Kapricious Thoughts

The Answer to the Meaning of All Life and Existence

2011-09-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

I made a joke about the meaning of all life and existence recently. A friend told me that, in a half-asleep haze, she had deleted a comment I had left on her Facebook wall. Though the actual comment I had left had only been a casual greeting, I responded by saying, "That's too bad. I gave you the answer to the meaning of all life and existence... now you'll never know!" Eventually I wrote back that according to Douglas Adams, the answer is 42.

But what is the true meaning of all life and existence? This is all anyone wants to know, isn't it? And though I spend far too much of my time searching for the meaning of my life and existence, is it possible I already know the answer to both questions?

Isn't it love?

I mean, not to be too vague or hippie... but isn't that what it all comes down to? Get past all the greeting card clichés and worldly cynicism and religious hypocrisy and self-help books and bad romantic comedies, and love still stands. Love remains. Love: that simplest and yet most complex of things. That greatest of things (1 Corinthians 13:13). That divine impetus upon which every other word from the mouths of the Prophets or the pages of the Torah or the pens of the Apostles hinges (Matthew 22:34-40).

And not just love, the greatest of things, but that love that is the greatest of loves--the kind of love Jesus was talking about when he said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13, KJV). And that might merely have gone down in history as a nice maxim if he had not then followed through on it, completely, in action, to the death. THAT gave his words a far greater power--the power to transform all of life and existence, to bring all of life and existence back into harmony with God, and to free all of life and existence from the very death of which he spoke.

There is no more final an answer to the meaning of it all than that.

It is love.

-Tom

The Old Toy Chest

2011-09-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've begun a new series of articles at my movie blog, the Rant Pad, part of the Incidental Dog production network I began with my friends a little over a year ago. The series is called "The Old Toy Chest." Here's the intro: You can read my first two entries in the series at the following links:

The Old Toy Chest: In this series I will be reviewing movies I loved when I was a kid but have not watched since childhood–sort of like digging out my old toys that I haven’t played with in a while. (Unburying them, so to speak, in keeping with prevailing themes on this site.) These movies are generally from the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s, and they generally will be films with which current audiences (i.e., current kids) are not familiar. In other words, for the purposes of this series, I will mainly be looking at films that have not endured the way other films of the era (like Back to the Future or The Goonies or The Little Mermaid) have endured as popular favorites. (I do, however, hope many of you will remember these films with fondness from your own childhoods.) I will be judging them through both the nostalgic eyes of the child within and the lens of the mature *snicker* film critic into which I’ve grown.

You can read my first two entries in the series at the following links:

Harry and the Hendersons: http://www.incidentaldog.com/rantpad/?p=573

Captain EO: http://www.incidentaldog.com/rantpad/?p=625

Then, check out the rest of the site! There are over a hundred articles to read at the Rant Pad and more than 60 video podcasts, plus some other goodies. Enjoy.

-Tom

Short Review: "The Making of Casablanca" (book)

2011-09-14T15:55:00.001-07:00

The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fascinating look, not only at the making of one of the greatest films ever made, but into the studio system of the 1930s and 40s and the way the U.S. government and the media worked throughout the Second World War. Part history, part biography, part film criticism, Harmetz comes at the story from all angles, and they all work. She did her homework and also includes plenty of firsthand interviews with just about everyone involved in the film who was still alive at the time of writing. I would have given it five stars but for the occasionally confusing writing style and the fact that she ends on such a cynical note after so many wonderful pages of marveling at the way this film came to be. Still, a highly recommended work of not just film history, but American history.

View all my reviews

Overstimulation of the mind

2011-09-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

I realized tonight that thinking has become a lot like surfing the Internet. I go online, and I can go through a hundred links in an hour, gathering information in little bites. Every page links to another page which links to another page which links to another. It's easy to follow such a long train of links that I can't remember where I started.

It's like when you're thinking about something, and one thought leads to another until you can't figure out how your brain got onto the current subject. I'm usually able to backtrack through the connections my brain has made until I remember what thought I'd originally begun on. And online, I am usually opening new links in new tabs, so it's easier to keep track of. But lately, I've discovered, I can't hold a thought for more than a few seconds.

Being online so much, my brain has become so used to receiving information in small interconnected increments that when I try to actually focus on an idea, I can't do it. My brain wants to follow the next link rather than stay on the current page. The only time I can focus on one thing for more than a minute is if I listen to a song and really concentrate on it; read something I am physically holding in my hands; or watch a movie--and even then, I sometimes find my mind following neurological links to other things based on what I'm watching, reading, or listening to. (I have often discovered I've read three paragraphs and have no idea what I've just read, because I've been thinking about something else from three paragraphs ago.)

It is difficult in this age of fast-moving, constantly changing, easily obtainable information, to just stop and focus, to meditate on one subject, even to pray and not have my mind wander. I was talking tonight with a friend about Paul's exhortation in his second epistle to the Corinthians to "take every thought captive." But lately my thoughts have been like sheep without a shepherd. It's not just a matter of arresting mental intruders. It's a matter of keeping the good ones that I already have from going astray and getting lost in the mountains. It's like I need pack of a mental border collies (and by that I mean collies of the mind, not deranged collies).

Perhaps spending less time on the Internet and more time retraining my thoughts to be able to focus and meditate is in order. But how is one to do it with all this noise?

Disillusionment

2011-04-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

We tend to think of disillusionment as a bad thing. Actually, disillusionment is a very good thing. It begins with negativity, and that can't be avoided. But to become disillusioned is to see through the charade. If you believe the illusion, you believe the lie. It is fine to believe the illusion at a live stage show. It is perilous to believe it in your everyday life. To become disillusioned is to see through the lie. It is to perceive reality. And it is unavoidably disheartening. But it can also serve as a catalyst for positive change. Disillusionment, if we embrace our newfound sense of what is real, can spur us on to the beginning of a journey toward discovering Truth. This is an always difficult and often lonely journey; but to seek after the Truth is always a good thing, and will lead the honest seeker to the Best of Things.

What is Horror?

2010-09-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

I am publishing film-related articles at the Rant Pad at IncidentalDog.com:

http://www.incidentaldog.com/rantpad/?p=23

It's time for another Good Idea, Bad Idea....

2010-08-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

Good Idea:

Having blind faith.

Bad Idea:

Having a faith that makes you blind.

The Incidental Dog Movie Podcast

2010-07-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'd like everyone to check out IncidentalDog.com. It's a new movie-centric website created by myself and my friends. Every week, we do a new video podcast and review a new movie. I also have a new movie blog over there. The website is still in beta-mode, and we're still working out the details, but it's coming along. You can check out our video reviews of Toy Story 3, Predators and Inception among others.

Relative accomplishments

2010-06-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

I accomplished something today that I have long wished to accomplish: I learned to drive stick-shift. That is, I basically learned. The real accomplishment will be taking a bus to Florida and making it back to New York with my uncle's five-speed truck in one piece.

Writing for writing's sake

2010-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

I asked my friends to hold me accountable to writing at least one blog entry per day for a week, starting this past Friday. Today is Sunday, meaning I've already dropped the ball two days in a row. (Well, technically the clock switched over to Monday 44 minutes ago, but this should still count as a Sunday night blog.)

Truth is, I don't even think to log in every day unless something has happened that day to inspire me to write something I think is worth others' time to read, and even when something worth writing about does happen, if I don't write about it right away, I forget to write about it later.

One thing that happens a lot is that I receive inspiration on the road. I get a lot of good writing ideas while I'm driving. Unfortunately, it would be dangerous and potentially counterproductive to write down ideas while I'm driving, because I firmly believe that it's difficult to blog about things when you're dead. (I'm also hoping that I won't care much about blogging in the afterlife.) I tried talking into a digital recorder once on a road trip, but all I got on the playback was ambient driving noise.

Sometimes, when I'm being particularly prudent and deliberate about my writing, I'll pull over and write something down while the thoughts are fresh. But even this can be dangerous, and annoying, if I'm trying to pull over every five minutes. I guess what I should do is take a few minutes to write in a journal every time I arrive somewhere.

Now, here's hoping I remember to do that. And there, meager and "meta" as it may be, is Sunday's post.

Hollywood News!

2010-05-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

This just in! Tom Cruise dumps Katie Holmes for Nicolas Cage! A publicist for the pair informs us that it was when they "looked into each other's eyes and recognized the crazy" that they knew they were meant to be together. No word yet on what bizarre name they'll give their first child. (Our money is on "General L. Zod Hubbard"--whether it's a boy or a girl.)

In other news, mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer hugs a bald man.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2325971456/rg3148913152

A true Hollywood story....

2010-05-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Director Kevin Reynolds sits beside the camera. "Okay everyone, quiet on the set! And, ac-"

"Hang on," Kevin Costner interrupts.

"What's the problem?" asks Reynolds.

"I'm not ready yet," replies Costner.

"But we've been prepping for four hours for this one scene of dia..."

"Okay. I'm ready. Action!" Costner shouts.

Reynolds looks at the ground dejectedly. "Action," he mutters to the cast inside his head, where Robin Hood is played by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Morgan Freeman is looking at Reynolds. He then looks over at Costner, who has his face bent toward the ground, his eyes closed tightly, obviously trying very hard to be English.

Freeman rolls his eyes, takes a deep breath, centers himself, and speaks: "Christian!"

"What?" says Christian Slater, standing just off-camera.

Everybody looks at Slater, who is focusing on Morgan Freeman, one eyebrow cocked, waiting. Freeman looks at Slater and nods subtly toward Costner, who still has his eyes closed. Slater cocks an eyebrow in Costner's direction. "Oh, right," Slater says. "My bad."

"Cut," says Reynolds.

"No, no, it's okay," says Costner. "Keep rolling, we'll just go again."

"Let's try it again," mutters Reynolds. He has a brief flashback to the set of Fandango. His eye twitches once.

Morgan Freeman is still looking at Christian Slater. He then looks at Costner, who is again concentrating on the Anglo-Saxon warrior within. Freeman takes a deep breath, trying to center himself. It's a bit harder this time, but suddenly he has a vision of a tall man on a Mexican beach fixing a boat, and is overcome with peace. He opens his eyes, full of Moorish fire, and bellows, "Christian!"

"Hm?" says Slater, cocking an eyebrow toward Freeman. Costner keeps his eyes closed. Freeman desperately clings to his vision of tropical paradise.

