Just Humor Me

If TV is a Reflection of Real Life, the World Sucks Right Now

2012-01-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, Johnny, that man is in a lower socio-economic class than us, which makes it entertaining.

All I can say about TV right now is that if aliens are picking up our signals, we’re screwed.

Have you done the Alien Test lately? Where you pretend that aliens pick up TV shows and draw conclusions about the human race based on what programs are dominating the Nielsen ratings? If that ever happens for real, and if it happens now, we’re in big trouble, my friends. We’ll all be laser-blasted to oblivion without a second thought in those oversized green heads, but not before some nasty medical experiments are done on our brains. Figuring out why so-called intelligent life on earth would use its leisure time watching Storage Wars and My Super Sweet 16 would surely become a celestial priority.

American TV, which has always been the younger, retarded midget brother of British TV anyway, is really at a low point right now. If you thought national politics was polarized, consider the current reality shows: We’re either a bunch of rednecks with bunny teeth, meth addictions, tacky tattoos, daughters dressed as hookers, sons with mullets, houses bulging with crap, and storage units filled with more crap and paint-on-velvet pitkchurs . . . or . . . we’re spoiled rotten rich bitches with oversized sunglasses, Jags and lips that are just seriously way too shiny. Seriously.

Back to Storage Wars, every time I’m flipping through the channels and I see someone open a storage locker, I marvel at the thought that someone somewhere is watching a show about storage lockers. I have a storage unit and I gotta tell ya, there is nothing that ever happens there that’s even remotely interesting enough to be on a TV show. It’s always completely empty and quiet, and the contents are boring in a way that only useless junk can be. If you got trapped in there you’d probably go a little bit insane from sensory deprivation. Yet there’s a TV show about a storage unit in which that bald guy with the big gut that’s barely contained by his wife-beater still can’t believe his luck. I’d like to know what karma he got into in a past life in which his life is the basis of a reality show. Whatever he did, I want to do that.

I understand there are also shows about those half-cops who issue parking tickets for expired meters, movers, crab fishermen, truck drivers who drive on ice, people who work in pawn shops, auctioneers, and an exterminator. Like, every shit job you ever didn’t want is now cool.

And those people are in a class warfare with the housewives of one state or another, rich girls turning 16 and not all that sweet, and Kardashians and their whipped, pretty-boy, dumber-than-a-sack-of-hair boyfriends. The women are bad enough on these shows, but the men? Good grief, it’s embarrassing to watch them. Who are you? I’m the boytoy of a Kardashian. Can you say grow a pair?

Occasionally, a rebel sparrow flies out of the flock and tries like hell to speed toward the Emmys to make a name for itself. Out of the Toddlers & Tiaras / Hoarders / Ice Road Truckers / Osbournes hot mess, there will emerge a show like The Killing.

The Killing is a smooth, smart who-done-it that is several levels above all other shows on TV. I know this because a) the actors don’t wear makeup, b) it’s based on a Danish show and we all know the Danes are intellectually superior to the rest of the world, and c) the setting is perpetually overcast Seattle; it’s dreary and mostly cloudy to the point where you forget you’re watching color TV and you could imagine that you’re screening an Ingmar Bergman film.

The producers of The Killing are apparently quirky artist types, because they put together a stunning first season, creating a layered plot about a murdered girl, city politics, cop-shop angst, and parental guilt which ended with about three cliffhangers last year. And then they forgot to follow up with a second season.

I have a theory about how this was allowed to happen. The first season was full of intrigue, conflicted flawed characters, the good cop might be a bad cop, the grieving father is a little bit of an asshole, the mom is guilty about something and not just because she doesn’t make dinner every night for the family. The season ends with everyone in an impossible jam, making you go, “How are they ever going to explain this without a dream sequence?”

I’m picturing the writers sitting around a table:

“OK, so now what do we do? Who wrote us into this corner?”

“It’s Jason’s fault. He’s the one who had the bright idea to give every possible character an ironclad alibi.”

“Is there anyone left who could have killed her? Maybe someone from a different show? Those guys on Mad Men would be good.”

“Maybe we could just continue to create Facebook fan pages and take polls and be all interactive on our website and everyone will forget that it was ever a TV show at all.”

“Wait! I got it! It was all just a dream!”

While waiting for The Killing team to get their shit together, I’m forced to sit through impossibly young couples buying vacation homes in Belize on HGTV (Oh, cry me a river, there’s no granite in the servants’ kitchen), Dance Moms and Swamp Loggers. It’s all very confusing.

