My Holiday Movie

The only film I want to see this holiday season would be one in which every character is trying to get their hands on a valuable artifact called the Archimedes Palimpsest.  (The actual Archimedes Palimpsest resides in  a museum in Baltimore, and is owned by a Florida billionaire.) 

Wikipedia defines a palimpsest as “a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped or washed off and which can be used again.”

Every time a character mentions the artifact, they struggle to remember its name, kind of like Steve Martin’s character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels desperately trying from jail to remember the name of Michael Caine’s character, Lawrence Jamieson.

Each character gets the name wrong, and among the mistaken attempts are the following.

§   The Scarlett Pimpernell

§   The Hasselbeck Blunderbuss

§   The Abscessed Pimpleface

§   The Kayak Palindrome

§   The Benedict Cumberbatch

§   The Instamatic Politician

§   The Arbuckle Bottle Scandal

      The Kardashiaan Pamplonabutt

§   The Jack Palance Quest

§   The Archemiley Papyrus

Happy holidays and merry moviegoing.

You Can't Spell Life Without Lie

     No one likes being lied to.  For six months I negotiated a relationship with a woman who, it turns out, lies for sport.  Her motto:  When you come to a fork in the tongue, take it.  I was playing with fire there, and our relationship was probably more like a transaction.  

     Nobody likes a liar.  And yet we also don’t care for people who claim that they never lie.  There is a proper amount of lying that should take place in order to spare feelings, avoid embarrassment and keep the wheels of society lubricated.

     My supervisor at work claims that she never lies.  Is it lying to let someone take credit for something they didn’t do?   What about exaggerating?  Acting?  Keeping up appearances?  Flakiness, omissions, glossing over, dressing up?   Isn’t  being full of shit a form of lying?  On the internet, if you’re not fully happy with the hand you’re dealt, you can fold or you can bluff.  How many people are one hundred percent forthcoming on the internet?  (Why do you think they call it the web?)

        Another thing people fudge is resumes.  Come on; when a guy puts, “went  extra mile to assist the President with crucial trade presentation in San Antonio,”  what he really means is “Road trip!  Got chance to hit San Antone for three days of comped hotel room and buffets.  The President is my college roommate.  (Neither of us got laid.)”

        Who lies more, employers or job applicants?  Producers or consumers?  Students or teachers?  Doctors or patients?  Pre-sex men or pre-tip waitresses?   Athletes or people in show business?   Children or their parents?  I’d bet that if we could interpret  animal behavior and communication more accurately, we’d find most of them lie, too.  

     If you work for a major food or drug corporation, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a liar.  If you work for a tabloid, it doesn’t automatically make you a liar, personally.  If you're involved in politics on the state or national  level…okay, you’re a fucking liar.  It’s right in the job description.  In fact, there are people who feel it’s a complete and utter waste of time to listen to politicians.  (It’s also a waste of time to use two different words that mean the same thing, like complete and utter.)

     

Bauchery

A much  needed new word in the English language is "bauchery."

Bauchery  n.  A bauble or luxury item such as jewelry bestowed on an angry spouse, usually female, esp an older wife.  Often bought by a philandering husband to assuage a livid spouse, usually for a dalliance with a younger female.

1.  "Stop complaining.  What about all that bauchery  you got last year after the business trip to Vegas?"

2.   Kobe has spent a lot of money on bauchery.


(Editor's note:  If you don't like this new addition to the English vocabulary, I'll let you get back to twerk.)    

Dirty Peccadillos

       I don’t consider myself a “smoker.”  And yet I do indeed enjoy a good cig once in a while.  I favor those  cigs with no added rat poison or plutonium.  American Spirit.  It’s a quality smoke.  Burns slow.  You can really kick back and stretch out with one of those. Last calendar year, I consumed seven cigarettes, and when I say "consumed," I mean the way a person consumes a cigar.  Yeah, I don't want that stuff in my lungs.  