Reynolds sighs. "It's okay, just keep 'em-"

"Cut!" yells Costner. He walks off to a nearby line of trees.

"Ah... I'm sorry," says Slater. "Maybe Kevin's character could have a less confusing name? Hm? Are the writers on-set?"

Costner is gazing into the distance, imagining rolling plains covered with millions of the majestic tatanka.

Reynolds is muttering to himself about a post-apocalyptic world in which the glaciers have melted and covered the planet in one big ocean.

Freeman has his eyes closed, and is back on that Mexican beach. He sees the tall man working on the boat. The sand turns velvety red. The tall man turns into a golden statue. Freeman smiles a big, toothy grin. Suddenly, a strange man in shorts and sneakers, with long scraggly hair and a red baseball cap, comes jogging across the beach. He jogs past Freeman, stops, turns around, says "I'm pretty tired, I think I'll go home now," grabs the golden statue, and runs back from whence he came. The smile disappears from Freeman's face.

Slater has one eyebrow cocked, looking around at the other actors for validation. "Right?" he says. "Less confusing names?"

Reynolds snaps out of his hallucinatory state, takes a few seconds to remember why he is in a medieval forest, sees Costner is nowhere to be found, is overcome by happiness, and announces, "Alright, let's take five. We'll get it when we come back!"

"I hope," mutters Morgan Freeman.

Movie violence

2010-04-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

My recent viewing of Kick-Ass got me thinking about movie violence. I've been trying to solidify my thoughts about it, and here is what I've come up with so far:

I have no problem when filmmakers depict acts of violence. Nor do I have a problem with filmmakers depicting acts of extreme violence. I don't even have a problem with filmmakers depicting acts of sadistic violence. What I do have a problem with, and this goes for Kick-Ass in a most exceptional way, is when filmmakers depict sadistic violence and then positively reaffirm it for the audience.

There is plenty of sadistic violence in Schindler's List, but it is a beautiful, brilliant, good film about the horrors of what man does to man. There is some sick sadism in A History of Violence, but that film is ultimately anti-violence. There are plenty of sadistic villains in the James Bond films, but such a thing is designed to put the audience against the bad guys and for the good guys. Even when Bond himself turns ice-cold in his use of violence, it never makes the audience feel good about it. If anything, it makes me slightly afraid of the hero.

What Kick-Ass does is show a little girl brutally slaying a room full of criminals, with which I would not necessarily have taken issue, but for the ones she kills who aren't even putting up a fight, and the expression of glee on her face as she does so, and the way the audience members around me seemed to be enjoying it. Put all these things together, and it makes me sick.

(Criticisms such as these are also why I think Crank is one of the filthiest movies ever made and is one of, if not the worst movie I've ever watched.)

I'm still not sure how I feel about Kick-Ass as a whole. There is a lot about it that I really appreciate, but I can not and will not get on board with thinking there is anything good about treating sadism so lightly.

Google Search Top 10: "How do I...."

2010-04-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

10. how do i breathe lyrics

9. how do i delete my myspace

8. how do i live without you song lyrics

7. how do i download youtube videos

6. how do i delete my facebook account

5. how do i love thee

4. how do i look

3. how do i know if i'm pregnant

2. how do i get a passport

1. how do i find my ip address

I find numbers 1 and 7 amusing.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

2010-04-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how many times in my youth I said the "sinner's prayer." I always felt like maybe I'd forgotten to say something important, that I'd missed a key phrase or idea. I always felt I was still a hopeless sinner. In October of 1998, I went to a Three Crosses concert in Pine Bush, New York. It was that night I had an epiphany: By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself--it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

I'd like to share with you, in honor of the resurrection we celebrate today, my favorite Three Crosses song (which, perhaps not coincidentally, was co-written by my favorite band of the past 15 years). I also encourage you, whether you have that faith or not, even if just to get a better perspective on what Christians celebrate today, or why we celebrate it, to read the biblical passages of Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. It is so important, that all four of the gospel accounts include it. The crucifixion would have been meaningless without it. It is, in truth, the moment on which our faith and our freedom from sin and death hinge.

(Disclaimer: I've tried about 30 times, and the formatting keeps getting messed up for some reason.)

"The Stone Was Rolled Away"

Written by Three Crosses & Jars of Clay
Recorded by Three Crosses for the album Jefferson Street (1996)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You wrote them off as fables,
Just stories that you'd use to pass the time
But still there's something calling you,
Begging you to read between the lines

Seeing the signs, the signs of His grace
Now you're awakened by the Spirit's embrace

The stone was rolled away....

Watching now in judgment,

You've heard the truth but rarely seen the light
But somehow when you look again, you're seeing something deeper,
A change that brings new life

Seeing the signs, trusting your faith
Now you're awakened by the Spirit's embrace

The stone was rolled away
(You know you'll never find the living among the dead)....

Why can't you see?

(I tried to catch a glimpse of You, but all I saw was an empty tomb)

I am so free

(How was I to understand that You were God and You were man?)

What more can I do or say?

The stone was rolled away....

"Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5)

Some thoughts on American Idol's Top 12

2010-03-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody (i.e., my many readers)! I'm back with some new things to say about Season 9 of American Idol (because I feel that there aren't enough people blogging about it already). Actually, this post really took shape because I wanted to say a couple of things about my girl Crystal Bowersox, but I kept finding more and more things to comment on, so I decided to just review the whole Top 12. I'll save the best for last, just like the show did.

First of all though, I have to express my disappointment with last week's results, when four of the wrong contestants were sent packing. The wrong FOUR. That's every one of them. Every one of the four with the least amount of votes (assuming the voting process is honest and accurate, for which I have reasonable doubt) was undeserving of the loss. Not that they were all the best of the bunch or even great, or even favorites of mine (two were), but they all offered something positive to the show that many of the other contestants do not.

Todrick Hall was no great singer, but as a decent singer with a background in dance, he was bringing something interesting to the show. Alex Lambert was just starting to blossom, and despite my prejudicial spite of mullets, the boy had an interesting voice. These two were the only male contestants, after Michael Lynche (whom I'll talk about more in a minute), who were not bland and forgettable. I am honestly having a hard time remembering the other five guys' performances, or even names, week to week.

The girls' results were trickier, as there is generally much more interesting talent amongst them, but even more egregious. Katelyn Epperly was far from being the best, but she was consistently more listenable than Katie Stevens, Paige Miles, or Lacey Brown. Shock of the night, however, was when Lilly Scott was given the boot. She was, after clear frontrunner Crystal, the most unique contestant, picking interesting if not spot-on songs every week, and had a voice that hardly ever missed a right note.

Lilly was clearly as confounded as everyone else and didn't shy away from saying so on the air: "I don't know what America wants to hear." She obviously doesn't listen to the stations playing "today's best music," because what America wants to hear is usually pretty awful. But I share the sentiment. It's not that we don't know what America wants to hear; we know. We're just frustrated about the why. And our frustrations with today's music will never be allayed, because we refuse to accept such terrible music as worthy of being referred as "today's best." I feel your pain, Lilly.

Last week was the most emotional I've ever seen things get on this show, as these results were just as big of a shocker to the rest of the contestants, and as Alex and Lilly's departures were particularly difficult for their colleagues to bear. But let's put the past in the past and move on to this week's performances.

The contestants performed covers of Rolling Stones songs this week, and somebody in the writers' room thinks highly of the Stones. The opening tribute video gushed with phrases like "without a doubt the most iconic band" and "the best rock band in the world." I know, I know, it's the Stones, and yes, they've got one of the most impressive songbooks in rock-n-roll history, but let's dial it down a notch.

First performer of the night was Michael Lynche. He is the best male singer in the competition by a mile, as Simon might say. Not only does he have a great voice, but he really feels it when he sings, and thus the listener does too. He's got to cut down on the falsetto, but he's the only guy there who deserves to reach the Top 3, if it's not composed entirely of women. His more R&B-heavy version of the Stones' "Miss You" was a great kick-off for the evening.

This is the only comment I'm going to make about the show that doesn't focus on the contestants and the music: Seacrest needs to focus on doing his job and stop trying to do Simon's. He's the host, not a judge. Nobody cares about his opinion of music. I don't care if he's a DJ, especially since that makes him one of the people peddling all the crap music to the masses, and since mainstream DJ's are, I say with a sad sense of irony, one of the least musically attuned groups of people on the planet. I swear, Seacrest is becoming more obnoxious every season, though perhaps his latest trend of second-guessing Simon's critiques is a symptom of separation anxiety. Moving on.

I have to admit outright: I am crushing on Didi Benami beyond reason. I know she's not the best singer, and she hasn't quite gotten the hang of picking the right song. But, well:

Tonight she picked "Play with Fire," which doesn't seem to fit her personality at all, but then again I only get to see her for an hour or so every week on a heavily edited reality show, so what do I know. She sang it pretty well anyway.

Casey James broke out the electric guitar and performed "It's All Over Now," which isn't actually a Stones original but a cover of a Womacks song from the same year of 1964. I'm not a fan of Casey. For some reason it annoys me just to see him take the stage. But maybe I'm just jealous of his hair. He actually did a pretty good job this time around though. It was his best performance so far, in my opinion, though still pretty forgettable. I don't think he's ever going to surpass this Bo Bice Lite thing he's got going on.

Next up was Lacey Brown. I truly like Lacey, but she's already gone further in this competition than she deserves. She probably should have been voted off instead of Lilly or Katelyn. Her performances are just sleep-inducing. I imagine her voice is well-suited for a more intimate setting, like a coffee house, but when she's got that big stage to fill, she disappears. I guess I might as well report that she sang "Ruby Tuesday," though it hardly matters. Also, if I may say so, she's really a beautiful girl, naturally, so I don't get why she wears so much makeup. But then I have this same problem with a lot of girls. Makeup isn't supposed to cover beauty, is it?

Andrew Garcia performed a terrible rendition of the awesome "Gimme Shelter," one of the Stones best songs. There was absolutely no feeling in it. It's like he didn't really listen to the song before he sang it, didn't feel the violence and tension behind it, didn't hear the intense passion in Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton's voices. I doubt he even took the time to learn anything about it. This is the guy who made it through when Alex Lambert got voted off. Shame.

