Petty Annoyances

Thanksgiving Food Needs to be Hotter

2011-11-25T15:15:00.000-08:00

Why isn't Thanksgiving dinner ever hot enough? Is it because everything sits out too long prior to the meal? Why must we always sit down to lukewarm turkey, tepid yams, room temperature stuffing, and unpleasantly temperate mashed potatoes smothered in a rapidly cooling gravy?

I hate having to eat this dinner like there's a clock ticking, and I can't risk insulting the hostess by bringing the whole shebang over to the microwave. In the spirit of the holiday I basically just have to be thankful the food has any warmth at all, while I dig in and think of England.

Is it too much to ask for a hot Thanksgiving dinner? To maybe see steam rising from just one dish? To need to blow on a bite of turkey before tentatively tasting it? To see others at the table clatter their fork to the plate as they fan their hand in front of their O-pursed lips? This would be unprecedented in the history of the holiday. "Piping", really, is the adjective I'd like to use, just one time, when describing the holiday meal.

This cold turkey phenomenon can't be specific only to my experience. I've had too many Thanksgiving dinners at too many homes to believe that it's a rare event. Admit it - this is a national problem. Your Thanksgiving food is just not hot enough. The bird, the fixins, the toppings, the sides, they're all served at that milky warm temperature - you know it from the shower - where it's just warm enough to remind you how much warmer it needs to be.

Yes, yes, there's the microwave. But it may as well be on another planet. There's just no way to push back from the table with your full plate and announce to the group that you're going to give it a quick zap in the ol' nuker. If there's a way to do this without offending the host, I'd love to know it. I'm sure this reluctance dates back to the original Thanksgiving feast, where pilgrims faced with cooling game bird and chilly cornmeal could find no polite way to ask the chieftan to give it a little more fire.

Or is it that this most traditional of American meals is coincidentally composed entirely of heat resistant foods? I mean, let's face it, mashed potatoes get cold quickly - and exposed turkey breast won't be far behind. You don't have any rich, heavy sauces on the menu that retain heat like a thermos. Brown gravy doesn't count - it strangely conducts no heat. Maybe what Thanksgiving needs is a liberal coating of marinara over everything? A fra diavolo sauce? Some kind of tikka masala, or panang curry out of which we can spoon little turkey pieces onto plates of steaming basmati rice?

I don't know, I'm just blue-skying it here. Just getting the gears turning. Just starting a conversation. Because the problem here is real, and the solution is elusive. From the green beans to the cherry pie, we need hotter food. I recommend we all take the time to visit a diner and order an open faced turkey sandwich, just to remind ourselves how enjoyable turkey and mash can actually be when we give it a few calories of heat.

When it's the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm not only full but dealing with a sore roof-of-mouth from all the piping hot stuffing the day before, I'll know our work is done.

No One Wants the Peanut Donut

2011-10-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

So why does the peanut donut always get included in the dozen? Why is it mandatory? Why do the donut stores even make the peanut donut?

My point here today isn't strictly limited to the loathsome peanut donut, it's more about the importance we place on "variety". A misplaced importance. This need we feel to bring some mysterious aesthetic quality to the content of the donut box. The motivation we feel, as donut selectors, to impress others with a dazzling variety of donuts. I'm here today to shake you by the shoulders and remind you that variety doesn't count for that much, that donut diversity is overrated, that functionality matters far more than form, and that the peanut donut can suck my dick.

If you've ever found yourself sneaking back to the donut box in the late morning, after your officemates have picked through it thoroughly, maybe because you're second guessing your original choice of the glazed old fashioned and now you're craving chocolate, you're likely to open the box and see two donuts left in there. They will invariably be the coconut donut and the peanut donut.

I've had a dozen office jobs, I've seen my share of donuts, and I am telling you that no matter where you are, or what the circumstances may be, the last two donuts in that box will always be the coconut and the peanut. No one wants shredded coconut at 9 in the morning, and they particularly don't want our nutty friend. And when I see these two rejects, I always had the same thought: "Why didn't they just get 12 chocolate frosteds? Would that have been so terrible?"

And then I started to notice this phenomenon elsewhere in life. A dozen bagels? The last one left is the raisin. A bucket of chicken? Good luck finding a late drumstick. A plate of cookies? Say hello to the oatmeal cranberry. Those chocolate chip cookies are looooong gone.

A raisin bagel

I suspect that sometimes the problem occurs because we let the guy behind the counter make our bagel / cookie / donut selections for us. We don't take charge. We instruct him to fill up a box of 12 while we take a look at the blended iced coffee options, and the guy adjusts his paper hat and heads right for the peanut donuts. I think the donut store is long on peanut and coconut donut inventory, which they can never move, so of course they jump at the opportunity to slip a few into the box if we let them act as our proxy. So my first piece of advice would be not to let the donut guy make the choices. He doesn't have your best interests in mind.

What you really need to do though is set the example. Arrive at work holding the long, flat box. Let everyone see you carrying it to the breakroom. The vultures will circle. Let them get close. Then open the box. What will they see? How about 8 chocolate frosteds and 4 jellies? They'll blink at it for a minute, uncomprehending. Then, gradually, the genius of it will dawn on them. They'll look at you with amazement and fresh respect, like you just invented wheels on luggage.

"I get it." They'll whisper. "A box of donuts..."

"Go on." you'll say.

"A box of donuts... with no shitty donuts."

"That's it," you say as you put a comforting hand on the shoulder. "I think you understand."

And then the next day you come with bagels. 4 plain, 4 sesame, 4 everything. Again, your cubiclemates can't believe that there are no bad choices in the bag. The next afternoon, you come with a box of cookies - and every single one is chocolate chip. They'll bumrush the plate of course - no one wants to get stuck with the cranberry - but.... there are no cranberries!

An oatmeal cranberry cookie

Every cookie is a winner! Every cookie is the one you want! Xanadu!

I say it's time we close the door on the peanut donut. Time to admit that we don't need to pepper the box with unappealing variety, just for the sake of appearances. Time to admit that all donuts are not created equal: some are good and some suck. I have a noble goal here. And that goal is to walk my bloated frame from the cubcicle to the mini-kitchen at 4:15 PM, open that donut box, and see one donut staring back at me. A chocolate donut. Now that would be a sight to see.

Please Spare Me Your Cat Fancy

2011-08-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

Is there anything more unpleasant than watching an adult human being coo and fuss and babble in front of a house cat? You know, that syrupy, pouty-lipped infantilism that seems to wash over some people as soon as you put a cat in the room? I can't stand this display. It's sickening. Look, however you want to play-act with your cat behind a closed door, go to it. No one will disturb your privacy. I personally vow to stay far away. But when I happen to be present, can you hold off on the moronic, simpering baby-talk? Is it so important that I see how you are in thrall, somehow, to your cat, that you think it's okay in mixed company to gurgle gibberish and fawn over it like it's your own child?

It's not a kid, it's not your baby, and you're acting like an idiot. Have some more respect for yourself, and for me, and even for the cat who by the way understands nothing.

I get it. I get that some people have this cat fancy. That they are mesmerized and entranced by the common cat. Some people just feel this way, and I accept that, and overall I consider it harmless. My point here is not to tell you that your devotion to this animal is wrong. I could care less. My point is to tell you not to behave like a saccharine, drooling moron in front of other people, or at the very least me. Okay? Do we have a deal?

The cat fanciers have this other habit too, beyond the infantilism. They like to push pictures of their cats in your face. And they expect a response. You're not going to get the camera phone removed from your full field of vision until you compromise and give them, at minimum, an Awwwww. If only there was some polite way to communicate your utter indifference to this cat's life or death. If only there was an opt out. A blind person could say "Sorry miss, but I'm blind". Why can't the non cat-fanciers have a "Sorry miss, but I don't give a shit."

And don't tell me I don't have compassion. I like cats. They're nice, more or less. They catch vermin - that's a plus. Oh and here's a pop quiz: guess which one of us would remove a cat's claws, and have it's testicles lopped off - and which one of us wouldn't? I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't mutilate a cat. But you would, and you did. And why? So he wouldn't scratch up your settee? So he wouldn't be aggressive? Do you think these are valid reasons to carve out parts of a cat? If the settee is so important, maybe pet ownership isn't for you.

Any animal is entitled to his full body. Cats, from my limited understanding, need their claws and their scratching to exercise and work out their natural aggression. I have no respect for those who would use surgery to deny this basic natural pleasure to an innocent animal, in order to make it more cuddly, those who feel no compunction about putting on a babyish display of slobbering affection to that same cat without regard to the nausea it induces in the stomachs of spectators, and those who seek constant validation for their cat-love by making little puss the constant center of attention and conversation. Grow up. Have real children. Calm down. Be demure. Learn restraint. And don't mutilate anything. These are not hard rules to follow. Most of all spare us your cat fancy. You'd be surprised how many people will be silently thankful.

There's Nothing Wrong with Talking on a Cell Phone While Driving

2011-07-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

How is talking on a cell phone any different, or any more distracting than talking to someone in the backseat? Really, how is it different? In one case I'm talking to a flesh and blood person in the backseat; in the other case I'm talking to a machine that is relaying their voice from a distant location. What is the difference? How is (A) the most normal thing to do in a car since cars were invented, and (B) is illegal in a dozen states? Why person good machine bad? What if I put the phone in the backseat, put a wig and a sweater on it, and buckled it in, and then talked to it. Would that be okay? Or how about talking to someone who's in the car - but who communicates through one of those larynx voice machine amplifiers? Would that be bad? It's talking via machine, right?

Yes, I'm pissy. And it's because my state, Nevada has jumped on this moronic bandwagon and passed a no cell phone law. Now, instead of laughing at my friends in other states who have to deal with this, I'm going to be the one dealing with it. Now, starting January, instead of calmly and freely using the phone in my car, I'm going to have to be furtive and constantly on my guard using the phone in my car.

To me, it's always been simple. Talking while driving is normal. People seemed to realize this in the seventies when car phones were a fancy luxury and no one was making the point that they posed some kind of hazard. If they had, they would have been laughed out of the room. How could talking on a phone be dangerous if talking to the person next to you was fine?

And don't say it's because I need both hands on the wheel. Cause here's the secret: the no-cell-phone people don't care about this - the hands issue. For them it's entirely about distracted drivers. They're not satisfied with hands-free headsets as a compromise. They want all calls banned. Here's (former) New York Times' house ethicist Randy Cohen on the subject:

"Do not make that call. Or blindfold a driver or bang a pair of cymbals near his head or do anything else that significantly ups his odds of getting into an accident. To talk on a cell phone while driving does just that. One study calibrates the increased risk as akin to driving drunk. While there are other driver-distracting activities -- listening to the radio, whittling -- this one is particularly hazardous. For a driver to deliberately increase his own peril is unwise; to endanger other people is unethical. You should not abet either.

Incidentally, the increased risk has little to do with your hands and much to do with your head: It is a cognitive problem, a shifting of your concentration from the road to the call. That many states, including New York, bar drivers only from using hand-held phones is an act of breathtaking cynicism or dazzling ignorance. They might as well ban only gray cell phones but allow black ones."

Ah, Randy Cohen. Despite his urge to nanny and his wrongheadedness on this subject, he accidentally does me a favor. He concedes the hands point entirely, where he probably has the stronger case, and instead stakes everything on distraction. I'm guessing he had some personal reasons for this. Maybe Randy enjoys a little Starbucks coffee while he drives, and therefore the Einhander argument could potentially have implications in the Cohen-mobile.

(Now, incidentally, I don't need both hands to drive. I've always driven with one on the wheel. To me one hand at 12 o'clock is the most natural driving posture in the world. When the day comes when I have to execute some kind of Jason Bourne style super turn, jamming the handbrake while simultaneously doing a 180 and then speeding down some narrow European side street while tiny police cars zip by blaring that weird Euro-siren, then yes - on that day I'll need two hands. Until then, give me a fucking break.)

So really, it's all about distraction. While I wait on an answer for my "how is it different than talking to someone in the backseat" question - and I know I'll be waiting a while - let's talk a little more about distraction. Of course there are distractions in a car. Fiddling with the radio knob is a small distraction. Answering a question that someone in the passenger seat just asked you is a distraction. Adjusting the AC to get it just right is a distraction. Sipping coffee is a distraction. But do all of these things add up to danger? Well.... no. Driving simply doesn't demand total concentration and rapt attention. It demands a significant percentage of those things, but not some kind of absolute focus.

There are levels and there are degrees. Handling a curvy portion of the autobahn on a crowded day in a driving rain demands one level of concentration from the driver, and your predictable commute on a straight line road in light traffic at 30mph demands a second kind. A seasoned driver knows how much of his mental focus is required to drive safely, and how much can be diverted to secondary activities, like adjusting a volume knob or chatting with the person sitting next to you.

That I should have to point out something so obvious and that this reasonable position flies in the face of the New York Times' ethicist's own, and now Nevada law is unsettling. It's been apparent since Henry Ford that conversations in a car are not dangerous, and that other similarly ordinary and everyday distractions are not big issues for drivers. I can only conclude that there's some kind of technophobia at work on the part of the banners, or, in Randy's case, just the basic totalitarian pleasure of instructing others on what they may and may not do. Just that warm feeling in the sternum that you get from imposing your own preferences on other people, hectoring them, chiding, and then finally forcing obedience.

January's not that far off. When it arrives - come and get me po po. Didn't Randy Cohen once say that we're not obligated to obey unjust laws? It was probably in the context of excusing someone for forging social security numbers for illegal Guatemalans, but I'll take him up on it just the same.

Do Not Boast About Not Owning a Television

2011-04-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

Here's another one of those Mensa-type errors in judgment that to me seems perfectly avoidable. The Mensa problem is that people who are drawn to Mensa membership think this will improve the regard others have for their intelligence. Tragically though, a boast of Mensa membership will generally produce the exact opposite effect. No smart person would join a club for smart people. Insufferable shits, on the other hand, would most certainly join an insufferable shits club, and most people grasp this intuitively.

The statement: "Well, actually, I don't own a TV." is similar. When spoken, the clear intention is for the listener to think "Wow. No TV. This guy must be pretty bright. Not to mention he's apparently got no appetite for all that crass, lowbrow entertainment. This is pretty forward thinking and liberated! I think I could learn a thing or two from him!"

But of course this is what the guy from the Princess Bride would call one of the "classic blunders". In reality, the statement "Well, actually, I don't own a TV" invariably results in the listener thinking: "Oh God. One of these assholes." And it's very simple to break down the logic of this conclusion. The listener isn't annoyed because the speaker reads too many books, goes on too many nature hikes, spends too much time in the museum of miniatures or just generally doesn't place any importance on watching television - that's not it. Many people who own televisions place no importance on watching television. What the listener actually thinks is this:

"Televisions are cheap. Most people own several. The programming on TV is so diverse that virtually any person on earth could probably find many things to enjoy. Even leaving enjoyment aside, there's tons of useful information on TV. There's breaking news, speeches from the president, there's tomorrow's weather, there's shows that will distract your kid for a few precious hours. There's the olympics and shark week, and Spanish language soaps. There's classic cinema and PBS and Saturday Night Live and war footage and iconic stuff like the Berlin Wall falling. This is stuff that isn't quite the same when you read it in the newspaper or dial it up on the internet."

"Owning a television doesn't mean I watch it all the time. TV falls somewhere between an occasional entertaining diversion and a when-I-need-it-it's-there resource. Having one in the den doesn't speak poorly of your character, and it's unclear why it would be virtuous to not have one. If you're poor, sure. If you're 90, okay. If you're so internet savvy that your computer screen is sort of like a default television, then I get it. Short of these excuses, why not make the buy? TV promotes sociability. You can gather the family in for your favorite show. You can snuggle on the couch with your spouse. You can have friends over to watch the game. These aren't bad activities, and it's weird that anyone would think they were."

"The deliberate choice to forgo ownership of a television must not really be about television. It must be some sort of gambit to assert a kind of personality or lifestyle, at the expense of one's own comfort. But that's sort of the point, isn't it? I forgo this easy pleasure, because I search for deeper, richer, more meaningful pleasures. But isn't that a crock of fairly pungent bs? People who have achieved greatness - the ones who have cured diseases, written great novels, built cities, etc. Do you think they owned televisions? I'm guessing they did. Why wouldn't they have? If they had been sufficiently asinine to think not owning a TV was a plus, they wouldn't have been geniuses."

"The only real reason not to own a TV is to be able to make the smug comment I just heard, made by a person who clearly thinks he's just earned a gold star, staked his claim to a little superiority on the cheap, and is obviously unaware how insufferable they sound and to what degree they've just advertised that their acquaintance will pay no dividend."

Fortunately your brain, being pretty quick, summarizes all that up as "Oh God. One of these assholes."

Only Idiots Own Pit Bulls

2010-11-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

There's never been a truer statement. Own a pit bull terrier? If so you're a moron. You can't not be. Show me the counter example. Show me the guy with the 175 IQ who keeps pit bulls. Show me the retired English professor. Show me the Boeing engineer. Show me the pediatrician. I'll wait. Being an idiot, you probably don't even know how to look.

You see, pit bulls, almost alone among dog breeds, are capable of unpredictable and unprovoked savage violence against humans, no matter how well they've been domesticated or trained. There is no such thing as a safe pit bull. They are responsible for over 50% of reported dog attacks in America annually. Think about that. That's one out of over 100 breeds responsible for more than half of all attacks.

But it gets better. Most dog bites result in non-serious injuries. Pit Bull attacks disproportionately result in maiming or death. Most dogs, when provoked, will only attack people they perceive as weaker - children and the elderly. Pit Bulls and only Pit Bulls make no distinction between adults and children. They will attack anyone.

My evidence for all of that? Only the most comprehensive multi-decade study of American dog attacks ever conducted:

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/Dog%20Attacks%201982%20to%202006%20Clifton.pdf

So let's ask a question. Why would a person choose a pit bull? Let's draw up a list of pros and cons. We already know the cons: pit bulls, no matter how well trained, are capable of unprovoked lethal violence against anyone. There's the check mark in our con category. So what are the pros?

How about maybe, they make good guard dogs? No, sadly they don't. They don't have the guard dog instinct. They conspicuously don't make a top-18 list of best guard dog breeds. Although the author notes that many people use them as guard dogs anyway, counting on their mere scary appearance to be a deterrent to a trespasser.

Which bring us to the next "pro" consideration. Is this a cute, charming or handsome dog? Well, you be the judge.
So no. It's not a dog that works, it's not particularly intelligent or beautiful, it possesses no special skill or ability. It really has only one outstanding trait, and that's that it's unpredictably savage and that it attacks people at far higher rates than any other dog. Why is that so hard for Pit Bull fanciers to admit? Why do sites like these blame the pit bull's reputation as a scary savage dog on "media hype"? Are the mauling statistics not convincing? Do they think that Basset Hounds are sending children to the hospital with these kinds of facial wounds with equal frequency as pit bulls but the media conspiracy just suppresses it?

So I mean, why not get a golden fucking retriever? Why would you get a pit bull? Even if you strongly disagree with me on the aesthetic question and you think this breed is handsome and beautiful, why get the one dog most statistically likely to maim your children? I don't get it. Is it that handsome and beautiful? Is it such a compelling dog in all other respects that you're willing to roll the dice on the maiming, and willing to pay higher insurance premiums? Of course it isn't.

In fact, there is only one "pro" to owning a pit bull terrier, and now we get back to my main point. The only reason to choose a pit bull is because you believe it is some kind of fashion accessory. You believe it's stylish. Specifically, you think that because the pit bull is a bad-ass dog, that it somehow makes you a bad-ass to own one. You're hoping that by owning an unpredictably violent dog, you will be thought of as a tough guy.

And to conclude, there's only one kind of person who would a) want to acquire a bad-ass reputation via dog breed selection, b) think that pit bull ownership actually accomplishes this, and c) think that pit bulls aren't really that dangerous. And that's a massively stupid person. And since the only reason to select the most savage dog in the breed book is to make this fashion statement, it follows that every pit bull owner is massively stupid.

Have a great day.

PhDs who Insist on the "Doctor"

2010-10-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

Imagine a guy who boasts to everyone that he's in Mensa. What would you think of a guy who boasts about being in Mensa? Would you have a higher, or lower opinion of this person? You would listen to him blather on about some recent meeting, or the upcoming national Mensa symposium, and what are you thinking? I wouldn't presume to speak for you, but I'm guessing you'd be thinking: "Who is this doughy load, and why am I talking to him?" And it's ironic and sad, because I'm guessing the only point of being in Mensa is to improve the regard other people have for your intelligence. Imagine the Mensa guy's disappointment when he discovers that the only thing membership in Mensa demonstrates is that you are a) insecure, b) a douche, and c) not all that intelligent because you couldn't figure out A and B.

This seems obvious to me. Yet this point eludes some of our nation's PhDs, specifically the ones who insist on being called Doctor, and the ones who sign their name in the style of this email I recently received. It was an email from a marketing firm, apologizing for sending me an incorrect survey. It was signed:

Sincerely,

Dr. Jan G. West, Ph.D.
Chairman and CEO
National Business Research Institute, Inc. ('NBRI')
15305 Dallas Parkway; 3rd floor
Addison, TX. 75001

What kind of a tool do you have to be to sign your name this way? Who on God's green earth is impressed by a PhD? You know what this is? This is stolen valor. You know, the crime of impersonating a veteran? That's what putting "Dr." in your signature is. Or asking to be called doctor outside the confines of the campus. You deliberately stoke the confusion of others who are temporarily and erroneously impressed that you're a medical doctor - you know, an actual doctor.

There's nothing wrong with getting a PhD. But to tack it on the end of your name - wow. Does a PhD really demonstrate superior intelligence? Does it even demonstrate mastery of a specialized area of knowledge? I'm assuming Dr. Jan G. West, Ph.D. got her doctorate in marketing. If you need a refresher on the rigors of a masters level marketing education, I report about my first hand experience of it here. As usual, I give a pass to anyone whose PhD was earned in engineering, comp sci, the hard sciences. Areas where specialized knowledge is very real and urgently important. You know, like the specialized knowledge an actual doctor has. But when you talk about the specialized knowledge a marketing PhD has, you are talking about the richest, most pungent and concentrated bullshit known to man. You're talking about pure bullshit extract, a clear liquid dispensed with an eye dropper while wearing rubber gloves. There is nothing useful, nothing, in marketing at the PhD level, except to practice your ability to weave impenetrable tapestries of gobbledegook on the page, for the benefit of professors who will grade you only on how inscrutable it is.

This is the substance of Dr. Jan G. West, Ph.D.'s implied boast. She's boasting that only a smart cookie such as herself could have qualified to forgo joining the workforce in order to spiral deeper and deeper into marketing academia. Furthermore, it's a statement that she thinks there's actual value in a marketing PhD. And finally, it's predicated on the assumption that others would be impressed by the decision. Dr. Jan G. West, Ph.D. is wrong on all three counts. In fact the only thing in her signature that impressed me at all was the inclusion of her middle initial. Oh no, wait - it didn't.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to a very important meeting.

People Who Offer You the Sugar Free Versions of Things as if There's No Difference

2010-07-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

I am fed up with this. I just spent a week as the houseguest of a very nice woman, who despite all her positive qualities had a terrible and offensive habit. She would serve her guests the low-fat, no-sugar, gluten-free, low-carb, or diet version of whatever food staple was being innocently offered. And she would offer it as if she was providing the genuine article. As if there was no actual difference between an ice tea and a diet ice tea. As if skim milk can get the job done in a cup of coffee. Because I was in the tricky position of being a guest and she was offering me hospitality, I couldn't really speak my mind and give her the verbal abuse that such behavior warrants. Instead I had to play polite and continually find new excuses of why I wasn't going to finish my bowl of no sugar added ice cream, or my bagel with fat free cream cheese.

With soda, I think you'll all agree, society has successfully managed to mentally distinguish the regular and diet versions. If someone offered you a coke, and then when you said yes, handed you a diet coke, you would look at it in confusion and say, "I thought you said you had a coke?" We view these two items (properly) as unique and non substitutable. Unfortunately this sense of clearly distinguishing diet products from their regular counterparts hasn't percolated up to the ice cream or tea markets, as evidenced in my recent experience in this minefield of a pantry.

There was a Seinfeld episode, an old one, where Kramer is down in Florida at Jerry's parents house. He mentions that he's hungry and Jerry's mom says something like "Would you like me to make you an omelet?" Kramer perks up immediately at this unexpected good fortune and says yes, please! Jerry's mom goes to work but starts advising Kramer on the particulars of what he's going to get:

Mom: "You don't mind cottage cheese, do you?"
Kramer: "Oh sure, sure. That's fine."
Mom: "And I don't actually have any eggs. I use egg beaters."
Kramer: "Uh.... sure. Ok."

And then there may have been one or two additional qualifications, and at each step Kramer signs off on it, with increasing unease, until by the end it becomes plain that this will be the most disgusting, inedible, unappetizing omelet in the history of western civilization. But Kramer by this point has committed himself. It's funny.

But at least in this frightening scenario Mrs. Seinfeld had the decency to warn Kramer at every step of the way about what was in store. And so when Kramer presumably ate the foul concoction he knew what he was getting. At least he wasn't caught unawares. This was the triple offense of my host's bowl of no-sugar-added ice cream. First you have the fact that no-sugar-added ice cream tastes like a frozen bucket of bus depot mop water. Second you have the shock factor. You were expecting ice cream when you spooned yourself that bite. You had no opportunity to steel yourself for the flavor of a barium milkshake. And third is our old friend the presumption of ignorance. My host assumed that I wouldn't know the difference. She assumed that ice-cream and no-sugar-added ice cream are substitutes, that they can be swapped without anyone being the wiser. "Is there a problem with the ice cream?" she questioned. "A problem? This is no-sugar-added ice cream, asshole!" I didn't reply.

There are some people, you'll agree, who are highly health conscious and their kitchens reflect their dietary priorities. You'll find lots of fresh vegetables, fruits, yogurts, rice cakes, protein bars, that kind of stuff. My host, on the other hand, didn't follow this model. She had, from all appearances, a kitchen full of the kind of junk food staples that I love. There were chips and pretzels, and microwavable stuff, there were sodas and Snapples, and the freezer was full of desserts. I think, in her mind, the fact that all of it was the diet-version made it okay.

But it really isn't okay. If you're eating no-sugar-added ice cream, you're eating a bowl of shit. Why not just have real ice cream, but have it less often? Or, instead of salt-free potato chips, how about you just have no potato chips whatsoever? These freakish, terrible tasting, golem like simulacrums of guilty-pleasure food are a lose lose situation for everyone. They provide no pleasure, and they still give you the guilt. Even so, I don't mind if you take this approach to your life - eating this foul chow - as long as you don't try to make me participate. You know how people who don't drink tea or coffee still might keep some in the house for guests? Keep some real food in your house just in case a person comes along who naturally recoils in disgust from things like Crystal Light.

At the end of the week, and at the end of a long day, my host asked the table if we'd all like some hot cocoa. At this point in our stay, you'd better believe, we had wised up to the reality of this kitchen. Our eyes darted around. Did cocoa sound good right about then? Of course it did. But what were we actually going to get? What kind of frightening liquid would actually appear in that steaming mug? Finally we said yes, but I watched the preparation like a hawk. First, out came the tea kettle, which our host filled with tap water. She got it going on the stove. Then out of the pantry came this box:

At this point I began the process of mentally preparing to drink sugar free hot chocolate. As the tea pot whistled our host asked if anyone wanted whipped cream. "No!" I cried out in fear before she had barely finished the question. Eventually, we all ingested a mug of this hot, watery solution, and as we did so, I privately made a vow to myself.

I vowed that when the day came that I myself would offer hot chocolate to my own guests, that it would go a little differently. On that day I will take some fresh whole milk and bring it to a simmer in a pan on low heat. Then - I bring out the block of baker's chocolate. Shaving off a chunk, I melt it separately with sugar, water, and a dash of salt. When the milk is mixed in, mmmmm - and I won't forget the marshmellow, my guests can choose full size or minis.

When my guests drink the cocoa.... some of them enter a state of pure relaxation and pleasure. Some weep. Some just whisper a silent "thank you". And some are involuntarily taken back to their earliest memories of home and family, like that guy at the end of Ratatouille.

That's my vow, and I also can state with certainly you will never be given the low calorie bullshit in any other disguise. If it took a week of watery dairy, artificial sweeteners, and fat free spreads to teach me this, well then maybe it was a lesson I needed to learn.

260 Annoyances

2010-06-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

241. A post office clerk who won't let you borrow the packing tape.

242. An usher making an announcement before the movie.

243. The fact that I can no longer hear any song from the Nutcracker without a voice in my head saying "Coming this Christmas".

244. When someone starts telling you a long-winded joke that you've already heard, and you miss the window of opportunity to interrupt them.

245. These breath-freshening-seed-things in the bowl when you walk out of an Indian restaurant. What are they and why do they taste so terrible?

246. Why does every word processor or email service assume that @ is part of an email address? I type @ and whatever I write next immediately turns blue and underlines itself and auto-links to an email pop-up. Have we all forgotten that the @ existed for quite some time prior to email and had other uses?

247. People who get on my elevator on an intermediate floor and then get off on another intermediate floor. Thanks for wasting my time.

248. People whose Halloween costume is clearly just their club outfit.

249. Getting a whiff of homeless.

250. Can we please stop calling movies and books "An American..." whatever? Maybe, way way back, this was some kind of genuine attempt to say something meaningful about the culture. Now though it's just utter laziness.

251. Who are these people who want to be my friend on Facebook who I haven't seen or talked to in years and only had the barest acquaintance with back then anyway? Do they not have any other friends? Or are they trying to break some record? Either way, I'm turning you down sucker.

252. Discovering that a TV show you like has commercials aimed exclusively at the elderly.

253. When you find out a famous person has died, and everyone you tell already knows.

254. Movies that are hoping you won't notice that everyone in the late 80's or early 90's has a cell phone.

255. A commute with the sun in your eyes each way.

256. Thinking you've found a shortcut but ending up in residential neighborhood labyrinth hell.

257. A kid in a fight who screams "I'm going to sue you!" at the other kid. Why do kids think this is such an effective threat?

258. Attn: people who are planning to visit Australia / New Zealand. When you get there, particularly if it is your first time, you are suddenly going to find yourself under the impression that you are a great travelogue writer and observer of culture. You are going to feel compelled to write long emails, essays, and social media posts about your every experience. When this urge occurs, you need to stop, calm yourself, and repeat to yourself in a whisper: "Nobody cares that I'm in New Zealand. Nobody cares that I'm in New Zealand." etc. "I don't write well." and "I have nothing interesting to say." also work fine.

259. A Robin Williams tearjerker, or a Billy Crystal romance.

260. Let me explain exactly what's wrong with putting everyone you talk to on speakerphone. You know, from being on the receiving end of a speakerphone conversation, that you have to strain to hear every word. When someone has you on speaker, they sound fuzzy, far away, and static-y. Now, on the flip side, it's great to be the one putting everyone on speaker, because it's hands free and oh-so convenient. So here's how it all tallies up: when you put someone on speaker, you get to enjoy added ease and convenience, at the equal-and-opposite expense of the other person's ease and convenience. Therefore, if you put someone on speaker when you're alone, you are a selfish asshole. You are saying "I am going to give you an echo-y, low-volume phone call, full of background noise and static - all so that I don't have to hold a phone cradle." The act is an announcement that you are a prick. In fact, speakerphones should come with an automated asshole message. Whenever you press the speakerphone button, there should be a bell tone, and three robotic female voices that say "Dooooouche!" in a major chord.

20 Questions: 2010

2010-05-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

1. What happened to binaca?

2. Why are Village Voice movie reviews always negative?

3. Why do nightclub bouncers always have their ties in a Windsor knot?

4. If cancer was cured entirely, would the anti-smoking crusaders call it quits? Or would they press on like nothing had happened? Would taxes on cigarettes be lifted? Would they allow Marlboro ads on TV? I would love to see this play out.

5. TV Judge shows. Are these people actually judges? Are these, like, actual courts? Do they follow actual law with respect to procedure and evidence and all the rest? Are their verdicts binding? Or is it all some kind of charade? I have a feeling like there's some fine print I'm missing here. If it's not really a court of law, why would anyone take their case there? Why would you take your small claims problem to someone whose primary goal is to entertain a home audience? And finally, why not actually put real court cases on TV, instead of the Judge Judy show, so that people can actually learn a little bit about how the law works, instead of this cheez wiz version of law? Oh wait, I guess they do. Court TV. Kind of boring, that Court TV.

6. How come, on the highway, everyone turns their headlights on when the sunset has just barely started? You know, when there's still a good hour of daylight left? The minute the sky gets just a little orange, wham, all the lights come on. I can't speak for anyone else but until the actual moment of dusk, putting on my lights does not offer one iota of additional visibility.

7. How can they show TV advertisements for a better TV than the one you already have? If they try to impress you with the crispness of the image, doesn't that just prove that your own TV is good enough?

8. Every time I watch a boxing match on HBO I always see one bewildering statistic. The announcers will state what the weight class is, and what the weight limit is, and then casually announce the boxers' true weights, which are always 5 or 10 pounds heavier that the maximum weight permitted. "Shouldn't the boxers be, uh, disqualified then?" is what I'm always thinking. Boxing's practice of "weighing-in" days before a fight does not make sense to me. These boxers scientifically starve themselves down to goal weights for the specific hour of the weigh-in, and then spend the next day hurriedly putting the weight back on in time for the fight. How does it make sense to permit this? Just weigh them in 30 minutes before the fight! What's the argument against this? Plus, how can the boxing authorities implicitly condone the unhealthy rapid weight gain and loss, in a sport that's supposed to be about peak physical health? What other official sports governing body would allow tactical anorexia to be a legitimate strategy?

