Category: Commentary

What I think about stuff…

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John Hughes Follow-Up

John Hughes, director of such iconic 80s and 90s films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She’s Having a Baby, Uncle Buck and Curly Sue and the writer of many more such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Home Alone and Career Opportunities, passed away of a heart attack yesterday in New York at the age of 58.

Born in Lansing, Michigan on February 18, 1950, Hughes grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, where many of his films would take place (the city was originally named “Shermerville”, hence the “Shermer, Illinois” name in the movies). He married his high school sweetheart in 1970 and remained with her throughout his life. He began his professional life working for Chicago ad agencies, where he created the famous “foam vs. Edge” credit card commercials.

I’m not going to write a long post about how he was the “voice of a generation”… in fact, I’m not sure I really even know what that phrase means. All I know is that Hughes made me laugh, cry and think about my life. His movies were the first to portray “my” generation in a somewhat realistic manner. And when I saw his characters on the screen, I identified with them. These weren’t movies for my mom, my younger and hipper uncle, or even the babysitter… there were movies for me. And for that, I’m thankful we had John Hughes, if only for a short while.

Here are a couple of neat Hughes-related things:

Here’s the complete text of “Vacation ’58”, Hughes’ “allegedly fictional” short story that inspired the Vacation film. It’s a short (but hilarious) read… you oughta check it out!

And here’s a blog entry by a woman who was “pen pals” with Hughes. It seems that she wrote Hughes a long letter, pouring her heart out to him after she saw The Breakfast Club. Hughes sent her a form letter in return, which made the woman so mad that she sent him another long letter, this time an angry one. Hughes actually wrote her back personally this time, and the two exchanged several letters over the years. Reading her post is sad… not only because of Hughes’ death, but because she quotes a few paragraphs from her letters about why he largely turned his back on Hollywood. It’s a sad and poignant post, and if you were a Highes fan at all, you should really read it.

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Worse than newbies…

In the world of tech support, there is a special scorn reserved for “newbies” or “n00bs”, people that are new to computers and are often afraid that their machine will burst into flames if they click the wrong thing. Personally, I never understood the hate. Yes, newbies are annoying… but weren’t we all newbies at one point in our lives? There are a million things I don’t know, and I know that if I tried candlemaking, caulking, coffee roasting, or stamp collecting I’d be an annoying newbie to all those with experience.

The people that I hate are those that have “just enough knowledge to be dangerous”. For example… calls like these:

Knowledge Is Dangerous Guy: “I was hoping you could help me.”

Me: “Sure, let’s first get some basic information about your system.”

KIDG: “Well, it’s running Windows Vista SP2, but it has two network cards.”

Me: “Two network cards?”

KIDG: “Well, I didn’t want to spend the $30 for a router, so I set up a virtual machine running Squid, which is connected directly to the cable modem…”

Me: “Ummm… OK…”

KIDG: “But I didn’t think that was safe, so I set up Internet Connection Sharing on an old Windows 2000 computer I had lying around, so the Squid output from the virtual machine is forwarded to the Windows 2000 machine, and…”

Me: “Wait… what?”

KIDG: “… now, I used to have ZoneAlarm and Kerio installed on the Vista box, but that didn’t work out so well, so the Squid box sends the output to the ICS machine, which runs it though ZoneAlarm before sending it to Kerio on the Vista box…”

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Captain Obvious returns!

Why is it that some men feel the need to tell me that they would sleep with some obviously beautiful celebrity?

You’d “tap” Jessica Alba? Really? Really? Welcome to the least exclusive club in the entire world, buddy: “Men Who Would Sleep With Jessica Alba”! We currently have 3.8 billion members. We meet on Tuesdays at the Y. Bring cookies. Come early – seating is limited.

Call me stupid… call me old-fashioned… but I always thought that “I’d tap that” was used when talking about friends, chicks at the grocery store… that kind of thing, or maybe a celebrity that most people wouldn’t consider to be attractive. In fact, the whole point of “I’d tap that” was to bring attention to the fact that you’d sleep with someone who wasn’t especially known for her looks. Thus, you’d say something like “You know Brenda at JustCuts? I’d tap that!” or “I can’t help it…  I’d hit Kirstie Alley”.

To say that you’d “tap” or “hit” someone obvious like Scarlett Johanssen, Angelina Jolie, January Jones or Katy Perry… well, it just sounds stupid. If given the chance, all of us, the entire male population of planet Earth, would do the same thing, genius. I know your mom told you that you were special, but really… you’re not.

But that’s just me talking.

