track, or a dog chasing a squirrel, or a ...well, I’ve run out of examples and if you haven’t gotten the point by now, you must actually be a dog.
Yes, I think I’ve got the answer, and I’ll get to it sooner, or perhaps later, but here’s an example of what I’m talking about. I’m a girl. Like all girls (and I’m talking about gender here, not age because I’d probably have to use the word woman which doesn’t seem to make my point as well, if there is a point – we’ll have to wait and see).
As I was saying, as a girl I watch other girls and the one thing you’ll notice about girls is that the ones who want a boy (now here it seems like it would sound better to say man. Odd.). Anyway, if a girl is craving a guy (that works!), she has it written all over her like a neon sign: I WANT ME A MAN AND I’M NOT TOO PARTICULAR, HELL, EVEN YOU’LL DO!
Guys see her coming and they scatter like cockroaches when they see a can of RAID. I love using cockroaches as an analogy, and it says nothing about my attitude toward men. And I’m not doing product placement either. I hate RAID and killing bugs, but this seemed to work and I’m not changing it now. This is a prime example of over thinking something, which is exactly what girls craving a guy do.
Here’s the catch. The girl doesn’t just want a temporary guy, she wants a permanent one. This is what scares guys to death, but the girl is oblivious to this. She thinks that if she puts on a little more makeup, shows a little more cleavage, and gets a little drunker, she’ll be closer to snagging her prince charming.
But guys see right through this. They want a temporary woman – they’re looking for a good time for a short time. Like from midnight to three. This is the manly guy thing that has been proven in bathrooms all over the country. In women’s bathrooms, you’ll see little hearts drawn in permanent marker with Sally loves Billy or LaKeisha loves Muhammad inside them. In a guy’s bathroom you’ll see: For a good time, call...
What a girl’s gotta do is decide she doesn’t want a guy, then she’ll attract them like maggots. This is because guys love a pursuit, yes, but they’re also hard-wired to see women in terms of their relationship with their mother. There’s even an old song about this by Harry Von Tizer and William Dillon (wonder if he’s related to Bob Dylan?) that has a nice, catchy tune and lyrics and a chorus starting with, “I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad.” This is two guys saying, out loud, that they want to marry someone just like their mother.
Which proves my point. If you want to snag a permanent guy, you have to become his mother. How do you do that? Easy. You ignore him when he talks to you, like that commercial for the TV show “Family Guy” where the mom’s trying to take a nap and the son is standing beside the bed going, “Mom, mom, mom, mummy, mummy, mom, mom, mummy, mummy, mummy, mom…” and she finally shouts, “WHAT!” and he says “Hi.” You have to ignore him for a long time, like a few weeks or at least through a couple of sets the live band does at the bar.
Then when you finally acknowledge that he exists, you have to have a laissez-faire attitude toward him. Laissez-faire is a word I learned tutoring – this was on a high school kid’s spelling list, and he’s from Somalia, so he doesn’t realize that the word is never, ever used in the English language in any way whatsoever except on a vocabulary sheet. Other words on the list were caveat emptor and coup d’état – I had to look them up in the dictionary to explain to him what they meant – and just try using them in a sentence!
What I’m saying is, you can’t just let the guy possess you right away, because these days he can do that with any old girl. You have to be special – he has to work to win you over. Or as one happily married guy I know phrased it, “I chased her until she caught me.”
What’s this got to do with success as a writer? Beats the hell out of me. But I think there must be something to it. Somehow we’ve got to play hard to get with these agents and publishers. (Disclaimer: You should have a respect for the rule of caveat emptor when you read anything I write.) Wouldn’t it be a great coup d’état, though, if I, as a writer, could snag a great publisher by using a laissez-faire attitude? I sure wouldn’t use these words, though, because I’d have to look them up again.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
The Long Awaited Dinner with Mr. Margolin
I’ve just returned from a dinner with Phillip Margolin, an international best-selling author of murder mysteries. A couple of the women in my writer’s group bid on him at an auction, and we all gathered to gorge ourselves and pick his brain about writing.
Before I get to him, I must talk about the food. And what a spread it was! I love a potluck better than almost anything because people bring their show-off foods. There were only 13 of us present, including the guest of honor, but there were at least 20 different dishes. At least. People brought two and three things, and huge quantities of everything – like a Thanksgiving platter full of lasagna and fruit salad. After I finished stuffing myself, I found a crock-pot full of chili that no one even knew was there. I love chili but one more smidgen of food and I would have exploded like I’d swallowed a grenade, which might have put a damper on the evening, but you never know.
If the food had been lousy, I would have probably overeaten anyway, but because it was so spectacular, I ATE TOO MUCH AND had three very lovely little red cocktails, which had no effect on me whatsoever except to make me extremely sleepy.
Okay, okay, I’m getting to Margolin. I ended up sitting close to him, so I’d ask him a question and he’d say, “I’ll answer that a little later when I give my spiel.” I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting next to a perfect stranger, I either have to talk about my boring life or ask him questions. I wasn’t going to sit there like a chipmunk with my jaws puffed out from food and not talk, so I asked him something else and he smiled with infinite patience and said, “That’s one of the questions I’ll answer a little later.” Ooookay. Actually it made sense to wait because of the seating arrangement. We weren’t all gathered around the same table, so the people at the card table would have missed out, or we at the big table would have had to hear his answers again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Margolin settled back to tell us how he got his books published, and I started feeling my eyelids coming down like someone was tugging on a window shade. I jerked my lids back up and forced myself to look bug-eyed for a little bit, but then the old shades started sliding down again. I figured, what the heck, I’ll just have myself a short little nap and be good as new in a few. I’d wake up when the group would laugh. Finally I opened my eyes and saw the lady across from me dozing. It’s really hard to stay awake when you’ve eaten so much. Mr. Margolin’s stories were interesting as he took us down these winding paths, back alleys, and over hills and dells describing his experiences as a published writer. He’s also involved in a program that teaches grade school kids how to sit still for an hour and play chess that he’s very passionate about, and that has enjoyed many successes. I probably should have asked him if he could teach overeating grownups how to sit for an hour and stay awake. He’s an extremely nice guy who was a lawyer and must have worked very hard to do that and write at the same time, but he made it all sound like a piece of cake, which is what I got up to get because I could smell that chocolate from the kitchen and it was calling me like a siren song (whatever that is and I’m not looking it up right now).
If you want the summary of what he said, read on. Basically, he started writing because he wondered what it would be like to write a whole book, and about that time an old college friend he hadn’t seen in years called him up wanting to come visit. This guy turned out to be a bigwig in the publishing world. One lucky break after another effortlessly fell into his lap, and lots of very nice people helped in many, many ways. He just writes and lets the rest take care of itself.
His is a great success story, and one that, I think it’s safe to say for the whole group, none of us wanted to hear. We wanted him to write for many years and suffer rejection after rejection but keep going and one day, finally, someone recognized his talent. This is what we’ve all been going through, except we haven’t reached the one day, finally, part yet.
But all in all it was a successful evening. He gave us insights into what it’s like to be a famous writer flying all over the world with escorts in all the cities who take him to all the bookstores and speaking engagements. It sounds like great fun. Hope to be there soon.
The other place I hope to be even sooner is in my snuggly warm bed. Yawn, stretch, snore, dreaming of Margolin and success, and stuffed mushroom caps and chocolate cake. See ya!
Before I get to him, I must talk about the food. And what a spread it was! I love a potluck better than almost anything because people bring their show-off foods. There were only 13 of us present, including the guest of honor, but there were at least 20 different dishes. At least. People brought two and three things, and huge quantities of everything – like a Thanksgiving platter full of lasagna and fruit salad. After I finished stuffing myself, I found a crock-pot full of chili that no one even knew was there. I love chili but one more smidgen of food and I would have exploded like I’d swallowed a grenade, which might have put a damper on the evening, but you never know.
If the food had been lousy, I would have probably overeaten anyway, but because it was so spectacular, I ATE TOO MUCH AND had three very lovely little red cocktails, which had no effect on me whatsoever except to make me extremely sleepy.
Okay, okay, I’m getting to Margolin. I ended up sitting close to him, so I’d ask him a question and he’d say, “I’ll answer that a little later when I give my spiel.” I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting next to a perfect stranger, I either have to talk about my boring life or ask him questions. I wasn’t going to sit there like a chipmunk with my jaws puffed out from food and not talk, so I asked him something else and he smiled with infinite patience and said, “That’s one of the questions I’ll answer a little later.” Ooookay. Actually it made sense to wait because of the seating arrangement. We weren’t all gathered around the same table, so the people at the card table would have missed out, or we at the big table would have had to hear his answers again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Margolin settled back to tell us how he got his books published, and I started feeling my eyelids coming down like someone was tugging on a window shade. I jerked my lids back up and forced myself to look bug-eyed for a little bit, but then the old shades started sliding down again. I figured, what the heck, I’ll just have myself a short little nap and be good as new in a few. I’d wake up when the group would laugh. Finally I opened my eyes and saw the lady across from me dozing. It’s really hard to stay awake when you’ve eaten so much. Mr. Margolin’s stories were interesting as he took us down these winding paths, back alleys, and over hills and dells describing his experiences as a published writer. He’s also involved in a program that teaches grade school kids how to sit still for an hour and play chess that he’s very passionate about, and that has enjoyed many successes. I probably should have asked him if he could teach overeating grownups how to sit for an hour and stay awake. He’s an extremely nice guy who was a lawyer and must have worked very hard to do that and write at the same time, but he made it all sound like a piece of cake, which is what I got up to get because I could smell that chocolate from the kitchen and it was calling me like a siren song (whatever that is and I’m not looking it up right now).
If you want the summary of what he said, read on. Basically, he started writing because he wondered what it would be like to write a whole book, and about that time an old college friend he hadn’t seen in years called him up wanting to come visit. This guy turned out to be a bigwig in the publishing world. One lucky break after another effortlessly fell into his lap, and lots of very nice people helped in many, many ways. He just writes and lets the rest take care of itself.
His is a great success story, and one that, I think it’s safe to say for the whole group, none of us wanted to hear. We wanted him to write for many years and suffer rejection after rejection but keep going and one day, finally, someone recognized his talent. This is what we’ve all been going through, except we haven’t reached the one day, finally, part yet.
But all in all it was a successful evening. He gave us insights into what it’s like to be a famous writer flying all over the world with escorts in all the cities who take him to all the bookstores and speaking engagements. It sounds like great fun. Hope to be there soon.
The other place I hope to be even sooner is in my snuggly warm bed. Yawn, stretch, snore, dreaming of Margolin and success, and stuffed mushroom caps and chocolate cake. See ya!
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Woo-Hoo! The Ducks Are Going to the Rose Bowl
We had a small gathering at our house tonight to stuff ourselves and watch the Oregon Ducks play the Oregon Beavers. I’m not originally from Oregon so it took me two decades, when my son went to college at Oregon, to understand that Oregon is the name for the University of Oregon, and Oregon State is the name for Oregon State University. Oregon’s team is the Ducks, and Oregon State’s team is the Beavers
I have to say that it was a good, clean game with only one broken leg, one guy vomiting on the sidelines because he got kicked so hard in the stomach, only a few guys limping and staggering, and one poor coach with a barrel of iced liquid poured down his back in the 25 degree night.
It was a cold and clear, and the teams facing each other on the line of scrimmage were huffing clouds of steam. They looked like cartoon bulls getting ready to charge the red cape – you know where the bull stands still and takes his front leg and paws the dirt three times while steam clouds come out of each nostril. That’s what these guys looked like.
My brother came over, and he was rooting for the Beavers. He kept telling the coach what to do. “You need to go for the two point conversion, then if the Ducks get ahead and you get two touchdowns, you’ll win by one point.” Unfortunately the Beaver’s coach didn’t listen, and when the game was over and the Beavers lost by four points, my brother told the TV as the coach was walking dejectedly off the field, “See, if you would have gone for that conversion and tried for that field goal, you would have been one point ahead right now, just like I told you.”
I’m glad the coach didn’t listen to him, because the Beavers might have won. Which makes you wonder, who came up with the school names for these Oregon teams? Ducks? Now that name sends a chill down the spines of their opponents. And Beavers? That’s a mighty fierce image.
The thing I like about Oregonians is that they are proud of their teams, no matter what some well-meaning person named them. For instance, there is a town just off the Oregon coast name Tillamook. Yes, Tillamook. And this town is famous all through Oregon and surrounding environs for having many, many cows – mostly because you can smell the town from hundreds of miles away if the wind is just right. You’ve got to do something with all those cows, so they milked them and set up a factory to make cheese called the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Then they got a high school and named their football team the Tillamook Cheesemakers. Google it if you don’t believe me.
I don’t know if people look at these names from every angle. Immediately when we saw the name of this high school on the way to the beach, the whole car erupted into one “who cut the cheese” joke after another. We came up with millions of variations opponents could use to humiliate Tillamook’s team. “You guys sure cut a bunch of cheese in here…your team stinks like Limburger cheese.” Hilarious stuff.
