The Average Blogger

Smart Guys

This afternoon, I had coffee with an ex-Most Favored Colleague and now excellent friend.  I shared part of the chat with Not Your Average Blogger:

This is the best mid-conversation exchange from my afternoon:
Him: I find myself quoting Say Anything a lot lately.
Me: Yeah? I find myself quoting Deadwood.
Him: So, OK, our heads are basically in the same place. 

NYAB wrote back, about 2 minutes later:

Lloyd Dobler. Alright. He's a real cocksucker.

Brain-Rot, Blindness, BS

Thoughts while watching TV:

I  really don't like the "allied" bank commercials.

WWE scares me. 

I need to go back to watching shows on DVD only. Real-time is just irritating. When are they going to stop making network TV and just release everything straight to video?

I am probably the only person on earth who really doesn't care about NBC's late-night nonsense.

I wouldn't mind living in a hotel. But it would have to be a very nice hotel, and I doubt I could afford to live in such a place very long.

I would not want to work as a TV personality on cable news.  For one thing, I swear way too much. For another, I don't wear enough makeup. And finally, I prefer to know what I'm talking about before I start talking.

What is the next technology leap going to be? Video on the Internet is nice and all, but what does human behavior dictate comes next?  Smaller computers you wear like glasses? Programs that react based on eye motion rather than point/click/scroll? 

Not Your Average Blogger should look at my weekend errands and shopping lists to see what he should invest in -- Panera, Starbucks, Target, Lowe's.

Wow. TV is just really, really bad.  I'm better off going to the office.

WTF, Alfred?

Who am I, Tippi Hedren? This is the second day in a row I've been besieged by birds, and all that hyperactive flapping and all those sharp and shiny beaks combine to make me nervous. They are loud suckers, too. Pictures don't begin to do justice to the real thing.

Moral Relativism

As if you needed further proof that I can take any topic and turn it into sleeping potion, allow me to share an issue my friend Bald Owl and I were discussing last night.

Owl has a saying: "We like rules, because when we follow them we're allowed to judge those who don't."

You can trust me when I assure you that Owl knows from rules.

Anyway, the conversation turned to movie attendance, and seeing two movies for one ticket (declared unacceptable by both parties,) which in turn led to the issue of smuggling in one's own contraband material. And that posed the following question:

If a theater does not provide your beverage of choice, where on the moral outrage scale should you land if you bring in your own?

I worked in a theater for a while, and I know that the little sign on the door that says, "Please, no outside food or drinks," is up there for four reasons:

1 -- Every cent of concession profit goes to paying for everything except the movie.  Movie tickets cover the distribution fees and that's it. Popcorn covers rent, salaries, electricity, etc.

2 -- Generally, people who bring in their own food and drinks are a sloppy and inconsiderate bunch, which means not only did they not help pay the salary of the guy who will have to mop up whatever they spilled, they also required that guy to do that much more work for that much less pay.  This is a bit of a tautology, though: If that class of person weren't sloppy and inconsiderate, they'd probably respect management's request to not bring stuff in.

3 -- Because the theater management doesn't want you sneaking in your booze and spiked brownies to enhance your viewing experience.

4 -- So they can say you were duly warned when they kick your ass out if they do catch you bringing in stuff.

Now, here's the thing. Generally speaking, I am simply too lazy and not really well-organized enough to plot a surreptitious picnic in a movie theater.  But if I were ....

The theater  where we go most often does not serve my drink of choice.  They serve Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and fruit punch.  They might also serve that nasty orange crap that tastes for all the world like that glucose test pregnant women have to take, I don't remember.  But they do not serve Dr. Pepper.

I say, if they do not serve my drink of choice, I should not necessarily be required to cough up the $3.50 to buy a drink of their choice. Generally I do, because the way it works out is that we get the YP a "kid's special" which is a tiny popcorn, tiny drink and bag of Skittles, and then NYAB and I split a 40-gallon drum of popcorn, and then he gets another drum of punch, and I scowl and get a drum of Coke. If he were to get Coke, I'd probably just drink half of his -- which is about the amount of beverage we both wind up throwing out anyway, as "small" in this world means "bigger than your head."  Occasionally we will also get some kind of candy, depending on when we last ate.