Next was Katie Stevens performing another of the Stones' greatest songs, "Wild Horses." Katie is immensely likeable, but her performances are nothing special. Katie was the one who made it through when Lilly got voted off. Shame again.

Tim Urban is the one they're calling the "comeback kid" because he originally did not make the Top 24. The guy he was brought back to replace was Chris Golightly, and I don't feel like taking the time to go back and find all the details, but that boy got the short end of the stick. Something about a prior contractual obligation that they thought conflicted with his American Idol contract, but actually turned out to be fine after it was already too late and he'd been sent home and replaced. I'd hate to be Chris. I doubt very much he's going lightly these days.

Anyway, Tim Urban. I never remember this kid or anything he performs. Apparently he did a light reggae version of "Under My Thumb" (good thing I took notes), which is a pretty dark song about sexual power. Another fine job of not paying any mind to the actual lyrics. He seems like a nice kid, just like Katie, but they are both going to be crushed under the weight of the ones in the competition who know how to bring a song to life.

This brings us to Siobhan Magnus, who is one of the best singers in the competition and also knows how to make a song her own, as evidenced by her rendition of "Paint It, Black," but my goodness, is she an odd duck. I cannot get her figured, and that's a good thing, because she constantly surprises. I read a comment by someone somewhere who referred to her as "the one who sounds like she sniffs glue," which gave me a good laugh, because that is a good way to describe her cadence, demeanor, and behavior--but she's likeable, too, and seems to have a better grasp of the classics than most of the rest. "Paint It, Black" is another very dark song and another of the Stones' absolute best. I wouldn't say Siobhan nailed it, but hers was by far the most intriguing performance of the night.

Next up was Lee Dewyze. According to my notes he sang "Beast of Burden." As you can probably tell, Lee is just another member of the bland Top 6 guys (with the exception of Michael, of course). What I can say about Lee, now that I remember who he is again, is that he always, always, has the look of a man who fears he's being hunted for sport.

I never cared much for Paige Miles until tonight. Paige was one of three girls that I thought deserved to voted off last week, but I'm actually glad she was till around this week because she was definitely the most pleasant surprise of the evening, giving maybe my second-favorite performance of the night. She took "Honky Tonk Women" and, as the judges would say, made it her own. You could tell she was into it, and she sang it nigh perfectly. She was rockin' the look and rockin' the song, and it was one of maybe two performances of the night that I would actually like to have on my iTunes--and that is rare for me to say about an American Idol performance. (The other, you won't be surprised to discover, is from Bowersox at the end of the show.)

Aaron Kelly just looks and sounds like a kid that some recording studio would mold into a pop star, which makes his presence mildly bothersome every week despite his easy-going demeanor. No offense to the boy, and I realize this isn't his fault, but I have had all the references to Justin Bieber that I can stand this season. I think I just have a vague moral issue with such young people becoming pop icons. But I won't even try delving into that right now. Aaron did a slightly better-than-expected performance of "Angie," a song to which I'm sure he relates at his ripe age. My cockatiel Charlie seemed to be diggin' it though, bobbing his head to the music, so points to Aaron.

Okay, I'm about to get to the main event, but first, I need, I need to say something about this stupid Bing commercial. Some of the Bing commercials are decent, and the one with the yoga is particularly funny, but this one with the vampire is awful. Awful. And lazy. And the execution doesn't make a lick of sense. The girl's sitting on the motel bed looking for places to eat on her laptop, and this guy's flitting around the room drawing the curtains, berating her inability to search quickly and whining about how hungry he is. (Not using Bing apparently warrants such verbal abuse.)

Finally she uses Bing. Suddenly he sits down and looks directly at the TV audience but he's still addressing her. Why? No reason. Then he says they'll just stay in. "But I thought you were hungry," she says. Then he, still looking out at the TV audience and smiling, with her sitting on the bed in background, says, "I am." Then sharp canines pop out of his mouth to the sound of knives being pulled from their sheaths (?). Then there's a distant, muted sound of some woman screaming (??). He's still smiling at the TV audience. Then she laughs. WTF? Awful.

Okay, back to the show, and let's just face it, it's The Crystal Bowersox Show. Her singing, her playing, her sense of arrangement are all so effortless, and the girl has been sick, and has looked really sick while on the show, but still performs circles around the others. She does need to have a little more fun with her performances, but I think she knows it, and hopefully now she's healthier and will be able to deliver. She did my personal favorite Stones song, the daunting "You Can't Always Get What You Want," but she did it damn good, and I wish she could've performed all seven-and-a-half minutes of it.

Crystal's the one this season; she's my new Melinda Doolittle. Head-and-shoulders above. But here's the thing: I don't want her to win.

Crystal is sorely out of place on American Idol. She doesn't care about the all the hype, she looks really uncomfortable during the packaged group performances they're forced to do, and she's pretty much flat-out said she doesn't care much for the show. She sees it as her opportunity to perform to a larger audience and make a bigger paycheck so she can support her family doing what she loves and was created to do. And I say, more power to her. But I hope she doesn't win.

She's never watched the show, she says? Then she has no idea what's waiting for her at the end. If Crystal wins, she'll be contractually obligated to record some terrible pop single, and I see her having a real hard time reconciling that reality with who she is as an artist. So what I'm really hoping is that she'll come in second or third, after which she'll still get a decent recording contract, but one that will hopefully allow her to make music that is more on her terms. Like Daughtry, except she'll be recording good music.

So here's hoping. Oh, one more nice thing to say about Bowersox: the peacock feather was a classy shout-out to the unjustly cut Lilly Scott. Seacrest pointed it out, so I guess he ain't all bad.

Geckos, Geese & Loons

2010-03-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

I've got a few things to share tonight.

It's no secret that the Government Employees Insurance Company is a marketing machine with a relentless and often brilliant advertising campaign system. I believe they currently have no less than four separate television ad campaigns running. These include:

1) the GEICO Cavemen, still a well of creativity despite an ill-conceived attempt at expanding its schtick into a sitcom;

2) the ongoing shenanigans of The Gecko and the Goofy Old CEO (coming soon to ABC, no doubt);

3) the headache-inducingly awful "that's the money you could be saving" series with that googly-eyed banded stack of cash, the blandest non-character since NBC's casting department hired Justin Bruening as the hero of their terrible Knight Rider sequel series, which thankfully quickly went the way of the cavemen; and

4) the latest, in which an affectedly serious Robert Stack type asks "Can switching to GEICO really save you money on car insurance?" and answers with "Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?" (he does), or "Did the Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?" (they did), or my personal favorite, "Does a ten-pound bag of flour make a really big biscuit?" (which I love because just a five-second shot of a little boy frosting a giant biscuit and his mother's reaction of resignation relays a world of information about this family's home life).

But recently, GEICO overlooked an obvious opportunity to employ their little gecko mascot. There is a radio commercial in which a voice states that humans blink something like 17,000 times a day. How that relates to car insurance, I don't recall. (Is it really important for me to remember anything about the actual product?) However, the voice in the ad is not the Gecko's voice, and it totally should be! Because then he could have said something like this (and remember to imagine this with the proper accent):

"The average human blinks once every five seconds. Well that's, what, more than 17,000 times a day! It's an awful lot o' blinking, i'nt it? Now just imagine, in the space of less than 200 blinks, you could save 15% or more on your car insurance. I don't have much personal experience on the subject, o' course. I haven't got any eyelids. I have to clean my eyes with my tongue, which is a bit more painstaking of a process, let me tell you."

To make it worse, another commercial followed which did feature the Gecko. Oh GEICO, you are getting sloppy.

On a related note, I was watching The Office tonight. During one commercial break, I was organizing my iTunes, as I obsessively tend to do. One of The Gecko and the Goofy Old CEO commercials came on, and I turned in my chair to return my full attention to the TV because I thought the show had come back on. It literally took me that entire motion of turning and staring at the screen, watching an animated lizard standing on a desk, to discern that I was, in fact, not watching The Office but a GEICO commercial. The realization process took waaaay too long. Maybe that little gecko just fits into that world so well. Or maybe there's an exposed wire in my brain.

Or maybe it's time for a little shake-up in Scranton. Maybe it's time for a CGI lizard to join the cast. He can be voiced by John Oliver. Why not? Steve Carell, Ed Helms, and Larry Wilmore are all a part of the show. Why not one more Daily Show correspondent?

Now that I've written way more about that subject than I'd intended, let me switch gears. I went for a walk in the woods today, and as I was sitting by the lake, a couple of geese flew overhead. It made me think how fascinating geese are, how they always use the buddy system. If one has to separate from the rest of flock (or the skein, as it is called when a group of geese are in flight), another will go with it. Geese have such an amazing social structure.

This just in: Pat Robertson has just scientifically proven, after much research and controlled testing, that playing hand-held video games while sitting in the backseat of a car is a gateway drug to becoming addicted to pornography! (Either that, or, in the space of two sentences, he made a mental leap of what has only the barest resemblance to real logic. This is what I get for channel surfing at five in the morning. On the plus side, I was introduced to Cousin Larry, who had me entertained and delighted as he demonstrated his cousin's amazing cutlery. Yes, he was introduced as Cousin Larry. Yes, he was actually fun to watch. Yes, those knives do look awesome. Yes, I was watching this through bloodshot eyes at five in the morning.)

I leave you with this:

A brief review of "Human Target"

2010-01-19T20:54:00.003-08:00

"Human Target" is Fox Television's shiny new gift to action fans everywhere and a perfect companion piece for the often gloomy "24." It's the most thrilling thing I've seen on TV in a long time. The pilot episode is suspenseful and funny (in a good way), with a plot full of brilliant twists and turns and not a second of screen time wasted.

Director Simon West, who hasn't given the world anything so worth watching since 1997's Con Air, keeps the pace fast and the action tightly choreographed and gleefully executed. I constantly felt myself being physically drawn toward the screen, my face tightening with anticipation, and my breath shortening at every close call.

As for our new hero, if Jack Bauer had a square jaw, a heart of gold, and a sense of humor, he might look something like Christopher Chance, played with vigor by Mark Valley (probably best known for his role on David E. Kelley's "Boston Legal"). Writer/producer Jonathan E. Steinberg is like the action-junkie's Aaron Sorkin, and Valley reads Chance's dialogue like an adrenaline-pumped Bradley Whitford. (I realize that is something of a left-field comment to make, but listen to--and watch--the way Valley delivers his lines. It was bothering me during the denouement until I finally realized who he sounded like.)

