A Holiday from Cliches

Since my weekend was uncharacteristically full of wide-open leisure time, I decided to catch up on my Netflix queue. I watched a movie on Friday that looked good in the trailers, but turned out to be an awful piece of shit in full-length. I guess it's fitting that the trailers made the movie look good, since one of the main characters is a movie-trailer maker.


The Holiday made me groan, roll my eyes, and sigh in frustration throughout its two-hour-and-sixteen-minute runtime. Sometimes a movie annoys you but you're not really sure why. It has great stars and a good premise, and yet it just feels too forced, too manipulative, too movie-like. It's just trying too hard. That was the problem with The Holiday. It was one tired old movie cliche (yes, I recognize that that phrase itself has become cliche) after another.

I like reading reviews of movies after I've seen them, but I usually only bother with movies I really loved or really hated. And when I found reviews of The Holiday, I was delighted to see that many of the critics hated it as much as I did. And they brought up the same exact points that I made about the movie. Yay, validation!

Richard Roeper tears it a new one in a review that, unfortunately, I can't link to. For some reason the Sun-Times doesn't offer it for free online. So I found it on a library database, and here's some of his best lines:

This is a romantic comedy filled with moments we recognize from other, mostly better, romantic comedies.

He then lists several examples, and adds:

You get all that and more in "The Holiday." I guess you could say I've just spoiled some of the surprises in the film, but the surprises would be surprises only if this is, like, your fourth movie ever.

Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post writes a brilliantly funny review where she chronicles her thoughts as she watches the movie. This review alone was worth enduring the two-hour movie. Some of my favorites:

8:00 Did Kate Winslet's house in Surrey spring fully formed from the forehead of Thomas Kinkade?

8:15 Kate Winslet is so real. So winning. So utterly wrong for this movie.

8:30 Did Cameron Diaz's house spring fully formed from the forehead of J.W. Marriott?

8:55 I wonder if Kate will add this to her American Express commercial. ("At 31, I fired my agent for putting me in a piece of generic entertainment-industrial product with no redeeming artistic value.")

9:07 Jack Black is so funny. So winning. So utterly wrong for this movie.

9:30 For the love of all that's holy, please stop talking and end this movie.

In my schadenfreudic investigations, I discovered that the movie was written and directed by Nancy Meyers. Some consider her to be "Hollywood's queen of the chick flick." She's also responsible for Baby Boom, Father of the Bride, What Women Want and Something's Gotta Give. Roeper contends that Meyers likes to emasculate her leading men. I never thought that much about that, but I do know that the movies of hers I'm familiar with have annoyed me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against chick flicks or romantic comedies. Love Actually and When Harry Met Sally are two of my all-time favorite movies.

When I gave The Holiday a bad rating on Netflix, it asked me if I wasn't interested in movies with strong female leads. That offends me, because I have no problem with strong female leads. What I have a problem with is bad Hollywood cliche.

As Wesley Morris said in another brilliant review, "Meyers can't sustain a convincing idea in her movies..." He starts his review with a summary of the scene in The Holiday where Cameron Diaz and Jude Law meet:

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

It's Jude.

Jude who?

Jude better sleep me with now. You've only got two weeks!

He adds, "That's cheesy, I know, but welcome to the universe of Nancy Meyers, where low-grade cheesiness is contagious."

Sometimes it can be really fun to hate bad art, so I will say this about Nancy Meyers: her horrible movie has provided me with much great entertainment as reviewer after reviewer has outdone themselves cleverly tearing it to pieces.

To use another Hollywood cliche, that alone was worth the price of admission.

Relative Conflict

My family is a large diverse group with lots of different interpersonal styles and priorities. Some of us are very high-strung. So we argue a lot. It seems that someone is always mad at someone else.

But two stories in the news this week have made me realize that we are a model of harmony.

1. Rod Blagojevich, the sleezy impeached ex-governor of Illinois, is on trial for being a political scumbag. His brother, Robert, has also been mixed up in the scandal, and this week testified as a co-defendant. He said that his relationship with his brother is "strained." Yeah, I'll bet. Can you imagine the next Thanksgiving in the Blagojevich family?
   
   "Moooooom, Roddie tried to illegally sell Obama's vacant Senate seat and shook down a children's hospital and now I might have to go to jail for it!!"
   
   The Chicago Sun Times reports:
   

   "Who am I to give him advice?" Robert answered, acknowledging that his relationship with the ex-governor is "strained." "He doesn't listen to me, you should know that by now."

