it’s the little things

I believe there’s not nearly enough anger in the world. OK, not really. But I do think a lot of society’s problems go unsolved because nobody gets angry about them. Righteous anger.

So I figure, maybe people need to practice getting angry. Find some little things to get angry about, then work your way up to things that really matter. So think of this as an anger training workshop. We’ll find little, seemingly meaningless things that nonetheless, really piss us off, and try to nurture that little spark of outrage within. I’ll start.

CLICHES WHICH, WHEN BROKEN DOWN, ACTUALLY MAKE NO SENSE

This one is like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards to me. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Yes, you can.Think about it. You buy a cake and take it home. You now have a cake. Then you eat the cake. You have now had your cake, and eaten it, too. The phrase to express ‘not being able to have things both ways’ should be “you can’t eat your cake and have it, too” because if you’ve eaten your cake, you obviously don’t have it anymore.

STUPID NAMES FOR THINGS THAT WE HAVE TO SAY BECAUSE WE NEED THE THING WITH THE STUPID NAME AND THE PERSON WHO HAS WHAT WE NEED INSISTS ON CALLING IT BY THE STUPID NAME
I love Arby’s sandwiches–something about odd-tasting mass-produced quasi-beef product topped with a plasticene kinda-sorta cheese is comfort food for me. But the experience is ruined when I have to ask for packets of ‘horsey sauce.’ I feel like an idiot asking for ‘horsey sauce.’ It’s  horseradish! Or…is it?  Why isn’t the FDA investigating this? True story: I asked for two packets of horseradish at an Arby’s once and the person at the window was actually stumped for a second until I said “You know, horsey sauce.” By the way, I get just as angry at coffeehouses which have three sizes of cups but you can’t ask for a ‘small’ because they call their ‘small’ a’medium’. It’s hard to communicate with someone when they decide to REDEFINE WHAT WORDS MEAN!
PEOPLE WHO PUSH A BUTTON MORE THAN ONCE IN THE BELIEF THAT IT WILL MAKE THE LIGHT CHANGE (OR THE ELEVATOR COME) MORE QUICKLY
Stop it. Just stop it. The mystical forces which control the Walk/Don’t Walk  signals and the elevator do not care that you are late for a meeting. In fact, you end up vexing the Elevator God by your manic
button-pushing. I’m no electrical engineer, but you might actually be damaging the little doo-dad that sends the signal to the thingie that makes the elevator come. And by the way, if you see me push the button and you’re waiting for the same elevator, it doesn’t do any good to push it again. This just insults me, as if you’re saying, “Yeah, I know you pushed the button, but you should let me handle this.”
WHEN I PAY FOR MY PURCHASE AT THE REGISTER, PUT MY HAND OUT FROR MY CHANGE, AND THE CASHIER PUTS MY CHANGE ON THE COUNTER
Look, I suppose there’s always the chance that by putting my change into my outstretched hand, you might contract some flesh-eating bacteria, but when you think about it, I don’t know where your hands have been, either. I’m willing to take the risk.
WHEN I GIVE ALL OF MY INFORMATION TO THE FIRST CUSTOMER SERVICE GUY, FIND OUT HE CAN’T ACTUALLY HELP ME, SO HE TRANSFERS ME TO ANOTHER GUY, AND I HAVE TO GIVE HIM THE EXACT SAME INFORMATION
I’m pretty sure that any company with enough technology for menu options in their phone system also has the ability have the first guy send my name, account number, billing address, last four digits of my social security number and THE REASON I’M CALLING to the second guy BEFORE the call is actually transferred. Maybe your computers could actually be… I don’t know…networked or something.
Well, these are just a few of the everyday nuisances which, if unaddressed, will simply lead to more stupidity, which will lead to more irritation, more pent-up rage, and ultimately, civilization as we know it will collapse. Of course, it could be just me.
Category: COMEDY | LEAVE A COMMENT

no news is good news

I don’t sleep too well these days. I think it’s because I’m a news junkie. I am addicted to news. I have bookmarked thirty-five online newspapers (current favorites include the North Korean News Agency and the Moose Jaw Times-Herald ) and on cable I’m usually flipping between Headline News and MSNBC. I’m also pretty sure that my news addiction is to blame for my astounding lack of productivity–yeah, I may not have updated my blog in a week, but I sure know a lot of random facts about Uzbekhistan.

The news makes me edgy, because on the 24 hour news channels, they make you process everything at once. I swear CNN should be called ADD–on the screen is the guy telling the story, a caption underneath the guy telling you what the guy is telling you, the weather for forty-seven cities, basketball scores, and I’m pretty sure I saw someone in a small box doing an interpretive dance about the story.