I have some great ideas for the next season of all of those shows: They’re all knocked off by the frustrated actors from The Killing.

Everything I Know I Learned From Jigsaw Puzzles

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

I grew up with a jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table more often than not. Certainly there were more puzzles than meals in the dining room in our house on Stewart Avenue; the room was more of a workspace/project room/Girl Scout meeting room. I’m pretty sure we had a couple of Thanksgiving dinners on that table, and several birthday parties, but that’s about it.

So it was with great joy that I opened up a Marilyn Monroe jigsaw puzzle last week, dumped the contents out on my dining room table and started working on it with my daughter.

Seeing a puzzle on the table as I pass by our dining room makes me feel warm, fuzzy and homespun. Makes me want to put on an apron and whip up some biscuits. Right after I get this one corner piece. Goddamnit, now I have to do the whole corner. Did I mention that I tend to become a competitive hot mess over jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table?

I slipped into jigsaw puzzle zen immediately. After completing the entire light green grass-in-the-background section of the Marilyn puzzle, a section that to the naked eye seemed like just a big block of plain light green puzzle pieces that stretched on forever, my daughter was amazed.

“How did you do that?” she said, secretly grateful that the boring part was done and she was left free to work on Marilyn’s face, white dress and cleavage, which were easy in comparison.

While explaining to her about how I worked on it long enough to start to see the nuances in the shading, the little differences in the shape of the protruding parts (otherwise known as the “male” parts or “sticky-outy parts”) that made it easier once you really concentrated on it, I came to two conclusions:

I love the challenge of the tedious parts of a jigsaw puzzle. I'd actually rather do the plain light green background section than Marilyn's face any day of the week. I enjoy sorting the pieces into "mostly sticky-outy" and "mostly innsy" and "equal in and out" and other things that autistic people are good at.

Jigsaw puzzles are a lot like life. The rules you follow, the way things fall together, the dance you do with a jigsaw puzzle can be applied to the rest of your life.

Always do the framework first.

You’ll always be tempted to do the colorful, detailed parts first, especially faces. There are some sections that are so easy to match up they practically jump off the table and pair up themselves in mid-air. Doing those first is fine if you’re 8. As an adult, you need to suck it up and do the hard parts first. Build the edges and frame it out, so that the entire thing is laid out and organized. And if you really want to be the hero, take on the task of spreading out all the pieces and turning them face up. You won’t get any extra credit for it, but you’ll know you’re that guy.

The piece either fits or it doesn’t. Wanting it to fit doesn’t make it fit.

You’re sure the piece fits; you want the piece to fit; it looks like it fits; all the colors match up; it looks exactly like it fits. You’ve run out of options and it would sure be nice if this piece fit. But sometimes the piece doesn’t fit. Don’t waste time whining and looking at the box for an 800 number to call to complain that there’s something wrong with your puzzle. Move on. When you find the piece that does fit, you’ll have that Aha! moment and you’ll understand that it had to be this way. Sometimes you don’t get the moral of the story until the show is over, and then it all makes sense.

Sometimes you have to walk away.

Puzzle work is easier after you’ve been working on it for 10 or 15 minutes. You hit a groove and become comfortable with the pieces and the spaces and you’re really into it. But after a while, when you can’t find squat, you have to walk away and give it a break. If you’ve gone 20 minutes without getting one piece in place, walk away, shake it off, have some iced tea, make a sandwich, watch a Will & Grace rerun. When you come back to the dining room, don’t be surprised if you get a piece right away! Everyone needs a break. A refreshed mind is a more productive mind.

You get what you pay for.

Quality is quality wherever you go. Cheaper puzzles are not as interesting and not as much fun. The pieces are all shaped the same and lack imagination. I once did a puzzle that had an extra piece, which is just mean-spirited. (Never buy a jigsaw puzzle from a company called 网络孔子学院简介.) When you want to get satisfaction out of something, you have to be willing to spend more and go with a known brand.

Be flexible.

Sometimes I get all caught up in a plan for the puzzle. First I’m going to do the fence and then I’m going to do this bird on the edge and then I’ll move onto the door. (See previous comment that suggests that I might be just a little autistic.) That’s fine. Do that, but take in the whole picture; get a feel for the entire puzzle and then when you’re all into your plan and working on the fence and you see a piece that is light green with a bright red sticky-outy part, you’ll go, Hey! I know where this goes! Drop the fence like a slutty ex-boyfriend and work on that light green bright red thing like a mother. You’ll be a better puzzler for it.

Your eyes will deceive you.