      These days people seem more and more rigid in their opinions, and most anything can constitute a deal breaker in relationships.  I suspect that a person who has a strict “no smoking ever” policy will find themself with plenty of opportunities to be in a room where there is no cigarette.  And no significant other.

(NOTE:  mention the incident at the driving range w/ John and that cunt from the ins agency?)

     People who pull out a cig today are ostracized about as much as people who never pulled one out back in the '50s.  A particularly conservative, religious, and straight-laced friend of mine (!) once wore a button with a picture of flowers and the tagline “Smoking Stinks.”   Okay.  You know, smoking is more than just the stench of a stale ashtray.  Likewise, religion is probably more than just burning people who are different.

     Apparently some folks are under the impression that a single cigarette will cause their curtains to smell like a Bangkok brothel.  Listen, in order to make your curtains smell like a Bangkok brothel, you’d have to… Never mind what you’d have to do.

     I personally find tattoos kind of a dirty peccadillo.  I don’t see the allure.  I don’t get why people get them.  Other than the obvious, “I was drunk at the time,” or “It’s the Chinese character for Judge Judy, who saved my life by making me realize I should quit law school,” I don’t know what motivates people to get them.  Maybe it’s because I have sensitive skin.

     That said, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker if a woman whom I liked had a small one in a discreet, remote location.  I  would have to be pretty closed-minded to rule out a sweet, smart girl just because she has a minor flaw.  After all, it’s a high impact world we live in today.   I keep hearing about the importance of branding yourself.  Since no one has job security anymore, you must make yourself stand out. 

     Whatever the reason for getting tattooed, I’m a reasonable man.  It’s not like in the middle of our first intimate encounter, having pulled off her undergarments, I’m going to exclaim in a Ralph Kramden voice, “ah-HAH!  You didn’t tell me about your filthy little friend.  You know how I feel about tats.”

      “Uhh…what?  That’s not a tat, you idiot.”

Chief WTF Engineer

    These days I often ask people what their take is on dialogue obfuscation in films.  The people who don’t know what I mean tend to annoy me.  As does dialoge obfuscation.  My theory, perhaps a cynical one, is that the studios do it to increase the chances that the viewer will go to the movie / rent the DVD again to find out “What the fuck did he say?” 

    A little bit of mystery is a good thing, but there is a fine line between romance and annoyance.  As if Charlize Theron’s character in Young Adult isn’t annoying enough, there’s the scene where she says to Patton Oswalt, “____ me.”  Hmm.  Anyone catch that?  Could’ve been "Hold me."  Or maybe "Fuck me."  Hell, I'm thinking, Why me?  An acquaintance of mine pointed out that maybe the studio was going for a certain rating and so needed to cut the “fuck” down to, say, a barely audible “do.”

    My friend in L.A. who works in the business, sort of, says that sometimes on a given take the actor might have a vocal miscue, or the vagaries of the take might leave an audio soft spot.  I don’t really buy that explanation, since much of the dialogue is dubbed in during post-production anyway.  C’mon.  They have the fucking technology.  I mean, even in The Invisible Man, a film shot in the ‘30s, you can clearly hear every word.  You can’t see him, but you can hear him fine.

    The woman I'd been dating doesn’t know what I’m talking about.  “Okay, the next movie we see, I’ll point it out to you,” I promised.  Unfortunately, next up in my queue was The Artist.  It’s always something. 

    How can so many people not be aware of this practice?  As if you need some kind of sixth sense to detect it:  "I hear dead syllables." 

    If the studio wants to create mystery of the “what-the-fuck-did-he-say” sort, they should stick to the type rendered by Bill Murray at the end of Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, where we are not meant to know what he said to Scarlett Johanson. 

     On a related topic, someone should start an 800 # or web service to explain confusing plotlines.  “Hello, yes.  I don’t get the thing with the keys in A Perfect Murder.”

