MASTERS OF NOTHING

etc etc etc

[avarnermn]

PBS.

(This was finished at like 1:30 in the morning.  I cannot vouch for its quality.)

---

It is actually 12:30 AM, in my internetless existence right now.  Instead of sleeping, I am watching Public Broadcasting, presenting The Fab Four: The Ultimate Tribute.  Which is a Beatles tribute band concert, filmed apparently for television.

Which is OK.  It’s weird, since you’re watching people pretending to be other people, which I would have to imagine makes these musicians endlessly fascinating.  Do they regret the moment they joined this cover band and forsook their more creative ambitions?  Or have they come to terms with the realities of the industry, and are just glad to play any kind of music while also putting food on the table?  They attempt to mimic each of the Beatles’ styles and mannerisms… do they take their characters home with them?   Do they have feuds/arguments in the vein of the original Beatles?  I would be delighted if there was a documentary on these type of tribute bands… which I would check were I not completely removed from the internet at the moment.  What a hard life.

And there’s strange cutaways to the audience having essentially the time of their lives.  (Is this even possible for a tribute concert?  There’s a girl that had something resembling tears during a performance of “Get Back.”  I mean, even if John Lennon and George Harrison rose from the dead in order to reunite the Beatles for a one-song performance in my backyard, if they ended up playing “Get Back” I wouldn’t feel much other than mild indifference.)

The worst part is that it’s during a membership drive.  Not because they’re interrupting every 15 minutes to convince you to give them money  (for only $200, I could see The Fab Four at the State Theatre with seats starting in the 4th row)… which is annoying in the usual public broadcasting way, which you build up a tolerance for if you happen to be lame enough to be subjected to a certain amount of them. 

The worst part is that the people who are interrupting this concert are HUGE DOLTS.  And it is 12:30 AM.  And I am awake.  And they are really aggravating me.

I mean, they’re probably pleasant people.  They’re also probably doing the best that they can, as they have to fill about 45 minutes trying to convince you to give them money, all based on the idea that you can’t get this content anywhere else.  Of course, this content is a performance of a Beatles tribute band… which most likely doesn’t have a huge ceiling in terms of audience.  Granted, it convinced me to watch, but still. 

But one of the hosts, an older gentleman, perhaps in his early 60’s, just talked about how he liked the early Beatles and the late Beatles, but that middle period was just “too weird.”  Now, you can debate the merits of that statement all you want (although if he includes Rubber Soul and Revolver in that middle period, then he shouldn’t be able to discuss music anywhere ever.)  But… I’m pretty sure he said that in an argument that you should buy the concert CD/DVD of this tribute performance.

He later said “as great as The Beatles are, they lose their impact on record without that visual of seeing them play.”

(All of these quotes are paraphrasing, of course… and it is by no means 100% accurate.  But the original intent is in place.)

The above statement is stupid, in my opinion.  I am finding it hard to articulate why it is stupid, but suffice it to say that on any given list of greatest songs of all time, you are bound to find a handful of Beatles songs ranked rather highly.  And they’re most likely not ranked that high because The Beatles bopping their heads around adds an essential part to the impact of the song.

This isn’t even close to being the dumbest thing I heard.

Another quote from the older gentleman host on how closely the mannerisms the tribute band match the Beatles: “These guys are great in how they effortlessly recreate these songs as they occurred live in concert.”  This is *right* after a block of songs from the Sgt. Pepper era… songs which, as far as I am aware, WERE NEVER PLAYED BY THE BEATLES IN ANY CONCERT EVER.  BECAUSE THEY STOPPED TOURING IN 1966.

There were two other hosts. One of them wasn’t so bad.  But the other host?  Goodness gracious.  My head hurts. 

I’m pretty sure she said this: “I know all of the Beatles’ songs by heart—I know when the cellos kick in, I know all the words to every song—and let me tell you, if I turn my head while watching this performance… I can’t tell the difference!”  YEAH, IF YOU ARE A HUGE DOLT.

THEN.  For God knows what reason, she decided it was Improv Night at the public television station, and decided to riff on classic Beatles tracks as it pertains to their little drive.  I am not getting it word for word, but… this is close.

“I was looking at the listing of the songs on this CD, they’re practically telling you to pledge!

‘Please Please Me?’ By pledging!

‘I Feel Fine?’ …because I pledged!

‘I Should Have Known Better’… than to not pledge!

‘Help!’ … us by pledging!

‘I Saw Her Standing There’… with her credit card in her hand!

‘Michelle?’ … *extremely long pause* she pledged!”

…

What the f***?

I had to listen to this.

Am I just extremely ornery when I am watching television late at night when I should be sleeping?  Could this actually not be *that* bad?  I mean… it’s pretty bad.  I might not be so enraged by everything if I were sleeping like a responsible adult… and again, they had to fill 45 minutes in an attempt to raise money for their TV station.  But… they could possibly fill those 45 minutes by saying things that are NOT THE THINGS THAT I HAVE WRITTEN ABOVE.

It’s now 1:30.  They’re now playing a collection/concert of old country legends.  It’s not as offensive.  It’s also less interesting.

[avarnermn]

Winter.

Listen.  My favorite season is winter, and I have my reasons for it.

1) I love Christmas, and winter just so happens to be lucky enough to be associated with it.  It could very well be that if any other season were to be in the midst of Christmas season, I would consider it to be the superior season, but none of the other season has that intense visual splendor that is the first day of snow.  When that first snow hits the ground, you know you’re in the midst of the Christmas season and memories of when you built the huge snowfort the day before Christmas come instantly rushing back.  It’s pretty much one of the best feelings in the world.

2) Above all else, I have a deep pride in being a Minnesotan—and Minnesota tends to be associated with miserable winters.  Good, I say.  It makes us *tougher*, and thus… superior.  Also, shared misery is a great thing.  And being Minnesotan is an exercise in shared misery.  (Or at least when it comes to winter and our sports teams.  Which covers just about everything, really.)

3) Winter tends to be the least favored season by probably an overwhelming majority.  Contrarianism comes by me naturally.  So I tend to gravitate towards those unjustly maligned—and so winter and I make a perfect match.  And so I would argue for the season.  It’s better to be bundled up for the cold than to dress down for the heat.  Winter makes you appreciate the other seasons more.  You have no balls if you can’t survive the winter.  These are things I probably would say… probably things I have said.

So you would think that I would be thrilled that here in Minnesota, winter has been going strong for… I don’t know, 6 months now. 

Funny thing happened.  I grew sick of this winter. 

It wasn’t necessarily the cold.  I survived a winter in an apartment that might have averaged an indoor temp of 40-45 degrees, which is like a badge of honor to me.  I’m surviving this cold in my current apartment—which probably averages out to be 55 or so degrees inside.  Cold is easy to deal with.  It keeps you fresh on your toes.

It’s not the winter driving, which might be my least favorite aspect of the season—although I’m assuming it’s also everyone’s least favorite season.  Yeah, the roads suck, and make everything slower.  But roads and driving and the like are man made constructs—we shouldn’t hate something that naturally occurs because it inconveniences our little dumb transportation system we developed.

The reason I grew sick of winter was all the ice.   Specifically, the ice on the sidewalks.  Even more specifically, the ice on the sidewalks that I happened to walk on.

I don’t really know if this is true and if so the explanation behind it, but it seemed as if this winter produced way more slippery conditions than any other winter I can remember.  Which means that I have fallen on the ice with greater regularity.

In fact, I fell on the ice a lot this year.  To the point where I honestly believe that the occasions I slipped on ice this year far eclipse every other year of my adult life combined.  This is a lot, people.  At least twelve.

I know that everyone happens to slip and fall on the ice—and so it’s not anything really to be ashamed of.  But the act of falling is kind of humiliating nonetheless—you watch other people fall and you don’t necessarily laugh at them or deride them in any sort of way, but you definitely feel relieved that you are not the person being viewed as they unexpectedly hit the ground.  Well, I was that person.  At least twelve times.  Although most likely no one was looking for the large majority of them.  So maybe someone watched me fall twice.  That means at least two people watched me suffer in humiliation.  Although every single fall was humiliating enough.

The worst falls happened on the same day, about a month ago.  I was just leaving work after I believe a particularly exhausting day.  I noticed that the sidewalk was mostly dry and free of ice… but I spotted a small patch of ice just as I was about to step on it.  Oh well, it’s probably not going to be sli—NOPE.  It was slippery.  I fell.  This was probably the eleventh or twelfth time I fell, which again—probably eclipses my record of falls in a single winter by eight or nine.  I wanted to punch all things cute and furry. 

Then I got into my car and drove home.  I got out of the car, and went over to the other side to retrieve some items to carry inside.  As soon as I tried to maneuver the small window between my car door and the curb/mound of snow combo—I fell on my rear.  Right on that curb/mound concoction.  And it HURT.  I can still tell my rear is less than 100% when I try to sit down/get up in a particular way.  Who knows.  I may just never be the same.

After that moment—winter was done for me.  No more snow, no more below freezing temperatures, I wanted to do away with all of it.  Bring on the sunshine, bring on the happiness—all the dumb things people tend to associate with the Spring, just get on with it already.  Anything but this damn winter before I make the Darwin Awards by killing myself via slipping.

Weeks went by and winter wouldn’t go away.  I can only assume it was only lingering because I broke its heart, and was trying to win me back.  It wasn’t working.  The snow started to melt, the temperature slowly began to rise—winter wasn’t exactly letting go, but it was losing hope.

But then something weird happened.  And it started snowing again this week.

And I’m completely on board with winter again.

You know what?  If this damn winter won’t just get up and leave, I might as well just embrace it, you know?  It’s not often that we can wake up to snow in the middle of April.  Sure, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but nonetheless here winter is, keeping on keeping on.  It’s kind of great, in a maddening and befuddling way.