   As a little brother, I know the feeling.
   
   
2. Last night a local man was arrested for shooting his brother in a grocery store. Presumably it was about more than what kind of beer to buy.

When I consider these two stories, it really puts our family's problems into perspective. Where family feuds are concerned, it's all relative.

Gayest Ad Ever

I'm convinced that the makers of this Shake Weight video knew exactly who they were marketing to. It's got to be the gayest ad this side of Fire Island. Even without the sound, the phallic repetition of the exercise just kinda thrusts itself into your face. Ripped men holding a throbbing, shaking, skin-sliding cylinder right in front of their face? I'm not even gay and it's turning me on. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.)

The models groan and grimace as if they're having the sex of a lifetime with this contraption. After a slow motion segment that clearly evokes a porn money shot, they speed up the video. The model grimaces in exquisite pleasure/pain, bites his lip, then suddenly stops and says, "Whoo, that's it."

The text from the video (delivered in deep, tough, male voice) is further evidence of the clear homoerotic theme:

• This is shake weight, FOR MEN.
• And it's going to kick... your... BUTT.
• ...add SIZE, definition, and strength...
• Technology is all about PACKING megaperformance in less space, right?
• The FASTER YOU SHAKE, the more INTENSE and challenging your workout.
• Think you can HANDLE it?

Seriously, if this was not intended for a gay male audience, then it's also the funniest ad ever made.

Free Drinks

I was at Qdoba in the Indianapolis airport, watching them make my fat yummy burrito, when a lady came up to the line and asked, "Do you provide free drinks to armed forces people?"

The Hispanic man behind the burrito prep station had no idea. He looked to the next guy down the line, who looked at the cashier. Finally one of them said, "No."

The lady turned to the two other people in her party and said, "I guess they don't do that at this one." She was clearly upset. "We'll go to McDonald's instead," she said and left in a huff.

I mean no disrespect, but the lady's response seemed really silly to me.

Who are soldiers to demand free drinks from a private business? And then get all bent out of shape if they don't get them? What, are we living in imperial Rome? A British colony? I thought this was one of the things we rebelled against England for-- that soldiers were demanding accommodations from private citizens.

If it's about honoring their service, surely soldiers are not the only people who protect our way of life. What about teachers, doctors, military contractors, cops, firefighters, judges, sanitation workers, public defenders? Don't all of those people also contribute to the American way of life? They all protect our ideals in different ways, and yet I've never heard, for example, a teacher demand that they get free services from a business while they were off-duty. If the only thing that keeps America "free" is our military, then surely North Korea also deserves to be called "free", because they happen to have a pretty formidable military.

A lady I know once said to me, "I think our troops should get the best possible medical care." I said I agreed. "Just like everyone else," I added. "No, I mean, the best," she said. Yes, exactly. And I think everyone should have that same level of medical care. Her frustration made her unable to continue. Clearly I was too much of a pinko commie to understand what she meant.

It's a free drink, for chrissake. Not comprehensive health care coverage or proper body armor or a fair retirement plan. The cynic in me wonders whether all this trivial respect we are supposed to pay to soldiers is a way for politicians to neglect to take care of them in more substantial ways. Encouraging token acts of respect toward soldiers is a lot easier than considering the effect that sending them off to fight in unnecessary wars will have on their bodies, minds, and families.

I appreciate the dangerous and horribly stressful jobs that soldiers have. But they're not the only ones. Police and firefighters also have very dangerous and stressful jobs. I've never heard them demand special treatment because of it. If soldiers aren't making enough money, that's a separate conversation I'd be happy to have. But don't get all bent out of shape because the poor workers making minimum wage at Qdoba (and have no authority to make such decisions) didn't give your military ID card the proper deference.

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UPDATE: I have added an addendum to this post here: http://tim4814.blogspot.com/2010/09/atoning.html

Perfectly Annoying Storm

Sebastian Junger, the guy who wrote The Perfect Storm, was on The Daily Show recently. He was there to push his new book, which is about the war in Afghanistan, but all I could think about was how this one guy has done something that very few of us could ever hope to do: infuse our language with a ubiquitous phrase.

The "perfect storm" that Junger writes about in his book is a confluence of meteorological events that lead to the storm of the century. Literally. Like, in a hundred years, you won't see so many phenomena happen simultaneously to create such a "perfect storm."