As you see, I'm not exactly stiffing the movie theater of its 99-percent markup on concessions.  I'm not bringing in my own popcorn, or my own fruit punch, or my own Reese's Pieces.

So on those rare occasions I actually know in advance we are going to the theater AND I remember they don't serve my soda, or in the slightly more common event that I just happen to have a half-bottle in my purse because I didn't finish it at work the day before, I will drink it in the theater -- with gusto, but also with care and non-sloppiness, and keeping in mind the hiker's motto to take out what I brought in.

Owl says this is wrong, and judges.  He is correct to do so, though I think my defense is solid.

The question I didn't ask Owl last night because it didn't occur to me until this morning: What if I were to buy a cup of ice from the theater and then pour in my own liquid? Does that square the deal? Or am I still in violation? After all, the sign on the door does clearly say "No outside food or drinks" -- not "No outside food or drinks unless you promise to be good and buy other stuff from us." 

What is your take?

I think, after all this, that perhaps the easiest thing is to just start going to the movie theater that's another 10 miles down the road, as they do serve my beverage of choice and all this woolgathering is moot.

What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

 Once upon a time, it was OK -- nay, insisted upon -- that as a group, kids should not spend a lot of time playing with the creepy freak who spent all his time mutilating animals and throwing glass bottles off rooftops.  It was commonly accepted that it was OK to assess people and then proceed based on those assessments. People could be "good" or "bad" or " barking insane and dangerous" or "dumb as a sack of hammers" or "smart, but totally fucking lazy and useless." 

I don't think this is quite as true as it used to be. There have always been good/bad/lazy people around and probably in the same proportion, but I am fairly well convinced that shame as I understood it in grade school is no more.  We aren't supposed to point and comment that Susie is a total spaz who can't walk without falling over and we aren't supposed to  roll our eyes when Jimmy c-c-c-c-caaaaaannnnnnnnn't ruh-reeee-re-ad-read a simple sentence in under five minutes.

Public shame was a great motivator in my day. It taught me that my strengths did not lie in kickball, but in spelling. It taught me that if I wanted to be chosen for teams rather than simply being the person left over at the end that nobody wanted, I'd better start figuring out how to play kickball better, or how to make enough money to pay someone else to play for me.

What has taken the place of this public shame? A flattening out of the bell curve for across-the-board mediocrity? All kids get medals regardless of where they place. All punishments are uniform, whether someone is a willful jackass or just having a bad day. People who work their 8 hours and bolt rather than sticking around that extra hour to finish their work are astonished when they get reviews that are less than glowing. All this focus on self-esteem has left little room for self-appraisal. Honestly, I see people who have spent their whole lives hearing how they are special! And wonderful! And ... nope, they're pretty stinking average.

Now, see, this is where things fall down. There's absolutely nothing wrong with average, it's just not special. The world needs ditch diggers too.... and frankly, the world would be better if those ditch diggers had some kind of ethic and incentive to be the best damn ditch diggers that ever lived, rather than rending their garments and howling about how they are special! and deserve better than ditch digger wages! etc. etc.

The best people I've ever worked with are the ones who love their work, who enjoy their lives, who don't stomp around with a whining sense of entitlement and overestimation of their worth as a human being, or conversely, la-de-da-ing around wondering why their life is sooooo harrrrrd and notttt fairrrrr and won't someone anyone please please hellllp meeee because I triiiiiiied and I just caaaaaaaan't. 

How do we get more of the former and less of the latter?  I'm pretty sure we wont' get it if we keep saying Everyone Is Special, and oh, it's OK if you're stupid, we'll just take care of it for you, it's not your fault! 

And how sad is it that if 99 percent of the whiners out there were to read this, they wouldn't have the slightest clue that they were the ones I'm talking about??

Whistling in the Dark

It's been a week and I am not happy about this Daylight Saving business. 

It never used to really make much of a difference to me, as I did not think any self-respecting person should ever confess to being awake before 8 a.m. anyway.

These days, not so much. Now I not only had to readjust to waking up at "3" -- which really means TWO -- it also means that my morning walk, which a week ago was taken at dawn, is now either taken in pitch dark watching the moon set, or pushed off until after deadline and daylight, which results in the quasi-embarrassing situation wherein I am changing clothes and curling my hair and blablabla while sharing the ladies room, as opposed to having my own personal run of the joint with no concern of being walked in on mid-mascara application or worse.