And you know what else?  My birthday is next month. 

You know what I’ve never had for my birthday?  You know what I’m kind of wanting more than anything else for my birthday, despite the fact that it seems historically impossible to deliver?

YES.  THAT’S RIGHT. 

GIVE ME A WHITE BIRTHDAY, WORLD. 

[avarnermn]

Fools.

This is where I reveal myself to be a joyless curmudgeon.

April Fool’s Day is the worst day in the entire calendar year.

(This is where I reveal myself to be not as joyless and curmudgeon-like as you possibly thought, as evidenced by my next paragraph about a children’s program I enjoy watching.)

There’s a great episode of SpongeBob SquarePants fittingly called “Fools in April.”  In it, SpongeBob shows up to work on April Fool’s, and proceeds to perform the most inane and dumb pranks and jokes possible.  And everyone seems to lap it all up—except for Squidward, who finds himself increasingly annoyed at all of SpongeBob’s jesting, and can’t understand why everyone seems to stand it.

Of course, this is where I erase all doubts on my status as a joyless curmudgeon by stating that I identify with Squidward here.  I don’t take it as far as Squidward does in this episode, when he decides to pull a prank on SpongeBob that is more spiteful and humiliating than anything SpongeBob pulls—in that I don’t willingly partake in any joking activities.  In fact, I should just protest the whole damn day by being intentionally humorless.  Which might be considered an April Fool’s joke.  Nevermind that idea.

It’s not that I hate jokes.  (Although there’s been a long debate with my ladyfriend and I whether or not I enjoy puns.)  I mean, I love comedy.  These past couple sentences makes it sound as if I’m trying to convince you all of something I don’t actually believe.  But it’s actually true.  I’m just as likely to laud Airplane! or This Is Spinal Tap as I am your typical classics such as Citizen Kane or The Godfather.

BUT.  Let's list my main reasons for being adamantly against April Fool’s Day:

1) Just because somebody can pull off a good joke doesn’t mean that every person in the world can.  Look, comedy is hard to do. Standup is probably the most difficult piece of performance theater to do, since even the most successful comedians have had to withstand getting heckled off the stage.  But they have had years to ply their craft, tinkering with what doesn’t work and honing what does work.  Not that I’m arguing that no one should tell a single joke outside of the people who get paid to tell jokes.  But today is the day that everyone feels empowered to be as “humorous” as possible… which means that I am forced to endure a day long open mic night.  So maybe I am arguing against the average person attempting jokes.  You know what?  No apologies.  I can allow myself to be elitist about this sort of thing.

2) Pranks work best when they are least expected.  Comedy works best when the punchline comes from a source you weren’t anticipating.  SO OF COURSE, WE DEVOTE A DAY TO PRANKS AND JOKES SO THAT WE WON’T HAVE ANY PROBLEM IDENTIFYING THEM.  I WAS JUST LYING AT THE BEGINNING HERE.  PRANKS ARE NEVER FUNNY UNLESS THEY ARE EXPECTED AND TRITE.  Seriously, we have 365 days a year, most of them could use an injection of humor.  Everyday should be a celebration of humor.  Actually devoting a day to humor makes it feel less like a celebration and more like a mandatory ritual you’re forced to enjoy.

3) The internet exists now.  This has resulted in the enabling of everyone having their voice heard.  Which can be good, in some respects.  But too often it results in this echo chamber where everyone HAS to comment on this one specific event without ever saying anything new on the subject.  Which, to be fair, I have participated in as well.  You just realize it’s irritating when it occurs around something you don’t care at all about. 

So when this day rolls around, what happens now that the internet is this huge, powerful entity is that every single company and every single website puts out a press release advertising a fake product or making a false announcement.  It happens because every other company is doing it.  It’s never funny, because these are PR firms that are coming up with these “pranks”, and so they’re all designed to be as inoffensive as possible lest anyone try something edgy and lose a couple customers.  (For example, the Army states it is “weaponizing cats.”  It’s funny because it’s the internet.)  It’s essentially now a big marketing ploy, designed to bump up the likeability of a brand.  Yet somehow, no one complains about this being one big PR circlejerk like they do about any other holiday.  It’s now “part of the day.” 

Let me just state it again.  This is the worst day on the calendar. 

Obviously this is just my opinion.  You’re free to enjoy the day, of course.  You all probably live happier existences than I do anyway.  I am a joyless curmudgeon, after all.

Mainly, I’m just a big contrarian.  That’s really the heart of this issue.  But you know what?  No apologies.  I'M NOT GOING TO PARTICIPATE IN YOUR STUPID DAY.  JOKES ARE DUMB AND I HATE THEM.

[avarnermn]

Brackets.

So every year, around this time in March, this one thing called the “NCAA Tournament” comes around and makes everyone waste all their time as they root for their favorite team and fill out their bracket in hopes of winning their local pool.  Then when their team loses/their bracket falls apart completely (as it always does), they go back to whatever the hell they were doing before this all started.  But until that moment, it’s all basketball.

I am in this same boat.  I fill out my bracket every year, and I cheer for the teams I’ve got a rooting interest in.  This year, my Minnesota Golden Gophers inexplicably made it in, which makes my rooting interests ostensibly clear—but they’re going to lose extremely hard, so what’s the use.  Instead, I tend to cheer for as much chaos as possible—as many buzzer beaters as possible, as many underdogs prevailing.  It works.  I have fun, until the Dukes and Indianas of the world prevail.

Anyway.  I explain this every year I write about it, but when I fill out my predictions for the tournament, I tend to coin flip the entire tournament.  And for the past couple years, my ladyfriend has gotten in on the fun, as she predicts based on the school’s name.  It’s a good system—not in the sense that it gives me any shot to win any tournament pool I might enter, but in that it allows me to revel in any chaos that might occur. 

See, what happens every year is that people tend to base their tournament selections on concepts such as basketball knowledge, and sound judgment.  But when something happens like—say a #3 seed finds themselves losing to a #14 seed, they tend to freak out as they realize that their Final Four selection might end up losing in the first round.  Which seems completely against the point of the whole tournament—to me, at least.

My coin flipped bracket allows me to cheer for whoever the hell I want to, since I know that I have absolutely no chance of winning any pool anyway.  PLUS—if I do end up getting a preposterous selection correct, I get to gloat about it and tout myself as an extraordinary visionary whose basketball IQ should compel rank amateurs to give up watching the sport entirely.

Speaking of this…

LAST YEAR—two #2 seeds (Duke and Missouri) found themselves losing in the first round to #15 seeds, which had only happened four times previously.  You know who predicted both of those upsets to happen?  I DID.

TWO YEARS AGO--#11 seed Virginia Commonwealth shocked the entire world when they made an inexplicable run towards the Final Four, tying them for the lowest seeded team to make it to the Final Four.  Who predicted that as well?  Me.  (Although to be fair, my ladyfriend accurately predicted both Virginia Commonwealth and UConn to make it to the Final Four.)

So I have a strangely OK track record in terms of predicting the improbable storylines over the past couple years.  Which doesn’t mean that you should take my coin-flipped bracket seriously—but you could, most definitely.

So.  As for this year’s bracket…

Well, it sucks.

My Final Four teams are as follows: #4 Saint Louis, #5 Wisconsin, #2 Georgetown, and #8 NC State, with Saint Louis going over Georgetown in the finals.  Which… is strangely plausible for my bracket.  I mean, NC State might be a stretch, but Saint Louis is being touted as a sleeper choice for the Final Four, Georgetown is solid and has an easy region, and Wisconsin is Wisconsin—so who the hell knows. 

So basically, depending on how scoring goes in any pool I enter, I could possibly not finish in last for possibly the first time.

I would say that this might complicate my rooting interest lying in every underdog, but some of my other selections go like this: -#1 Louisville losing to #16 (whoever wins this play in game (ESPN doesn’t allow me to choose this game)) -#1 Gonzaga losing to #16 Southern U. -#15 Iona and #15 Pacific upsetting #2 Ohio State and #2 Miami respectively.  Pacific makes it to the Elite Eight, while Iona makes it to the Sweet Sixteen. -#14 Valparaiso going to the Elite Eight, #14 NW State going to the Sweet Sixteen. -And other, uninteresting upsets.

Why don’t we just discuss my ladyfriend’s bracket?  It’s more interesting anyway. 

So again, she decides the winners by how the school name sounds.  So something can impress her by sounding lyrical and stately, or it can be completely ridiculous and fun to say.  And if you have a relatively boring name, then sucks to be you.  (Duke goes out in the first round every year.)  Last year’s winner was St. Bonaventure, and the year prior was Wofford.  She has done other brackets in years before as well, but I have no way of knowing what they were.  Probably a combination of Gonzaga, Villanova, and Xavier won.

We’re breaking it down by region:

MIDWEST: This was an easy bracket to figure out.  Oregon made a surprising trip to the Elite Eight, beating out the likes of Louisville and… well, Fill-In-The-Blank State schools… which almost never catch her fancy.  But in the end, this was all Valparaiso.  Nothing else could compare to Valparaiso.

WEST: This is Gonzaga’s region, so one would think that it’d be an automatic shoo-in to win based on years’ prior.  But what I am noticing is that strong contenders from years’ prior lose a bit of their luster as they make repeat appearances, so a more novel name might catch the ear moreso than a constant stream of Gonzaga.  So in the end Gonzaga bows out in the Sweet Sixteen, to a somewhat surprising Boise St.  Again, she has tended to automatically opt against taking ____ State teams, but the bouncy sounding Boise was apparently enough to get it by the Gonzaga juggernaut.  In the end, though… it met its match in the Elite Eight against Iona, which is making its second straight appearance in the Final Four in her bracket.  So… congrats, Iona.  You have no chance in the actual tournament, but you should take any victory you should get.

