why do I love TV?

I honestly have no idea. I don’t watch a lot of it anymore; just the occasional show here and there. Every week. At the same time. And sometimes I watch the same show over and over again online. Yep, spending my personal time watching re-runs of something I just watched. You would think I’d be ashamed of this, but I’m not– I just know that I should be.

So anyway, here are some shows I watch, why I like them, and why I should hate them:

1) Burn Notice. This has to be at the top of my list of stupid shows. It follows the tried and true serial TV structure by having a new conflict every week, while dropping hints of a larger storyline throughout. Kind of like Monk, or…I dunno, Starsky and Hutch? In any case, while the first season was intriguing, action-y, and with smart dialogue, the second season (and more so the third) has been boring boring boring. Action has overtaken the dialogue, and the characters (which had some dimension in the first season) are as one-dimensional as a game of Pong. And yet I watch it every week. I am beginning to think that my devotion to this show is more about clinging to hope than it is about being entertained. Or it might be Bruce Campbell. Whatever.

2) Royal Pains. A show about a Brooklyn doctor who ends up getting fired and falls into the doctoring opportunity of a lifetime? Sign me up! Unless the dialogue is annoying and the character development is going in some pretty horrible directions. But then, at least there is character development, though if it follows the trajectory of other shows of its type, it will only go downhill from there. The upside? I pretty much have a crush on this guy, and I don’t care what you think:

So I will continue to watch this show despite my serious problems with it.

Shut up. I’m rubber and you’re glue, bastards.

 

3) Chuck. This is my favorite show on TV, pretty much. It has great character development, really good dialogue, and is a really self-aware show– especially when there seems to be an overkill of action in an otherwise hilarious show. That combination is tough to beat, at least for me. Check it out on nbc.com sometime. The first and last episodes of this last season were the best for me, but you might think differently. So, that is a “yes” vote for genius geeks who underachieve. Shut up.

4) Psych. The main character of this show is kind of a prick, and tells jokes that are unexpected and only funny to him. And me. I think this show is funny precisely because of its disarming style of humor, where the straight man can’t always keep up with the quips. The stories are pretty good, I guess– kinda ham-handed, if you ask me– but the dialogue is pretty awesome. Check out this exchange:

Shawn: Gus, you two are my least favorite tag-team ever.

Random Guy in the Scene: Really? With Nikoli Volkoff and the Iron Shiekh on the table?

Shawn: Wow. You just made that reference.

Random Guy in the Scene: (shrugs)

I get the feeling sometimes that this show was written just for me, because I can think of only two people I know that would recognize the reference at all, and one of those two are dead. And you have no idea what it is referring to without googling it, so don’t pretend.** What I am saying is that I will forget the show all of its shortcomings if they can continue to make references like that.

30 Rock: A great show. I like Alec Baldwin and all, but he is no Dr. Hank from Royal Pains. No, I just like the mix of characters in this show. My favorite line right now: 

Kenneth:  Science was my favorite subject in high school. I especially liked the Old Testament.

Otherwise, most of my TV watcing is re-runs, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, and maybe some sports here and there. And with only two exceptions, everything I watch on television is bad.

 

 

**except you, C. I suspect you know what it is.

a person shouldn’t believe in ‘isms’, he should should believe in himself

The gendered language above comes from one of my favorite movies of all time, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Recently, a friend of mine (whatup, C!) lamented the death of John Hughes but said that the movie he really could not stand was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,  saying that it should be subtitled “That Smarmy Prick That Got Away With Everything.”

After getting over the initial shock of such a statement (which took roughly a week), I began to think about the movie and what it meant to me. Worse yet, after a few minutes of serious consideration, I actually started to agree with him. He was a smarmy prick, huh?

Luckily for me, I spent a few more minutes trying to think about how he was wrong. And then I realized that he might not be.

I went back and forth on this for a while.

For me, Ferris Bueller represents the ultimate likable guy– ”The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads – they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.” But there is more to it than that, at least for me (here is where I begin projecting, methinks). I think Ferris is the guy who, for some reason, didn’t fit in. He didn’t fit into all of those categories or cliques that one often finds in high school. You know, the ones which, when you are in them, you never think are actually cliques. Yet at the same time, he managed to get along with all of those kids (a bit less projecting there, since I actually had a number of enemies in high school, both dangerous and not-so-dangerous). There was something about him that made people ok with who he was, even though he wasn’t like them. Ok– usually that “something” was often a combination of manipulation and charm/smarminess, but hey, who among us is perfect? 