We now use that phrase to describe any unusual confluence of events: a perfect storm of stress, a perfect storm of holidays, a perfect storm of footwear needs.

I really wanted Jon Stewart to ask Junger how he feels about this use of his phrase.

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I had my own perfect storm this week. And it was actually precipitated by a real, literal thunderstorm.

In a week when:

• I have matches in all three of my summer tennis leagues (Mon, Wed, Fri)
  
• I'm playing in a tournament this weekend. (I only play one or two tournaments a year, so this is a rare event.)
• Wimbledon is on my TiVo. (Wimbledon only takes place two weeks of the year.)
• I have a night class next Monday, which means I already have to reschedule a match from my Monday night league. (It's my only night class of the summer.)
  
• I already have to make up a missed match due to thunderstorms last week
• I have to be the substitute captain for my mixed doubles team this week. (The only time all summer I have to do that.)
  
• I'd already had one match keep me up past my bedtime this week: a sweaty three-set affair in humid 90-degree heat. After 2.5 hours of play, my opponent had to retire due to leg and hand cramps. (I was up 4-0 in the third set, so he was going to lose anyway.)
  
• Starting next week I will be out of town nine out of ten days, going on two trips. The one day I am in town, I have a league match scheduled.
  
• The tennis center where we play our matches doesn't have any indoor backup this week because of a tennis camp for kids. Usually they reserve the courts for us in case of rain, but not this week.

In a week when all that was going on, my match last night was interrupted by a thunderstorm. It's something like the ninth thunderstorm we've had over the past two weeks. The weather report on Monday read this like this: Today, showers and thunderstorms... Tuesday, showers and thunderstorms... Wednesday, showers and thunderstorms. As King Kaufman would say, do you see a pattern there? Me neither.

So with all this going on, I have to figure out when to finish my match. We're currently at 4-3 in the second set. (I'm down, 6-7, 3-4, but I'm not out. Not yet.)

The really funny thing is how life is imitating art. Or imitating larger life. At Wimbledon yesterday an astounding match was played. In the fifth set they don't play tiebreakers at Wimbledon. So until someone is ahead by two games (6-4, 7-5, 8-6, ect.) you keep playing. The first one to six usually wins, but sometimes they'll go long, like 9-7 or 10-8. Any score past ten is very rare.

Yesterday a match was stopped due to darkness when the fifth-set score was 59-59. That's not a typo. Fifty-nine to fifty-nine! That's almost a hundred games longer than any match EVER played. They played for nine hours without a victor.

So it was kind of fitting that my little unresolved match happened on the same day. Maybe it adds to the perfect storm of coincidences.

Not My Friend

The dealership that sold me my car keeps wanting to be my friend.

They send me birthday cards. Christmas cards. Thank You cards after I bring my car in for service. If I go too long without an oil change, they'll send a Miss You card.

Just yesterday they sent me a joyous letter. They want to give me, as a loyal customer, an unprecedented opportunity. (Their boldface.) If I bring the letter in to them by this weekend, they will give me the price on a new car "we normally reserve for our employees!" (Their exclamation.)

Prices are well below any ever advertised. This event will not be advertised to the general public. Seriously, you can save thousands of dollars! ... But, you must bring this letter to do so!!

(Actual quote with their overblown sense of excitement.)

Isn't it great how companies will go out of their way to convince you that buying their product, giving them your money, is always an incredible opportunity? Like you've just won the lottery? Like they're doing you a favor? Maybe the Nigerian email scammers are not so unusually sleazy after all. They're just running with ideas that "legitimate" businesses employ every day.

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Look, Toyota dealership, stop trying to be my friend. I already have friends. Plus, I don't like you. You're obnoxious, pushy, manipulative, and come across as desperate.

I've never understood why people get bent out of shape when a corporation or institutions treats them "like a number." I want to be a number. When my bank asks for my account number and a photo ID, it puts me at ease. I know they're not going to mix me up with someone else. There might be other people with my name, but only one account has my exact number. I don't need to get my social needs met from my bank or government agency or grocery store. I have Facebook for that.

For business transactions, I want to be anonymous. Just another face with a number.

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I spent a few hours in the waiting room of my dealership recently. I hate it hate it hate it there. Even when I make an appointment, and I'm only getting an oil change, it takes them hours. At the quick lube oil place I usually go, I don't need an appointment and it only takes them ten minutes. Sure, the dealership has free donuts and coffee, and big screen TVs, and a free shuttle service, and they wash your car for free. But that stuff isn't really free. I'm paying for it with the exorbitant prices they charge for service.

