Back when I used to be a writer, I had this thing where I reviewed movies I'd never get to see, at least not in a timely fashion. Like everything else in those days, the bitterness of too much free time and not enough freedom was the driving motivating factor behind its creation. It's the same combination of factors that got me kicked out of my housewives' online reading club. Let's see how much Jane Austen you have to read before you start SWEARING IN ALL CAPS too. And if you're reading this, fuck you, Brenda. I still say the girls would have liked Palahniuk if you'd just let us give it a chance.
Now I have less free time than I did when I was staying home with the kids, but, ironically, I have all the freedom I want to see movies. It helps that the kids have gotten older now, so there's less worry about being the guy with the crying children in the movies. It almost never happens now. Almost. But look, the rules are R is Restricted wherein no one under 17 is allowed in without parent. With parent, it's every pre-teen for himself. Sometimes Daddy wants to see the one with exploding heads and plot-unnecessary boobies. So yes, sometimes there is crying. But it's manageable. They're all past what the Catholic church calls the "age of reason." For the church I think it's mostly a legal out for implied consent. For me, it means I can convince them to cry at a more reasonable volume if I threaten to take away their Nintendo DS.
The daddy-time outings are rare. I may now have the time to whip out the suffocated, insufferable, douchebag of a cinephile long dormant in me, but I'm stuck for the most part seeing things that a 12-year-old boy might want to see. Or does want to see. I know this because he asks me directly. Or when the commercial comes on, he says something compelling like "Whaaaaaaaa, awwwweessoooomme!" in the way only California public schools can teach one to articulate.
So hooray, more movies! And boo, Green Lantern and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Yes, I know there was a gap where I wasn't able to get out as much, but at my age, there's no excuse for not expecting big stupid loud action movies to be some combination of loud, stupid and big. So that's not really the complaint. Although, that said, I should be allowed to complain about another fucking Transformers movie. Not just a fighting robots movie, but a Michael Bay fighting robots movie. Not really a haven for nuance, unless by "nuance" you mean a new invented single-word meaning describing the ability to ascertain the pubic-hair configuration of a woman via the tightness of the dress she's wearing. Which I now do. Most nuanced film ever.
Green Lantern had kind of the same problem except all the tight and/or missing clothing happened to Ryan Reynolds. He basically spent the entire film in a green onesie. I spent most of the film, as you can imagine, thinking "dang, this film could use a lot more nuance."
That said, I was still a little ashamed of my erection.
The moral of this and probably all other stories ever is be careful what you wish for. As I noted above, my oldest is 12. And all the movies he wants to see are PG-13. Which means, as a parent, this means not only do I have to sit through shitty movies and pretend they're not shitty afterward while the kids talk about how awesome they are (don't worry, I puncture their self-esteem by "accidentally" referring to them by girls' names), but quite often I will have to sit through these films twice, once solo as a pre-screening, then with the boys.
Rarely does a pre-screen lead to an overrule. With the last Harry Potter movie, it just meant I knew when to tell the scaredy-cat ones to cover their eyes, but we still went. The only one I rejected on their behalf was X-Men: First Class. The part where the Nazis murder someone's mother and then later when a guy dies by having a coin very slowly and lovingly passed through his skull were enough to exercise my executive veto.
You'll be happy to know I don't have to see all of them twice. Transformers, I mean, fuck, come on. First of all, Mr. Bay lacks the narrative or constructive skill to manufacture a scene of any psychological impact, frightening or otherwise. Plus, I fucking wish a movie like that would give the kids nightmares. Then maybe I can dare to hope they'd at least pause before considering seeing the next abomination of CGI battle porn.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
#paxil
I went to the 10 year high school reunion neither willingly nor unwillingly. Somehow I had managed to carry with me--whole and unspoiled, a decade after separation from the place and the concomitant social experience--the same exact feeling of detached indifference. I went because my wife and I were in the same graduating class at the same school. The logic of me being her escort to the event outweighed any of the alternative dating options I considered proposing for her.
