It's 11:13 pm on Sunday, February 22, 2009, and at present, while I clean house and figure out what I'm going to wear to work tomorrow and regret not having called my brother and feel a little peckish but am trying to avoid eating late, I have the Academy Awards on as a soundtrack to my evening full of dust mites, ennui, and regret. They are just getting to the montage of who croaked it this past year.
God, why do we torment ourselves with this every year? The mind-numbing pacing, the ponderous staging, the obscure references in acceptance speeches, and, kill me now please, the Jonas Brothers ('cause lord knows they're all about the H-town glamour), three boys who seem intent on dressing like wait staff at Farrell's Old-Tyme Ice Cream Parlour, circa 1896-meets-1976.
Vests. Freaking checked vests.
Then, even after the Jonas Brothers, when you think it couldn't possibly get even more why-don't-I-force-knitting-needles-into-my-temples-just-for-laffs?, they trot out the f**king "comedy stylings" of Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman, ferchrissakes. I mean, Ben Stiller wasn't even a funny zygote. Delivery didn't even improve his delivery--ba-da-bing! Ben, the best you got is a lame imitation of Joaquin Phoenix on the David Letterman Show? Dude, I've seen better comedy come out in the form of milk through a junior high kid's nose.
The only good moment I saw tonight was when James Franco's character from Pineapple Express put his arm around Seth Rogan while watching his character in Milk kiss Sean Penn. I do love me some James Franco. Say what you will, but I don't think we'll be seeing *him* swapping spit with Reese Witherspoon anytime soon, in some ill-advised effort to affirm his heterosexuality. Nor do I think he'll go the traditional route, a la Kevin Spacey, and bring his mother or a heretofore unknown girlfriend to the ceremony next year.
Essentially, this is an industry event, not the great public spectacle of tradition and glamour everyone seems to think it is. Oh, you may put on display the mannequin that is Nicole Kidman or let Hugh Jackman and Beyonce strut their stuff (what, Rihanna and Chris Brown weren't available? Sorry, I haven't been paying attention to the headlines lately . . .), or pay endless tribute to Heath Ledger, Star and Accidental Overdoser (what is it? Australia Night? The movie tanked faster than British ships in Darwin harbor during a raid by kamikaze pilots), but for its actual import to the rest of the world, the Academy Awards might as well be a celebration of the Best Independent Insurance Salesperson in America, or the HealthSouth Top Earner in Pharmaceutical Kickbacks, or the Wells Fargo Spirit Winner for Banker Most Likely to Choke on His/Her Caviar While Enjoying the Fruits of a TARP Bailout.
There was a couple of weeks post-9/11 when there were all these wonderful predictions that celebrity would fade, that people would want something more meaningful and serious in their lives after what was one of the most horrible, sea-changing moments in modern history. And then Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Friends did a g-dd--ned telethon for 9/11 victims and survivors, and, well, we just never took our eyes off the Silver Screen, large or small edition, after that.
I just do not get the appeal of this culture and especially this awards show. At this moment, I'm only sorry that more Hollywood types didn't bite the golddust this last year--but, then, that would only make the montage to Hollywood's fallen heroes even longer.
Stay safe throughout the year, James Franco. But Ben Stiller, feel free to submit your photo early for next year's Montage of Death.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Totally furked up
My experiences--sometimes indifferent, occasionally negative--with "alternative grocery stores" are one of several recurring themes here in Blogtucky, a theme that we'll turn to again as I present you, dear reader, with another close encounter of the texturized vegetable protein kind.
It went down like so:
I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.
Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.
Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.
"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.
"An odd expression? Really, it's pretty common . . . ."
Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.
Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.
So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.
No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.
Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"
Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.
But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.
Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?
Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.
Oh dude, I feel a poem coming on.
It went down like so:
I stopped in to the local alterna-mart to buy some of that Greek-styled yogurt I like to help soothe a savage stomach, all aflame and aflutter due to some antibiotics I'm currently taking . . . which involves a completely different set of events, which we may or may not get to at some point. Just not right now. While in the store, I also realized I needed some cash for a road trip occurring the next day.
Already it was 7:30 pm; I'd been at work since very early (for me, meaning before 10 am) and was quite tired from all the prep I'd done for the next day's travels and meetings. I just couldn't imagine making one more trip to the bank before heading home. So, instead, I thought, hey, I'll just use the alterna-mart's check-out for a quick cash transaction while paying for my groceries.
Or as I put it to the clerk at the counter, I would like to "kill two birds with one stone"--buying groceries and getting cash at the same time, model of efficiency that I am, with a devil-may-care attitude toward ATM withdrawal fees to boot.
"Killing two birds with one stone. Hmmm, that's an odd expression," said the clerk, one in a long-line of attractive, earnest alterna-boys and -girls who call the co-op their day job.
"An odd expression? Really, it's pretty common . . . ."
Oh, but wait. Where are you standing in the universe at this very moment, I thought. But of course. I'm at the alternative grocery store! In such an environment, I'm sure this act, the random (if figurative) stoning of birds for cash, is liable to offend, consternate, and/or provoke pensive musings--or, ferchrissakes, poetry--about the violence of language among the quinoa-and-kefir set. Using such language, in fact, probably ranks up there with the time I cluelessly wore my leather jacket into the store, receiving a reception so chilly among the organi-gentsia that it would have been pleasanter to stroll from my home to the store in a thong and tank top in the middle of a snowstorm.
Never mind the fact that the store does sell a limited amount of dead meat. Eat all you want--just don't wear any.
So, I thought, what should I have said? "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant adultresses! Ululululululululululululu . . . ," ending the conversation with a little shout-out to my peeps in Mesopotamia.
No? Offensive to the entire Middle East you say? May your favorite date palm develop a fungus at the height of ka'ak baking season.
Maybe instead I should have said, "I'm sorry, did I say 'killing two birds with one stone'? I meant tofurkeys!"
Hmmm, tofurkey. A meat so not-meat killing it certainly couldn't offend anyone. Except maybe a fructarian. And even they've got their consciences to live with. Slaughtering innocent apples and oranges, indeed.
But maybe it's the killing that's getting everyone into a Class-A bummer, prompting the flow of free verse to throb in the brain. Maybe there's a better way to put it, one that doesn't refer to the act of destruction. To rephrase things, though, I would need to know how one actually brings about the death . . . uh, demise . . . uh, denouement of a tofurkey.
Do you brine it, baste it, then burn it? Simmer it, soak it, and try to savor it? Goose it, gas it, and finally (and more likely) gross out over it?
Saying "I'm hoping to coordinate the preparation of two tofurkeys through the use of one energy-efficient heating source" (an Amish space heater, maybe?) hardly has the same metaphorical impact as the original. Then again, the "new and improved" tofurkeycide-is-painless approach offers a no more and no less clear testament to expediency and efficiency as does an old colloquial chestnut involving the simultaneous maiming of two examples of bird life.
Oh dude, I feel a poem coming on.
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