SOUTH: Couple things happened here.  One, Minnesota made its way to the Elite Eight, which I should stress HAS NO LIKELIHOOD OF HAPPENING IN REAL LIFE, AS THE GOPHERS ARE TERRIBLE AND WILL LOSE BY  20 IN THE FIRST ROUND.  Otherwise, former Final Four contestant VCU (or as it was referred to as when making the selections, Virginia Commonwealth) squared off against perennial favorite Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen.  But ultimately, Villanova succumbed to that growing sense of been-there-done-that that ultimately decided Gonzaga’s fate.  So VCU made another trip to her Final Four.

EAST: Not the strongest region, as there was a lot of state named schools in this section—which can make runs, of course, but you would tend to opt for the less commonplace names in general.  That said, Montana was able to make it to the Elite Eight.  But it wasn’t able to withstand Bucknell, who possibly had tougher opponents in every other round in Pacific (Sweet Sixteen), Marquette (2nd round), and Butler (1st round).  Well, maybe Montana’s better than Butler.  Nonetheless, Bucknell completes our Final Four.

MATCHUP #1: VALPARAISO VS. IONA

I thought this was going to be a shoo-in for Valparaiso, since Iona had made the Final Four last year.  But, with some exclusive commentary from my lady herself: “Iona’s just very lyrical, very melodic.  Valparaiso’s a little harsher with that “Z” sound.”  So there you go.

MATCHUP #2: VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH VS. BUCKNELL

MORE EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY: “I was really appreciating Bucknell for that staccato feeling it had.  But Virginia Commonwealth is just a full mouth phrase, there’s just so many sounds there.  It sounds very complete.”

And finally:

CHAMPIONSHIP: IONA VS. VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH

I tried getting some exclusive commentary on  this matchup, but around the point she started talking about something she called the “voiced labiodental fricative ‘V,’” I lost track of what she was saying.  She then stopped talking to me.  In the end, it’s a matchup of former Final Four participants, and Virginia Commonwealth prevailed, partly due to that “voiced labiodental fricative “V.”

So there you go.  Virginia Commonwealth wins. Linguistics.

[avarnermn]

Green.

Today is March 17th.  This means that it’s a holiday.  St. Patrick’s Day, to be exact.  Perhaps some of you had a good time celebrating the holiday.  I did not, however.  This is because St. Patrick’s Day is SECRETLY THE WORST HOLIDAY OF ALL TIME.

(That’s not actually true.  The worst is April Fool’s Day.  I might explain later.)

I guess my opinion is probably partly due to the fact that I’m not a drinker.  I guess I could claim that I find it stupid that the original meaning of the holiday has been lost in order to just emphasize consuming large amounts of alcohol… but really, pretty much ALL holidays have been watered down in order to emphasize stupid activities.  It’s just that I happen to not partake in this particular activity.  But I mean, even if I was a drinker, I wouldn’t want to go out to a bar on perhaps its busiest day of the year.  And does the world need a day devoted to drinking anyway?  Couldn’t that just be… everyday?  This might actually be a larger reason if I ever put myself in a position to witness some of the supposed depravity that I’ve heard happens.  But I’m boring, so you know.

It also is partly due to the fact that I’ve lived near Irish bars for my couple years of living in St. Paul.  I haven’t actually encountered any *real* problems, but I have however encountered parking problems.  And if there’s anything that can get you worked up over something as trivial as where you can properly store something, it’s parking a damn car.  One year I might have just circled my block hundreds of times looking for a spot to open up on my street.  In retrospect that was stupid… but I blamed the crowds flocking to the Irish bars.

But there’s one main reason that I hate the holiday.

And it’s that everyone wears green.

I don’t have anything against green as a color.  Sure, it is worn by perhaps the most repulsive sports franchise in the history of man, but that’s not necessarily the color’s fault…and it’s the conjunction of green and gold that makes it truly abhorrent.  But green as a color—pretty good.  Not the best, but not the worst.  Except when it’s this day.  Then it’s the worst.  Worse even than dark blue. 

Last year I remember it being unusually bad.  The weather was extremely nice (somewhere in the 80’s,) which meant that there was less of people bundled up in coats and jackets not necessarily selected in mind for holiday color coordination.  So everyone was walking around on this bright and sunny day… and everyone was wearing green.  You know how in some sci-fi-esque movies there’s a scene where you realize that there’s something off about everyone else, and then you suddenly realize that everyone is being controlled by this machine that’s trying to replicate human behavior, but forgot to implement the component of free will… so in the end you’re the only one that is human, and you start to go mad trying to convince everyone that you’re in fact quite sane? 

That’s kind of how I felt that day.  I realize that last block of text might actually make me look a bit mad.

But I don’t get it.  I mean, I know that conformity isn’t always the worst thing in the world.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t for example give gifts on Christmas because everyone else is doing it (because giving gifts happens to be pretty fun… also Christmas is awesome.)  But there’s really no good reason to wear green on this day.  You’re essentially doing it to fit in.  And that is not a good reason.

Perhaps if you were *actually* Irish, and wanted to commemorate your Irishness by wearing its traditional color.  But NOBODY’S actually Irish.  I mean, there are people with Irish blood in them.  (I think by my own estimation I am about 1/16th Irish—but really, that doesn’t count.  For all intents and purposes, I am not Irish in the slightest.)  But most probably don’t have any significant Irish heritage.  People are wearing green because someone decided that today was the day to wear green.  That’s dumb. 

BESIDES—according to that bastion of reliability that is Wikipedia, green isn’t even the color associated with St. Patrick originally.  It’s blue.  Not that I’m advocating for everyone to just start wearing blue instead—although I guess it sort of sounds like I am, but at the very least you could mix it up a bit and accept other colors as fitting for the holiday.  And there’s another color on the Irish flag too!  Sure, it’s orange… and apparently no one likes orange (except me), and apparently you have to be Protestant to favor the Irish orange over the Irish green.  But people aren’t Irish!  They’re not going to really care!  So just mix it up, for cripes sake!

I’m sure I’m in the minority here.  I’m sure everyone else thinks it’s an inoffensive holiday, and that I’m getting worked up over nothing, and that I don’t know how to relax and enjoy a bit of fun.

That last part might be true.  I also hate April Fool’s Day with a burning passion.  That might be a topic I’ll delve into two weeks from now.

I’m basically an old curmudgeon.

[avarnermn]

Expectations

I got a ticket the other day.  It was for an illegal “U-turn.” The U-turn is in quotation marks because—as you might guess, I am not fond of calling the turn I made a “U-turn.”  I would more liken it to a “left turn.”

You see, this “infraction” occurred near a fairly large intersection.  And before I arrive at that intersection, there is this side street I am supposed to be on in order to get to work, which I’ve always considered to be accessible via the left turn I made.   Right before you turn is a median.  It is a median that essentially blocks you from turning left from the side street back to the road I was travelling on, but you can attempt to turn left onto the side street and still reasonably assume it’s a left turn.   It’s maybe more of a slight acute angle rather than a perfect 90 degree turn, but it’s reasonable, and everyone does it.  (I showed the intersection after I received the ticket to someone, and just as we were passing by, someone made the exact same turn I got cited for.)  There is a “no U-turn” sign on the median, which  I have noticed before—but I always assumed that was meant for… you know, U-turns, and not left turns.

The cop apparently didn’t see it this way, and gave me a ticket for an illegal “U-turn” When I initially got pulled over, I asked the cop how that could be construed as a “U-turn,” which he didn’t answer.  Then he gave me the citation, I tried asking the same question.  Because U-turns in my book generally have to have a shape to it that generally looks like a U.  He gave me an answer of “Oh, well by making that turn, you entered back into the opposite traffic.”  (Which I don’t agree with.) Then he told me if I feel like I should do so, I should call to contest.  The number was already circled.  By the way, this was the last day of the month.  Given how terse he was with me, I assumed he was trying to fill a quota.  (Which are “illegal”, but nonetheless.)

So I am going to contest this.  The hearing is later today.

On one hand, I feel like I have a legitimate case. 1) I didn’t make a frickin’ U-turn, 2) the statute cited on my ticket has nothing to do with what I actually did wrong, 3) I’ve seen other “no left turn” signs at intersections where the left turn is at a greater angle than the one I made… so if I can’t turn there, why the hell isn’t there a “no left turn” sign?  (The answer of course is because there’s an intersection nearby, and thus would probably be confusing… but still.  It’s a gripe… one of many that would probably  hold less weight than the complaints listed before, but are still irritating to me.)  I’ve also discussed this with my roommate, who went in to contest a hearing a few months back, and he seemed optimistic about my chances.

Yet I am still extremely nervous about this, expecting to most likely lose. 

The reasoning is that I have seemingly lost my groove.  (“Lost my groove” is a fancied up way of saying that I have had absolutely no confidence as of late.  But I didn’t want to say that I lack confidence, because that doesn’t sound as cool as “losing my groove.”  Not that lacking confidence is something that deserves to be dressed up to make it sound cooler, but whatever.)  An example of my “lack of groove” came yesterday, when I went in to Jimmy John’s on the request  of my ladyfriend to pick up a couple sandwiches.  I ordered what my ladyfriend wanted first, watched them make it halfway, only to realize that I had ordered the wrong item.  Any reasonable person would have said “oh, sorry… that wasn’t actually what I wanted,” and had the person make the right sandwich, who would have been slightly annoyed perhaps but would have moved on with their lives.  But I didn’t want to upset the person making my sandwich, so I just decided that would just be my sandwich.  It had mayo on it.  I hate mayo.

Which plays into my worry that I won’t be persuasive enough in my case to get off the hook for this citation.  I feel like I have a strong case, and I feel like I can properly elucidate why I feel I am in the right, but I have a tendency to rush what I am saying when I am nervous or trying explain a complicated matter.  This usually results in people being generally confused as to what the hell I’m talking about, which then results in me taking another 3 or 4 cracks at explaining something I didn’t properly describe the first time.  This is why I tend to not be as persuasive as I would like to be.