The 10-year for me was way back in 2002. I should have been somewhat nervous about it I guess considering the primary motivating factors for conversation at these things are nostalgia and/or schadenfreude. In high school I was on that social level of invisibility below even the geeks and the nerds, because they at least existed in a social space necessitating a label. It's hard to be nostalgic about that time we had French class together for three straight years and never spoke. So that was out as an option. And the schadenfreude, well, at the time I was still a housewife. Not that I was ashamed of it, it just requires very little explanation. When "So what are you doing now?" is followed with something like "forensic accounting," you have social permission to drone on endlessly afforded by the fact that nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about. That can kill a whole hour! But when you're a housefrau as I was, nobody doesn't know what that is. And nobody wants to hear the details of your job, 70% of which is another person's feces. They have parents. They know what you do. Being a dude in that role seems interesting, but it works out to about one extra sentence of conversation, usually something vaguely condescending. Proud as I was of my work at the time (no children died!), it made the schadenfreude part kind of difficult. Plus, even if I did fight off the social acrophobia long enough to look down on someone, the only person I would have had to share it with was my date/wife who had made me swear I'd be nice. The running list of who had gotten fat/gone bald I kept to myself. Which sucks because, I mean, what else is the point?
That was the 10. The 20 is coming up next year. I haven't yet gotten the invitation yet, but if anyone on the organizing committee is reading this: I'm not going. Ostensibly the draw is to catch up with people you haven't seen, but with Facebook, I'd be reunion-ing with people whose breakfast menu from that morning I could probably reliably produce for you. The people I would see in a hallway 20 years ago in an acne-fied, gangling mob of backpacks and elbows but had not then and still have never physically spoken to I could already give you their marital status, their jobs, what kinds of cars they drove and to where they drove them, the names and ages of all their kids and the positioning of most of their tattoos and/or piercings. A reunion now is a physical redundancy from a pre-digital world. The conversations will still start with "remember that time..." but we'll be talking about earlier that week.
Plus face-to-face social interaction requires a level of politeness that digitality does not. I think I would know more about a person if I followed their Twitter feed immediately after our conversation rather than from the conversation itself. I could make empty small-talk with a guy whose face I vaguely remember, end it with a handshake and the obligatory false promise to keep in touch, then go straight to my iPhone and see he tweeted: "20 mins talking to some tool about mortgage rates. I think maybe he was a janitor? Gay vibe. Party sux."
A friend of mine just went to her 30-year reunion and says she likes them more the more years pass. I'm going the opposite direction. My indifference at the first one is bleeding into overt hostility toward the upcoming one. It's a new order out there. Social media has smothered the idea of a reunion under a pixellated mountain of information, asphyxiating it into obsolescence. I've turned my back on the 20th century in every way imaginable. My oldest kid was born in '99 and I'm trying to see if I can offload him to a circus or an Amish family. The world moves too fast now. I don't have time for anything pre-2000. Not going is a stand on principle, one for which the rest of you will thank me when my example kicks over the card-house of rickety, reified "tradition" perpetuating itself for the sake of itself.
That and my ex-wife will probably be there. I could do something childish while I'm there like start a rumor about her, but I'm above all that. Besides, that, like everything else, would work way better on Facebook.
The 10-year for me was way back in 2002. I should have been somewhat nervous about it I guess considering the primary motivating factors for conversation at these things are nostalgia and/or schadenfreude. In high school I was on that social level of invisibility below even the geeks and the nerds, because they at least existed in a social space necessitating a label. It's hard to be nostalgic about that time we had French class together for three straight years and never spoke. So that was out as an option. And the schadenfreude, well, at the time I was still a housewife. Not that I was ashamed of it, it just requires very little explanation. When "So what are you doing now?" is followed with something like "forensic accounting," you have social permission to drone on endlessly afforded by the fact that nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about. That can kill a whole hour! But when you're a housefrau as I was, nobody doesn't know what that is. And nobody wants to hear the details of your job, 70% of which is another person's feces. They have parents. They know what you do. Being a dude in that role seems interesting, but it works out to about one extra sentence of conversation, usually something vaguely condescending. Proud as I was of my work at the time (no children died!), it made the schadenfreude part kind of difficult. Plus, even if I did fight off the social acrophobia long enough to look down on someone, the only person I would have had to share it with was my date/wife who had made me swear I'd be nice. The running list of who had gotten fat/gone bald I kept to myself. Which sucks because, I mean, what else is the point?