The supporting cast is equally up to the task. Chi McBride (that's pronounced shy, I believe), fresh from "Pushing Daisies" (The Pie Hole will be dearly missed), improves anything he's in, though here he has essentially the same archetypical role he played so well in that late, great show. And, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Jackie Earle Haley with mustache and beard! (Sorry.) I cannot express how excited I was to see that Haley--the absolute best thing cast-wise about both Little Children and Watchmen--would be appearing in a weekly action series, and furthermore, one that gives him such a tantalizing character to play.

I look forward with eager anticipation to the next episode of this highly entertaining new series. Watch it here: http://www.hulu.com/human-target.

Some thoughts on tonight's broadcast of the Season 9 premiere of American Idol

2010-01-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

1. First of all, this is Simon Cowell's final season as a judge. He's a unique personality on the show and on television in general, and American Idol will be lacking without him. Fox will undoubtedly try to fill his shoes with another abrasive middle-aged man with a sharp tongue, but it will be a step down no matter what they do. He's irreplaceable.

2. Oh yeah, Paula Abdul's gone. I barely noticed. Now there's only one inarticulate babbler left behind the judges' table. Speaking of whom....

3. Randy Jackson manages to be rude even when complimenting someone. He usually sounds something like this: "Y'know, dawg, when you first came in, I looked at you and I was all like, I don't know if this is gonna be good, but you worked it out, dawg, you did a'ight." Also, someone needs to help Randy grasp onto the concept of numbers. This "one-hundred-and-ten-thousand-billion-kajillion-yes-you're-going-to-Hollywood" stuff is getting out of control.

4. The new judge, though she won't be joining the ranks until the Hollywood rounds, will be Ellen Degeneres. I love Ellen, and am excited to see what she brings to the table because she's witty and talented and often hilarious, but shouldn't they have gotten somebody from the music industry? Like, I don't know... Deborah Gibson, or one of the Bangles?

5. Kara DioGuardi is one foxy lady. And kinda scary.

6. Round 1 of the auditions took place in Boston. Do you think the show's music producer saw the irony of using California-band Augustana's 2006 single "Boston" as the episode's theme song? Or was he (or she) just like, "Hey, the song's called 'Boston'! Perfect!" Remember, these people are trying to get out of Boston and go to California. For my part, I think they should have gone with a certain native Boston band's 1976 classic "Foreplay/Long Time." Check out the lyrics:

It's been such a long time

I think I should be going

And time doesn't wait for me

It keeps on rolling

Sail on

On a distant highway

I've got to keep on chasing a dream

I've got to be on my way

Wish there was something I could say

(Or, you can listen to it in my playlist at the bottom of the page.)

It doesn't get any more theme-appropriate than that.

7. The guest judge for the Boston auditions was Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham. Again, why not secure a Bostonian? Donna Summer or James Taylor would have brought some clout to the proceedings. It would've been way cool to bring on Tommy DeCarlo, the current demo-and-a-dream singer for the band Boston. Or, get Boston native Conan O'Brien. I hear he may need the work.

Not that I'm complaining, really. I never noticed before tonight how strikingly, naturally beautiful Victoria Beckham is when she's not striking a pose and being all posh. She also brought a very welcome sense of decorum, which nicely complemented Scary Spice DioGuardi. And, boy, is she tiny!

8. Best performance of "Ring of Fire" ever! Johnny Cash has nothing on... whomever. (I'm being waggish, of course. It was awful.)

9. It's come to my attention that having those outstandingly awful contestants audition on television is tailor-made "reality TV" by the producers. Not that these are not actual, real eccentrics with big dreams and little talent. I'm sure they are very real and painfully actual. But every contestant has to go through a preliminary audition before ever reaching Simon and the others. Otherwise, those three or four "face" judges would have to sit through thousands of auditions, which would take much longer than the two days allotted. Which means that those prelim judges are obligated, maybe even contractually, to send through the worst of the worst so that prime-time TV can have its reality train-wrecks. This seems somewhat disingenuous to the contestants and manipulative of the audience... oh, right, Fox Reality. Of course, without such a process, the world would have gone on spinning in ignorance, forever deprived of William Hung and Bikini Girl.

10. I really am just a sucker for this show. But there is something about the shared experience of live television, and about event programming and even serialized drama in general, that appeals to me. It's the idea of being connected, however inconsequentially, with millions of other people around the country. It's one of the reasons I still prefer to watch Saturday Night Live when it's live, even though I know it will largely suck, to be in that moment with the rest of a vast audience. It's why I like to see a potential blockbuster film in a packed theater on opening night. Plus, as a bonus, when it comes to Idol--I just love having something so ripe for criticism before me. It's an outlet, and sometimes even a creative one. (And a much better outlet for my unbridled sarcasm than close friends and immediate family.)

Do these genes make me look gay?

2009-12-29T19:09:00.000-08:00

Today I overheard a conversation between deli workers wherein someone postulated the possibility of homosexuality being hereditary. I believe the exact phrasing was, "It runs in his family."

Avatar

2009-12-28T22:51:00.000-08:00

I feel like James Cameron saw FernGully in the early 90s and said, "I can do better."

What are Kapricious Thoughts?

2009-12-28T01:45:00.000-08:00

I had a minor epiphany today, and I owe it to Bob Vila. My ambition is to blog more often, daily if possible, but it seems my ambition overreaches my ability to motivate myself. Then it hit me.

I had just ordered Chinese food at a little place called the Great Wall in a strip mall on Binghamton's Front Street. I stepped outside to call my friend. (Time waiting for Chinese is often my time to make a phone call.) As I was talking to my friend on my cell, I was pacing up and down the sidewalk. As I passed a store called Northgate Vacuum, which was closed but still had a few lights on inside, I turned to walk back in the other direction and was startled to see, through the glass, a man standing in the shadows with his arms crossed, watching me. Then I realized he wasn't moving. Then I realized he was two-dimensional. Then I realized he was made of cardboard. And then I realized he was Bob Vila. It is amazing how many realizations the human brain can make in less than a second.

Then I thought, this would be a funny thing to talk about on my blog, but how can I make a decent-sized article about being startled by a life-size cardboard Bob Vila? The answer was, I don't have to. I call this blog "Kapricious Thoughts." Capricious thoughts can be brief thoughts, random thoughts, non-sequitors. That is the nature of capriciousness.

So my new goal is to post at least one "Kapricious Thought" per day, provided I have the electronic capabilities. Most will be brief, simple, random. It would certainly take off the pressure to "craft" something when I have no direction. And then maybe my brief, simple, random thoughts will grow on their own. I love when writing takes on a life of its own. It reminds me why I like doing it, because sometimes I surprise myself.

Anyway, there's today's Kapricious Thought: While waiting for my Chinese food, I was startled by a life-size cardboard cutout of Bob Vila.

Pop Culture Archaeology

2009-12-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

The latest from Rick Warren's purpose-driven marketing empire.

Dante's Prayer

2009-12-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, I haven't posted anything in almost a month. This is unacceptable. I guess I've hit a bit of dry spell, creatively. I don't like posting something that just tells people about what kind of day it's been. "Woke up late today. Ate some cereal. Went out, looked at some clothes but didn't buy anything. Went home and watched Cold Case Files with some linguini and a beer. Today was more exciting than most. I almost drove past my own driveway! God, I'm so lonely." Yeah, that'll up the readership.

So, sometimes, I look for inspiration... in stupid email surveys. I know, you're probably thinking, Boooooooring. And I usually agree. Nobody cares to read your one-word answers about what your favorite color is or what the name of your kindergarten teacher was.

Incidentally, my kindergarten teacher's name was Bjornstad. Try dropping that on a five-year-old who can barely read. Of course, I was already reading polysyllabic words by the time I started kindergarten, and had been living my whole life with a Slavic surname nobody in America could spell or pronounce properly, even though it's only four letters long and phonetic--so I was ahead of the curve. Still, that Scandinavian "j" gave my brain a workout. (If you think the entire purpose of this parenthetical paragraph was to subtly brag about how well I've always been able to read, you're probably right.)

If you do think Internet "get to know your friends better" surveys are boring, then you've obviously never read one of mine. I make these things FUN, with both all-caps and italics, baby. Besides, this one is inherently fun. Here are the rules:

1. Put your iTunes or other music player on shuffle.

2. For each question, press the "next" button to get your answer.

3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

4. Put your own comment after song.

And here is a caveat of my own: I will skip a track if it's entitled, for example, "Piano Concerto in G major," because that would just be ridiculous. Sorry, Mozart, you're gonna have to sit this one out. I'll most likely skip tracks from orchestral scores and the like as well. When you're done reading mine, go ahead, have fun, do it yourself. Post it as a comment, even--if Blogger allows such massive comments. Okay, here we go:

1. If someone says "Is this okay?" you say:

"Look What You've Done" (by Jet)

No. It's not okay. Go sit in the corner.

2. What would best describe your personality?

"The Very Old Man" (by Hum)

Oh, come on! Look, I know how write a blog! My grandpa doesn't even know how to plug in a computer. In fact, he brags about it.

3. What do you like in a girl/guy?

"More to This" (by Third Day)

Interesting. Ah, the sexiness of mystique. (Unless this just means that I'm a kindred spirit to Sir Mix-a-Lot.)

4. How do you feel today?

"Lover, You Should've Come Over" (by Jeff Buckley)

"Tonight, you're on my mind... Broken down and hungry for your love, with no way to feed it...." Hm. The tone fits better than the title, I think.

5. What is your life's purpose?

"In Your Time" (by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band)

My life's purpose is to slowly figure out my life's purpose? In the words of Keanu Reeves, "Whoa."

6. What is your motto?

"You Are the Girl" (by The Cars)

I feel like this survey is designed to make me feel like a character from a Cameron Crowe film.

7. What do your friends think of you?

"You Love Me" (by Jars of Clay)

Yeah you do.

8. What do you think of your parents?

"The Gathering" (by Caedmon's Call, Dan Haseltine, Bebo Norman & Sara Groves)

Sort of puts me in mind of Thanksgiving. Okay, it'll get more entertaining from here. I promise.

9. What do you think about very often?

"Million Miles" (by Bob Dylan)

I like traveling, traveling's my favorite.