Not to mention that it is sort of weird and creepy to walk around DC before dawn. There are residential blocks with long creepy shadows and lots of dark windows punctuated by the random well-lit apartment where you can see all the interior decorating laid bare. Or there are business zones along major streets with broad sidewalks -- except everything is closed at that hour and just looks empty and cold and forlorn.

I suppose it is dangerous, too. I'm not particularly paranoid, and all a mugger would get off me would be a BlackBerry and an iPod, but still... people have been held up at gunpoint around my office, so I prefer to stick to the better-lighted avenues.  That, or chase a jogger for safety in numbers. 

But the real reason I don't like walking in the dark is because I'm a top-notch, Grade A spaz. I trip over my laces. I trip over curbs. I trip over cobblestones and construction cones. I'm aware of my surroundings, I see the the sidewalk is lumpy, and then I thunk right over the protruding pavement anyway. I think I get more exercise catching myself than I do from any actual forward motion.

Laurie Anderson wrote a song about walking and falling.  I know she was being deep and meaningful, but this is all I've been able to think of as I've spent my time stumbling around predawn DC.

I guess on the plus side, any would-be mugger will just think, "La, she's too drunk to bother with," and it can be my saving grace. I remember in college I'd stomp home from Boyfriend's apartment at 2 and 3 a.m. after arguments and I'd be flailing my arms and railing aloud to myself about what an ass he was. I'm pretty sure looking like a lunatic prevented a couple of confrontations. Nowadays people would just assume I was on a cellphone. Maybe I should sing aloud with the iPod? That'd have to be good for a forcefield the distance that sound carries....

All of Life's Riddles Are Not Answered in the Soundtrack*

I've been trying for days to figure out a way to flesh out this blog entry I want to do about music in movies, but I'm failing. Maybe y'all can help out.

Basically, I was thinking about how certain scenes in certain movies will take an unsuspecting innocent song and completely and utterly turn it on its head for the viewer forever.

For example, Singin' in the Rain.  Happy, cheery, dude-in-love song, yeah? Yeah, until you see A Clockwork Orange.

Or the latter-day cousin to that, Reservoir Dogs' treatment of Stuck in the Middle With You.

Or David Lynch using In Dreams in Blue Velvet.
Well, pretty much any song in Blue Velvet.
OK, pretty much any song in a David Lynch movie.

Conversely on Orbison, the saccharine in the hooker movie with Julia Roberts sorta tanked Pretty Woman for me.

Hm. Why is it that 75 percent of the examples in my head are hideously violent?

I guess you could say that Lloyd Dobler hijacking In Your Eyes in Say Anything is part of this list, except I think I was the only person on earth who liked that song before the movie came out ... and it didn't really change how I think of the song in my head, since the emotion on film was meant to reflect the emotion of the song. But hey, I know a fair number of people who have come to view that scene as not romantic and brave but actually a little obsessive and creepy.

Anyway, I can't really pull this around to having a point. What have you guys got for me?

*Extra points to anyone who knows the quote I'm quasi-referencing in the title. Except you, NYAB.

What Will I Think in 20 Years?

A friend from high school posted his yearbook photo on his blog recently. It was not a particularly bold move on his part, as he was reasonably good looking and it was a reasonably good photo.  As opposed to the photo of me in the same yearbook, where even my own mother looked at it and asked if I'd been eating lead paint that day.  And the hair -- oh, the hair. I think I was 25 before I figured out what to do with my hair, and maybe even older than that.  In high school my hair was an indecisive brownishblondish color lovingly referred to as "field mouse," and it alternated between being wildly long and unruly ala Carol Kane in her Simka years and being swept back out of my face and pulled into one of those little-girl half-ponytail things.  The yearbook photo is an attempt to deviate from both those norms and wound up rather Farrah-ish. 

The annoying thing is, I actually did have one senior picture come out that wasn't entirely embarrassing. Note, I said entirely.  My hair looked OK, I was smiling, and my eyes were open. I was also in front of a pink satin backdrop and wearing a white fur thing wrapped around my shoulders and looked for all the world like an employee of a Hello Kitty bordello.