That was the 10. The 20 is coming up next year. I haven't yet gotten the invitation yet, but if anyone on the organizing committee is reading this: I'm not going. Ostensibly the draw is to catch up with people you haven't seen, but with Facebook, I'd be reunion-ing with people whose breakfast menu from that morning I could probably reliably produce for you. The people I would see in a hallway 20 years ago in an acne-fied, gangling mob of backpacks and elbows but had not then and still have never physically spoken to I could already give you their marital status, their jobs, what kinds of cars they drove and to where they drove them, the names and ages of all their kids and the positioning of most of their tattoos and/or piercings. A reunion now is a physical redundancy from a pre-digital world. The conversations will still start with "remember that time..." but we'll be talking about earlier that week.
Plus face-to-face social interaction requires a level of politeness that digitality does not. I think I would know more about a person if I followed their Twitter feed immediately after our conversation rather than from the conversation itself. I could make empty small-talk with a guy whose face I vaguely remember, end it with a handshake and the obligatory false promise to keep in touch, then go straight to my iPhone and see he tweeted: "20 mins talking to some tool about mortgage rates. I think maybe he was a janitor? Gay vibe. Party sux."
A friend of mine just went to her 30-year reunion and says she likes them more the more years pass. I'm going the opposite direction. My indifference at the first one is bleeding into overt hostility toward the upcoming one. It's a new order out there. Social media has smothered the idea of a reunion under a pixellated mountain of information, asphyxiating it into obsolescence. I've turned my back on the 20th century in every way imaginable. My oldest kid was born in '99 and I'm trying to see if I can offload him to a circus or an Amish family. The world moves too fast now. I don't have time for anything pre-2000. Not going is a stand on principle, one for which the rest of you will thank me when my example kicks over the card-house of rickety, reified "tradition" perpetuating itself for the sake of itself.
That and my ex-wife will probably be there. I could do something childish while I'm there like start a rumor about her, but I'm above all that. Besides, that, like everything else, would work way better on Facebook.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Wasteland
I've had a birthday semi-recently, which makes me 37. This means I've finally made the crucial life transition from late-mid thirties to early-late thirties. It's a strange sensation to finally be on the other side of the momentous divide I've been staring down for so long. I can say it doesn't feel anything like it did when I crossed the other major social turning points in one's life, like 18 or 21. It's hard to explain what feels so different about it. There's a kind of general tightness, like the icy grip of mortality, squeezing not so tightly as to suffocate, but just enough to remind, constricting not quite to pain but certainly to a vague, numbing tingling. Mostly in the area of my prostate.
Life expectancy is a weird calculation, varying study to study, but I don't think there's any question that now, for any American man born in 1974, I've definitely crested the hill. Like most people who make this realization, all I can really think of are those summers before high school when all I could think of was how excruciatingly bored I always was with nothing whatsoever to do except watch cartoons on black-and-white television and sweat. The television wasn't black-and-white because it was 1950, it was because we were poor, which was kind of the same thing, standard-of-living wise, in the 1980s.
The crux of the memory is the sensation of time standing absolutely fucking still. And to tell you, once again, that I grew up poor. I'm not sure why it ends up being the point of most of the stories I tell. Partially it's because I don't have a lot of stories about growing up not-poor. I notice that I almost always manage to work it in. If I sit and think about it at all, I guess I use it as a kind of a social inoculation. Sure, I can be an asshole in many, many, many other ways, but how can you stay mad at me when you know I went all through junior high school living in a trailer park? Or that, when I did live in a proper neighborhood, it was such a economically disadvantaged area, the only lawns being mowed by Mexicans were their own.