9. When you have to give your address on an internet form, and there's a drop-down list of countries, why the is Antarctica always on there?

10. Why does the supermarket constantly change all the aisles around? Just when I learn where the soda is and where the bread is, I show up and it's all different. What was wrong with the old configuration?

11. How do Civil War magazines find new headlines every month?

12. Why is nothing a doctor scribbles on a prescription slip ever remotely legible?

13. To the people who think all cell phone talking while driving is inherently dangerous, even if done on a hands-free headset: do you think talking to the other passengers in the car is similarly dangerous? If no, what exactly is the difference between talking on a heads-free handset and talking to the person in the backseat?

14. You know in movies or on TV when they show you a newspaper that has a front page headline that supposedly is part of the plot... like "Batman Saves City" or something. Do you ever look to see what the other headlines are on the newspaper? Do you try to read the actual text of the "Batman Saves City" article? I think sometimes the text is gibberish, but occasionally, JUST occasionally, they actually compose a whole article and put it in there just in case someone like me actually tries to read it. Does anyone know any examples of when the two-second shot of the newspaper actually contained a fully coherent, plot-appropriate story in the small print?

15. How come every other species of animal can just squat and give birth, but humans require drugs and specialists and training and hospitals and surgery? Are we really that weak and fragile compared to every other animal?

16. What would someone with Tourette's shout if they had never been taught any curse words?

17. Sometimes when I'm on the elliptical machine at the gym, I'm browsing channels on the built-in TV. And sometimes, because there's always a Star Trek episode airing somewhere, I'll stumble on a good Next Generation episode, like the one where the Enterprise blows up before every commercial. So for about 1 second, I say "Hey, I think I'll watch this." And then I realize - hmm, I'm at the gym. Do I really want to be watching Star Trek: The Next Generation at the gym? And, reluctantly, I change the channel and look for something manlier to watch. And it's not just Star Trek of course. What else have I been too ashamed to linger on? The Golden Girls? Antiques Roadshow? Has this ever happened to anyone else? Wanted to watch one thing on the gym TV but reluctantly felt it didn't reflect well on you? Maybe I should start my own gym, where the promise is that we offer a TV safe-zone, where's there no judgment.

18. I'm seriously weirded out by what I only recently discovered about Joe's Stone Crabs. This is the famous restaurant in Miami that serves the Stone Crab claws. You can read a brief synopsis here, but the basic idea is that the crab is caught, a single claw is severed, and then the crab is thrown back, where over the course of a year they can grow back their missing claw, at which point (gulp) they get dragged up in the net again.

I don't know, is that crossing some kind of a line? I've made my peace with being a carnivore. I've made my peace with eating live oysters or tossing lobsters in a boiling pot... but do I really want to eat a limb of something that is still swimming around in the ocean? How can I enjoy my meal when somewhere out there is the remainder of this crab? Probably a very angry crab.

19. When am I going to get "tapped" to join a secret society? I want it all: the secret greeting, the tattoo, a ring with a glyph on the inside. I'm ready dammit! Tap me!

20. Imagine Abraham Lincoln speaking. Imagine the whole scene: he's standing on a wooden stage, he's got the beard and the hat, he's got both hands on his coat, and here he goes: "Four score... and seven years ago..." Now hold it right there. That voice you imagined. The Lincoln voice. Kind of barrel chested. Kind of like Sean Connery but without the Scottishness. Where did you get that from? There are no recordings of Lincoln's voice. None. Never were. And yet, not only do you know Lincoln's voice, in a pinch you could probably do a good impression. What's that about? Do you think maybe we have some kind of collective national memory of Lincoln's voice, that's been passed down successfully for 150 years? That strikes me as odd. There's no Washington voice. No Jefferson voice. To me, the authoritative Lincoln voice was always the Lincoln from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. That's the Lincoln voice against which I judge others. But I have no idea if it's accurate, and who living today would know better? We're dealing with a hand-me-down impression that's had a century and a half to morph and mutate. For all we know the real Lincoln sounded like Pee Wee Herman.

The Popularity of "Isabella"

2010-05-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

As of today, May 8, 2010 it is now a fact that Isabella is the most popular baby girl name in America. Isabella. Like the Spanish queen. How did this happen?

Most baby names hover at a consistent popularity. A quick tour through the Social Security baby names website reveals that Emily sat in the top spot from 1996 to 2007. Before that, Jessica and Jennifer enjoyed similar long stays at #1. For most of the century, Mary was the undisputed champ. Most names don't rise or fall much in the rankings for any given year. In the very long run, they do tend to cycle. New moms and dads reject the names of their parents' generation but embrace the names of their grandparents. Some names are perennials. Some have religious associations or nationality associations or run in families. It's all fairly predictable.

But Isabella has come out of nowhere. Before 1990, it didn't crack the top 1,000 girls names. Look at this table showing Isabella's ascent through the girls' ranks. The 1990s shows the name coming from nowhere and vaulting to the top 100. The 2000s shows Isabella climbing like a machine to the #1 spot.

And don't be misled by the fact that the yearly ranking gains got smaller and smaller for Isabella. Climbing from #800 to #600 might involve a hundred girls. Climbing from #4 to #2 requires thousands of girls.

I am fascinated by the rise of Isabella. And I'll admit, I'm feeling a bit of the schadenfreude. Let me explain. People who for decades chose #1 baby names like Jennifer and Jessica did so because they liked the names. There was no illusion when you named a girl Jessica in 1995 that you were stepping outside the mainstream or making a hip choice. However, I feel certain that all of the Isabella moms and dads over the last 15 years chose the name partly because of its perception of exotic uniqueness. The last thing they wanted was a common name. They didn't want something like Jane or Lisa, the sort of name where if the teacher called it out in class, half the hands would go up. No no no, they wanted something bold. So they chose the hauntingly beautiful Isabella, confident that no other girl not descended from Spanish royalty would share the name.

Now look at them. Unique? Isabella is now officially the least unique name choice in the United States. It is the commonest name. You may not appreciate it now, but just wait 20 or 30 years, when all these Isabellas are grown up. Have you ever wondered why your mom's friends are all named Linda and Barbara, but those names don't seem to exist in any other age group? That's Isabella, 50 years from now.

So yes, I do relish the disappointment of these parents who thought they had found something unique and special, and didn't realize they had inadvertently climbed on the largest bandwagon and selected the trendiest name of the decade. There's another wave close behind Isabella by the way, and it's called Sophia. Watch out for that one in the coming years.

But none of this explains why Isabella, specifically, got so popular. Why Isabella? Well, we know it's a variant of Elizabeth. We know that "Isabel" or "Isabelle" has been around for a long time in America, for anyone wanting that Spanish flavor on Elizabeth. But "Isabella" is really going whole hog with the Spaniard thing. It would be like naming your son Pierre without any French stock in your family. Why would you do that? For this reason, Isabella seems to me to be an unlikely choice to become the #1 girl's name in the US.

Some of you may be thinking that the popularity is due to the book Twilight, but think again. Twilight was published in 2005, a good 15 years into Isabella's rise to fame. To understand my theory of why Isabella vaulted it's way to #1, I need to explain my longstanding and larger theory on baby name popularity.

A lot of people think that name trends follow celebrities. Moms like to name baby girls after the women they admire or envy. Sometimes these women can even be fictional characters. Well, I say this is only partly true. If you really want to know where baby names come from, don't look at the name of the admired celebrity. Look at what the admired celebrity names her baby. It's the baby names that the admired women select that catch on.

The single best example of this is the name Emma.

Emma's stock had been rising slowly throughout the 1990s. Some of this I believe is the cyclical effect of granny names coming back into fashion. Emma had been very popular in the late 19th century. In 2001, Emma clocked in at 13,300 girls in 13th place. In 2003, Emma hit a surprise peak of 22,686 and the #2 spot. Even though it continued to stay high in the rankings afterward and actually hit #1 in 2008, no year exceeded the 2003 total of 22,686 Emmas.

So what the heck happened in 2002? Here's a clue:

Jennifer Aniston, playing the role of Rachel on Friends, named her baby Emma. That's it. Now even though Jennifer Aniston in real life may have questionable taste and intelligence, the character of Rachel was the perfect fantasy. Beautiful, stylish, smart, funny... she came from money and was climbing the corporate ladder at Ralph Lauren. So when she named her baby Emma, guess what about 22,000 other women decided to do? Is there any other explanation for the spike? Followed by the steady decline afterward?

Other examples abound. Check out the name Lily. Yes, it too has been gaining in popularity gradually for 20 years - again the grandma effect. But what do you suppose could have pushed *Lily* into the top 20? How about Sex and the City?

Again, it wasn't the mom's name, Charlotte, that gained ground. Charlotte has been rising recently, it's now in top 100 - but during the run of the show was stuck in the 200s. No, it was her daughter Lily that people wanted to mimic.

And how about the girl's name Regan? Know any girls named Regan? I know two. They were both born in the 70s. Chances are if you know any Regans, they were also born in the 70s. Why? Have a look at this picture:

Yes, that's the Regan they are all named after. The possessed girl from the Exorcist. Portrayed by Linda Blair, the character's name was Regan MacNeil. Now, do you really think American women in 1973 were so charmed by the pea soup spewing, demon-possessed girl Regan, that they all decided to poach the name? Not exactly. You may have to watch it again, or just think back to it, but try to remember the character of Regan's mother.

The mother, Chris, played by Ellen Burstyn, was Jennifer Aniston squared. Take some time to refresh your memory. Not only was she devastatingly beautiful, but she was impossibly wealthy, and all of it self made. She lived in an impossibly opulent mansion in the best neighborhood of 70's Georgetown. She was single. She was an author (smart!), an actress, (artistic!) and her apparently regular cocktail parties and soirees brought guests from the highest echelons of Hollywood and government. (popular!) Even though the movie was not about her, she was front and center for most of it, and her incredible career and lifestyle was the stuff of dreams. (except the demon baby part).

I estimate, based on data from socialsecurity.gov, the movie produced around 1,500 Regans that wouldn't have otherwise existed. Starting in 1973 and ending in 1981. And like I said I've met two of them. Both admitted that the Exorcist was the inspiration for their parents.

So where does this leave us with Isabella? The name took a long time to reach #1. But as we've disccused, it broke into the top 1,000 names, out of nowhere, in 1990. In 1990 there were 215 Isabellas. in previous years there were less than 200, and therefore they don't appear on the site. In 1991, 300 Isabellas. In 1992, 500. In 1993, 827. In 1994, 1,275!

What happened in 1992 or 1993? We can't credit the grandma effect because the name had never had cyclical popularity or any kind of historical vogue. So where was the originating event - which is to say, what admired woman named her daughter Isabella, right in this time period? Well, ladies and gents, it took some searching, but I've found your answer.

Nicole Kidman and husband Tom Cruise adopted a girl, Isabella, born December, 1992.

Here she is today, Isabella Cruise Kidman. Patient zero.

This is literally the Isabella that spawned all the others. Thousands upon thousands of knockoff Isabellas, including thousands yet to be born, to ever more increasingly dumb portions of society that will manage for many more years yet to not have heard the word about the commonness of this name. I grant you, the only moms who were consciously emulating Nicole Kidman were the ones giving birth in 1993, 94, and maybe a few more beyond. But this was enough to start the wave. Thereafter, there were enough baby Isabellas to inspire copycats from moms who admired those mothers.

Nicole Fucking Kidman. Rich, erudite, gorgeous, talented, Tom Cruise-marrying Nicole Kidman. I have to assume the name was her idea and not Tom's. This Isabella thing, and the decades we're all going to have to put up with it, are all her fault. Thanks Nicole Kidman. Look what you've done.

Look what you've done.

Even If You Can Make a Useful Contribution, Do Not Butt Into the Conversations of Strangers

2010-04-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

Don't be an asshole. Don't do it. Do not insert yourself into the conversations of strangers, simply because you feel you could make a useful point, or could clarify something they've misstated.

It's bound to happen. You'll be sitting there on a bus, on in line at the coffee shop, or waiting in the dentist's office, and you'll overhear a conversation that relates directly to a strong opinion you hold, or an area of your personal expertise. You'll hear the strangers making factual mistakes, or wondering aloud about questions you could easily answer. You'll hear them make arguments that are plainly wrong for at least 3 reasons you can think of immediately. And you'll hear them serve up good-humored conversational softballs to which you could respond with any number of funny quips.

You will want to butt-in. The urge may be so strong that it seems irresistible. You will rationalize it to yourself. You'll think "These guys will be thrilled that they just happened to pose questions in earshot of someone who knows the answers! It's their lucky day!"

But you are dead wrong. You are setting yourself up to look like an insufferable prick, and the only thing you will make the strangers feel is a secret desire that you drop dead.

Imagine talking to your friend on the crosstown bus:
You: "I heard KFC's grilled chicken actually has more calories than the original recipe."
Friend: "You don't say?"
You: "Yeah, it's cause of the marinade."
(Suddenly, Colonel Sanders himself turns around from the seat in front of you)
Colonel Sanders: "Actually that's not true. The grilled chicken only has 2/3 the calories. And it doesn't even have a marinade."
Friend: (Silence)
You: "Fuck off, Sanders."

The more you know about the topic, the more you will feel compelled to butt in. This happened to me last week at a bar. The strangers were discussing a movie that happened to be one of my favorites. They were arguing over the fine points and they couldn't remember certain details. It was a fun, jocular conversation, they were laughing, and they were making lots of little errors in talking about the film.

I sat there and I knew what I had to do. I had to keep my mouth shut. I could have lectured them for 20 minutes on all the fine points of the film. I could have delivered an impromptu symposium on it. But the conversation - and this is what you have to understand - the conversation they were having was not really about the movie. The movie didn't really matter. What it was really about was a couple of friends unwinding after a long work day and sharing a couple of beers. Having a few laughs. Enjoying some good company. Even though we were in a public place, there was an expectation of privacy. And if it just so happened that their casual banter involved talking about a movie - and not even getting it right - then that was their prerogative. They couldn't remember the actor's name? Didn't matter. They were having more fun trying to figure it out than they would have if I butted in like a google search result.

There are circumstances I guess where you can break the rule and butt-in. If someone gives bad directions, or someone is about to get on the wrong train, then it's okay. If you can be a good samaritan and save someone from headache and inconvenience then do it. But otherwise stay out. Allow the strangers to say things that are wildly incorrect. Allow them to be offensive.

One of my goals in life is to write a book. And the reason is because I want to someday be tempted by the ultimate butt-in scenario: some strangers talking about my book while I am sitting right there. The urge to say "Actually, I wrote that book." will be so overwhelming, that by resisting it I might break out into sweats and the shakes - but it is the ultimate test. Because anyone who says "Actually, I wrote that book." is a douche. And that's the question you have to answer. When push comes to shove, when all the chips are down: will you respect someone's privacy? Or will you be a douche?

What the Hell is "Gay Panic" and Why is "Hot Tub Time Machine" Guilty of It?

2010-04-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

I saw Hot Tub Time Machine last week. Funny movie. I recommend it. One habit I have is reading reviews of movies after I see them, to see if I agree with the critics and to see if they had any additional insights on the film.

So I'm reading some reviews of HTTM, and mostly I'm interested to see if the critics can give the film an endorsement for being funny, despite the raunch factor. To my surprise, the critics didn't seem to mind the raunch. Par for the course, they admitted. Roger Ebert was downright refreshed. No, the real problem was that HTTM traded in the lowest form of bigot comedy - not racism or sexism, but something called "gay panic." Well this was a new one to me.

Variety: "The pic ... later features projectile vomiting (twice), wayward pee and some of the lowest gay-panic humor in recent memory."

The Onion's AV Club: "Machine is engaging enough, but its characters’ path to redemption would be more satisfying if it weren’t greased with authentically ’80s-style casual sexism, gay panic, and frat-comedy clichés."

The New York Times: "The undercurrent of misogyny and homophobic panic that courses through most arrested-development, guy-centric comedies these days is certainly present here."

Rolling Stone: "But Pink goes way too broad with the screenplay partly credited to Sean Anders and John Morris, who lift a gay-panic joke out of their own She's Out of My League."

Film Journal International: "Not all the jokes land, of course; the movie unfortunately doesn't avoid the tired gay-panic gags that continue to plague most buddy comedies..."

I could have gone on. This was a common complaint. Now, the charge of homophobia - that one I'm familiar with. The word means fear of homosexuality, but is used (inappropriately I've always thought) to mean bigotry against homosexuals, or having an anti-gay attitude. I say inappropriately, because if you had a guy who runs away in terror every time he saw a homosexual, that would be a homophobic person. A guy, by contrast, who dislikes gays but isn't particularly, you know, afraid of them - that person may be a lot of things, but "phobic" doesn't seem very apt.

Unless you're going to argue that "fear of homosexuality" somehow lies at the root of all anti-gay animus, and that phobic is therefore the right term - in which case my response is either "Prove that." or "You're full of shit." depending on my mood.

But accusations of homophobia in films like Hot Tub Time Machine seem to have died down lately. And I think this is not because everyone has mellowed. I think that the line of scrimmage has simply been moved. Those who would make jokes in sex comedies about men fellating each other have been pushed back towards their own goal and are now being accused of "gay panic" rather than "homophobia".

I'm trying to figure out what the dictionary definition of gay panic is, but Google isn't being much help. I'm also trying to figure out where in HTTM some sort of offense to homosexuals occurred, and I'm coming up empty on that too. What Google and Wikipedia are telling me is that gay-panic is a term concocted as a legal defense by those whose have committed acts of violence against gays. A hetero person discovers that someone he is talking to is homosexual, or is actually hit on by that person, and the hetero guy becomes enraged, losing all bonds to sanity, and turns violent. Gay Panic is thus invoked as a form of temporary insanity to get violent thugs off the hook.

Now I have to say, that's one of the worst defenses for murder or battery I've ever heard. The book should be thrown at the thugs. Temporary insanity is a crock of shit. But this definition of gay panic is clearly not the one being employed in these film reviews. As best I can tell, when the New York Times or Variety is accusing HTTM of trading in gay panic jokes, they are referring to scenes where the (hetero) characters are panicking in the context of a homosexual act that may be about to occur or that they may have to participate in.

I'm mentally going through the movie and I can think of four instances where homosexuality was referenced at all, let alone panicked over. They are:

1) In the car ride to the resort, two of the characters get into one of those back and forths of "You're gay." No, you're gay." No, YOU'RE gay."

2) Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and John Cusack all get into the hot tub naked. (off camera). The fourth guy is reluctant to disrobe and join them and has a line, something like "I just don't like the idea of a bunch of dudes naked together in a tub."

3) Rob Corddry and that same guy (forgot his name) are about to have a threesome with a woman. Corddry is very gung-ho about it, but the other guy is uncomfortable. He has a line where he says something like "Sure I'd be into a threeway, but not with another dude!".

4) Rob Corddry makes a bet where if he loses, he has to fellate Craig Robinson. He does this only because he believes his victory in the bet is inevitable. For hilarious reasons, fate conspires to make him lose the bet. There is then a prolonged scene where Corddry and Robinson do indeed panic at the idea that they will have to make good on the bet and go through with the BJ.

These are the only times in the movie where any kind of gay activity is referenced at all. If I've missed any, please let me know. Presumably the charge of gay panic is being applied to these scenes.

Now here, finally, is where we get to my main question and the point of this blog. Does Political Correctness now dictate that heterosexual men, in films or in reality, are no longer permitted to be disgusted at the thought of committing a homosexual act? Is that what being accused of gay panic means? This is what I mean when I say I think the line of scrimmage has been moved. It used to be the case that overt, anti-gay prejudice was unacceptable. Now it seems that any expression of distaste at the thought of participating in gay sex is the new standard for opprobrium. And if that's truly the case, then I call foul in a big way, and say no to the new standard.

In the four references I cited above, I think you can make the case that the first one was a bad idea - you don't need a comedy reinforcing the use of "gay" as an insult that straight guys use on each other. The 40 Year Old Virgin had the same joke if I recall. I think movies could, by and large, make a point of not having characters call one another gay, the same way they make a point of not having anyone smoke. So if you want to get on HTTM's case that the "No, you're gay" routine in the car was in bad taste, I'm on board.

But as for the other three scenes, no dice. I stand my ground. There is nothing offensive to homosexuals there. It is simply a fact that hetero men are grossed out, always will be grossed out, at the idea of homosexual coupling. Hetero men are biologically hardwired to be that way. If men weren't grossed out by the thought of gay sex, if the idea was somehow a neutral one rather than a negative one, then the animal kingdom wouldn't have gotten very far. If same-sex coitus was a sort of acceptable, runner-up activity if you struck out with the ladies that day, then what species would have survived or thrived? It's not enough to be attracted to the opposite sex, it seems to me. You must also be repulsed at the idea of mating with your own gender for procreation to work. Straight sex and gay sex can't be interchangeable in the mind.

What this means is that no matter how progressive or enlightened we are, no matter how accepting of gay rights we are, no matter how well we can, intellectually, wrap our minds around the idea of gay sex being fine and dandy for those who enjoy it, we will never overcome the natural revulsion to participating in such sex ourselves. And no campaign to overturn that reality will ever be successful. 1,000 years from now, immature boys just beginning to understand their sexuality will taunt others in the playground with accusations that hey, that kid likes to suck cock. And the lesson that such language is offensive to gays will have to be taught and retaught every generation. That project will never be over.

Many people like to point out the similarities between the struggle for gay rights and the struggle for civil rights for blacks, or suffrage for women - they compare the laws against gay marriage to anti miscegeny laws and draw those kinds of parallels. And I just kind of sit back and brood on that. To some extent, yes there are similarities. But the big difference is the one I just discussed. No one is born a racist. You have to be taught that. People are, on the other hand, born to be powerfully sexually attracted to one gender, and (in most cases) powerfully sexually repulsed by the other. Therefore, while I can envision a world free of racism, I cannot envision a world free of "gay panic". And of course gays are not immune from this panic either. What would your average gay man say when contemplating sex with a woman? Would he be neutral about it? Or would he say "Ew! Tew-nahhhhhh!"

But that isn't offensive. That's normal. So when Rob Corddry balks at sucking Craig Robinson's dick, that is, dare I say it, a normal response to that predicament. Is it Gay Panic? Well what does that mean, and what's wrong with it?

It should probably be pointed out that in HTTM, none of the supposed gay panic scenarios involved anyone actually being gay or being mistaken for gay. The real gay-panic is supposed to involve one person's sudden discovery that the other is gay. That never happens in HTTM. The reluctance of Clark Duke (I looked up his name) to get into a hot tub with three naked guys is not about his fear that one or all of the men are gay or that gay sex is somehow imminent - it's about his fear of being perceived as gay by others. And that fear, in turn, is not about the diminished social standing that comes with being perceived as gay, it's about that perception limiting his chances with women and inviting overtures from real gay men, reasons that strike me as being entirely sound, with motivation that's deeply biologically hardwired. It is, in short, normal, fine and inoffensive.

If the situation was reversed (always a handy tool to sift through PC bullshit) and it was a gay Clark Duke asked to participate in a threeway with a dude and a girl, and Duke wanted no part of it because he wasn't into girls, would I, as a straight guy, be offended? Nope. Could a film critic cry out "Straight panic!"? Again, nope. If a gay Rob Corddry lost a bet and was forced to perform oral sex on a woman, and Corddry got all panicked at the thought, would that disturb me? Uh.... no. Why would it?

So the charge that Hot Tub Time Machine is guilty of something called gay-panic falls pretty flat for me, and it concerns me that the new standard of being a right thinking person includes being forbidden to take a negative position on your own participation in homosexual sex, lest you be committing the crude faux-pas of gay panic. Being grossed out at the thought of gay sex if you're straight, or straight sex if you're gay, is the most normal thing in the world. Where's the offense?

The Problem with the New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest

2010-03-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

Every week, the New Yorker has a cartoon caption contest. They provide the cartoon on their website. They accept caption submissions. They choose three finalists and open it up to a public vote. There's no money, but the the winner gets the caption published in the magazine, along with their name.

The real prize of course, not openly acknowledged but universally understood is that one's mother will swoon with pride and joy if one wins the contest. "Hey mom, guess who got their cartoon caption published in the New Yorker?" is the sentence that the winner is permitted to speak. Because of the high value of this prize, I have been trying for months to win this friggin' contest. Thousands of entries are sent in every week and only one wins, so the odds are small. But still, most of the entries suck donkey balls, and so winning it shouldn't be so difficult. And yet success eludes me, most likely because the judges themselves also suck various parts of pack animals. Some of the "winning" captions are unbelievably bad. Even Roger Ebert, writing here about his own frustrations with the winning captions, was himself proposing stupid substitutes.

But let me tell you the problem with the contest. Besides bad entries and inept judging, the contest has a built in flaw that no one seems to have caught. Before I explain it in detail, have a look at some previous contest cartoons and the winning captions:

Okay now take a close look at the one with the subway panhandler in the hammock. And consider the winning caption "Brother, can you spare a lime?". Funny, right? A good old pun that fits right into the situation. He's not a typical beggar, see, he's on some kind of tropical vacation - and he's begging for fruit. In the subway.

Now I grant you, if you've been staring at that blank cartoon for a long time, trying to caption it, and someone says to you "How about 'Brother, can you spare a lime?'" then yes, you're liable to laugh and admit that that's a good one. But now, imagine opening up the New Yorker and looking at the same line, on the same cartoon - not realizing that it was a caption contest winner - just thinking that it was a normal cartoon. What do you think about it now?

Well, it doesn't make a lick of sense, does it? Why is there a guy on a hammock in the subway between two girders? Why is he wearing a Hawaiian shirt and begging for fruit? Sure, you get the pun, but the pun doesn't explain the image. The image requires an explanation. The caption contest winners never furnish explanation. They only serve as verbal solutions to the puzzle of the image. The image is always something nonsensical, like a piano filled with fish; and the winning captioner is always the one who can find the pattern in the nonsense, with something like “They were caught swimming off the Keys.”

But this is insufficient. If you opened up the magazine, and saw that fish cartoon, you would simply be baffled by its randomness. The bizarre scene of the image demands some sort of explanation that’s anchored to reality. It has to speak to some sort of truth about music, or culture, or the shoddy state of public aquariums, or I don’t know what. But what it can’t be is some kind of pun that merely relates the concept of fish to the concept of pianos. That doesn’t work. All of the caption contest winners have this problem.

The winner needs to be the one that makes the cartoon feel organic. The winner needs to fool you into believing that the caption and image were created concurrently, with a point in mind, and not that one was reverse-engineered from the other. This is such an obvious problem, but the contest just rolls on, oblivious.

You might be saying that all this complaining and nitpicking is because I’m just bitter that I haven’t won. That I'm somehow saying that all that stands between me and earning my mother's love is the stubbornness of the New Yorker. And you'd be right. And yes they are.

My Attempt at a Jay Nordlinger Corner Post

2010-03-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

In last week's Impromptus I had a followup to my Corner post of Wednesday last that engendered much comment. To briefly recap, I had written "I have written here and elsewhere, most recently in Impromptus, on a subject that raised a few eyebrows and occasioned much comment." Judging by the overwhelming response in my inbox, I see more discussion is warranted. I had responded previously on this topic, propelled to do so by a hearty influx of supportive email, but I see by the reaction solicited by the original item that, clearly, I had not given the subject a full airing.

Elsewhere I've written on peripheral topics, and I'm pleased to say they've borne just as much conversational fruit. (A quick search should bring up a trove of such). But I'd be remiss in not mentioning an item I included just two weeks previous, in which I mused that the response the original piece excited was notable not only for its volume but for the passions aroused. When I then wrote that I'd written similar observations, regularly, for years, and had predicted the elicited reaction at least once in NR dead-tree, I was deluged with letters! And - even though I've printed a few of the best in this space, I'd like to share just three more.

Final Fantasy is now Entirely About the Modeling of Realistic Human Hair

2010-01-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

Final Fantasy is ruined. This great series of videogames, one that for over a decade delivered the best games of all time, strung together like pearls, has now officially died. By focusing on what didn't matter and ignoring what made the series so wonderful, Square-Enix has neutered the series. Specifically, they've abandoned the notion of creating "role playing games". And they've directed their energies, I think exclusively, on an aspect of gaming I wouldn't have considered essential: the realistic rendering of human hair. As a fan of the series since the beginning, I have to say, I didn't see that coming.

There were hints, I suppose, going back as far as the pointless and stupid Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

"Her movements (which mirror the actions of real actors) feel about right, and her hair blows convincingly in the wind." - Roger Ebert

"As you watch Aki, voiced by Ming-Na, you're struck by how realistic her hair is and imagine that much of the budget must have gone into giving it a special shampoo- commercial glow." - The New York Times

"It is said that a full third of the film's budget was spent on making the heroine's wispy hair convincingly wispy; how many heads of organic hair they could've bought is apparently irrelevant." - The Village Voice

Those of you who remember the movie remember that even though the hair was amazing, it was boring, the story made no sense, and the characters sucked. If only we had recognized this in 2001 for what it was: a warning siren. It was lauded though, at the time, for its groundbreaking CGI. We see now, 9 years later that a movie can only coast for a very short distance on special effects alone. Who now would rent or own this dog? The visuals, which looked fine at the time, now seem distinctly old hat. (There's a lesson here about Avatar by the way) But even in 2001, we can see Squaresoft's earnest passion to animate an uber-realistic head of follicles. Why? Why do they care so much about hair?

I have a pet theory. If you cast your mind back to the release of Final Fantasys 1, 4 and 6. (1, 2 and 3 in America) you remember that they were heralded as incredible games with terrible graphics. Even by the standards of the day, Final Fantasy games were far behind the curve, visually. Now as a fan I forgive that entirely. I personally would much rather that the limited memory available on an NES or SNES cartridge go toward gameplay depth in an RPG at the expense of graphical wonder. And the sales of those games bear that out. In fact, they prove a point. If a game that good doesn't need cutting edge visuals to be a best-seller, then the visuals aren't really what make an RPG good.

But here's where the pet theory comes in. Square knew it had a bestselling franchise. It also knew that the franchise had a reputation for butt-ugliness in the graphics dept. Square doubtlessly felt much great shame and experienced a loss of face. The President of the company may have even drawn out his seppuku knife and angled it at his ribs. So they committed to turn this complaint on its head. The worst looking graphics? From now on we'll have the best looking graphics. Final Fantasy games ugly? From now on, no game will be more beautiful. And the obsession with prettiness was born.

That also marks the exact moment when the gameplay excellence began to decline. And little did we know that the series would eventually become solely about hair. Thick, lustrous, silky hair. Feathered hair. Wind swept hair. Waterlogged hair. And the hair physics! A hair physics engine so complex and powerful that it could probably play Deep Blue to a draw at chess.

A brief recap of the franchise since it started going downhill:

Fans loved 8, but at the time I was worried. The Junction system didn't have the Materia system's depth, exploration and leveling didn't pay off quite as much, and the card game was given too much importance. I appreciated that the movies looked great (particularly the opening movie), but I was alarmed that the story was so weak. (No villain practically the whole way. What's-his-name, your schoolmate who turns bad, was set up nicely as a villain, but then abandoned)

IX was excellent. The crystal system was too simplistic, and again the real estate for meaningful exploration continued to shrink, but as a game it was fine. Chocobo Hot and Cold was a highlight.

X was the bombshell where you realized that the train was heading, permanently, in a new direction and you'd better ask yourself if you were on board. While superficially a huge world, in truth it was claustrophobic. No freedom to explore. No backtracking at all until the game was 90% over. The Sphere Board superficially appeared to offer freedom of customization, but in truth forced each character down a narrow development path. (If you think Kihmari is the exception, try making him a black mage). And the story that earned so much praise, made precious little sense.

X-2 was the same deal.

XI I ignored.

XII. Now number 12 was in some ways an improvement over 10. But while the characters all had rich, exciting, nuanced and compelling hair, they didn't have much in the way of personality. The story was so convoluted, incomprehensible and poorly written, that even now I can't remember a single thing about it. Not a thing. I cannot provide a summary, and I think I beat the game. I think there were some bad people in an army who wanted some bad things. And there were lots of political interludes where people I didn't know discussed incredibly urgent matters that made no sense, and then many of them died. I think the hero's name was Vaan. And there was another guy who was supposed to be a kind of Han Solo character but ended up being pretty lame. That's all I remember about 12.

XIII. And now we get to the death knell. The end of the line. The deeply disappointing, completely inexcusable Final Fantasy 13. Now you might say it's unfair of me to judge a game I haven't seen or played, but I ask you - since I never intend to see it or play it, how long am I supposed to wait to pass judgment? Can't I just say that it sucks? Consider: 1) No towns. 2) All shopping is done from save terminals. 3) It's the Sphere Board system all over again. 4) Every map is just a straight line tunnel with fancy graphical wallpaper on the sides. 5) The story (from what I've read) is weak-sauce Aeon Flux, and the hook of "If they win they're going to die anyway" was lifted directly from FFX.

Most of that I would have expected, but the complete abandonment of non-linearity did come as a surprise. We knew this was where the train was heading. Each sequel since VIII has given you less and less freedom. But we've suddenly and unexpectedly arrived at total, unforgiving linearity. We are now fully on rails. The only navigational spaces in XIII are death tunnels. The story is utter nonsense and the characters (Lightning honorably excepted) are apparently really annoying.