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Monday’s “Random Stuff” Post

– Heroes star Hayden Panettiere was the star of the recent bomb, I Love You, Beth Cooper. If you saw the film (or the trailer, or the commercial) you might remember the pivotal opening scene, where a high school valedictorian uses his commencement address to announce his longtime crush on Panettiere’s title character. Well, it seems that a jackass viral marketing team paid a real-life valedictorian in Los Angeles $1800 to “spontaneously” reveal her secret crush during her own commencement address. A member of the marketing team was on hand to record it for posting to YouTube. The team did not ask for permission from the school administration or the Los Angeles Unified School District… so parents were subjected to what was essentially a marketing gimmick for a crappy movie in the middle of their children’s high school graduation. Stay classy, marketing folks!

– Food Network star Guy Fieri’s two restaurants are getting horrible reviews on Yelp.com. It’s unclear whether the restaurants actually suck, or if this is some kind of backlash against the celebrity or what. It’s still funny, though.

– Barnes and Noble are adding DRM to certain ebooks… to “protect the copyright”… of public domain books. I don’t understand it, either.

– A 14 year-old British racing star who was nearly decapitated in a racing incident has made a full (and remarkable) recovery.

– A simple, $5000 facelift surgery might cure migranes.

– Gibraltar’s airport has a major road that runs across a runway:

Gibraltar Airport

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Save the Cheerleaders!

This is just disturbing:

[A] suit was filed in Mississippi that alleges a school official—more specifically a teacher acting in her capacity as a cheerleading coach—demanded that members of her squad hand over their Facebook login information. According to the suit, the teacher used it to access a student’s account, which included a heated discussion of some of the cheerleading squad’s internal politics. That information was then shared widely among school administrators, which resulted in the student receiving various sanctions.

This is wrong on so many levels. I understand that many schools have “conduct policies” where students may be disciplined for activities that take place off school grounds and not on the school’s clock. For example, a kid can get kicked off the football team for posting to MySpace or Facebook a picture of himself smoking a joint. I don’t agree with those policies, but I can see where school administrators are coming from.

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Fun With Candy

My father owned a wholesale grocery business in Atlanta. It was like a Sam’s Club, only a “Mom & Pop” place that catered to convenience store owners. Although the store sold a wide array of grocery items, the vast majority of sales was in candy, cigarettes, chips and drinks.

I worked there in the candy department for almost 8 years. In that time, I had my share of bizarre run-ins with customers. Here are some of my favorites.

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“Bulk candy” is loose hard candy or gumballs that come in a giant box. Some candies, like starlight mints, are individually wrapped. Others, like gumballs or buttermints, are not. Such candy is mostly purchased by people who run candy stores or restaurant owners who give away mints with each meal. Although we frequently got calls asking if we carried bulk candy, we actually didn’t, because there simply wasn’t enough demand to make it a regular item in inventory.

One day, a call about bulk candy was put through to me. Keep in mind that the woman on the other end of the line had an obnoxious New York\New Jersey accent:

Me: “Good afternoon, candy department…”
Customer: [with obvious Yankee accent] “Do ya sell bulk candy?”
Me: “No, ma’am, we sure don’t, but if you call [local distributor] I’m sure they’d be able to help you out.”
Customer: “Thank you… Just out of curiosity, where are they located?”
Me: “They’re on Phil Niekro Parkway in Norcross, and…”
Customer: “WHAT?”
Me: “I’m sorry?”
Customer: “I can’t believe that YOU PEOPLE would name a street that! It’s not the 1950s anymore!”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Customer: “That’s disgraceful… naming a street Phil Negro Parkway… YOU PEOPLE should be ashamed! If they did that up where I’m from…”
Me: “It’s ‘Niekro’, ma’am… after Phil Niekro? The pitcher for the Atlanta Braves?”
Customer: “Who?”
Me: “Phil Niekro. N-I-E-K-R-O. Pitcher for the Braves. Had a mean knuckleball, ma’am.”
Customer: [sheepishly] “Oh. I’m sorry.”

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The Strangest Gift Shop In The World

I’ve been to 133 different cities in 6 different countries on 3 different continents. I’ve seen the Great Barrier Reef. I’ve seen Hampton Court Palace. I’ve seen Leopoldskron Castle. I’ve seen the Malecón. But none of this could prepare me for what I saw at the Gay Dolphin!