Time no longer stands still, summers be damned. I've got air conditioning and HDTV, which both seem like mistakes now in retrospect. Time absolutely hums as it whips past me. This used to be a stressor, but I'm less afraid of dying that I used to be. I find my level of existential dread comes and goes with what my current relationship status is. I remember toward the end of my marriage, I went through a particularly bleak period of morbidity and fatalism. It turns out that was mostly neurological side effects from the metal filings my ex was sneaking into my scrambled eggs, but that doesn't mean it was all coincidental. Right now things are going pretty well, thanks very much, so I have a more settled sense of completeness. It's an absurd idea, though. I'm not sure how or why it would be easier to face the act of ultimate aloneness in someone else's company. Some people like to point out that we're born alone and die alone, but that's the kind of horseshit false symmetry people always throw over their heads to block out the view of the end. As mammals, birth is something we always do in tandem. But even on a crashing airplane surrounded by a couple of hundred others, every set of eyes closes individually. Unless Jesus is suddenly there, which for me would just be awkward. I would have a philosophical obligation to pretend not to see Him, which I imagine one can only keep up for so long.
Being the age I am, I also finally have the life experience to know that what is now will not always be. I appreciate the moment of satisfaction because I have moments of despair against which I may contrast it. "Contrast" is the right word. The colors shimmer and pop, individually and in concert, an ordered kaleidoscope of stark and subtle, overt and subdued, garish and sublime. It's through this fractured and fracturing lens I can see a little farther into what's coming and a little more clearly what's behind and weather both with letting the swirl affect my balance.
For instance, I know I'd never riot after a hockey game. Hardly an act of perspective there. But I guess in their defense (or in this case, "defence," the suck-ups) they do live in Canada. Hockey season is over and nothing televisable will occur again until the puck drops again in November or whatever it is. Frankly I'm amazed they don't riot every day.
Life expectancy is a weird calculation, varying study to study, but I don't think there's any question that now, for any American man born in 1974, I've definitely crested the hill. Like most people who make this realization, all I can really think of are those summers before high school when all I could think of was how excruciatingly bored I always was with nothing whatsoever to do except watch cartoons on black-and-white television and sweat. The television wasn't black-and-white because it was 1950, it was because we were poor, which was kind of the same thing, standard-of-living wise, in the 1980s.
The crux of the memory is the sensation of time standing absolutely fucking still. And to tell you, once again, that I grew up poor. I'm not sure why it ends up being the point of most of the stories I tell. Partially it's because I don't have a lot of stories about growing up not-poor. I notice that I almost always manage to work it in. If I sit and think about it at all, I guess I use it as a kind of a social inoculation. Sure, I can be an asshole in many, many, many other ways, but how can you stay mad at me when you know I went all through junior high school living in a trailer park? Or that, when I did live in a proper neighborhood, it was such a economically disadvantaged area, the only lawns being mowed by Mexicans were their own.
Time no longer stands still, summers be damned. I've got air conditioning and HDTV, which both seem like mistakes now in retrospect. Time absolutely hums as it whips past me. This used to be a stressor, but I'm less afraid of dying that I used to be. I find my level of existential dread comes and goes with what my current relationship status is. I remember toward the end of my marriage, I went through a particularly bleak period of morbidity and fatalism. It turns out that was mostly neurological side effects from the metal filings my ex was sneaking into my scrambled eggs, but that doesn't mean it was all coincidental. Right now things are going pretty well, thanks very much, so I have a more settled sense of completeness. It's an absurd idea, though. I'm not sure how or why it would be easier to face the act of ultimate aloneness in someone else's company. Some people like to point out that we're born alone and die alone, but that's the kind of horseshit false symmetry people always throw over their heads to block out the view of the end. As mammals, birth is something we always do in tandem. But even on a crashing airplane surrounded by a couple of hundred others, every set of eyes closes individually. Unless Jesus is suddenly there, which for me would just be awkward. I would have a philosophical obligation to pretend not to see Him, which I imagine one can only keep up for so long.