But the game does have one saving grace, and here I quote a review of the import:

"The Graphics: My God, I want to eat everyone's hair." - Tim Rogers, actionbutton.net

Yes. The hair is stunning. Judging the game purely on the hair standard, which I have to assume is how Square-Enix intends it should be judged, the game is an obvious home run. Let's check out some stills:

That is some great animated hair. I have no doubt each individual hair has independent motion and under windy conditions is programmed to move with a partly-randomized, partly-scripted flutter that mimics pure realism. And then upon contact with any other neighboring hair is programmed to interact with the correct balance of friction and attraction. I think this is the technology Peter Jackson used to animate battles in Lord of the Rings with 100,000 orcs, only now it's being used for hair.

The only reason I am bitching is because I used to love these games. They accomplished something that all video games want to do, and few succeed at: immersion. Not the kind of immersion where you like the game and are into it. The kind where the game permits you to be the director of the story - where you can put yourself in the game. This series used to put you in the driver's seat to an extent not seen anywhere else. You could explore and fight and adventure in your own way and at your own pace while still staying within the confines of a scripted story. A massive world was given to you, one that you could navigate by land, sea and air. Because you could customize your hero with great depth, the game gave you an opportunity to personalize the experience. No two players played Final Fantasy VI or VII the same way. No two players had the same experience. Now look at XIII, and turn the question on its head: Will any two players have a non-identical experience? Is this a game, or some kind of bad movie where you occasionally tilt a thumbstick upward to move the story along? I don't plan on finding out.

I hope there's a backlash. I hope Square does a reassessment and decides to go back to basics. The series could be great again. But for now I say so long to Final Fantasy. I wish it well, with lots of conditioner and no split ends, but I will look elsewhere for gaming this year.

Ben Affleck Can't Act

2009-10-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

I mean really. Stinkeroo. What an amateur. I actually got so annoyed with how bad his performance was in Boiler Room that it took me right out of the movie. And this wasn't even a movie like Gigli where the badness was legendary. This was supposedly a solid performance in a solid movie.

People kept telling me I had to watch this movie Boiler Room. If I liked Wall Street, which I do - and if I liked Glengarry Glen Ross, which I really do - then I owed it to myself to watch Boiler Room. So I picked it up as a rental. (In a nutshell: it was watchable but mediocre.)

Now here's what Variety said about this movie: a "likable ensemble, with a bravura turn from Ben Affleck". And: "Almost every character in Younger's elegantly staged thriller is borrowed from Stone or Mamet, beginning with Affleck's Jim Young, essentially the Alec Baldwin role from "Glengarry Glen Ross".

Here's the New York Times: "In its close attention to the hard-sell ethos of buying and selling, lying and cheating, "Boiler Room" calls to mind another movie its characters occasionally quote, James Foley's 1992 adaptation of David Mamet's play "Glengarry Glen Ross." (At times it hews a bit too close for comfort. Affleck's role -- to say nothing of his suit, his hair and his handsome hint of jowliness -- seems to have been traced over the outline of Alec Baldwin in that earlier movie.)"

One more, from the LA Times: "The way this movie deliberately evokes memories of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" invites the audience to make comparisons. Ben Affleck plays a small role that is clearly modeled on the tough, arrogant Alec Baldwin character in "Glengarry."

Strong praise, right? I mean - it sounds like Affleck's got a really juicy role where he channels the Alec Baldwin part from Glengarry Glen Ross. Now, I want you to watch both scenes. I want you to watch Alec Baldwin's scene from Glengarry Glen Ross, and then watch Ben Affleck's similar part in Boiler Room. Then we'll come back for discussion.

So you've watched both of them? Me too. Do you see now how godawful Ben Affleck is when you compare it to an actual great performance? And God help me - I never thought I would ever say this - but Alec Baldwin has some serious acting chops. He absolutely nails it. Or maybe he doesn't? Maybe Ben Affleck is just so bad that he makes Baldwin look like Lee Strasberg.

Affleck can't blame the Boiler script. It's top notch. The editing seems okay. He's lit well. He has no one to blame but himself. Seriously this is one of the most botched, painful, amateurish community-theater-level performances I've ever seen. He works himself up into belligerence... and then just keeps it there. He just shouts out every line in faux-drill sergeant anger. No modulation, no playing around with tempo, volume, intensity... it's just memorized lines being barked at you. Look at the Glengarry performance again. Look at how Baldwin changes gears throughout the scene. How he uses body language. How he plays off the other actors. How (if I can borrow from the SNL cowbell sketch) he really "explores the space".

Baldwin rotates through smarm, menace, fury, sarcasm; he drips with contempt for everybody and needles them expertly. Look at when he towers over Lemmon and put his hands on the desk. "These people are sitting out there waiting to give you their money! ... Are you going to take it? ... Are you man enough to take it?" There's a little smile there. He finds the humor in the line. Is he smiling because he feels a little sadistic pleasure in humiliating Lemmon? Or because he recognizes the ridiculousness of what he's asking? Or because he's trying to encourage Lemmon to get mad? You can interpret it many ways.

Another aspect of the performance is how comfortable Baldwin seems in his viciousness. He's not giving a screaming rant of a performance where his face gets red and his neck veins bulge. He's calm - even as he's dishing out withering abuse and shouting obscenities. You get the feeling that he has a whole other level of anger that you don't even want to tap into. It's such a controlled, compelling character and performance. There's a lot baked in there for just 7 minutes, and Baldwin hits it out of the park.

Now, painful as it is, go back to Affleck. After watching the Glengarry scene can you even sit through this open-mike-night quality bullshit? Who at Variety was calling this a "bravura turn"? First of all, terrible casting. Who could possibly believe chubby-cheeked, baby faced Ben Affleck as some sort of corporate pit bull? His anger is whiny. Listening to him it sounds like he's never yelled at anyone before in his life. He doesn't know the rhythm of it. He sounds like a high school jock who unexpectedly has to give the team pep talk because the coach is out sick. He thinks the shouting is the performance. But it's not supposed to be. The script has him singling out Giovani Ribisi for praise, and it clearly makes Ribisi uncomfortable. Is Affleck even aware of that? When he tells the other guy "It's not funny.", does it sound even remotely natural? His hand gesture at the end... do you buy it for a second?

I did find one critical take on Affleck during my internet search, and it came from Maxim of all places: "Remember Bugsy Malone, that movie where there was a bunch of little kids acting like tough gangsters? Well, since Boiler Room was a pre-K version of Glengarry Glen Ross, it's no wonder Affleck delivers a watered-down, pre-pubescent version of Baldwin's classic castrating sales lecture. Affleck's about as intimidating as a male nurse, so the effect is, let's say, less intense than the stare-down from Alec's Blake. Hey, Ben, put that coffee down."

It's just a total embarrassment of what could have been a great scene, but for our boy Ben not having a single clue how to take advantage of an A+ part. A part where if he had just been adequately good he could have conceivably stolen the film. He is so godawful in that conference room that I was forced to write two full paragraphs praising Alec Baldwin. Ben Affleck should quit movies and find an entirely new career, maybe operating an apple pushcart in a park somewhere.

That's it! I'm done!

"To Be Honest" is a Perfectly Useful, Appropriate Phrase

2009-10-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

I am really getting tired of the people who interrupt you when you begin a sentence with "To be honest". They stop you mid sentence and say "What do you mean, 'To be honest'? Does that mean you aren't honest the rest of the time? That you were lying?"

You get the same criticism for "Honestly," or "To be frank," - any of these phrases that connote that you're about to get serious with the other person. My last boss was particularly strict about this. He absolutely did not want to hear "To be honest" because he thought it spoke badly of your character. And because he was the boss, it filtered through the organization to the point where nobody could comfortably use the phrase.

Well I'm here to tell you that's bullshit. "To be honest" is an enormously useful, perfectly respectful phrase that conveys a definite message and says absolutely nothing about the character of the speaker.

Human conversation is full of artful deception. All of it. All the time. Most of it is benign. When someone says "How are you?", and you say "Doin' just fine Dave." it is understood that you elected not to give a full, detailed reply. Both parties are fine with that. The question was merely a greeting, and the response was just an acknowledgement. That's it. When the wife says "How do I look in these pants?" and you say "I'm not sure I like that style on you", you are choosing not to say "You look like a cow."

Every interaction we participate in has a certain amount of this. We sugarcoat. We spare each other's feelings. We hype up. We put a spin on our message. We highball. We lowball. We use euphamism. We temper, we boast, we use modesty or arrogance - depending on circumstance. We deflect, we downplay, we shift the focus, we exaggerate, we flatter, we console - all of it is to some various degree an acting job. We do not, absolutely do not use pure honesty all the time. Anyone who did try to offer total honesty all the time would be some kind of social outcast.

This is why the phrase "To be honest" is so useful. It alerts the listener that a bullshit-free opinion is about to follow, in a situation where bullshit would normally be employed. It doesn't mean that all bullshit is necessarily bad, or that in generally I am an untrustworthy person - it simply means that I am about to give you a fully truthful, unvarnished opinion. Many people do not even want to hear a fully truthful opinion, and the phrase "To be honest" gives them a second or two to tense up for the blow. It's a phrase that encourages you to pay close attention, to listen in. It advertises the arrival of a meaningful message. It does all of this in three simple words.

And it's particularly useful in a business environment where massaged and sugarcoated opinions are the norm. In my job, I'm expected to be optimistic in marketing, pessimistic to the top brass, and realistic to operations. The boss doesn't want to hear "to be honest"? He doesn't think that these aren't useful distinctions to make? If he asks me how sales are doing for the quarter, I can use A) "We'll get there, boss.", or B) "With a little luck, we can make quota." or C) "To be honest, I'm worried about making quota if that last contract falls through." All three responses are actually quite truthful. It depends on context. If he comes into my office with his shirt sleeves rolled up, closes my door and sits down, I'm going to use C. If he asks my opinion during a meeting where he's going around the table, it might be B. If he's walking through the office giving a tour to the board of directors, stops at my desk and introduces me, then asks, you better believe it will be A.

This is life. This is about the delicacy of using the right words in the right situations. So when I use C, how do you think I feel when I get rebuked for the implied dishonesty?

To be honest, the people who correct you when you start a sentence this way and rebuke you for the lies are deeply confused jackasses. Anyone who gives you a hard time for "To be honest" is saying that every conversation should be bullshit free. That is delusional. It takes a special pair of balls to correct people mid-sentence on their choice of words, and so if you're going to do it you should probably make sure you have a valid point, and are not simply advertising your lack of intelligence.

Thanks a Lot, Shoe Bomber

2009-07-19T07:10:00.001-07:00

Thanks a lot buddy. Great job you did there. What with the bomb in the shoe. That was some strong thinking. Enjoy your prison time.

He's Richard Reid, and has any one person ever been responsible for the creation of so much annoyance? So much disgruntlement? So much ill-temper, brown study, disaccommodation and just general inconvenience? I mean sure, you've got Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung. But they painted their misery on more of a broad canvas. They were more direct. Richard Reid the Shoe Bomber is a more subtle operator. It's as if he wants to rival Stalin for evil, but he's not going to kill anybody - he's just going to poke you in the ribs and screech a soft, high pitched tone in your ear until the total evil inflicted is the same. He doesn't care - he's got time.

The terrible thing is that when I flew east last week, I didn't even get annoyed when the TSA made me remove my shoes. I'm trained now. I'm acclimated. There's no fresh sting of indignation when these incompetent, moon faced, drooling buffoons order me around. I had made it a point to continue to be aggravated at the requirement, just to remind myself that it truly was stupid and unnecessary. But this time I just gave up. Had to make the flight. Didn't care.

Of course we could also talk about the liquids ban. Some other terrorist plot involved a liquid bomb and now we can't bring drinks on the plane. The dirty secret here is that no one in the aviation industry is particularly interested in having this ban lifted. It forces passengers to make expensive purchases at the gate and on the plane. I'm sure it's been a boon to revenue. Don't look for that one to go away anytime soon.

What scares me though is the thought of where the next terrorist is going to hide his bomb. A book? His socks? What item of necessity will we next be forced to part with or subject to a scan? I'll tell you this, if I ever open the paper to read about the iPod bomber or the PsP bomber, I am officially quitting air travel.

Here's the bottom line. Some day the TSA will lift the liquids ban and the shoe scan requirement. Of course they will. Remember the "3 questions" you used to be asked when you checked in? Have you packed your own suitcase? Have you left it unattended? After billions and billions of repetitions of those questions and not a single justifying event to back them up they were discarded. It will be the same thing with the shoes. But the TSA, in its colossal stupidity, needs a lot of time to figure that out. Have I mentioned that the TSA are worthless? Have I mentioned that their front line agents are dumber than cheese? Seriously. The next time they're confiscating a nail file, ask them who the vice president is. Ask them to name a planet. It isn't normally fair to belittle someone for the crime of being dumb, but when that person is ordering you around like a child and making you surrender a diet coke, you should take the edge off their power trip by reminding them who they are and where they are.

We just happen to live in that unhappy twilight time: The Shoe Bomber is in the past. The TSA realizing that shoe scanning is ineffective is in the future. We're stuck in the middle. Plus, can't they just improve the full body scanners to find things in your shoes?

Thanks Shoe Bomber. And you did it all for God, right? Hope that works out for you.

240 Annoyances

2009-05-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

221. Vegetarians who force their pets to be vegetarian.

222. Eddie Murphy's refusal to participate in any kind of SNL retrospective.

223. Songs that reference other songs. Like this recent one that won't go away about "Playing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long." What kind of balls do you have to have to make a song that's about the pleasure of listening to a much better song?

224. When you bump into a friend you haven't seen or spoken to in a long time and they get all petulant about how come you never write or call. Well why didn't you write or call? Why is the onus on me? Isn't a friendship a two-way street? This is particularly annoying when it was you that made the last contact. Your email was ignored or your call wasn't returned - and now she's wagging her finger at you because you don't keep in touch. Man that's irritating.

225. Asking for ginger ale and getting Sprite.

226. People: if you form a big semi-circle around the shopping mall mime disguised as a statue who freaks out the people who walk by, then everyone will know it's not a statue. Disperse! Watch from a distance!

227. People who call tomato sauce on pasta "gravy". Yeah, you're Italian.

228. That oblivious driver in front of you who if he pulled forward just a few inches would allow you into the turn lane.

229. When your friends make a St. Patrick's Day plan to all meet at around 9pm at that one Irish pub that's about 20 minutes away on the freeway - and when you get there, you realize, a) this is the most crowded you've ever seen an enclosed space, b) there's a $20 cover, and c) a portion of the floor has been roped off to feature a live band playing the loudest and shittiest music you've ever heard. Despite not having any fun at all, and meeting outside after 20 minutes to decide where to go next, you will all get amnesia and do the exact same thing next year, and ever year thereafter.

230. What good is a piece of sushi that's too big to put in your mouth? It's not like you can cut it into smaller pieces. Chefs: cut them smaller. Make 10 pieces instead of 8. Especially if its some kind of dragon-pizza-volcano-roll type deal.

231. I hate the expression "It's a glorious day." A "glorious day" means only one thing: that I'm about to get a hard time for continuing to sleep or watch TV.

232. Trivial Pursuit games with ancient pop culture questions. Also: Trivial Pursuit games with way-too-current, why-should-I-be-rewarded-for-knowing-this? pop culture questions.

233. TV shows where the opening credits spoil the surprise of which secondary characters you can expect to see in that particular episode.

234. People at the symphony who clap after the first movement.

235. Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones.

236. Waitresses: if you're out of something, just tell me up front. Don't roll the dice that I won't order it.

237. The gauntlet of questions you have to answer at the Barnes & Nobles counter before they let you buy anything.

238. People who begin a speech with "The Chinese have a proverb: May you live in interesting times."

239. Who made the decision to replace the line "Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." with "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough"? The original line is much better.

240. Can I get some sort of "Knows How to Navigate a Website" certification? So that I can opt of all these bullshit online training courses that I've had to take at two consecutive jobs wherein I am taught, click by click, how to use a supplier or client website? I mean maybe there are a few people out there who really do need to be shown how to navigate a menu bar and click on things, how to log on and change a password, how to select something from a pull down tab - but can't people who aren't fucking morons take a pass? Can't there be some kind of opt out clause?

Being Told That Your Password Isn't Rigorous Enough

2009-04-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

It's been kind of a chore, over the years, to keep track of all my passwords. I don't want them all to be identical, and yet if I had 10 or 20 different ones there would be no way to remember them all. I do have about 5 passwords that I use, and they're all related to each other. So if I forget my log-on for some email account or customer-ID or something, it's a quick question of cycling through the list.

But I do have to gripe just a bit about these passwords at work. At any job where they give you a computer and a log-on, you're going to have to create passwords. Back in the olden days, you could pick whatever password you wanted. Then they started to tighten the rules. It had to be at least 8 letters. Fine. It had to contain at least one number. Well, okay. It had to contain both upper and lower case. Errr. And it had to be changed once a month, and could never be replaced with a previously used password.

Well Jesus Christ. So it has to be Mnz8sJk9, and you have to change it once a month. Putting aside the ridiculous notion that anyone would a) want to hack my work PC, or b) be thwarted at the last moment by my ingenious use of upper case, consider the following:

We are not robots. We cannot memorize multiple nonsense passwords, and then start fresh every month. I brought this up to my boss, who said, "Oh, just use 'Password1'. And then next month, 'Password2', and so on. It's what everyone does. It's easy." Good idea. And that's exactly what I do now.

But you just have to note the irony. This ultra secure, super fool-proof set of password requirements that was put in place to guarantee impenetrable ciphers of dazzling complexity... has instead resulted in everyone, EVERYONE, using the most obvious password you can possibly think of. Don't you just love that? Isn't this a great argument for just leaving people the hell alone?

New Blog Update

2009-02-27T02:44:00.000-08:00

I had one or two other topics to go here that were poker related. But I'm starting to think that poker is a bit of a niche issue, and not everyone would be interested in my complaints about specific Las Vegas poker rooms. So I'm starting up a new blog called Poker Advice of Dubious Value. It will cover all the poker topics I want to talk about, and that way I can stick to general subjects here. If you're a poker player and want to check it out, the address is www.dubiouspoker.blogspot.com. The plan will be to update it every Sunday. As for the Petty Annoyances, I'm tapped out at the moment. I got nothing in the hopper.

But I do have a great quote from the author Jonah Goldberg, where he discusses his own petty annoyance. Read and enjoy:

Another useful ban would be to bar people from using foreign words when English ones work just fine. My favorite example of this, if memory serves, was a piece in the American Spectator in the mid 1990s by, I believe, Michael Vlahos who in the course of a perfectly insightful and intelligent article used the German word Konzept instead of the English "concept."

Even today a friend of mine will over-pronounce the word Konzept (spitting on the final "T") like a Disney movie German scientist whenever one of us comes up with a fairly banal idea or suggestion. For example, Me: "Some buffalo wings would be really good right now." Friend: "That is a fascinating Kooooooohhhhhhnnnnnzzzzzzepttttt!"

The Undeserved Reputation of the Bellagio Poker Room

2009-01-22T22:40:00.001-08:00

The Bellagio Poker Room in Las Vegas is seriously overrated. It coasts on accolades like these year after year, without any real critical scrutiny. Yes, Bellagio hosts the biggest games. Yes, Bobby's room is cool. Yes, it's the place to go for poker celebrity sightings, and yes the Bellagio has made a big commitment to poker. But....

Have any of you actually tried to play there? At any given time there's 25 games going. Most of those games are not high limit, they're the same 4-8, 5-10, 1-2 and 2-5 games that you see everywhere else. They're the bread and butter of the poker room. And Bellagio's service is terrible. Let me outline what we commoners have to put up with:

1. The Tables Suck

One of the most irritating things a poker room can do is play ten handed holdem on a stud table. None of the Bellagio tables are big enough. No cup holders or wood border either.

2. And There's No Space Between Them

Good luck getting to one of those tables in the corner.

3. Drink Service Disappears When the Room Gets Crowded

4. The Brushes are Surly

5. They Use a Retarded Clipboard System for Lists.

Look, you can make an argument that the electronic lists are buggy and problematic and maybe there's a certain nostalgia factor for keeping an old-timey chalkboard list, but a pencil-and-clipboard list just doesn't work.

First, no electronic list, no remote monitoring of the list. That means you can't get it on your hotel room TV. Second, if you can't see the list, you can't decide what you want to do unless you're already talking to the brush. At Caesars, or the Venetian, or anywhere else, I can view the list at a distance, and I don't need to actually talk to the host until I know which lists I want to be on. The clipboard system means I always have to be crowded around the front desk craning my neck to see what's going on.

6. There's No Technology on the Tables.

There's no "seat open" button that the dealer can press, which means that Bellagio is one of the last houses in town where little old lady dealers still have to shout "I've got 2 on 15!!!" at the top of their lungs.

7. "You're going to table 8. Go and purchase chips first over there."

Thanks friend. Where's table 8? Oh, it's the one under the TV in the general direction where you're waving? That's helpful. And I'll go wait on the cashier's line first, I get it. Can I pick up some trash on the way?

Other poker rooms actually seat you and get your chips for you, but hey - this is the Bellagio.

8. They Won't Page You.

So what are you supposed to do if you're on a list that's a mile long? Just stand there awkwardly for an hour? Which leads directly to:

9. Where are Players Supposed to Wait?

Seriously. If you stand more than 10 feet from the brush, you will miss your call. If you stand in front of his face you clog the tiny space that people use to circulate in and out of the room. There is nowhere to sit. There is no alcove. The magazine rack is mysteriously on the other side of the room. If you wander even as far as the sportsbook bar, you will be out of earshot. This system of having players bottleneck the entrance by standing awkwardly against the wall is so poorly thought out that I'm surprised anyone puts up with it.

10. There are no Loyalty Rewards of Any Kind.

No swiping in, no points, no jackpots, no bad beats, no high hands, no drawings, no deli coupon, no monday night football square... there's bubkus. Absolutely nothing. Nada.

Although... it needs to be said: #10 is the reason why I do still play there. Not that I don't want a bad beat jackpot, but the lack of any kind of loyalty rewards keeps the poker zombies far away. The cranky, savage, nitpicky, liver spotted retirees that clog poker tables in Vegas like cholesterol. You know these guys. They're the ones who play one hand and then take an hour break. The ones fighting over who gets the next seat change button. The ones requesting setups. The ones more interested in enforcing obscure rules than in actually playing poker. At Bellagio they earn nothing for their play, and so they withdraw like Dracula from sunlight and actually make the games more playable.

But I digress. Have I painted a clear enough picture of what to expect at Bellagio at the lower limits? A sardine-packed space with crappy service? Even for all that, it's not a terrible experience. They have lots of games going all the time, which is a crucial plus. The quality of the opponents is a little lower than average (counter to conventional wisdom and due, I think, to the loyalty reward factor I noted above). And they make a good orange julius.

But let's be honest. Wynn has the best room in town, and Venetian isn't far behind. It's time for Bellagio to take inventory and sort a few things out. And it's time for the poker media to stop giving them a free pass.

I Hate the "Clock Manipulation" Portion of the Football Game

2009-01-14T21:40:00.001-08:00

In my opinion there's just something unsportmanlike about it and it diminishes the game. That's probably an extreme position to take on it, but come on. There's something lawyerly, something unfriendly about those last two minutes where people are spiking balls, calling time-outs, running out of bounds, taking a knee, doing goofy things on the field for no other reason than to manage the clock.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The rules of a sport exist to serve the sport. It's not the other way around. Football is an athletic contest. It's offense versus defense, broken down into discrete plays. The rules should be structured to promote the finest and fairest possible contest, so that pure athleticism is the deciding factor. If a running play is called for, but clock considerations force you to run a passing play instead, then you've got some flawed rules. The rules should always promote best play, all the time.

I don't think this is a hard line position. I've been complaining for years that I think there's something ugly about a basketball team running out the clock, and I've always faulted the rules of bridge for arbitrarily penalizing a 4 contract in the minors and a 5 contract in the majors. But football just takes it to a whole other level. Now, I come to football as a really casual fan. I don't watch a lot of it. I didn't grow up with it. When I sit through a game, there are always a few questions that come up for me about penalties and technicalities. I don't know all the rules.

But I know enough of the game to see that there are really 5 quarters. There's quarters 1-4, and then there's the really unfornutate final 2 minutes which can often last longer than a full quarter. Now, I don't fault the players or the coaches. They're just doing the best they can under the given rules. It's the governing body that's at fault. They've created a game which is doomed to always conclude with 10 or 20 minutes of pointless micromanagement. They've created time-outs for one purpose: extra time to confer about the next play, only to have coaches use it for a different purpose: stopping the clock. They've created distinctions about which plays cause the clock to stop and which kinds of plays cause the clock to keep going, that end up determining which plays players have to run.

As a spectator those last two minutes of gametime offer a completely different football experience, one that's not so much about great athleticism as it is about efficient coaching and a creative expoiting of the rules. Longtime, passionate football fans don't see this. To them, the whole micromanaged, litigous conclusion to the game is just part of the fun. To me, it's just kind of crass and it doesn't have anything good to show about the sport.

Do I have an alternative? Well, I don't have any well thought out plan - but clearly you need to rethink the clock, and some of the ways it can be cleverly manipulated. Baseball has no time limit. Other games like hockey and soccer manage to have time limits without the game turning into molasses at the end. Maybe you need to need to have a "last possession" rule when time expires. The clock ticks down to zero, at which point it's officially the last possession. Then you could see some real football because the team with the ball wouldn't be burdened with a time limit.

I don't know how many great, historic football coaches are now spinning in their graves, but I stand by my heresy - these rules are no good. I've got other suggestions as well: why should the winner of the overtime coin-toss get such a huge advantage? but that's an argument for another day.

I Am Tired of Hearing that Samus Aran is Some Kind of Videogame Feminist Icon

2008-12-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

I don't get any pleasure out of saying this - but don't you think it is patently clear that the Metroid protagonist Samus was made female as an afterthought and as a joke? I mean, isn't it plainly the case that the Japanese programmers who made the original Metroid in the mid 80's made Samus a girl so they'd have a Ha-Ha twist ending? You win the game... the hero takes off his helmet for the first time... and surprise! It's a girl!

I have to bring this up because in the 20 years since the surprise ending of Metroid, Samus has evolved into a bona fide Videogame Feminist Icon. She's constantly trotted out as a prime example of how videogames provide strong female protagonists and role models for girls, and have been doing so since day one. And the more I read these gushing homages (like this one) to a great shattering of the videogame glass ceiling, the more of a fraud I think it is. I mean, isn't it clear she wasn't conceived as female?

It's actually a serious point. If she wasn't intended to be a female character, and her female identity was thought up and added as a postscript for a cheap "gotcha!" moment, then where does that leave the people who say that she represents gaming's first strong female protagonist?

Here's the original Metroid director, Yoshio Sakamoto, talking to IGN.com in 2007: "We were partway through the development process, when one of the staff members said Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?" Exactly. The character had already been designed and scripted, and then they gave her a gender. And let's remember, this was a game that had a secret password to let you play as Samus in a leotard, and a bonus ending showing you Samus in a bikini. This is not the Marie Curie of videogames. This is joke territory, replete with 8-bit titillation.

Apparently I'm not the only one who feels that the empowered-woman reputation of Samus is sort of at odds with the way she's actually shown in the game. Here's Gamespot editor Greg Kasavin in the article "Samus' Suit Was Made by Men":

"Metroid, the perennial favorite sci-fi series from Nintendo, has a female main character. This was first discovered by surprise at the end of the original 1986 Metroid game, in which, if you finished the game having met certain special conditions, you'd see a brief cutscene of Samus Aran's red and gold armor magically disappear to reveal a shapely, scantily clad woman, who then waves at you. It comes as a bit of a shock, and why shouldn't it? Samus doesn't sound like a woman's name. ... While I wouldn't go so far as to say that I disapprove of this--I like the series, after all, and it's targeted at people like me--it also rubs me the wrong way. I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line. Ironically, Metroid is often cited as one of those games that's quite progressive in its portrayal of women. It's obvious, I hope, that I happen not to think so."

Yes yes, this is all a big nitpick, but I've had to listen and read about the historic nature of Samus and her inspiration to girl gamers everywhere for 20 years. I've had to listen to how videogames were ahead of their time, morally serious responsible citizens because Nintendo had strong female protagonists like Samus Aran. And you know, if some young person out there is genuinely inspired by the example of Samus from Metroid, a retroactively designated woman, then shucks, I have no desire to piss on their parade, but how about we set the record straight for everyone else?

These Entertainment Weekly Best-Of Lists

2008-12-14T18:19:00.000-08:00

This year, Entertainment Weekly published a whole issue of lists. Best 100 Movies of the last 25 years. Best 100 books, music albums, TV shows, etc. We all know that magazines use lists like these to sell copies (because if nothing else they allow you to show any celebrity photo you want, without the annoying burden of reporting any actual news) - but I had never seen an entire issue that consisted of nothing but lists.

In general, I like best-of lists. They're good conversation starters and fodder for debate. They're good old, empty calorie fun to read. So I'm reading these new Entertainment Weekly lists, and I'm enjoying them, but.... something wasn't quite right. There was that nagging little tingle on the back of my neck. That slight, barely perceptible sound of fingernails on blackboard or a violin out of tune. I knew that something about these lists was seriously wrong. And now, I think I've got a good grip on it.

Here's the thing. You've got the Academy Awards, right? Or the other top tier film award societies. The groups that genuinely try to reward the best films of the year. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got something like the People's Choice, or better yet, the MTV Movie Awards, where someone like Tom Green can win Best Tongue or something like that. So you've got two completely different standards of seriousness.

The question is, where on this continuum of seriousness does Entertainment Weekly purport to be? Where is their disclaimer? I think the problem I have with them is that they clearly are claiming membership in the A category, putting on airs of total seriousness, while making B category choices.

Let's lay it all out on the table. And just to be clear, I have no problem with the B category. I have no problem with the MTV Movie Awards and handing out golden popcorn buckets to rappers and teenagers and Eugene Levy. My problem is solely with Entertainment Weekly's posturing.

EW is actually playing a very artful game here. I give them credit. I'm sure if I pressed them on naming "Speed" as the 40th best film of the last 25 years, they would respond with something like this: "Of course our standards are different than the Oscars. We don't dismiss all popular entertainment out of hand. Other critics won't consider the Matrix, Spiderman 2, Steven King, etc. because they reject crowd pleasers. We strip away that pretense and analyze everything on the merits. We're not afraid of looking at mainstream entertainment and calling it high art." That, I think, would be the EW retort.

And it's such a sensible, smooth, compelling explanation that it almost fools me. It sounds true, doesn't it? Think about it. Movies like The Dark Knight and Lord of the Rings - big blockbuster movies really can be high art, right? Maybe EW really does have the right idea?

But no. It's a lie. Here's what's really going on. And now that I've figured it out, I'll never be fooled by an EW list again. EW, when making these lists, is limited to pop culture product that the average Joe has heard of and seen. And that's it. They have to choose popcorn blockbusters to round out these lists because that's all they will permit themselves to consider.

Roger Ebert has a list of his own best movies of all time, and it's chock full of films you're never heard of. In his top 10 is something called Aguirre: Wrath of God. Now, maybe Aguirre: Wrath of God actually is one of the top 10 films of all time. But Entertainment Weekly could not ever, in a million years, acknowledge that. Why? Because you've never heard of Aguirre: Wrath of God, and if a magazine told you it was the 5th best movie of all time - then you'd feel just a little stupid. 'Cause you consider yourself a little bit of a movie buff. Hell, you subscribe to Entertainment Weekly after all - clearly you're into movies. And the 5th best movie of all time is something called Aguirre: Wrath of God? Kind of a let down. Kind of makes you feel dumb. This is the taboo that EW can't break. They can't risk making you feel dumb in this way, and so all risky and obscure choices are off the table.

Now that you understand the logic of the EW list, you can look at every category and finally understand the choices. The only category where I can bring any personal expertise is the best video game category. And looking at this list, I can say with certainty that each one of these 50 games is a mainstream, blockbuster best-selling hit. Every game there is a super safe choice. There are no misunderstood masterpieces. No brilliant Japanese imports that never found a US audience. Instead there are games like Guitar Hero, whose greatness lies solely in the immense number of copies it was able to sell. This isn't a list of the 50 greatest games you've ever heard of, it's a list of the 50 games you've ever heard of.

Look, EW is welcome to this shitty approach to the ranking of film and TV and music. It's nice that there's someone out there validating my enjoyment of Ghostbusters. But we need a disclaimer EW. We need you to acknowledge that you are limiting the candidates for these lists to movies found in the surplus inventory stock room at Blockbuster.

Oh my God, did they really list The Bourne Supremacy as movie #29? Was that the middle one? Man, I'm feeling a little nauseous now.

Seasonal Potpourri

2008-11-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

What Use is a James Bond Blu Ray Boxed Set that features 6 Completely Random Bond Movies?
This happens all the time. You get six random Bond movies, jumping across decades, with no unifying theme. No particular reason for the pairings. You don't (with this set) even get a sample of one movie with each Bond actor. It's totally, bafflingly arbitrary.

If you're a completist, then you're screwed. How how are you supposed to assemble a complete James Bond Blu Ray collection? Even if the other 17 or so movies do come out later, how do you make sense of the scrambled order? Why do they do this? Why?