I Googled other Oregon teams and most of them had appropriately fierce names like panthers, tigers, Spartans. Except for the coastal town of Astoria, who were the Fishermen. Ditto the humiliation for this name as above, “PU, it smells like fish in here.”
Well, back to the Rose Bowl, which is much better than the Commode Bowl. Yuk Yuk. Yuk. The Ducks will be playing the Buckeyes. What’s a Buckeye? I guess it’s the eye of a buck – a male deer. I’ll have to think of some good eyeball lines – like “Hey you bunch of eyeballs, get back to the buck head where you belong.” Gosh I’m funny! GO DUCKS! Woo-hoo!
I have to say that it was a good, clean game with only one broken leg, one guy vomiting on the sidelines because he got kicked so hard in the stomach, only a few guys limping and staggering, and one poor coach with a barrel of iced liquid poured down his back in the 25 degree night.
It was a cold and clear, and the teams facing each other on the line of scrimmage were huffing clouds of steam. They looked like cartoon bulls getting ready to charge the red cape – you know where the bull stands still and takes his front leg and paws the dirt three times while steam clouds come out of each nostril. That’s what these guys looked like.
My brother came over, and he was rooting for the Beavers. He kept telling the coach what to do. “You need to go for the two point conversion, then if the Ducks get ahead and you get two touchdowns, you’ll win by one point.” Unfortunately the Beaver’s coach didn’t listen, and when the game was over and the Beavers lost by four points, my brother told the TV as the coach was walking dejectedly off the field, “See, if you would have gone for that conversion and tried for that field goal, you would have been one point ahead right now, just like I told you.”
I’m glad the coach didn’t listen to him, because the Beavers might have won. Which makes you wonder, who came up with the school names for these Oregon teams? Ducks? Now that name sends a chill down the spines of their opponents. And Beavers? That’s a mighty fierce image.
The thing I like about Oregonians is that they are proud of their teams, no matter what some well-meaning person named them. For instance, there is a town just off the Oregon coast name Tillamook. Yes, Tillamook. And this town is famous all through Oregon and surrounding environs for having many, many cows – mostly because you can smell the town from hundreds of miles away if the wind is just right. You’ve got to do something with all those cows, so they milked them and set up a factory to make cheese called the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Then they got a high school and named their football team the Tillamook Cheesemakers. Google it if you don’t believe me.
I don’t know if people look at these names from every angle. Immediately when we saw the name of this high school on the way to the beach, the whole car erupted into one “who cut the cheese” joke after another. We came up with millions of variations opponents could use to humiliate Tillamook’s team. “You guys sure cut a bunch of cheese in here…your team stinks like Limburger cheese.” Hilarious stuff.
I Googled other Oregon teams and most of them had appropriately fierce names like panthers, tigers, Spartans. Except for the coastal town of Astoria, who were the Fishermen. Ditto the humiliation for this name as above, “PU, it smells like fish in here.”
Well, back to the Rose Bowl, which is much better than the Commode Bowl. Yuk Yuk. Yuk. The Ducks will be playing the Buckeyes. What’s a Buckeye? I guess it’s the eye of a buck – a male deer. I’ll have to think of some good eyeball lines – like “Hey you bunch of eyeballs, get back to the buck head where you belong.” Gosh I’m funny! GO DUCKS! Woo-hoo!
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Mac vs PC and the Loser Is...Consumers
I’m getting a little fed up with the bickering between Macs and PCs. I have both, and I spend most of my day doing something on a computer – either playing Wordscraper on Facebook or doing projects with Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator – fantastic programs that let you be really creative once you take a couple of years to figure out how to use them (just kidding – I own stock in Adobe. They make fantastic products that I highly recommend to everyone, even infants).
The thing is, Macs do some things great, and PCs so some things great, and neither of them is great all by themselves. Everyone talks about PCs crashing, but just today I had to restart my Mac twice because I was uploading new photos and when I went to view them in iPhoto, my $2,400 Mac started pixilating – which means the whole screen looked like aliens had scrambled it. This is not the first time it’s happened. And I’ve had to reload my Leopard Operating System once with the reassurance from the guy at the Apple Genius Bar that he’s done his a bunch of times and it doesn’t do any harm. So the Mac is crashing to the point of having to reload the operating system, and Mac uses this as a put down for PCs? Shame on you, Mac!
My PC, on the other hand, sometimes makes me do extra steps, each one starting with, “Are you sure you want to…?” Yes, I’m sure I want to delete those twenty-three lousy shots of a duck. Yes I’m sure I want to close Internet Explorer.
But the Mac can be a real pain in the neck because it’s not happy unless you are dragging something somewhere. A website comes up and it looks like someone has taken an axe to the right side, so you have to drag the bottom corner to make it spread over the screen. If it would just come up like that to begin with, it would save that step. This happens in every program all the time. Even trying to look for a file in Finder you have to drag to see the whole file name, and according to the guy at the Mac genius bar, there’s no fix for that.
And DO NOT get me started on the Adobe programs on the Mac. In my opinion, they work better on a PC. Ouch, I felt that slap from every graphic designer in the universe. But you guys have always used them on a Mac. I started with them on the PC and they are easier there. Wanna know why? Because on the Mac you have to drag everything everywhere, that’s why. You open up Photoshop and you have to drag it to be full sized. In Dreamweaver, a website developing program, you have parts of the program spread all over your monitor that you constantly have to drag out of the way to be able to see. On the PC, the center of the screen is the website you’re working on, and your tools are lined up to the right and down below – and they’re always there. On the Mac, sometimes tools disappear completely and I have to hunt them down and find them in weird places, like in the kitchen pantry.
So in conclusion, Macs are a drag, and PCs are uppity and want to second-guess you all the time. We need a hybrid of these two, and if anyone wants to start a company that will bring the best features of both operating systems to consumers, I’ll buy a little of your stock. In the meantime, you boys doing your name calling in commercials should get your mouths washed out with soap for fibbing. Honestly, someone needs to send you to your rooms until you can learn to be like Thumper, “If you can’t say anything nice, get the heck off my TV screen.”
The thing is, Macs do some things great, and PCs so some things great, and neither of them is great all by themselves. Everyone talks about PCs crashing, but just today I had to restart my Mac twice because I was uploading new photos and when I went to view them in iPhoto, my $2,400 Mac started pixilating – which means the whole screen looked like aliens had scrambled it. This is not the first time it’s happened. And I’ve had to reload my Leopard Operating System once with the reassurance from the guy at the Apple Genius Bar that he’s done his a bunch of times and it doesn’t do any harm. So the Mac is crashing to the point of having to reload the operating system, and Mac uses this as a put down for PCs? Shame on you, Mac!
My PC, on the other hand, sometimes makes me do extra steps, each one starting with, “Are you sure you want to…?” Yes, I’m sure I want to delete those twenty-three lousy shots of a duck. Yes I’m sure I want to close Internet Explorer.
But the Mac can be a real pain in the neck because it’s not happy unless you are dragging something somewhere. A website comes up and it looks like someone has taken an axe to the right side, so you have to drag the bottom corner to make it spread over the screen. If it would just come up like that to begin with, it would save that step. This happens in every program all the time. Even trying to look for a file in Finder you have to drag to see the whole file name, and according to the guy at the Mac genius bar, there’s no fix for that.
And DO NOT get me started on the Adobe programs on the Mac. In my opinion, they work better on a PC. Ouch, I felt that slap from every graphic designer in the universe. But you guys have always used them on a Mac. I started with them on the PC and they are easier there. Wanna know why? Because on the Mac you have to drag everything everywhere, that’s why. You open up Photoshop and you have to drag it to be full sized. In Dreamweaver, a website developing program, you have parts of the program spread all over your monitor that you constantly have to drag out of the way to be able to see. On the PC, the center of the screen is the website you’re working on, and your tools are lined up to the right and down below – and they’re always there. On the Mac, sometimes tools disappear completely and I have to hunt them down and find them in weird places, like in the kitchen pantry.
So in conclusion, Macs are a drag, and PCs are uppity and want to second-guess you all the time. We need a hybrid of these two, and if anyone wants to start a company that will bring the best features of both operating systems to consumers, I’ll buy a little of your stock. In the meantime, you boys doing your name calling in commercials should get your mouths washed out with soap for fibbing. Honestly, someone needs to send you to your rooms until you can learn to be like Thumper, “If you can’t say anything nice, get the heck off my TV screen.”
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Movie Madness
I just saw a great movie, The Blind Side, with my mother-in-law and her friend Ruthie. Isn’t Ruthie a cool name? When my son was little, he called her, “Root-a-toot-a-toot-toot-tootie.” The little darling.
When the movie started, Marlene, my mother-in-law, made a few comments out loud but then quieted down as we got into it. This is in sharp contrast to my friends Pam and Gina. If you go to a movie with either of them, they talk out loud all the way through, or at least until someone in the audience turns around and gawks at them or says, SHHHH! really loud.
But they are nothing compared to my friend Elfriede, the German bombshell. She’s an older lady who talks non-stop, not to me but to the movie itself. Imagine being alone at home watching a TV show and someone is hiding with a knife behind the door, and you’re telling the actress, “Don’t go in there, don’t go in there, turn around.” This is what Elfriede does throughout a movie. “Don’t believe a word he says,” she’ll tell the actress. “He’s got a girl on the side. You can do better than him.” She doesn’t whisper these comments, she leans forward toward the screen so the actress will be sure to hear her and says them OUT LOUD.
We once went to a film festival documentary about monks in Germany who only spoke one Sunday a month for a couple of hours. The camera is following different monks around doing their routines, and no one says a word. There isn’t music in the background. It’s total silence, and in the theater you could hear a feather drop. Then Elfriede says, “I wonder if you miss women,” and “Aren’t you going to talk to that cow while you’re milking it?”
What’s amazing is my friends don’t think anyone else can hear them. Pam once got very indignant when she was shushed, as if the person shushing her was the one being rude.
I don’t know what’s worse, my friends talking all through the movie and people shooshing us right and left, or teenagers in the row in front of me texting with their bright cell phones.
Nonetheless, and in conclusion, The Blind Side was a really great movie that I highly recommend. And Tim McGraw, if you ever get tired of Faith Hill, give me a jingle – but only if your personality is exactly like the guy you played in the movie. He was sweet and had a nice sense of humor and let his wife get away with anything, which I guess in clinical terms would be called “supportive.” My mother-in-law and Rootie-Toot-Tootie are also interested in connecting with you, as we discussed at length over dinner after the matinee.
And so thus ends today’s post, and here’s a disclaimer. It goes without saying that certain portions of these posts are fiction. My girlfriends’ behaviors are greatly exaggerated so in case any of them ever read this – you know I’m just kidding. I LOVE going to the movies with you guys, and it’s not just because I’d have to go alone which I don’t want to do. I think your comments are FUN! And the shushing is pretty amusing too! I’m just trying to write something funny – digging deep, making stuff up. Honest.
When the movie started, Marlene, my mother-in-law, made a few comments out loud but then quieted down as we got into it. This is in sharp contrast to my friends Pam and Gina. If you go to a movie with either of them, they talk out loud all the way through, or at least until someone in the audience turns around and gawks at them or says, SHHHH! really loud.
But they are nothing compared to my friend Elfriede, the German bombshell. She’s an older lady who talks non-stop, not to me but to the movie itself. Imagine being alone at home watching a TV show and someone is hiding with a knife behind the door, and you’re telling the actress, “Don’t go in there, don’t go in there, turn around.” This is what Elfriede does throughout a movie. “Don’t believe a word he says,” she’ll tell the actress. “He’s got a girl on the side. You can do better than him.” She doesn’t whisper these comments, she leans forward toward the screen so the actress will be sure to hear her and says them OUT LOUD.
We once went to a film festival documentary about monks in Germany who only spoke one Sunday a month for a couple of hours. The camera is following different monks around doing their routines, and no one says a word. There isn’t music in the background. It’s total silence, and in the theater you could hear a feather drop. Then Elfriede says, “I wonder if you miss women,” and “Aren’t you going to talk to that cow while you’re milking it?”
What’s amazing is my friends don’t think anyone else can hear them. Pam once got very indignant when she was shushed, as if the person shushing her was the one being rude.
I don’t know what’s worse, my friends talking all through the movie and people shooshing us right and left, or teenagers in the row in front of me texting with their bright cell phones.
Nonetheless, and in conclusion, The Blind Side was a really great movie that I highly recommend. And Tim McGraw, if you ever get tired of Faith Hill, give me a jingle – but only if your personality is exactly like the guy you played in the movie. He was sweet and had a nice sense of humor and let his wife get away with anything, which I guess in clinical terms would be called “supportive.” My mother-in-law and Rootie-Toot-Tootie are also interested in connecting with you, as we discussed at length over dinner after the matinee.