Network news is worse—especially the teaser ads. See, the media needs the public to be afraid, otherwise we might not need them. I heard a news anchor say “Coming up at ten, we’ll tell you about a common household substance that can kill”…no…… TELL US NOW! There are people dying in their kitchens and your sitting on a story! And reporters on the scene aren’t any more Pulitzer-worthy. The other night, a reporter at the scene of an accident said “details are sketchy.” THEN THEY’RE NOT…DETAILS!!!

I lived in L.A. during the Rodney King nightmare, and it led me to this conclusion. The next time L.A. burns (because it will happen again), I hope the first buildings torched are tv news studios, because that’s where the accelerant. is. I would love to see some smug, insulated anchorman sitting at his desk reading off the teleprompter “We’ve got reports of a fire at–MY DESK! MY DESK IS ON FIRE!”

Seems like there are two extremes in broadcast journalism. There are talking heads that yell a lot and interrupt each other, and there’s Charlie Rose. I think Charlie is great. He never seems fazed by a subject–frankly, he never seems all that interested, either. Every time he puts his chin in his hand and leans forward, I’m worried he’ll nod off,. But I’ll take that  over the yelling any day.

As if it’s not bad enough that stories on tv news are all too short to be useful (Now I understand fundamentalist Islam, thanks to that sixty second feature) , time that could be used for thoughtful analysis is given instead to entertainment news. When you only have thirty minutes to give a rundown of the news of the entire world, maybe you should prioritize. I’m guessing the day Charlie Sheen kidnapped a hooker, there were at least one or two extra things that could have been mentioned about Darfur, or Iran.

As a nation, our priorities are a little out-of-whack. For instance, I love animals, but it seems like some people would step over a homeless person to get to an animal-rights meeting. MSNBC yesterday announced that scientists have isolated the cause of…gray hair. Really? You know, maybe we should organize a big scientist meeting and give them a to-do list…sure, spend some time working on the scourge that is premature graying but let’s do that AFTER we cure AIDS.

Prioritize, people! I hate to sound like a Luddite here, but when the banks are failing and nobody’s working, is it the best time to give NASA a billion dollars MORE than they got last year? Well, at least we’ll get amazing pictures from space of where that money should have been spent on Earth.

Ultimately, it’s the dumbing down of news that irks me. Like the whole ‘red state/blue state’ notion. Reducing the complicated dynamics of national politics to primary colors. It reminds me too much of USA Today, with all its colors ,pie graphs and simple headlines, like it’s edited by Dr. Seuss. I really imagine that if a nuclear bomb killed millions of people in this country, their headline would be “Lots of Us Still Left–And We’re Shopping More!”

We reached another nadir when I saw Katie Couric on Letterman. I think one of the inviolable rules of journalism is that an anchor’s credibility is inversely proportional to the amount of giggling said anchor does. Yegads! It was like listening to Dave interview Mylie Cyrus. And when asked about her interview with Alex Rodriguez, she actually said she’s a “glass-half-full kinda person” who, when people tell her things, “tends to believe them.” Katie, I hate to tell you this, but that’s actually the opposite of journalism.

Growing up, I got a lot of news from talk radio. It used to be like a neighborhood of the airwaves–just people talking over the metaphorical back fence about things that mattered to the community. I gave up on the medium when it got co-opted by fire-breathing right-wing hatemongers, but lately, since I’m not sleeping too well, I’ve started to tune in again.

Sure, there are still plenty of xenophobes and reactionaries on the air, but they’re my neighbors too, and I might as well be neighborly and listen. Like Mike Gallagher, the popular host who once explained why he felt the guy who threw the shoe at Bush should have been shot to death by the Secret Service. Seriously. Yeah, what better way to show Iraqis what democracy means than a little disproportionate whup-ass without due process.

Speaking of talk radio, I was sad when Paul Harvey died. I realize on some level that he was a right-wing flag-waving shill, but there was a certain integrity about him, too. He seemed genuine. And you have to admire that he was still broadcasting at ninety years old, after seventy-five years in the biz. I can’t imagine doing standup for seventy-five years, but I will say that if I’m still doing one-nighters in crappy bars in the year 2056 someone should put a bullet in my head.

Now Paul’s signature phrase was ”and now you know…the rest of the story.” After thousand of stories, I kept hoping he’d get bored and mess with his listeners just once…give a long, historically detailed introduction and then say “There is no…rest of the story. That’s all I got.”

The other night, I was pretty sure Paul had lost his mind, because he gave his usual setup that was all positivity and patriotism, and then the ‘rest of the story’ went on to describe how some of the first settlers of the Mayflower colony…were… cannibals. WHAT? You can’t do that! That’s like your grandpa telling one of his war stories and all of a sudden mentioning in an avuncular voice that “well, you know, we were in a foxhole and ran out of food, so we had to eat Private Jones.” But whether you liked Paul Harvey’s style or not, you had to admit one thing–he never giggled.

