Sunday December 12, 2004

Pining away

Hmmmm. Let’s see. What have I done, what have I done…

It’s mostly work around here, and I don’t like to talk about work much on this blog, since it’s possible one or two of the people I work with my stumble across it at some point, and talking too explicitly about your job can be dangerous to your occupational longevity.

In non-work stuff, my direct deposit generally hits at 2 am Friday morning, which, since I work from 3 pm to midnight, is pretty much my Thursday night. Last night after it slammed into my bank account, I took some money out at the ATM, called a cab, and went up to Wal-mart. My intention was buying a Christmas tree; foolishly, it never occurred to me that their greenhouse area, where the Christmas trees are, might not be open the same hours as the rest of the store.

But, of course, it wasn’t. And I had to go pick up new glasses and pay some bills the following day before work, and really didn’t want to add going back to Wal-mart, getting a tree, and getting it set up and decorated, to that before-work list. So… with a very exasperated sigh, I broke a lifelong vow and did the unthinkable… I bought an artificial tree.

I loathe artificial trees. I really do.

Nonetheless, I bought one, and while I’m sure somewhere at Wal-mart there was a can of compressed pine-scent spray just for people like me who want our goddam artificial Christmas trees to smell real, I didn’t want to hunt the fucker up, so I bought a package of six pine-scented air fresheners for your car instead. They don’t really much smell like anything I’d call a pine tree, but, well, they don’t smell like plastic, either.

On getting the damned box with the artificial tree home, I then spent seventeen year assembling the artificial tree. I did not do it the way you are supposed to, which is actually good; my artificial tree does not have the artfully shaped branches arranged in their very orderly, symettrical way. It has shorter branches occasionally interspersed with longer branches, and looks much more real that way. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I like the effect.

Last year, when I was living with my brother Paul, once Christmas was over I took down all the decorations and stuck them in a cardboard box out on the front porch. When I moved ten months ago, I left that box on the porch. About two months ago, I finally got a ride over there and rescued it. I’d already picked through the debris in the box once when I got it home the first time (not wanting to carry anything living and/or chitinous inside the house with me) but hauling those decorations out this time, I pretty quickly discovered that the usable remnants were fairly scarce. So I did what I could, and the next day picked up quite a few more decorations at the Dollar Store that is right next to where I work.

Now it looks pretty good, for a goddam wretched artificial Christmas tree. I actually have presents underneath it, all for me, due to a friend of mine whose name I am not allowed to mention on the blog because he or she has threatened me with death if I do. But I’m grateful for the early Christmas package that had those presents in it, because a Christmas tree without presents is just really forlorn and depressing, somehow.

One thing I wanted, and did not get, was a lighted Christmas tree star. You know, one of those really garish flashing light thingies. The one in the rescued box doesn’t work (I don’t think it worked last year, either) and the Dollar Store was all out. I wound up with this metal thing that has little flecks of crystal on it that, as my tree doesn’t have anywhere near enough lights on it, doesn’t really do much at all. But, well, that’s the way that is.

There seem to have evolved, over the course of my life, several different schools of thought on Christmas tree decorations, and every single one of them except the way I do it is appalling. First, there’s this whole monochromatic thing, where tasteful middle aged women and pretentious preppies only decorate their Christmas trees in shades of silver and/or grey. The really really annoying ones buy artificial Christmas trees that are silver or grey and then decorate them with little foil balls of the opposite metallic shade, and put lights on them that shine steadily white. This stuff looks some ghastly special effect in some dreadful 1960s science fiction movie about Christmas on a starship, or in an underground future arcology, or something.

Grotesque and revolting though these abominations are, they are nothing compared to the other school of Christmas tree decoration that I loathe even more, namely, this hideous notion of vertical garland. Anyone who places their garland up and down on the Christmas tree instead of draping it around the Christmas tree the way it’s meant to be done should be sent to a re-education camp.

There are other, more minor offenses, like ribbons instead of garland. Christmas trees with ribbons (and especially if they’re big fat red ribbons with big fat red bows) instead of garland look like somebody invited your Christmas tree to a christening or something and it felt like it had to get dressed up. And then there are those who don’t use tinsel, by which I mean, icicles. The older I get, the more I run into these people, who have all been struck very hard in the head by croquet mallets or meteors or something, and who therefore actually believe that a proper Christmas tree is not absolutely drowned in silvery glittery pieces of tinsel.