Aside from his best friend Cameron (the only one who seems to see through his bullshit, though he still goes along with most of it) and his girlfriend, there really wasn’t a place for him in his world, at least the high school one that was defined for him. His answer was to make a world of his own, where he fit in everywhere just enough (Alert! Major Projection Alert!) not to get beat up or stabbed. Well, maybe Ferris wasn’t in any danger of being stabbed, but he was definitely an outsider, but somehow turned that into being an insider.

The movie was not meant to be Citizen Kane or anything, and perhaps in its oversimplicity there are some pockmarks– such as the fact that there were only two characters that did not like Ferris, and one of them (his sister) ended up coming around at the end. But for me it was a hopeful movie, especially for someone who liked Depeche Mode but did not like them enough to dress in a black trench coat; enjoyed a lot of Gangster Rap but did not care to be an 8-0 Street Bl___d or Cr_p; and really liked being sports, but could not get down with the bully culture that permeated the jocks.** A guy who could get along with all of those people but not actually be any of them seemed really cool, and Ferris Bueller embodied that for me, even if I could never really be that way myself. Instead, I was stuck in the theatre click pretending to like Shakespeare and Brecht (the former I actually grew to like, so whatever) just to keep myself safe. I did try to get along with everyone, but it got me punched in the face– which might actually be my man C’s point.

And yet, at a time in the mid-80s when I was struggling to figure out where I fit in while suspecting that I didn’t fit in anywhere, Ferris gave me hope– a big, shining, beacon of hope– in a world where I could never afford to dress right (admission– even if I could afford it, I doubt I could have ever dressed right anyway), or even act “right.”  

 

**And I couldn’t afford the trench coats, black pants, the Starter hats, gold chains, football jerseys, or sports equipment. It definitely hampered any shot I had at making the team. That is, if I wasn’t restricted from participating in competitive sports by my parents and my religion.

steady mobbin’, or Republicans Want to Pee on You.

Sigh. With the internet, it is almost no fun to keep up on current events and write about them here. Ok (another sigh) fine:

Not that you haven’t heard already– since my two loyal readers are incredibly in tune with the social and political goings on in the world– but there are apparently mobs showing up at town hall rallies about health care and disrupting them. The news coverage is all over this, either calling them mobs or concerned citizens. Given the ideological divide between the three major media outlets (which is really a three way divide between conservative [foxnews], liberal [msnbc], and generally ignorant [cnn]), the labels for these people tend to vary. But who cares?

ok, I do, if only a little bit. When thinking about these mobs, I started wondering whether or not this was an effective organizing strategy. In other words, what is the end game of these actions? I also thought about all of the actions that I was a part of where disruption was objective, and tried to be fair about whether or not what I am seeing is something similar to what I have actually done, even if I don’t agree with what they are doing. Are they just doing the same thing that I was doing, but with a different set of ideoloogical beliefs? And in this honest moment, I came to the following conclusion:

Fuck no.

The actions that you are seeing on the news, and reading about online are nothing like the activism and actions I was involved in for two reasons: 1) they suck, and 2) the actions that workers, PoC, women, the LGBTQ community and other groups I have worked with were all people who had to raise their voice to be heard in the first place. There was no town hall meeting to talk about our issues, because these groups were often invisible. In contrast, the town halls that are being set up now for healthcare are specifically so people can ask questions, educate themselves, and either agree or disagree. No matter who is organizing these disruptions, it is clear to me from what I have seen is that no one wants to listen. No one wants to have a discussion– no one wants to even try to figure it out. If I were proud to be American (I am not, because I know history), I would be sad about this, because it flies in the face of the very ideals upon which this country was founded (that is, if my reading of the constitution is correct). What is most hilarious about this is that the people doing the disrupting probably haven’t read the bill (though it is undergoing changes all the time), and they don’t even know what it says.

What makes it tragic and funny at the same time is that they probably think what they are doing is standing up for the “American way”– funny because it is only a vague idea with no historical grounding they are defending, and tragic because what they end up defending is in fact the “American way,” which is “I got mine, so fuck you.”