10. What is 2 + 2?

"So This Is Love" (from Cinderella)

2 + 2 = Love. Wow, I never realized how simple it was. (Yes, I have classic Disney on my iTunes. Lots of it.)

11. What do you think of your best friend?

"Sunny Came Home" (by Shawn Colvin)

I don't know anyone named Sunny. And I don't know what my friends think about transcendence.

12. What do you think of the person you like?

"Whatsername" (by Green Day)

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! so lonely.

13. What do your parents think of you?

"Coming Down" (by Skillet)

From upstairs? From upstate? From my high horse? With a cold?

14. What will you dance to at your wedding?

"The Dream" (by The Moody Blues)

"Live hand in hand, and together we'll stand, on the threshold of a dream." (Apparently it's going to be interpretive dance.)

15. What will they play at your funeral?

"Surely God Is With Us" (by Rich Mullins)

Great song. Great sentiment for a funeral.

16. What is your hobby/interest?

"Secret Kingdom" (by Newsboys)

Makes me sound vaguely geeky. Especially with lines like, "Gonna send us hobbits out of the Shire."

17. What is your biggest secret?

"Moondance" (by Van Morrison)

My secret's out. I dance in the moonlight. With fairies. To a jazz flute.

18. What do you think of your friends?

"Jesus Doesn't Care" (by Point of Grace)

He doesn't care about my friends? He doesn't care if I have friends? He doesn't care what I think of my friends? Or do I think Jesus doesn't care about my friends? Based on the title alone, there is no good answer. Based on the content of the song, actually, it's a pretty humble worldview.

19. What's the worst thing that could happen?

"Belong" (by R.E.M.)

Okay, the first line of the song is, "The world collapsed on a Sunday morning...."

20. How will you die?

"Amie" (by Pure Prairie League)

Now I just have to steer clear of anyone named Amie.

21. Does anyone like you?

"Everyday" (by The Moody Blues)

"Love will come, as it does to everyone, though I know it won't be too easy...."

22. If you could go back in time, what would you change?

"All Because of Jesus" (by Casting Crowns)

"It's all because of Jesus I'm alive." Maybe I'd go back and be more obedient.

23. What hurts right now?

"Hallelujah" (by The O.C. Supertones)

Even happiness hurts.

24. What rule do you always follow?

"Comatose (In the Arms of Slumber)" (by Eagle Eye Cherry)

When in doubt, pretend to be asleep.

25. What have teachers always thought of you?

"The Old Apartment" (by Barenaked Ladies)

I got nothing.

26. What's something you do everyday?

"O Come and Mourn with Me Awhile" (by Jars of Clay)

Well, not every day.

27. What will you post this as?

"Dante's Prayer" (by Loreena McKennitt)

Okay, well, some answers are funnier than others, some answers are more profound than others. I actually filled out this same survey last year. I just re-read it. Some of the answers are pretty good. I must have been on some good antihistamines at the time. Here are my answers from last year, in case you don't have anything better to be doing with your time:

1. If someone says "Is this okay?" you say:

"Idumea" (by the Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty Church)

Yes, when someone asks me, "Is this okay?" my reply is the Latin name for the descendants of Esau.

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2. What would best describe your personality?

"Sing a Song" (by Third Day)

This is actually pretty accurate. I identify almost everything with music.

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3. What do you like in a girl/guy?

"Daring Daylight Escape" (by Caedmon's Call)

Uh... I like her to be... to be able to get away quickly? Golly, what were we up to?

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4. How do you feel today?

"Feel" (by Matchbox Twenty)

No joke, this is the song that came on next. And the chorus asks, “how does it feel?” I guess, I just feel.

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5. What is your life's purpose?

"Whisper My Name" (by Jennifer Knapp)

My life's purpose is to make everyone whisper my name. Do it. Do it now.

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6. What is your motto?

"Monosynth" (by Joy Electric)

This is what I tell myself in the mirror every day. I look myself in the eye, and I say, "Monosynth."

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7. What do your friends think of you?

"Keep the Customer Satisfied" (by Simon & Garfunkel)

You know it, baby.

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8. What do you think of your parents?

"Surfin' Safari" (by the Beach Boys)

I think I want to take them on a surfin' safari.

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9. What do you think about very often?

"I Am" (by Ginny Owens)

I think. Therefore....

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10. What is 2 + 2?

"Don't Wake Me" (by the Black Crowes)

Especially not to ask me such a silly question.

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11. What do you think of your best friend?

"Tell Him" (by Lauryn Hill)

what? What? Tell him WHAT?!

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12. What do you think of the person you like?

"The Only One" (by Bill & Billy Kapr)

oh my. If this is not a sign....

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13. What do your parents think of you?

"Flight from Peru" (by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra)

I was in Peru? Is there a dark side to my past that I don't know about? More importantly, do my parents know Indiana Jones?

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14. What will you dance to at your wedding?

"Desperado" (by the Eagles)

Ah, yes... a song written to a loner who won't let anyone love him.

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15. What will they play at your funeral?

oh geez... "Jedi Rocks" (by John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra)

This is that annoying "Special Edition" performance by a couple of creepy CGI aliens that George Lucas felt was the missing ingredient to his original version of Return of the Jedi. Thanks, George. The movie sucked before, but now it ROCKS! (ugh... just kill me now and get it over with.)

(Now you're wondering, "If he hates it so much, why is it in his iTunes?" Because it was on the soundtrack, that's why! I just haven't gotten around to deleting it yet.)

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16. What is your hobby/interest?

"Don't Think of Me" (by Dido)

My hobbies and interests include not thinking of myself and hoping you won't either.

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17. What is your biggest secret?

"Jeremy" (by Pearl Jam)

Well... there goes my reputation as a heterosexual.

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18. What do you think of your friends?

"Don't Be Afraid" (by Avalon)

You can do it, Tom. They're only people. People, just like you. Just imagine them in their underwear.

(Now everyone knows I listen to Avalon....)

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19. What's the worst thing that could happen?

"She Walks with Me" (by Michael W. Smith)

Welcome to Part II of my new series, "Is This a Sign?"

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20. How will you die?

"Stuck in the Middle" (by Stealers Wheel)

I'm fairly terrified right now that my death is going to involve clowns.

Oh, and according to the song, you'll be there too, so, enjoy being stuck with the clowns and dead me.

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21. Does anyone like you?

"Somebody to Love" (by Jefferson Airplane)

Yes, I want somebody to love. Yes, I need somebody to love. Yes, I'd love somebody to love. I'd better find somebody to love.

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22. If you could go back in time, what would you change?

"Last Great American" (by Five for Fighting)

Now I just need to figure out who the last great American was… or does this mean the last one to be alive on earth? If that’s the case, I’d need to go into the future. So… in order to go into the future I have to go back in time? I have to go… back to the future! Whoa. I just blew my own mind.

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23. What hurts right now?

"Can't Help Falling in Love" (by Elvis Presley)

would it be a sin...?

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24. What rule do you always follow?

"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" (by Jim Croce)

The baddest man in the whole damn town don’t follow no rules.

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25. What have teachers always thought of you?

"Come As You Are" (by Nirvana)

Come as you are. Stay as you were. Leave as we want you to be.

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26. What's something you do everyday?

"Tomorrow Man" (by Gus)

Wait… every day IS tomorrow! Whoa… just blew my own mind again. I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.

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27. What will you post this as?

"Shine on Us"

Phew!… now to let my brain recover.

You may want to see a doctor about that....

2009-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

Last night, during the football game between the New York Giants (who sadly lost) and the San Diego Chargers, CBS aired a commercial in which an middle-aged-to-old man is walking down the sidewalk next to a building with large glass windows. His reflection starts asking him questions about whether or not he talked to his doctor. The man is justifiably startled by this and tries to get away by turning the corner.

There are large windows on this side too, however, so his reflection easily catches up to him and continues asking him about--are you ready?--his erectile dysfunction. We, the viewers, then discover that the man is trying to keep the conversation hush-hush, not because his reflection is trying to talk to him on a busy street in broad daylight, but because of WHAT his reflection is trying to talk to him about.

When I realized what was going on in this ad, I asked my friend, "Are we really watching an ad in which a man is having a conversation with his reflection about erectile dysfunction?" My friend concurred that we were.

Listen, Mister, if you're walking down the street in the middle of the day and start having a conversation about your penis with your reflection in a window, your problems may go a little deeper than erectile dysfunction.

And yeah I really do think....

2009-10-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

I find it frustrating that a pop singer who's been around for about a decade and a half figures prominently in 90% of the conversation about a word that has been part of the English language for 500 years, the proper usage of which she never understood in the first place. It's just so... oh, what's the word I'm looking for...?

The Creator

2009-10-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

(Inspired during a Sunday school class on the evils of a non-literal interpretation of Genesis. Original date of writing: Sunday, February 11, 2007.)

The God I worship, the God who created the universe, the God who sustains the universe--that God, my God, is powerful enough to speak the Grand Canyon into existence, to create that wonder of the natural world by simply whispering Be; and that same God, my God, is powerful enough to lovingly, meticulously sculpt the Grand Canyon out of the desert rock over billions of hours in the workshop.

For my God, the Omnipotent God who stands outside of time and space, who sees all of time and space in a pin-prick in His palm, who made time and space by the creative work of His word and His hand--for that God, my God, the instant of His thought and those millennia of craft and art are the same.

Why then do we still attempt to contain that timeless God in a 6,000-year-square box?

Pay It Forward?

2009-10-28T02:42:00.000-07:00

A young guy approached me on my way into Wendy's. He was no older than me. He asked me if I could spare a couple bucks for a sandwich.

"A sandwich here?" I asked, pointing to Wendy's. He said yes. I told him to come with me, that I'd buy him something. He wanted a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger.

"Is that it?" I asked. "Don't you want anything else? Something to drink?"

"No," he said, "I'll get some water." Then he added, "Maybe a dollar five-piece?"

"Five-piece chicken nuggets?" I asked. He said yes. "No problem. Actually, I think I'll get the same thing."

I ordered two Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers and two orders of the five-piece chicken nuggets.

"Is this to stay or to go?" asked the girl at the register.

I looked over my shoulder at the guy. "To go?" He said yes. "To go," I said, noticing the girl's strange expression.

"What kind of sauce would you like with your chicken nuggets?" she asked.

Before I could answer, the guy came up next to me and said quickly, "Sweet and sour." At least the guy knows his sauces.