And so thus ends today’s post, and here’s a disclaimer. It goes without saying that certain portions of these posts are fiction. My girlfriends’ behaviors are greatly exaggerated so in case any of them ever read this – you know I’m just kidding. I LOVE going to the movies with you guys, and it’s not just because I’d have to go alone which I don’t want to do. I think your comments are FUN! And the shushing is pretty amusing too! I’m just trying to write something funny – digging deep, making stuff up. Honest.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Exercising Your Akimbo
Last night I exercised. I did a few sissy push-ups and a few crunches, staggered back to me feet and threw myself on the sofa all akimbo, worn out, huffing and puffing, wondering if a heart attack was speeding on it’s way.
And you ask why the heck do I do it – why do I use words like akimbo? Can’t I just say something simple like flopped on the couch? And what does such a word even mean?
Well, I’m glad you asked, because I certainly don’t know but I’m going to consult the all-knowing and very powerful Google, and I’ll get right back to you.
Sorry to keep you so long, but this word is way more interesting than you’d think. I discovered how I probably got it in my head that it meant getting tossed around like a rag doll, which it doesn’t mean, but it was used that way on Seinfeld, and since I’ve seen every episode, I must have picked it up when Elaine was dancing at the Christmas party and jerking around, and was described as “dancing with her limbs flailing and arms akimbo.” That was a pretty funny episode, and I bet she got plenty of exercise practicing that dance.
According to Wikipedia, akimbo means standing with your hands on your hips. There is also a rock band named Akimbo, so I went to their website and found out that you can book them by calling a number with an area code of 206. They don’t say where they’re located, but another site said that “Jon Weisnewski (Bass/Vocals) and Nat Damm (Drums) have solidified a unique and devastating sonic battle axe left embedded in the skulls of their enemies.” (www.punknews.org) Sounds like my kind of music.
Why is this important in the great scheme of life? Because when we go around heaving heavy words like akimbo all over the place and naming rock bands after them, we are enriching the English language and making it a much better experience for our children, our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children ad infinitum - which is another heavy word worth toting on your colossal English tool belt.
And what does this ad infinitum mean? Do you ever stop with the questions?
I know it’s Latin, and I know what it means, but is there a rock band named after it? That’s what I’m curious to find out. I’m going to go check. Hold on a second.
Did you feel the whoosh of me zooming back? I have fast internet. I couldn’t locate a rock band per se, but I found something musical (I think) that is much more intriguing. It’s an “Analog Modular Synthesizer Frac-Rak Modules by Alex Iles.” I’m not going there because some things you’re better not knowing, but this phrase perfectly illustrates my point. Words should be entertaining if they can’t be sensible, and this Frac-Rac thing tickles my fancy, which is located behind my knees, a particularly sensitive area especially on children. If you want to tickle them until they wet their pants (which is cruel and I do not condone), tickle their fancy rather than their feet (which can kick) or armpits (which can leave a distinct odor).
Distinct. That’s another great word – it’s got a bad smell built right in, so it’s like giving someone a double whammy when you say they have a distinct odor because of the word stink in there. Odor is bad enough, but a stinky odor is just foul.
Bet you didn’t think of that, did you? See, it’s good to exercise your cleverness with the English language, and it sure the heck beats sit-ups and push ups.
And you ask why the heck do I do it – why do I use words like akimbo? Can’t I just say something simple like flopped on the couch? And what does such a word even mean?
Well, I’m glad you asked, because I certainly don’t know but I’m going to consult the all-knowing and very powerful Google, and I’ll get right back to you.
Sorry to keep you so long, but this word is way more interesting than you’d think. I discovered how I probably got it in my head that it meant getting tossed around like a rag doll, which it doesn’t mean, but it was used that way on Seinfeld, and since I’ve seen every episode, I must have picked it up when Elaine was dancing at the Christmas party and jerking around, and was described as “dancing with her limbs flailing and arms akimbo.” That was a pretty funny episode, and I bet she got plenty of exercise practicing that dance.
According to Wikipedia, akimbo means standing with your hands on your hips. There is also a rock band named Akimbo, so I went to their website and found out that you can book them by calling a number with an area code of 206. They don’t say where they’re located, but another site said that “Jon Weisnewski (Bass/Vocals) and Nat Damm (Drums) have solidified a unique and devastating sonic battle axe left embedded in the skulls of their enemies.” (www.punknews.org) Sounds like my kind of music.
Why is this important in the great scheme of life? Because when we go around heaving heavy words like akimbo all over the place and naming rock bands after them, we are enriching the English language and making it a much better experience for our children, our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children ad infinitum - which is another heavy word worth toting on your colossal English tool belt.
And what does this ad infinitum mean? Do you ever stop with the questions?
I know it’s Latin, and I know what it means, but is there a rock band named after it? That’s what I’m curious to find out. I’m going to go check. Hold on a second.
Did you feel the whoosh of me zooming back? I have fast internet. I couldn’t locate a rock band per se, but I found something musical (I think) that is much more intriguing. It’s an “Analog Modular Synthesizer Frac-Rak Modules by Alex Iles.” I’m not going there because some things you’re better not knowing, but this phrase perfectly illustrates my point. Words should be entertaining if they can’t be sensible, and this Frac-Rac thing tickles my fancy, which is located behind my knees, a particularly sensitive area especially on children. If you want to tickle them until they wet their pants (which is cruel and I do not condone), tickle their fancy rather than their feet (which can kick) or armpits (which can leave a distinct odor).
Distinct. That’s another great word – it’s got a bad smell built right in, so it’s like giving someone a double whammy when you say they have a distinct odor because of the word stink in there. Odor is bad enough, but a stinky odor is just foul.
Bet you didn’t think of that, did you? See, it’s good to exercise your cleverness with the English language, and it sure the heck beats sit-ups and push ups.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Fat Begone!
Around the holidays I start having wardrobe malfunctions. My waistband moves up or down, trying to find a place to rest with all the new me it has to cope with. If it moves up high, the fat goes under the waistband, but I get a really serious case of camel toe. If it moves down, the fat squeezes up over the waistband to form an unattractive toadstool. It’s a universal problem with average sized women who overindulge on occasion, and I realize that I’ve touched on this subject before, which only goes to show that there are no easy solutions.
If I buy a size bigger pants, that would take care of the problem, but it would be the end of being average. Right now, with only a few extra pounds, I’m uncomfortable. If I lose the weight, which would mean cutting carbs and candy, I can be comfortable again. This is torture, since I live for buttered bread and Milky Ways, but it’s doable with a week of suffering as long as I don’t have too much fat to begin with.
However, if I buy a bigger size, in the short run I’ll be comfortable, but in the long run, it’s just a matter of time before the bigger sized waistband starts choking me, and this time I’d have to lose twice the weight if I wanted to get back to average.
What I really hate is that period of time when I become uncomfortable, which occurs after every social gathering where the host puts out spreads of sumptuous food (and this can be just potato chips and dip). Beiing kind-hearted, I try to save the host the unpleasant chore of storing all those leftovers by eating and drinking non-stop the whole time I’m there. In fact, I’ve looked up from the buffet table to find that I’m the only person left in the room, and snoring is coming from the host’s bedroom.
So today I set about to find an undergarment that will camouflage that inner tube of fat around my stomach until my weight loss resolve kicks in, which sometimes takes awhile. I know I’ve worked on this before, and I actually found a solution for under a dress, but I’m dealing with jeans, and that’s a whole new set of problems. I went to Fred Meyer’s undergarment section and was surprised to see all the different girdles, body suits, corsets, etc. available for people in my predicament.
I tried a couple of them on. A full body suit is flesh colored and looks like one of those old-timey swimsuits that is one piece with legs stopping just above the knees. I’m happy to say I lost at least two pounds struggling into the thing. It had “stays” all around the torso, which are hard pieces of “boning” that hold the suit up and keep the fat in. I think you could stand a body suit up on your front porch at Halloween and scare off goblins.
The disadvantage of this item, including the inability to get out of it quickly enough if you’ve had a couple of beers, is that the fat has to go somewhere. Where the undergarment ends, fat lurches out and forms a rim that can easily be seen under the thickest sweater or pants. Also, the 60 little bra-type hooks needed to rein in the fat also showed under my t-shirt.
So I tried a high waisted girdle, but it had the same problem. You’d think your internal organs would have the decency to move over and give the fat a little space, but they won’t budge. It has nowhere to go so it balloons out the top and underneath. The fat isn’t high enough to enhance your bosom (what a funny word), instead it just makes you look like you’re sagging, and the fat pushing out the bottom makes your thighs look like they’re wearing twin tourniquets.
I tried combining a long shaping bra with a tall firming girdle, but the fat all went to the no-man’s land between them where the two didn’t overlap. I looked like I had an hourglass figure with a mini hula-hoop in the middle.
I decided to bag it and go on the diet right away. Except that there are leftover pieces of a super-yummy chocolate pecan pie that I’ll need to plow through. I can’t lose weight with temptations in the house. Plus I’ll need to finish off some really soft chocolate chip cookies my daughter made. But the second I get through those, and the rest of the bag of Oreos, I’m losing that fat, or my name isn’t Megan Fox.
If I buy a size bigger pants, that would take care of the problem, but it would be the end of being average. Right now, with only a few extra pounds, I’m uncomfortable. If I lose the weight, which would mean cutting carbs and candy, I can be comfortable again. This is torture, since I live for buttered bread and Milky Ways, but it’s doable with a week of suffering as long as I don’t have too much fat to begin with.
However, if I buy a bigger size, in the short run I’ll be comfortable, but in the long run, it’s just a matter of time before the bigger sized waistband starts choking me, and this time I’d have to lose twice the weight if I wanted to get back to average.
What I really hate is that period of time when I become uncomfortable, which occurs after every social gathering where the host puts out spreads of sumptuous food (and this can be just potato chips and dip). Beiing kind-hearted, I try to save the host the unpleasant chore of storing all those leftovers by eating and drinking non-stop the whole time I’m there. In fact, I’ve looked up from the buffet table to find that I’m the only person left in the room, and snoring is coming from the host’s bedroom.
So today I set about to find an undergarment that will camouflage that inner tube of fat around my stomach until my weight loss resolve kicks in, which sometimes takes awhile. I know I’ve worked on this before, and I actually found a solution for under a dress, but I’m dealing with jeans, and that’s a whole new set of problems. I went to Fred Meyer’s undergarment section and was surprised to see all the different girdles, body suits, corsets, etc. available for people in my predicament.
I tried a couple of them on. A full body suit is flesh colored and looks like one of those old-timey swimsuits that is one piece with legs stopping just above the knees. I’m happy to say I lost at least two pounds struggling into the thing. It had “stays” all around the torso, which are hard pieces of “boning” that hold the suit up and keep the fat in. I think you could stand a body suit up on your front porch at Halloween and scare off goblins.
The disadvantage of this item, including the inability to get out of it quickly enough if you’ve had a couple of beers, is that the fat has to go somewhere. Where the undergarment ends, fat lurches out and forms a rim that can easily be seen under the thickest sweater or pants. Also, the 60 little bra-type hooks needed to rein in the fat also showed under my t-shirt.
So I tried a high waisted girdle, but it had the same problem. You’d think your internal organs would have the decency to move over and give the fat a little space, but they won’t budge. It has nowhere to go so it balloons out the top and underneath. The fat isn’t high enough to enhance your bosom (what a funny word), instead it just makes you look like you’re sagging, and the fat pushing out the bottom makes your thighs look like they’re wearing twin tourniquets.
I tried combining a long shaping bra with a tall firming girdle, but the fat all went to the no-man’s land between them where the two didn’t overlap. I looked like I had an hourglass figure with a mini hula-hoop in the middle.
I decided to bag it and go on the diet right away. Except that there are leftover pieces of a super-yummy chocolate pecan pie that I’ll need to plow through. I can’t lose weight with temptations in the house. Plus I’ll need to finish off some really soft chocolate chip cookies my daughter made. But the second I get through those, and the rest of the bag of Oreos, I’m losing that fat, or my name isn’t Megan Fox.
Window Washing Sucks Less Than a Vacuum
Today I decided it was time to get my home ready for Christmas. We have these big windows, and in the winter, when the sun is lower than our passive solar overhangs, the sun shines through the windows and illuminates the spider crap that’s all over them.
I think because we have a one-story house, and the overhang sticks out about six feet all the way around the house, spiders think our place is the Ritz-Carlton. The light from all the windows attracts insects which get caught in the spider webs so it’s like a big bug buffet out there all the time.
Spiders, like all of God’s creatures, have to go to the bathroom; therefore there are little brown and black spots everywhere like millions of grasshoppers have been engaging in tobacco-spitting contests. Some of the spots slide down the glass. Then it dries and hardens to a cement-like substance that takes a vigorous scrubbing to dislodge.
Why am I telling anyone about this? Just because.
So I’m out there in the cold with the squeegee, and my husband and son are sitting on the couch watching some bikini TV show. I’m used to my husband and children passively watching me work. I’m like a lot of women who just get tired of nagging and do it all – which appears to be the goal of every man’s and child’s life.