To these people, I say, go back to Russia, darn you all. Christmas trees are meant to be gaudy and garish, not tasteful. They should be festooned with ornaments of different textures, and different (very bright) colors, and different shapes and sizes. They should swarm with (properly wrapped) garland and be covered with tinsel. They should have big blinking blaring electric stars on the top, and be all ashimmer with gaudy blinking lights in every color of the rainbow. They should be piled knee deep underneath with presents, and someplace nearby a bunch of big red felt stockings with people’s first names in glittery cursive letters across the white fur top trim should be hanging, too.

If you can swing it, you should also have a fireplace, or at the very least, a big bow window, somewhere in the immediately background. And if you can swing the fireplace, then for the love of all that’s holy you have to have a crackling fire in it.

And, you know, if somewhere in the background Lake Bell or Uma Thurman is lying around on a couch or a bearskin in a black teddy with a fur trimmed Santa hat on her head, well, that works, too.

Yeah, the media has pretty much ruined me, too. Real life is never going to be good enough for me again. Just bring on my full immersion VR helmet; it’s the only way any of us are every going to have the Christmases we all think we SHOULD have after a lifetime watching TV commercials and Yuletide Specials.

Let’s go to the movies

Here we go again…

While I was at Wal-mart, I went looking for the Director’s Cut of Hellboy, which I saw a few weeks ago when I was spending money on orphans and none on me (alas), but I couldn’t find it (damn) so I bought myself Dodgeball instead.

I also picked up a copy of Groundhog Day on DVD, which I may have talked about before, but what the hell, I’ll talk about it again, since I like it so much.

And, a few weeks ago… Thanksgiving Night, in fact… I got bored and took a cab up to watch National Treasure. Or did I mention that before now?

Dodgeball is a much better movie than I expected it to be, mostly because it is a movie out of its era. It belongs to the 1970s and 1980s, an era of films like Animal House and Caddyshack, when the term “slob comedy” did not mean you were going to spend 90 minutes watching people vomit, spit, and make various disgusting jokes about body fluids. Back then, the rather annoying trend of either making fun of really stupid people, or glorifying stupidity by having a mentally challenged hero somehow triumph against all odds, hadn’t really solidified yet, either.

Dodgeball has a lot of physical humor in it, and like most of the comedies of that bygone day, it’s pretty much about lovable loser/good guy/underdogs taking on stuck up, preening, really obnoxiously successful and utterly despicable winner-types. However, the closest it gets to the disturbing gross out humor so common in today’s lowbrow comedies is in some of the extremely uncouth things that the crusty-but-not-overwhelmingly-lovable mentor-type (played by Rip Torn chewing the carpet with great elan and even greater enjoyment, obviously). Most of the rest of it is, again, straight out of the 70s, with most of the physical humor coming from people getting hit in the face, head, and more sensitive anatomical areas by high velocity missiles ranging from wrenches to,well, the titular dodgeball.

Both Vince Vaughn and Stephen Root turn in almost eerie performances in the movie as they immaculately channel, respectively, Bill Murray and Rick Morianis in parts that must have been written precisely with those two actors in mind. Ben Stiller, whom I normally despise, is absolutely hilarious as the heavy, and somebody named Christine Taylor, whom I’d never heard of before, does a decent job as the mandatory cute blonde who turns out to be better than the boys at nearly everything.

Beyond the earlier era ambiance and the letter perfect impressions of Murray and Morianis, what this movie is mostly notable for is its really weird, and apparently endless, string of cameo roles. You honestly never know who’s going to show up next from one frame to another, and while we are certainly aware that Vince Vaughn’s protagonist character has to have a change of heart after he decides to give up before the deciding match at the dodgeball tournament, I doubt anyone expects Lance Armstrong to walk out of the crowd and give him a lecture on quitting! William Shatner and Chuck Norris also show up, and, well, a few other notables I can’t remember at the moment put their heads in the door, too.