If in fact these “disruptions” are the work of Republican organizers, then it is clear to me that they learned nothing from temporary demise of their party in the last year or so. What has always stunned me about the success of the Republican party, especially in the last eight years or so, is that the solutions they propose for the supposed ills of America are always shortsighted. After eight years of patchwork and stop-gap politics, they paid the price for their ideological shallowness (which really added up to no more than a bundle of catchphrases designed to either quell or rally the middle and upper classes) with the 2008 elections. In a sense, their genetically engineered corporate chickens came home to roost. If government was not the solution but the problem, as Reagan said back in the day, it is clear that an actual solution was never something that they felt was advisable or even necessary to propose.

And so it is today. And what sucks for me is, I want to hear what these people have to say. I want to hear different viewpoints. I actually think that we would all benefit from a frank discussion of where healthcare is going, where we want it to go, and where it should go. But I never will, since serious participatory politics is not what the Republican party is about– and they haven’t been since Eisenhower. They would rather people just roll into a ball in a secluded corner of their house and wait for it all to end, surviving on the sustenance of angry and bitter catchphrases that indict the president and his party as criminals and liars without discussion, or even a trial.

Will the people leading these so-called mobs (which, by the way, they are not; they are more like lemmings, really) wise up and start acting in their own interests, or will they continue to eat the political sloppy seconds of industrial and corporate rhetoric?

I am not optimistic.

if newspapers are obsolete, how do I prove the child I kidnapped is alive?

I’ve been asked to prove my existence on facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there, so I guess it kinda makes sense. I thought about posting a picture of myself holding the day’s newspaper, but there never seems to be one when you need it.

Indeed, newspapers as an object have become nearly obsolete, if not an afterthought. Most people blame this on the internet, but I don’t. Despite the fact that I spent a bit of my last post talking about how modern electronic conveniences are not only making us lazy but less thoughtful (and thus more blindly trusting) about what the media is spewing, I would like to take that back– but only mostly, because taking it all the way back would mean that I am acknowledging I am wrong; and that is something that I will never, ever do. Because I am always right. Always.

I’m digressing and trying your patience. I get it. Here is my point: the jig is up. Newspapers were never ever supposed to be something we trust; it was just the best (only) thing out there. Reporting has never been objective. There are no halcyon days when the news was pure and we were all happy that there were trustworthy people transmitting/reporting/informing news that happened. I’m only prepared to go back to the end of the nineteenth century, but I would bet that if we went back even further, the misdirection, misdeeds, and vested interests of either the proprietors, corporations, or even reporters who printed the news had only their own interests at heart, and maybe that of the reader coming in a distant second. Harrison Gray Otis? Harry Chandler? Ring any bells? How about William Randolph Hearst?

We sit in our Progressive Era US history courses and marvel at the ways in which people ”used to” manipulate the news, how “yellow journalism” and “muckraking” are things that belong in quotes– as if they are completely and totally things of the past. Even today, we look at the 24 hour news cycle and long for the days when there were people in the newsmedia we could trust. We think about those simpler times, when there were only three networks, and the anchors for the nightly news on ABC, CBS, and NBC cared about us, and were truthful as a matter of principle, and held accountable by– wha?!

They were never held accountable. You watch the movie Good Night, and Good Luck, and think about the long debates that occurred in the newsrooms, the air hazy with unfiltered cigarette smoke and gin soaked shirtsleeves, and wonder how things could have changed so much. I look at that movie and I see a group of alcoholic white males and think about all of the debates they didn’t have. I think about all of the stories they didn’t report. I think about just how fair and balanced that world was, let alone the news. And I am left to wonder: exactly what are we lamenting?

Journalism hasn’t become fiction; it always has been. The internet, in this case, is the equalizer, giving an equal voice to everyone who wants to report and comment on the news. The only question left to answer is, will the internet bring truth with it, or will they just create a bigger, stronger, faster fiction than we’ve had for the last couple centuries?

And most importantly, will anyone know, or even care?

Because outrage is just too tiring

The other day, I was reading the HuffingtonPost on my break (which is to say, not really on my break at all but in th emiddle of my shift), when I came across the story about Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly ending their own personal war with one another over the air waves of FoxNews and MSNBC (dis)respectively.

