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!