Another reason to despise cell phones

One of the downsides of getting a large screen, high definition television is that you can now see with perfect clarity every moron with a cell phone, sitting behind home plate during baseball games, carrying on like fools because someone can see them on TV. It's annoying to the point of distraction.

The shaving cream clown

Every morning, just before I begin shaving, I see myself for a brief moment as a clown in his make-up and am tempted to leave my face as is and greet the world as The Shaving Cream Clown.

Fecal Times

Waking up this morning, I misheard a radio ad for Medieval Times as Fecal Times. Disgusting. After realizing my mistake, I began to wonder if that was intentional, if what I heard was one of those sinister, Freudian, subliminal ads. Then I began to think. Who's to say that in eight or nine hundred years there won't be theme restaurants featuring jousting bouts between Madonna and Michael Jackson and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Osama bin Laden?

Cool mourning

Watching clips from the Michael Jackson memorial yesterday, I was reminded of a trend I've always disliked: sunglasses as a mourning accessory. What's the point of wearing sunglasses at a wake or a funeral? To shield the world from the fact that you're sad and may have been crying? You're at a funeral, who's going to be offended if you shed a tear or two? It's always struck me as being a bit immature and self-absorbed ("I'm not happy to be here, but at least I can look really, really cool").

Hollywood horseshit

I didn't have high hopes going into Public Enemies. I had seen some ridiculous quotes from Johnny Depp saying John Dillinger was a personal "hero" of his and the commercials suggested the stylized, glamorized treatment you would expect from Michael Mann. But I had enjoyed the book it was based on and hoped that the well-researched subject matter would prevail. What the hell was I thinking? I should have known that once the material was filtered through the Hollywood dumbing down process that what ended up on the screen would only approximate the facts as presented in the book. A couple scenes were pure fiction: the scene where the FBI physically tortures Dillinger's girlfriend after her arrest (one agent is shown whacking her across the face with a phone book!) and the scene where the agent who has just killed Dillinger kneels down to listen for his last words (there were no last intelligible words; the bullet that killed him had severed his spinal cord and exited above his eye; he died almost instantly). The final scene (also complete fiction) where the agent visits Dillinger's girlfriend in jail to deliver Dillinger's supposedly romantic fictional last words is like a bow placed on a giant pile of shit.

I had avoided seeing Revolutionary Road when it was in theaters because I had expected to be similarly disappointed. I didn't think the movie could live up to the excellent Richard Yates' novel it was based on. I was wrong. It's one of those rare occasions where the filmmaker actually respects the original material and does his best to bring it to the screen. A nice surprise.

A new tradition

Last year I lamented the rise of fart-themed father's day cards. This year when the first father's day card I picked up involved dear old dad's flatulence, I said to myself, "Fuck it. I'm not going to fight this thing anymore. I'm going to go with it. Obviously, fart-themed father's day cards are a sign of the times and who am I to go against the zeitgeist." So, when I handed my father his card yesterday I said that this was the beginning of a new tradition. From now on I will seek out and purchase the best fart-themed father's day card every year. My father seemed to be cool with it, but I may be wrong.

The baby

I had a nightmare the other night that was like something out of a David Lynch movie. In the dream I was the father of an unusually large baby girl (my mother collected dolls and one of her dolls may have been the inspiration for this big baby). A friend of mine (not the mother; the mother remained unknown) was assisting me in the care of this child. When I noticed that my friend had placed the baby in a crib full of stringy, cotton-like packing material and that this material was covering the baby's face and had gotten into her mouth, I panicked and quickly attempted to remove the material from the baby's mouth with my index finger. While I was doing this, it became apparent to me that the child was displeased with my action; she began gnawing on my finger. In the instant it took to scoop the material from the baby's mouth, it now became horrifically clear that my finger was no longer in the baby's mouth, but in her eye and that I had just scooped out the poor child's eyeball. That's when I had enough and woke up.

The snickering policeman

When the policeman entered the vestibule, he could barely suppress a snicker. I couldn't really blame him. To the world, a guy who has fallen for the ruse of a hopeless drunk countless times must appear the biggest fool who has ever lived. I was only the latest (according to the policeman, who was very familiar with the story, I was Fool #5). Her face twisted into an angry red knot, snarling, harsh words were uttered while the offending party and her meager belongings were hastily packed and removed from the premises. Otherwise, it was more civil than I had imagined it. Strangely, the night before I had spent hours in the ER with the very same person (only after spending many stupid hours convincing her that "three beers" wasn't the solution to her physical problem). As sad as the circumstances were, I felt nothing. Any emotional connection that had ever existed had been worn away completely. It ended just as I suspected it would three months earlier when it began.

Two weeks, two funerals

Just when you think you have problems, life presents an example to make your problems seem puny. On Easter I learned that a childhood friend's sister had died. She was 45. Today I learned that my childhood friend had died. I can't imagine what it must be like for a mother to have to bury two children in two weeks. Or to lose a sister and brother in the same amount of time. And both still young and in their prime.