Plus, they're always trying to get me to get more work done on my car than I need. They print out page after page of estimates, on colored textured paper that look as official as a deed to your house. I want a mechanic who's lazy. Someone who doesn't want to do any work that's not necessary.

I don't want all the frills and fuss. I just want them to fix and maintain my car. But when I look around the waiting room, I realize: I am not the demographic they're going for here. The TV in the waiting room had Matlock on it. That should tell you all you need to know.


I'd never actually watched Matlock, but I found myself glancing at the screen more and more while I tried to read my book. It was an interesting nostalgia trip, looking at the 80's styles and recognizing TV actors that I hadn't thought about in 20 years. But I digress. See? That's what the dealership does to you. They try to be your friend so that you start getting comfortable with the donuts and the Matlock in waiting room, and before you know it you're happy to have some new experience to blog about.

But you pay for it. You pay dearly. It's not just the money. They'd take your soul if they could. Every single person I dealt with at the dealership kept trying to get my email address. They'd look at my record on the screen and say, "Can we get your email address?" No, you can't. Quit trying to slither your tentacles around more parts of my life. You're not my friend. Next thing you know I'll be getting Facebook requests from them.

Friends don't let friends use dealers.

Temperature Control

I had a girlfriend in college who used to say, "Temperature control is a 24-hour-a-day job." She lived in one of those small college one-room apartments where you don't have control of the thermostat. So the only way she could regulate the temperature was by opening and closing the windows. It was indeed a constant struggle to get the right temperature.

Despite the fact that now I own my own house and have supreme control over the thermostat, I still find my friend's words to be truer than ever. Because I really like fresh air, whenever the temperature is between 65 and 80, and not too humid or rainy or windy, I have to shut the thermostat down and go around the house opening all the windows. And then do the opposite when the fickle weather moves away from my "window" of conditions.

And then there are the times when I'm simply a dumbass.

==========================

Air conditioner season only started a last month, and already I've had two situations where I misread the knob.

It's one of those old circular models that has a little switch between A/C, off, and furnace.

Only the switch doesn't exactly correspond to the labels, so it's more of a relative positioning system. That is, if it's on "cool" and you want to turn it off, click it one position higher. If it's off and you want to turn on the heat, do the same. Because this time of year the weather goes in and out of being acceptable open-window conditions, (cool at night, hot during the day, for example), I'm constantly turning the thermostat on and off.

The other day I came home and the weather was beautiful, so I opened some windows and turned off the A/C. About half an hour later I was in the kitchen and heard something running in the utility room. That's where the furnace and water heater live. What's on in there? I thought. It sounded like the furnace running, but that wasn't possible. I went and looked at the thermostat. I moved the little switch and realized, to my horror, that when I thought I had turned off the A/C, I had actually turned on the heat. For half an hour I'd been heating my house in 80 degree weather. D'oh!

======================

The following week I did a similarly stupid thing. What I usually do, when I'm home during the day on a summer morning, is I open all the windows to get as much cool, fresh air into the house as possible. As the day warms up, usually late morning, the A/C will kick in and I'll go close all the windows. So I did that. A few hours later I noticed the house was really hot. I checked the thermometer and noticed that the in-house temperature was creeping up past my thermostat setting. I turned down the temperature on the thermostat to see if the air would kick on. It didn't, as far as I could tell.

But the vents are in the ceiling, so maybe it was working but I just couldn't tell. I went out to the side of the house to check the condenser unit. When the A/C is on, it will be blowing air. It wasn't doing anything. I went back inside and turned the thermostat even lower, thinking maybe it was just being wonky. (As it sometimes is.) Still, nothing happened.

Oh, no, I thought. Not this again.

Last January I had to pay $800 when my furnace broke in 15-degree weather. The following month I shelled out about $1100 because my sewer line was busted. (Any time you hear the word "excavation" as a homeowner, be afraid. Be very afraid.) Now was I going to have to deal with a broken air conditioner?

In desperation, I clicked the switch on the left side. I heard a click and the vents started pushing out beautiful, cool air. I had never turned the damn thing on.

My embarrassment was mitigated by my double relief: the physical relief of getting cool again, and the emotional relief that my house was not about to demand another ransom-- this time for my air conditioning.