Being the age I am, I also finally have the life experience to know that what is now will not always be. I appreciate the moment of satisfaction because I have moments of despair against which I may contrast it. "Contrast" is the right word. The colors shimmer and pop, individually and in concert, an ordered kaleidoscope of stark and subtle, overt and subdued, garish and sublime. It's through this fractured and fracturing lens I can see a little farther into what's coming and a little more clearly what's behind and weather both with letting the swirl affect my balance.
For instance, I know I'd never riot after a hockey game. Hardly an act of perspective there. But I guess in their defense (or in this case, "defence," the suck-ups) they do live in Canada. Hockey season is over and nothing televisable will occur again until the puck drops again in November or whatever it is. Frankly I'm amazed they don't riot every day.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Airing It Out
I'm not going to do it.
It's not that I don't want to. I really, really want to. And it's not that I think you don't want me to, because it's either that or something that's both more work and less interesting. Not a great combination.
But the guy's name is Weiner. And even though he spells it wrong, he still pronounces it the right way for it to be absolutely perfect for the continuing news story about the man's dick. His junk. His schlong. His cock. Rod. Love muscle. Trouser snake. John Thomas. Shaft. Boner. Old Fella. Meatsicle. Dong. Pole. Third leg. Gnarled hedgehog. Spartacus. Wookiee. Coldstone Creamery.
I could keep going, sure. But as I said, his name is Weiner already. It just feels like piling on. One of the lobby televisions at work was tuned to CNN yesterday and (this is absolutely true) the graphics banner underneath the story read "Mounting Pressure On Weiner." I can't... there's just no way to top that. It's like standing in Pompeii, looking up at erupting Vesuvius and trying to think of different ways to talk about volcanic ash. Sometimes your senses are overwhelmed and there's just no point. Sometimes you have to just stand there and let it happen all around you.
Nobody likes a dick joke more than I do. They're simple, they're always funny and they allow me to express my phallophilia without that vanilla-almond scent of gay. You tell people you love dick and all of a sudden they assume you mean hiding a foreign one in one of your available orifices. You can't just appreciate the thing in all its majesty and procreative, tubular glory; you automatically have to want to swallow one balls-deep. A guy could stand in front of the Washington Monument and suggest it looks like a pillar of marble tumescence and everyone assumes you're a comedian or a feminist instead of an earnest and ardent appreciator of nature's pointiest wonder.
So I'm not going to do it. No dick jokes this post. This Weiner kerfuffle has gotten everyone all stirred up on the subject, but we all know it's only a matter of moments before interest climaxes, flags and then suddenly falls dormant.
It's not that I don't want to. I really, really want to. And it's not that I think you don't want me to, because it's either that or something that's both more work and less interesting. Not a great combination.
But the guy's name is Weiner. And even though he spells it wrong, he still pronounces it the right way for it to be absolutely perfect for the continuing news story about the man's dick. His junk. His schlong. His cock. Rod. Love muscle. Trouser snake. John Thomas. Shaft. Boner. Old Fella. Meatsicle. Dong. Pole. Third leg. Gnarled hedgehog. Spartacus. Wookiee. Coldstone Creamery.
I could keep going, sure. But as I said, his name is Weiner already. It just feels like piling on. One of the lobby televisions at work was tuned to CNN yesterday and (this is absolutely true) the graphics banner underneath the story read "Mounting Pressure On Weiner." I can't... there's just no way to top that. It's like standing in Pompeii, looking up at erupting Vesuvius and trying to think of different ways to talk about volcanic ash. Sometimes your senses are overwhelmed and there's just no point. Sometimes you have to just stand there and let it happen all around you.
Nobody likes a dick joke more than I do. They're simple, they're always funny and they allow me to express my phallophilia without that vanilla-almond scent of gay. You tell people you love dick and all of a sudden they assume you mean hiding a foreign one in one of your available orifices. You can't just appreciate the thing in all its majesty and procreative, tubular glory; you automatically have to want to swallow one balls-deep. A guy could stand in front of the Washington Monument and suggest it looks like a pillar of marble tumescence and everyone assumes you're a comedian or a feminist instead of an earnest and ardent appreciator of nature's pointiest wonder.