"Okay," I nodded. "Sweet and sour."

Again, the girl's strange expression. "Is this... together?"

"Yes," I said, "it's together."

I paid. She went to get the order. When she came back, I clarified, "Separate bags."

"One of each in each?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. She gave us our bags.

"Could I have a cup for water?" the young guy asked. She gave him a cup of water. With ice.

"Thanks a lot, man," he said to me when the transaction was done.

"It's no problem," I said. Then, as I gathered my bag to leave, I thought to myself, I hope you pay it forward.

I then went out to my car to eat, where my fifty-cent Pepsi refill from the discount theater was waiting for me. Yes, I had planned this ahead. I'm trying not to spend too much, which is why I eat at places like Wendy's when I'm out. (I also love movies, which is why I'd been to the discount theater. I could go on justifying myself all day.)

As I was pulling out of the Wendy's parking lot, I almost ran over the same guy as he was leaving the restaurant. I waved at him, but he didn't seem to notice me, even looking right at me. I then realized this was because he was too busy trying to get away with the jacket he'd stolen.

I hadn't immediately noticed the jacket--it was pink and sort of puffy--not until an older woman and a younger female employee came after him. I couldn't hear anything, but I could see him trying to play it off like he'd found the jacket lying on the floor. Older woman wasn't buying it, so he sheepishly gave back the jacket and then took off down the street.

I drove away feeling a mixture of amusement, disappointment, and pity, my appetite temporarily sated, my skin-and-bones résumés sitting on the passenger seat.

I hope that guy's warm enough.

Monday Morning Tirade

2009-04-20T03:32:00.000-07:00

We all know that there is something terribly wrong with radio DJs. And I hope most of us realize that roughly 73% of the music they play is utter tripe. (If you had a private giggle over the phrase "utter tripe" because you get the pun, give yourself a cookie--with milk, of course.)

However, last night I heard a DJ do something so mind-bogglingly stupid that I must share. If I keep it to myself, I'm afraid my cerebrum may implode. He was talking about the song he was about to play--U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," one of the best songs ever recorded and the opening track from their heavenly 1987 Joshua Tree album. He played a segment of an interview with the band's lead guitarist and keyboardist, The Edge (so named, it seems, because of his face).

It was an interesting behind-the-scenes tidbit about Mr. Edge's intentionally simplistic guitar stylings and how it lent itself to the overall sound of U2's music in general and to "Streets" in particular. I'm so glad I was able to catch it while channel surfing on my long drive between Philadelphia and Akron, Ohio, because it gave me a new appreciation of a classic.

Now you're asking, if I enjoyed the interview so much, why am I complaining?

The DJ played the interview over the song's entire musical intro. It's bad enough when these guys talk over a great song's intro. But to run an interview about the music over the music so that the listener is then unable to properly appreciate the song or the newfound perspective on the song--that takes either an astounding amount of thoughtlessness (even for a disc jockey) or a disturbing amount of sinister glee (even for a disc jockey).

This has to be one of the biggest professional discrepancies on the planet: the people in charge of airing the music have neither the proper appreciation nor the proper respect for it.

On a related note, another station later played the long version of the Fugees' 1996 cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"--which is to say, the obnoxious version of an otherwise great hip-hop cover--followed by the radio edit of Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up the Sun," which, missing a full minute-and-a-half, robs it of much of its rhetorical context and makes it the most ludicrously truncated song this side of "Lightning Crashes."

But who really wants to spend a whole five minutes listening to a good song when you can hear 80% of it in four-fifths of the time? It gives your playlist more room for your Beyoncés and your T-Pains and your Katy Perrys, and without them we might have no idea what sub-par songwriting sounds like.

Can anything good come out of February? (Part II)

2009-02-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

2/13

Confessions of a Shopaholic

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1093908/

Director P.J. Hogan gave us the enjoyable My Best Friend's Wedding back in 1997. Isla Fisher is a beautiful actress who has proven, especially with her deranged performance in 2005's Wedding Crashers, that she is a comedic force to be reckoned with. Together, they will probably deliver an enjoyable piece of fluff, albeit one high on cliché.

The International

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963178/

At first glance, this looks like just another paranoid thriller starring the overexposed Clive Owen. However, the man behind it all is none other than Tom Tykwer, the German director who gave us such unique films as the fate-entangling Winter Sleepers, the bizarre romance The Princess and the Warrior, and most notably, the kinetic thriller Run Lola Run. Thus, this one is high on my must-see list for the year.

Friday the 13th

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758746/

Director Marcus Nispel was behind the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I highly recommend you never see. This is a remake of the unpleasant and not particularly good original Friday the 13th of 1980. I’m thinking there’s a lot more girl-killing here, which always makes for great entertainment. Like Mike Neslon, host of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” once said, “You think a lot of guys who make movies have issues with women?”

Two Lovers

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103275/

This is writer/director James Gray’s third film with the endlessly interesting Joaquin Phoenix. I have not yet seen last year’s We Own the Night, but 2000’s The Yards was a well-crafted if not particularly memorable film. Two Lovers is in limited release.

Gomorra

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929425/

I’ve been hearing great things about this Italian crime epic; alas, I shall have to await the DVD release, as it appears to be showing only in New York and L.A.

Walt Disney Cops a Feel

2009-02-10T10:41:00.000-08:00

I am not in the habit of besmirching someone's name, but occasionally I feel inclined to make snarky comments about something I see in a video. Click on the following link and pay attention around the four-minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99OMrsEag0A

Personally, I think I would go for the belly or the waist in such circumstances, but then again I've never had to try to keep a lady from falling face-first off a dock. Still, could there be a more awkward way to steady a tipsy woman?

I'd love to be privy to the conversation that took place when all the cameras and microphones were gone. Maybe it would sound like a scene from Raging Bull. "Did you feel my wife? Did you feel my wife?"

By the way, where were my mermaids? I remember when I was little and went on the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride thinking that I really was in the deep, so I can only imagine how thrilled I would have been if I had seen mermaids! Would've been way better than animatronic squids.

I wonder how many youngsters hit early puberty on Disney's Nautilus. Submerge a boy, surface a man.

And I love how things in this old film devolve from "we can use this new submersible technology to learn and explore and bring peace and progress as humanity" to four straight minutes of scantily clad women with fin attachments doing water ballet.

Can anything good come out of February? (Part I)

2009-02-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when a whole lot of cinematic crap is excreted from the recta of the major film studios. But there might be a gem or two in there. (Wow, that sounds like it could be a bit painful, huh?)

I'm going to take a look ahead at what's coming to theaters this month and offer my thoughts on each one. And for those of you who find interest in such things, I referenced the New Testament in my title. Whoever tells me what book, chapter, and verse first gets a cookie! Two cookies if you can tell me the name of the person credited with uttering the original quote, which was possibly the best joke ever made about Jesus Christ, at least until the Chitty Chitty Death Bang episode of "Family Guy." (http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3023962137/)

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2/6

The Pink Panther 2

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0838232/

Remember when Steve Martin was funny? You might have to think back awhile. Did Planes, Trains & Automobiles really come out more than a decade ago? I'll give a few points to any movie for featuring the adorable Emily Mortimer (watch Disney's The Kid), but overall my thoughts on this franchise can be summed up thusly: Rest in peace, Peter Sellers. If you can.

Push

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465580/

Call me a cynic, but this looks like another lame Matrix rip-off (which some claim to be itself a Dark City rip-off). The marketing for this one includes some of the lamest TV spots I've ever seen. Marketers used to reserve quotes attributable to no one for the back of the video. Now they're using them on television ads.

He's Just Not That Into You

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001508/

I must admit to enjoying the trailer for this film--the first time I saw it. It actually gave me a new perspective on the male-female romantic relationship. Now I've seen the TV ad about a hundred times, and I just can't wait for this to come and go. On its own merits, it appears to boast a decent cast with some good lines, but also some tired cliches. However, having never watched HBO's "Big Love," I have only just discovered Ginnifer Goodwin and would probably watch this movie just for her.

Fanboys

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489049/

A group of Star Wars geeks go to Skywalker Ranch to steal a copy of The Phantom Menace for their dying friend because he might not live to see its release? Curses that this movie is not showing in my area! Curses! (Yes, I'm a Star Wars geek.)

Coraline

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327597/

This is it, people. This is the most exciting movie coming out this month. This is the one I'd put my money on to be not only the best movie of the month, but one of the best of the year. Director Henry Selick is one of the three brilliant minds responsible for giving us the milestone classic The Nightmare Before Christmas (along with creator/producer Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman). Coraline looks to be just as fantastic and creepy and beautiful. If you get to the theater once this month, this is the one I suggest seeing.

Tuesday Morning's Stream of Consciousness

2009-01-13T05:23:00.001-08:00

I like Coldplay, so long as I don't have to actually see them. I wouldn't make a very good Gwyneth Paltrow. But if I were Gwyneth Paltrow, I certainly wouldn't name my child "Apple." Maybe "Peach" or "Kiwi," but not "Apple."

I do love apple pie. I used to be more of a cake man, but I've recently discovered the virtues of apple pie. With cinnamon. Cake is fluffy. Pie is filling.

Pi was a really good movie. Darren Aronofsky is one of the most interesting directors to come out of the 90s. I haven't seen The Wrestler yet, but I want to, and I must say that I was surprised to learn Aronofsky directed it, because it seems like such a straightforward thing for him to take on. Surprisingly, any line of thought seems to take me into the movies.

Mickey Rourke, star of The Wrestler, used to do cocaine. A lot of it. He's past it now and making a comeback with The Wrestler. At the Golden Globes on Sunday night, presenter Seth Rogen, whom you might know from every other comedy to have come out in the past year and a half, made a joke about doing cocaine with him. I like to imagine Mickey went over and sat down next to Seth at his table later that night and stared at him for awhile before saying something like, "I know you think you're a funny kid, but that was a bad @*&$-ing joke." You have to imagine the language being a little colorful, this being Mickey Rourke. And I like to imagine Seth Rogen made a face similar to the one in The Pineapple Express when he witnesses a brutal murder while getting high.

Speaking of which, I just discovered you can't say "getting high" in a music video on VH1, even, apparently, in a song that's pretty much about being high on life. The song is "Roll On" by Kid Rock, who put out a crackin' good rock record last year, if you take out a couple ridiculously obscene songs. "Amen" is one of the best songs of the year.