Today, though, it didn’t sit well with me. I came in and made some snide remarks, which usually fall on deaf ears, but for some reason my husband got mad and turned off the TV, jerked the squeegee out of my hand and went outside to get away from the nagging. I could see that he wasn’t putting in quite the effort that I had been, but I decided even if I had to do some of the streaks over, that was way easier than doing it all alone. After a few minutes of staring at the TV where the almost naked girls had been, my son said, “Dad just gave me a dirty look. Have you got something I can do?”
These are words I have never, ever heard my son say. I dabbed at my tears of joy. “Well, I guess you could grab the duster and dust.” He did it without too much complaint - it is, after all, the easiest housework in the world. When he was done I asked if he’d help me get the Christmas stuff down out of the attic. I figured I’d better make hay while the sun was shining. This is when the avalanche of griping started.
“It’s not even December. Why are you getting all this stuff down? Where are you going to put it? You’re just cluttering up the bonus room with all this crap. Oh my gosh, how many boxes are there? Why do you have all these fake poinsettias? Nobody likes all this crap but you. Why don’t you just get rid of it? Who came up with all this decorating bullcrap anyway? You’re going to spend all that time putting all this stuff up and then just take it all down a month later…..”
I just let him go on and on because he was continuing to help as he bitched, so I wasn’t about to fly off the handle and have him use that as an excuse to walk out of the room. The second he was done he left to go get a haircut.
Meantime my husband was still washing the inside windows. He got finished and started putting the squeegee and ladder away. “Leave all that, I have to do the outside,” I said. “Well, I’m not doing them,” he said, and sat down. I immediately went and got the vacuum. He hates the noise the vacuum cleaner makes. I turned it on and started vacuuming right where he was sitting. He got up, grabbed the squeegee and went outside. I turned the vacuum off. He came back in. I turned it back on. He went back out. I figured if I kept vacuuming, I could get all the windows washed. Unfortunately, even going really slow, I had to finally stop, and he came back in, leaving a couple windows undone. I finished the job, pretty satisfied that I’d gotten my two lazy boys to help out. We all went to a restaurant for a late lunch, my son went back to U of O because there was supposed to be a party he didn’t want to miss, my husband went back to the remote control, and I went shopping. Not a bad day at all.
I think because we have a one-story house, and the overhang sticks out about six feet all the way around the house, spiders think our place is the Ritz-Carlton. The light from all the windows attracts insects which get caught in the spider webs so it’s like a big bug buffet out there all the time.
Spiders, like all of God’s creatures, have to go to the bathroom; therefore there are little brown and black spots everywhere like millions of grasshoppers have been engaging in tobacco-spitting contests. Some of the spots slide down the glass. Then it dries and hardens to a cement-like substance that takes a vigorous scrubbing to dislodge.
Why am I telling anyone about this? Just because.
So I’m out there in the cold with the squeegee, and my husband and son are sitting on the couch watching some bikini TV show. I’m used to my husband and children passively watching me work. I’m like a lot of women who just get tired of nagging and do it all – which appears to be the goal of every man’s and child’s life.
Today, though, it didn’t sit well with me. I came in and made some snide remarks, which usually fall on deaf ears, but for some reason my husband got mad and turned off the TV, jerked the squeegee out of my hand and went outside to get away from the nagging. I could see that he wasn’t putting in quite the effort that I had been, but I decided even if I had to do some of the streaks over, that was way easier than doing it all alone. After a few minutes of staring at the TV where the almost naked girls had been, my son said, “Dad just gave me a dirty look. Have you got something I can do?”
These are words I have never, ever heard my son say. I dabbed at my tears of joy. “Well, I guess you could grab the duster and dust.” He did it without too much complaint - it is, after all, the easiest housework in the world. When he was done I asked if he’d help me get the Christmas stuff down out of the attic. I figured I’d better make hay while the sun was shining. This is when the avalanche of griping started.
“It’s not even December. Why are you getting all this stuff down? Where are you going to put it? You’re just cluttering up the bonus room with all this crap. Oh my gosh, how many boxes are there? Why do you have all these fake poinsettias? Nobody likes all this crap but you. Why don’t you just get rid of it? Who came up with all this decorating bullcrap anyway? You’re going to spend all that time putting all this stuff up and then just take it all down a month later…..”
I just let him go on and on because he was continuing to help as he bitched, so I wasn’t about to fly off the handle and have him use that as an excuse to walk out of the room. The second he was done he left to go get a haircut.
Meantime my husband was still washing the inside windows. He got finished and started putting the squeegee and ladder away. “Leave all that, I have to do the outside,” I said. “Well, I’m not doing them,” he said, and sat down. I immediately went and got the vacuum. He hates the noise the vacuum cleaner makes. I turned it on and started vacuuming right where he was sitting. He got up, grabbed the squeegee and went outside. I turned the vacuum off. He came back in. I turned it back on. He went back out. I figured if I kept vacuuming, I could get all the windows washed. Unfortunately, even going really slow, I had to finally stop, and he came back in, leaving a couple windows undone. I finished the job, pretty satisfied that I’d gotten my two lazy boys to help out. We all went to a restaurant for a late lunch, my son went back to U of O because there was supposed to be a party he didn’t want to miss, my husband went back to the remote control, and I went shopping. Not a bad day at all.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Black and Blue Friday
In case you just arrived here from Jupiter (how’s the weather? Seen any good meteorites?), today is the biggest shopping day in the United States, and maybe the whole world. Maybe in the jungle, cannibals are offering two torsos for the price of one. Or buy one torso and get a leg for free. But I doubt it – that seems like too good a deal. Plus, I think our retail bonanza is tied to Thanksgiving, which is an American holiday.
As a way of giving thanks for their abundance, people in this country try to eat up all their abundance in one day the form of giant birds, mountains of mashed potatoes with gravy, butter, sour cream, and salt plus an accoutrement of breads, vegetables, and desserts with butter as the main ingredient until they have to go lie on the floor or sofa or ambulance stretcher to recover. The lucky people give extra thanks because they get to sleep in the next day.
The unlucky ones must set their alarm clocks for 3:00 a.m. so they can wake up out of their L-tryptophan stupor and return to work to await the herd of bargain-lusting shoppers wanting to bust down the door for savings. We in America call this day Black Friday, I’m assuming because the guy unlocking the door for the crazed shoppers gets knocked down and trampled in the stampede, resulting to black scuff marks all over his face, arms, stomach, and legs.
If you’re really and truly unlucky and work for Michaels in the Metropolitan Portland area, then you had to push yourself up off the floor, drunk on bourbon pecan pie and shots of Jack Daniels quaffed on the sly with your alcoholic Uncle Bob, and put yourself in the mood to peddle arts and crafts at 5::00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to other overstuffed and miserable drunks who felt the compulsion to leave the comfort of their warm homes and beloved friends and relatives in order to get a leg up on Black Friday shoppers who dared to wait until the rest of the stores open at 4:00 a.m. the next day.
If you take the time to notice, you’ll see that the previous paragraph was all one sentence. You’ll also observe that American stores have become so obsessed with trying to get a leg up on other businesses that they are kicking down the very institutions that brought them business in the first place. If they open their stores on Thanksgiving, then why bother even having that holiday? Sure, the grocery stores make a killing on the days leading up to Thanksgiving, but if you force workers and shoppers to forsake their traditions so that your business can make money, what happens to the tradition? No one is home having Thanksgiving dinner with their families because they’re out shopping.
Same thing goes with Christmas decorations in October. They will eventually replace all Halloween decorations, and then that fun family holiday that gives adults an opportunity to hang out with their children and socialize with their neighbors as they gather free candy in the freezing rain – even that will fall by the wayside. And as you continue to blather about “holiday” festivities and Christmas lists earlier and earlier, consumers get more and more disgusted with the whole business. In case you store owners also just arrived from Jupiter, let me give you a heads-up: WE HATE CHRISTMAS ADS ON THE TV, RADIO, IN THE PAPER, ON FLYERS, AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND DECORATIONS, EVEN RED AND GREEN COLORS – WE HATE THE MERE THOUGHT OF CHRISTMAS before Thanksgiving.
Those of us who get our holiday shopping done early (sometimes on December 26th of the previous year) are going to continue doing that whether you advertise and decorate at an obscenely early date or at the proper time, and those of us who wait until the last minute to shop, (sometimes on December 24th), are going to continue doing that. Or else we are going to ignore the whole Christmas thing altogether, be forced to report to work on Christmas day, buy up everything on sale before the after Christmas sale, and say to hell with it.
In my humble (though always right) opinion, if we’re stupid enough to forget to buy a carton of eggs on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I can guarantee that no one is going to starve to death as a result, so I can’t see any excuse for a lot of these stores to be open on Thanksgiving and other traditional family gathering holidays. Give employees a break, for crying out loud. And don’t start sputtering about the exceptions, about the people who don’t have families or who don’t celebrate traditional holidays. It’s a lame excuse for money-grubbing, and you know it.
But will any of you listen? Of course not, because you’re too afraid that someone is going to get a little more of the market share than you are. Well, let it be known right here and now – I refuse to shop at Michaels for the rest of this year, and possibly forever, because they forced employees to work on Thanksgiving for no good reason. You can take your market share and shove it up your tofurkey for all I care (see previous post if this doesn’t make sense, and if it still doesn’t, go back to Jupiter).
So there.
As a way of giving thanks for their abundance, people in this country try to eat up all their abundance in one day the form of giant birds, mountains of mashed potatoes with gravy, butter, sour cream, and salt plus an accoutrement of breads, vegetables, and desserts with butter as the main ingredient until they have to go lie on the floor or sofa or ambulance stretcher to recover. The lucky people give extra thanks because they get to sleep in the next day.
The unlucky ones must set their alarm clocks for 3:00 a.m. so they can wake up out of their L-tryptophan stupor and return to work to await the herd of bargain-lusting shoppers wanting to bust down the door for savings. We in America call this day Black Friday, I’m assuming because the guy unlocking the door for the crazed shoppers gets knocked down and trampled in the stampede, resulting to black scuff marks all over his face, arms, stomach, and legs.
If you’re really and truly unlucky and work for Michaels in the Metropolitan Portland area, then you had to push yourself up off the floor, drunk on bourbon pecan pie and shots of Jack Daniels quaffed on the sly with your alcoholic Uncle Bob, and put yourself in the mood to peddle arts and crafts at 5::00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to other overstuffed and miserable drunks who felt the compulsion to leave the comfort of their warm homes and beloved friends and relatives in order to get a leg up on Black Friday shoppers who dared to wait until the rest of the stores open at 4:00 a.m. the next day.
If you take the time to notice, you’ll see that the previous paragraph was all one sentence. You’ll also observe that American stores have become so obsessed with trying to get a leg up on other businesses that they are kicking down the very institutions that brought them business in the first place. If they open their stores on Thanksgiving, then why bother even having that holiday? Sure, the grocery stores make a killing on the days leading up to Thanksgiving, but if you force workers and shoppers to forsake their traditions so that your business can make money, what happens to the tradition? No one is home having Thanksgiving dinner with their families because they’re out shopping.
Same thing goes with Christmas decorations in October. They will eventually replace all Halloween decorations, and then that fun family holiday that gives adults an opportunity to hang out with their children and socialize with their neighbors as they gather free candy in the freezing rain – even that will fall by the wayside. And as you continue to blather about “holiday” festivities and Christmas lists earlier and earlier, consumers get more and more disgusted with the whole business. In case you store owners also just arrived from Jupiter, let me give you a heads-up: WE HATE CHRISTMAS ADS ON THE TV, RADIO, IN THE PAPER, ON FLYERS, AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND DECORATIONS, EVEN RED AND GREEN COLORS – WE HATE THE MERE THOUGHT OF CHRISTMAS before Thanksgiving.
Those of us who get our holiday shopping done early (sometimes on December 26th of the previous year) are going to continue doing that whether you advertise and decorate at an obscenely early date or at the proper time, and those of us who wait until the last minute to shop, (sometimes on December 24th), are going to continue doing that. Or else we are going to ignore the whole Christmas thing altogether, be forced to report to work on Christmas day, buy up everything on sale before the after Christmas sale, and say to hell with it.
In my humble (though always right) opinion, if we’re stupid enough to forget to buy a carton of eggs on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I can guarantee that no one is going to starve to death as a result, so I can’t see any excuse for a lot of these stores to be open on Thanksgiving and other traditional family gathering holidays. Give employees a break, for crying out loud. And don’t start sputtering about the exceptions, about the people who don’t have families or who don’t celebrate traditional holidays. It’s a lame excuse for money-grubbing, and you know it.
But will any of you listen? Of course not, because you’re too afraid that someone is going to get a little more of the market share than you are. Well, let it be known right here and now – I refuse to shop at Michaels for the rest of this year, and possibly forever, because they forced employees to work on Thanksgiving for no good reason. You can take your market share and shove it up your tofurkey for all I care (see previous post if this doesn’t make sense, and if it still doesn’t, go back to Jupiter).
So there.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Tofurkey Day!