It's not just Bond, it's any multi-movie boxed set. They all do it. I've seen Woody Allen box sets that have a collection like "Annie Hall, Hannah and her Sisters, Interiors, Another Woman, Bullets over Broadway and Small Time Crooks. And I'm like... "Wha?" I mean, you could do "The Comedies of Woody Allen". You could do "Woody Allen: the 70's". You could do "Woody Allen: the Mia Farrow Collection". There's lots of way to creatively package his 80 feature films. But to write each of his films on a ping pong ball and then have a lotto machine serve up a random six... that's just infuriating.

I guess maybe the strategy with these blender-style collections is that you get to package a couple of stinkers in with a couple of known favorites, but man - my logical collector's brain just starts steaming when I see these boxed sets.

Ladies: Please Put Away the Goddamn Camera

What is it with women and their need to take a thousand pictures? Why must every fun or spontaneous moment be stopped for documentation? Let me distinguish between female photography and male photography, since both kinds exist and there's a distinction I'm trying to make. Guys who are into taking pictures are different. These are loner guys with full beards and an unkempt appearance. They get up early to take pictures of the sunrise and they carry thermoses. They have one of them fancy cameras and they can tell you about the lens. They would much rather get a candid photo of you putting on your shoes than get you and two others to huddle in for a group picture. They like working in black and white and they have their own darkrooms. These guys are inoffensive and they aren't the problem.

The problem is the women who actually make everyone stop what they're doing in order to get a group picture. Not once, or once a day, but every 30 freakin minutes. "Oh oh! Can we stop for a picture!" So you stop, and you pose. And you force a smile. Then you have to wait to make sure she likes the photo, cause if not, well then you do it again. And again. Then she wants to get in the photo too and you have to "Ask the Stranger". I hate asking the stranger. And I hate putting other, innocent pedestrians in the position of having to pause and walk around us so they don't get in the picture.

And all for what? To create a scrapbook? Who cares? Who's going to look? Why not just do what the rest of us do and rely on your brain to remember what happened? Sure, take a few pictures - but keep it low key. Don't interrupt the momentum of whatever's going on to get a group photo.

When Did 5 O'Clock Shadow Get so Hip for TV Professionals?

The other guy that comes to mind is the cop from Heroes, the telepathic one who does everything in his life: work, leisure, family time, with a perfectly unchanging coat of 18-hour stubble. I couldn't find a good picture though. Watch the 1st season episode where he plans the perfect date for his wife, and he's dressed to the nines and serving a candlelit meal - but he still doesn't shave! Are other cops besides him allowed to show up for duty with a 1-day beard, let alone a perpetual one?

Try showing up for work at your job with a 1-day beard and see what happens.

Wait, looks like someone has beaten me to the punch here and is already chronicling a list of TV characters who sport perpetual 5 O'Clock shadow. Here's the link.

My Secret Vestibule Trick

For anyone reading this far, I'd like to offer you a little secret bonus that is guaranteed to make your life a little more pleasant. I've been doing this for years and it's never let me down. It's my secret vestibule trick. Say you are walking towards the entrance to a place of business. A restaurant, a hotel, a Starbucks, whatever. You notice another person is on a trajectory to arrive at the door at roughly the same moment as you will get there. Whichever one of you gets there first will clearly end up getting served first, and the second person will have to wait in line. Furthermore you know that the other person is perfectly aware of this too.

Now traditionally, there are 2 things you can do in this situation. 1) You can preemptively forfeit. You don't want a confrontation, you don't want any bad blood, so you hang back for a minute and let the other guy get there first. 2) You speed up, pretending not to notice that it's a race. You get there first, but the punishment is that both of you know that you're an enormous prick.

These are both bad choices. Here's what you can do instead. Look inside the building and see if there's a vestibule. That is - a small space with a second set of doors after it. You've probably never considered it, but many, many businesses have these vestibule entrances. If there is a vestibule, here's what you do. Allow yourself to awkwardly arrive at the front door simultaneously with the other guy. Give him a smile full of brotherly love, and graciously open the door for him.

My friends, you'd better believe you'll be sampling ice cream flavors with the little sampling spoon first and that other guy will never know what hit him. To him it will all be a blur of politeness and smiles and vestibules, but the next thing he knows he's standing in a line, and you're getting served. That is the secret vestibule trick. Share it only with those you trust.

Now, if there's no vestibule, you're back to square one. I would suggest whipping out your cell phone and pretending to be engrossed in a call. It makes your fast-walking seem more plausible, and you can pretend to be totally oblivious to anything around you.

Scientists: Lets Move a Little Faster on Immortality

2008-11-09T02:31:00.000-08:00

Why is no one talking about immortality? How come it isn't on the agenda? How come all this progress on decoding the genome and sequencing our DNA is going on all around us, and the cutting edge of speculation on future gene therapy all revolves around changing our babies eye color, and stuff like that? Aren't we really close, theoretically, to being able to fool the body into not aging?

My layman's understanding of aging is that our cells are all capable of regenerating, but after age 25 or 30 or so, some genetic instruction kicks in and tells the cells to start failing at reproduction every once in a while. Eventually, the failure rate increases and we start to show visible signs of aging. Finally, some major organ fails catastrophically and we die. In theory, if we could suppress the genetic instruction that causes aging, we could generate healthy cells forever and be perpetually 25.

Is it really that simple? Probably not. But where the hell is the research? Where are the foundations? Where are the charitable trusts? The clock is ticking over here. I need this now.

Here's the truth of it, and it's been bugging me for a while. For some strange reason, there's a social taboo against pursuing this goal. The pursuit of immortality - it's uncouth. It shows poor character. It's a moral failing.

Well no. No it's not.

At what point does "I don't want to die." go from being a reasonable and universally shared feeling to being a tragic character flaw? 60? 70? 80? You know those movies where the old man on his deathbed has a twinkle in his eye and comforts the child by saying "Don't worry son, it's my time." That's some Hollywood bullshit right there. I think Woody Allen had the right idea when he said "Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I’d prefer to live on in my apartment."

There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep living. The naysayers caution "Do you REALLY want to live FOREVER? Wouldn't that be boring? Wouldn't life lose all meaning?" Well, I'll let you know. Or probably I won't, cause you'll be dead. Suicide is always there if I change my mind, right? Let me tack on another 100 years to my current lifespan, and then I'll reassess the situation.

Again the naysayers: "What about the overcrowding of the earth?" Me: If a vasectomy is the price, then sign me up. No problems there. After those two arguments are rebutted, the anti-immortality guy realizes most of his ammunition is gone, and the remaining arguments he tries to field are really vague and wishy-washy. "What about the hubris? What about tampering in God's domain? What about the need to refresh the species with new blood? What about death giving meaning to life? What about..." And here is where I just slowly turn the volume dial down to mute. So, really, there's no ethical problem with a pursuit of immortality.

Which brings us back to the original question: why aren't we all over this shit? Why isn't there a Newsweek cover story on this all the time? Shouldn't we be talking about it? Do you have any idea how significant a development this would be? This is a real monkey-throwing-a-bone-upwards moment in the history of our species. Conquering death! This is evolution man! If we achieve immortality, (and don't just insist, categorically, that it isn't possible) then I will argue that it is the third most important moment in the history of mankind, after 1) the dawn of civilization and 2) Enlightenment. This would be the third milestone on the road to wherever it is we're going. And theoretically, it's within sight. It could happen in our lifetimes. And no one's talking about it! All because of this foolish social taboo.

I've looked online in the past for any guidance on this, and the difficulty is separating the legitimate thinkers from the cranks who want to sell you miracle tonics and stuff like that. Here is one organization that I think is fairly legit, and it provides links to other good sources.

The champion of the current legitimate immortality movement seems to be this man, Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

You see, immediately, my pessimism. To me, his beard and shirt say only one thing - that I may as well shop for a casket and burial plot now. And this is his publicity photo! Do you realize that he appears to be lying down? I'm screwed, man!

Look, Dr. Aubrey de Grey could be a genius, I don't know. But if he wants my donation, if he wants to get his act together, he'd better take some cues from 1960's NASA to set my mind at ease. How about a lab coat? A starched shirt? A tie? A shave? A crew cut? A clipboard? Anything!

I'm not usually in the habit of making predictions. My political predictions for this year (see the January 2007 archives) were spotty. My digital piracy prediction (that one day all music and all film will be free and there's nothing anyone can do about it) is still in the balance. But I'm ready to make a new prediction: immortality will eventually be the most important issue on the planet. Because the power to achieve this isn't in some distant future - it's coming soon. Mother nature never anticipated humans achieving this level of fundamental meddling. We're going under the hood of human existence and we can make whatever changes we want.

You heard it here.

Toilet Closets

2008-09-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

At first they were a curiosity. A novelty. They popped up in the bathrooms of the rich - I don't know how long ago - and have since been trickling down, so to speak, to the bathrooms of the common man.

I speak of the toilet closets. These bathrooms within bathrooms. You enter a bathroom, you say "Hey, where's the toilet?" and then you see a door leading to an even smaller chamber that contains the commode and perhaps a little picture of flowers hanging on the wall.

I'm not knocking the rich here. God bless the rich homeowner and the pathbreaking service he provides, trying out all kinds of wacky new home design ideas, and occasionally stumbling on something genuinely useful, like wall-mounted TV speakers, or remote control drapes. But this innovation process can lead to trouble too. Take the whole island kitchen fad. It used to be that the appliances and the counters were on the perimeter of the kitchen, and the center was reserved for some family space, like a breakfast table. Now, when the rich folk want to fundamentally rethink a classic room, like the kitchen, the goal is really just to figure out how to make it bigger. How do you make a kitchen bigger? If you double the size of the room, that's going to be one huge breakfast table. That's no good. So say hello to the "Island kitchen". Now, all the important appliances are in the center. Now, the center is a "workspace". Efficient use of space? No.

But that's still fine with me. It's your money, it's your house. The problem is when, in an effort to boost the value of a modest house, the builders install an extra-large island kitchen for no other reason than to lend the house the appearance of wealth, at the square-footage expense of other rooms.

Which brings me back to today's annoyance: the toilet closet. All these new houses I've been visiting have a toilet closet in the extra-large master bath. It seems like the toilet closet has become a permanent feature of the 21st century house. Well that's a damned shame in my opinion. Let me lay out the case against the toilet closet.

First let's dispense with the one argument in favor of the TC. This is the argument that it permits someone else to use the bathroom while the first person uses the toilet. I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally do not want anyone, even a loved one, standing 24 inches from me, brushing their teeth on the other side of a closed door while I attempt to get in the state of mind necessary to relax the bowels. I don't want to hear the sink running and the patter of footsteps. I don't want anyone out there. I don't even want anyone in the bedroom beyond. Ideally, no one really should be in the house. In fact I sometimes play a little game with myself on the toilet. "It sure does suck to be the last man on earth," I say in my head, "Oh well, at least it means I can take this shit in peace." Solitude, really, is what I'm looking for at that moment.

But the main problem with the toilet closet is much more serious. The toilet, frankly, is the whole point of the bathroom. Don't think so? You see restrooms with toilets but no showers all the time, right? When have you seen a bathroom with a shower or bath but no toilet? Never. The toilet is the whole point. Let's stop pretending that it's not. The problem with the toilet closet is that it relegates the act of shitting into some kind of secondary concern. It shuffles shitting off to the side, forcing you to enter this cramped, unappealing space. It's as if the bathroom is saying: "Oh, you want to take a shit? You don't want to sit at the vanity and powder your nose? You don't want to take a shower that also has a flip down seat? No? You really just came here to take a shit? Well... I suppose you can if you want, we have a little space for that over there."

No, that's bullshit. Think about it. Think about how fancy the shower has gotten. All the granite and the ceramics and the misted glass, and the shower head with all the settings, and the waterproof iPod docking station, etc. Now look in the toilet closet. You get nothing! The message is that you should be ashamed to even be in there.

Let me tell you about the bathroom I would like to see when I open the door. First, to even approach the bathroom, I ascend a staircase to the highest level in my house. Then, when I push open the door, I am greeted with a stunning visual composition. A long, bright, tiled hall. As I walk down this hall I pass the shower and tub on my left and right. I pass the sink and the vanity. And then friends, I ascend a final 3 steps into an open rotunda, a circular space with wide open windows in all directions and all spangled with natural light. The cross breeze blows this way and that, filling the room with a constant rush of fresh air. And in the middle? The toilet. As you take your seat on the throne, you can see everything. The backyard. The setting sun. The distant forest. Or the cityscape, the skyline. Or, in my perfect world, the inky blackness of deepest space. On your left hand side, toilet paper - the strong stuff. I like Scott Original. Toilet paper with some bite. Beside the roll, a small water fountain for optional dampening of the paper. On the right hand side you'd find a small side table with the appropriate, customizable miscellany: a book, a magazine, sudoku. And of course a remote control to activate some music if the mood is right.

Now that is a compelling shitting experience. Compare that to taking a thankless dump in a space no larger than an airplane john, and with no ventilation to speak of. I don't want a toilet closet, I want a toilet command center. Now, really, I just have to become rich myself, so that I can realize the whole Rotunda Bathroom. And then it'll catch on as being all nouveau-riche and popular, and then all new starter houses will come equipped with one. That's the dream.

My Attempt at a Thomas Friedman Column

2008-08-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

I was off in an exotic and dangerous part of the world when an extremely mundane thing happened to me. Maybe a hotel waiter gave me profusive thanks for a gratuity, or I saw an impoverished man using a cell phone. This event suddenly and vividly gave me an entirely new understanding of how the world works. Such was my dumbfoundment and surprise that I realized a new term or phrase was needed to succinctly describe this vital new lesson. So I coined one and am introducing it here.

This new Coined Phrase explains a lot. It explains why Americans are losing their competitive edge, and why Europe is leading the way in green tech. As I explain this is detail, your mind will wander back to the original mundane event, wondering a) if such a thing really illustrates what I am claiming it does, and b) why all of my vignettes seem to occur during the taxi ride to the hotel or the airport.

Now that I am returning to the aftermath of the mundane thing that happened, I will repeat the new, Coined Phrase in a tautological attempt to validate it. Do you really want to leave your children unprepared in a world that has ignored the clear signs of what I've been talking about? Look at the clever citizens of the country I am reporting from... do they look like they're unprepared?

To put it all in perspective, consider what links the Coined Phrase insight with the events of 9/11. Haven't guessed it? What links them are my own puns and facile alliterations. Such as: "While we're scrutinizing our ocean ports, they are busy upgrading their computer ports."

Friends, make no mistake - the time for change is now.

The Petty Annoyances Guide for Selecting a Second Language to Learn

2008-07-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

Like many Americans, you've long thought about learning a second language. Perhaps you're a college student and want to take a language course as an elective. Maybe you're an adult with some time on your hands and a desire to broaden your horizons. Maybe you're just tired of being monolingual while those around you speak other languages. Or you may be like me. In which case you think there is really only one good reason to learn a second language, and that's to lay 90% of the groundwork for getting laid in that country.

I refuse to believe that I am the only person who has ever considered sex as a primary motivating factor to learn a foreign language. Quite the contrary, I think that it crosses everyone's mind as they scan the list of languages, deciding which one to attempt. Sure you might consider the number of countries where Language A is spoken versus Language B - but don't try to tell me you aren't also considering the possibility of mind blowing coitus with an endless supply of young women who are all stunned that an American is actually fluent in their native language.

Because no one besides myself will publicly admit that this plays a role in second language selection, it falls to me to actually analyze the languages out there, and determine where it is that the least amount of effort expended will yield the highest return of eager young women bouncing on your face.

Here are some of the factors we will be considering:

Difficulty of the Language
Hotness of the Women
Local perception of Americans
How sexually open the culture is
The relative rarity of an American / White man speaking this language

Because the overall analysis here is so complicated, maybe we should start with the last one first:

Rule #1: No one will be impressed if you show up in Paris speaking French.

Discussion: In France, you are expected to speak French. The French assume that their language is global and cosmopolitan and that if you visit Paris you must have already taken the time to learn a few words. There are a few other reasons why French isn't a great choice, but here's the question to ask yourself: Who is going to be impressed when I show up speaking language "x"? French obviously fails this test. Spanish does too. No one will be impressed anywhere by an American speaking Spanish.

Basically, if you are white, and the native speakers of this language are also white, you are at an immediate disadvantage in the quest to have a woman laugh with delight at your courageous attempts to speak her language at the conversational level. Like say, Italian. Now, if you're an African American, then by all means, go with Italian. But for us white dudes, Western Europe and even South America isn't the most fertile ground to impress anyone.

Now if you showed up in Addis Ababa and start speaking fluent Amharic, cars will screech to a halt and jaws will drop. You might be the first Amharic-speaking white American they've ever seen. Does this mean that Amharic and Ethiopian babes are the way to go? Not remotely. This leads us to:

Rule #2: If the female population isn't already sexually liberated and open, then you're wasting your time.

Discussion: Ask yourself - are they religious? Do they have intensely strong family structures and family bonds? Is this the sort of country where in order to take the girl out for a soda you need permission from the parents, the grandparents, and all uncles older than 16? We're talking about the Middle East here. Many African countries. Some Asian countries. Places that have no casual sex culture. You may impress the hell out of everyone with your mastery of their obscure tongue, but be prepared to live with a dry dick.

Rule #3: On the other hand, there's no point in learning the language if they're going to fuck you anyway.

Discussion: Thailand. Russia. The Balkans. You're an American and you show up with cash? They're going to be breaking down your door to fuck you! No need to learn a single word. Let them struggle with their English. Let's eliminate these countries and languages. We really only want to focus on countries where the knowledge of the language is going to make a huge difference, and in a society with loose morals to begin with.

Rule #4: You're looking for the widest gap between female hotness and male unattractiveness.

Discussion: We're looking for countries where the women are smoking hot, obviously. But less obviously, it's a big plus when the local men are ugly, uninteresting and charmless. It'll make you stand out as an exotic prize. Here I want to be sensitive and not hurt anyone's feelings, so I won't name any of these countries except for South Korea.

Rule #5: Some languages are far easier to learn than others. Don't break your back here.

Korean turns out to be one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. Which is a pity, since it scores great on our checklist in most other respects. Here's a website that gauges the relative difficulty of foreign languages for English speakers. All things being equal, why choose a more difficult langauge?

Conclusions

So which countries and languages are we talking about then? Here are my thoughts.

#1 Greek

Hottest of all Bond girls - the Greek one from For Your Eyes Only

I keep coming back to Modern Greek as being the best choice. Greek women: beautiful, passionate, sensual. They're looking for an excuse to sleep with you. Give them one. And name me one non-Greek American dude who speaks Greek. There aren't any! You'd be the first! Greece is great to spend time in anyway - food, climate, culture - it's a fantastic country.

#2 Something Nordic

I think Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish aren't bad choices. Again, these aren't languages anyone bothers to learn who doesn't a) have some family tie to the country or b) have a really compelling reason to be there. Nobody picks up Finnish for fun. And the women? Gorgeous. The kind of women you'd take on a spaceship to colonize a new planet. Now, according to that difficulty website, Finnish isn't easy. Maybe Swedish is the way to go.

#3 Japanese

Ya ta!

Then you've got Japanese. It's one hell of a hard language. But the rewards are potentially staggering. I've never been to Japan, but if all that violent, wild-ass-crazy tentacle-porn-cartoon stuff is even remotely grounded in truth, then I can't even fathom how awesome it would be. And you can't beat Japanese women for strange, exotic hotness. Those schoolgirls outfits. Those tomboy haircuts. That small, supple physique that's so intoxicating that you can't help but think NAMBLA may be onto something. These girls already love you because you're American. Now you can really blow their minds.

So have I missed anything? By all means add some suggestions.

Carnevino is in Trouble

2008-07-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Mario Batali Update

Loyal readers know that I intensely dislike Mario Batali the chef. His sin was that he composed the most asinine, incoherent, treacly piece of pious bullshit I've ever seen on a Starbucks cup. I mean, all of those Starbucks cup quotes were bad, but the Mario Batali one towered over the rest for its 100% pure-cut Colombian stupidity.

Then I actually bumped into him at the Palazzo in Las Vegas outside his new restaurant Carnevino. Not initially realizing who he was, I missed the opportunity to grab his ridiculous hat and run away.

I had meant to eventually eat at Carnevino but I never got around to it. I had actually wanted to sample the food of a man who, according to his Starbucks cup, was no more than two generations removed from a guy who shook hands with another guy who picked the peas of the first guy. But the word now is that the restaurants at Palazzo are tanking. Apparently you can walk in and be seated immediately at any of them, any time of day, any day of the week. Just yesterday I read a scathing review of Carnevino and I'm glad I stayed away. Oh, this is awful. I almost feel bad for Mario. Almost. Check it out (courtesy of Eating Las Vegas):

And speaking of not-so-nice prices, be prepared for some serious sticker shock and some seriously over salted food, should you or your dining companions mindlessly insist on enduring a meal at Carnevino. This Mario Batali meat emporium has all the charm of a bus station, and is so massively overpriced that you’ll feel like one of Adam Perry Lang’s overstuffed cattle being led to slaughter when you get the bill. For example: I just returned from New York where a prime, well-aged steak for two, at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Park Avenue South that gives Peter Luger’s a run for its money, cost $82.50….at Carnevino it’s $150.

What's the air and soil telling you now, fat boy?

The Dark Knight: A Fictional Story

Did anyone see the Dark Knight? Yeah? So did I. Skip this section if you don't want spoilers. The always dependable Moriarty wrote one of the best Dark Knight reviews on aintitcoolnews.com. Moriarty doesn't bat 1000 - he enjoyed The Love Guru for instance, but he's a capable reviewer and I agree with his take on Batman.

But hold the freakin' phone. In the review, he discusses the scene on the ferries where each group of passengers is given the option of blowing up the other group to save their own lives. He mentions the part where Tiny Lister (big, imposing black guy, here playing a convict) takes the detonator and throws it out the window. Moriarty writes:

When he steps forward and demands the detonator, I did exactly what Nolan wanted me to do: I judged Lister on his appearance. I looked at him, and I knew full well what he was going to do with the detonator. Nolan really milks the suspense, too, as Lister talks about the difference between someone strong enough to make the awful moral choice and someone who is too weak to do it. He takes the responsibility and the detonator out of the hands of the warden... and then throws the detonator out the window and returns to his friends so they can pray. It’s not a moment I would have ever expected to see in a summer blockbuster, but more than that, it’s a moment that made me realize that no matter how enlightened I like to think I am, I harbor prejudices like anyone else. I leapt to a conclusion I had no business making, and the reversal made me feel terribly guilty.

Um, Moriarty... a couple of white, non-convict screenwriters wrote that scene. Tiny Lister, an actor, was hired to play a fictional man who does a fictional thing with a fictional detonator, with hundreds of fictional lives at stake. In other words Moriarty, IT DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN. Therefore, it does not present some kind of striking counter-example to challenge your conventional prejudice. Tiny Lister's behavior in the scene does not reflect the behavior of an actual person, and thus does not create a basis for your self-doubt and introspection.

[Necessary disclaimer: there are of course REAL reasons to not be prejudiced against big imposing black guys like Tiny Lister. His Christopher-Nolan-scripted behavior in The Dark Knight is merely not one of them]

American TV and film are relentless in the way they purposefully defy racial stereotypes. If some group has a stereotype of being lazy, Hollywood will portray them as industrious. Poor? Hollywood makes them wealthy. Criminals? Virtuous. Not so smart? Geniuses. Greedy? Generous. etc. etc. But what I don't usually see if someone pulling a "Moriarty": citing these fictional portrayals as actual evidence that the stereotype is unfounded. Now that takes stupidity.

My Pistachio Story

2008-07-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the story. I really really like pistachios. They're definitely in my nut top 5. They share elite space with cashews and pecans, and they easily beat other high-profile premium nuts like walnuts and macadamias.

The only problem with pistachios, as we all know, is that they are a bitch to get out of the shell. Only about half the nuts in the bag will open easy. Another 40% will be a real hassle, and the final 10% impossible. We've all been there. And yet prying open a stubborn shell and claiming its salty reward has a certain satisfaction that is undeniable. When I eat pistachios, the dilemma is usually: eat this single nut now? Or open three more shells so I can pop four of them into my mouth at once, peanut style? It is a subtle but serious test of my will power, because the desire to eat the nut in hand is always so strong, but the pleasure of having a mouthful of pistachios is that much better.

And that's the thing. I've never experienced the bliss of stuffing my face with mouthful after mouthful of de-shelled pistachios. I've crammed many a mouthful of cashews into my maw, believe me. I've grabbed and eaten peanuts by the bowlful. But pistachios? No, I've never known the experience of grabbing a handful and stuffing my face - due to the labor factor.

And so for years, I have dreamed of doing just that - stuffing my face with de-shelled pistachios. Maybe you, reader, have different dreams. This one was mine. And every time I would visit a supermarket, I would casually scan the produce and nut section, looking for the elusive holy grail - a bag of de-shelled pistachios. But in years of looking, I never found it.

Until last weekend, where at a trip to Trader Joes I spied what I had searched for, at long last: a bag of raw pistachio nutmeats.

Now, a word on Trader Joes and hippie supermarkets in general. I'm of mixed mind here. I like the product that they sell. But I have two issues. Why do Trader Joes shoppers have to be so insufferable? And secondly - why the exclusivity? Consider: I like Chef Boyardee mini raviolis. I like fruit loops. And, I also like local artisan cheeses and Orangina. Why can't I have both at the same place? Which is to say, why is it not enough that Trader Joes carries a great stock of organic, local, environmentally safe hippie food - why do they also have to exclude doritos? Whole Foods has the same problem. I like Whole Foods, I really do. But I also like Diet Coke. Why can't I have a one stop shop? But anyways....

Back to the holy grail of nutmeat. I had my de-shelled pistachios, finally. Courtesy of Trader Joe. You really have to imagine the excitement as I got home and poured a generous helping of the de-shelled kernels into a broad and deep nut bowl. I switched on the TV, grabbed a soda, and prepared to do what I had never done before: stuff my face with huge handfuls of pistachios, with no labor involved at all.

And now here is where we get to the point of the story. For believe me, I did indeed stuff my face. Over and over. I was barely graduating the previous mouthful of nuts before I was introducing the next freshman class. As Fat Bastard said in Austin Powers: "Get in ma belly!"

And then it hit me: this doesn't taste that great. I mean, it was all right. They weren't bad. But the explosion of flavor from a single nut fresh from the shell didn't seem to translate well to the face-stuffing experience. It was a bit like drinking a cold can of cream soda. The taste is exquisite on the first sip, but then rapidly loses flavor on each subsequent sip, until the bottom of the can just tastes like carbonated sugar water. (Maybe I'm the only one who experiences cream soda that way). But it was the same with pistachios. Now that I finally had my unlimited supply and could scarf them down to my heart's content, I discovered that the flavor doesn't hold up at all. In the end, eating these things became a crunchy chore.

Apparently, some foods are enjoyed best in small, dainty quantities. The pistachio shell, which to me had always been an annoying speed bump in the pistachio experience, turns out in hindsight to have been crucial to the enjoyment. I would have never guessed that. From now on, I'll enjoy my pistachios the old fashioned way: one at a time.

(But I'll still stuff my face with the spicy jalapeno-lime cashews. I can fucking drink those things.)

The Amazon Kindle? Seriously?

2008-06-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

"This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere." - Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar's Poker.

You know, I enjoyed Moneyball. And Liar's Poker looked pretty good. But my stock in Michael Lewis's judgment just went into freefall. Does he really think the Amazon Kindle is the future of book reading? Man, first Ben Stein comes out as a creationist and shatters my impression of him, and now Michael Lewis comes clean as a moron. What's next? Steven Hawking announces his favorite movie is Norbit?

eBooks. What a tremendously stupid idea. Does anyone actually believe that reading books via portable back-lit monitor is somehow superior to reading ink on the page? I'm typing this on a monitor and I already have a headache. You're reading this on a monitor and even you are already feeling the twinge of eye strain. Who would want to read an entire novel this way?

The modern book has been around since, oh, 1450 AD. It's pretty well tested. It's fairly tried and true. Sitting in a library, or in a cafe, or on the back porch, or in bed, and turning the pages on a good book... does Michael Lewis really think that we're going to give up that unique pleasure, en masse, for some kind of gussied up Apple Newton that also checks email? Is he out of his cotton picking mind?

I know what's going on. Somebody thought that this was a natural evolution of book reading. Somebody figured that books were due for a revolutionary step forward. After all, VHS made the transition to DVD. CDs gave way to the iPod. The cell phone replaced the land line. Email replaced snail mail. Online news replaced newspapers. It was only a matter of time before someone figured that the "book" was ready for some similar makeover.

But is it? When it comes to "revolutionizing the way people do X" the internet has a spotty track record. Sure there are successes: Google, eBay, YouTube, etc. But for every MySpace, aren't there 10 or 20 "Gourmet-Meals-Delivered-To-Your-Door".com's? Or Find-a-land-surveyor.com's? Or Used-Office-Furniture-Exchange.com's? Isn't recent history littered with these failed grand ideas? To me, the Kindle feels like it belongs in 1997, with 4 engineering college drop out buddies in rented SoCal office space, tinkering with sautering irons and old PC parts trying to cook up a working prototype, while one of them sits on the phone making desperate cold calls to potential investors. That's where the eBook belongs. An idea whose inevitable failure was baked into the very concept: that book-reading was something that needed modernizing and revolutionizing.

Amazon is trying sooooooo hard to convince me that the Kindle is a must-buy. Don't I realize that I can download new books wirelessly? Don't I know that as soon as I'm done with one I can load up another? You see, the Kindle solves an age-old problem that has hindered mankind for centuries. It used to be, before the Kindle, that when you were finished reading a book, the book was still there in your hands and it didn't go away. Yes, you could dispose of it, but what if you wanted it later? Well, then you were stuck with the ownership of a "book". Many people, again, before the Kindle, would have to keep all manner of books stored in their homes for just this reason, sometimes even installing a "book-shelf" for the very purpose. I think we all know the shame of having someone visit our homes and seeing row upon row of "books" on shelves or in specialty cabinetry, unused and inert, a physical monument to inefficiency and waste. Again, before the Kindle.

And of course, Kindle apologists wouldn't sit still for my comments about getting headaches from reading off a monitor. Don't I know that the Kindle uses a revolutionary new kind of electronic display? A display so advanced it's virtually indistinguishable from paper, with the same hues, opacity, refraction and albedo? Have I even looked at a Kindle?

Of course I haven't looked at a Kindle. And what, it's got a display almost as good as paper? And pressing "page forward" becomes almost as second-nature as turning a real page? And the battery life is 16 hours, almost as good as infinity? All that for only 400 times the price? This is a no brainer! Where I can I sign up?

The Kindle is a solution to problem that doesn't exist. Useful innovations tend to be born out of need. Kindle-style innovations aren't midwifed by necessity. They're born out of pure greed and shortsightedness. Now it should be said, I have nothing against greed. I'm a Gordon Gecko man all the way. But Gordon Gecko would have never hawked eBooks. The entire Kindle concept has no more underlying logic than a Madlib: "The internet will revolutionize the way we experience books." It isn't compelling. It's unnecessary and unwanted. And, no offense to Steve Gibson, nobody will want it.

Prediction: Amazon slowly scales back their promotion of the Kindle. They will drop price, hoping to generate more interest, but it won't work. Ultimately, a niche market will appear for the Kindle. It will be a) the elderly who need larger, manipulatable font, b) disabled people who can't operate normal books easily, and, c) well, Steve Gibson. So Amazon will come out with a new version with enhanced features for those people, price will go up slightly, we'll never hear about eBooks ever again, and the world will be well.

One More Question

2008-06-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

What the hell happened to Dana Carvey? Look at him! How is he younger than he was 20 years ago, and female?

20 Questions: 2008

2008-05-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Time for another round of those niggling, nagging questions I have about life and the universe. Any help here would be appreciated.

1. Why do people encase their license plates in those frames that are just advertisements for the dealership? Who would do this voluntarily? Are they employees of the dealership? Seems like there's a lot of them.

2. Why does every supermarket have 3 times more aisles than they ever use?

3. Why the hell, when we were conquering huge swaths of territory from the Mexicans in the 19th century, did we stop short right at the Baja? Who made the decision that we didn't want Baja California? Were they insane? Wouldn't Baja have been an awesome 51st state? I'd be there right now.

4. Do you think sometimes the ambulances don't really have an emergency and they just feel like they're too good to sit in traffic? I have a strong feeling that this happens.

5. If I use illegal file-sharing to download a Ken Burns documentary, is that really unethical? I mean, it's PBS. It was free to begin with. I think I'm on firm ground here.

6. When I press stop on the microwave and quickly open the door to take my coffee cup out, how fast do the deadly microwaves dissipate? What I'm worried about is that for a split second, my hand is getting roasted in the microwave. Yes, the light bulb in the microwave turns off when the door opens, but that really doesn't tell you diddly. Wouldn't the microwaves still be bouncing around in there for another few seconds?

7. Why do PC monitors have USB ports placed so close together that you can't actually have two flash drives inserted side by side?

8. Let's talk zombies. Unlike the original Night of the Living Dead (which in my opinion basically got it right, with slow moving, stupid, fall-over-dead-at-dawn zombies) these modern zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead remake, Land of the Dead, and I am Legend which I just saw) feature, essentially, energizer bunny zombies. Meaning, years after their original zombification, they're still walking around, just as powerful as ever. I'm sorry, but this just defies all common sense. After the initial feeding frenzy where they wipe out most of humanity, what are they eating on a day to day basis? Okay, in some zombie movies there's a supernatural element, so you can argue that the normal rules don't apply. But most zombie movies go out of their way to remind us that there is a highly scientific explanation for the zombism. Every zombie movie has the obligatory newscaster on scratchy television footage explaining about a mutated Hanta virus or something. So, how can zombies walk around for years at full power with no food?