Yes, the end of the yelling, screaming, name-calling, challenges of strength and mental acuity have ended, and now we can go back to having regular news without all of these juvenile shenanigans. OK, maybe “regular news” is a stretch; let’s call it the regular news that we have come to expect from these two major outlets. 

But actually, the way in which this war of words ended sheds much light on why our journalism is the way that it is today: it ends up that the General Electric (the parent corporation for MSNBC) CEO and Rupert Murdoch met and decided to end the feud because it was bad for their other businesses– that is, journalists (and in the case of both Olbermann and O’Reilly, I am forced to use the term as loosely as possible without dropping it) are in fact controlled by the corporations that own them. Read Glenn Greenwald on the topic, where he has a lot of nice quotes and evidence to show exactly what is happening here.

All this means is that my worst nightmare is true: Robert Smigel is right:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3179529

 

And you know what? I should be outraged, but I’m not. I’m tired. Maybe this is the plan: make everything in the world so convenient (news, communication, television, etc.) that people will become so complacent and expectant of such convenience that they no longer question either the veracity or quality of the convenience itself. And I’ll be honest, it is totally working on me. Look out for my next post about how Obama is using Health Care Reform to kill old people.

gray hairs

It’s really nothing new. I’m getting old. Drinking has not yet lost its novelty, but after a long night (and even some short ones) of drinking, I find myself dragging myself out of bed and a bit slower to slide on my slippers in the morning…and sometimes the afternoon.

I think like many people my age, I am beginning to think of drinking as a byproduct of social interactions, rather than the other way around. I was slow to learn this, mainly because I didn’t really start drinking until I was 27 or so. In any case, while it is fun to go out and drink too much, sing the Vincent Price portion of “Thriller” at karaoke, and almost vomit upon my arrival home, I may have to limit such excursions.

Like maybe once a week.

Twice, tops.

OK, fine, just call me, and I’ll probably go.*

But in the meantime, I’m content just to hang out and have a beer, chat about history, academia, politics, sports, life, and occasionally get into a heated argument about why I think (insert appropriate contrarian position here).

Such a transformation, however hollow (remember to call me if you are going out!), is kind of a big thing for me. In fact, in a way, I am lamenting the fact that I am not raising a teenager right about now. I could totally be that dad– “hey, _____– what’s up with your dad?” And my son/daughter would reply, “just ignore him, he just does weird stuff like that.”

I think it would be a pretty worry-free lifestyle, as far as accountability for outlandish behavior goes. Carte Blanche to be a freak, bitches! I’m glossing over a lot of the very real responsibilities that go along with fatherhood, I suppose, but I don’t worry about that. I would be a good dad, probably.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to have another drink.

 

*I blame a certain sociology professor in Los Angeles for this.

an interesting take on the Henry Louis Gates situation

There is an article on Salon that argues in effect that the Gates ordeal was more of a class issue than a racial one. Check it out if you have a moment.

acting stupidly

I don’t think that I need to post any links to stories about Henry Louis Gates Jr. being arrested, nor do I have to give any commentary about the state of race relations in America despite the election of an African American president. However, there was something really interesting I saw on The Daily Show last night. Try to check it out around the 6:00 mark.

Now, I know that The Daily Show is primarily a show that critiques the media rather than politics, but I thought that Jon Stewart’s reaction to the Obama’s engagement with the topic of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was telling. Apparently, Obama talking openly about race is a dangerous thing. On the one hand (which is what I think Stewart was pointing out), it would inevitably draw attention away from serious legislation about healthcare that he is trying to push through congress, and that the media would welcome such a topic change, since the juxtaposition of race and possible* racism is just too sexy to ignore– certainly a lot sexier than healthcare. On the other, an African American president speaking out about racism (particularly when it comes to law enforcement) inevitably draws lines in the sand between American institutions and racial groups. Whether or not it was supposed to be a more nuanced response to the question, the media will now act as if Obama just chose a side.

Prepare for some backpedaling.