When my kids are looking for something in the house and they claim that they’ve looked everywhere it could possibly be, I tell them to look in places it couldn’t possibly be.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” they’ll tell me. “Why would my black sweater be in the silverware drawer?”

Because you’ve already looked in all the places that make sense and that sweater exists somewhere on the earth right now, so it must be somewhere that doesn’t make sense. Yes, I intend to take this analogy to a jigsaw puzzle and all of life. And, no, the sweater is not going to be in the silverware drawer, but it will be somewhere equally as bizarre.

Puzzles can be sneaky little bastards. You’ll be searching for the piece that is a certain color and shape and you’ll have exhausted all possibilities that make sense. Try the pieces that don’t make sense and you’ll find that sometimes the piece that you’re sure has white fur on the tip doesn’t have fur on the tip. The fur is mysteriously absorbed into the crevice and another piece entirely fits in there. It’s all very complicated, but, again, move on.

Sometimes the piece you’re looking for is on the floor under the dining room table.

No explanation needed. Sometimes shit just happens.

Facebook for 50 and More Over: The Sequel

2011-12-13T13:24:00.002-05:00

Last January, I posted 10 tips for those 50 and over who are on Facebook. Facebook for 50 and Over, hit home for many of my friends. But it’s a testament to how fast Facebook is speeding toward its destiny (its destiny of world domination and best YouTube traffic generator) that it was outdated less than a year after I wrote it.

For instance, in Facebook for 50 and Over, I talked about pokes. Are pokes even on Facebook anymore? Well, I did a little poking around (ha ha *snort*) and I discovered that pokes are still with us, but I doubt they are ever used. It’s amazing that they survived Black Death Hell September 2011, when Facebook changes drove hundreds of people to suicidal thoughts and drug therapy. But there they are, hidden under the arrow next to the cogwheel, which is only visible if you’re on the page of the person you want to poke. See? Improvements.

Here are six more tips for the oldster on Facebook:

1. Stop Complaining.

We all agree that Facebook is evil incarnate for a) selling our private information so that advertisers can stalk us in the most cyber-creepy way, b) not bowing to pressure to create a dislike button, c) constantly changing, and d) not giving a rat’s ass how we would run Facebook if we had had the foresight to invent a world-changing social media.

The constant changing, improving and tweaking may indeed drive you bat-shit crazy, but please try to stop being so whiny. Sure, Facebook knows that we 50-plus-ers are going to be its bread and butter well after younger, hipper people find something else. And they are aware that we don’t handle change very well. (People my age didn’t handle it well when their IBM Selectrics were carted off and replaced with those giant computers, either. But they survived.) They are not going to stop changing Facebook. I repeat: They are NOT going to stop making changes to Facebook. Try to keep up.

2. Not to be a grammar nerd, but I’m going to have to say something about spelling and punctuation.

No, you don’t have to be self-conscious about your horrible English. That is, unless you post Michael Savage quotes about illegals who have the nerve to not study the English language and then, yes, you better dust off that Strunk & White. (I wasn’t going to say anything, but some of you are making our Guatemalan lawn workers sound like Edwin Newman.)

Leaving out punctuation, which seems to be a common Facebook thing to do, can cause misunderstanding and also people will hate to read your posts. I’ve sometimes had to read a post three times, once aloud, to figure out what the point is. LOL Krissy are you back if your down this way give us a shout just recovered from sunday night out with ray tomorrow. That's just too much work for what little information I'm getting. A couple of commas and a semicolon wouldn't kill you.

But as long as you are willing to take the risks, don’t worry too, too much about grammar on Facebook. With one exception: Be sure to get your own name right. I keep seeing a friend suggestion for a guy I went to high school with who didn’t capitalize his own first name. Unless you’re a beat poet or an artist living in the Village, if you see that you screwed up your own name, remember: You can fix it. So fix it. Now. Because no one wants to be your friend if they think you were so disinterested that you didn’t even hit the right keys when typing your own name.

3. Be the few, the proud, the 3 percent.

Younger, shallower Facebookers will steadily pelt you with sulky taunts. “Put this on your profile for at least one hour today. 97 percent of you won’t do it, but I think I know which of my friends will.” They don’t really know which of their friends will post it. They’re not even going to check. They’re just saying that. Remember, it’s not like refusing to throw a buck into the hat for a birthday gift for a co-worker or funeral flowers. This is not a moment where you have to think about your image or what people will think of you. It’s more like getting that cheesy junk mail from the FOP with pictures of crippled kids on the front of the envelope, trying to make you feel ashamed to use the complimentary address labels or the nickel taped to a card if you don’t send them $50. You don’t fall for that, so don’t fall for Facebook extortion.