9. Do you think the deaf know how to quiet their farts? Is it something that can be taught?

10. What is it about being homeless that makes you want 10 sugars in your coffee? Don't believe me? Just keep your eyes open. I've seen this going back decades. From my teenage stints at the local soup kitchen where homeless guys would empty entire sugar bowls into coffee mugs, to modern Starbucks fixins bars where the homeless go crazy with the chocolate powder and the cinnamon shaker, it's just a fact. I have a private little bet with myself that I will give all the cash I have on me to the homeless person who says "No no no, just black, please."

11. Sort of a legal question here, but why do we sometimes see the headline: "He will be tried as an adult."? I don't get this. Isn't there a cutoff age for juvenile crime? Maybe it's different from state to state, that's fine, but what's with the prosecutor saying 'We're going to seek to try him as an adult."? How does that make sense? If he was under 18 at the time of the crime, he's a juvenile. If he was older than 18, he's an adult. Who gets this discretionary power to decide who's really an adult? What's the criteria for seeking an adult trial? That the kid looked at the prosecutor funny? That the crime was heinous? And where is the fairness if one kid gets the adult treatment and the other doesn't? Someone needs to explain this in detail.

12. You know the tired old argument that men are supposed to leave the toilet seat down to be considerate. Well, without hashing it all out here, I do have one question that's always stumped me. The women in these arguments always point out that one time at 4 in the morning, they actually fell IN the toilet, because their idiot man left the seat up. This is what I want to discuss. Who the hell sits down on a toilet without looking at it? In my entire life I have never done that. I don't care what hour of the morning it is, I don't care how bleary eyed, tired or drunk you are, who the hell just parks their ass on a toilet sight unseen? What if the toilet had been closed entirely? Would you have peed on the lid? I mean, how dumb do you have to be? It takes less than a second to look at what you're about to sit on. You get no sympathy from me.

13. Sharks. Every time there's a shark program on TV, the narrator reminds me that if you bleed even a single drop of blood into the water, a shark can smell it up to three miles away. I'm sorry, but I just can't believe this. I realize I'm probably wrong, but how is that possible? For animals on land, they can smell you when the wind cooperates and sends your smell along. But the wind has to be just so, and there's a time lapse. Now, for sharks, how can they have instant awareness of blood from three miles away? Doesn't at least one molecule of blood have to make the physical journey from my location to the shark's nose? Wouldn't that take time, considering that it's water, not air? And wouldn't the shark have to get lucky, being on the receiving end of that specific current? Right? I just can't believe that I put one drop of blood in the water, and suddenly, three miles away, a shark says "Hey! Blood!" Just doesn't make sense.

14. Here's a pretty naive one: Why are ancient ruins buried underground? Why is it that the deeper you dig, the further into the historical record you go? I don't get it. So, if I abandon my house and come back 2,000 years later, it's going to be underground? How is that? Is it weather patterns? Continental drift? Erosion? I thought erosion exposes things? So, eventually everything on earth is going to be buried, and the whole world will someday be three times as large, covered by unlimited, magical new layers of topsoil?

15. Daylight savings. Why do we spring forward on saturday nights and lose precious, precious weekend sleep? Wouldn't it be much better to spring forward on say, Tuesdays, at 2 in the afternoon? This is a no brainer.

16. Do you think the Wii shortage has actually fueled its popularity?

17. Those videos you see during karaoke songs. The couples walking through gardens and the sailboats and all that. That's like thousands of hours of footage. Where does it come from?

18. How come, when A&E or the History Channel or Discovery airs a documentary on the history of video games, it's always showcases games that you have not once in your life ever seen or heard of? Oh, they do the obligatory 30 seconds on Tetris and Super Mario Bros., but then the balance of the show is some moron, some absolute moron, waxing philosophical about technology while on the screen we see endless footage of some blocky, polygonal Everquest type of game that you have never seen before in your life. Some circa-1998 questing game where a valkyrie or a barbarian is endlessly running across a featureless plain. The guy in the background is talking about how computer modeling can now accurately capture emotions on faces, and meanwhile we're watching the most dated, ugly 3D tech-demo shit on the screen. What the fuck? This is the history of video games? When is somebody going to make an actual video game history documentary that doesn't feature the opinions of a teacher at some technology institute and that doesn't canvas the screen with bullshit?

19. Why do ATMs that can only dispense twenties ask you to specify how much cash you want down to the penny?

20. I just saw American Gangster on DVD recently, and it's not a bad movie, but at one point I started counting all the cop movie cliches. You've got the main character taking a bullet... in the fleshy part of his outer-upper arm (the all-purpose body part for gunshot wounds that don't have to be there in the next scene). You've got a lieutenant type screaming about how "Internal Affairs is breathing down my neck." You've got the detective who puts the tiniest amount of white powder on his pinky, then pats it against his tongue and can instantly say "Yep, that's pure heroin." But then there is this one cliche that really has me intrigued. You've seen it before. The bad guys have a drug lab, and in the lab are beautiful women, all naked and wearing face masks, seated at long benches, quietly doing something-or-other to the drugs. They're naked, explains a character, so that they can't steal.

Okay, did this ever, in real life, ever happen? The beautiful naked women in the crack lab? I'm open to being told yes, by the way. By all means, dazzle me with a documented example. I've seen this in movies going back as far as those 1980s Steven Seagal bone-crunchers, and probably earlier. Is this phenomenon really based in fact, or was it invented to provide a flimsy excuse for nudity in a movie too busy to include a strip club scene? I would like to know.

People Who Love Telling the Chevy Nova Story About How "Nova" Actually Means "No Go" in Spanish

2008-05-20T10:29:00.001-07:00

If I have to hear this cautionary marketing tale one more time, I may just start slitting throats. I don't know what gets me more - a) that the story is a bogus urban legend (more on that in a bit), b) that the entire rationale for diversity in business seems to rest on the strength of this one anecdote...

Or c) that every nincompoop, tie wearing, pit stained professional who clears his throat and says "Let me tell you a little story about the Chevy Nova" seems to be under the impression that no one has heard this story before. I think "C" wins. Over the dozens of times I have heard the Chevy Nova story, the speakers have all had this beatific attitude like they were about to relate the parable of the good Samaritan to virgin ears. Nobody, and I mean nobody who tells an audience the Chevy Nova story ever considers that we've heard it 18 times. There's just something about the Chevy Nova story that makes a man think he can dazzle an audience. I am here to tell you that it is not so.

Of course, it's not just the Chevy Nova story that suffers from this weird problem. Other factoids and bullet points from the history books also tend to lather people up into this lecture mode. Have you ever had someone tell you, with solemn authority and a clear expectation that your worldview was about to be shattered, that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves? That Jesus was Jewish? That Hitler came to power legally? Oh, the worst is Schrodinger's cat. What is it about Schrodinger's cat that makes everyone think they can blow your mind?

But I digress. Let's fight one battle at a time. Here, just for the record - and not to imply that you don't already know it - is the short version of the Chevy Nova story. General Motors wanted to sell the popular Chevy Nova in their two largest Latin American markets: Mexico and Venezuela. However, because they didn't embrace diversity, it never occurred to anyone at GM that "Nova" in Spanish means "No Go". The car was a complete failure in those markets as a result. The lesson? Diversity. Hire some brown people.

Now, I can't remember the first time I ever heard the Chevy Nova story. I know that every textbook I had from high school onward was legally bound to include it somewhere. And every teacher found some excuse to invoke it. But things didn't reach a critical mass until I started going to business school in 2004. Business school, as it turns out, is not about preparing you to succeed in the professional world. It is actually an elaborate Chevy-Nova-story delivery system, complete with its own staff, campus, endowments and government sponsorship. UNLV had one mission - and it was to tell me the hell out of that story.

It got to the point where I would start judging the professors on their skill at telling the story, like some ancient Greek Homeric recital where we all know the story, we just want to see the craft of the storyteller. Would there be some flourish of the arms? Would there be some invented detail about how the CEO cast his eyes sadly around the room, and realized he didn't see a single brown face?

I am not the only one fed up with the Chevy Nova story. A quick search on google will reveal dozens of web sites all sounding the same alarm: the story is completely bogus. GM knew full well that "no va" meant "no go" when they launched the car in Latin America. But they launched it anyway, with the correct reasoning:

1. The word "Nova" did exist in Spanish (e.g. Bossa Nova) with the intended meaning intact. There was even a brand of gasoline in Mexico called Nova.
2. No reasonable Mexican would confuse "Nova" with "No va." just as no American would confuse "carpet" with "a pet that belongs in your car".
3. "No va", in Spanish, is incoherent as a statement that a car is broken. A person would say "no marcha" or "no funciona" instead.
(http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp)

Did the Nova bomb in Mexico? No, it sold well. In Venezuela it exceeded sales expectations. The thing about the Chevy Nova story is that requires stupidity on all sides - the executives at GM had to be rock-stupid, and the entire population of Mexico/Venezuela also had to be exquisitely dumb - for the story to make sense. But then, to buy the Nova story as some sort of compelling rationale for corporate diversity, you'd have to be pretty dumb yourself.

You see, the argument for corporate diversity is that without it, you end up in "Nova" type situations. You end up making some terrible blunder. You don't appreciate cultural differences, you don't truly understand your customer, so you end up botching your marketing or your customer relationship management. A secondary argument is that without diversity, you don't get the full advantage of all perspectives in your internal operations.

Now, the viking in me wants to pick up a broadsword, some sort of Claymore or Zweihander, and just start hacking my way, screaming and foaming, through the dense bullshit in those arguments. But to keep this completely on point, I'll just point out the errors in the Chevy Nova morality tale as they relate to the diversity case.

Let's say the Nova story was not urban legend. Let's say it was more or less true. Can we conclude from it that GM suffered from a diversity deficit? Putting it another way, does the Nova debacle justify jettisoning a race-blind hiring policy and instituting a race-conscious hiring policy? Because that's what diversity ultimately comes down to. Do we consider race as a factor in hiring, or do we regard that as unconscionable? The Nova story says: "As uncomfortable as you might be with it, you have to consider race in hiring - because the alternative is business failure."

But no, it isn't true. The argument, much like the Nova story itself, is a pungent crock. If I hired a Hispanic person who spoke no Spanish, I'd be no closer to avoiding the Nova disaster. If I hired a white guy who spoke fluent Spanish, I could avoid the Nova disaster. The ethnicity of the employee is irrelevant. If GM wants to launch a car in a new market, they need native language speakers and marketers who are knowledgeable about the target market. Even though experts in Venezuelan marketing would indeed be disproportionately Hispanic, they would not have to be Hispanic. And so to make "being Hispanic" a plus in the hiring decision, you are discriminating unfairly.

And this, mind you, is in the very limited case of an exporter looking to introduce an American product to a foreign market. How the Nova story is supposed to be universal is completely beyond me. If I run a hardware store in Omaha and need to hire a stocking clerk, how does the cautionary Chevy Nova tale inform my hiring decision?

These are the thoughts that go through my head when some lecturer launches into the exciting story of the Chevy Nova, and the ironclad case it makes for embracing workforce diversity. This is what I go through when I see an affirmative action debater masterfully recite the tale as if she's playing the ace of trumps.

And now, to calm down, I will play some Grand Theft Auto IV. Take me away from all this, GTA. Make the hurt stop.

Anti Cigarette Ads

2008-05-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

I loathe these ads. These anti-smoking TV commercials produced by Thetruth.com. Oh the arrogance. Oh, the preachiness. There are several variations of them where anti-smoking crusaders with megaphones set up camp outside the swank offices of "big tobacco", and loudly chastise "big tobacco" with evidence of how many people are killed by cigarettes every year. Here are a few examples.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=c4xmFcrJexk&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fqzs2gz7muQ

Now, call me crazy. Call me wacky. But aren't the smokers themselves 100% responsible for their own deaths? Not 95 or 98% responsible, but 100%, all-the-way responsible for any cigarette-related ailment that might come their way? Entirely, wholly and absolutely responsible?

No? Well then don't you have to show me an example of someone who was successfully bamboozled by "big tobacco" into thinking there was nothing wrong with cigarettes? Don't you have to show me a guy who says "Wait a minute, you're saying cigarettes are hazardous to my health?" Because I'm seriously doubtful that guy exists. Historically, sure. Maybe as recently as 40 years ago, there might have been one person left in American who hadn't gotten the news. The warning on the pack became mandatory in 1966. Our schools, our TV programming, our entire culture is saturated with the anti-smoking message. It's just not possible to grow up in this country and be ignorant of the fact that cigarettes are dangerous.

Having said that, if you want to continue to blame "big tobacco" for cigarette deaths, you have to do enormous logistical cartwheels. First, you have to absolve parents of any responsibility in monitoring their children. Then, you have to make a case that peer pressure so clouds a young person's judgment that they are literally forced into the irrational decision to start smoking. Then, you have to ascribe such addictive power to the cigarette that a person is entirely blameless in not being able to quit. And above all that, you have to weave a complex conspiracy theory about how cigarette companies are using the most artful and devious methods to hook new generations of young smokers, even though they are legally bound not to and would face staggering penalties if caught.

Where is this damning evidence of Big Tobacco's lies and deceit? Oh, the Truth has evidence. They have a great, damning, Tobacco executive quote from, wait for it... 1971.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IuSQaVxQKuY

19 friggin 71. Is that the best you can do, Truth? You got any quotes from 2005? 2006? We all know that the cigarette companies disseminated lies about smoking health's risks - dozens of years ago. Punitive damages ensued. Enormous settlements were paid. The cigarette companies don't lie anymore. They walk on eggshells. Don't you know that? Where's your more recent evidence of lying? Got any?

These commercials are an elaborate kabuki dance with one purpose and one purpose alone: to remove any kind of agency from the smoker himself. To absolve the smoker of all responsibility. It is this disrespect, ultimately, that angers me when I see these commercials. It's this worldview that holds that a human being is passive and powerless, and can just be swept along in the currents of whatever "big tobacco" wants you to think. It's a profoundly dark, uncharitable and contemptible view of humanity. It places (in this case) the anti-smoking megaphone-holding activist in a position of superiority over the poor smoking plebs. This is the same worldview that says the lottery is a tax on the poor, or, recently, that voters are disenfranchised if they have to show photo ID at the polling station. What a bunch of wretched, lobotomized fools you and I are assumed to be. Incapable of taking any responsibility for any action. In this worldview, business is saddled with all the moral agency, and individual people have none.

Let's say that the "Truth" commercials worked. Let's say that everyone at the big 4 or big 5 cigarette companies simultaneously looked in their bathroom mirrors at home and said "My God. What am I doing? What have I become?" - and they all quit. Let's say they were all driven to paroxysms of guilt by the Truth ads and they all closed up shop. How long do you think the average smoker would be inconvenienced by the shortage?

My guess is: they wouldn't be inconvenienced at all. Because smaller, independent, and foreign suppliers would smell opportunity and immediately step in to meet the demand. See, that's the thing about capitalism. If it costs 50 cents to get a pack of smokes to a consumer, and the consumer is willing to pay $4 for that pack, you better believe that consumer will be getting his packs. Where there's demand, there will be supply. You can't guilt-trip all the suppliers in the world into abstaining from making their profits. Eventually someone's going to say "I need to feed my family, I have a tobacco crop, and smokers know what they're getting into." And you know, he'd be right.

So maybe cigarettes should be banned? Maybe that's what "The Truth" should push for? Does "The Truth" want to ban smoking? ... No, of course they don't. Besides the fact that we have a little thing in this country called Freedom, it would be impossible to enforce. So, if the Truth doesn't want to ban the manufacture of cigarettes, and if they won't lay any blame at the smoker's feet, and if they know, deep down, that megaphone-wielding 21 year olds can't really bring the global production of cigarettes to a halt, then what, exactly, are they trying to do?

Maybe they're just a bunch of imbecilic, confused jackasses who just enjoy making preachy commercials? Yep, I think that's it. And hey, I don't smoke! Never have!

Morphine - Kind of a Disappointment

2008-04-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

You can imagine how excited I was as the nurse held up the full syringe of morphine, doing the little tap-tap on the tip to produce that dribble from the needle, preparing to inject the whole, sweet draught directly into my feverish bloodstream.

Yes, the part of me that was still thinking clearly had only one word in mind: awesome.

The backstory is that I've been suffering from a gradually worsening case of tonsillitis. I had started a course of penicillin, but the doc was afraid the bug was too nasty and switched me to a more powerful antibiotic called Augmentin. But the drug didn't help. I had fever, chronic headache, fatigue, dizziness whenever I stood, a hacking cough and a killer sore throat. To say nothing of the tongue thrush, sour stomach, the shakes, and diarrhea with the consistency of chocolate in those kit kat commercials where they show how they make the kit kat.

I was in bad shape. I was rapidly using up my sick days, and the antibiotics weren't working. Last saturday night, the fever and headache got so bad that I thought I might as well go to the emergency room before I was no longer capable of doing so.

One very reassuring thing about the emergency room is that you can immediately see 5 other people that are worse off than you. "Well at least I'm not that guy." you can say to yourself. I found myself, after a bit of a wait, on a gurney on one of the main thoroughfares of the hospital. The doctor would see me shortly. I immediately conked out into a semi-stupor. When the doctor arrived and I had given him a rasping version of the story, he said he was going to stabilize me with an enormous IV dose of antibiotics, and a shot of morphine for the pain.

And now, readers, is when I perked up. Morphine. Not advil. Not Bufferin. Not even codine, which a doctor in England had given me once. Morphine. The real shit. The most powerful pain killing opiate ever devised by man and science. A narcotic with unrivaled potency. And when I say there was a full syringe of it, I'm talking about a fat, old-time syringe.

I'd never been high before. Tried pot a few times but never felt much. Booze just makes me sleepy. I was ready for a trip. An experience. As the nurse prepped my IV there in the corridor, I envisioned a white stallion trotting up alongside my gurney. He would whinny and snort and motion for me to get on. Feeling nothing but euphoria, I would climb on his strong back, gripping his mane in my fingers - and he would take off at a gallop, down the long, long hallway. Together we'd ride, right out of the hospital, and up into the sky, up up and away, the wind in my face - my hospital gown flapping freely in the rear - and we'd take to the clouds, never looking back.

That, at least, was the plan. Though in a lot of pain and with a sickening fever, I still had a giddy optimism about me as the nurse now was ready to apply the morphine shot to the newly inserted IV. This was it. I had my passport. I was ready to trip. As the morphine entered my body I waited calmly for the first few bars of Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem. I figured that's how it would start. Then... a warming sensation in the belly. Here we go.... I waited....

And nothing. Zip. Nada. The "morphine", if that's really what it was, very quickly took the edge off the headache and the sore throat. Not "killed" the sore throat and headache. No. It just took the edge off. So I still had a bit of a sore throat and a headache. After a friggin SHOT OF MORPHINE. And the trip? Where was the trip? I was sober, man. I could have struck up a conversation about the flagging Las Vegas housing market. I had no buzz.

Morphine! Morphine for God's sakes! Isn't this what they give soldiers on the battlefield when they've had a leg blown off? Wasn't there that scene in Saving Private Ryan when the one dude (the medic) has had his stomach blown open and he's dying, and they jab him with a morphine dose? Remember that scene? That was just a tiny dose of morphine, and the guy instantly goes passive. I had a huge syringe of morphine! And I had no mood altering experience, and I still had a headache! How's that for luck!

Well, the fever's down now. It's a few days later. The tonsils are feeling better. The sore throat is gone. Still a little feverish. Still fatigued. But on the mend. What have I learned from this experience? I've learned that morphine just isn't all that great. It's essentially no different than tylenol PM. Unless the hospital was pulling some placebo shit with me and didn't actually give me the real thing. Which maybe is possible. I'll have to look at the bill.

220 Annoyances

2008-04-14T18:05:00.000-07:00

201. Movies that have adult characters puffing away on asthma inhalers as a cheap way of making them interesting.

202. Restaurants that refill their ketchup bottles. Do they at least rinse them?

203. Someone doing an English accent just to be cute.

204. I don't like not knowing whether or not I'm going to get the whole coke can on the plane. Will it be the whole can, or just that little plastic cup? I can actually handle not getting the whole can, so long as I'm prepared. But there's no standard. There's no universal policy. Sometimes, seemingly at random, you get the whole can. Other times, just the very small cupful of coke and a wan smile. How am I expected to manage my thirst?

205. Old couples at restaurants who sit in total silence for the whole meal.

206. When you mis-enter one line on a long, tedious online form, and you submit it, and then the site points out your error in red, but then - surprise! Every line has been erased and you have to retype the whole damn form from scratch.

207. These "people" who "submit reviews" to the Zagat Survey, who use the same "annoying quotation mark style" that Zagat does in its capsule review, "not seeming to realize" that there is "no need" to do this, as they themselves "are not summarizing" fifty other reviews.

208. A guy in front of you at Starbucks unfolding a list.

209. Friends, family and coworkers: Do not email me things that require me to sign up for some bullshit in order to view whatever it is you're sending. I have to register with some site to see your photo album? I have to give my name and email to view your party invite? I have to create an account and password to open your animated holiday card? I ain't doing it. Why are you trying to get me to invite even more junk mail and spam into my existence? Why are you trying to put me on yet another marketing database? Why do you even need the help of a third party website to show me some photos anyway? Just zip them and send them for Gods sakes.

210. Slot machines that are programmed to give you a lot of close calls.

211. Thomas Friedman's incessant attempts to coin phrases.

212. No sugar added ice cream.

213. I am now officially tired of seeing the lower case "i" and "e" in front of products, services and companies. I give Apple a pass, because it's a market leader, and it already had that reputation for whimsical names. But every crappy tech product being called the iThis or the eThat - it's starting to get on my nerves big time. I was recently on a website where I could buy an eFridge, and if I clicked on it it would go in my eBasket. Look I understand that new words and concepts arrive naturally in the language. I accept that we need an abbreviation like I-Banking to refer to internet banking. But I don't see any reason why we have to spell it iBanking. What worries me is that run of the mill shitty companies are using the iSpelling technique as code for "Please have confidence in this product. Clearly it is on the cutting edge." This is a recipe for trouble, people.

214. When you enter a restaurant with one half clearly empty, and you're told there's a wait.

215. Deaf people who want their children to be deaf.

216. Failing, for the millionth time, to match that two-digit number at the end of the pinball game. Has anyone ever won the match game?

217. Websites that rely on spelling mistakes to get your traffic.

218. People on the left side of the moving walkway who aren't walking.

219. You know what I don't like? The first time you go skydiving, you have to be harnessed to another dude. The instructor. This is terrible. The very first time you skydive is probably the most exhilarating. The most emotional and crazy and adrenalin fueled. No jump will probably ever give you the rush that the first one will. And the first jump has to be the one where a leathery old skydiving instructor is mounted on you. Isn't there some skydiving instructional school somewhere that can train you so well that you don't need a guy on your back on the first jump? I don't mind the dude on the 10th or 20th jump. By then it's old hat. It's just another jump. But the first time - give me some freedom!

220. You know, when I use my hands to illustrate a concept to someone I'm talking to, I always defer to the listener's perspective. Like, if I wave my hand when I say "from beginning to end", I'll wave it right to left. If I'm describing a headline or a marquee title, I'll sweep my hand right to left. If I say "to the left" or "to the west", I'll point right. Basically, if there's any kind of timeline, or directional significance to whatever I'm explaining, I defer to the perspective of the person I'm talking to. And I apparently AM THE ONLY ONE ON EARTH WHO DOES THIS. Just saying.

Quidditch Just Isn't Very Well Thought Out

2008-03-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

The rules of quidditch are really stupid, and I'm going to explain why in excruciating detail.

Now I'm guessing that you, the reader, either already know the rules of quidditch, saving me the need to rehash them, or - you're saying "what's a quidditch?", in which case I predict you're really not going to care once you find out. Either way, I don't need to explain the rules. But here they are anyway as a reference.

OK. Imagine soccer. Except somewhere on the grass there's a little chocolate bunny. And when the chocolate bunny is found, the game ends and the finder's team get 15 extra points.

Now, how much effort would you put into scoring goals in this version of soccer? Not too much, huh. Wouldn't proper strategy dictate that the whole thing just turn into a massive bunny hunt? And when a player spotted the bunny, he would call over his "seeker" to grab it, and that would be it?

I mean, why would you even bother with the soccer ball?

This, basically, is Quidditch. Who would give a rat's ass about scoring a goal in this game? The majority of the positions and players in the sport involve scoring goals through floating hoops - but in almost every case, the winner of the game will have nothing to do with how many goals are scored. The goals mean nothing. For the goals to ever make a difference, one team would have to score at least 15 more goals than the other team.

And if one team scores 10 more goals than the other in a soccer-like scoring environment, but loses anyway, then what kind of game is that?

The only game I can think of in real life that has a similar cheap-win mechanism is 9-Ball pool, wherein a player can make 8 consecutive, exquisitely perfect shots, then screw up the last shot and allow the opponent to immediately win the game. But even in 9-Ball, you play best-of-7 or something.

And why the hell are fictional games & sports in sci-fi and fantasy always just 3 dimensional versions of familiar sports? Quidditch is just field hockey with a z-axis. (And a chocolate bunny.) Where's the invention? Where's the fantasy? Is the future of sports really going to be the sports we already know, except we all fly around?

Blu Ray Wins the Format War. So What?

2008-03-08T17:26:00.001-08:00

I have two points here.

First, who does Sony think is going to rebuild a DVD collection from scratch to make it all Blu Ray? Is anyone going to do this? Yes, we did rebuild our VHS collections for DVD - that's true. But a) the difference between VHS/DVD is night and day, b) DVDs offer tons of superior convenience like interactive menus and slim storage, c) they offer boatloads of extra content, and d) VHS hasn't entirely gone away anyway. Some people still use it for hard to find items and for recording.

Now why would anyone rebuild a DVD collection into Blu-Ray? Do any of those reasons hold up? No, they don't. Blu-Ray is only a marginal improvement. There might be a gradual migration of sales, sure, but nothing like the arrival of the DVD standard. This is laserdisc, folks. You heard it here.

The second point is that the entire video sales industry is about to start showing symptoms of the terminal illness that is currently afflicting the music business. Why would anyone buy music if they can download it for free? The only thing keeping the patient on life support at this point is that some people still haven't figured out how to share music online. Why do you think Barry Manilow has been putting out chart-topping CDs lately? Could it be because his audience is the only demographic left that still gets its music from Target?

I already know early adopters that illegally share movies online. Probably you do too. The only thing slowing the mass adoption of movie stealing is the still (at this point) high memory and RAM demands that these downloads make on current computers - movies are big files - and also a general ignorance on how to do it easily. But over time, and I'm talking only a few years, both of these obstacles will vanish.

"But movie downloads give you a grainy, low resolution picture!" say the studios. "Plus, you get no extra content!" Sure, sure. But it's free, and that's the key word. You know what food always tastes good? Free food. It's the same with Batman Begins.

Government enforcement? Impossible. I've said this before and I'll say it again. If your intellectual property can cheaply and quickly be converted into ones and zeros, there is absolutely no way to protect it from piracy. That's essentially a law of nature. The cost it would realistically take to enforce anti-piracy policy would be far greater than the benefits gained.

Movie-download-pay-services? Won't work. How can you beat free? Movie-download-for-free-if-you-look-at-some-advertising services? Same deal. How can you beat free with no ads?

We are only a few years away from the complete collapse of the home video market. There will always be a market for the movie theater experience, but the act of going to a store and buying a "thing" that you take home and unwrap and slide into an expensive player? Those days are fast approaching their end. Everyone will be carrying around massive movie collections on keychain flash drives, all acquired illegally and for free, and it just can't be stopped. There might still be a few people - A/V geeks, who want the whole hi-def experience and who therefore will still shell out big bucks for legitimate movie-watching equipment and the movies themselves - but they will be few and far between. They will be like their counterparts in the 60s and 70s: the guys who had their own screening rooms where they could run films at home. But the rest of America will watch lower-res free movies.

You don't think America will settle for lower-res? Think about the telephone. When I was a kid, there were no cell phones. Every call was on a land line and it was crystal clear. Now, it's the 21st century, I live exclusively on a cell phone, and the quality of any particular call is shitty. "Hello? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?" That's modern phone life. We settled, en masse, for shitty phone reception because the reward was the enormous convenience that came with cell phones. Movie viewing is about to take its own step backward, for similar reasons of convenience.

Short sell those film stocks now, people, the floor is about to fall out. And Blu Ray. Think about all the champagne corks popping over there at Sony. Do they have any idea what's about to happen? The format war is over. But Blu-Ray didn't win. My keychain flash drive won.

So That's It. To Play Any Nintendo Game, Going Forward, I'm Going to Have to Wave a Stick at the TV.

2008-03-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

I mean, every game? EVERY LAST GAME?

Is it just me, do I have to be the first one to say this - but isn't this completely stupid? How is it that an interface best suited for Mario Party 8 somehow became mandatory for every game on the system? Games like Metroid and Mario - games that require the finest precision - now have to somehow be reduced to magic wand waving, motion sensing control?

I DON'T LIKE WAVING THIS FUCKING STICK AROUND.

Look, I had as much fun as anybody slipping on the armband and trying out Wii Bowling for the first time. That was a great 20 minutes. Putting custom eyebrows on my Wii character and picking his hair? Great stuff. Kudos to Nintendo for delivering a quality half hour of entertainment.

But thanks to that one enjoyable diversion I have to see the greatest franchises in video game history forfeit their intricate and elaborate control schemes and submit to the magic wand fad? Again, I ask: every game? Every last game?

We've seen these games before. They're called Light Gun games. Light Gun games have their niche and they have their fans. If you're the kind of gamer who likes playing the same 10 minutes of game hundreds or thousands of times, then yes, light gun games are probably for you. But if the president of Nintendo announced that henceforth, every game for Nintendo would have to be a light gun game, wouldn't we all just be a little ticked? How is this Wii remote any different, in terms of the challenge it offers and the way it dumbs down a game, than a light gun?

Sure, kids, grannies, knock yourselves out. Casual gamers, pick up and play gamers, sure. There's a class of gamer out there who wants to experience everything the game has to offer in the first 10 minutes. The Cooking Mama gamer. The magic wand is perfect for this person. There's another class of gamer who wants a skill-equalizer. A game where a novice can be competitive against a pro. Like Mario Party, where whoever is ahead will be gradually handicapped until the others catch up. The magic wand is perfect for these gamers, because the skill-ceiling it offers is really quite low.

Nintendo man. I tell ya. For the last 5 years, this gimmick shit has taken over their corporate philosophy, and the available real estate for gamers like me has been shrinking and shrinking. First it was "connectivity". They wanted to turn the gameboy into a controller that you would attach to your Gamecube for innovative multiplayer. The Gameboy screen itself would become a secondary screen for use by the game.

Not a bad idea in theory, except for the inconvenient fact that in order to make proper use of this scheme, a game would have to be seriously dumbed down. The Zelda and Final Fantasy franchises produced 4-player offerings for this "connectivity" design, and, well, they were really bad. And a pain in the ass too. If you wanted to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles to its 40 hour conclusion, you had to find 3 other people, all with gameboys and connection cables, to meet somewhere for regular sessions of Final Fantasy multiplayer. Did that ever happen, anywhere?

Then the Sony PSP came out. I've never played a PSP, but I blame it for killing my Gameboy Advance. Nintendo was forced to counter the PSP by rushing out a successor to the GBA. And so we got the DS, with its stylus gameplay.

Fuck you, stylus.

So, with the DS, Nintendo basically said "If you want to continue to play your favorite Nintendo games on gameboy, then you're going to have to use this stylus." And with that edict, every gamemaker had to go back to the drawing board and put stylus functionality into their games. Useless, pain-in-the-ass, un-fun stylus gameplay.

"Well, that's okay." I said at the time. "I can still play my favorite games on the big screen." Then the Wii was announced and its wand-waving control scheme unveiled. And now it's all over. The lion's share of the greatest game franchises of all time - exclusive to Nintendo - are now only accessible to those willing to twirl this stick gaily about, swishing it this way and that, jerking, wiggling and pantomiming.

Look, video games have a certain cerebral component. They're not ALL just twitch button, arcade-y affairs. I like the strategy elements in an RPG, or an RTS game, or a puzzle game, or a an adventure game. These are games where there's not necessarily anything special about the controls. Tetris, one the greatest games of all time, really only requires two buttons: a directional pad and a rotation button. Games aren't always about the interface. In fact, the best games usually make you forget there even is an interface. Nintendo's decision to make every game a light gun game demonstrates that they don't give much of a rat's ass about that. They're going to differentiate their product in the only way they can - by creating a unique interface that's truly unusual and un-copyable. "No more ports," Nintendo is saying. Every Nintendo game will now be fully unique.

Well, fantastic. I'm glad it's worked. But in doing this they've changed the DNA of the games the system will support. Now every game has to somehow include all the excitement and challenge of that machine at Dennys where you try to grab the stuffed animal with the robotic claw.

I don't want that shit. I don't want my Wii to be party central. I want to zone out to a cool metroid game with the shades drawn and doritos on my shirt. The last game I was able to enjoy in the old fashioned style was the new Zelda, since a Gamecube version was released too.