Category: COMEDY | LEAVE A COMMENT

thundersnow and freezing fog

I’m sure you’ll forgive me if, every spring, i refuse to turn even one cartwheel. But I know how this works. Sure, after a relentless winter, we can now enjoy those special two or three weeks before it becomes too hot and humid. Seriously, this was turning into the mythical Winter With No End. And after ten or so winters here, I’m finally starting to realize something very profound–crappy weather sucks.

But what we have in Minnesota is a kind of collective amnesia, a shared mental illness that allows us to conveniently forget, every year, that the weather will turn to shit, every year. Yet we stay, walking around muttering things like “great theater…vibrant music scene” to convince ourselves that it’s actually a good idea to live in a place where on some days, you have to cover your mouth so that you breathe in air that might freeze your lungs!

I lived in Minneapolis for several years in the 80’s and distinctly remember telling my California friends how great it was to live where there’s a change of seasons. And of course, my friends in L.A. would call to give me grief every winter, asking me “How cold is it now?” and “Are you freezing yet?”–as if we don’t have ‘indoors’ here, like there are no cities, simply bands of nomads exposed to the elements. Of course, my snarky vengeance would come every fall, when I would call and ask “Is your shit on fire yet?” or in February when I could ask “Has your house slid down the hill yet?”

Now that I have the wisdom  that comes with middle-age, I think I’m less fond of Old Man Winter than I had been when I was a bit more…spry.  Last night, we got 6 inches of new snow.  I’m looking out my window as I write this, and it’s quite lovely–if I didn’t have to actually WALK OUTSIDE. But take it from a guy with a limp and a cane–one man’s glistening city sidewalk is another man’s treacherous path to the bus stop. Winter wonderland my ass–as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a lot of places where I can slip and crack my skull on the curb.

I try not to bitch about the weather here, but today is one of those ridiculous days. This afternoon, the high temperature will be 15 degrees. Spring training has started, fer chrissake! I really don’t understand how the midwest was even settled. Let’s say the westbound pioneers got here in…June. Beautiful skies over the endless plains, frolicking in the lakes. But a few months later in that first year, when it became butt-fucking cold (an actual meteorological term)…PACK UP AND KEEP GOING WEST! OR HERE’S AN IDEA–GO SOUTH! But don’t just…stay where you are. It’s not like the first Minnesotans were tied to mortgages and school districts–get in the wagon and find someplace warmer! Load up your wagons and take your ad hoc city somewhere else! Some place where a suffocating blanket of cold and ice doesn’t bury you for four months!

And TV weather people don’t help. They seem to perversely relish these ‘weather events.’ I want to hear the anchorman say “Here’s Dave with the live Doppler forecast to tell us what to expect” and have Dave say “Screw that–everybody get out of here! Evil Winter’s coming with her mighty arsenal of cold and ice!” Last night they predicted ‘thundersnow.’ C’mon–that doesn’t even sound real. In Oregon I saw a forecast of ‘freezing fog’. I was pretty sure that was just Portland’s Chamber of Commerce trying to frighten people out of moving there–let’s take TWO shitty weather conditions and pretend they’ve joined forces! And wind chill–is this concept even necessary? Do I need to be reminded that not only is it too cold to be outside, but that it ‘feels’ even colder than it is?

And then there’s my favorite meteorological phrase–‘a wintry mix.’ Now there’s descriptive, verifiable hard science for you. Anyway, I realized a long time ago that weather forecasting is actually just pseudo-science, like astrology, or phrenology. Think about it–when the weatherman says there’s a fifty percent chance of snow, isn’t that basically saying it might snow, or it might not? That’s going out on an empirical limb!

I’ve lived in a lot of cities, and I will say I’ll take cold weather over hurricanes or earthquakes. When I left L.A. after the Northridge quake, people would say “but every place can have disasters.” True enough, but with every other natural disaster get at least some warning. If you’re in Florida and the guy on your teevee says you should leave your home–you usually have the option of LEAVING YOUR HOME. If you live next to a river and it’s rained real hard for real long time, then during that real long time you could FIND HIGHER GROUND. Even tornadoes–if you can’t get to a basement, you at least have a couple minutes after the siren sounds to…I dunno–pray.

But not earthquakes. Not only can they not be predicted (we have the technology to go to freakin’ Mars but we can’t predict when our own planet might break into pieces like peanut brittle?–priorities, scientists?) but when one hits, you have no idea if it’s gonna be a few seconds of gentle rolling or THE CATACLYSMIC RUPTURE  THAT SENDS US ALL PLUNGING INTO THE OPEN MAW OF AN ANGRY EARTH!

So, I suppose I can deal with cold, but I gotta admit, if some opportunity presented itself in say, Austin Texas, I might take it. It might be a hundred degrees for a few months, but you don’t have shovel heat.

Category: COMEDY | LEAVE A COMMENT