Well, I’m happy to say this was a fabulous Thanksgiving, and I am so stuffed that I will have to make my entry short because I need to be supine right now with my belly sticking up in the air like an island in the Pacific.
Our friends had us and a few others over for dinner, and Laurie was trying to be a great hostess. Her daughter and I are both vegetarian, and since we couldn’t eat the turkey, she graciously prepared us a turkey substitute called “Tofurkey.”
This thing was a roundish ball of, judging by the name, some kind of tofu that had been colored to simulate a turkey breast. It almost had me fooled except for the ends. The “breast” had been formed in some kind of plastic casing that had been twist-tied at both ends, creating a molded, puckered look. The human body has an orifice that has that same puckered look, and it was about the same color. I couldn’t look at it, honestly, it was grossing me out totally. My friend’s husband carefully sliced the Tofurkey like a real turkey, and left one of the puckered ends on top. What a hideous presentation.
It’s hard to eat fake meat anyway. It never has the taste or texture of real meat, though you know they’ve tried really really hard to make it a suitable substitute. You have to use a lot of sauce or something and your vivid imagination to think that something called Tofurkey is going to taste like turkey. But when it looks like an, well, puckering part, it’s not going to pull off the masquerade.
I ate it, just to be polite, drowned in it’s own Tofurkey gravy and eaten with a mouthful of mashed potatoes to further disguise the taste. Memo to Tofurkey producers: put the pucker on the bottom or somewhere I can’t see it if you EVER want me to celebrate with your product at Thanksgiving.
The rest of the meal was an absolute delight; we all stuffed ourselves and then listened to our children playing Van Halen songs on the electric guitar. Oh, and did I mention that my family went skiing this morning and the sun was out? Seventeen runs – not too bad for the first day out, and no bickering among us, mostly because the kids slept all the way to the mountain and back.
I really wish I could find something more to complain about, and something to make fun of, but the sofa is calling me so loudly I’m going deaf and can’t focus. Happy Thanksgiving – yes, it was!
Our friends had us and a few others over for dinner, and Laurie was trying to be a great hostess. Her daughter and I are both vegetarian, and since we couldn’t eat the turkey, she graciously prepared us a turkey substitute called “Tofurkey.”
This thing was a roundish ball of, judging by the name, some kind of tofu that had been colored to simulate a turkey breast. It almost had me fooled except for the ends. The “breast” had been formed in some kind of plastic casing that had been twist-tied at both ends, creating a molded, puckered look. The human body has an orifice that has that same puckered look, and it was about the same color. I couldn’t look at it, honestly, it was grossing me out totally. My friend’s husband carefully sliced the Tofurkey like a real turkey, and left one of the puckered ends on top. What a hideous presentation.
It’s hard to eat fake meat anyway. It never has the taste or texture of real meat, though you know they’ve tried really really hard to make it a suitable substitute. You have to use a lot of sauce or something and your vivid imagination to think that something called Tofurkey is going to taste like turkey. But when it looks like an, well, puckering part, it’s not going to pull off the masquerade.
I ate it, just to be polite, drowned in it’s own Tofurkey gravy and eaten with a mouthful of mashed potatoes to further disguise the taste. Memo to Tofurkey producers: put the pucker on the bottom or somewhere I can’t see it if you EVER want me to celebrate with your product at Thanksgiving.
The rest of the meal was an absolute delight; we all stuffed ourselves and then listened to our children playing Van Halen songs on the electric guitar. Oh, and did I mention that my family went skiing this morning and the sun was out? Seventeen runs – not too bad for the first day out, and no bickering among us, mostly because the kids slept all the way to the mountain and back.
I really wish I could find something more to complain about, and something to make fun of, but the sofa is calling me so loudly I’m going deaf and can’t focus. Happy Thanksgiving – yes, it was!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Duck if You See This Turkey Coming
On this, Thanksgiving Eve, I think it’s time to talk turkey, or if you come from Louisiana - Turducken. I typed that and my spell check lit up like a turkey grease fire. That’s because Turducken (there it goes again) is a completely unnatural species of animal that I first learned about from my sister-in-law’s husband’s in-laws in Baton Rouge.
Whether the Cajuns invented this atrocity, or just acquired it, I don’t know, but it definitely sounds like something that came from their neck of the woods. They eat crawdads and gators and blackened everything, plus it seems to me like something Emeril might come up with. I heard rumors that he wanted to solve the nutria problem in Louisiana by using creative recipes to cook up the water-dwelling, pre-historic rodent that looks like a gargantuan rat on steroids.
For those of you who have been fortunate enough to never hear of this creature (the Turducken, not the nutria, which is at least a somewhat attractive member of the rodent family, once you get over its mammoth size eight food whiskers), I suggest you quit reading right now, because you’re not going to want to know. Trust me. This is an abomination against nature.
You’re still with me? You know, you can lead a horse to water but if he refuses to drink, well, I rest my case.
A Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside the intestinal cavity of a duck, which is then stuffed inside the intestinal cavity of a turkey. This unwieldy beast is then stuffed inside your oven where it cooks unspeakably, unevenly, and unbecomingly. Understand why I despise it?
Who would have come up with such a thing? There is something about reaching up inside a bird that lowers the threshold of my appetite to begin with. I used to have to turn my head when my mother stuffed fistfuls of dressing into the anal cavity of our family turkey, and I sure wasn’t about to eat any of that stuffing. If I didn’t witness it coming straight out of a separate pan, I wouldn’t touch it.
So to put a whole bird, or de-boned bird, or whatever in the hell it is into another bird is just not right. But my sister-in-law’s in-laws swore it was the best thing on the planet besides marrying your first cousin, so we got one for Thanksgiving a few years back.
I don’t like eating duck for any reason – they are so cute when they come up to you quacking for breadcrumbs, and Daffy and Donald could be their relatives. Eating chickens doesn’t worry me so much after one time when I was little I picked up a chick at my grandfather’s house and a mother hen flew out of nowhere right on top of my head and flogged me with her wings for about two hours. I think chickens are treacherous. I’ve never been intimate with any turkeys so they don’t bother me one way or the other. But on general principle I prefer not to eat anything that’s been shoved into something else’s guts. Have I belabored this point too long? No, I haven’t.
I’ve been vegetarian for years, so I didn’t partake of the Turducken on those grounds, though I would have become vegetarian that very day if it was the only way to avoid the hideous thing. The others reported that it was okay, ranking between possum and road kill, though nothing special. I think even they were grossed out. All I know is this: If a food is called something with the word Turd in it, I’m staying away. I advise you to do the same.
Whether the Cajuns invented this atrocity, or just acquired it, I don’t know, but it definitely sounds like something that came from their neck of the woods. They eat crawdads and gators and blackened everything, plus it seems to me like something Emeril might come up with. I heard rumors that he wanted to solve the nutria problem in Louisiana by using creative recipes to cook up the water-dwelling, pre-historic rodent that looks like a gargantuan rat on steroids.
For those of you who have been fortunate enough to never hear of this creature (the Turducken, not the nutria, which is at least a somewhat attractive member of the rodent family, once you get over its mammoth size eight food whiskers), I suggest you quit reading right now, because you’re not going to want to know. Trust me. This is an abomination against nature.
You’re still with me? You know, you can lead a horse to water but if he refuses to drink, well, I rest my case.
A Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside the intestinal cavity of a duck, which is then stuffed inside the intestinal cavity of a turkey. This unwieldy beast is then stuffed inside your oven where it cooks unspeakably, unevenly, and unbecomingly. Understand why I despise it?
Who would have come up with such a thing? There is something about reaching up inside a bird that lowers the threshold of my appetite to begin with. I used to have to turn my head when my mother stuffed fistfuls of dressing into the anal cavity of our family turkey, and I sure wasn’t about to eat any of that stuffing. If I didn’t witness it coming straight out of a separate pan, I wouldn’t touch it.
So to put a whole bird, or de-boned bird, or whatever in the hell it is into another bird is just not right. But my sister-in-law’s in-laws swore it was the best thing on the planet besides marrying your first cousin, so we got one for Thanksgiving a few years back.
I don’t like eating duck for any reason – they are so cute when they come up to you quacking for breadcrumbs, and Daffy and Donald could be their relatives. Eating chickens doesn’t worry me so much after one time when I was little I picked up a chick at my grandfather’s house and a mother hen flew out of nowhere right on top of my head and flogged me with her wings for about two hours. I think chickens are treacherous. I’ve never been intimate with any turkeys so they don’t bother me one way or the other. But on general principle I prefer not to eat anything that’s been shoved into something else’s guts. Have I belabored this point too long? No, I haven’t.
I’ve been vegetarian for years, so I didn’t partake of the Turducken on those grounds, though I would have become vegetarian that very day if it was the only way to avoid the hideous thing. The others reported that it was okay, ranking between possum and road kill, though nothing special. I think even they were grossed out. All I know is this: If a food is called something with the word Turd in it, I’m staying away. I advise you to do the same.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Rumpus Dreams
I’m going to get my hair cut tomorrow and my salon let me hang four of my framed photos there. Unfortunately, that’s all they’ve been doing is hanging. None have walked out the door under someone’s armpit yet, but they are, perhaps and all things considered, overpriced. I thought if I used a double mat, I could double my price. Apparently the world of art doesn’t work that way.
My favorite of the four is a picture of a dory boat on the beach of the Oregon Coast. A couple of fishermen, one in no shirt and a ponytail, were reeling the boat onto its trailer. The boat wasn’t much to look at, but the reason I took a picture was the name of the side, “The Codfather.” Get it, “COD” father? It had a little string of fish hanging on a line just under the name.
I think it’s fun when people have a sense of humor like that. I took another picture that I haven’t framed yet of a muddy white pickup truck with a dirty teddy bear in the front grill, a porpoise glued to the roof, and assorted little statues of mermaids, elves, miniature lawn gnomes, and what-not glued to the hood and all over the dashboard. I don’t know who would buy such a picture, but it might be quite impressive in a dorm room or rumpus room.
Speaking of rumpus rooms, my brother once had a dream that there was a cow in the unfinished basement that he was turning into a rumpus room. The dream disturbed him no end because he likes to analyze dreams and believes they have a lot of insights. I think it had to do with the cow he killed when he was five. He was supposed to close the feed door after feeding the cows with his great grandfather, but he couldn’t quite reach the latch so he did what all little boys in his shoes would have done – he ran away from home and joined the circus. No, of course he didn’t do that because it was getting too dark, so he pretended he latched the door and ran like wild dogs were chasing him to catch up before something got him in the night.
The favorite cow, named “Pet,” got in the feed and literally ate herself to death, which was a financial and emotional tragedy for everyone. Pet made her way up to the pasture before she keeled over and died. The next day the kids went up and sat on her. We were too young to know any better, and it was the only way we were going to get to ride a cow. I think Pet came back to haunt him, and what better place than plopping right in the middle of the rumpus room he was trying to fix up.
For me, dreaming has everything to do with what I’ve been doing that day. If I’ve been cleaning house, I’ll have a dream that the vacuum breaks and the floor is covered in confetti and the neighbors are in a pack on their way over for a party. Tonight I’ll probably dream about that pickup truck – I’ll be driving down the road in it and the teddy bear will blow off the grill and hit the windshield in really slow motion, taking out the porpoise as it crests over the roof. Except the porpoise will be a cow. Sounds pretty entertaining – I’m off to bed.
My favorite of the four is a picture of a dory boat on the beach of the Oregon Coast. A couple of fishermen, one in no shirt and a ponytail, were reeling the boat onto its trailer. The boat wasn’t much to look at, but the reason I took a picture was the name of the side, “The Codfather.” Get it, “COD” father? It had a little string of fish hanging on a line just under the name.
I think it’s fun when people have a sense of humor like that. I took another picture that I haven’t framed yet of a muddy white pickup truck with a dirty teddy bear in the front grill, a porpoise glued to the roof, and assorted little statues of mermaids, elves, miniature lawn gnomes, and what-not glued to the hood and all over the dashboard. I don’t know who would buy such a picture, but it might be quite impressive in a dorm room or rumpus room.
Speaking of rumpus rooms, my brother once had a dream that there was a cow in the unfinished basement that he was turning into a rumpus room. The dream disturbed him no end because he likes to analyze dreams and believes they have a lot of insights. I think it had to do with the cow he killed when he was five. He was supposed to close the feed door after feeding the cows with his great grandfather, but he couldn’t quite reach the latch so he did what all little boys in his shoes would have done – he ran away from home and joined the circus. No, of course he didn’t do that because it was getting too dark, so he pretended he latched the door and ran like wild dogs were chasing him to catch up before something got him in the night.
The favorite cow, named “Pet,” got in the feed and literally ate herself to death, which was a financial and emotional tragedy for everyone. Pet made her way up to the pasture before she keeled over and died. The next day the kids went up and sat on her. We were too young to know any better, and it was the only way we were going to get to ride a cow. I think Pet came back to haunt him, and what better place than plopping right in the middle of the rumpus room he was trying to fix up.