And it wasn't even that good.

Who Is This Person? And Why is He in Every Movie?

2008-02-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Yeah. A year ago I had never seen this portly fellow before. And now he is literally in every movie, and every TV show. It's getting to the point where he's playing every part too. I'm a little alarmed, because in his many, many roles I haven't seen anything particularly interesting out of him. His comedy is too broad. His "tough guy" isn't so tough. He just confuses me. Is he funny fat? Or is he tough guy fat? Or is he just-ignore-that-I'm-fat fat? Nothing makes sense with him.

I'm flipping channels, and suddenly it's this movie with Jet Li kicking ass, and yet inexplicably this guy seems to get more screen time than Jet Li. And in some scenes he's comic relief, and in others he's supposed to be threatening. I just don't get it. I rented Transformers. He's there. I saw an ad for this show called K-Ville. Wham! It's all him.

I guess what I'm saying is - this guy needs to back off a little. Let some other actors have a chance. There's no need to be in every movie. Let's not forget this other guy who used to be in every movie:

I'm not sure what happened to him, but from 1982 to about 2002 he also was in every movie and TV show. Particularly if your movie called for exactly one Asian character. Then, forgot about it, he'd be there. Don't make the mistake of this guy, other guy. Be more selective in your roles. Don't be that guy.

If you're going to be in a lot of movies, and there's no persuading you otherwise, I recommend you go the Gary Oldman route and disappear into roles.

No one ever says "Pffft. Great. Another Gary Oldman movie." No, people say "Wait... that was Gary Oldman?" That's what you're looking for. That's where you want to get to.

Losing 200 Pounds via Gastric Bypass Surgery Does Not Make You a Hero

2008-01-26T14:10:00.001-08:00

You know, looking at Mario Batali's full, cherubic face reminded me of this topic - something I had meant to write about before but had forgotten about.

I'm sorry but it's true. If you lose a few hundred pounds through diet, exercise and sheer determination and will - well now that's a heartwarming story. That's a story about character. That's a great, rousing, stand up and cheer, life affirming tale. You can sell that story to me over and over again. I will always stick around till after the commercial to see the new, slim gal and to watch the spouse's tears flow freely. I might even get a little misty myself.

But some fat tub who lost 200 pounds because of a gastric bypass? I mean sure, hooray and all. Nice that you're alive and not dead. But.... I'm supposed to be proud of you? I'm supposed to reach for the kleenex as I watch your touching story? Well, no. My opinion, madam, is that you didn't do shit. You learned nothing.

The problem originates with the TV people. You see, they have a "woman loses 180 pounds" script. They've had it for decades. They wait till someone loses 180 pounds and then they step in. They get the "before" photos from the woman's scrapbook, they film some new video, they get a few tearful interviews. Whammo, it's all done in one morning, and they can broadcast it that night at 5:30. But this gastric bypass craze is so recent, so unexpected, that the networks haven't had time to adjust their well worn playbook for fat women who lose 200 pounds.

They still frame the story like its a heroic triumph of great courage. So let me get this straight. Stop me if get any part of the story wrong.

1) A person gets fat to the point of imminent death.
2) Rather than summoning the will power to stop eating, she agrees to surgically reroute her digestive system, limiting the amount of food she can intake at any time.
3) Thanks to her insurance, society as a whole gets to cough up the 20-50 grand for the procedure and associated post-surgical therapy.
4) The post-op woman sheds 200 pounds, regardless of any will-power or lack thereof.
5) CNN rushes a camera crew over to interview the hero.

Am I missing something? Maybe there are a few heroes in the story. There are the medical researchers who developed this lifesaving surgery. There are the surgeons who went through a lifetime of study and training to be able to perform it. There's you and me, working away at our jobs so our health insurance contributions can foot the bill for the fat tub's surgery. I can't see who else qualifies for the hero label here.

Am I wrong or does the morbidly obese person have absolutely no redeeming qualities in the gastric bypass story? At least the old fashioned 200 pound losers had a character arc. They were gluttonous, they looked death in the face, then they made a commitment to fight for their life and turn over a new leaf. That's good TV. That's a story. But the gastric bypass people have no story. They started pathetic and ended pathetic. They didn't decide to turn their life around. They decided to have others turn it around, and at great expense on the public coin.

Look, I'm not saying don't have a Gastric Bypass. Go ahead, get the surgery. I encourage the surgery. Go and save your life. Rediscover the joy of having your leg not touching your other leg. But network TV: stop showing me these people. They've learned nothing. They destroyed their own bodies and were rescued from themselves by the charity of society. They're not heroes.

A small programming note: I will try at some point to get a reservation at Carnevino. And then I will try to engineer an encounter with Mario Batali. I will then ask him what the soil and air are currently telling him, and maybe we'll chat a bit about organic farming. Stay tuned.

Close Encounter...

2008-01-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

I had a brush with fame the other day that I need to mention. I was attending the grand opening of the Palazzo last week - the new resort on the Las Vegas Strip - and I found myself outside the restaurant Carnevino. Actually, I was just passing by on my way up the stairs. As I walked past, a chef came out of the restaurant in a hurry. He was a roly poly little man, fairly barrel shaped, and he had on the whole chef's outfit, complete with poofy hat and a tied-off scarf. He also had a fairly striking ginger beard. He huffed and puffed, and craned his neck upward, looking out into the crowd, staring intently into the middle distance.

My only thought at the time was "What an odd-looking little man." although as I walked away it occurred to me that line chefs wouldn't be permitted to walk outside the restaurant like that and that therefore this guy must be the head honcho. But that's all I thought about it.

Until the next day, when it suddenly dawned on me: doesn't Mario Batali, the imbecile author of that idiotic Starbucks cup quote have a restaurant at Palazzo? Could that have been the restaurant? And could that have been Mario Batali? The guy who talked about what the air and soil "knows", and argued that the only way to find solace from the headaches of soul searching on how to acquire inner peace was to have a grandfather who once shook the hand of the individual that shucked his corn? The same guy?

So I google-imaged his face and lo and behold:

So it was Mario Batali! Just think, I was only feet away from the guy whose irritating prose I had to read on my coffee cup for months and months. I could have confronted him. I could have called him an idiot. I could walked up to him and said "Hey man, do you know that I pick your peas? How bout a hug?" At the very least I could have grabbed his hat and ran away. Too bad.

Yes, I live in Las Vegas. No, I haven't heard of your favorite lounge act from 45 years ago.

2007-12-27T11:22:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy New Year, from all of us here at Petty Annoyances. I'm in New York for a week, and wanted to report just briefly on a disturbing phenomenon - another demerit on the long list of things I can't stand about the elderly. I've been mingling around all these holiday parties, and you better believe that the elderly love holiday parties. I think these holiday parties afford the elderly two, rare chances. First, they get to wear their sunday best, which for them must be an increasingly rare proposition. And two, they get to enjoy a kind of professor emeritus status that I know they covet dearly.

So as soon as the word gets out that I'm visiting from Las Vegas, it doesn't take long for the following to occur. An old guy, cheese dip and/or crumb hanging from lip, will buttonhole me in a corner for this conversation:

Old Guy: "Rowsdower. Rowsdower."

Me: "Yes, hi! Hello."

Old Guy: "Come over here. I need to ask you something." (We retreat to a quiet corner)

Old Guy: "You're from Las Vegas?" (His mouth opens and closes even when not speaking)

Me: "Well, I'm from here, but I live there now."

Old Guy: "Have you ever heard.... ..... ..... ........ of the Pineapple Brothers?"

Me: "No."

Old Guy: "They used to play there. They were huge."

Me: "Where did they play?"

Old Guy: (seemingly annoyed by the question) "Oh I don't know."

Me: "Well about what time period?"

Old Guy: (Incredibly dismissive) "Oh.... a long time ago."

Me: "Well.... what about them?"

Old Guy: "They were huge!"

And then the conversation sort of runs out of steam.

And this happened 3 years ago, more than once. It happened 2 years and 1 year ago, and now it's happening this year. Old people learn that I am from Las Vegas, and are seized with the desire to know if I have heard of some ancient lounge act.

"You know who I used to love in Las Vegas?"

"Who?"

"Sally Hanmeister and the O-Kay Cabaret. Have you ever heard of them?"

"No. No I haven't."

"Oh, they were huge! We saw them on our honeymoon!"

I've known for a long time that old people like to play the "That didn't used to be there." game when driving by offices and gas stations. But apparantly hearing the words Las Vegas triggers a deep, long forgotten well of memories - a rich new vein of conversation topics that have no point except to briefly exist and then taper off into nothingness.

"Have you ever heard....................................................... of Big Doc Brownnose?"
"The Wallapaches?"
"The Sassafrass Band?"
(Brief pause while old guy licks every square inch of his lips)
"Herbert Moonpie?"
"Toucan Willie?"
"Glen Potsticker and the Bakers' Dozen?"

Me: "No."
They were huge!!!

Really, if a Vegas act has been gone for more than 1 year, there is only a very small chance that I have ever heard of them. An act from 1961? Sure, yeah, I read about them all the time in my subscription copy of "Old!" Jeez. At least the pastries at these parties have been top notch.

The Disgust that Star Trek Characters Have When They Travel Back to Our Time

2007-11-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Now just to warn you, this post will go so deeply into the dorkiest reaches of nerdland, that even seasoned geeks may want to take a pass. But for those of you who have watched basically all the trek shows and have a reasonable comfort level with the characters and storylines - maybe you will be sympathetic to this longstanding annoyance of mine.

Have you ever noticed that in the dozens of times when trek characters have been magically transported to other historical eras, they are always utterly delighted and enchanted by the opportunity to spend a little time in history, EXCEPT when they visit "our" time, in which case they are always filled with contempt and disgust?

It's true! Be it a) a time travel episode, b) a holodeck adventure or even c) just being visited by people from other times - Trek characters are guaranteed to have this over-the-top infatuation for whatever era they're in... unless it's the late 20th century. There's no better way to get Captain Picard giddy as a schoolboy than to put him in Napoleonic France, or Robin Hood England, or some such. You with me? You send Picard to Victorian England and before you can blink an eye he's got a pipe, a deerstalker cap and he's excitedly solving mysteries. But you put him in 1990's California and it's all he can do not to spit on everyone he encounters.

The best example of this that I can think of is the Next Generation episode where three 1980's Americans are unfrozen and end up on the enterprise. Picard is entirely uninterested in them (even though history is his greatest interest). Plus, he's quietly disgusted that they froze themselves in the first place (even though they did so, it is revealed, to save their own lives) and he reacts with pure contempt and hostility when they ask to speak with him.

Do you think for a single moment that he would have reacted the same way to, I don't know, someone from the WWII French resistance? I think we all know he'd have been fawning and drooling all over them and inviting them back to his quarters for high tea.

Why does every historical era generate these warm fuzzies and excited curiosity except our own? Here's my theory. I attribute about 60% of the present-day-disgust thing to the sci-fi convention where the futuristic people have to express amazement at how primitive and backward we are. It's just a convention. So when McCoy calls the 20th century doctors barbarians (or something like that) in Star Trek 4, that's really the only point. We're so used to being the advanced society, that aha! Here's how it feels to be the primitive society! It's drama and pathos on the cheap, but that's TV. Now logically, the disgust should apply doubly to even earlier historical eras, but then there'd be no point. You don't see Picard strutting around Elizabethan England saying "Bows and arrows... How primitive!" because there's no bow-and-arrow wielding audience who will thrill to the idea that hey, maybe we ARE primitive?

And it's not all that realistic, because if I was transported back in time 150 years, I wouldn't strut around main street saying "Hmmph! Horses and carriages. What ignorance!" It would be more like "Horses and carriages! Awesome! Can I have a hay ride?"

So that's about 60% - the need to excite us with the concept that weeeeeeee are the primitive people. But then there's that other 40%. The nasty part. And I think maybe I'm going to have a hard time articulating this, but there's some sort of weird moral-agency/anti-capitalism/anti-American thing going on. I'm serious. Like every human society pre 20th century can be forgiven for their vast sins, but "present day" society cannot. We are guilty. We are culpable. It's moronic.

Look, Roddenberry cooked up an interesting premise for the future of humanity - I'll grant him that - but this over the top disdain for capitalism is uncalled for. Can't anyone from the future acknowledge that just maybe capitalism was a powerful engine of progress? Here's a few bits of dialogue from the episode where the evil 20th century businessman is unfrozen on the Enterprise:

DATA

   These are not like any other
 humans I have ever encountered.
 I find them fascinating.

   RIKER
 From what I have already seen
 of our "guests", there is very
 little to redeem them. In fact,
 it makes me wonder, how our
 species ever survived the
 twenty-first century.

How about this exchange? (Ralph is the
evil 20th century businessman)

PICARD

   I do not think you are fully aware
 of your situation, or the time
 which has passed.

   RALPH
 Believe me, I'm fully cognizant
 of where I am, and when. It is
 simply that I have more to protect
 than a man in your position could
 possibly imagine. No offense,
 but a military career has never
 been considered upwardly mobile.
 I must contact my lawyer.

   PICARD
 Your lawyer has been dead for
 centuries.

   RALPH
 Yes, of course I know that, but
 he was a full partner with a very
 important firm. Rest assured the
 firm is still operating.

   PICARD
 That's what this is all about...
 A lot has changed in three hundred
 years. People are no longer
 obsessed with the accumulation of
 "things". We have eliminated hunger,
 want, the need for possessions.
 We have grown out of our infancy.

   RALPH
 You've got it wrong. It's never
 been about "possessions" - it's
 about power.

   PICARD
 Power to do what?

   RALPH
 To control your life, your
 destiny.

   PICARD
 That kind of control is an
 illusion.

   RALPH
 Really -- I'm here aren't I? I
 should be dead and I'm not.
 That's what money did for me.
 That's the kind of power I'm
 talking about.

All of this occurs after Picard has already gotten seriously pissed off that the 300 year old people even wanted to talk with him at all. And Ralph, despite being a ridiculous caricature, still gets the better of the exchange.

How about the Voyager episode where the crew is magically transported to Los Angeles in the 1990s? The very existence of earth is threatened! But by who? A hostile alien race? A mad scientist? A sentient blob of antimatter?

No actually, it's this evil corporation:

The CEO, motivated by pure greed, intends to launch a time machine that will cause devastating effects on the environment. Does he care? Of course not. Cue the diminished seventh chords and the mustache twirling.

Where's the boundary between the pure delight time travel, and the "you disgust and offend me" time travel? Is it somewhere around JFK? The World War II episodes are pretty safe. Wasn't there an original series episode where they all become Al Capone era Chicago gangsters? Wasn't there a Voyager holodeck episode about racing drag cars in the 50s? Clearly, there's a little wiggle room in the 20th century. Maybe the hatred and disgust sets in around the Jimmy Carter years.

Man do I hate Picard's moral preening. He'll wax spiteful one minute about the foolishness of humanity in creating nuclear weapons, and then the next minute he's defening his decision not to interfere and stop an alien genocide. (It would taint the purity of their authentic culture, you understand.)

Well get bent, you late 20th century hating, all other historical era loving, prime directive obeying lackey. Go dunk your head in some Earl Grey.

These Women-Only Rooms at the Gym

2007-11-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

Here's another issue that, like my position on refusing to buckle-up on command in the back seat, I can't get anyone to agree with me on. This despite the fact that I'm absolutely right on the merits.

My gym here in Vegas (to remain anonymous) is a relatively new facility. Well appointed. Well staffed. The water fountain water is usually cold. Plenty of parking. So, generally, not a bad gym. But, a crowded gym. And I tend to go after work during their evening rush. Sometimes, you have to squeeze in a set between other people. Sometimes, you're standing on line for an elliptical machine.

So, there's this room on the first floor, for women-only, that has the works: nautilus, cardio, free-weights, workout-mats, plenty of space. And never full, by the way. I see one or two women in there, max. I don't exactly know how much good stuff there is in there, since I can't see the whole room from the door and I can't just stand there squinting through the window lest I look like some kind of perv. Who knows what kind of xanadu lies around the unseen corners? What could there be back there? A climbing wall? A smoothie counter? I don't know.

It's not fair. Why should I have to stand in line for a cardio machine while plenty sit unused in the ladies-only room? What happened to equality? What happened to the great principles of Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and others who have appeared on our one dollar coins? Do they mean nothing?

Now let me explain exactly where I stand on this. If the gym wants to install a ladies-only workout room, I don't object in theory. But, they must do one of the following:
1) Give men a discount on membership, proportional to the reduced availability of the facilities
2) Open a mens only room of equal size and appointment.

That's all. Doing one of those thing fairs it up entirely. Notice, the whole issue of why women want these separate rooms is irrelevant to the complaint. They don't want to be hit on and/or intimidated. Personally, I think they should quit whining and grow some tougher skin, though I admit that men who try to pick up women at the gym are engaging in the worst brand of slimy behavior. The solution should be to curb the behavior, not to segregate the genders. But that's a digression. If the gym wants to create a womens-only room, that's fine - so long as you give me the mens-only room or the penis discount on membership. That would make it fair.

Of course, I don't think you'd see much enthusiasm for a mens only room. So, uh, let's go with the membership discount as the preferred alternative.

I put the issue to a female friend at work, who as you might expect, took a contrary position. "Deal with it." was the substance of her rebuttal. She got quite animated and seemed to have as strong an opinion about it as I did. I pressed her for a more robust argument, and she actually came up with a savvy one. She said something along the lines of "You never hear women complain when we get overcharged at the dry cleaner. Or for a haircut."

Me: "Haircut? But women get all that fru fru shit done when they get their hair cut. Men's cuts are simpler."

Her: "What about women with short hair who just want a simple hair cut? Why should they get charged double?"

Me: "hmm.........."

Her: "Whatever you pay at the dry cleaner for a shirt, they charge double for a women's shirt, even though its the exact same process."

Me: "Really? That doesn't seem fair. Wait a minute. Aren't women's shirts all silky and scented and dainty and what-not? Don't they require extra care?"

Her: "No! It's the exact same process!"

So okay, she's got a point. Now, my position on the womens-only room at the gym is unchanged. Two unfairs don't make a fair. But I now hereby stand for haircut and dry-cleaning gender-based pricing reform. And I am against all other such bullshit raw deals.

Someday, when I'm on a one dollar coin, you'll all realize I was right.

Awareness

2007-11-04T15:58:00.000-08:00

Is it me, or is "Awareness" completely worthless? All this ribbon wearing, all the marching - can someone articulate what the point is? What does it accomplish? "We want to promote awareness." What does that even mean?

Let's say you care passionately about an "issue". And by "issue" I mean one of the issues that currently is represented by an awareness ribbon. Wikipedia has a list here. If you really want to make a difference for, for example, cancer sufferers, wouldn't you donate money? Volunteer at a hospital? Lobby for more public funding for research? Something along those lines? How exactly does wearing a ribbon, or marching to promote "awareness" do a damned thing? Who, specifically, in the audience of the awareness pageant wasn't already aware of cancer? And, if their awareness is temporarily heightened, what exactly does that achieve?

I am unconvinced that "awareness" does anything at all besides advertise the do-goodedness of the ribbon wearer and/or provide a outlet for frustration for people who want to make a difference but have no idea how. "But girls need to know the importance of doing regular checks for breast cancer." Agreed. But isn't communicating that message the rightful job of parents, teachers and doctors? Why exactly do you want that message communicated via parade? Isn't that less effective?

Someone coined the word "Slacktivism" to indicate someone who pretends to be an activist but doesn't actually do anything besides making the most superficial and lazy gestures. Ribbon wearing is cited as textbook example of slacktivism. Now, I actually don't agree 100% with this perspective. I can be an incredible slacker activist if I sit at home in my underwear, eat doritos, and occasionally click my mouse to donate money via paypal to cancer research. In my opinion, that's 100 times as valuable as a high energy, ribbon wearing dude who spends all his free time promoting "awareness". The awareness guy is doing diddily shit, accomplishing nothing except fueling his own superiority complex, while I'm greasing the wheels on actual research.

But of course, he cares so much that he sees it as his mission to educate others. By not wearing a ribbon, clearly, I must care less than he does about cancer.

Helpful

Not Helpful

This sort of ties back to my old complaints about political protests on the streets. What do they ever accomplish? What CEO ever heard the commotion on the street below, walked over to his venetian blinds, pushed them open between his index and middle fingers, looked through the crack at the throng of determined protesters on the street and said "My God. What have I done?" Nooooooo one. And what has ribbon wearing and "awareness" ever accomplished, besides giving useless people a vague sense of accomplishment? Nothing!

The Tidal Wave of Condescension You Get From Your Doctor When You've Researched Your Own Symptoms

2007-10-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

God forbid I should intrude on their staggering expertise. How dare I presume to deign to even imagine that I might actually contribute something to the conversation. Shouldn't I just keep my mouth shut when I'm sitting up there on the crinkly paper? After all, only one of us went through half a dozen grueling years of list-memorization, followed by another half dozen years of taking urine samples on graveyard shift. So what could I possibly know about my back pain?

Plenty, I think. I could read a layman's primer about it on the internet - maybe go through one of those symptoms analysis websites - maybe ask a few questions on a few forums - and then maybe develop a highly reliable working understanding of the common causes of back pain. But is that going to impress my internist? What do you think?

Look, obviously the doctor has the real expertise. Obviously he's drawing from a much deeper well when he diagnoses me. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do some cursory homework before I pay for the doctor visit. I typically don't go to the doctor until I've exhausted all possible over-the-counter type avenues and done as much internet research as I can. But if I tell the doctor something like "It's got all the signs of a slipped disc." then my friends you have never seen such drippingly hostile, barbed, venomous condescension.

It can take one of two general forms. One reaction is the pissy one. It's the "please don't waste my time with your amateur theories" exasperation. These doctors take it as a personal insult that you would even offer some kind of analysis of your own condition, because it implies that you don't view them as the incense-waving, all-knowing shaman that they want you to think they are. The second common reaction is the tidal wave of patronizing, infantilizing condescension. The doctor takes on the attitude of a man who finds his dog looking at a newspaper. "Awwwwww, who's reading the paper! Who's reading the paper! C'mere little guy - is the Dow up today! Who's my big boy!"

WTF? You wouldn't get this from any other kind of professional. If you told your mechanic the brakes were feeling a little sluggish, and that maybe it was a weak piston on the caliper, would he blow up in your face? Would he say "Hey, who's the mechanic here?" Would he say "Suuuuuuuure it's the piston on the caliper! What a bright young man you are! Do you want to be a real mechanic some day?" No, of course not. He'd say "Okay, I'll check it out."

I'm not telling the doctor what I think the problem is because I want a pat on the head, It's because a) I'm doing him a favor, and b) because I would like to be an active participant in the process. I'm trying to be the Robin to his Batman. The Igor to his Frankenstein. I am just... trying... to help.

What doctor ever tells you to study up on your condition and recommends a book? What doctor ever invites you to become more educated on the principles of diagnosis? They don't, do they? They enjoy your ignorance. They savor it. Not necessarily because they're panicky that you'll read a book and put them out of business. It's because they've been taught since day one that they will be the keepers of the sacred knowledge. That's the doctor's reward as he slogs through med school - he knows the exclusive club he's about to join. But it's not enough that he has this mastery. Everyone else has to be ignorant.

Again, compare it to almost any other scenario where the layman comes to the specialist and tries to demonstrate that he's read up on the specialist's work. The specialist would normally be flattered. At least, he'd feel a little warmth toward you that you had taken the time to learn something about what he does. There'd be no belittling sneer. No "You've read the holy book!?!" anger and venom.

Look, doctors - it's only natural as the internet matures we will see self-diagnosis websites that just get better and better. True, it's very hit and miss right now. But even now, I guarantee you for any weird symptom you can do a google search and find 5 people all complaining of the exact same problem, followed by the advice of doctors advising them what it might be about. In the future, trust me, Dr. Clippy will be running circles around you.

"Paging Dr. Clippy. Dr. Clippy, you're needed in surgery. Dr. Clippy."

Dr. Clippy will be able to upload your medical history, then ask you 100 questions, then narrow down the diagnosis possibilities with what I promise will be a ridiculously high batting average. You doctors need to understand that the vast chasm of highly specialized knowledge between you and the average Joe is about to become irrelevant. You doctors - you aren't particularly great geniuses. Your great skill was memorization. You're a bunch of walking medical encyclopedias. And Dr. Clippy, who's a much more reliable memorizer of facts, is about to be able to diagnose anything that you can, and there's not any reason to think he can't do it much better.

So when I come in with (gasp!) an opinion about my groin pain, maybe at the very least you should take it seriously, and lose the 'tude?

Why are Actors All so Damn Fruity?

2007-10-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Remember, in high school, the clique of drama-club guys? That group that was always in every school play? The skinny, turtle-necked guys? Sometimes a little goth? Maybe a little with the tight pants and the scarves and the berets, carrying around dog-eared Eugene O'Neil paperbacks? Not necessarily homosexual you understand, just... deeply fruity.

My problem is that, and this has been confirmed to me over and over, the actors we watch today in TV and film are merely the adult versions of these people. Which is to say, anytime you cast a movie or a TV show, every part has been cast from this same limited, anemic, fruity pool of talent. If you're looking for a gifted 25 year old actor, then you're looking for someone who made a commitment in adolescence to study the craft of the stage. Which is to say, an overly sensitive, highly artistic fruit of a young man. That's how you get a gifted 25 year old actor. Which is fine I guess if you're casting a Woody Allen movie and every other scene takes place in a gallery party or a SoHo loft. But when the time comes to cast some real manly men, you can't get any real manly men. You can only get a sensitive drama-club guy doing what he thinks is an impression of a blue collar, masculine dude.

To be fair, occasionally you get someone like Schwartzenegger, who broke into the business just because of his physical attributes, and not because of any "muse". So sometimes, you can pluck someone from real life and make an actor out of them. But it's rare. And actually, I tend to enjoy those performances the best. But generally, we're stuck with fruity actors trying to portray non-fruity non-actors. Sometimes they succeed. Usually they don't.

Leo as.... Howard Hughes?

Adrien Brody mans it up in King Kong.

Isn't it a weird let down when you watch your DVD extras and see these interviews with the actors, and you discover to your amazement that someone like Tom Wilkinson, in real life, is not some bad ass at all but is instead someone who talks about his "muse", and gets very animated about Shakespeare, and waxes romantic about some theatrical golden age, and so on? And you're like "This is the real Tom Wilkinson?" "A art-house fruit whose dinner table conversation is probably completely insufferable?" "Tom, Tom! Say it ain't so!"

Tom Wilkinson: Bad Ass

Fooled you!

And it gets worse. The guy in the film who plays his son was his school's drama-club weirdo. The guy playing the villain was his school's drama-club weirdo. The entire cast was each, individually, their own high school's sensitive, fruity, drama-club weirdo. Down to the last carefully coiffed guy. And these our our idols! Our sex objects! Our national celebrities who have the ear of the entire media whenever they have any opinion on politics, culture and law! The drama club clique!

The problem, at the most fundamental level, is that those who become actors were drawn to it at this impressionable high school level - and not because they were particularly good at it. No one has a childhood where the dad says "Wow son, you sure do know how to act! Have you considered studying it and maybe pursuing it as a career?" Not a chance. Rather than ability, it's a defect of ego and character that draws someone to dramatic performance - these people who constantly need to show off, be the center of attention and get a round of applause. If it was really about talent, then the high school drama coach would be more like the football coach. He'd try you out, tell you honestly that you had no talent, and you'd be gone. But the drama coach admires your passion and wants to nurture it, no matter what your abilities.

I say we elect a new profession as the pool of talent for all future movie casting, future celebrities and commentators on politics and culture. How about locksmiths? It can be like a rotating stewardship. I guarantee the acting would be better and the characters more authentic.

How Can Lotteries Claim They Have a $1 Million Jackpot When the Winner Only Gets About $250,000?

2007-10-05T16:07:00.001-07:00

I've never personally won a large lottery or gambling jackpot, but boy will I be pissed when I do. For those who don't follow these things, the way these enormous lottery jackpots work is like this: If you win, say, 100 million - you can either accept the money in 20 annual payments of 5 million each, or, you can just take 50 million right now (approximately) and walk away.

What this means, to put it as plainly as I can, is that you've only won 50 million. You didn't win 100 million. Sure, you could stockpile your 5 million payments for 20 years and then show me the whole 100 mil, but you could take the 50 million lump sum, invest it safely, and produce the same 20 year outcome. In other words, you've only won 50 million.

And then, even after you've been given the $50 million instead of the $100 million, you've got to give half of that to Uncle Sam. To put it simply, this blows.

So we've ended up with a state of affairs where any posted jackpot or huge cash prize is really only going to net you ONE QUARTER OF THE WHOLE THING if you actually win it. Does this get anyone else as angry as it does me?

How about I sponsor a lottery, only 1 dollar to enter... And the grand prize is a cool million. Yep, I will pay you a million dollars. However, the prize will be paid out in the form of an annuity payment of $1 a year. For a million years. Don't worry, it will be a trust and payments can continue to go to your descendants. Or... if you don't like that idea - you can take one single lump sum payment of $14.28. Which, assuming a generous interest rate, is how much my prize is actually worth.

But hey! A million dollars right! No. No it's not a million. And this lump sum, annuity payment bullshit is no different. It's just a lie. That's all it is. I propose that all stated jackpots and lottery payouts be publicly advertised, displayed and posted as the post-lump-sum, after-tax amount. So if the prize says 5 million, and you win - you actually get handed a tax-free check for $5 million. Am I wrong? What position would you rather be in? a) You win a $5 million jackpot and get handed the tax-free check for the whole amount, or b) You win a $20 million jackpot, and then you find out later that it really only adds up to about 5 mil?

In situation A I'd be jumping for joy. In situation B I'd be seriously pissed off. The local TV reporter would put a mike in my face and say "So Rowsdower, how does it feel to win $20 million?" And I'd be like "Uh, that's... $5 million, Jim. It's just $5 million." He: "Did you ever imagine you'd be a millionaire 20 times over?" Me: "Well, like I said, there's no $20 million. It's only $5 million." He: "How are you going to spend $20 mill-" Me: "Look would you shut up about the 20 million please! It's JUST 5 MILLION."

This is just common sense everyone. Let's stop inflating our jackpot promises up to these lofty imaginary numbers. Post-lump-sum, after-tax figures only. Sure, the powerball will never get up past 50 or 75 mil anymore, but I think we'll all be a little happier for the honesty.

Women Who Want to Fight Over the Baby's Last Name

2007-09-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

Some women want to keep their names after marriage. Good for them. Some women don't want the prefix Mrs. either. Fine. Great.

And now, more and more, there are some who aren't satisfied with that and want the baby to have their last name, too. And that, readers, is where I have to draw the line. Now, I have no kids. I speak purely hypothetically. But I would never consent to letting my kids take their mom's name. And I would resist hyphenation with every last fiber of effort.

The women I've spoken to have put forward a few arguments. The weakest ones are the "I went through pregnancy and labor and childbirth and you didn't" arguments. You did so voluntarily, is my response. No one put a gun to your head. Going through pregnancy doesn't entitle a person to some kind of compensation, like a paycheck.

The only argument that has merit is the obvious one, that men and women are equal - and that there's no reason for the child to always be named after the man. I have two responses to this. I think that either, independently, is satisfactory. The obvious retort here is that naming the baby after the mother isn't any fairer. There's no truly fair solution except hyphenation, or selecting an entirely new name. The problem with hyphenation, as others have pointed out to me, is that it's not a long-term solution. Will the great grandchildren be named Johnson-Merrick-Douglas-Finklestein-Shanks-Paisley-Wainright-Gibbs? And the problem with selecting a new name is that no one seems particularly keen to do it.

So the first problem with the "It's not fair" argument is that there's no fair solution being proposed. But now, allow me to introduce the world to the second compelling reason why women shouldn't be fighting this battle and should just gracefully concede it. This second reason is one that is intuitively understood by all men everywhere, but I've never really heard anyone articulate it before.

Women: if your men have to raise children who have your last name, they will be the laughingstock of men everywhere. Men know this, and this is why they will put up enormous resistance to the idea. They may not even care about passing on their name. They may not even like their name. But what they do care about is having every other guy they know and will ever know - including men of the future who have not even been born yet - think they are a whipped, neutered little pansy.

And this isn't just some idle fear. "Who cares what other people think?" you might be saying. "Why should bowing to the prejudices of others have any bearing on our decision?" Well, what if your husband needs to get a job someday? What if he needs to make contacts? What if he needs to make a sale? What if he needs to impress clients? What if he needs to build his reputation or influence others, for any reason, at any time? Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't mortally handicapped by everyone snickering behind his back about how his wife made him forfeit his own family name so he couldn't pass it on to his own kids? Does she make him pee sitting down too?

Maybe somewhere out there are some hippyish dudes who either don't care or who actually respect the choice. Sure they may exist. But will they be the dudes your husband needs to impress to get that account or make the sale? That's a big N-O.

So that's your dilemma women. If you actually win this fight you are dooming your man to a lifetime of humiliation and disrespect. And if you don't really care about that, then you suck. Count your blessings. Enjoy your advantages in other areas. You live longer. You have higher emotional intelligence. The whole multiple orgasm thing. When have you ever heard a man whine and say he was entitled to something because of his shorter lifespan? You don't. Yes, naming the baby after the man is unfair, but that's just life. The baby last name fight is just not a good place to stand your ground.

200 Annoyances

2007-09-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

181. Old people who are just now reaching the stage of email proficiency where it seems like a great idea to send out massive amounts of forwards to everyone they know.