    “Right, here’s the deal with the keys…”

     As of now, I’ve never seen “Chief WTF Engineer” appear in the end credits, but I’m convinced these schemers exist, secretly calibrating the amount of obfuscation.  Especially in romcoms.  Especially a certain 2008 romcom.  I won't mention any names.  Suffice it to say, the film left me frustrated:  Forget you, Sarah Marshall!  









 

Display Case for the Ductwork

   Ladies, I implore you...

   Our work space was a huge, expansive single floor with about 300 cubicles. Sort of a cubicle farm.  Women, especially young women, tend to turn out for this work.  As a team leader, I spent most of my day milling around helping fellow readers score essay answers to standardized test questions.  I peer over shoulders at monitors, and down at faces.  It's not exactly a professional job, and the dress code is pretty casual.

   You know, if a woman wants to show lots of tit at the club or even at the grocery store, great.  But at work, what are you doing?  Many women, especially the younger ones, don't seem to realize the extent to which they insinuate themselves into the male brain, a brain that just might be stuck at work carrying around a 3 and 1/2 day encumbrance.  Sometimes I'll be walking down an aisle, look up at someone and think, Put that away.  Jesus.  (Other times it's more like, Pick that up.)

   There were two women on my team named Sabrina.  Both sexy.  Black Sabrina, the type of girl who was probably used to getting her way, was a very nice person, but she tested authority.  She would take her own "break before the break."

   Guys would wander over from other projects to chat with her.  Big Glen, our data monitor with a front butt, said, "This is getting out of hand."  I joked with him  that we should set up one of those deli number dispensers at her cubicle.

   "I know, Glen.  There are two black guys and three white guys who come by all the time.  Four, counting me."  Blame it on the wanderbra.

   She had a sweet set of B cups.  I don't know what these brassieres are called, but  hers may as well have been "The Erector Set," or "Display Case for the Ductwork."  She provided a sweet view from above.  The luxuriating mid-size mams with that little strip of connecting fabric.  I was seriously asking myself if I could afford to be let go.

   If you hold a Milk Bone in front of a dog, he's gonna look.  He's gonna do more than look.

   Once in a while a student's essay needs to be flagged and sent higher up.  Anything mentioning suicide, other violence, pregnancy talk, stuff like that.  One day four minutes before dismissal, white Sabrina raises her hand.  She's also in her mid-20s, not quite as angelic, but really pushes the boundaries with her display.  When I get over there, she says, "Is this an Alert?"  (Something about building a bomb and blowing things up.)

   I looked down over her and thought, You bet it is.  Jesus!  I'm seein' pink.  I'm seein' blue veins.  Secure the perimeter!  This is a major alert. Then, conjuring up Groucho, I'm all,  Lady, please!  I need this job.  I've got kids to feed.  And from the looks of it, so do you.

 

 

     

 

 

Angry Money

     Jon Stewart's dressing down of financial celebrity James Cramer four years ago was an interesting phenomenon.  Cramer is a smart, well-informed insider who has something to say.  He is also a guy who loves the sound of his own voice.  I was surprised that he didn't punch back when Stewart repeatedly slammed him as being part of the problem.  He absorbed every last bit of the beating.

     I'm not a fan of Cramer's show Mad Money, partly because I tend not to like loud people.  The guy acts  and sounds like the Wizard of Oz.  One thing I will say in his defense is that he sometimes admits when he's wrong.  There are probably tens of thousands of newsletter writers, stock pundits, gurus, trading system peddlers, advisors, call them what you will, who virtually never admit when they're wrong; and of course, anyone who repeatedly gives trading advice on specific stocks will frequently be dead wrong.

     So what's my point?  It's just that I would think Cramer (and other high profile stock advisors) would have trouble sleeping at night.  I haven't seen Mad Money in years, and maybe they run a boilerplate warning about risk of loss, so that inexperienced, naive investors don't get too carried away in the excitement of the show.  But toward the end of the Stewart interview, Cramer's defense was, "I'm not Edward R Murrow.  I'm a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business."  