Which might not matter *at all*, and the hearing officer might just decide that my case is strong enough without me trying to explain anything.  Or, the hearing officer might just be in a good mood, and let me off the hook without my getting a word in edgewise.  BUT STILL.  THE FEAR REMAINS.  IF THERE’S ANYONE RIGHT NOW THAT COULD SCREW THIS UP, IT’S PROBABLY GOING TO BE ME.

All right, so you might be thinking: OK… worst case scenario, you lose.  You’re out $100 or so.  Not the worst thing in the world.  Which it isn’t.  Sure, I don’t want to lose $100 on what I perceive to be a non-existent rule violation, but I can pay it and everything.  The issue is that at this moment, the only way I feel I can lose this is if I screw something up, which I believe has a decent chance of happening given the current state of matters.  Feeling this makes it all the more worse.

Of course, I realize that there’s also the chance that my stance will be stated clearly and concisely, and I will get off the hook partly due to the presentation of my side.  And I am hopeful this will happen, which would hopefully rejuvenate a sense of confidence. 

Yet for every moment that I am able to have a moment of clarity, where I am able to say “don’t worry about it, it’s not that big of a deal,” there is another moment where this loud and powerful voice booms “YOU ARE GOING TO SCREW THIS UP.  YOU WILL HAVE THIS IN THE BAG, AND THEN THE OFFICER WILL CHANGE HIS MIND DUE TO HOW BADLY YOU WILL SCREW UP.”  It’s a slightly irrational voice, but right now it seems just the little bit convincing.

Anyway.  I’ll probably write back in a couple hours to explain how it worked out after all.  This is how it usually happens.  Except when it doesn’t.

[avarnermn]

Bananas.

As the title of this post has probably lead you to believe, this is about bananas.  Bananas are a fruit.

Below I am going to list a couple facts about bananas… and by “facts,” I mean “opinions.”  But the word "facts" has more gravitas.  So screw your normal definitions of words.

-The best way to eat a banana is to split it into thirds.  Although I may prefer this just because I discovered this trick on my own, so I feel like I am a charter member of some super secret elite club.  By the way, you can split bananas into thirds down the middle.  In case you didn’t know.

-Banana flavored things are delicious.  Banana ice cream, most specifically.  I have no idea why we as a collective society has decided that the main ice cream flavors we should sell in grocery stores are variants of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.  We have banana flavored ice cream, people.  It’s the best.  (Although strawberry ice cream is the best whenever banana ice cream isn’t the best.)

-However, I have never been huge on the taste of actual bananas, with the one big exception being that I find bananas that are about to become overripe and rotten to be exquisite.  You have to sort of weed around the brown spots in order to enjoy it, but otherwise it’s bliss.  Your typical newly yellow bananas are just—there.  They’re OK.  Nothing to write home about.  Not a finalist for the “best fruit” award.  Not until it ages a little bit, accumulates a couple scars, and verges on the precipice of death.

That has been my opinion for perhaps the last 20 or so years.  I don’t think a lot of other opinions of mine rival that in longevity.  (Other than… you know, “I love my mom,” and “the Timberwolves are my favorite basketball team.”)  It was set in stone, as far as I considered.  Newly yellow bananas were never going to be my thing, and that was that.

My ladyfriend and I went out for a bite on Monday, and we ended up in a local Somali restaurant.  We didn’t know what the hell we were doing, we were the only white people there—we saw a group of people at a counter purchasing something, so we awkwardly stood behind them waiting to be assisted.  They called ostensibly for the only English-speaking worker to come help us, which he did, and we asked for a menu.  He then stated they didn’t have a menu because everyone who ever comes in knows what they want already.  (I felt like we were assholes that was disrupting the natural state of being here.)  He rolled off what the place had, and we picked out some chicken based item with rice.  It was a humongous plate that we couldn’t even finish, plus we got soup and a pitcher of mango juice—all for the price of $10.  It felt like either we were accidentally fleecing them, or they felt bad for us in some way and decided to knock off most of the items we ended up devouring.

Anyway, the point of this all is that right before we got our huge meal and after we had started our soups, we ended up receiving a couple bananas.  My ladyfriend asked me if I would like to partake in one, and I declined, seeing an obvious lack of any brown spots to indicate it’d actually be tasty.  She then shot me a dirty look, so I quickly changed my mind, and started to peel it, expecting another average banana and wishing it had a couple more days on it. 

Then I began to eat the thing and it was delicious.  I don’t know how to properly describe the taste of it—it tasted like a banana.  But it tasted like I had been eating bananas wrong all these years,  and that I was finally able to unlock the secret of the true perfect banana.  I was enlightened to the truths of the world.  I consumed it whole as soon as this discovery was made.

I thought maybe this was an aberration, and that Somali food somehow heightens the taste of the banana in ways that are incomprehensible to anyone without an acute awareness of the complexities of Somali dishes.  I figured that this moment would pass, I would never have a banana as delicious, and soon enough the experience would begin to feel like an urban legend.  Perhaps that was OK, though.  I was content with the way I viewed the world before I ate this banana.  No need to unnecessarily shake your worldview up just for the sake of a fruit.

Last night I started craving bananas, though.  And not the ones that I usually end up getting, but the type that I had just experienced at this Somali restaurant.  I needed to know whether or not this was a permanent paradigm shift in my taste.  I went to the grocery store and purchased the most pure yellow banana I could find.

And I ate it.  And it was still delicious.

So now I love bananas in ways and forms I never even knew I was capable of.  My predisposition against any banana except the spotty ones has now been revealed to be a complete fallacy, a fallacy I somehow held to be true for the past 20 years. 

And now, my only question is why?  Why now?  Why, after 20 years of being inclined in one direction, am I suddenly questioning my allegiances?  Why has it been decreed that *this exact moment we are living through right now* is the period of extreme transition for me?  Why—out of so many people—have *I* been selected to be the one to have his beliefs completely shattered and twisted around?  Am I now to champion this cause?  What is the meaning behind all of this?

…

Well.  Such are the mysteries of bananas.

[avarnermn]

Predictions

I like the Oscars.  Indulge me.

Below I am going to discuss the races that I’m most interested in, the races that seem to be the closest, and all the other categories that I’d feel bad about not discussing in a post about the Oscars.

First, some extraneous selections.  (And by “extraneous”, I mean “things that are not actually relevant to the categories,” not “everything, since this is an effing awards show.”)

LIKELY RESPONSE TO SETH MACFARLANE HOSTING:

Mild to favorable, with some clamoring to bring him back in the future.  Everyone who hates Family Guy won’t be able to look past their seething hatred of the show, and will bemoan him as the worst host in Oscar history.  This is me.

PRESENTER MOST LIKELY TO WEAR A DUMB COSTUME OR WASTE AN EXTRAORDINARY AMOUNT OF BROADCAST TIME IN AN ATTEMPT TO BE FUNNY:

Paul Rudd or Melissa McCarthy seem to be the favorites, being the “comedic actors” and such.  But “Ted” is listed as a presenter, and part of Seth MacFarlane’s schtick is to waste an UNGODLY amount of time on a humorless joke, so… my prediction is “Ted.”  And whoever has the misfortune to be stuck with him.

MONTAGES DEDICATED TO THE MUSICAL I WILL ENJOY:

0.

LENGTH OF TELECAST:

3:22:27.49.

MOST ANTICIPATED CUTAWAY TO SOMEONE IN THE AUDIENCE:

Michael Haneke—up for Best Director of Amour—when Seth MacFarlane makes a joke in his opening monologue about Amour—the joke being either about the film being French, about old people, or about how nobody saw the movie.

And for the hotly contested races:

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

Probably the most exciting category for yours truly.  None of the nominated films have any chance in the big category, but this seems to be a much more contested race than Adapted Screenplay, which is most likely going to Argo on its route to becoming the king of the year.  It’s down to Michael Haneke for Amour and Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained.  (Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty ruled out for being pro-controversy and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom ruled out because the Academy will honor him when he’s 50-60 years of age and making more streamlined films.)  My theory is this: Amour is going to win for Foreign Language film  and (in my opinion) Best Actress.  This is the best chance Django’s got in winning a category.  If the Academy decides they want to honor the film in any way, they’re going to give it to Tarantino here, right?  Then again, Amour is a quiet and devastating story, while Django Unchained freely tosses around the n-word because Tarantino has the excuse for it(movie being set in slavery-era South and all)—hmm.  Well, my tenuous prediction for the Oscar goes to ______________________.  (I’m writing this Saturday morning.  I’ll fill it in right before I post this.  Or maybe I won’t.  You really think you’ll proofread, Alex?)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

From what I’ve read, the race seems to be down to Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln), Robert DeNiro (Silver Linings Playbook), and Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained).  (Seemingly no hope for my personal favorite, Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, but he was a lead anyway.)  Waltz I’m ruling out since he just won three years ago for the last Tarantino movie he was in (fantastic he was in Django notwithstanding.)  Tommy Lee Jones seemed to be the favorite in this category, but in terms of actively campaigning, DeNiro has got him beat.  The idea I’m going with is sharing the wealth—Silver Linings Playbook was obviously a popular movie within the academy, so there has to be some idea of supporting the film in some way.  Jennifer Lawrence might have the best shot as it stands to take home a major trophy for the award, but if they opt for Riva in that spot instead, they might just pencil in DeNiro.  Plus, he’s been in terrible movies for years.  They have to like it when the greatest actor of a generation regains his groove.