182. The bottom third of the tortilla bag.

183. Sitting at the exact jurisdictional border of two waiters, and neither thinks he's covering your table.

184. People who use the counterfeit verification pen on small bills.

185. People who, when choosing donuts for the dozen-donut box, round out the selection with a coconut donut and a peanut donut. This is done out of some misguided belief that there needs to be complete variety in the donut box, and ignores the reality that not a single person on earth prefers the peanut or coconut donut. If I ran the show, when people chose one of these donuts, the clerks would be instructed to say "Ma'am, are you SURE you want a peanut donut?"

186. Celebrity game show contestants who play for animal charities.

187. A pick-up or SUV whose headlights are at the exact altitude to bounce off my rear view mirror directly into my pupils.

188. Wikipedia entries that inform me, in scholarly prose, that whatever I'm looking up is also the name of a manga/anime/videogame character/band/soap opera episode title/nickname of a wrestler/name of a fictional town in a graphic novel, etc. Who. gives. a. SHIT. Can wikipedia please create a separate site for this meaningless information?

189. Getting the white gumball.

190. When your birthday is too close to Christmas.

191. Foul smelling water in the gas station courtesy window wipe bucket.

192. Bad action/fantasy/sci-fi movies that have the arrogance to end with a sequel tease when it should have been abundantly clear to everyone that there would be no sequel.

193. Kids who make a big production out of adjusting the side mirrors to impress the driving tester.

194. That wheezing laugh. The one fat people have where it sounds like a pig is dying.

195. When news anchors ask their field reporters to describe something they're witnessing on a scale of 1 to 10, no reporter has ever said 4. Or 6. Really the whole 3 through 7 range is never used. This bugs me.

196. These spam emails with subject lines like "RE: your dental plan". Doesn't it cross the spammers minds that this implies I wrote an email with the subject line: "your dental plan"? Why would I write an email whose subject line is "your dental plan"? Wouldn't it be "my dental plan"? This seems like such a basic error yet I see it all the time. Try harder, spammers. Work for it.

197. People who take the elevator to the second floor at the gym.

198. Google not customizing its logo for Memorial Day or Veterans Day.

199. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Am I the only one who has always secretly felt that this just isn't a great quote? That the sentiment isn't really that profound? That the word choice was pedestrian? That its very quotability makes it seem manufactured and canned? Even when I was kid, I always thought "That was the best he could do?" I mean, I can't say anything, cause it's a "Great Quote". But c'mon. We needed a home run that day, and this wasn't it.

200. For the entire 20 year lifespan of the VCR, people have made the casual claim that they could make me a copy of a VHS tape. "Oh don't worry," they'd say. "I'll just hook up two VCRs together." But it never, ever happened. Was there any claim on earth more frequently made but with less actual follow through than the offer from a friend to dub a VHS tape to another VHS tape via linked VCRs? No one ever, not even once, ever did it. Granted, VCRs are almost entirely obsolete now, but it just must be stated for the record that no one, despite thousands of casual promises to the contrary, actually linked up 2 VCRs to make their buddy a copy of something, ever. And don't bother writing me saying that you did do it, and what the hell am I talking about. Think about it. Did you *really* hook up two VCRs at home to dub something? You really brought the bedroom VCR into the living room and sat there on the rug trying to make sense of all the cables? No. No you didn't. So why did you tell people you could? You just wasted their time.

Undead Army Post Mortem (plus predictions)

2007-09-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

To recap the discussion about Dr... you know, the guy running for president who was the subject of the last column. I can't actually say his name, because then the undead army will hone in on this blog again and batter me with insane comments. It turns out they use technorati.com to get minute by minute updates on any mention of... Dr. Grandpa, let's call him, in the entire blogosphere.

You may have noticed I didn't permit any comments on the last post. Not that they didn't try. If I hadn't turned on comment-moderation there would have been an endless chain of them - each one mentioning "Dr. Grandpa" and thereby triggering a new radar blip on technorati, thus bringing in a fresh wave of traffic and comments. Here is a sample of what the undead army had to say:

"...news flash: No other declared Republican candidate has any chance to be elected President in 2008, either. So if not having a chance to win means you shouldn't be in the debate, then that worthless thug Giuliani, that doddering old fool and fascist pig McCain, that cult member and all around worthless Ken doll Romney, the genocidal maniac Tancredo, and the medieval Young Earther trailer trash Huckabee and Brownback shouldn't be in the debates either. Maybe the networks can just shoot a picture of empty chairs and broadcast it as dead air for two hours instead of having a debate at all."

By the way, did anyone see Dr. Grandpa get smacked around the other day at the New Hampshire republican debate? I'm starting to think he actually adds something to the mix. No matter what our differences as republicans, be we worthless thugs, fascist pigs or young earthers, we can all rally around Dr. Grandpa and use him as a punching bag. No matter how many Dr. Grandpa rabid supporters are in the debate audience cheering his every word, it's still nice to see someone like Huckabee dress him down as he stands there blinking and uncomprehending.

Now I'll make a few predictions about the order in which the remaining republican candidates will exit. First out will be Duncan Hunter. Not because his is the most hopeless of the remaining candidacies, but because he actually seems like a sane person. Someone who might actually realize they're not going to win, and, as such, closes up shop. Duncan Hunter, I salute you. (presuming you do it)

Next will be Tancredo and Brownback, in indeterminate order. These guys aren't vanity candidates, and they aren't moonbats like Dr. Grandpa. They're issue candidates. Immigration and abortion, respectively. They're running to support their issues. Therefore, the hopelessness of the candidacy doesn't really phase them. As long as they can get airtime to promote their pet cause, they'll stay on the stage.

Then, Huckabee. He's got it in his head that he's a contender now - and until he's disabused of it, he won't drop out. But he isn't a contender. And he's reasonably sane. Look for him to exit sometime early next year.

McCain might drop out. Maybe. He's going to get crushed in all the early states, then he's going to designate a state as his "last stand" state, where he'll spend all his money and spend all his time. Basically, this was the Joe Lieberman Delaware strategy of 2004. McCain will pick his Delware... and proceed to get crushed there too. Just like Lieberman did. Hopefully at that point he'll have the good sense to exit.

The remaining 4: Giulianai, Thompson, Romney and Dr. Grandpa will slug it out to the bitter end. Look forward to a few debates where Dr. Grandpa gets wayyyyyyy too much airtime. Giuliani will win the nomination, and Thompson may be a good choice for a running mate. Too early to tell on that.

Ron Paul's Internet Army of the Undead

2007-08-24T17:56:00.001-07:00

You know, loyal reader, that I can't stand the presidential candidates who have no chance and yet insist on clogging the debate stages. To briefly recap why, it's because I think that the process of selecting a good president is fairly important to the country. As poorly as the debates are currently formatted, they are still the best forum to see our potential presidents defend their positions under cross examination. In my opinion, having to suffer equal time for a Chris Dodd or a Ron Paul is no different, literally no different, than mandating that presidential debates have to devote equal time to a clown that comes out and does a unicycle and bowling pin routine.

Saying that Paul or Dodd provide opinions and unique points of view we may not otherwise hear doesn't impress me at all. This isn't some kind of open mike night, shoot the shit, political roundtable, dorm room jam session where we say "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we abolished the IRS?" No. It's a presidential debate. It's a place for actual candidates with an actual chance of being president to spar with other actual candidates with positions that actual people actually take seriously.

If you really feel we should abolish the IRS then good for you, but you have a lot of hurdles to clear before you can justifiably take your case on network TV to waste my time with it in a forum that's supposed to be about weighing the merits of serious candidates. Get your man's polls out of the basement before you bring me these goofy, nutjob ideas.

Now, I have a special dislike for Ron Paul, more so than the rest of this year's crop of no-chancers. I dislike him on a personal level for two reasons. (And by the way, all pro-Paul comments on my site will be immediately deleted. I'm not interested in a dialogue with Paul's undead army, only in demoralizing them. Anti-Paul comments though are welcome.)

The first reason I dislike him is his politics. Anyone who advocates an immediate, total pullout of Iraq without even pausing to consider our responsibility for the genocide that would surely follow, can't be taken seriously. And then there was his specific comment in that one debate, the comment where he said: "They (the 9/11 terrorists) attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." And: "I'm suggesting we listen to the people who attacked us and the reasons they did it." Here's the whole, fun clip.

Yesssssssss, we should listen to the people who slaughtered 3,000 Americans wholesale. Why did they do it? I'm sure that if we just stopped our cowboy rampage in the middle east just long enough to hear out the radical Islamists, hear *why* they did it, instead of shooting first and asking questions later, then maybe WE would learn something. Of course, I'm guessing we'd hear "You stationed your troops too close to our holy pile of sand." but maybe I'd be wrong. Maybe there's a good, compelling reason for the slaughter of 3,000 innocent people, and we just haven't stopped to listen.

Or, maybe Ron Paul is an ignorant tool? I don't know, I'll just stay agnostic on this one.

The second reason I have a special dislike for Paul is that he commands a tireless, crazy, internet army of the undead. Maybe you've seen them. They're the people who swamp, swarm and overwhelm any internet based poll, discussion, survey, comment space, Q&A, or kaffeeklatsch where Paul is being discussed to offer unreserved praise and unrestrained support for "Dr. Paul".

Nothing wrong with showing support for your candidate, you ask? Why not give your guy a shout out, especially because he's a longshot and could use the boost, you say? Well, because, see, it's a lie. Ron Paul's national polls are in the basement. He consistently, consistently, comes in no higher nationally than 2 or 3 percent among republicans. These polls, the reputable ones, use random sampling. That is, they pick numbers at random out of the phone book, or use some other equalizer so that the sample for their survey is as unbiased as possible. When sampling is done in this responsible fashion, Paul weighs in - consistently, as I said - at 2 percent. (And at Betfair.com, the world's largest betting exchange, he's currently a 17-to-1 dog)

So when some outfit like ABC News or Drudge has an online poll after a debate, and Ron Paul wins it by something like triple the votes of the next highest guy, well.... it's a lie. It ain't so.

Paul didn't win the debate by some absurd triple margin. Indeed, he probably wizzed it down his withered leg. He merely has way more fanatical web-troopers willing to swarm the online-vote-button. And the saddest part about all of this has to be the gameplan of the undead army. They think - seriously - than they can sway people over to Ron Paul by swarming web sites and deluging them with Pro Paul comments. This is their honest to God strategy for winning. Like someone out there is going to be fooled by a rigged debate poll. And these comments they leave on websites. They always start with some neutral sounding paragraph about how much they like the website and have enjoyed reading the contents, and then the second paragraph always begins the same way: "Now personally, I support Dr. Paul." Suuuuure you do buddy. This approach always has the faint aroma of the Mormon missionary who thinks he can loosen me up by asking me if I saw the big game last night before he tells me that he found Jesus.

How did you guys get together anyway? Were you all Lyndon LaRouche supporters, who had nowhere to go after he retired? So you wandered the earth like masterless samurai, waiting for the next hopeless candidate where you could practice your crazy arts? I don't suppose it would mean anything to you if I said that Ron, sorry, "Dr. Paul" doesn't have the remotest chance of winning anything? Does that give you pause for even a second? Does the fact that he came in behind the amateurish Tom Tancredo in the straw poll get you even the tiniest bit depressed? The straw poll! The one event where you can actually bus in your supporters and essentially buy your votes! He couldn't beat Tancredo, the guy who's been casually threatening to nuke our enemies. Couldn't beat him! When you can press a "Vote Here" button online, you guys are all over it like stink on a monkey. But getting a few thousand people into Ames, Iowa - that's a little complex for your armchair generalship, isn't it?

What's the day after Ron Paul's candidacy is over going to be like? Will there be one of those muted, reflective get togethers - one of those somber parties with wine, easy listening music and balloons - where you reminisce and talk about getting back together in 2012? Somehow I don't think so. I think you're all going to move on without a flinch to your next crazy project. What will it be? Rigging the online polls for People Magazine's Worlds Sexiest Man? Stocking more canned food in your fortified, underground bunker? Joining Woody Harrelson's hemp crusade? How about endorsing Tony Cox, the longshot's longshot?

Maybe Ron Paul will run as an independent after he loses the nomination? Won't that be fun. Then we get an additional half-year of you people.

There's really nothing else to say. Except, perhaps: "Go away. Your elderly, confused candidate has no chance. Every word you say is wasted breath, and every line you type is someone else's wasted time. Go bang your head against a door with gradually increasing force until you stop liking Ron Paul. Then apply a cold compress and just cry it out."

How Can Elmer's Glue Keep Calling Itself a Back-To-School Supply?

2007-08-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

Nearly every August, when I'm hit with all the back-to-school ads, I see an enormous amount of Elmer's Glue placed front and center.

Can you believe this racket? What kind of a coup is this for Elmer's Glue? It's frickin' glue! You don't need glue in school! I mean what, for a crafts project? For sticking pipe cleaners on construction paper? Something you do in kindergarten and then never do again? For this you need four bottles of glue?

I remember we had white out in school. We may have even had a jar of rubber cement. But outside of shop class, where was the glue? My family owned, I think, a single container of glue, which more than amply met our glue needs for the entirety of my primary education.

Normally, I'd be pointing my finger at Elmer's, crying shame, and demanding that they stop pushing glue as a back-to-school necessity. But the thing is, I don't believe Elmer's is the real culprit here. Oh sure, they're riding this free publicity for all it's worth. But it seems like Office Depot type stores and stationers are pushing the glue all on their own. Like they perennially find themselves long on glue as autumn approaches and are forced to push their inventory like a waiter would push an overstocked Bordeaux.

And the parents are partially culpable as well, for buying into the glue scam. "I can't let Jayden be the only one without Glue!"

But then again, maybe the stationers advertise glue in their back-to-school sales to provide some kind of visual ballast in the ad. I mean, you've got erasers, rulers, mechanical pencils, notebooks. It's all so dry. So boring. It actually reminds you of, well, being in school. Not good. But the glue says fun. It says active. It says you're doing something.

So I checked out the Elmer's website, and yeah, they're milking this for all it's worth. If you don't have a tube of glue in your bag on the first day of school, then you're one sorry motherfucker. I mean, can you believe this site? Teacher's corner? Lesson plan tips? This is a company whose sole purpose is to manufacture polyvinly acetate polymer adhesive. But they want to tell me how to make sure children don't hog space at the water fountain. So yes, they're milking the whole back-to-school ambassador status.

Do you think maybe that in the ye-olden days of American school that glue really was a vital school supply? And that as glue has gradually been phased out as an academic tool, the back-to-school retail industry just hasn't caught up yet? That would probably be the most charitable way to look at it, so maybe I'll just leave it at that and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

People, You Don't Need to Cut Holes in the Soda Can Plastic Rings Anymore

2007-05-31T15:06:00.001-07:00

Every so often, I still see someone piously taking out the scissors to thoroughly carve up a six-pack plastic ring, or "yoke" before disposal. When I see someone do this, they throw me that look. The "I pity you" look. It's the look that says "Maybe YOU don't cut up the plastic rings, Mr. Choke-a-fish, but some of us have a little compassion."

What the sanctimonious yoke snippers don't seem to get is that they already won this fight. You don't have to cut up the six-pack plastic rings anymore because they're all photodegradable now, and have been so for almost 20 years. US and Canadian law demands they be photodegradable, and the one company that makes them, ITW Hi-Cone, bends over backwards to demonstrate how environmentally friendly they are. Did you know they're all made from post consumer product and are made from 30% less material than a generation ago?

Leave them out in the sun for more than two weeks and they disintegrate. Throw them in the ocean and they float to the surface and disintegrate. There's really nothing bad you can say anymore about six-pack plastic rings. They're used in arts and crafts. The days where you could see humorous sights like this are long, long gone.

But cutting up the rings is just one of those leftover behaviors that you can't get anyone to shake off. It's been drilled in so well that you have to cut up the rings. It's a relic. It's like how every gas station still screams out "UNLEADED" 30 years after it's necessary. It's like the people who are still fighting the battle against styrofoam and preaching about saving the whales.

That's it for today. I was actually working on a grand treatise about which supermarket items it's okay to buy the generic versions of, and which items really demand a brand-name purchase - but now that I've taken such a hard stance against branding, maybe it wouldn't be appropriate anymore. It's just... diet coke is so much better than diet rite... I have to admit I'm conflicted here.

Don't Be a Dusthole

2007-05-19T00:37:00.000-07:00

That's right readers, don't be a dusthole. For at least the last year or two there have been these billboards all around Las Vegas cautioning drivers not to "be a dusthole". I see one on my commute every day, and sometimes I'm stopped at a red and I get to just stare at it. Here, have a look:

Here's my problem. After living with this billboard in my neighborhood for several years and contemplating it more than once, I have to confess: I STILL HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IT MEANS. And I'm a guy, not to toot my own horn here, I'm a guy with some experience at breaking down ads and deciphering all the hidden insults. But this billboard has been my kryptonite. This ad is just a wall of incomprehensibility. I *want* to know what it's talking about so I can scoff at its presumptiveness and go drive through a little dust just to show it who's boss. But I can't just drive through some dust, cause, this is Vegas and there's dust everywhere, I drive through dust every day, it accumulates on my windows faster than I can clean it, and - for the love of God what the hell is the point of this billboard!

Am I supposed to swerve out of the way when I see dust? Am I supopsed to avoid dust if I see a pile of it on the median? Am I supposed to judge an oncoming dust storm and steer in the opposite direction? And no, those aren't sarcastic asides, those are my actual theories for what the billboard means. I can't just dismiss this appeal to "steer clear" of dust as the rantings of an insane person, which is what it feels like - because someone actually cared enough about this issue to design a public awareness ad campaign, craft the ads, and pay for billboards all around town. So someone with money clearly cares about my driving habits with regard to dust avoidance, but in all of their planning they forgot the most important ingredient - the ingredient that makes your billboard make sense.

So the plan today, right here with you the reader, is to go on the internet, track down the sponsors of this billboard, and find out finally, for once and all, what steering clear of dust actually means and why the Dusthole, pictured, is such a poor dust-steering-clearing decision maker. So here we go...

Okay, I'm back. And now finally, I do know what steering clear of dust means. But I will say, that was not an easy search. I had to deploy all of my googling prowess to track this info down. I did all kind of searches for "air quality", "Las Vegas", "billboard" and "dusthole" and came up with nada. Actually, surprisingly, all I found were other blogs also expressing confusion over the dusthole.

The breakthrough came when I found this site, which you really need to see for yourself. It didn't solve the mystery, but at least now I had a name for the dusthole face: "Dusty the Dusthole"

Now I renewed my search for the meaning of the billboard, using the name Dusty. And voila. I found this article from the RJ. It's a long article about the successful ad campaign to raise dust awareness. Bafflingly, it almost completely omits any mention of what Dusty is supposed to be teaching us. I ask again: what does "Steer Clear of Dust" mean? In the name of the baby Jesus, please, what does it mean? But then thankfully, we get this money paragraph:

Reid and fellow commissioners credited the success of the dust-control program in part to public awareness through television ads that featured Dusty the Dusthole, a character with a penchant for stirring up dust by driving fast on unpaved roads and speeding across vacant lots.

So that's it. Driving on unpaved, dusty roads or lots stirs up dust that pollutes the air. Okay, now how was I supposed to figure that out from the "Steer Clear of Dust" slogan and a picture of a guy with Down syndrome? Shouldn't it have been "Don't kick up dust." with a picture of a truck... I don't know, kicking up dust?

The good news is, I don't think I've ever taken a shortcut across a vacant lot, so I can finally feel relieved that I'm not a dusthole. It had been weighing on my mind. And Clark County, by virtue of having an indecipherable billboard, actually succeeded in its mission, which was to raise awareness. Consider me aware.

I leave you now with my favorite Las Vegas billboard, located somewhere around Decatur and Spring Mountain, which I think pretty much speaks for itself. Till next time!

Willy Wonka Hypocrisy

2007-05-13T14:56:00.000-07:00

So I had the opportunity to rewatch this movie recently. The original Willy Wonka. A fine, fine film in my opinion. Has it aged well? Eh, mostly. It does feel out of place that Charlie bumps into an honest to God tinker outside the factory gates. I mean, a tinker? Even in 1971 I'm not sure how many tinkers there were wandering the streets.

Also there's the gum thing. I feel like I grew up in an era that was still recovering from some kind of childhood gum plague. Teachers in school would tell us with the harshest insistence: "Absolutely no gum chewing in my classroom! Do you hear me!" And we're all looking at each other thinking "Gum? Who chews gum? What gum?" So presumably there was a time when children chewing excessive amounts of gum was a huge problem, I just had the good fortune to be born afterwards. No, our problem were those damn curling bracelets that looked like little rulers but they snapped onto your wrist. What were those things? Where have they gone?

But anyways, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory takes a bold stance against gum chewing, and it does feel a little out of date. But dated or not, it is still a great movie.

Well, except for a slightly bigger problem. See, the film has always seemed a little hypocritical to me. How? Well, the Roald Dahl book is a morality tale. Dahl shows us that kids with bad habits get what's coming to them. Take Augustus Gloop for instance:

He's a glutton. He's fat. He eats too much chocolate. He falls in the chocolate river and gets sucked up the pipe. Lesson: don't be such a pig. But now here's the funny thing. Do you know who made the film? Not Paramount or Disney. The film was made by the Quaker Oats Company, and it was made first and foremost as a marketing tool to sell these candy bars:

The actual Wonka candy bar was a complete failure (supposedly it was like a Nestle Crunch bar with graham instead of crackle), but the movie was a big hit. Now if you want to make a film adaptation of a Roald Dahl morality tale about the dangers of eating too much chocolate, do you really think it's wise to use the film as a vehicle to sell chocolate? Don't you think that just slightly undermines the message?

And that's without even mentioning that the book contains another character, Mike Teavee, who's addicted to television:

Why would you make a film adaptation out of a story whose moral is that television is bad for children? Isn't there a bit of a problem there? It would be like, I don't know, making a Cliffs Notes edition of a book about the dangers of using Cliffs Notes. Or taking a book about the sad lives of circus animals, and doing a stage adaptation of it with actual circus animals. It's just not a good idea. Did the filmmakers mind these two casual betrayals of the moral of the story?

So there's always been that hypocrisy with the Willy Wonka film. The film tries to draw moral lessons, and the filmmakers undercut the lessons. But then, with the new, inferior Tim Burton remake, we get a fresh dose of hypocrisy.

See, they've reinvented Mike Teavee. Now he's a video game addict. He's not just vain like the original Mike, now he's violent:

What a smart idea. How bold of Tim Burton to update Mike for the 21 century. It's not just television that rots the brain, it's these damned video games. Good for you Tim Burton! Kids today need to be told what's bad for them. What bold commentary. What fresh insight. What courageous... wait a minute! Hold on! What's this?

Why, it's a video game of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "Hey kids, crack is bad for you. Oh and by the way, here, have some crack." Tim Burton, you're a hack. You're nothing. And yeah, the movie sucked. What the hell was up with Johnny Depp?

Do you see now why I hate marketing? Look how they've exploited Roald Dahl and undermined his story. Look how they've sold him out. And for what? To make money? Is that all? Man does this get me cheesed.

Branding

2007-05-05T14:46:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to go into full soapbox mode for this one, so everyone should probably stand back. In fact you may just want to browse out of here.

I think that advertising cheapens and coarsens our lives. It pollutes society. It takes the joy out of everything it touches. It teaches us all the wrong lessons. Any one ad, taken in isolation, is irritating but benign. It's the cumulative force of tens of thousands of them, over years, that cause permanent damage.

Coca Cola, you see, doesn't make you happy. It doesn't mean that the party has started, it doesn't help you bond with the guys, it doesn't take you back to the old days. There are other things in life that really can make you happy; but if you've been tricked into thinking that Coca Cola does it, you're that much poorer. You're further away from the real pursuit of happiness. You've let Coca Cola detour you into a dead end.

I've tried to resist this programming. I know that ads promise things, like happiness, that have nothing to do with their product, but I don't think I've escaped the effects. I know I've been programmed to think that going out and buying something will make me feel better. The act of buying and the act of owning have been drilled into me as the source of personal fulfillment.

Just a brief disclaimer now. All of this is not a prelude to saying that we need to a) renounce materialism and go live on a commune, or b) find Jesus. I'm actually a big cheerleader for materialism, in the sense that I think that all of our material conveniences and comforts are necessary stage-setting for the real pursuit of personal fulfillment. My swiffer doesn't provide happiness, but it cuts the cleaning time in half so that I can spend that surplus time doing something meaningful (or, more typically, playing Grand Theft Auto). For that reason alone I'm grateful for the swiffer.

It's "branding" that has to go. Branding is evil. Branding is responsible for this cheapening of our lives. Here's my amateur theory on the subject.

I think in the old days of consumerism, the really old days, there was no government oversight, no money-back guarantee, snake oil salesmen selling you mysterious tonics and potions, and lots of bad science floating around. If you bought something, drank it, and were allergic to the wrong thing, you could keel over and die. This is why good products, back then, had to trade on their name. If your toothpaste said "Colgate" on it, then you could be relatively assured that it was good toothpaste.

I seem to remember as a kid that a lot of advertising would stress the word "guarantee". Our product is guaranteed. Works every time or your money back. Company founders would appear in their best suit in the ad and give their personal word that the product was guaranteed to work as promised. You don't see that too much anymore. No one makes "It really works!" the focus of the ad these days. Now it's more likely to be a 30 second skit with a joke and some sexual innuendo with the product as a central prop to the play.

The reason why the "guarantee" ads have disappeared is that everything is guaranteed now. By the time something gets to your supermarket shelf, it's passed every conceivable test for safety and effectiveness. And if something still manages to go wrong, you get immediate service recovery. And if something still isn't resolved to your satisfaction, you can sue the bastards.

But the whole reason that Brands and Jingles and Catch-Phrases existed was to convince you of the quality of the product. Now that the quality of any product on any shelf is always guaranteed, what do we need the aggressive sales pitch for anymore? I've always conceded that commercials can sometimes function in an instructive way - for example showing me a upcoming movie that I wasn't aware of, or alerting me to a going-out-of-business sale, or announcing hat day at the ballpark, etc. But there's no longer any need to tell me to use Colgate brand toothpaste.

Because, now, there's no difference between Colgate, Aquafresh and Crest. None. It's all the same thing. Any ad that tries to persuade you that Colgate is superior is just a phenomenal waste of time, money and energy. At best, it annoys you and spoils an otherwise pleasant 30 seconds. At worst it actually succeeds in persuading you that Colgate is better.

So how can a commercial persuade you that one branded commodity product is better than another branded commodity product. The method that marketers have discovered is to persuade you that the toothpaste offers something more than just the normal toothpaste-y goods. One way is to differentiate the brand by inventing lots of different toothpaste categories, like Tartar control, extra whitening, maximum strength (?), etc.

But the problem with that is that Aquafresh and Crest will quickly mimic any successful toothpaste differentiation you can cook up. They'll have their own Tartar control product. So now what?

Now is when you get really sneaky. Now is when you decide that toothpaste can actually transport you into an entirely different lifestyle or social class. If you make an ad that shows a woman scrubbing with Colgate before hopping gleefully into bed with an attractive man in what is obviously a well appointed house, you're pitching a lifestyle. If you see that commercial enough thousands of times, you might actually start to associate Colgate with great sex and fabulous wealth.

And yes, I'm by no means the first person to make this case. In fact it's been made to me in several classrooms - sadly though it's been made by teachers who actually endorse this kind of marketing, and who clearly admire the strategy.

Modern marketing says that you don't pitch the product, because that's futile - all of your competitors have the same product. You have to pitch something that's out of reach, something that's otherwise unobtainable. Colgate doesn't just clean your teeth, it also leads to great sex. You don't need to demonstrate how Colgate can provide great sex, you just need to put them in the same picture frame over and over.

Now this indeed might be the best way to boost toothpaste sales. I can't fault the theory on its successful track record. But I wonder if the professors and faculty in my school's Marketing Department have thought about what they're helping to do to society. (Jeez, and I really hate writing sentences like that last one. But it's worth it. The message has to get out.)

What it does is promote a gnawing sense of insecurity that whatever we currently have isn't good enough. This bombardment of film footage that we are constantly subjected to that equates product ownership with happiness - it messes with our programming. I know my programming has been permanently altered. If someone were to ask me right now: what's the best laundry detergent on the market? Without hesitation I would say "Tide". But, Tide isn't better than any other detergent. All of those detergents: Wisk, Gain, All, Cheer, Tide - all of them - they're all the same. That smug sense of satisfaction I get when I take my Tide to the laundry room and see all the poor saps with their generic supermarket detergent. How I pity them! They can't afford Tide. Maybe I should be charitable and give them a cup? Give them a taste of the good life... See how Tide has twisted my brain?

And these professors, these educators are going into the classroom every day and instructing the next generation how to perpetuate the deception. Does anyone ever raise their hand and ask why we should devote so much time and strategy to convince total strangers that Coke is better than Pepsi, when it's actually not better? That would be a fun question to ask in class.

What can I possibly hope for here? Will ads ever die? Sometimes, when the product becomes so commoditized that no one can even pretend to claim that their brand is better, then the ads go away. Like... I don't know - salt. No one makes ads trying to claim that their salt is the bomb. Unless I just haven't seen them. I can't recall any salt ads where the woman takes the salt down from the cupboard and the muscular, manly husband comes up behind her and puts his arms around her and nuzzles her neck. "Mmm... smells delicious honey. Is that Morton's Iodized table salt?"

Well, yep, I'm definitely plummeting down from the coffee high now, so it's time to wrap it up. People, don't be fooled by ads. All those different brands, they're all the same. Okay, maybe a laundry detergent connoisseur can detect the slightly different bouquet of Cheer and prefers it to Downy, but whose fault is it that he got the idea in his head to have a detergent preference in the first place? Can one really have a preference? Can one really express individuality through brand choice?

All right, I'm done. No more soapbox today.

Ads for States

2007-04-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

Isn't it true that there are certain businesses that just shouldn't advertise? Especially on TV? When you see a lawyer standing in front of a wall of books saying "Have you been injured in a motorcycle or automobile accident?" - doesn't that ad accomplish the exact opposite of what it intends? The only thing it tells me is: do not, under any circumstances, use this lawyer. A lawyer who advertises on TV cannot logically be a good lawyer. I'm not saying he's not a lawyer who can't make money from rolling the dice on car-accident cases, but still - he isn't a good lawyer.

And so it is with states who pump out the ads on TV. Here's the rule of thumb. The more feverish the state's tourism office seems in its advertising, the more it boasts, the more they deluge you with their ad campaign, etc. the less you'd ever want to go there.

How many times have you ever seen an ad that says: "New York. Excitement awaits!"
How about never? "The District of Columbia. Come see our rich history." Nope. "Texas. Saddle up and ride!" Haven't seen it. These places don't need ads. These are states that are confident in their ability to draw a crowd. They don't need to strut on the street corner that is a Jeopardy! commercial break.

By contrast, no matter where I go in the US, I am carpet bombed with ads for North Carolina. All the freaking time. The beaches. The surf. The lush landscapes. The history! The peaceful bucolic countryside. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Every damn state has natural splendor. Even New Jersey and Delaware and Rhode Island and Kansas has its share of natural splendor. No matter where you are in the USA, you are probably no more than an hour's drive from as much natural splendor as ANYTHING North Carolina has to offer. What am I saying? I'm saying you can't make "Come see our natural splendor" the central focus of your state tourism ad campaign. A few states like Alaska can get away with it. But North Carolina is just barking up the wrong tree here.

With the NC ads I get this distinct whiff of the old orange juice ad problem. The orange juice ads would remind us how healthy orange juice is and then say something like "Doctors recommend drinking a glass of Tropicana orange juice every day." Well why does it have to be Tropicana, doctor? The same goes with North Carolina. "Like beaches? Like, uh, ferns? Like crickets at night? Like clement weather? Then come to North Carolina!" Well why? Why North Carolina? What temptations and delights can NC possibly have to distinguish it from whatever state you're already in? If what you want is a beach trip, aren't there a dozen states with better beaches? How about Civil War sites? Aren't there far better places to go? Lush countryside? Sleepy towns? What? Tell me! Why would I possibly set foot in this mediocre state?

I give North Carolina Kitty Hawk and that's it. I'm sure there's a good exhibit there, and then probably a decent crab shack next door. Fine. That's one interesting morning you can spend in NC. Other than that, there's no reason to visit. The info on the state quarter pretty much satisfies all my curiosity about NC.

Doctors

And doctors too, of course. Any doctor that advertises on TV is a doctor to avoid. In fact, there's really only one method to find a good doctor. What you do is mention to a trusted friend that you've got this recurring sinus infection, and then the friend leans over and tells you in a conspiratorial tone: "I have this great Ear Nose & Throat guy. The best. Give him a call. Tell him you're a friend."

Then you call the guy, and you find out that a) He doesn't take your piddling insurance plan, b) he doesn't take cash patients, and c) there's a 6 month wait for an appointment. That's how you find a good doctor. You don't just scan your PPO book for the guy with the closest office, and you certainly don't trust a doctor who advertises on TV.

Universities

And hoo boy, you do not want to go anywhere near a institution of higher learning that sees fit to market itself to a mass audience. I suppose if you're completely unskilled and unemployed, and you see an ad for some vocational technical school, then that's okay. Something like DeVry. But if it's an actual 4-year college or university with aspirations to seriousness and respectability, then what the hell are they thinking? When was the last time you ever saw "Harvard. A fine education... at reasonable prices."