     Wait, wait.  Let me stop you there.  An "entertainment" show.  You mean like when a psychic has a disclaimer (or should, anyway) "For entertainment purposes only"?  So people aren't actually supposed to take their hard-earned cash and plunk it down on some snappy growth stock in an emerging new business that you think is aces?  You mean like when those 900 numbers in the back of weekly news rags say, "For entertainment purposes only"?  So... is buying a Cramer stock pick akin to taking the "entertainer" at your local gentleman's club back to the VIP room?   To use the parlance of financial speculators:  "This stock's got legs."

Saunders' Tenth of December

     I've seen George Saunders on Letterman.  He seems like a good guy: modest, funny, likable.  And Tenth of December was hyped on NPR, the reviewer proclaiming it might be the best book you will read this year.

     He has been described as the chronicler of the wage slave, and the best short story writer today, so naturally I had to lay my hands on a copy.

     Here is my review.

     How to respond:  Incumbent upon, and what not.  But what would they say?  Keep wits, no doubt.  Keep wits.  It could be done.  Oh God, voice rec.  Ignition.  Sledding is tough, unbelieving, informal.  Hotel Echo, this is Charlie Delta.  Show some respect.  (Weds OK?)  Coffee shop sample requester.  Direct quote: "cornhole the ear-cunt."  Added bonus or pure liberty?  Takingwise.

     If you've enjoyed my review of Tenth of December by George Saunders, then you might like Tenth of December.

The Universal Language

    During the first few years of my guitar-playing life, I was really livin'.  And learnin'.

    I'd recently traded in my basic guitar for a very well-made cedar top.  The relationship between musician and instrument is an intimate one, and I guard my 6-string with the vigilance of a mama gator.

    There was a folk music club where members take turns rendering their favorites.  The group's organizer and leader, Walt, is well-known locally as a folk music enthusiast and patron.  With his bald head, long beard and black, plastic horn rims, he looked professorial.

     Some people think it would be difficult to get up and give a speech.  Nothing compared to playing acoustic and singing, which requires complete relaxation and immersion.

    In the cozy classroom setting of this club, I decided that "Dark Hollow," a tune derived from bluegrass and made somewhat popular by the Grateful Dead, would be my best bet for a winning debut.  I had almost no experience playing for anyone other than myself and my yellow lab, and I hadn't quite mastered this tune.  But I just figured this crowd would go for "Dark Hollow."  The song ends with the following refrain.

                                         I'm goin' away, I'm leavin' today,
                                         Well I'm goin', but I ain't comin' back      (repeat)

    I struggled with some of the chord changes; my rhythm was iffy; my vocal was flat.  It was a frustrating attempt at communing with like-minded humans.

    As I was putting my cedar top back in its hardshell case, and out of harm's way, moderator Walt said, "Well don't go away mad."

    I actually replied with, "Oh, I'm not leaving."  And I didn't.  I slid back down onto my chair where I quietly held my baby in its shell.  I'm more protective of my guitar, apparently, than I am of my dignity.



 

Has It Been That Long?

     "I'm not feeling too well," she explained when I called Friday night to firm up our Saturday plans.  We'd been dating every weekend for about two months.

     "I'm kind of run down and a little depressed."

     This actually suited me, as I wasn't feeling my best either, and was struggling to come up with something  interesting to do for a date that wasn't too taxing.  Thinking it polite to show some concern for her condition, I continued, "So it's not like a bug or something then... you're just kind of  stressed out?  I have lots of bad days myself but don't actually get sick much.  Usually I get a cold once a year in October.  Actually last year, I didn't get sick, probably cuz  I wasn't working around kids anymore."   Blah, blah...

     I called Saturday afternoon.  We had a long chat that went pretty well: I scored some laughs, cheered her up a bit.  And then I wanted to recap how she was doing.

     "So then you don't have like a virus or anything serious, you're just run down?"

     I'm not sure at what point over the next couple days it finally dawned on me.  God.  Two things:  I'm pretty slow, and I need to get out more.   It's been so long since I've had a regular relationship that I forgot women have periods.