I found out in the same video that you apparently can't say "bitch," which surprised me, because everybody on TV says "bitch" every other word nowadays, especially on cable. Guys call women "bitches" all the time on TV, and guys call other guys "sons of bitches," simultaneously pissing each other off and unforgivably bringing each other's mommas into it. But you can't, apparently, use "bitch" as another word for "complain." As a way to demean women, yes, it's perfectly acceptable. But you can't good-naturedly say, "I don't bitch."

And that is officially the most times I've ever used the word "bitch" in a paragraph, up from my previous record of zero.

30 Tidbits of Kapricious Trivia

2009-01-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

This actually started as a chain email in which I was supposed to write a list of 25 things that the people who know me may or may not know about me. I upped it to 30, possibly out of egotism, and then decided to post it here on my blog, also possibly out of egotism. I was going to say it might be out of narcissism, but then I learned that "narcissism" has a sexual connotation.

Here are 30 tidbits of trivia about me:

1. I once chased a sheep through the woods with a lasso.

2. I once touched an electric cow fence with a pair of metal pocket knife scissors while trying to cut my brother free of some barbed wire. I woke up on my back ten feet away.

3. I was due to be born on Christmas Eve, 1981, but was delivered by cesarean section on January 6, 1982.

4. My friend and I were once chased down the interstate by a man in a semi.

5. I've been bitten by dogs, cats, birds, a snake, a turtle, and multiple kinds of rodents including a wild squirrel.

6. Speaking of dog bites, I've been bitten in the hands and feet (too many times to keep track), once under the arm, and once directly in the face--the gum, lip, and nose.

7. I have a few scars: one on my lower lip from a high chair accident when I was two, one on my hairline from splitting it open when I was seven, one under my left knee from flipping over on a high-speed ride down a cement chute at Action Park in New Jersey (that park is now closed due to too many safety infractions), one between my right thumb and forefinger from slipping on a wet garage floor and stabbing myself, one under my right arm from being bitten by my dog while I was sleeping, one on my right shoulder from being bitten by a squirrel, and one on my right hand from surgery for a broken knuckle during my senior year of high school. I'm sure there are more, but who can keep track of these things?

8. I had cosmetic surgery on my ears when I was young--so I'm sure there is also some scarring there, but I can't really see back there too well.

9. I've been in 37 of the 50 states, so far. I grew up in New Jersey and New York. I've lived/worked in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and South Dakota. Altogether, I've traveled through Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico (with at least one foot), North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin; and I've done more extensive traveling in California, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming.

(Just to brag: In 2005 alone, I traveled for business through Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; and, for pleasure, through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, and back through Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.)

10. I've also been out of the United States six times and have been in seven other countries: three times to Belize, once to Europe on a WWII history tour (England, France, Luxembourg, Belgium), once to Germany, and once to Canada when I was very young.

11. I avoided an armed robbery when gunmen entered the Domino's Pizza where I was working about an hour after my shift ended. This was a job in which delivery persons occasionally got beaten and mugged, but the most violent thing that happened to me was having my car pelted with rocks.

12. I once took a really, really bad road into the Colorado mountains looking for a place to camp. When the road abruptly ended and the rocks made it nearly impossible to turn around, I was seriously considering the possibility that I would have to have the car air-lifted. I made it out a couple of hours later. I camped in Rocky Mountain National Park instead.

13. I have personally punched three different people in the face, on purpose anyway.

14. I was once chewed out by my drunken landlord in front of a large crowd of people. That was after I complained about being chewed up by the bedbugs living in the apartment he rented me.

15. I've had work published in six different publications, so far, including being the movie critic for the Rockland County Times out of Nanuet, NY, for a period of about ten months.

16. I love climbing trees. I've only ever fallen twice. The first time I was inches from being impaled on a sharp stick. The second time I never hit the ground because my coat got caught on a sawed-off branch (which also almost eviscerated me). The highest I ever climbed was probably in a tree in Belize, where I also climbed coconut trees and picked my own coconuts.

17. I could probably choke you with my toes. But I won't because I like you. Those who have seen my naked feet will verify.

18. Perhaps the worst thing I've ever done to fellow human being was ramming a plastic sword down my brother's throat (unintentionally).

19. I've seen about 2000 movies. My favorite is Raiders of the Lost Ark, though Casablanca is a close second.

20. My all-time favorite band is the Moody Blues--mainly their 1967-1972 period in which they produced seven amazing albums: Days of Future Passed, In Search of the Lost Chord, On the Threshold of a Dream, To Our Children's Children's Children, A Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Seventh Sojourn. I have seen them in concert four times.

21. I was once on a rollercoaster that got stuck as an electrical storm was rolling in.

22. I have personally had to bury a total of 12 of my pets: my hamster Snoopy, my other hamster Fuzz (I had a third named Hoppy that was put to sleep for a tumor), my guinea pigs Chloe and Pookie, my gerbils Harry and Tripod (who had three legs), my silky mouse Charlotte (who believe it or not was one of the best pets ever), my chinchilla Skippy, my cockatiel Duke (who was actually more my mom's, but I had to bury him on Christmas morning), a baby mouse I tried to nurse to health, my kitten Paw-Paw whom I found in the woods and tried to nurse back to health (and who died more or less in my hands), and last but not at all least my beloved dog Muffin, who was hit by a car (for the second time in her life) on Thanksgiving Eve 2006. I also buried a monitor lizard, but it was dead when I found it.

23. I have sung solo in front of a large crowd of people twice in my life.

24. I spent a week at the World Trade Center in 1998. It's a strange thing to know that a hotel you stayed in was utterly destroyed in a terrorist attack. It's a strange feeling to remember being on top of those towers.

25. I've randomly crossed paths with Stephen Baldwin (a few times), Benicio Del Toro, Val Kilmer (I'm pretty sure), Rosie O'Donnell, Chris Rock, Donald Trump, and possibly Francis Ford Coppola. (Not all at once, though.)

26. I've been in three wedding parties and have served as the official videographer at two others. This coming June will mark my fourth wedding party and my third as best man.

27. I will swear under oath to having witnessed ghostly, demonic, and angelic activity, and, on more than one occasion, multiple UFOs.

28. I love Cocoa Pebbles cereal.

29. I could probably spend a couple of hours quoting Mystery Science Theater 3000--I am that big of a geek (for the best TV show ever created!).

30. I am allergic to sesame and on two occasions have had to be taken to the emergency room due to anaphylactic shock brought on by food allergies--once in my college town of Nyack, NY, and once on a trip about halfway to Ohio in a place called Jersey Shore, PA.

There you go. Now you know 30 potentially interesting things about me. Just in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy.

Adventures in English: The Urinal Note

2008-12-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

I found the following hand-written note taped to the wall above the urinals at a New York State rest area:

"Please don't put tobacco pruduces in the irlnes!"

Forget tobacco. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to take up marijuana.

At least the "Please do not remove" note taped to the electric hand dryer had everything spelled correctly.

Rediscover Christmas

2008-12-24T22:37:00.000-08:00

I first posted this entry during the Christmas season of 2004. I re-read it every year. I post it again this year in the hope that it will reinvigorate someone's--anyone's--interest in the original Christmas Story, or that some reader somewhere will see this "tired old story" from a new perspective as I did when I first put these passages together. Merry Christmas; or, in other words, rejoice in the communion we have with Christ as we celebrate that day when God in heaven became Immanuel--"God Is With Us."

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(Original introduction from December 21, 2004)

The Bible weaves an incredible story from Genesis to Revelation. It is amazing how every piece fits perfectly into the whole. I tried looking at the Christmas story from a different perspective this year, rather than simply reading straight through the first couple chapters of the Gospel of Luke like we evangelicals usually do. We recognize December 25 as the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but there is so much more to Christmas than is apparent on the surface.

I urge you to read straight through this post, as strange as its arrangement may look at first, then to get a Bible and read the verses again within the passages that encapsulate them. In so doing, I hope we can rediscover the profound significance of the Christmas story.

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“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. (Micah 5:2)

The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.” (Luke 1:30-31)

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21)

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:9-10)

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”–which means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:22-23)

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

“My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2:30-32)

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” (Luke 2:34-35)

“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” (Luke 1:32-33)

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. (Isaiah 9:7)

“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us–to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” (Luke 1:67-75)

And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40)

Merry Christmas and may the grace of Christ be upon you this holiday season.

It's a Wonderful Life?

2008-12-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

An interesting article by Wendell Jamieson:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html?_r=1

Greet Every Customer 100%!

2008-12-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

These are the words that sprawl across the break-room wall at my Barnes & Noble like a banner: "Greet Every Customer 100%!"

I must've stared at this sign for ten minutes trying to decide what it was supposed to be telling me. What does it mean to greet someone one-hundred percent? Is it possible to greet someone only fifty percent? Or twenty-five percent? Or ten?

Is a 10% greeting like, I don't know, making eye contact with a customer but then ignoring him? That doesn't sound like any kind of greeting at all.

Maybe I make eye contact, then walk over with my hand stretched out in a gesture of hospitality, only to walk straight past him and keep on going in the other direction--would that qualify as a 50% greeting?

Let's say I do shake his hand. While shaking his hand, I say, "Hell!" See, that's "hello" with the "o" chopped off. "Hell" is, what, about 80% of "hello"--if you count each letter of a five-letter word as 20%? Would this then be considered an 80% greeting?

I'd argue that this customer would feel considerably less greeted than if I had made eye contact with him but NOT come over to him at all. Now, I'm in this person's space, vigorously pronouncing "Hell!" to his face. If I were him, I wouldn't feel greeted. I'd feel worried, anxious, possibly terrified.

What if I see a customer from across the store and yell, "Hello! Hello!" until she realizes she is the one I'm hello-ing. What percentage of a greeting would that be? If I were her, I wouldn't feel greeted so much as, again, worried, and possibly paranoid for the rest of my shopping experience that I would eventually get closer to that yelling employee, maybe even have to rely on him for some kind of customer service.

Or maybe "Greet Every Customer 100%" is supposed to read more like, "Greet 100% of customers." This, of course, would require being at the store every minute of every business day, answering every phone call, personally replying to every email--you see the ridiculousness of this scenario.