For me, dreaming has everything to do with what I’ve been doing that day. If I’ve been cleaning house, I’ll have a dream that the vacuum breaks and the floor is covered in confetti and the neighbors are in a pack on their way over for a party. Tonight I’ll probably dream about that pickup truck – I’ll be driving down the road in it and the teddy bear will blow off the grill and hit the windshield in really slow motion, taking out the porpoise as it crests over the roof. Except the porpoise will be a cow. Sounds pretty entertaining – I’m off to bed.
Monday, November 23, 2009
How I Get My Material
Nobody asks me how I come up with my ideas, but in case they ever do, I’m going to practice my answer.
I have no system. I get up in the morning thinking, “What will I write about today?” and my next thought is, “I’m hungry,” and I don’t think about writing for awhile, until I think, “I’m still hungry,” and that goes on until about 10:45 at night, when I panic and realize that if I’m going to meet my goal for the day, I need to make a beeline to the kitchen and grab something to tide me over while I write.
If you’ve ever read de Tocqueville’s, Democracy in America, you were probably forced to by some nincompoop like my college professor who taught American Literature. I protested on the grounds that it wasn’t even written by an American, for crying out loud. We got in a knock down drag out fight that resulted in me having a B grade from all my work but getting a C in the course because of my attitude. Oh how I despised that man. I have to go outside and spit…..Okay, I’m back. What a bad taste the memory gives me.
His name was Carafoil or something like that, but I called him Caro-vile. I was clever back then. I wanted to get my English degree, and I wanted to do it after working all day and going to three hours of classes four nights a week and paying for it out of my own pocket. The very, very last thing I wanted on earth was a man who thought he was God’s gift to English majors and, for that reason, really didn’t need to do much teaching because he felt that entertaining us with jokes and rambling reports of his ultra stupid life was a much better way to kill three hours of class time week after week.
Pardon me while I go evacuate my innards……..Okay, I’m back. That feels better. It’s hard to imagine after all this time that he still can make me nauseous.
But why was I talking about him? Oh yeah, when I wrote the word “beeline” up above, I remembered something from de Tocqueville about bees that was interesting. Bees will go out into the world and find some honey, and they’ll come back to their home in a straight line. If you want to find honey, you can actually follow a bee and it will lead you to it. That’s where the term “beeline” came from. I followed a bee a little ways once but couldn’t get over my neighbor’s fence quick enough.
Another interesting thing in that book (which was published in 1835) was the story of a farmer who had some kind of opening in his living room ceiling and bees came in his house and made a nest up there. They had their little habits, coming and going, humming and buzzing. The farmer and his wife thought they were right good company. Today, one bee gets in and people fly out the house like teenagers busted in a bar. Out come the cans of RAID, fly swatters, a big shoe, my brother’s bad breath (he can drop an insect at 7 paces), and all other lethal means to eliminate the ghastly thing before it, heaven forbid, bangs itself to death on the window trying to get out.
So there you have it, that’s how I come up with my ideas. Aren’t you glad you didn’t ask?
I have no system. I get up in the morning thinking, “What will I write about today?” and my next thought is, “I’m hungry,” and I don’t think about writing for awhile, until I think, “I’m still hungry,” and that goes on until about 10:45 at night, when I panic and realize that if I’m going to meet my goal for the day, I need to make a beeline to the kitchen and grab something to tide me over while I write.
If you’ve ever read de Tocqueville’s, Democracy in America, you were probably forced to by some nincompoop like my college professor who taught American Literature. I protested on the grounds that it wasn’t even written by an American, for crying out loud. We got in a knock down drag out fight that resulted in me having a B grade from all my work but getting a C in the course because of my attitude. Oh how I despised that man. I have to go outside and spit…..Okay, I’m back. What a bad taste the memory gives me.
His name was Carafoil or something like that, but I called him Caro-vile. I was clever back then. I wanted to get my English degree, and I wanted to do it after working all day and going to three hours of classes four nights a week and paying for it out of my own pocket. The very, very last thing I wanted on earth was a man who thought he was God’s gift to English majors and, for that reason, really didn’t need to do much teaching because he felt that entertaining us with jokes and rambling reports of his ultra stupid life was a much better way to kill three hours of class time week after week.
Pardon me while I go evacuate my innards……..Okay, I’m back. That feels better. It’s hard to imagine after all this time that he still can make me nauseous.
But why was I talking about him? Oh yeah, when I wrote the word “beeline” up above, I remembered something from de Tocqueville about bees that was interesting. Bees will go out into the world and find some honey, and they’ll come back to their home in a straight line. If you want to find honey, you can actually follow a bee and it will lead you to it. That’s where the term “beeline” came from. I followed a bee a little ways once but couldn’t get over my neighbor’s fence quick enough.
Another interesting thing in that book (which was published in 1835) was the story of a farmer who had some kind of opening in his living room ceiling and bees came in his house and made a nest up there. They had their little habits, coming and going, humming and buzzing. The farmer and his wife thought they were right good company. Today, one bee gets in and people fly out the house like teenagers busted in a bar. Out come the cans of RAID, fly swatters, a big shoe, my brother’s bad breath (he can drop an insect at 7 paces), and all other lethal means to eliminate the ghastly thing before it, heaven forbid, bangs itself to death on the window trying to get out.
So there you have it, that’s how I come up with my ideas. Aren’t you glad you didn’t ask?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A Movie to Kill Time
I just watched the most asinine movie called, “The International.” I don’t know what the critics had to say about it, but here’s my review.
We were renting this in the comfort of our own home, thank goodness, and so we saved $150 between the three of us when you add up the price of the movie tickets, popcorn, sodas, Milk Duds, and Jujube’s)
It started out and you knew SOMEBODY was going to get offed because of the music and the tension, but we didn’t really know which of the two characters it would be. And the method was fairly ingenious. It was looking like a good choice as the plot started to gear up and everyone seemed suspicious.
Then the other guy from the opening scene gets killed, and the good guys (Clive Owen and Naomi Watts) begin an “international” manhunt that leads to more plot twists and suspects, one after the other. My daughter asked, “When is this movie ever going to be over? It’s been on forever.”
This is not a good sign. An exciting movie, full of intelligent plot twists and suspense, will yank you in so that you don’t come up for air long enough to even think about the time.
Not this egregious curse of a movie. Everyone who could take us out of our misery by ending it gets killed off. In one magnificently stupid scene, the bad guys (a mean, selfish bank) decide they need to kill their hired assassin because the good guys are on to him. A bad guy meets him at the Guggenheim to set him up. He gets shot, and Clive Owen, who’s been tailing him, runs over after the shooting to try and get a couple of names out of the assassin before he croaks. The guy’s on the floor, looking like he’s dying, and says, “Help me out of this thing, I’m suffocating.” Turns out he’s got on a bulletproof vest so he doesn’t get a scratch from all the bullets fired at him.
We all breathed a sigh of relief because finally, FINALLY, one informer is left standing who can squeal and the movie will be over. The second Clive Owen gets his vest off, big surprise, someone starts shooting – BEFORE he talks, of course. They shoot the crap out of the Guggenheim, with new bad guys appearing like cockroaches in the night. And you won’t believe it. Mr. “Get This Thing Off of Me” is hit by 40,000 bullets to the chest after two hours of shooting during which one of the good guys is hit in the neck and spews a geyser full of gory clots into the air like Old Faithful. “Oooo, that’s gross!” my daughter said, and it was, but in the stupidest way.
With this informant dead, my daughter and I discussed whether to commit slow suicide by continuing to watch the movie, or walk away without knowing the ending. My husband had done the smart thing by falling asleep in the Lazy Boy.
Finally, Clive convinces a brand new informant to end the movie, and it looks like it might just work until that one gets killed, too. “Will this movie never end?” wailed my daughter, which woke up my husband.
The movie did end, ridiculously, when the script brought in a hit man out of the blue hired by the sons of one of the informants killed early in the movie. No real justice is served. Clive Owens doesn’t get to see the bank’s activities brought to light – this final bad guy could have been persuaded to talk if he hadn’t just been killed. The final scene is of Clive standing on a rooftop looking bewildered, probably because he’s thinking that if he’d hired the hit man a couple of hours earlier, he could have taken out ALL the bad guys and avoided a lot of useless film time for nothing.
In a desperate attempt to bring closure to this monstrosity, newspaper clips are shown during the credits about how the bank ends up getting huge profits, how its behind the scenes dirty dealings are causing weapons to proliferate in Third World countries (which is what the plot is based on), and how Naomi Watts is appointed to lead a new investigation, which she spent the whole movie doing, to no avail, so you know the bank will continue with business as usual.
So thanks Hollywood, again, for stealing what seemed like nine hours of my life to watch a movie with no intelligent plot that didn’t even have the basic decency to satisfy the suffering audience at the end. However, my husband thought it was good, but considering that he slept through most of it, I don’t know if I’d count that as a recommendation. My Final Grade: F - See it at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
We were renting this in the comfort of our own home, thank goodness, and so we saved $150 between the three of us when you add up the price of the movie tickets, popcorn, sodas, Milk Duds, and Jujube’s)
It started out and you knew SOMEBODY was going to get offed because of the music and the tension, but we didn’t really know which of the two characters it would be. And the method was fairly ingenious. It was looking like a good choice as the plot started to gear up and everyone seemed suspicious.
Then the other guy from the opening scene gets killed, and the good guys (Clive Owen and Naomi Watts) begin an “international” manhunt that leads to more plot twists and suspects, one after the other. My daughter asked, “When is this movie ever going to be over? It’s been on forever.”
This is not a good sign. An exciting movie, full of intelligent plot twists and suspense, will yank you in so that you don’t come up for air long enough to even think about the time.
Not this egregious curse of a movie. Everyone who could take us out of our misery by ending it gets killed off. In one magnificently stupid scene, the bad guys (a mean, selfish bank) decide they need to kill their hired assassin because the good guys are on to him. A bad guy meets him at the Guggenheim to set him up. He gets shot, and Clive Owen, who’s been tailing him, runs over after the shooting to try and get a couple of names out of the assassin before he croaks. The guy’s on the floor, looking like he’s dying, and says, “Help me out of this thing, I’m suffocating.” Turns out he’s got on a bulletproof vest so he doesn’t get a scratch from all the bullets fired at him.
We all breathed a sigh of relief because finally, FINALLY, one informer is left standing who can squeal and the movie will be over. The second Clive Owen gets his vest off, big surprise, someone starts shooting – BEFORE he talks, of course. They shoot the crap out of the Guggenheim, with new bad guys appearing like cockroaches in the night. And you won’t believe it. Mr. “Get This Thing Off of Me” is hit by 40,000 bullets to the chest after two hours of shooting during which one of the good guys is hit in the neck and spews a geyser full of gory clots into the air like Old Faithful. “Oooo, that’s gross!” my daughter said, and it was, but in the stupidest way.
With this informant dead, my daughter and I discussed whether to commit slow suicide by continuing to watch the movie, or walk away without knowing the ending. My husband had done the smart thing by falling asleep in the Lazy Boy.
Finally, Clive convinces a brand new informant to end the movie, and it looks like it might just work until that one gets killed, too. “Will this movie never end?” wailed my daughter, which woke up my husband.
The movie did end, ridiculously, when the script brought in a hit man out of the blue hired by the sons of one of the informants killed early in the movie. No real justice is served. Clive Owens doesn’t get to see the bank’s activities brought to light – this final bad guy could have been persuaded to talk if he hadn’t just been killed. The final scene is of Clive standing on a rooftop looking bewildered, probably because he’s thinking that if he’d hired the hit man a couple of hours earlier, he could have taken out ALL the bad guys and avoided a lot of useless film time for nothing.
In a desperate attempt to bring closure to this monstrosity, newspaper clips are shown during the credits about how the bank ends up getting huge profits, how its behind the scenes dirty dealings are causing weapons to proliferate in Third World countries (which is what the plot is based on), and how Naomi Watts is appointed to lead a new investigation, which she spent the whole movie doing, to no avail, so you know the bank will continue with business as usual.
So thanks Hollywood, again, for stealing what seemed like nine hours of my life to watch a movie with no intelligent plot that didn’t even have the basic decency to satisfy the suffering audience at the end. However, my husband thought it was good, but considering that he slept through most of it, I don’t know if I’d count that as a recommendation. My Final Grade: F - See it at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
the Terrible Teens
In 8th grade, kids have to carry a ten-pound sack of flour around to give them an idea of what a nuisance it is to have a baby in their teens so they’ll wait until they’re older. There used to be a program where prisoners would talk to kids and show them how bad life is when you break the law. I think it was called, “Scared Straight.” These are good ideas. It’s like a flu shot – it gives you a small dose of discomfort so you can avoid the big misery of the real thing.
One thing they should also do is have a room full of teenagers and bring in couples who are desperate to have a child. They should let the teenagers just talk about their lives, and how no one understands them and how stupid their parents are, especially when they insist that their rooms get picked up every few months and the dirty, moldy plates get brought to the kitchen. “It doesn’t bother us, why should it bother them? It’s our room, not theirs. If they want it clean, they can come in and clean it.”