The Dwelling Was Fully Involved

  When it comes to marriage and kids, how involved should one get?  Well, to each his own, but remember that word involved.  It’s a word used by firefighters, as in, “By the time we arrived on the scene, the dwelling was fully involved.  There was nothing we could do.”

  What does  life have in store for me?  Am I fated to holing up like Pynchon or Poe, only without the body of work?  It’s an unhealthy existence, slowly withering on the vine, while the images of me in photographs begin to fade away like those of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. 

  For all those guys bent on a life without kids, George Gilder’s Sexual Suicide is one scary read.  In this defense of marriage, family and traditional values, he seems to suggest that men who don’t have children tend to fare poorly in life.  Men need to be socialized by having a family.

  As for the ladies, he notes that many of them like to broadcast their utter lack of interest in having babies, but he says they are denying their biology.  Childbirth is their destiny.  And here I thought childbirth was a publicity stunt.  (That seemed like a pretty good line when I came up with it.  Then along come a few  headline-grabbing, high-output females, and suddenly it doesn’t seem particularly original, clever, or, alas, funny.  Thanks.)  Carry on with your biological chain letter, your parental pyramid scheme, your human hoarding.  Do we really need to be farming humans in overcrowded pens?   Spawning like shrimp in a fetid pond?  Honestly, I miss the days when TV shows were about families like the Petries, instead of families from Petri dishes.  In the film Get Him to the Greek,  Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, says to the boy whom he thought was his son, “Your mother… is a wonderful mother; but she is a terrible human being.”

  Sexual Suicide suggests that in life’s main event, reproduction, women play the central role.  They have the power.  They’re the Johnny Carson, while the father is standing around like Ed McMahon.  To hear all the jokes that male comics make at the expense of females, one would think that men don’t like women: "Why do women knit?  Gives them something to think about while they’re talking."  (I'm just the messenger.)  The male attitude toward women is shaped by the notion that hetero men have but two choices in life:  (a) Settle down, get married, and have kids.  Or (b) Proceed down a dangerous path that leads to prison.  Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me no pleasure to point out that many names for jail sound like slang for the lady bidness.

·         Cooler..................... Cooter

·         Frig ......................... Brig

·         Clit ........................... Clink

·         The Pokey................. (that could be either, really)

·         (ditto the Walls, Up the River, etc)

·         Hoosegow .................. House cow

·         In Stir ......................... In Stirrups (get ‘em up)

  All right, let’s not belabor it.  So men need to be subordinated by family.  Here’s how it works.   A guy will want to nail pretty much anything that walks by until he has his own children.  Why does having his own kids change his behavior?  Based on my observations, it’s because his kids keep hitting him in the nuts.  When I pay a visit to my younger brother’s family, my seven year old niece Julia (Jules for short) comes running at me.  Sometimes I yell, “Cover the jewels!”  She thinks I’m talking about her.  Ever see a family where the kids’ ages are like 9, 8, 7… and then 1?  That woman is trying to keep her man in check.  (By the way, this is all true:  I looked it up on Wankipedia.)  Uh… I guess you guys aren’t ready for this stuff yet … but your kids are gonna love it!

Naivety Scene

     Out of the corner of my eye, “nativity” appeared to be “naivety.”  An honest reading mistake. 

     In the 21^st Century, naivete  (or the British naivety) helps people believe.  Truth to tell though, if anyone had a naïve young adulthood, I did.  In my late-blooming, sheltered mid-twenties, I went to my dad and earnestly said, “People who believe in God…they’re just pretending to believe in it, right?”

     According to an article in The New Yorker, when a person sees something, only 20% of the image is created by nerve endings in the eye.  The other 80%?  Memory.  Explains a lot.  Fully 80% comes from that part of the brain that controls memory.  Which is why my particular eye/brain combo came up with naivety.  People see what they want to see.  Ex-Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens thought that the fat one-third of a shattered baseball bat was in fact a baseball.  Maybe that's not the best example.