Anyway, this is just the latest bump on the Nostalgia Road that I've been on lately.  See, it's my 20th high school reunion this year. I still haven't decided whether I'm going, though everyone who sees the Web site for the hotel where the event will be held insists I absolutely must.  I dunno. I didn't know many of the 1500 or so people who attended my school. And most of the ones I did know were either a year older than I or they weren't really the Reunion Type, so to speak.

On the other hand, there is story value. Stories to be shared, stories to be remembered, stories to be written down for posterity and hopefully a laugh or two.

And that leads us to the issue of journals.

Oh, my lord, the journals. I still have all my notebooks and scratchings and sad little adolescent attempts at Real Writing and angry venty rants about the unfairness and injustice of being 13, 15, 19.

And I tell you what, man. I am embarrassed. Though not for the reasons you might think.

It's not because of the sentiment, or even the sentimentality, for the most part. I don't think I've changed all that much as a human being, and stuff that got me all riled up then can still get me all riled up now.   I don't spend all my time pining for That One Boy to look my way, but that's only because of the sheer luck that he actually already did and even more amazingly he didn't look away. And even with that, hell, I still go boy crazy. I still work up a righteous lather if I am feeling jealous or ignored or lonely.

And it's not because what I wrote held very much Youthful Arrogance. That's something I'm sort of pleased to report. I've never been one of those types who get on a high horse and be like, "Ohhh, the rest of the world is SOOOOO STUUUUPID!!!!! People who think X are stupid! I am soooo much better than anyone who would EVER do Y! I am a genius! I got vision and the rest of the world needs bifocals!"  Of course I had those moments, but even back then when I said stuff like that I usually wound up embarrassed before  the words were completely out of my mouth.  I learned pretty early that people don't generally base their opinions on complete insanity, that they don't form a belief system on a few random whims.  I might not understand their thought process, or I might think they are woefully uninformed, or misinformed, or just plain stubborn in their denial of fact -- or, yes, admittedly, on some occasions, dumb as a sack of hammers -- but I never really envisioned myself as Better Than Them because I was smarter. Even the mindblowingly stupid people usually had some characteristic where I didn't measure up -- stronger, taller, faster, better at driving a car or not throwing up after the 12th beer, whatever. 

So, no, nothing in the content, per se. No, the embarrassing aspect is how awful my writing was then. So flowery. So full of pathos and fervor. So spastic poet. So. Arm-Flailingly. Dramatic!

Soooo dreadful.

No, I will not be posting reprints here.

Because frankly, here I sit, umpty-ump years later, and what am I doing? Keeping an online journal. How brilliant is that? I like to think that since I know this is a public forum I have turned on some filters and what I write will not embarrass me in 20 years. Then again, when I was all virginy and new to the interwebz and stuff, I embarrassed myself right handily by getting sucked into flamewars and vitriol and hopelessly circular political arguments. And that wasn't even five years ago. So I guess there are no guarantees.

But dang, I'm awfully glad blogs didn't exist when I was 17. I'd be setting a few servers on fire, I have a feeling. And I wonder about that. I wonder if all that online adolescent angst will wind up coming back to bite the bottom of Generation Whatever We're On.  I wonder if one day a few years down the road, there won't be a mass lockdown of sites where Girl A currently rants about her horrible childhood and Girl B brags about all the sex she's having and Boy C spouts off about how anyone who votes a certain way is morally irresponsible and Boy D spews out all his emo unrequited love poetry e-vomit.  Because even those locked, private, anonymous, double-blind posts have a way of being found out. 

Good luck, you who are young and the future.  I'll be the dinosaur in bifocals looking at your resume and googling you and laughing behind your back at all your visionary sound and fury.

Thinking:

Why is it that if you see a car with a vanity plate that says HOT or SXY or BABE or CUTIE or HONEE, the person driving the vehicle most assuredly will not fit that characteristic?

Free Stuff!

Sparkling Cipher is a tricky little dickens.  She posted on her blog about a free handbag giveaway thingamajobbie at Handbag Planet. So I went to look. And dangit, I got totally sucked in.

There are some neat bags there, y'all. 24, to be precise. Go check it out!