And then when it’s question and answer time, and the couples innocently ask some general thing to communicate, for instance, “How do you like school?” the teenagers could answer, “why are you people always up in our faces? Why don’t you get a life of your own?”
And then they could start asking for money and a ride to someone’s house in a snide and snarky tone of voice, and get mad at the would-be parents for not jumping up and doing it on a minute’s notice.
Finally, they could start blaming the prospective parents for things like making them be in that room answering stupid questions instead of out with their friends. “Your just like all grown-ups, you only think about yourself. You have no idea how hard our lives are.” And if the parents-to-be ask if there’s something they can do to help, the teenagers can say, “Yeah, right, like you could understand or even want to do anything,” and walk out the door, slamming it as hard as they can.
Yes, I know, I’m painting a pretty rosy picture of living with teenagers, because it gets a lot uglier than this. If anyone would have warned me, I might have reconsidered. The only consolation is that, rumor has it, the nasty alien thing living in your child’s body will eventually leave, and your sweet daughter will reappear sometime in her 20’s or 30’s. I only hope I can survive that long because, if looks could kill, I’d be fertilizing daisies.
One thing they should also do is have a room full of teenagers and bring in couples who are desperate to have a child. They should let the teenagers just talk about their lives, and how no one understands them and how stupid their parents are, especially when they insist that their rooms get picked up every few months and the dirty, moldy plates get brought to the kitchen. “It doesn’t bother us, why should it bother them? It’s our room, not theirs. If they want it clean, they can come in and clean it.”
And then when it’s question and answer time, and the couples innocently ask some general thing to communicate, for instance, “How do you like school?” the teenagers could answer, “why are you people always up in our faces? Why don’t you get a life of your own?”
And then they could start asking for money and a ride to someone’s house in a snide and snarky tone of voice, and get mad at the would-be parents for not jumping up and doing it on a minute’s notice.
Finally, they could start blaming the prospective parents for things like making them be in that room answering stupid questions instead of out with their friends. “Your just like all grown-ups, you only think about yourself. You have no idea how hard our lives are.” And if the parents-to-be ask if there’s something they can do to help, the teenagers can say, “Yeah, right, like you could understand or even want to do anything,” and walk out the door, slamming it as hard as they can.
Yes, I know, I’m painting a pretty rosy picture of living with teenagers, because it gets a lot uglier than this. If anyone would have warned me, I might have reconsidered. The only consolation is that, rumor has it, the nasty alien thing living in your child’s body will eventually leave, and your sweet daughter will reappear sometime in her 20’s or 30’s. I only hope I can survive that long because, if looks could kill, I’d be fertilizing daisies.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sorry I'm Late
I just had a wonderful Indian dinner with friends, and when it was all done and I was happy as a clam, they started talking about taxes and the new health plan. I immediately got indigestion, and since I procrastinated all day writing my blog, and now I'm too cranky to be funny, I'm taking the lazy way out and using a poem I wrote a while back. This still counts as my blog post for today, if I can hurry and get it done before midnight.
I do not premeditate being late.
I really try not to procrastinate.
I want to be on time, honest I do.
But then my keys hide, and so does one shoe.
I set my clocks ahead, but it's all for naught.
Sometimes being late isn’t always my fault.
If I leave my house almost right on time.
A bus on a narrow road puts me behind.
Red lights conspire to slow my pace.
They’re never green when I’m having to race.
Road construction blocks my path.
Flagmen don’t care about my wrath.
And if I'm late, I'm just like my brother,
We both got tardiness from our mother.
She made us be careful and take our time.
She said, "If you're late, it's not such a crime.”
"Better late than never," is what she'd say,
But most other people don’t feel that way.
My bosses scold, and I dread all the fuss,
My husband fumes and starts to cuss.
My daughter pouts when she’s late for school,
My son says, “Mom, this is really NOT cool.”
Puntuality is always my goal.
But it's something I can't seem to control.
Oddly, I have friends who are never late.
You’d think they’d complain when we make a date.
They know what time I’ll dash through the door.
Five minutes behind, just like before.
You'd think my lateness would make them distant.
"You're late," they say, "but at least you’re consistent."
I do not premeditate being late.
I really try not to procrastinate.
I want to be on time, honest I do.
But then my keys hide, and so does one shoe.
I set my clocks ahead, but it's all for naught.
Sometimes being late isn’t always my fault.
If I leave my house almost right on time.
A bus on a narrow road puts me behind.
Red lights conspire to slow my pace.
They’re never green when I’m having to race.
Road construction blocks my path.
Flagmen don’t care about my wrath.
And if I'm late, I'm just like my brother,
We both got tardiness from our mother.
She made us be careful and take our time.
She said, "If you're late, it's not such a crime.”
"Better late than never," is what she'd say,
But most other people don’t feel that way.
My bosses scold, and I dread all the fuss,
My husband fumes and starts to cuss.
My daughter pouts when she’s late for school,
My son says, “Mom, this is really NOT cool.”
Puntuality is always my goal.
But it's something I can't seem to control.
Oddly, I have friends who are never late.
You’d think they’d complain when we make a date.
They know what time I’ll dash through the door.
Five minutes behind, just like before.
You'd think my lateness would make them distant.
"You're late," they say, "but at least you’re consistent."
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Birds of a Feather
I was thinking about friendships, and I realize that I tend to like people who are like me. That’s because we have things in common. If I’m in a group of people, and they’re all talking about American Idol – they know all the contestants’ names and call in and vote a dozen times – but I don’t give a flying rip about the show (and I’m just using American Idol as an example, you can substitute any show, like Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, Jerry Springer - it’s all the same difference). If you don’t watch the show, it’s probably because you’ve tried to sit through one episode and you concluded that it was pretty dumb. And if they watch it, then it stands to reason that they’re dumb, too.
Humans have an immense capacity for thinking everyone else is stupid. Women demonstrate this repeatedly. A woman will say, “I can’t believe she did that!” Frequently the woman will lean over and put her hand to the side of her face so the public won’t be able to hear her catty comments. What she’s really saying is, “She’s so bizarre, I just want to take her and shake some sense into her.”
Women always want to shake some sense into somebody. We think we can fix people. We start with our husbands, which doesn’t get very far, so we have children and enjoy a small measure of success while they’re helpless, but around age two the battles start and escalate until they reach their teens and we concede the war.
So women go to work on their friends, but they have to be careful if they want to actually keep the friend. “I really liked your hair short,” is the kind of subtle comment they’ll make to try and get you to change. Or, “why don’t you try yoga, I hear that’s a really good way to get in shape – I’ll sign up with you.”
If you migrate toward people more like you, there’s less to fix and, consequently, less irritation. For instance, people choose the Republican Party because they want to hold onto their money and buy gas-guzzlers and McMansions to show they have succeeded in life. People choose the Democratic Party because they feel guilty about succeeding in life and want to share some of their wealth with those less fortunate. You’ll choose the group that makes you feel most comfortable, and set about criticizing the other group and try to convert them as much as possible.
Sometimes I wonder where I’m going with these tangents. But one thing I’m certain about, even within my own circle of friends who are a lot like me, I can still find things about them that I wish they’d do differently. And everyone I know is like that. I have one friend who thinks women should never be caught shoeless without a fresh pedicure. After she has people over in the summer, all she can talk about is how so and so’s feet looked so bad and how she can’t believe they go around in flip flops with those yellowish looking toenails. I have a relative who talks incessantly about how other people act so inappropriately, yet she has the social graces of a baboon.
And then there’s me, who wishes I could do a makeover on everyone. I’d have the negative people shut up, the mousey people stand up, the unhealthy people slim down, the mean people beat down, the prices at my favorite stores marked down, and my income jacked up. That’s how I’d make the world a better place. But in the meantime, I’m going to try and accept people just the way they are because, God love ‘em, they weren’t lucky enough to be born like me. And I’m pretty positive that everyone else thinks they’re just right, because it doesn’t seem like anyone I know has ever changed for the better, no matter how much good advice I give them.
Humans have an immense capacity for thinking everyone else is stupid. Women demonstrate this repeatedly. A woman will say, “I can’t believe she did that!” Frequently the woman will lean over and put her hand to the side of her face so the public won’t be able to hear her catty comments. What she’s really saying is, “She’s so bizarre, I just want to take her and shake some sense into her.”
Women always want to shake some sense into somebody. We think we can fix people. We start with our husbands, which doesn’t get very far, so we have children and enjoy a small measure of success while they’re helpless, but around age two the battles start and escalate until they reach their teens and we concede the war.
So women go to work on their friends, but they have to be careful if they want to actually keep the friend. “I really liked your hair short,” is the kind of subtle comment they’ll make to try and get you to change. Or, “why don’t you try yoga, I hear that’s a really good way to get in shape – I’ll sign up with you.”
If you migrate toward people more like you, there’s less to fix and, consequently, less irritation. For instance, people choose the Republican Party because they want to hold onto their money and buy gas-guzzlers and McMansions to show they have succeeded in life. People choose the Democratic Party because they feel guilty about succeeding in life and want to share some of their wealth with those less fortunate. You’ll choose the group that makes you feel most comfortable, and set about criticizing the other group and try to convert them as much as possible.
Sometimes I wonder where I’m going with these tangents. But one thing I’m certain about, even within my own circle of friends who are a lot like me, I can still find things about them that I wish they’d do differently. And everyone I know is like that. I have one friend who thinks women should never be caught shoeless without a fresh pedicure. After she has people over in the summer, all she can talk about is how so and so’s feet looked so bad and how she can’t believe they go around in flip flops with those yellowish looking toenails. I have a relative who talks incessantly about how other people act so inappropriately, yet she has the social graces of a baboon.
And then there’s me, who wishes I could do a makeover on everyone. I’d have the negative people shut up, the mousey people stand up, the unhealthy people slim down, the mean people beat down, the prices at my favorite stores marked down, and my income jacked up. That’s how I’d make the world a better place. But in the meantime, I’m going to try and accept people just the way they are because, God love ‘em, they weren’t lucky enough to be born like me. And I’m pretty positive that everyone else thinks they’re just right, because it doesn’t seem like anyone I know has ever changed for the better, no matter how much good advice I give them.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Somebody's Got to Be the Straight Guy
I’ve always been the straight man, or straight person. I’ll see a joke coming and set it up. Like last night at that concert I was telling you about. My friend took a picture of me, and then a couple of minutes later we were looking at the pictures, and since it was dark in there, and the screen’s really tiny on those phone things, at first all I could see were just shades of color. I said, “Is that me?”
They laughed, so I realized it must not have been. The other thing is, I’ve got braces on my teeth due to some faulty dental work (I had very straight teeth and the last thing I wanted or needed before the faulty dental work was braces). I look hideous in pictures and I’m not exaggerating. They did a little blurb about me in The Oregonian and sent a photographer to my house, and he must have taken 500 pictures, but since every camera makes me look like some toothless doofus no matter how I pose or the skill of the photographer, I looked like an idiot. “It wasn’t the best picture of you,” my friend Joyce said, which I thought was very kind.
Anyway, I hate getting my picture taken, but not as much as I hate seeing the picture. Laurie was sitting in the middle, holding up the pictures for both of us to see, and as my eyes finally got focused on the camera, I saw that she was showing a picture of her pet frog, an ugly close-up shot from an angle that distorted him and made him out of focus so that he looked like a brown cow pie with a giant froggy eyeball. I piped up and said, “Is that me? I just don’t look like myself with these braces.”
Laurie and Olivia about wet their pants because they could obviously see the frog in the picture. Tears started rolling down their eyes, I’m not kidding. They were bent over like they were checking their shoes and laughing, only coming up to wipe away the tears, then bending back down again. Now, mind you, we all had a couple of pints of IPA, except Laurie had that black poison of a beer – a porter – because she must have thought she needed more hair on her chest, so maybe that made them a little more susceptible to my humor, but that’s what I’m talking about being the straight person.
I had a friend once named Steve Bingham who I snubbed all through high school but “met” in Fort Myers Beach, Florida when I was there with two girlfriends spending the summer after my sophomore year in college. Bingham (that’s what we all called him), by sheer coincidence, had come down there with a pack of his friends, and we ran into them and invited them to our apartment. A hurricane was raging outside – wind bending the palm trees almost 90º and sheets or horizontal rain pounding the windows. I discovered that Bingham was naturally very funny. We were listening to The Who, and I had on a pair of headphones so I could hear over the wind, even though the speakers were up plenty high. Did I mention I’m going deaf? Anyway, Bingham would ask me questions like, “You’re ugly, aren’t you?” and then start shaking his head up and down in an exaggerated way to get me to agree with him. Everyone in the room thought I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could, though I pretended I couldn’t and I’d start nodding yes along with him. Everyone cracked up. I could see them all giggling, but I kept a straight face. They acted like it was the funniest thing on earth. There was beer involved there, too. Then Bingham would say, “You like girls, don’t you?” and I’d nod and smile. “You eat Palmetto bugs, don’t you?” and so on. Seems like we did that for hours until we were overcome with hunger and walked downstairs to Vi’s Restaurant to get Key Lime Pie.