Had Dodgeball come out in the early 1980s, we probably wouldn’t remember it much these days. As it came out in the 21st Century, though, it’s fairly notable, if only for being a reasonably dumb, physical comedy that is, nonetheless, actually funny.

National Treasure is… well, better than I expected. That’s about all I can say about it. While it’s clear that everyone involved in the making of the film would sell someone else’s children to be working on an Indiana Jones movie instead, still, there are worse influences to have. Nicholas Cage gives the same action film performance he always gives, Jon Voight is impassioned and, well, puffy looking, the guy who plays the sidekick, as always, gets all the good lines, and the cute blonde is a cute blonde. The chase through American occult history, although really dumbed down for the mainstream audience, is generally entertaining and occasionally even interesting. Sean Bean makes a really cool villain, but I kept expecting him to start yelling at Frodo about how all he wants is the strength to defend his people, or something. I know, I know, it’s not his fault, but some roles just ruin an actor for life.

I wouldn’t necessarily say National Treasure is worth owning, but then, I’m fairly picky about what movies I buy as keepers. It’s certainly worth a cheap rental, when it comes around to your neighborhood video store.

Now, as to Groundhog Day… I just did a quick Google, because I’m fairly sure I did a review of this movie on a previous blog page while I was still living with Paul, but it’s not coming up, so maybe I didn’t. Anyway, what always strikes me when I watch this film is just how many movies people have erroneously labeled as ‘Capra-esque’, and how out of all of those poorly understood films, only Groundhog Day has ever really struck me as deserving the label.

Of course, first you have to understand what ‘Capra-esque’ actually is. A great many people who really should know better seem to think that a movie is ‘Capra-esque’ if it seems to revolve around the notion of one particular individual having an impact on their surrounding society, or an underdog triumphing against authority or long odds.

If this were true, pretty much every movie ever made in America would be Capraesque, including all the Rocky movies and, well, Dodgeball. In fact, if it were true, then the one really rotten movie most commonly mislabeled by starry eyed morons as Capra-esque, Field of Dreams, would, in fact, actually be Capra-esque. But Field of Dreams is not really Capra-esque, because to be Capra-esque, a movie has to be about more than, as Robert DeNiro put it in The Untouchables, ‘individual achievement’.

To be truly Capra-esque, a movie (or, for that matter, any other creative work attempting to explore a certain theme) has to not only be about an individual achieving success against great odds, or having a discernible effect on the world around them, but it also has to show that one person can make a very positive difference in the lives of everyone around them… and that the only real wealth in the world comes from putting your efforts into helping other people, not yourself. That is the true message of movies like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Meet John Doe, and It’s A Wonderful Life… not simply that it’s really cool to ignore the crowd, stick to your guns, and do what you think needs to be done no matter what, but, rather, that ultimately, the only thing that matters is helping other people, and if you do that, you’ll be happy, whereas material wealth won’t really get you anything that matters.

Field of Dreams has nothing to do with someone learning that the only real wealth in the world is friendship, and the only real effort that matters is the work you put into helping other people. Field of Dreams is about some psychotic who thinks dead baseball players want him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond, and who presses on with his psychosis even when his neighbors want to lock him up. Eventually he succeeds in building his cornfield baseball diamond, and apparently, dead ball players do indeed show up to play baseball there. How this enriches or improves anyone else’s life I could not tell you; in fact, the whole concept seems really creepy and sick to me.

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, is all about one guy learning that it’s not about him, it’s actually about everyone else… and he can never really be happy until he learns to make everyone around him happy first. This is very much the essential concept of all of Frank Capra’s movies.

The DVD also has a commentary track by Harold Ramis, who directed it, and so far, Ramis seems to be an agreeable narrator. Where a lot of commentary tracks are just wastes of disc space, Ramis tells us stuff we’d most likely actually want to know, about how they picked out the town they filmed the movie in, and what Bill Murray and Andie McDowell were actually like on the shoot, and how the script evolved from one stage to another, and what was actually shot on location and what was on a set, and stuff like that… things that I, at least, am always really interested in.

And, honest to God, I don’t think this blog page could get much more boring, so I’m just going to stop this now.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.