My Facebook friends probably don’t know that I actually am against middle school bullying, cancer and terrorism, and I do support autistic kids, mothers who have lost their children, soldiers and Jesus. I just don’t feel obligated to use my Facebook page to announce it. If you start reposting everything that you’re shamed into reposting, you’ll soon find out that there are a lot more diseases and levels of human misery than you can imagine. You’ll be working overtime just keeping up with Facebook repostings. Set a precedent early by not reposting anything, no matter how much you support it. Be strong. It gets easier.

4. Contain your joy over Battle Blitz, Empires & Allies, and Slots.

In two months, replace the names of the above games with whatever are the hot Facebook games. And then two months after that, replace them again. If I had been writing this last month, I would have used Mafia Wars, Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz.

I’m not saying don’t play these games. Games are fun and purposeful. Ever since A Beautiful Mind, I stopped feeling guilty about games I play. If a brainiac like John Nash can devote his life to the mathematics of gaming, who am I not to play hours of Tetris every day?

Play away! But resist the urge to send all of your friends invitations to join you. We know it’s a blast. We know how you get into it and it’s a cheap, non-alcoholic way to unwind. We know you’ve made lots of friends because of it. But if we wanted to play, we would play. We wouldn’t wait for an invitation.

When I joined Facebook in 2008, I did Pieces of Flair, Bumper Stickers, Hugs, some Christmas ornament thing, and Lil’ Green Patch. I actually experienced some angst over letting my lil’ green patch go to seed. I felt terrible. But it was too much like those Tamagotchi pets my kids had, where I was feeding and cleaning up after things that weren’t real. I was more worried about the squirrels in my lil’ green patch than I was with whatever was eating the avocados on the real tree in my real yard in my real life. Games are great, but they’re not for everyone. Respect that some of us are too busy playing Words with Friends on our phones.

5. Learn and memorize the consequences to letting your freak flag fly.

“Where did all these conservatives come from?” my friend Jim said, marveling at the political opinions of people he thought he knew from our hometown.

If you’re on Facebook you really should show your true colors, but be able to back them up, because sure as shootin’ there is at least one person who will disagree with you. Like writing a break-up letter, when you write a rant on Facebook, let it sit there a while before you hit “Post.”

If you have an extreme viewpoint (and you probably do), keep it on your own page. If you’re a wacky liberal and one of your friends posts something from birthers.org on his own page, let it go. It’s his house. If he comes over to your page with that shit, you are welcome to go all Samuel L. Jackson on him. And vice versa.

6. It counts.

Facebook is now an acceptable method for:

thank-you notes
party invitations
engagement announcements
engagement break-offs
telling your husband that you're going to be late for dinner
finding a Realtor

In other words, doing it on Facebook makes it count now. This isn’t just some toy-of-the-month, people. Facebook is serious stuff. I know two relationships that are the result of Facebook romances, so it can change your life.

So have fun with it, but don’t screw it up. But no pressure.

My '80s Wedding

2011-12-06T17:39:00.001-05:00

When I was growing up and my mom would talk about when she was younger, anything she said that seemed odd to us or unlike the current day and its ways, she would explain it away by saying, “It was during the war.” Apparently the fear of never seeing the guys from the neighborhood alive again and the threat of being bombed by Nazis were an excuse to chain-smoke unfiltered cigarettes, kiss strange soldiers at the Pittsburgh bus station, and drink beer out of a shoe.

I find myself using similar logic when trying to explain to my kids about why I wore 4-inch-high shoulder pads that made me look like a linebacker, why my husband wore giant glasses, and why we danced the Hokey Pokey at our wedding. “It was the ‘80s,” I find myself saying.

Mom, why is Dad smoking a cigar in this picture?

Mom, what’s with the two-toned Monte Carlo? Is that rust?

Mom, what were you thinking . . . just . . . what were you thinking with that perm?

It was the ‘80s. It was the ‘80s. It was the freaking ‘80s.

We celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary last weekend. Getting married in 1983 meant that I was only kidding myself when I thought that my hairstyle and wedding gown were enduring and “classic.” Just like the kids’ baby books, which asked me to put down for posterity the fads and fashions of the day - presumably so they can laugh at us later - it’s impossible to know what’s a fad and what’s timeless until you’re about 15 years removed.