*A dude (Henry Louis friggin’ Gates Jr., no less, is arrested for breaking into his own house. I’m trying to find a turn of events that might have occurred or a context where the officer didn’t say, “oops, sorry sir,” and leave. Even if Gates was angry, it seems to me that there was some kind of power struggle here, and race had everything to do with it. Possible racism? Probable, or almost definite racism. Even though I wasn’t there, I would personally feel safe in saying that the officer acted stupidly. But then, I’m not trying to revolutionize (modernize) an entire country’s healthcare system.

Blogging a la iPhone

I’m blogging a la iPhone because I no longer have a laptop. It was stolen from my car early this morning. All of my work is gone.
I have decided to get drunk this evening.
Yes, I left it in plain sight.

Let the berating commence.

I love you! (I may be a bit drunk already)

reflections at work (update!)(update II)

At my hotel, there are busy rushes that last about an hour or two, followed by about five to seven hours with nothing to do but answer telephones and stupid questions from guests. I am in the middle of one of these periods right now.

One of the crazy things about this hotel is that we send out customer satisfaction surveys to all of our guests, and the responses tend to preoccupy most of teh people at the front desk, except for me. I tend to have an “I don’t give a fuck after they’re gone” kind of attitude, so I only really pay attention to it when people mention my name. And most of the time it is the usual stuff, like “Jeff was fabulous,” “he was great,” “he looked kind of perturbed that he had to talk to me and acted like he was smarter than I was,” so I don’t really pay much attention to it, since I already know that I am great, fabulous, and smarter than most of the guests.

But the problem is never me. I am a delight to deal with; everyone knows this. No, the problem is the guests. Here is some advice for people who do traveling and stay at hotels:

1) you are probably wrong. You have a reservation for a suite that only costs $8 a night? You are wrong. They told you that breakfast was included? You are wrong. You have a reservation for the night? You are wrong.

But don’t worry, most of these problems can be fixed, and the front desk person will be more than happy to find a way to fix it for you. Unless you keep insisting that you are right. If you do that, and especially if you raise your voice, you have pretty much guaranteed yourself a minimum of assistance in fixing anything. As you get more and more agitated and loud, behind that labored smile or sympathetic look there are two things the front desk agent is thinking: “stop yelling you dumb FUCK,” and “what can I say to get this person as far away from me as possible?” In the end, you might get what you want, but nothing more. And all of the people that work in the hotel will know that you are a PITA (pita is an acronym for…well, you can figure it out) and treat you accordingly.

2) If you are nice to the person at the front desk in the face of adversity, they will do anything for you. My perspective: I have been standing here for about four hours straight, and I hear the same complaints through my entire shift. The rooms are too small, the TV doesn’t work, checkout time is too early, check in time is too late, the food is horrible in room service, someone is in the public bathroom, why don’t you have newspapers, why don’t you have a shuttle, I demand a better room, why do your rooms cost so much….the list goes on. I have pithy answers that I break out only for the worst guests that run me the risk of being fired, but my point is that if in the middle of all that, if someone is just nice to me (especially if I have to give them bad news), I will dedicate the rest of your stay to making your life as easy and enjoyable as possible. Kindness is my job requirement, but optional for most guests. If you are kind, you will get just about anything you ask for.

3) I know this is painful and expensive, but…tip everyone. Tip the valet ($3-$5), the bellmen ($1 per bag is the norm), and the housekeeper ($3-$5, depending on the length of your stay) when you leave. You can tip the front desk person, but only (a) if you have money to burn, or (b) if they go to extraordinary lengths to help you (i.e. get in a room early, a free upgrade, makes you dinner reservations). At the front desk, I rarely get tipped, but usually the nice things I do are because the guest was nice to me, not because I was expecting money. Your kindness, which is rare for a front desk agent to be on the receiving end of — is like gold to us.

4)  do not die in your room, and try to avoid being murdered. This results in a lot of paperwork and a lot of time spent at the hotel after our shift is over, and being trapped behind the front desk for eight hours is bad enough.

So, to sum up, be nice. And don’t ask about bed bugs. They are everywhere, even in the nicest hotels.

Just kidding…

 

UPDATE: and don’t ever say you are a doctor. I’m not saying this for any of my readers, but rather people you might know who do. A dude just did that to me today, and I “accidentally” hung up on him.

UPDATE: And lastly, don’t be a German tourist. Ever. I’m not kidding about this.