BEST ACTRESS:

This initially was a race between Jennifer Lawrence of Silver Linings Playbook and Jessica Chastain of Zero Dark Thirty, but there’s been a rush of support towards the end for Emmanuelle Riva of Amour due to her storied career and this being the first (and possibly only) chance at winning an Oscar for the 85 year old actress.  (There’s also been a rush of support for Riva because, you know, she gave the best performance of the lot, but that’s not that important here.)  The race is down to Lawrence and Riva, and head to head, the idea that Lawrence will have multiple more opportunities to snag this will push it towards Riva.  And it’ll be on her birthday.  So really, there can’t be any question.  You can’t break a birthday girl’s heart.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:

Roger Deakins’ work on Skyfall is gorgeous and wonderful.  He has also been nominated about 10 times, only to never won the damn award.  It is an affront to the validity of the Academy.  Unfortunately, Claudio Miranda also does some quality work for Life Of Pi, and looks to be the eventual winner.  Granted, the visual effects team might be more responsible for the look of Life Of Pi than the cinematographer, which might leave Deakins an opening, but Life Of Pi seems as if it’s gearing to rack up several awards here.  I’d include this one.

BEST DIRECTOR:

An interesting category in the sense that Ben Affleck’s snub in this category seems to have spurred Argo’s quick ascent to the role of overwhelming favorite for Best Picture.  But Affleck’s not in here, so enough of that.  The race seems to be down to Spielberg for Lincoln and Ang Lee for Life Of Pi, with perhaps David O. Russell sneaking in and nabbing a statuette.  Other than that, I have no idea.  This seems like the de facto runner-up prize since Affleck isn’t nominated—I’m tempted to go with Spielberg, even though apparently support for the film is less extensive than originally believed.  But I can’t imagine Life Of Pi winning 6 awards (twice the amount of Argo) and winning Best Director and yet not winning Best Picture.  And giving Spielberg a 3rd win would be a nice tip of the cap to his work, even if they’re not crazy for the film.  Eh, screw it.  Lee’s gonna win.

BEST PICTURE:

Argo.  Wouldn’t be my personal choice, but it’s about to become the second film in Oscar history to win Best Picture with no Best Director nomination.  Not only that, but since it got snubbed for the Best Director nomination, it became essentially a shoo-in for the prize.  Not that I remember any details about Driving Miss Daisy’s win (the other Best Picture winner with no Best Director nomination), but I have a hard time imagining it sort of steamrolling to an easy win like Argo has here.  It’s pretty impressive.  Wouldn’t be my choice for the winner (or 2nd, or 3rd), and I don’t know if it’s going to stand the test of time as a worthy victor… but as of right now, I’m content with it.

And for the less exciting categories:

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway. BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Argo BEST FILM EDITING: Argo BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Amour BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Brave. BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Searching For Sugar Man BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Life Of Pi BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Skyfall BEST SOUND EDITING: Life Of Pi BEST SOUND MIXING: Les Miserables BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Life Of Pi BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Anna Karenina BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Anna Karenina BEST MAKEUP: The Hobbit BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Buzkashi Boys BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Paperman BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Mondays At Racine

And Michael Haneke.  For Amour.  Original Screenplay.

[avarnermn]

Jackets.

Recently I was told that I have no sense of style. 

Which is OK.  It is wrong, of course, but it’s OK.  I wouldn’t expect others to easily understand my style.  It’s a little disconcerting when the one not understanding your style happens to be the one you are dating—but again, it is OK.

If you have to ask, my style is this: an orange track jacket with gray stripes.  I wear it all the time.  It’s not the *only* thing I wear, although I worry that others might assume so, but I like the idea that the orange jacket has become an easily identifiable part of me. 

I liken it a bit to the comic strip Peanuts, where everyone has their own recurring bit of clothing.  It’s not always the exact same piece of clothing, but the only difference will be that the color will vary.  So Charlie Brown will always wear a shirt with a zig zag, Linus will always wear a shirt with small stripes—well, except when they *don’t* wear them, but still.  They’re still recognized as integral parts of who they are.  That would be something I would like to strive for.

I bought this jacket at a thrift store many moons ago, and instantly took a liking to it.  It served as the de facto replacement for another orange jacket that was becoming a little worse for the wear, which I also wore quite frequently.  This one was better, and I wore it everywhere.  After some time, I realized that the orange jacket was not going to last forever, and that someday it was going to meet a similar fate to my previous jacket.  I began to envision how to adequately replace it.  It seemed like a monumental task, since this was obviously the best jacket imaginable.

Then, on one fateful day at another thrift store in town, the challenge of finding an adequate replacement became perhaps the easiest choice I ever made, as I found the perfect successor to the orange jacket throne.

It was, of course, the same jacket as my current one.  Same orange, same gray stripes, same size.  It was perfect.  It was everything I had been looking for, yet I did not even realize it.

I purchased it obviously, and began to wear it alongside my older incarnation of the jacket, tending to wear the newer one to stave off the eventual ruination of the older one.  This went on for a long while, and everything was grand.  The grass was perpetually green, the sky was eternally blue… you know, yada yada.

Then something terrible happened to the new orange jacket.  I was cooking in my apartment at the time, which was extremely small.  The kitchen may have been about 15 square feet in total.  Anyway, I believe I was dumping something out of an extremely hot pot while wearing the jacket when somehow the bottom of the pot touched my jacket and burned it.  It left a scar.  Still wearable, of course.  But it’s that sort of moment when you realize your own mortality, and your life flashes before you in an instant.  Except that this moment had to do with an article of clothing.

An even worse affliction befell on my older orange jacket a couple months ago, when all of a sudden the zipper slider fell apart.  Nothing happened to mitigate this, of course, it just decided its usefulness on this Earth was over, and decided that right now was the opportune moment to crumble to pieces.  This is still wearable as well, as the zipper still works and everything, but a core piece of its functionality is now missing, and I can no longer glide the zipper up and down with any sort of ease.

So now my old orange jacket is slowly dying of old age.  My newer orange jacket is in seemingly better shape, but it was scarred and traumatized in a freak accident and could now be seen as unstable.  So I have NO reliability in the items that I perceive to be an essential part of me, and I’m not really sure the best way to properly continue.  The easy solution is to keep wearing them till their demise, quietly mourn their death, and then move on with my life and (hopefully) find a new article of clothing to call my own.  But that’s a little too resigned, don’t you think?

So I have begun searching for a replacement orange jacket.  And by that, I mean I am looking for an exact replica of the previous two orange jackets I have owned.  Yes.  They say you can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice, but I am trying to do it thrice.

I have going back to thrift stores—the locations of my previous finds—hoping that someday a store will yield another orange jacket for me to buy and adore.  Unfortunately the process has been slow going—EXTREMELY slow going.  As are other endeavors searching for one thing out of millions, I’d presume.  It’s been a long enough process that I am slowly beginning to lose hope that I’ll ever find an exact match. Which would mean I would have to move on and find another article of clothing to fill the hole it would leave—not that any single piece of clothing could do such a thing of course.

But then—a glimmer of hope.  I was at a thrift store last Thursday, quickly browsing through the jacket aisle when out of the corner of my eye I spot *it*.  Orange, gray stripes down the arm—it was of the exact same DNA that my other orange jackets were from.  But it was in XXL.  And I am a large.  If it were in XL or medium I would have purchased it, but as it was… well, I still almost purchased it.  I’m rethinking my opinion right now.  Maybe I should try again tomorrow.  It would probably be comically oversized for me, but perhaps I could pull it off.  Perhaps I could shrink it.

In any case, I don’t have it.  The search goes on.  But at least this proves that my search is not going to be in vain, and that I can eventually find the exact match I need—again.  I only worry that since there was a two year gap in between my finding of the 2nd orange jacket and the XXL one, that maybe it’ll take another 2 years to find a similar jacket.  That cannot happen, of course.  I need to find this exact replica.

A part of my being is at stake.

[avarnermn]

Sweaters.

Recently I got a sweater at this thrift store I had never been in before.  It is blue, gold, and white. 

My ladyfriend disagrees me with me.  She insists that it is in fact VIOLET, gold and white.

Before I go any further, let me just state that she is, without a shadow of a doubt, wrong.

I don’t want to post a photo, since that would interrupt the nice wall-of-text vibe I have going on here.  But if you want a visualization of the sweater, Google the Swedish flag and take a look.  Each image seems to have its own shade of blue for the flag, but no matter.  My sweater looks like that (except it has white.)  My ladyfriend, again, argues that the color of the sweater is in fact violet.  What she is essentially arguing then is that Sweden’s flag is violet, since my sweater and Sweden’s flag look extremely similar.  Sweden’s flag is not violet.  It is blue.  Wikipedia confirms this.

The debate raged on for a while, until I met her at a local café.  I was wearing my sweater, so she instructed me to take off my coat.  Once that happened, she asked a nearby stranger to perform the duty of impartial arbiter to decide for once and for all the color of my sweater.  He stated that it was a shade of light blue.  This came as no surprise to me, because… I was right.  Nonetheless, I partook in a small celebration, reveling in my distinction as rightful winner of this dispute.

___

I am a competitive person.  Extremely competitive, some might say.  (My ladyfriend says this.)  I  might dispute this somewhat, as I believe I am competitive in certain matters.  If I perceive myself as having no chance at winning in a situation, I will take the matter much less seriously, and might not even try at all.  If I am heads and above the best in a competitive situation… well, I’ll still try to win, because no one likes to finally prevail over someone who is letting them win.  But I won’t get too broken up about the loss, because I know I’ll most likely win again.