I'll be a little more realistic and infer that it means to greet every customer who comes into the store while I'm actually scheduled and clocked in. What if I get there in the middle of the work day? Greeting 100% of customers would require me running around the store saying hello to everyone there. Also a ridiculous scenario--and one that, if I were a manager and witnessed this kind of behavior, would cause me to second-guess my wisdom in hiring this person.

Or maybe I'm just supposed to say "Welcome to Barnes & Noble" to every personwho walks in the doors and "Thank you for shopping at Barnes & Noble" to every person who exits, even if this requires interrupting their personal conversations or shouting it at the backs of their heads till they acknowledge my friendliness. (This is roughly the kind of customer service one will experience shopping at a Wal-Mart--albeit by much scarier-looking people in much more hostile, I'm-one-step-away-from-stalking-you-to-your-car tones.)

By the time I reason "Greet Every Customer 100%" down to inferring that I'm expected to greet--and possibly even help--every customer I encounter while working at my respective station, I have to conclude that the intended meaning of the motto is quite different from the motto itself. Not even the worst manager in the world (and I've worked for her, too) would expect me to greet 100% of the customers who walk into the store. See, that is why they always have more than one person working in the store at a given time, and often more than a few.

And if it is, in fact, supposed to mean that every greeting should be a 100% greeting, I would LOVE to hear a manager explain that one. I'm sure it would give me far better blog fodder than anything written here. (Here's an activity you can try with the kids: say "far better blog fodder" five times fast. Careful what you say in front of those kids, now.)

So, here's my question: Why this ridiculous banner, which sounds like something translated from English into Chinese and back into English again? "Greet Every Customer 100%" looks like a sign you'd see surrounded by fish heads and cheap watches in a market. Surely, in the largest, most sophisticated bookselling corporation on the planet, we can do little better on the employee motivation than Soon Go Fatt's Asian Cousine.

What is Real?

2008-12-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

I found an "original edition" copy of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams at my Barnes & Noble while I was organizing the children's classics bay. This was fortuitous. I generally don't buy things unless they seem as if they were placed there specifically for me to find (or unless I have a really sweet employee discount). I do have a rather large book collection, including many classics, but the majority of them I've liberated from yard sales, library basements, or acquaintances' throw-away boxes.

I used to own a large, beautiful, full-color hardcover picture book edition of The Velveteen Rabbit, but it was tragically destroyed in a flood in upstate New York, along with many other classic children's books I was saving for posterity. That day was a sad day for me.

This day was my first day ever working in the children's section. This copy was the last copy in the store. This unassuming little paperback was hidden amongst all the larger, flashier re-releases of classic children's literature. And with my sweet employee discount it would only cost me two-and-a-half bucks.

This book was waiting for me. This book wanted to come home with me. It's as if the nursery magic Fairy had placed it there just for me to find. Okay, that's a stretch, but the point is, The Velveteen Rabbit went home with me.

The reason I am telling you about this at all is to share my favorite passage of The Velveteen Rabbit. It is the heart of the story. The Rabbit has only two desires: he wants to be there for the Boy who loves him so dearly, and he wants to be Real. He asks the Skin Horse, the oldest and wisest of all the nursery toys, "What is REAL?" Here is the conversation that follows:

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"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are Real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

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What is Real?

Real is a becoming.

Real is painful.

Real is beautiful.

Real is everlasting.

A Brief Review of My Attempt to Read a Long, Boring Novel

2008-12-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

I'm about 180 pages into this 500-page opus, and it occurs to me that every time I pick up the book to read another chapter, it feels like a chore. I realize that I'm spending an awful lot of time reading a book that I neither enjoy, nor appreciate intellectually, nor feel is important in my attempt at a self-imposed education in the classics.

Do you know what the difference between watching a movie that does nothing for you and reading a book that does nothing for you is? After the movie, you lament the two hours of your life that you'll never get back. After the book, you think to yourself, "Man, I spent three months on that stupid thing!"

That is why it is unlikely that I will ever finish Tom Clancy's Patriot Games.

Do I really need three pages of Jack Ryan going over his stock portfolio? Four pages describing in detail Jack Ryan's travails in putting together a dollhouse? An entire chapter devoted to Jack Ryan's uneventful flight home? This is a thriller, right?

I was only reading this book because Patriot Games is my favorite of the Jack Ryan movies. But Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan is nothing like Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan is more like Alec Baldwin's Jack Ryan. And as good a movie as The Hunt for Red October is, and as much as I like Alec Baldwin as an actor, I have always been partial to Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan. Aw, heck, I'll even say it: I think Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan is better than Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan.

What do you think about that, Clancy, you right-wing, Ben Affleck-loving, hire-hacks-to-write-books-in-your-name-so-you-can-cash-in sell-out?

(I'm sorry, I got a little riled up there.)

Well, if Patriot Games did anything postive for me, it's ensured at least for now that I hold no literary pretentions. No self-respecting literatus would openly claim to prefer the movie over the book. (On the other hand, I did just publicly debase a best-selling author by calling him a right-wing sell-out.)

The New York Post raved that in Patriot Games, "Clancy delivers the suspense," but I'm not buying it. No really, I'm not buying the New York Post. Did you ever wonder what a truly sorry excuse for a journalistic endeavor looks like? Read the New York Post. Read it cover to cover. By the time you reach the Sports section, you may find that you've drooled onto your chin, that your left eyelid is twitching, and that your capacity for intelligent conversation has dropped by thirty or forty percent.

Maybe someday when I'm old and bored, and I've read all the classics and have caught up on all my Michael Crichton and then read all those great books and all those Crichton thrillers a second or third time and seen Patriot Games the movie another dozen times on top of the dozen times I've already enjoyed it--then maybe I'll pick up Clancy's Patriot Games again. Maybe my bookmark will still be stuck in there between pages 186 and 187. Maybe by then I'll be 86 or 87 and won't be able to see that tiny print anymore anyway.

Until then, I'll be happy with Harrison Ford.

Visit me at Goodreads.com: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/roxton_malone

Random Scribblings

2008-06-22T13:17:00.002-07:00

I like to record random things during my work day: things I overhear people say (I call it my "Completely Out-of-Context Quote Collection") or random little things that amuse me, disturb me, or make me stop and think. Sometimes, they're just brief thoughts that spring from my own slightly off-kilter brain.

Here, entirely as-scribbled, are three random things I wrote down at work:

1) "Lord help me, I've got this exuberant 50 yr old woman yelling to me in the middle of a store full of customers, 'Smell me! Feel me!'"

You know what, I think I'll put that one in context. This particular exuberant woman works in the jewelry store that connects directly into the bookstore where I work. That morning she'd been working in a shop called the Apothecary, sampling perfumes and lotions to customers by dabbing them on her arms, as is the custom in such silly stores. She's actually an alright person to work with--just exuberant. And Texan, I think, which is its own brand of exuberance.

2) "I think that 4-yr-old just shot me a gang sign on his way out the door."

Looked like a West Side. But more cowboy-ish. And more 4-yr-old-ish.

3) "What is the opposite of 'sexually active'? 'Sexually passive'?"

That last one was one of my random thoughts--a capricious one, if you will.

I'll close with a quote from a book: "There is nothing more likely to ruin a night's sleep than the imperative of having to get a good night's sleep or else." (from Weird Hikes by Art Bernstein)

The Closest I've Ever Come to Rudely Laughing in Someone's Face

2008-06-22T13:17:00.001-07:00

Today, somebody asked me, in regards to a problem with an electronic device, "Is it just unplugged, or is it not plugged in?"

My Wooden Co-Worker

2008-06-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

I work in a tourist attraction, a Western-themed mini-mall, along the corridor of which sit scattered statues and things referred to as "picture-taking props." There's an old wooden cowboy, a horse saddle sat astride a horizontal wooden barrel, and a wooden statue of Poker Alice sitting on a bench with five cards in her hand and a cigar in her mouth.

Just outside the entry to the bookstore in whic I work is what has to be the most popular picture-taking spot in the entire place: a wooden statue of a well-endowed, bare-legged, blonde-curled saloon girl wearing only a tiny red bustier-type piece and a flamboyant hat. She sits on a bench with an arm draped across the back, beckoning the passers-by to come and sit with her for a bit: curious little boys who don't yet understand how impolite it is to grope a woman's chest; doughy middle-aged men in khaki shorts and polo shirts dragging along begrudging wives and small armies of pre-teens; awkward teenage boys who try not to look like they're contemplating the improbable size of that heaving wooden cleavage; and old men who do know the improprieties of groping a woman's chest but laugh heartily as they do it anyway.

This tourist prop is an endless source of amusement for me throughout the day. The occasional dirty old man aside, I do enjoy seeing people's reactions to my scantily-clad colleague. I laugh at the two-year-olds who climb her like a jungle gym and open-palm her bosoms as they stare into her expressionless wooden face--many of them don't yet fully grasp the difference between real and fake. (Wow, I just realized what a double entendre--no, triple entendre--that sounds like.)

I derive great satisfaction from listening to the Mid-Western moms who cajole their embarrased pre-teen sons--"come on, don't be so shy, put your arm around her"--while they fumble with the camera. I especially enjoy, and was at first quite surprised by, the bus-loads of senior citizens, who seem to have the most fun with my wooden co-worker. The old gentlemen put a hand on her knee while the gray-haired women laugh and snap their pictures. Not to get too deep, especially on a subject such as this, but it makes me think about the cyclical nature of human life: these aged, wrinkled, arthritically-bent folks who laugh like children--albeit children who are past, or more likely well into, a sexually active life, fully get the joke, and are perfectly at ease casually joking about it with one another.

The only thing is, I've noticed, this poor saloon girl never gets a thank-you. People come, people laugh, people touch, people take pictures, people leave. People.

I've collected a handful of things I've overheard said about her in particular, the best of which are:

Teenage girl: "What's with all the wooden people?"

Young girl: "I think she had plastic surgery, Dad."

and,

Old man: "She's what ya call a hard body."

Random Things I Overheard

2008-01-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

I like to collect random bits of speech I've heard in passing--phrases and statements heard completely out of context of the private conversations in which they were spoken. Here are three good ones:

1) "It's like the Buddhist says: 'One must strive for balance.'"

2) "Those are just a bunch of pipes! Why are you even looking at that?"

and my personal favorite,

3) [Spoken in a very hushed and serious tone] "I've been doing a lot of thinking... and I know what kind of cat I want to get."