There are just some places and people: doctors, lawyers, universities and states - whose success depends on a perceived self-confidence. By advertising, you cheapen yourself. You expose yourself as struggling in the contest with your competition. You send out the warning beacon to stay far away.

Now go on and sue me, states! That's right, take your best shot! (These state tourism offices can be litigious. Just see what the state of Maine did to a blogger who dared criticize its ad campaign)

These "Unrated" DVDs of PG-13 Movies

2007-04-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

Isn't this just the biggest crock?

I'm afraid I missed the long, slow buildup to what is currently an enormous cinematic debacle. Just as you don't see an ant or a roach until you've got a full blown infestation, it wasn't till recently that I scanned the aisle at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and realized that every third title is "Unrated and Uncensored!"

Again, what an enormous, stinking load of bullshit this is. To add 2 seconds of bared breast to your unpleasant PG-13 comedy and then release it as Unrated! like it's a long lost cut of Behind the Green Door - it makes me want to give up all civilization and become Amish. Then kill a lot of people. And then become Amish again.

Here's a condensed version of this sad story. Once upon a time, back when ratings were a whole lot stricter, there were movies that were too violent/disturbing/sexual to get an R rating. But it was the kiss of death to accept an X rating, because the porn industry had eagerly claimed that letter as its own. So if you were unwilling to cut the film down to an R, you screened the movie where possible as "unrated" and hopefully made a few dollars. Unrated meant X, but not porn.

Then we got NC-17, which was supposed to eliminate the gray area, but it didn't work because theaters still wouldn't screen NC-17s and most stores wouldn't carry them. At this point, moviemakers essentially gave up, and resigned themselves to not making movies that couldn't pass by with an R. We, the public, are the losers. In a way, the pendulum has swung back towards permissiveness, since the R rating keeps getting more and more lenient. I'd say it now captures most of what was previously NC-17 territory. Can any movie get an NC-17 for violence alone? At one time I'd say yes. Now, no.

So that's the history of the "unrated" label that the American Pie marketers are now feverishly trying to exploit. Never mind that today's young audiences don't know that "unrated" used to mean taboo, the tactic seems to be working all the same. So now you've got one of these Mr & Mrs Smith or Date Movie! type movies, and they're barely squeaking by with a PG-13. The studio strategy is to edit a blatantly R version of the film for the MPAA and ask for a PG-13 rating. The MPAA falls for the ruse perfectly by demanding a list of 15 specific cuts and changes to get the PG-13. But the studio doesn't care. They threw 40 things in there which deliberately challenge the PG-13 rating. If they have to remove 15, that means they get to keep the other 25. And they get the PG-13 rating.

So now, when it's time to release the DVD, you put the 15 cuts back in and you simply don't resubmit the new edit to the MPAA. Now you've got an unrated version. But here's the thing: The "uncensored" parts that you're now reincorporating into the movie were conceived as bits that could possibly slip by the MPAA into a PG-13 version. In other words, they're weak-R. They're barely-R. They were filmed with the intention of being part of a PG-13 movie.

So when you see something like this in the comedy aisle, stop and take stock of all the ways you're being insulted and deceived.

1) Nothing in America is censored. A DVD that claims to be uncensored is really just saying "We, the studio, chose to self-censor this movie earlier because we knew we could make more money. Now, we can un-censor our own product, because, again, we can make more money."

2) The bits that are now uncensored are weak, weak R-rated shots, some no longer than a single second. Go rent Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Even a tame R rated movie like that has acres more nudity than an uncensored Taj. Go rent The Sure Thing.

3) An attempt is being made to confuse you into associating an unrated PG-13 movie with the Unrated movies of yore. The real unrated movies. Doesn't that piss you off?

4) And what the hell is Blockbuster and Walmart and Target and Best Buy doing? Don't they have these high and mighty policies about only stocking movies with certain ratings? So now anyone can sell an unrated movie at Best Buy? What happens when Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer comes out as unrated on DVD? What will the Best Buy policy be then? Or Delicatessen?
What kind of cartwheels of logic will be necessary to ban some unrated movies but keep others?

On my recent trip to Blockbuster I asked about their ratings enforcement. Do they treat their unrated movies as R's or PG-13s? Or more than R's? Answer: a blank stare. Kids can rent R rated movies at blockbuster if the account says that they have permission. Do the unrated movies count as R's? Apparently it's at the discretion of the guy at the counter. So..... no.

But don't get me wrong. What's bothering me isn't the idea of kid seeing a tit. It's the rank hypocrisy of Blockbuster. The pious rental chain that won't stock NC-17 fare, the chain that strictly enforces the rating system. I guess when you dangle an extra $3.25 in front of blockbuster their principled position kinds of melts away. And you know, it's not just the hypocrisy. And it's not just the studio's presumption of my stupidity. And it's not just the way that they market their movies to confuse and deceive.

Unrated movies used to mean something. An unrated video meant that you were about to see some seriously messed up shit, or at the very least some bush. Movies that could shock and appall. Exciting movies. Dangerous movies. Movies where buttery fingers could at any minute slip up Marlon Brando's anus and it was par for the course.

And now every third movie on the aisle is unrated, and so of course it ceases to mean anything. Pornographers, in the 70s, exploited the ratings process and turned it into a form of advertising. Single X.... how about Triple X! (question, was there ever a Double X porn movie?) Now, national lampoon is doing THE EXACT SAME THING. Using the MPAA process (and the MPAA are themselves spineless and unprincipled) as a way to promote product.

Roger Ebert is right. (Not something I say every day) The rating system is broken. The whole idea of going back and forth with the MPAA to get the most graphic and explicit R or PG-13 that you can goes against the entire spirit of what the ratings are for in the first place. It also guarantees that the limit of what's acceptable will just keep moving north. Ebert wants an "M" rating, for movies that are too harsh for R, but aren't pornographic. But he's misguided in thinking that this would work. NC-17 was the M rating. That was supposed to be its function. But it failed because it's never going to be in a theater's interest to take a film that comes with a built-in limited-audience handicap. The theater will always be better off posturing and saying "We only play family fare here", (as they show Hostel on 3 screens).

No, there really is no good solution. Eventually the establishment will take a stand against the proliferation of these unrated DVDs, and then blockbuster will clean up its act. Until then, sit back and enjoy borderline R movies that boast that they're Uncensored!

Porn in my PS2

Speaking of arbitrary ratings and smut, why is it that when I put porn DVDs in my PS2 I get prompted to authorize parental control level 8? What in God's name do I need to put in there to get prompted for level 9 or 10? Cause the scale on the screen goes to 10. You may not be aware how disheartening it is to put in some serious porn and find out that you've triggered only this medium-high response from the PS2 parental control. Here I thought I was going to watch some hardcore shit, and the PS2 is treating it like it's one of the lesser Emmanuelles, or a Victoria Secret catalogue or a Oui Magazine.

What do I have to do to get the 10, Sony? What do you want? A snuff film? Nazi medical experiments? I'll do it! Just tell me! I want that 10.

The scary thing here is that according to Sony's logic, they have envisioned a situation where a parent might permit a child to watch anything up to and including hardcore porn, but absolutely nothing more adult than that! You hear me buster! Level 8 and that's it! Now be a good boy and watch your Seka.

Fill Soda Bottles Up All the Way, You Cheap Bastards

2007-03-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

I mean wtf? As usual, I'm the one who has to give voice to what I'm sure is an unspoken, private complaint of millions. My whole life I've looked at that empty neck in the coke bottle, and my passing thought has always been: "Hmmm, I'm sure there's some good reason for that." But no, there is no good reason. The bottlers are cheap bastards, and they'll keep giving us progressively emptier and emptier bottles until we just refuse to take it anymore.

Have you ever thought about how much money you've spent on ATM fees over your whole life? A lot, right? Wouldn't it be nice to have all that money back? Well imagine how much soda you've lost to this 90%-full bottle bullshit over the years? Imagine a truck pulling up to your house with all that missing soda. You'd be sitting pretty, friends. You'd be set.

What are the purported reasons for the empty neck? So the soda can breathe, like a fine wine? So a freshly opened bottle won't spill as easily?

"Well come on Rowsdower, it's a carbonated beverage. It's physics. It's about the pressure building up in the bottle, especially when agitated. Don't complain about things you know nothing about."

Oh yes, of course! The carbonation. Wouldn't want to fill up a soda bottle all the way with all that pressure building up. I take it all bac... wha? Wait a minute.... what's this?

The same shit with bottled water? But I thought it was all about carbonation? Ahhhh, so that was just a pile of BS? I see. You cheap, cheap bastards.

Wouldn't it be nice to open a bottle of soda and see the fizzy, quivering surface right there at the top? To know you've gotten your full $1.25's worth? Look at Gatorade, people. See the way it should be done.

Now as long as we're talking about bottled water, I want to spend just a minute discussing some of the claims made on the water bottles about their purification process.

I always like to look, first of all, at where the bottle is maintaining the water comes from. And for the record, I trust something like "Bottled from an Idaho Municipal Water Source" about ten times as much as I trust something like "Bottled from the finest protected natural streams in the United States and Canada". Sometimes it's just "Bottled in Roanoke, Virginia" which tells you virtually nothing, although you can pretty easily assume it means somebody's tap. But my general rule of thumb is to trust the water that proudly claims that it's from a municipal source, and not to trust the bottles that get all vague about crystal streams and leafy glades and babbling brooks and sylvan glens. There's something ugly in that sylvan glen. Something they don't want you to know about. I steer clear of those waters.

But the latest trend is for the water to admit that it's bottled locally from the tap, but then to claim that all kind of purification rituals are performed on it, returning it to a pristine H2O state. I am deeply suspicious of this.

To understand my suspicions you need to understand the sorry state of Las Vegas tap water. For those of you who don't live here I'll break it down. We are serviced by the artificial reservoir Lake Mead - water diverted from the Colorado river. This wide open pool of standing water is pumped into our homes, and when the water is pumped out as sewage.... it gets a sewage treatment plant once-over..... and is dumped back into Lake Mead. Now recycling sewage back into drinking water might be okay on the international space station, but this is America's fastest growing city. If you actually drive out to lake Mead to look at our drinking supply, it's an alarming sight. People bathe in it. There are watersports. Jet skis zip around. Blue smoke pours out of outboard motors. Makes you thirsty, doesn't it?

By the time this reclaimed sewage has had the jet ski treatment and is pumped back into our homes it's been generously dosed with foul-tasting chemicals to make it safe for drinking. Which is a long way of saying that Las Vegas tap water sucks. It tastes like a children's pool.

So along comes a bottler like Niagara, claiming that they've purified our tap water. Suuuuuure.
The bottle says that they treat the water with:
1. Carbon Filtration
2. Reverse Osmosis
3. Microfiltration
4. UV Treatment
5. Ozonation

A list like this sets off all my warning bells. A name like "Reverse Osmosis" sounds too technical. It sounds like a name designed to pacify you into thinking that it's some really robust purification technique, when it fact all it means is that they've hired a person to blow on the water. If reverse osmosis means "blowing on water to make it colder" I am not going to be surprised. Okay, let's look it up....

Here's the scoop. Reverse Osmosis means "filtering". It's a screen that you push the water through. The water goes through, solid particles don't. Ah. How does that differ from... microfiltration? It doesn't. From wikipedia: "Microfiltration is not fundamentally different from reverse osmosis"

Ozonation and carbon filtering involve introducing carbon and ozone to the water to soak up bad things like bacteria. I have nothing to say about this.

Niagara water does taste pretty good, so maybe I shouldn't complain. But I can't shake the suspicion that purified Las Vegas tap water can't be much better than Kevin Costner's purified urine that he made on his Waterworld trimaran. The whole enterprise just seems wrong. I'll stick with my Idaho municipal water, if it's all the same to everyone.

Gas Station American Flags

2007-03-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

And now, let's talk about flags at gas stations. Huge, ginormous American Flags. Really big flags. Flags so large you need powerful, gale force winds to actually see them stream. The new home of the enormous American flag has become, for whatever reason, the suburban gas station. The Alamo never had flags this big. Tranquility Base on the moon didn't have a flag this big. Even George C. Scott would say, "Damn, that's one big gas station flag."

I have no problem with enormous gas station American flags; in fact they're nice to see. Plus, they sometimes offer urgent news bulletins. When Ronald Reagan died, how I did I find out? Word of mouth? A TV interruption? Nope, it was a gigantic gas station American flag, flying at half mast, alerting all that something was amiss. It's too bad we have to rely on something like a Chevron to uphold our civic traditions, but there you have it.

But friends, all is not well in the suburban gas station community. Was I the only one that noticed that the death of Gerald Ford threw them all into confusion? Did anyone notice (in whatever part of America you live in) that no one seemed to know when to return the flag to full staff? Ford died the morning of December 26th, and the flag is lowered for 30 days for the death of a president. But no one seemed quite sure when the 30 days were up. Was it 30 days to the minute of the death? 30 days from the presidential order to lower the flag? Or one month from the day of death? (Real answer: the flag could return to full staff after sundown on the 25th)

On the 25th, some flags were back up. Others stayed at half staff for days too long. My feeling is, if you're going to fly the largest American flags on earth as part of some who's-more-patriotic gas station arms race, you at least owe it to the people to obey the rules.

So my question is: who at Shell or Mobil headquarters is in charge of sending out flag bulletins? Does Exxon have a "Director of Enormous-Flag Affairs"? Does AM/PM have a Dead President Flag Coordination department? Does the slurpee guy actually do the raising and lowering? Does he fold a retired flag into the proper triangle.

I visited a local Terribles gas station (it's a Nevada chain) to get the answers. The clerk blinked a few times and referred me to the manager. The manager, for her part, seemed deeply suspicious that someone was asking about the flag. That particular flag is this one, although the picture doesn't really do justice to its size.

"We got a crew that takes care of that." she said. A crew?

"They do all the Terribles."

I wanted to know the name of the company, but I couldn't get any more information from the suspicious manager. Maybe if I get the chance I'll do a little more digging. For now though, lets just be thankful that we get to see businesses flying flags at all, even if it is just a transparent marketing ploy to try to erase the old public perception that gas stations are run by foreigners, and to somehow tie gas-buying with a feeling of patriotism. Despite all that, a giant flag is a welcome addition to our neighborhood skyline. Just learn the rules for raising and lowering it. That's all.

Celebrity Chefs

Continuing on, since I haven't posted in a while, I'd like to blow the whistle on the wild abuse of the term Celebrity Chef. You can't just go around claiming that your restaurant features a Celebrity Chef. You see, without any kind of controlling, regulatory body to assign people official Celebrity Chef status, just about anyone can claim to be a CC, based on nothing more than publishing a cookbook or making one or two TV appearances. That's a load of crap.

Emeril is a Celebrity Chef. Julia Childs was a Celebrity Chef. Paul Prudhomme. Maybe Wolfgang Puck. That's it. Chefs that manage to cross that boundary into the public consciousness. Everyone knows Emeril. BAM! But come on - being on the Food Netowrk a couple of times doesn't qualify you. It's the Food Network. It's a niche channel with a niche audience buried among hundreds of little cable channels. And being generally well known or well respected within the insular chef community - someone like Joel Robuchon - that doesn't cut it either. Publishing some books? Nope. Having a mildly well known restaurant that bears your name? Nope. That's a rich and successful chef, not a celebrity.

David Hasselhoff is a celebrity. Bobby Flay is not. Ohhhh, poor Bobby Flay. Go make me a steak, chef. That's right, put on a ridiculous hat and make my dinner. You're a food cooker. You prepare meals so that others can spend that time on other, more important matters. Oh, you're going to make some little artistic design with the onions on top? You're going to swirl the raspberry sauce around the cheesecake in some wild, crazy way? Oh yeah, that's art. You're a real celebrity. Please.

These Footnotes in the "Barnes & Nobles Classics" Books.

This requires a little explanation. Barnes and Noble publishes a series of "Classic" books - basically the more accessible classics like Huck Finn and Dracula - for reduced prices. It's a good deal all around: they've got relatively attractive covers, some new interviews or commentary, and you can't argue with the price. And if the goal is to introduce a new generation to the joy of great literature through some of the more readable books, who can object?

Well I do, damnit!

I was browsing through B&N, and when I saw the complete Sherlock Holmes in the Classics series for only $14.95, I couldn't pass it up. I love Holmes stories, and I had never read the novels. So I get home with these two fat volumes, I put on a pot of English breakfast, I get a crackling fire going in the hearth, and I settle in to read some Holmes. (all true except for the tea and the fire)

The first story, A Study in Scarlet, is a thrilling mystery with all of the anti-Mormon prejudice that you could possibly want. (and I like a lot) But on almost every page... there is a footnote. A big ol' asterisk with a note from the editor down at the bottom. Now, I didn't buy an annotated Sherlock Holmes, I wouldn't have wanted to. But according to Barnes and Nobles, these footnotes are simply:

"Designed to inform, and never to intrude. The elegant superscripts are clearly visible within the text, and the corresponding notes appear on the foot of the page for ease of reference. With a glance, footnotes briefly identify historical figures, gloss obsolete terms, and translate foreign words and phrases."

Yeah, except, these are the most asinine and unnecessary footnotes I've ever seen. How retarded does Barnes and Nobles Classics think its readers are? Check some of these out:

Sentence in the text: "With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case* in the corner."

*Locked stand in which decanters of liquor and wine are displayed

Really? Wow, thanks Barnes & Nobles! Thanks for the interruption!

"There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian war*."

*Conflict between France and Prussia, from 1870 through early 1871.

Ohhhhhhhhh, so it was a waaaaaar between France and Prussia! I thought it was a Franco-Prussian dance, or maybe a Franco-Prussian soup.

"I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser* under me at Bart's."

*Medical assistant whose duties include bandaging, or "dressing," wounds.

I still don't understand. You mean someone who puts on the band-aid?

Some other terms that are helpfully footnoted:
Farthing
Guinea
Half-Crown
Underground
Gaiters
Huguenot
Plantagenet
Consumption

And, worst of all, every single literary allusion or reference is footnoted. Every time Holmes tosses out a phrase from the bible, or Shakespeare, or any other great work of literature we get the asterisk. Imagine for a moment how annoying that is. When Holmes says "There is nothing new under the sun." do you, the reader, really need to know at that moment what verse of the bible that's from? Does every French word require a translation? Isn't part of the richness of the reading experience either a) catching these allusions naturally and letting them sweep you further into the story or b) knowing you didn't understand something and following up on it later on your own time? I don't know what's worse: being spoon fed like this, or having your ignorance presumed on what the London Underground is.

Go away, footnotes! Stop adding value to my purchase!

180 Annoyances

2007-02-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

161. Movies where characters demonstrate how masculine and tough they are by taking a Tylenol and just swallowing it without water. Does anyone, in real life, choose to just swallow pills dry when water is easily available?

162. Old people in the theater who sit there and stare at the end credits.

163. That metallic-pumpkin car color.

164. Gym machines that really highball the burned-calorie estimate.

165. When you get a call from your power company or your cell phone provider or whoever, and they stay completely silent until you've said hello a second time.

166. Parents who have their baby's totally awesome sixth finger removed.

167. Using "I can't hear you!!!" more than once when pumping up the crowd.

168. That hairstyle you sometimes see with black women where it looks like their hair is painted on their scalp. I don't know what it's called but it's really off-putting.

169. Law firms with 6 or more people in the name. (For example)

170. Dressing up as a tennis pro for Halloween. Wearing a white shirt and shorts, carrying a racket, and draping a sweater over your shoulders is officially the least effort you could possibly make at a costume.

171. January gym crowding.

172. All those 10-10-220 and 10-10-321 commercials from about 5 years ago.

173. Sitting next to your parents during a movie sex scene.

174. The headache you get from an autostereogram.

175. How the Chinese government "owns" the panda species.

176. When the ambulence/firetruck eats your whole green turn arrow.

177. Being bent over a barrel by these frickin expensive cell phone plans. $100 a month? Didn’t phone ownership used to cost about $20 a month? Enjoy it while you can, Verizon, I predict it won’t last.

178. Pizza parlours that don't serve by the slice.

179. Coffee grounds in the last sip.

180. That one person at a dinner table toast who absolutely needs to clink every.... person's.......... glass.

The Upcoming Presidential Campaign Season

2007-01-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

With all of these politicians announcing their candidacy in the past week, we should all get mentally ready for the TWO YEARS of the 2008 presidential contest that pretty much has just started. And I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. Why? Not because I'm politically apathetic or cynical about the process (actually, I guess I am cynical about the process), but because this is going to be like a two-year-long movie where I've already guessed the ending.

I'm going on record, right now, in January 2007. It will be Hillary, with Obama as VP, versus either Giuliani or McCain, probably Giuliani, and Hillary will win.

There, I said it. I almost feel bad saying it, like I'm spoiling the ending of the Sixth Sense or something. And lord knows, I'm not happy about that outcome. I'd much prefer Giuliani. But in my own mind, a Hillary presidency has been inevitable for some time now. The day she announced she was running for the Senate, back in what, 2000? - was the day I knew she'd be impossible to beat in a presidential contest.

But we're going to have to listen to two years worth of reporting on meaningless BS in the meantime. "Judy, tell us what kind of organization Bill Richardson is putting together. Where is he getting his braintrust?" And "Shep, I'm here in Mitt Romney's campaign headquarters, where it's fair to say they are VERY excited about the upcoming Iowa straw poll."

Why? Why? Do you have any idea how much airtime is about to be wasted on these candidates who have no chance? Now, a year or so back, I complained about the Vanity candidates. These were the guys like Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer who must surely have known that their candidacy was hopeless, yet they pressed on anyway with the intention of furthering a personal agenda that had nothing to do with becoming president. With Bauer, he wanted a platform for his nutty ideas. With Sharpton, he just wanted to feed his appetite for publicity and keep his personal profile high. Keyes I think just wanted a TV show.

This time around, with the new crop of hopeless candidates, I don't sense the vanity candidacy as much as I do the delusional candidacy, more in the tradition of Dennis Kucinich than Jesse Jackson. The delusional candidacy is when your candidacy is utterly hopeless, yet you're incapable of recognizing it. Take John Edwards for example. He's the guy who couldn't beat Kerry in the primary. And Kerry is the guy who couldn't beat the loathed, reviled, hated George W. Bush. Democrat primary voters have already formed this thought with regards to Edwards: "We had an unbelievable chance to take the presidency in 2004, cause Bush was so unpopular, and Kerry somehow managed to botch it. And we're supposed to vote for the guy who couldn't even beat Kerry?"

So Edwards has no chance. When Quayle mounted a candidacy in 1996 (or was it 2000?) that was also a delusional candidacy. Didn't he know that his Q score or whatever was in the toilet? Didn't he know he was a national laughingstock? Did no one tell him?

How about Mitt Romney? He's in the low single digits. He's Mormon. He won't be able to carry his own state. He's far to the right of everyone else. And yet my friends on the right are doing everything they can to build his buzz. Friends, the Romney candidacy is so utterly hopeless that I'd have a better chance of bluffing my way into the Mormons' big, exclusive Disney-esque temple for my own wedding than Romney does in capturing the white house.

Someone, please, give me a modern example of a guy who started out in the low single digits at this point in the campaign versus two powerhouses in the 30 digits each who somehow came back to win it. It just can't happen. And yes, the Mormonism is an issue. Don't be fooled by the spin. "We're just as Christian as anyone else." Nope. Uh-uh. "Worrying that Romney will take orders from Salt Lake City is just as foolish as worrying that John Kennedy would take orders from the Vatican." True. But that's not the issue. It's not that Romney might be taking orders from high-priest whoever, it's that he's stupid enough to actually believe in that unbelievable pile of horseshit called LDS. Why LDS is horseshit is beyond the scope of my little rant here, but I encourage you to do the most cursory research and find out for yourself.

Moving on to the two republican contenders. Giuliani and McCain. Here is where I feel least sure, but I give the edge to Giuliani for a couple of reasons. First McCain is old. If he's elected, he'll be older than Reagan was when he was sworn in. Second, McCain is a known quantity. There's nothing new or exciting about him. His signature issue still seems to be campaign finance refzzzzzzz....(snore)

Third, there's the Edwards problem. McCain is the guy who couldn't beat Bush in 2000. The hated, loathsome, reviled George W. Bush. Who's going to give McCain a shot now when his opponent this time (Hillary) will be much more formidable than Gore was back then? He couldn't beat Bush! On the Giuliani side of the equation, there's more to like. Sure he's not as conservative as many republicans would want, but primary voters are more savvy than that. They value electability. They will elect whichever republican has the best chance of beating Hillary. And that's Giuliani. Why? Here's my theory. Voters gravitate toward the candidate who best makes up for the specific shortcomings of the previous president. We have short memories. Bush was the anti-Clinton in 2000. He was a straight-talker, a straight shooter. He'd never betray his wife. Lying and being verbally slippery were against his nature. He promised to exercise moderance and temperance in his presidency. Now without getting into a debate about how Bush turned out, we can all agree that this was his persona in the 2000 campaign. He ran as the un-Clinton. The winner of the 2008 race will be the guy (or gal) who is the anti-Bush. This favors Giuliani. Giuliani projects raw, determined competence. He thinks. He acts. He takes no BS. He gets things done. He's smart. He motivates and can lead. He inspires. He's like the Joe Pesci of politicians. Whereas Bush is verbally clumsy, and articulates everything he says with that folksy smile and swagger that drives liberals insane, Giuliani has that no nonsense tone of voice. Giuliani's reputation, deserved or not, of competence and a record of results could propel him to the nomination. So at this point, I think he has the best chance.

Moving to the democrats, this one's a no brainer. I will start by observing that it appears that I am the only one in the universe who sees that Barak Obama is clearly running to become Hillary's VP, and not to become president himself. Just like I was the only one who was willing to say that Bill and Hillary's marriage was 100% about mutual political ambition, and that when Bill cheated, it enraged Hillary only in the sense that it damaged their careers. Who besides me ever said that, and who will dispute it? And now, in 2007, it is equally obvious. McCain or Giuliani would slaughter Obama. But he'd be mighty attractive in the VP slot. He's making a show at a run to demonstrate his chops, but that's it. His place is at Hillary's side, holding up her arm and smiling for the cameras.

So Hillary. Why will she win. And full disclosure here - I hate her guts. I think the only thing that motivates her is a lust for power, and I've never seen anything to dissuade me in the slightest. Sure, I don't like liberals, but observe how far to the right she's moved in the last 4 years. Do you think, my liberal readers, that this represents a genuine change of heart on her part, or that it's all a calculated move to make her more electable? Say what you will about any other candidate, I can't imagine anyone else in either party having such flexibility with their basic values and principles. It's disgusting, frankly. I prefer a passionate and sincere liberal to someone whose core values are for sale. But anyway, why will she win?

Simple. And again, this is a point no one will make. There are tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of women, who know nothing about the candidates or the issues, who will vote for the woman because, hey, a woman is running for president. And with Obama as the VP you simply seal the deal with the African American vote. Are there white males who will have the opposite impulse? Guys who won't vote for her because she's a woman? Yes, but not nearly as many.

And yes, there are plenty of women who will say "Hey, I'm not that simple or stupid, and I don't like Hillary.". Sure, but there aren't enough of you. Candidacies these days boil down to a few simple things like name recognition and reputation and basic characteristics. Somebody like Bill Evans or Sam Brownback has zero chance because we don't know who they are, and there's no amount of money that can change that.

Well that's it. I'm on the record, 2 years in advance. We'll see how things shake out. And if I turn out to be utterly wrong, I will admit it. But barring some completely unexpected development that changes the game, some event of 9/11 power or significance, I see this playing out very predictably. Anyone disagree?

These Baffling Movies with Anonymous Teen Casts about Kids Who are Deadly Serious about Their Really Gay Extra-Curricular Faux-Sports

2007-01-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

Apparantly when I was a teenager I missed out on a major part of adolescence. That is, the part where you pick some random, mildly gay, fundamentally uninteresting extra curricular activity - like frisbee tag or ham radio - and then immerse yourself in the secret world of its cutthroat, hyper-competitive, elite upper tier.

This was the message I gleaned from the current fad of movies where teens take their extra-curriculars waaaaay too seriously. As my post title indicates, I'm referring to these movies where unknown teen actors play high schoolers who balance complex social lives with their struggle toward the national championships of.... A capella singing. Or ice sculpture. Or capture the flag.

And this message comes to you bullshit free. Which is to say, I've actually SEEN these movies and can report faithfully on them. I have seen Bring it On. I sat through Drumline. I watched several scenes of "Stick it" - and, most tellingly, I saw most of "Center Stage" - the movie that dared to portray male teenage ballet dancers as macho guys. I will say in my defense that all of these viewings involved being over at friends' houses, deciding to watch a movie (from the friend's massive DVD collection), and then letting the friend's wife/girlfriend make the choice. The wife always gets to make the choice, doesn't she?

(And just a little aside on that. The unwritten rule of wife-makes-the-choice has resulted in me watching a whole lot of crap. The Heath Ledger one where he's the knight? The Drew Barrymore one where she's the princess? I drew the line at American Pie. I still refuse to watch that. Why doesn't any wife ever want to watch, say, The Score with Robert De Niro and Edward Norton? Wouldn't she be the coolest wife of all time?)

So these movies cover a diverse array of gay extra-curriculars: the four I mentioned are about Cheerleading, Marching Band-ing, Gymnastics and Ballet. All of them activities that a few dudes, for whatever reason, choose to participate in.

Out of these four, the most ridiculous by far is Drumline. These are marching band drummers who have turned the gentle art of halftime music into some kind of martial and aggressive interpretive dance of anger and ferocity and badassedness. They've managed to change halftime drumming from the poofy-hat-wearing effeminate display that it is - the sad performance of people who can't actually BE on the team yet still want to participate - into this macho peacock strut thing. It is, simply, the stupidest idea of all time. And moreover, the drummers of one team "battle" the drummers from the other team - challenging each other in that special "you got served" style of coordinated dance - a method of demonstrating superiority that seems to be reserved exclusively for people with both intense pride and nothing whatsoever to be proud of.

And I do want to take a quick second to point out that the drummers in Drumline have practice uniforms.

Meaning, when you show up for drumming practice, you presumably need to be wearing your drumming practice shorts and your drumming practice shirt. If you showed up for, I repeat, drumming practice, in a regular old t-shirt and shorts, would they kick you out? Would they yell in your face, drill sergeant style, about commitment and honor as you stood at attention with eyes forward?

But just how fictional is this whole culture of macho, in-your-face, halftime drumming? According to some of Drumline's imdb reviewers, these badass drummers are quite real. Here are some real quotes from the imdb...

#1
I marched in one of these bands (Southern University in Louisiana) 20 years ago and back then, band camp was FAR MORE INTENSE than anything you see on the screen in this movie. YES, it is that competitive. YES, it is that grueling. YES, it is that disciplined. Black College marching band is serious business and this film gives you only a small sample of what it takes to "make the band."

#2
Performing in a competitive marching band is HARD work. Everybody thinks the football players have a rough practice. We would practice on the field adjacent to the football team. We would be on-line ready to march at 0700. The jocks would ramble in about 0900. We'd practice 'til noon, have a 1 1/2 lunch; practice again until 5:00 pm. The footballers would leave at noon and not return to the field until 6:00pm. After dinner, we'd continue practice 'til 9:00 - 9:30 pm...My point in all this is everybody thinks band members are a bunch of weenies. Well they're NOT.

Yes. Yes you are a bunch of weenies. You're taking your little halftime show waaaaaay too seriously. Let's think about this for a second. Why would a person join the marching band's drum squad? Seems to me there are maybe two reasons. You like drumming, and/or you want to support the football team. What am I missing? How did this harmless activity morph into "battling"? You're twirling a wooden rod and doing synchronized percussion and dance. That's Ga-Ay. How is this something that you can stake your ego on? It's the friggin halftime show. You're the entertainment. Your entire purpose in the stadium is to provide an alternative to taking a piss. The more serious you take the drumming, the less serious anyone can take you. I mean, if your school janitor came home with a trophy from the national mop finals, could you take him seriously either?

Another feature of these extra-curriculars movies is that they get some very, very low star wattage courtesy of a b-list actor playing the coach. Is there any surer sign that you're a has-been actor than when you get cast as the brooding coach in a teen extra-curriculars drama? Observe Jeff Bridges and Peter Gallagher:

Remember when teen movies were significantly better than this? Or is my nostalgia clouding my judgment? We had Better off Dead. We had Ferris Bueller. We had Revenge of the Nerds. We had the pouty angst of Molly Ringwald and the stereo-over-his-head-holding John Cusack. Naturally, a Duckie or Booger sidekick was standard issue. We had Spicoli ordering pizza in class. We had a hot chick materialize out of Anthony Michael Hall's computer. We had Val Kilmer holding a penis-extender. These were the salad days. The John Hughes days. A whole era defined by that eye from Porky's peeking into the girl's shower room.

Booger = Good

Jeff Bridges = Less Good

What do we have now? Taj? Stifler? The comedy stylings of Ashton Kutcher? These are dark days for teen cinema. Where is Christian Slater and his underground radio station? Where are the cliques of girls all named Heather? I say for shame. Enough with these modern teen comedies where the "joke" is that someone is tricked into drinking spooge. Enough with the teen dramas where the pathos is provided by ascending to the highest competitive levels of Bake-Offs or Indoor Climbing or Darts or Mock Congress.

Napoleon Dynamite aside, this generation has nothing on the teen movies of yore.

I want my two dollars!