However, when I’m in a situation where the victor is much more split down the middle, I will get ultra competitive and fight tooth and nail to emerge victorious.  An example includes a holiday game of Trivial Pursuit with my ladyfriend and her family.  She and I were racing towards  the finish, when her mother read her a question.  I think the question had to do with naming the only NFL team to be named after a poem.  The answer was the Baltimore Ravens.  My ladyfriend deliberated for an extremely long time, and somewhere in the middle her mother GAVE HER A CLUE.  I don’t remember what the clue was, but I think she stated a word that featured the sound of “Poe,” complete with extreme emphasis.  Oh, I was so mad.  She didn’t pick up on the clue (or so she would have me believe,) but after a while she eventually got the answer, and would then go on to win.  So essentially, I lost because of a clue.  You can’t give clues in Trivial Pursuit.  That’s an unspoken rule.  The fact I remember any of this months later, given my terrible memory, should prove the extent of my competitiveness.

My ladyfriend is not competitive. 

In fact, she insinuated recently that the reason that she is not competitive is because I am TOO competitive, meaning that she most likely resists her competitive urges in order to balance me out.

Am I OK with this?  I have ruined what must be a small part of herself just by being too overzealous.  I don’t know if I am OK with this.  Her competitive spirit might be an integral part of her being that she is completely suppressing because of me.  I am definitely not OK with this.  But I’m not sure how to fix it.

Which brings me back to the sweater disagreement.  Did I handle this completely wrong?  Of course, I couldn’t admit that it is violet, since I honestly believed it was blue.  But maybe she could have won the argument?  Then she could have felt the competitive juices firing up once more, and if I reigned in any reaction that might come out of me. It could be a step in the right direction.

The problem is I already won the argument via a non-biased arbiter.  I had no idea she was going to introduce that component, so I couldn’t enact any backup plan.  Maybe I could dispute the ruling.  But why would I do that?  He ruled in my favor.  Perhaps we could find second and third opinions, and we could get enough arbiters to deem the sweater’s color as violet.  I wouldn’t want to pay anyone off to rule in violet’s favor, because that would obviously be ridiculous.  But what if we just kept introducing arbiters until enough of them gave the edge to violet?  Best of nine, best of one hundred and thirty three… however long it takes.  Maybe there’s a violet fan club that meets every week and we could just randomly ask them to determine the color.  But no!  That would be skewing the results!  We need this to be a clear but honest victory for violet!  But that’s probably not possible, because the sweater is obviously blue!

Maybe I can just convince myself it is indeed violet.  Maybe if I stare at it long enough, the color will turn magically violet.  That can happen, right?  The mind does all sorts of strange things, right?  Changing one’s own perception of color has to be doable, right?  Maybe I will take all the purple-ish things I own, throw it into a big pile, and toss the sweater on top.  Then it will look like violet by association.  This is doable.  I own a bunch of Vikings things.  I can gather them together right now.  One second.

…

Still blue.

FUDGE.

[avarnermn]

Cage.

I feel like there is a better way to put this.  I would perhaps describe it as “obsessive.”  The best word may very well be “obsessive.”  I hesitate to use it because it implies that something has persisted in mind endlessly and I've struggled to cope—when a lot of my “obsessions” I’ve given up in quite short order and with no trouble at all.  In fact, it’d be great if someone could possibly describe a possible diagnosis for this, which might help explain why I would it in the first place. Anyway.  The best way I can put it is this: I have trouble with moderation.

It’s not a *problem*, per se.  It’s not “I dive too deep into something and then it immediately affects my life professionally and personally.”  And I generally try to avoid anything potentially addictive (drugs, alcohol, gambling), which might be the reason it’s not a problem.  But I tend to dive in too deep into things sometimes.  For example, I used to play Madden a lot.  I enjoyed playing the franchise mode where you could watch multiple seasons unfold before you.  I enjoyed envisioning multiple storylines resulting from what happened during the seasons.  One time, I decided to keep a notebook devoted to the season, in which I would keep a box score for every game I played, stats to indicate who was doing well and who wasn’t, and I would write a game recap that would underline the unfolding narrative of the season.  I did it so I could go back and relive some of the great memories and stories that I would have undoubtedly played through.  I probably never looked at those notebooks again.

I used to videotape every single television/movie program I ever watched for a good while.  Cartoons, sporting events, wrestling, late night talk shows.  There’s probably a bunch of tapes still lying around at my parents’ house.  It made sense to me—before the era of YouTube, you didn’t have instant access to whatever interesting clip you might find.  So if SNL had an instant classic sketch—you couldn’t just wait for it to appear on YouTube—you had to wait for it to reappear on television.  So I taped everything in case I wanted to relive it later.  Still weird, though.

Last year or so, I discovered that my mom had thrown out all but one of my games of Trivial Pursuit.  It was a bit heartbreaking to me.  Of course, the ones she got rid of were the ones I never knew any of the answers to (one was the 80’s edition and another was a Baby Boomer’s edition), but still, the revelation that I no longer had access to them was distressing, and I immediately decided I had to recuperate my losses and find other Trivial Pursuits to purchase, hopefully the 3 or so ones I had just found out I lost. 

I ended up buying about 30 Trivial Pursuits.  The reason?  I had the other obscure edition of the game, might as well have this one that looks pretty cool as well.  Of course, I didn’t play most of them.  Most of them sat in my van for months on end—theoretically so I could pounce whenever it was decided a game of Trivial Pursuit was in order, but really because I was either too lazy to take them out of my car, or because I had run out of room to store them in my tiny apartment.  They now act as a grandstand for my bobbleheads.

I bring this all up because I just had one of these moments where I go a bit overboard on something that’s ultimately harmless but still makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life.

Recently my ladyfriend decided that she is to have a movie night with friends/co-workers centered on the work of Nicolas Cage.  I love Nicolas Cage, as many do.  I would probably describe him as my favorite actor, and would also non-ironically describe him as a GREAT actor—something which many probably would not go as far to say.

A Facebook event was created for the event after she met with a friend and hashed out details.  The event’s description anointed me as a “Cage aficionado” and indicated that I would be choosing what movies to watch.  This felt like a distinction of great importance.  I immediately began to feel feeble and phony.

Of course, as I said above, Cage is the man I’d call my favorite actor.  But to be an “aficionado” to me indicates a keen knowledge and awareness of the man’s life and work.  And I’ve only seen maybe 15 of his movies, while his acting credits have most likely exceeded 50-60.  I mean, I’ve loved him in just about everything I’ve seen, but nonetheless I felt as if I was anointed to a status that I did not come close to deserving.  This is all very distressing, if you’re me.

I also realized that the task of providing the films featured would mostly fall on my shoulders.  Which would not normally be a problem, but I got around to collecting the Cage movies that I did own, and it came out to be nine.  Just nine films out of a 30+ year acting career.  An acting career that has produced some of my favorite performances on film.

Obviously this could not stand.

So I went out today, looking to hopefully score a film or two that would round out my collection a little nicer. Perhaps The Rock.  Maybe Wild At Heart.  Or Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans.  Or Con Air.  Those were the exact films I was looking for, actually.

Ended up finding Moonstruck, The Weather Man, & Matchstick Man at the first location.  Bought them all. 

Found Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans and Con Air.  Purchased them both.

Saw Bringing Out The Dead at another locale.  I didn’t need it, but I found it.  So I purchased it.

Took all my willpower to not buy City Of Angels, knowing that it had very little redeeming values.  Still thought long and hard about it.

Considered purchasing Wild At Heart online.  It wouldn’t be delivered before the movie night, but I could still add it to my collection.  Any Nicolas Cage collection needs Wild At Heart.

Kicked myself that I didn’t look harder enough for Leaving Las Vegas.

Might still go out looking for Leaving Las Vegas.

I ended up with 6 titles after only having 9.  Which doesn’t sound entirely unreasonable, but the problem is that it’s not going to stop.  Next time I will see Bangkok Dangerous, Season Of The Witch and Windtalkers and purchase with them with NO remorse.  That might be itself a symptom of some kind of illness.  Additionally, I bought these for the purpose of bringing them to the movie night, so that people would have more choices in deciding what they want to watch.  The likelihood of anyone choosing any of the films that I just purchased is slim to nil.  So it’s all for naught.

I mean, I’ll still watch the movies.  I’m watching The Weather Man right now, actually.  It’s pretty bad.  This adds another level of regret.

[avarnermn]

Cars.

I have a van that hit its 20 year old birthday recently.  It has been in my family for all of those 20 years.  It is on its last legs.  Well… I probably would have considered it to be on its last legs for the past 10 years.  So who knows, really.

It does have a litany of problems, though.  Here’s a list of all of them.  Indulge me.

-The frame for the left side mirror is dislodged—the mirror works fine, but the frame just sort of hangs on by a thread.

-The driver side door’s lock sometimes does not want to actually unlock. 

-The left window takes its sweet time rolling back up—sometimes it gets stuck.  This only happens in the wintertime, which is good because that’s when I want my windows down the most.

-The top of the dashboard rattles when idle.

-The van is supposed to make a ringing noise when you turn the van off and forget to turn off your headlights.  Now it just rings all the time.

-Sometimes the rear lights stop working.

-The rear lights flash red when you brake.  Sometimes they don’t like to turn off even when you’re not braking.  Sometimes this causes the car battery to die.

-Sometimes the overhead light doesn’t turn off when you leave the car.  This results in the car battery dying.

-There are cracks in the windshield.

-Air conditioning doesn’t work.

-The tape player doesn’t work.  This is the single greatest travesty of them all.

-The windshield wipers don’t work *that* well.

-The rear windshield wipers USED to just not work.  Now it just broke off, dangling by the cord that is still attached to the van.

-The side door’s interior wall completely fell off.

-Sometimes the side door just doesn’t want to close.  There’s a trick to this, you see… but only I know it.  And it’s difficult to explain sometimes.

And today, I heard sounds coming from my engine that sounded something like the car coughing.  Which hopefully is just due to the inclement weather.  (It’d be really nice to blame everything on the inclement weather, really.)