     Another word I have misread is “storied.”  The day after Bonds hit homer number 756, the photo caption read, “Bonds breaks Aaron’s storied home run record.”  Can you think of an apt anagram for the word “storied?”   Need more time?  I’ll wait.  By the way, I am not suggesting that Hammerin’ Hank used performance enhancing drugs, naturally.  I'm suggesting the virgin did.  (Oprah to conduct seance.)

     Of course, for many people, sports is their religion.  Only instead of putting the cash in a  collection plate, they give it to the beer and hot dog guy.  Tithing to the god of nitrates, saturated fat and alcohol.  Seeing what you want to see.  And you don’t want to see how they make the hot dogs.  Or the "miracles."

The Morality of the Male Maintenance

     I came across a video of a debate titled Is Porn Bad For Society?  Both sides made excellent points, but were often talking past one another.  Like life itself, porn can be both good and bad.

     But count me in the camp that has a real problem with pornography.  It's difficult to get the timing right. So oftentimes it happens that just when you're about to be delivered from your encumbrance, they cut to an extreme close-up, Learning Channel sort of shot.  Nothing romantic there.  In my experience the most common sin committed by porn directors is not keeping everything in the frame.  The viewer should be able to see everyone head to toe  for the vast majority of the video.  "Pull back!"  It's about context.

     Also, pausing is paramount.  Who's the Einstein who decided that having the "play" icon appear  in the middle of the picture every time you hit "pause" is helpful?  That triangular icon is usually blocking something important, maybe even another type of triangle.

     Yes, things would be different if I ran porn.  All I need to see is a few cute ladies, cotton undergarments and Newton's laws of motion.

     I once got into a conversation with a self-described "recovering priest" who tried to explain the reason why Catholicism  considers masturbation immoral.  Something about "You're not being devoted to your partner if you ejaculate on your own."  (Away from her?)  In other words, masturbation  cannot be separated from sexual intercourse, which is for procreation. 

     Tell it to the hand.  As I get older, the male maintenance is a job, not an adventure.  It needs to be done, and I don't necessarily enjoy it.

     I'd actually have to say that, in general, porn probably is bad for society for several reasons.   Like ice cream and twitter, it can be very addictive for many people.  And it usually does demean women.  However, masturbating is a personal health issue; and, to borrow from  (and paraphrase) the great stand-up Tom Rhodes, what are we going to look at?  The picture on the box of Close-Up toothpaste?

   

Keep a Ring on It?

     It’s not hard to imagine an uncorrupted family man (then again)—perhaps from an underdeveloped country—who moves with his wife and child to a modern, entertainment-addled community.  Then one day he sees something called a music video.  He has never seen anything quite like these gyrating, grinding dancers.  They mesmerize him, put him in some kind of trance.  Within a week of being inculcated by this powerful public service announcement known as Put a Ring on It, he begins to rethink the construct of limiting himself to just one woman—a non-gyrating one at that.  Mixed message.

Sugar-Coated Nuptials

     Certain words strike me as odd-sounding.  Nuptials is such a word.  “Last week I went in to have my nuptials removed.”  It’s like an appendix: no longer needed.  Nuptials to me sounds like a food.  Hostess bite-sized nuptials.  “Mrs Sedgewick, these nuptials are scrumptious.”  Sounds like “vittles.”  Birds Eye frozen nuptials:  the groom has cold feet.  Mixed nuptials:  inter-racial.  Green Giant steamed nuptials:  she’s a pissed off bridezilla.  

     Remember, for women it’s bad luck to see the groom before the wedding.  For men, it’s awkward to see other customers at the massage parlor.  Other annoying words:  Kudos, props and preggers.  “Kudos and props on the nuptials.  Are you preggers?” 

Excellence in Obviousness

    You hear some aging rock legend reflecting in his memoir on his six-and-a-half marriages, and  he says something like, "The thing is, I love women.  I really do.  To me there is nothing more beautiful than the naked female body."  What a Renaissance man coming up with that!  Give him a Nobel Prize for excellence in obviousness.