For instance, I didn’t know we were being ‘80s by wearing acid washed jeans. I thought everyone else was being ‘60s and ‘70s by wearing dark blue, regular-soap-washed jeans.

And in my wedding, I had no idea it would be the humungous puffy sleeves on my gown that would be the butt of the jokes. As far as I knew, it could have been the string of graduated pearls that my mom gave me to wear. I still wear the pearls. Those sleeves, though . . . I had been looking forward to pulling that monster out of the blue paper some year and trying to squeeze into it - maybe the 35th, which is traditionally the Gin-and-Tonics-in-Key-West anniversary. But now, I’m not sure I could fit the sleeves through the narrower doorways of modern day.

Our old neighbors in Illinois threw an ‘80s party once. It was 1997 and they were in their 20s and they and their friends thought it would be a hoot to wear Izod shirts with popped collars, poodle hair, belly shirts, and loafers with no socks.

“How can you have an ‘80s party?” I asked them. “There wasn’t anything about the ‘80s that stands out.”

“If you think that, then you’re still living in it,” Jeremy said.

Ouch. I should have known better than to enter a discussion on party themes with a couple of 20-somethings. I quickly smoothed down my collar.

It wasn’t until the ‘90s decade was over that I truly appreciated the ‘80s for the fashion freak show it was.

I may not have a wedding gown that my daughter would be caught dead in, but it’s only a matter of time - and generations - before it becomes vintage. The first great-granddaughter who says, “Oooh, Granny, I love your sleeves!” gets the gown.

Beer Me a New Hairdo, Please

2011-11-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

You know it’s time for a new hairdo when you start to think that one of the hairstyles above might be an OK thing to try. (I’m thinking “Date-Bait” might be just the funky, youthful, asymmetrical look I’ve been needing.)

My hair is looking nasty lately. This happens to me about every 12 years. I get a perfectly fine haircut, the same haircut that I’d been getting for a while. It looks great right up until I pay and leave the salon, and then I look in my rear-view mirror and see the person on America’s Got Talent who everyone is so surprised has a beautiful voice.

To add to my inner Susan Boyle, I’ve been having to wear my glasses because I’m within the last two weeks before my Lasik surgery. My glasses aren’t the cool, smart-girl, sassy, confident black glasses that you see on actresses who went to Harvard and those Pearl Vision ad models. I bought these glasses in 2001 at JCPenney Optical, the cheapest ones I could get, since I didn’t think I’d be wearing them much. Being a contact lens wearer, I only needed glasses to walk from the bathroom to bed, and back again. (Even the guy who sold me the glasses, who incidentally makes less than the clerks at the Gap, when I said I’ll take these, said, “. . . Really? Oh, OK . . . Wait, these?”)

About a year ago one of the nose pieces fell off, so these last 10 days of constant wear have left me with a small gouge in my left nose-bridge. Despite the metal-on-skin grip, the glasses keep slipping down my nose. Crookedly. In photos one lens gets all glarey and my daughter said, while looking at some pictures from Thanksgiving, “Look! Mom looks like she’s wearing an eye patch!”

My glasses + my current hair = my kids telling their friends that I’m their mom’s ugly twin, the aunt that has come to visit for a long, long time.

I’ve decided to use this perfect storm of frump to start a new life with a new hair person. I’m grateful that I resisted the urge to Facebook-friend my current hair person, because then I’d be stuck going to her forever.

I don’t break up with hair people very well. (I know they’re called hair stylists, but if you knew anything about me, you’d know why I can’t ever have someone in my life who is called a stylist. That would just be ridiculous.) I’ve been known to move out of state before voluntarily switching hair people. I’m just really afraid I’ll run into them somewhere and have to explain why I left. I’m not good at confrontation.

“Do you want a color consult?” the new hair guy’s receptionist asked when I called to make an appointment.

“Sure, why not,” I said. “I’d also like a cut consult, a bangs seminar, and a how-to-care-more-about-what-the-back-of-my-head-looks-like pep talk. Plus anything else he’s good at.”

That’s right. I’m going with a guy this time. I’m unabashedly sexist when it comes to hair people and I am convinced that men cut hair better than women. I know there are probably some very wonderful female hair people who wield a mean blowdryer, but my personal experience has been that most men go into hair careers because they consider themselves serious, artistic designers of hair. Most women go into hair careers because cooking was filled at the vo-tech.

His name is Dino ($), he has an Italian accent ($$), the salon is named after him ($), and there’s valet parking ($$$). I’m afraid I’m into serious money here. I might have to start calling him my hair stylist.