You know, I think some of this stuff gets lost in the telling, but I’m sitting here laughing like I’m at a comedy club thinking about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed about that frog picture – it probably wouldn’t have been so funny if the frog hadn’t looked so bad. I woke myself up snickering about it in my sleep. See? When you laugh, you forget about the bad things, like how hideous you look in braces. For a couple of minutes, anyway.
They laughed, so I realized it must not have been. The other thing is, I’ve got braces on my teeth due to some faulty dental work (I had very straight teeth and the last thing I wanted or needed before the faulty dental work was braces). I look hideous in pictures and I’m not exaggerating. They did a little blurb about me in The Oregonian and sent a photographer to my house, and he must have taken 500 pictures, but since every camera makes me look like some toothless doofus no matter how I pose or the skill of the photographer, I looked like an idiot. “It wasn’t the best picture of you,” my friend Joyce said, which I thought was very kind.
Anyway, I hate getting my picture taken, but not as much as I hate seeing the picture. Laurie was sitting in the middle, holding up the pictures for both of us to see, and as my eyes finally got focused on the camera, I saw that she was showing a picture of her pet frog, an ugly close-up shot from an angle that distorted him and made him out of focus so that he looked like a brown cow pie with a giant froggy eyeball. I piped up and said, “Is that me? I just don’t look like myself with these braces.”
Laurie and Olivia about wet their pants because they could obviously see the frog in the picture. Tears started rolling down their eyes, I’m not kidding. They were bent over like they were checking their shoes and laughing, only coming up to wipe away the tears, then bending back down again. Now, mind you, we all had a couple of pints of IPA, except Laurie had that black poison of a beer – a porter – because she must have thought she needed more hair on her chest, so maybe that made them a little more susceptible to my humor, but that’s what I’m talking about being the straight person.
I had a friend once named Steve Bingham who I snubbed all through high school but “met” in Fort Myers Beach, Florida when I was there with two girlfriends spending the summer after my sophomore year in college. Bingham (that’s what we all called him), by sheer coincidence, had come down there with a pack of his friends, and we ran into them and invited them to our apartment. A hurricane was raging outside – wind bending the palm trees almost 90º and sheets or horizontal rain pounding the windows. I discovered that Bingham was naturally very funny. We were listening to The Who, and I had on a pair of headphones so I could hear over the wind, even though the speakers were up plenty high. Did I mention I’m going deaf? Anyway, Bingham would ask me questions like, “You’re ugly, aren’t you?” and then start shaking his head up and down in an exaggerated way to get me to agree with him. Everyone in the room thought I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could, though I pretended I couldn’t and I’d start nodding yes along with him. Everyone cracked up. I could see them all giggling, but I kept a straight face. They acted like it was the funniest thing on earth. There was beer involved there, too. Then Bingham would say, “You like girls, don’t you?” and I’d nod and smile. “You eat Palmetto bugs, don’t you?” and so on. Seems like we did that for hours until we were overcome with hunger and walked downstairs to Vi’s Restaurant to get Key Lime Pie.
You know, I think some of this stuff gets lost in the telling, but I’m sitting here laughing like I’m at a comedy club thinking about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed about that frog picture – it probably wouldn’t have been so funny if the frog hadn’t looked so bad. I woke myself up snickering about it in my sleep. See? When you laugh, you forget about the bad things, like how hideous you look in braces. For a couple of minutes, anyway.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Concerts Make Me Sleepy
I just went to a concert by a group called Playing for Change with a couple of my girlfriends. We had dinner first at The Aladdin Theater, and it was packed. There was a table for two, so a couple sitting at a table for four agreed to change with us, so I felt I needed to entertain them with whining that our food was taking forever to get there and asking for some of theirs when they were served. Boy were they laughing, especially after I’d had a couple of IPA’s on an empty stomach. Everything I said was funny. Ha Ha
After we ate we went in and got our seats. The band came out and were quite good, except when they played reggae music which, excuse me if I’m not diverse in my musical taste, but it all sounds pretty much the same to me (which is the exact thing my dad used to say about my rock music). Besides, I like songs I know better than new stuff, especially at a concert. But it turned out to be good that they played those songs because then I was able to grab a little shuteye.
I enjoyed the concert – it was mostly an older crowd and we were swaying back and forth, a couple of people lit their Bic’s, and it was like old times. And actually, it was a whole lot like the concerts I went to back in the day. The Allman Brothers or Leon Russell came through Knoxville, Tennessee practically every other week, it seemed like, and there were about twenty of us who never missed a concert. Back then there was a cloud of smoke at every concert, and the majority of it was not tobacco. Complete strangers passed those funny cigarettes back and forth – it didn't matter if you partook or not, it was good concert etiquette to pass whatever was handed to you along. Someone would put a doobie in your right hand and you’d already have one in your left to pass off. I’m sure the second-hand smoke was enough to have an affect on those of us who were there just to hear the music. Oh yeah, that reminds me, we saw the Doobie Brothers, too.
I remember getting so sleepy because I had to be at work early every morning, and I’d pray that the concert would get over. Then finally the lead guitar guy would do his excruciatingly long solo of eardrum busting high notes, and when he quit everyone cheered – but I’m sure it was because it was finally over, not because anyone liked it. Then they’d leave the stage to pounding feet on bleachers and hollers and claps, and I would start praying again that the lights would come on.
But they never did. After the racket continued for a while, the band would sheepishly come back out, put their guitars on, and start playing the one song you’d been waiting to hear all night, which brought the house down. And they dragged the song out for an eternity, and then they’d go back off stage, and the freaking lights would still stay off. Doggone it! They’d come back and do a slow song nobody on earth wanted to hear, and when they were done we gave them polite applause and the lights went on, and I could go home.
Same thing happened tonight. Playing for Change comes back out and does their “Stand By Me” signature song, getting the audience to sing with them amid the cheering, swaying, and Bic lighters, and then they leave again, but the lights stay off, and there’s one guy still up on stage. He slowly raises a microphone to his mouth and everything gets really quiet and he starts singing, “Amazing Grace.” Well now there’s a slow one that he made even slower – and I thought, “this is the same formula they were using back in the day.” But I had to give him credit, he sang it very well, and it was all the more special because he was actually blind – wearing an eye patch even.
All in all it was a great concert, but now you must excuse me. I’m very, very sleepy – just like in the good old days.
After we ate we went in and got our seats. The band came out and were quite good, except when they played reggae music which, excuse me if I’m not diverse in my musical taste, but it all sounds pretty much the same to me (which is the exact thing my dad used to say about my rock music). Besides, I like songs I know better than new stuff, especially at a concert. But it turned out to be good that they played those songs because then I was able to grab a little shuteye.
I enjoyed the concert – it was mostly an older crowd and we were swaying back and forth, a couple of people lit their Bic’s, and it was like old times. And actually, it was a whole lot like the concerts I went to back in the day. The Allman Brothers or Leon Russell came through Knoxville, Tennessee practically every other week, it seemed like, and there were about twenty of us who never missed a concert. Back then there was a cloud of smoke at every concert, and the majority of it was not tobacco. Complete strangers passed those funny cigarettes back and forth – it didn't matter if you partook or not, it was good concert etiquette to pass whatever was handed to you along. Someone would put a doobie in your right hand and you’d already have one in your left to pass off. I’m sure the second-hand smoke was enough to have an affect on those of us who were there just to hear the music. Oh yeah, that reminds me, we saw the Doobie Brothers, too.
I remember getting so sleepy because I had to be at work early every morning, and I’d pray that the concert would get over. Then finally the lead guitar guy would do his excruciatingly long solo of eardrum busting high notes, and when he quit everyone cheered – but I’m sure it was because it was finally over, not because anyone liked it. Then they’d leave the stage to pounding feet on bleachers and hollers and claps, and I would start praying again that the lights would come on.
But they never did. After the racket continued for a while, the band would sheepishly come back out, put their guitars on, and start playing the one song you’d been waiting to hear all night, which brought the house down. And they dragged the song out for an eternity, and then they’d go back off stage, and the freaking lights would still stay off. Doggone it! They’d come back and do a slow song nobody on earth wanted to hear, and when they were done we gave them polite applause and the lights went on, and I could go home.
Same thing happened tonight. Playing for Change comes back out and does their “Stand By Me” signature song, getting the audience to sing with them amid the cheering, swaying, and Bic lighters, and then they leave again, but the lights stay off, and there’s one guy still up on stage. He slowly raises a microphone to his mouth and everything gets really quiet and he starts singing, “Amazing Grace.” Well now there’s a slow one that he made even slower – and I thought, “this is the same formula they were using back in the day.” But I had to give him credit, he sang it very well, and it was all the more special because he was actually blind – wearing an eye patch even.
All in all it was a great concert, but now you must excuse me. I’m very, very sleepy – just like in the good old days.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Don't Answer It!
I’ve gotten to where I’m afraid to answer the phone. In my office I don’t have caller ID, so I don’t know I’m about to get a sucker punch until I hear the pause on the line, then a nasally voice says, “Is Mr. or Mrs. So and So at home?” You know good and well that it’s not a friend or family member because they’d know you were home when you answered the phone. To toy with them I say, “This is Mr. So and So.” They stutter and then, like the polished actors they are, get right back to the script and start telling you, in earnest, that this is NOT a sales call. They simply have a small survey that will only take a few seconds, and could you please tell them if you have a heater in your house (no), does it have an air filter (yes), does anyone in your house have asthma or allergies (no), what is your age group (infant), are you working (get serious), how many children are living in the house (two dozen, I think. I’ve lost count).
Then they tell you that, based on your preposterous answers, you’ve qualified for a free in-home consultation at absolutely no obligation to you, it’s a free service they’re offering to people in your neighborhood because you’re special and they happened to be right down the street doing something important and can just drop in, say on Tuesday, or Wednesday if that would work better.
Do people really fall for this? Because I can tell you this, if you let them come to your house, they’ll convince you to buy some air filtration system that costs more than the crown jewels and, when it’s all said and done, you won’t notice you’ve got it, though you’ll try to convince yourself it’s working and saving doctor bills and removing dust in your home, though dust is like air – it goes where it wants to go and doesn’t need to consult you if it wants to lay in a grey film over everything you own, air filter or no air filter.
Sometimes I get calls from people wanting to give me an amazing vacation package to some new resort, but I have to bring my husband, and we have to sit through a ninety-minute sales pitch to buy a time-share, though they don’t put it that way. They say they just want to make sure we’re aware of all the amenities, which they list in exceptionally cheery tones.
I’ve been on a couple of these and they aren’t so bad, really, until the sales person takes you in the little room and tells you he’s not going to try and sell you on the place because it’s really the best deal on the planet so you’d be very wise to get in on it now because prices will go up and they’re running a special offer TODAY ONLY. After you say about forty no thank-you’s, the manager comes in just to make absolutely sure you know how stupid you are for passing up this once in a lifetime deal. You have to agree out loud that you are stupid before they’ll turn you lose, but it’s worth it.
So I’ve pretty much given up answering the phone. I let the machine take the call and then call people back who aren’t hustling me for something. I figure I save about two hours a day doing this, and my wallet can breathe easier, even if I won’t be able to until I buy the gold-plated filter. Personally, I get along just fine with dust.
Then they tell you that, based on your preposterous answers, you’ve qualified for a free in-home consultation at absolutely no obligation to you, it’s a free service they’re offering to people in your neighborhood because you’re special and they happened to be right down the street doing something important and can just drop in, say on Tuesday, or Wednesday if that would work better.
Do people really fall for this? Because I can tell you this, if you let them come to your house, they’ll convince you to buy some air filtration system that costs more than the crown jewels and, when it’s all said and done, you won’t notice you’ve got it, though you’ll try to convince yourself it’s working and saving doctor bills and removing dust in your home, though dust is like air – it goes where it wants to go and doesn’t need to consult you if it wants to lay in a grey film over everything you own, air filter or no air filter.
Sometimes I get calls from people wanting to give me an amazing vacation package to some new resort, but I have to bring my husband, and we have to sit through a ninety-minute sales pitch to buy a time-share, though they don’t put it that way. They say they just want to make sure we’re aware of all the amenities, which they list in exceptionally cheery tones.
I’ve been on a couple of these and they aren’t so bad, really, until the sales person takes you in the little room and tells you he’s not going to try and sell you on the place because it’s really the best deal on the planet so you’d be very wise to get in on it now because prices will go up and they’re running a special offer TODAY ONLY. After you say about forty no thank-you’s, the manager comes in just to make absolutely sure you know how stupid you are for passing up this once in a lifetime deal. You have to agree out loud that you are stupid before they’ll turn you lose, but it’s worth it.
So I’ve pretty much given up answering the phone. I let the machine take the call and then call people back who aren’t hustling me for something. I figure I save about two hours a day doing this, and my wallet can breathe easier, even if I won’t be able to until I buy the gold-plated filter. Personally, I get along just fine with dust.
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