But I guess you could argue that these flaws just add to the van’s character.  These aren’t particularly enjoyable flaws, of course, but they don’t stop me from getting to point A to point B and C and Z.  Which is what impedes my inevitable purchase of a new(er) car—since I probably won’t be able to afford anything but a used vehicle, I’m more comfortable just sticking to the car I know (flaws and all) than picking up an entirely different car with a whole history of problems that I don’t know about. 

Also, it’s *my *car.  I grew up driving in this stupid van, and I inherited it as my first vehicle.  Then abandoned it when I went off to college—only for it to welcome me back into its loving, rusting arms when I needed it again.  I have a lot of history with this heap.  I couldn’t just break up with it THAT easily, you know.

My main problem is gas mileage.  I’m lucky to hit 17 miles per gallon at the moment, and I have been privy to the slow and steady decline in the amount of usage it gets per fillup.  All of this could probably be treated and nursed to better mileage by someone who knows what he or she is doing, but it’s never going to be a vehicle that gets a whole lot out of its mileage.  I had come to terms with this.

…until yesterday, when I was in the vehicle of a friend’s when he stopped to fill his gas tank up.  I noticed that the pump stopped around 7.5 gallons, which is a little less than 10 gallons less than my car.  I asked him how many miles he got on that tank of gas.  He said he got about 350 miles.  With a tank that holds around 8 gallons.   My car holds 17 gallons.  It’d be lucky to get 300 miles.

This is the point where the image from the film Scanners of the man’s exploding head should be envisioned.

Is such a thing even possible?  A car that has THREE times the gas mileage of my old heap?  I mean, I had heard rumors about such beasts, and it would make sense that in an age where gas prices are continually rising that vehicles would be better designed to conserve fuel.  But now—I’ve seen it in the flesh.  It is real, and it is beautiful.

Obviously I need one of these.  Of course, I can’t afford one, so step one is finding additional sources of income.  Or perhaps I could just cease all spending and buy just ramen and rice for the rest of the year.  Or perhaps someone in town has a spare room in their house/apartment, and they’re so desperate for it to be filled that gosh darnit, they’re going to let me live there for free.  That is a thing that happens, right?  I could be someone’s surrogate son.  I’m good at mooching and ultimately being a disappointment.  I’d fit in with anyone.

My van?  Eh. 

It’s not you, it’s me.

[avarnermn]

Facebook.

I sometimes struggle with confidence, and…

Well. Before I go any further, I should say that this is a post about Facebook, and thus is of a completely trivial matter.

Anyway.  I struggle with self-doubt, and have had issues with self-confidence probably for the last 15 years.  It’s not fun, I’ve done my best to quell these issues to the best of my abilities, but sometimes it still rears its ugly head.  And I subsequently struggle in social situations, I struggle to apply for that one job, I start to believe I am woefully inadequate in multiple ways, etc.

What also doesn’t help is that I happen to be stubborn, and I am a man that likes his habits to either stay the same or change organically over time.  Again, it’s something to try to work on, but it’s difficult when you are usually set in your ways.

Recently, I have begun to feel quite inadequate as it pertains to Facebook.  I know what the problem is.  It’s the “like” button.

When it was first introduced, I thought it was stupid.  I still think it is pretty stupid.  (We’re talking about Facebook.  All of this is stupid.)  The reason that I didn’t like it is that it seemed to be designed to replace actual dialogue in the form of comments for an easier system where one click of a button gives indication of general pleasance.  Since I preferred comments, I didn’t really convert to the new system, and—to my knowledge—have not yet “liked” anything on Facebook.  (Although that may just be me distorting my memory to favor my case.) 

The problem with this is that “likes” have become the main mode of communication, which makes it seem like I am on a different wavelength than everyone else.  I log on to my Facebook and see that an average post has 10 “likes.”  And although I ostensibly don’t care about “likes”, I take a look at my own Facebook page and see that any content I post is lucky to get one or two of them.  And now I feel left out.

This is mostly my own fault—people tend to give more if they know the other person is likely to reciprocate, and since I don’t give any “likes” away—people are less likely to send any my way.  Also, the posts that tend to get the biggest “likes” are “big news” items—like “I’m getting married,” “I’m pregnant,” “I got a new job,” or some combination of those.  It’s not my nature to flaunt any noteworthy items in my life (not that I usually have any noteworthy items), so the downside is that I never get to bask in the glow of general appreciation.  And apparently this is now important to me.

(Other ways to rake in the “likes” are posting something political, and making a good joke.  I generally hate politics, and I am incapable of constructing a good joke that doesn’t take 4 paragraphs to get to the point, so forget about those.)

I could easily change all of this, of course.  I could gradually start “liking” posts, begin to be little more open and share things about myself (instead of mainly just posting about songs you like).  I could pretty much guarantee that would result in receiving more attention from other people, which would then result in me feeling a little more accepted by society.  It would be the easiest solution.  But I can’t do it.

Why?  Because I’ve already established that I don’t “like” anything.  I’ve already planted my foot in the ground that I don’t particularly care for the way “likes” work.  I can’t just change and start liking “likes”… you know, even if the end result is that I feel happier and more accepted.  It’s not my “character” to do so.  Likewise, I can’t just start posting items about my life, big or small.  I mean, I *could*, but I would just be doing it in order to feel more liked.  Which is usually not a good reason to start something. 

Of course, seeming more important on Facebook is not ACTUALLY a surefire method to happiness.  It’s possible to have a satisfying and content life without ever thinking once about the damn site.  None of this is ACTUALLY important.  My life won’t really change if I’m able to convince a couple more people to press a button.  I don’t know why I’m obsessing over it at the moment.  I didn’t care about it in the past.

But… you know.

Being somewhat neurotic is not the easiest thing in the world.

[avarnermn]

Antique

In my heart of hearts, I feel if there was one reason I was put on this Earth for, it was probably to be a collector.

I made this discovery on a recent trip to a couple antique stores.  My mom—knowing that I collect bobbleheads—recommended me this store knowing it had a cornucopia of them… and it did.  We made an impromptu decision to stop by another nearby antique store, and lo and behold it had EVEN more bobbleheads.  There was a 10 second period where one person brought me one bobblehead that would be a perfect fit in one of my subset collections, and another person brought me a different figure for a different subset collection of mine.  It might have been the best moment of my life.

I realized then just how giddy it makes me perusing thrift/antique aisles searching for some random item.  The feeling of finding something you’ve been looking for--or even something you didn’t realize you’ve been looking for— and then *having* it… well, it’s a good feeling.  I even enjoy the feeling  of just looking at various items, imagining it to be the start of a new collection and what I would do to increase that collection. 

So, this is what I might be put on Earth to do.  The only problem is that you can’t really make money off of collecting.

That is wrong.  You *can*, but I can’t imagine myself making any money off of it.

I can see myself trying to make money.  I can see myself investing hours upon hours researching what is valuable and what isn’t, figuring out how to buy said valuable items and then sell them off for a bit of a profit.  I can see myself starting to buy something like tin lunchboxes with the express purpose of letting them sit for 20 years and accumulate value.

But there’s only two ways I can envision making money by essentially collecting things, and neither of them are going to work for me.  First option is to sell online.  I have flirted with the idea before, during the heyday of my thrift store browsing days, but I know now that it will never work.  The reason for this is that your bottom line’s lifeblood is getting things shipped out on time and keeping the customers happy.  This I could not do.  I have had a gift I bought for a friend sitting in the backseat of my car for months, waiting to be shipped out to another state.  Still haven’t done it. 

The other option is that I could just open an antique store, and spend all my time in a place full of wonderment and delight (provided it’s the right type of antique store, of course).  Which in theory would be a great idea.  But the only problem is that I’m not old enough yet.

Perhaps there are outliers, but every single employee I’ve ever seen working at an antique shop has been at least 40 years old.  What does this mean?  Perhaps it means I simply don’t have an abundance of items over 20 years old that are suddenly worth a good penny again.  Perhaps I just don’t have the life experience needed to run a successful antique store. 

Or maybe it’s just you need to *appear* to be old, in order to have credibility in the eyes of the consumers—who demand a certain assurance that the proprietor has the necessary life experience for this type of work. 

My beard just so happens to be going gray.  Gray usually happens to add a couple of years of perceivable age to a person.  With perhaps a little extra gray coloring, I could add maybe 15 years to my age.

Maybe this is workable after all.

[avarnermn]

Internet.

So I live in a sober house right now.  Or, “a house with sober people in it.”    Which is to say… well, I’m not really sure.  It’s not an official sober “program.”  It’s more of a group of apartments that grew into an informal sober community for people that are past the difficult portion of kicking the addiction, and want to live in a sober, calm, addiction-free home.

Or at least that’s how I was described the place.  I’m not really part of the informal “community” since I never had any addiction.  I found an apartment on Craigslist, ended up not liking the room shown, but then was shown a room in a sober house that was exceedingly cheap for what I was looking for.  Since I didn’t drink or do drugs, it seemed like it would work out on both ends.

Which it has.

One of my roommates just moved out, as he is now going to some long term rehab.  Which wasn’t exactly the type of roommate I had ever seen myself living with, but he was a nice guy, and it was sad to see him go.  It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as he was in a separate rehab for a couple months before, and the house manager gave many updates on his condition/standing within the apartment.  Apparently he stopped paying rent, stopped answering phone calls, and it was determined after a month to officially start looking for a new roommate.

My main concern was the internet.

The internet was in my now-ex-roommate’s name, which meant that since we didn’t see him for months, we didn’t actually have to pay for the service.  But it also meant that once he ceased paying for the service, or once he cancelled the internet, that we would have to go through the hassle of re-acquiring the service, re-installing the boxes, etc.  And I knew that it would happen at a terribly inconvenient time, at a point in which I needed the internet badly only to be rebuffed by my own place of residence.

I tried to establish gameplans for the moment where we needed to act, in order to make the process as smooth as possible.  My roommate’s response each time was to tell me to just wait it out, and that we’ll deal with it once the time comes.  This did not help.