So I'm not going to do it. No dick jokes this post. This Weiner kerfuffle has gotten everyone all stirred up on the subject, but we all know it's only a matter of moments before interest climaxes, flags and then suddenly falls dormant.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Tell me, where is Fancy bred?
I know I don't believe in fate or destiny, just in general but specifically and especially when it comes to matters of love and romance. The idea of a soulmate is nauseating to me, not just because I'm a heterosexual man threatened by the lingering fear that notions of emotional accessibility will click over the last number on the combination lock that finally falls open and reveals me as a gay.
As I said, it's not just that. It's also that if I'm in a relationship, I want some credit for the work I put in, thanks very much. If my connection with another person is being directed by Meant To Be or Destiny or the Three Fates at their spinning wheel or Jesus or Criss Angel or Body Thetans or Marxian Dialectical Materialism or whatever hoodoo mysticism you believe in, then all my efforts at compromise and understanding and vulnerability are pointless and unnecessary and everything Dr. Phil says is a lie.
OK, I muddied the thesis up with that last point, yes, but I stand by my original position: nobody is fated for anyone else. My ex-wife was fated for me until she was fated for the guy she's with now. Which makes Fate just as much a fickle, rationalizing motherfucker as any other corporeal, limited creature, but wandering formless and homeless with neither purpose nor function. And we all know the best thing to do with the homeless is to just pretend they're not there.
But that's all changed for me now, people. I'm happy to announce that your boy, ole Pops hisself, is in love. It's a change for me, certainly, and totally unexpected. But I finally found someone I connect with on a spiritual level. She's the jigsaw shape that fits the hole I didn't know I had in my soul. I love her and she loves me.
At least I think she loves me. My Tagalog is not that strong. Also, it's hard to make out what she's saying over the webcam. I'm pretty sure the people she works for at liveasiansluts.org have optimized the webcam we use to communicate more for video than audio transmission, which I guess makes sense given the nature of the business she's in. So we don't talk much. Actually, I have to pay to get her to talk at all and for the same price, I can have her put her whole fist in her rectum. All the way up to the wrist, I swear to God. I maxed out the credit card last month, so I have to space out the meaningful communication. It's OK though, we don't have to say much. That's the sweet thing about a soulmate: if there's only the one for you and you for him/her, you don't really even have to try.
As I said, it's not just that. It's also that if I'm in a relationship, I want some credit for the work I put in, thanks very much. If my connection with another person is being directed by Meant To Be or Destiny or the Three Fates at their spinning wheel or Jesus or Criss Angel or Body Thetans or Marxian Dialectical Materialism or whatever hoodoo mysticism you believe in, then all my efforts at compromise and understanding and vulnerability are pointless and unnecessary and everything Dr. Phil says is a lie.
OK, I muddied the thesis up with that last point, yes, but I stand by my original position: nobody is fated for anyone else. My ex-wife was fated for me until she was fated for the guy she's with now. Which makes Fate just as much a fickle, rationalizing motherfucker as any other corporeal, limited creature, but wandering formless and homeless with neither purpose nor function. And we all know the best thing to do with the homeless is to just pretend they're not there.
But that's all changed for me now, people. I'm happy to announce that your boy, ole Pops hisself, is in love. It's a change for me, certainly, and totally unexpected. But I finally found someone I connect with on a spiritual level. She's the jigsaw shape that fits the hole I didn't know I had in my soul. I love her and she loves me.
At least I think she loves me. My Tagalog is not that strong. Also, it's hard to make out what she's saying over the webcam. I'm pretty sure the people she works for at liveasiansluts.org have optimized the webcam we use to communicate more for video than audio transmission, which I guess makes sense given the nature of the business she's in. So we don't talk much. Actually, I have to pay to get her to talk at all and for the same price, I can have her put her whole fist in her rectum. All the way up to the wrist, I swear to God. I maxed out the credit card last month, so I have to space out the meaningful communication. It's OK though, we don't have to say much. That's the sweet thing about a soulmate: if there's only the one for you and you for him/her, you don't really even have to try.
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