The Gay Dolphin
(photo via tripadvisor.com)

I recently went to Myrtle Beach for the first time, and like a lot of resort towns, the city has a ton of gift shops selling key chains, shot glasses, snow globes, airbrushed license plates, tacky t-shirts, and other assorted knickknacks and trinkets with the city’s name on them… and, in the case of Myrtle Beach, Confederate flags, too.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I bought a Steelers koozie, a Steelers beach towel (only $9.99 with coupon!) and a $7.99 Myrtle Beach t-shirt from a shop called “Bargain Beachwear” (which boasts 13 locations, 12 of which are on the same stretch of Highway 17).

But as the trip went on, there were more and more calls from my crowd to visit the “Gay Dolphin”. The Gay Dolphin is either “The Nation’s Largest Gift Shop”, “The East Coast’s Largest Gift Shop” or “Myrtle Beach’s Largest Gift Shop”, depending on which billboard you see. But any way you look at it… it’s just… something.

We were staying in Cherry Grove in North Myrtle, so it was a 35-40 minute drive to the Gay Dolphin. That alone would make me cranky, but it was raining, and Lisa and I were in one car, following a car with our fellow vacationers. After being in the car for what seemed like hours, I blurted out: “this damn gift shop had better be worth it!’

And oh, how it was… but not for the reasons you might expect.

You see, the Gay Dolphin has typical tourist “gak” like Myrtle Beach t-shirts, bottle openers and kitchen magnets. But what the Gay Dolphin truly specializes in is collectibles. Miles and miles and miles of collectibles. The kind of junk your grandmother collects. Shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf of dusty and unwanted clown figurines, firefighter figurines, “lone wolf” figurines, American Indian figurines, Precious Moments figurines, and knockoff Precious Moments figurines. There were figurines of Winston Churchill with a bulldog. There were  figurines of Winston Churchill as a bulldog. They have figurines that are clearly Martin Luther King, Jr., and figurines that are supposed to be Martin Luther King, Jr. , but which actually look like Steve Harvey. There had lighthouse figurines in various sizes from “thimble” to “almost life-size”. Really, Gay Dolphin has any kind of figurine you can imagine.

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Grammar tip: e.g. and i.e.

Here’s a quick grammar tip about something I see used and abused on the Internet on a regular basis: the terms e.g. and i.e.

Both are Latin terms (e.g. stands for “exempli gratia,” which means “for the sake of example”, while i.e means “id est” or “that is”).  You use e.g. when when you want to give examples of things, and i.e. when you want to clarify or rephrase a sentence.

For example, you might say “I like candy (e.g., Snickers and Kit Kats)” or “I like all candy (i.e., I eat pretty much anything on the candy aisle)”.

Here’s an amusing exchange from the film Get Shorty that might help you remember how to use the two:

Ray “Bones”: Which also means when I speak, I’m speakin’ for Jimmy. So e.g. as of now, you start affording me the proper respect.
Chili: ‘E.g.’ means ‘for example’, Ray. I think what you wanna say is ‘i.e.’
Ray “Bones”: Bullshit. E.g. is short for ‘ergo’.
Chili: Ask your man here.
Mob Guy: Best of my knowledge, e.g. means ‘for example.’
Ray “Bones”: E.g., i.e., fuck you. The point is, I say jump, you say okay. Okay?

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Meeting Pointless Celebs

I used to work on the dividing line between “downtown” and “midtown” Atlanta. One of the closest record stores to my work was a branch of the local Turtles Records chain. This location – in the same strip mall as Plaza Theatre on Ponce, for you Atlanta folks – used to be where mid-level musicians would turn up for “meet and greets”.

So one day, I snuck out of work to meet… Nitzer Ebb – a one-hit wonder Eurodance band. This is like admitting to going to meet Chumbawumba, only lamer because every English speaker under the age of 40 has heard “Tubthumping”, while Nitzer Ebb were known only in the “industrial dance” scene. I still have the “Lightning Man” 12″ single they autographed for me. I doubt I could get $1 for it on eBay, even with free shipping. Looking back on it now, it’s almost amusing that I risked my job for a band that 99.999% of America has never heard of, and even their fans haven’t listen to them since 1991.

I also met Maria McKee (lead singer of 80s band Lone Justice) at the same Turtles location. McKee was better known than Nitzer Ebb, so I’m not especially embarrassed to admit that I went to meet her. However, this story is amusing for two reasons.

First, McKee was stoned off her ass. I can spot a pothead from a mile away, and I can tell you that McKee was smoking far better weed than anyone I knew. After coming out and mumbling a few hellos, she started playing a couple of acoustic numbers… only she was wearing this giant silver ring on her “strumming hand”, and at one point it flew off and nailed someone on the forehead. At first she looked completely horrified, but when the guy she hit smiled and handed it back to her she just started giggling like something out of Half Baked.

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