So of course, on Tuesday morning, on a day in which I had things I wanted to accomplish before I had to start my week’s 58 hour work schedule, I looked into the living room only to find that our internet modem was missing, and no wireless connection was found.  Our couches were also missing, but that’s less important.

I quickly learned that it’s quite hard to cope without the Internet.

Sure, I’ve suffered outages before.  But this was a more permanent outage—one that I couldn’t solve by trying to unplug the internet modem multiple times over the course of an hour.  BECAUSE THERE WAS NO MODEM.  I couldn’t figure out when I could resume my internet service, since that required a connection I didn’t have.  Instead, I had to suffer in silence.  I couldn’t get every latest update on every minute news detail, I couldn’t find out every last detail on a trivial matter, I couldn’t watch anything or listen to any music.  Well, the last part isn’t true, since televisions and radios still exist—but it doesn’t seem as appealing without the internet.  I would be rendered disconnected for the foreseeable future.

I lasted about 20 minutes before I darted off to the library.

I was able to figure out a time for my internet provider to come over and reconnect everything, but apparently “right away” isn’t doable, so I am waiting until Friday.  That is 3 days of no internet access in a place I call home.  That is horrifying. 

I have been able to keep myself occupied—simply because I was working an obscene amount of hours this week, and most of the hours picked up have fallen within that 3 day window.  That has kept me distracted for a good portion of this period, but there has still been periods in which I am at a complete loss as to how to amuse myself.  I knew Thursday would be bad, as I had absolutely nothing going on.

However, on Wednesday I made an impromptu decision to travel an hour to my parents’ place after getting off work at 10 PM.  It was my brother’s birthday, and I felt bad that I had inadvertently agreed to pick up an extra shift on his birthday.  So I thought a spontaneous visit would be nice—and it was, and we watched Cloverfield accompanied with Rifftrax audio.  It was alright.

But really, I went home just so I could regain access to the internet.

That glorious, sweet, pure, unfiltered internet.

[avarnermn]

Hobbies.

I collect bobbleheads.  That’s what I do.

I’m assuming a lot of people would find my collection a little creepy, as I’m sure a theater of 100-150 figures with oversized heads that move with any bit of pressure would not necessarily be viewed as extremely comfortable.  But it works for me.  I have a lot of varied interests with no main passion, and bobbleheads allow me to coalesce them all into one small hobby.  So I can collect figures of sports players, sports mascots, cartoon characters, movie stars, music stars, video game characters, cereal mascots, historical figures, iconic literary and film characters, bizarre miscellany and any combination herein—and it all fits within the same uniform umbrella.

I try not to be too obsessive with the hobby.  One, because I already went through my “obsessive” phase (where I was running to a thrift store looking for bobbleheads probably on an average of once per day).  Two, because I don’t want to break the bank with the hobby.  I have a flexible limit of about $5 that I allow myself to spend on each figure—and now as my collection grows bigger and bigger, I’m spending less as I try to be more selective about what belongs on my shelf.  So now my bobblehead hunting is limited to less than once a week, or whenever my ladyfriend decides a thrift store run is necessary—and even then I can come out willingly emptyhanded.

Some days, though.  You can’t help it.

We were out about town earlier today grabbing lunch, when it was decided that we had enough time to kill to patron Barnes & Noble.  Barnes & Noble has a surprisingly decent bobblehead collection, usually in their shelves/tables devoted to the newest Hollywood blockbuster.  They tend to be over $10, so I hadn’t actually purchased one from them myself—but then, I happened to notice a Batman bobblehead in the clearance section.  It was in promotion for The Dark Knight Rises.  I did not particularly care for The Dark Knight Rises.  I did not particularly care for any of Nolan’s Batman films.  But his Batman as a discounted bobblehead?  Of course.  It’s Batman.  Obviously he belongs on my shelf.

We then went to a thrift store.  There were no bobbleheads in sight, which happens pretty frequently.  It’s alright.  I look for other things and move on with my life.

But then I spotted a guy.  He was an older gent, a little gray—maybe in his 50’s—wearing a grayish green jacket.  I would not have noticed any of these details about him though, were it not for the fact that he was holding what I believed to be a Felix The Cat bobblehead in his hand.

Now, I am not what you call a Felix The Cat fan.  No one in my generation probably is, unless they are hardcore animation nerds.  But he’s still an iconic character—perhaps not as iconic as Mickey or any of the Looney Tunes  characters, but still one of the first popular animated characters (if not *the* first).  I also got a glance at the price of the figure—it was $1.50.  That is *cheap*, provided it wasn’t in poor shape.  I wanted it.  Badly. 

Of course, it was still in the man’s hands, and I couldn’t just ask him to give it to me.  (I mean, I could have—but chances of success were minimal.)  I knew there was a possibility he’d eventually put it down, so I did what anyone in my situation would do: stalk him in the most inconspicuous way possible.  I went along into the next aisle with my ladyfriend, but kept a tab on the man and took quick glances into other aisles whenever I could.  Eventually I saw him head towards the checkouts, so I assumed he would have put down the bobblehead by now if he had decided against getting it.  I went through all the aisles again, looking for any newly positioned Felix figures.  No such luck. 

But then I saw the man reenter the aisle, Felix still in hand.  I watched him for a bit, hoping that this was the moment where he’d finally decide against getting the figure.  Instead, he just kept exploring the shelves.  He found a Mickey Mouse statue figure and peered over it.  I realized then we are quite similar—collecting stupid bobbleheads, preferring to look at pop culture-related merchandise over more useful items (i.e. everything in the store.) I realized that this person is probably me in 30 years.

I figured we could probably be friends.  Judging by what he was holding/looking at, I could only assume he was a classic cartoon aficionado.  I am not nearly as knowledgeable about classic cartoons, but I definitely have a healthy appreciation (and I did score volume six of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection for $4.50—which was probably one of my best finds in a year), and so I think we could have a good chat about it.  Plus, he might be into bobbleheads—we could talk about our collections and share hunting strategies, and I could marvel at the fact that I found ANOTHER PERSON ON EARTH that shares my hobby.  Who knows, he might have shared other interests with me.   This person could have been put on Earth to be my best friend.

I ended up not talking to him though, despite the overwhelming evidence that we were meant to be friends.  I did not talk to him because any conversation that would have occurred would have had to focus on the Felix The Cat bobblehead in his hands, which would have subconsciously encouraged him to actually go through with the purchase of the damn thing.  And I *wanted* that bobblehead.

I lost track of him eventually.  I wasn’t sure if I left first or if he left first, but the end result was the same, and I left the store Felix-less.

If there’s any moral to this story, it’s that hobbies ruin potential friendships.

[avarnermn]

Oscars.

Today happened to be the one calendar day of the year when I actually wanted to crawl out of bed before 9 AM.  It is the day that the Oscars reveal their nomination list, and I got straight up at 7 AM, hopped onto my laptop, and read about possible nominations before they were actually announced.  I don’t understand why they decide to announce them so early in the morning, but they do.  So I get up.

I love the Oscars.  I know some people don’t, and some people think awards in general are trivial and meaningless.  And they’re right.  But the Oscars allow me to get indignant about movies I care about.  And I love to get indignant.

The awards themselves—they’re not super important.  History has shown that the Oscars make terrible choices (Rocky over Taxi Driver & Network, Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Crash over any other movie that year), so there’s no actual reason to get heavily invested into the proceedings, since it doesn’t matter anyway.  But it’s essentially a sport—a bunch of films jockeying for position as they try to determine how to manage their awards campaign, when to release movie for biggest effect, etc.  (Actual quality of the film—well, it’s still a bit important.)  And you, as the outside observer, of course have your favorites and your least favorites, and will either rejoice or mope depending on what actually happens once the big day finally arrives.  It doesn’t really matter in your own lives—but sports doesn’t really matter either.  It’s just fun to watch.

Coming into today, my rooting interests lied with seeing Django Unchained pick up as many nominations as possible, since I knew it had an outside shot of doing so, and hoping that Moonrise Kingdom might sneak into the Best Picture field.  I also wanted to see Les Miserables go down, and go down hard. 

Not that I’ve actually seen the film, mind you.  But the director of the film, Tom Hooper, won Best Director and Best Picture not just two years ago with The King’s Speech, which pissed me off quite a bit at the time.  (It’s a fine film, of course—nothing special, but nothing to get so absolutely riled about.)  But would I have been OK with Zero Dark Thirty (another film I have yet not seen, although hopefully will do so this weekend) and Katheryn Bigelow nominations, when she and The Hurt Locker won not just three years ago in the same categories?  Oh yeah.  Totally. 

See, it’s completely like sports.  Your rooting interests may not make a lick of sense, but you’re passionate about it anyway.

In the end today, the Oscars sort of tossed a bit of a curveball.  Django Unchained got in for Best Picture and secured a nomination for Christoph Waltz (*fistpump*), but did not sneak into the Best Director race—which apparently was a wide open contest this year.  Moonrise Kingdom got a deserved Original Screenplay nomination, but couldn’t sneak into the Best Picture field.  Les Miserables (which I’m sure I will not hate once I see the damn thing) got its fair share, but Tom Hooper also failed to get in for Best Director.

Coming into today, the favorites for Best Picture had to be Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Les Miserables.  But one usually needs to snag a Best Director slot in order to have a solid chance, which Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Les Miserables all failed to do.  Which means that Silver Linings Playbook and Life Of Pi have popped up as surprising contenders for the main prize (having secured the Best Director nomination). 

But what this really means is that Lincoln is the overwhelming favorite now.  I can tolerate a Lincoln win, but it feels a little like if the New England Patriots steamrolling through the entire regular season, while their main competition all gets crippled by key injuries.  A little anticlimactic, but that’s sometimes how it goes.