Damn You, Mayans!

By Brian McCurdy

In his panic, Ross slammed the hatch to the mailbox without meaning to. He checked his watch and saw that he was just in time for the final mail pickup. Thank God there was mail on Christmas Eve because that’s the only way his mortgage check would make it to the bank by the 27^th.

The car was still running and he shifted to drive and was moving before he even buckled his seatbelt. Tapping the steering wheel, he headed toward the main artery to the mall. Ahead of him he saw the red tail lights blinking irregularly like Christmas tree lights starting to die out.

“I can’t believe I’m one of those people who is doing all his shopping on Christmas Eve,” Ross said to the windshield of his car.

How did he get here? The thing was that they were all out to get him. Just mess him up completely. Ross didn’t even have any food in the house. What was the point of stocking up to last beyond the 21^st? He resisted shopping through Saturday and Sunday so as not to waste money, opting for takeout instead. No sense being left with a fridge full of food at the end of the world.

The Maxima inched up but couldn’t make it through the light at Remington Road before it turned red. Cars turned left but got stuck in the intersection. Another light turned green but Ross could only glare at it and shake his head.

They all had it in for him. He waited a few days after the deadline, as he always had, in case the calendar was a few days off. Each morning, the sun rose – a little earlier each time, but it still rose. Three days of this and then he decided to move. So many deadlines had passed before: Aug. 29, 2007, Sept. 11, 1999, June 6, 2006, April 29, 2007, May 21, 2011 and now Dec. 21, 2012. He was so sure the apocalypse was coming this time. This was a real prophecy rooted in an ancient and exotic culture. Not just some notion by a fallible westerner.

They all were gunning for him. Harold Camping and Marshall Applewhite and Ronald Weinland and now the Mayans. An entire civilization. They were all laughing at him and now it was the 11^th hour and he was another sucker scouring the mall, looking for Christmas presents for his entire family.

The car crawled toward the retail Mecca, the music on the radio setting him on edge rather than soothing him. Ross parked in the first spot he saw, rows and rows away from the entrance, and almost ran in. He walked over to the map of stores and tried to see past the family of five that was looking for their particular niche. The wish list, hastily scrawled as it dawned on him that he needed to shop, indicated a few DVDs and CDs for his mom and brother. Best Buy it was, then.

Best Buy looked like there had been a hurricane and instead of looting for food, everyone decided they couldn’t survive without the Action/Adventure section of the DVDs, as well as Comedy, TV on DVD, Children’s and the R&B and Pop/Rock sections of the CDs. Discs were everywhere. Ross made his way through the sea of late shoppers and headed for his first choice: Season 4 of Frasier for his mom. They had seasons 1, 2 and 6 but no 4. He grumbled. Mom was very specific about what season she wanted. She had a few of the other seasons but he didn’t want to call and ask her what she had because then she’d know he got caught up in another apocalypse prediction. And then he’d have to hear about it until the world really ended.

Over in the Comedy section, it was slim pickins. The only things left were a few Adam Sandler movies and some films that Ross only vaguely remembered being in theaters. Nothing mom would want.

He hated this. It was too warm in the store and his coat was too heavy. The sweat was half stress and half discomfort.

A woman bumped into him without apology while reaching to grab the DVD of Ted off the shelf. It was rude and Ross wanted to say something but caught the stressed, dazed look in her eye. God, was that how he looked to other people? He decided to lay off her.

He flagged down a sales associate in a blue shirt. “Excuse me. I’m wondering if you have any DVDs of Frasier, season 4. There are none on the shelves but do you have any more in the back?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We don’t really have a back room like a shoe store. Everything we have is on display,” said the sales guy. He looked exhausted and impatient.

“Are you sure?” Ross pleaded. “It’s just that it’s Christmas Eve and I’m at the end of my rope. Like everyone else here, I guess.”

The employee suppressed a sigh. “No, I’m sorry. But we do have a good selection of other DVDs. Maybe you’ll find something else you’ll like.”

The employee left, flagged down by some other frantic person. Ross stared at the ravaged rack of DVDs, feeling empty. He couldn’t just order anything from Amazon because it would be in after Christmas and then his family would know the Mayans kept him from shopping.

Only one thing left to do: He had to trek over to the mall farther down the highway. Maybe they had the DVD.

Pushing through the perforated wall of humanity, he made his way back to the car. He saw dozens of faces like his: Panicked and a little guilty and embarrassed that they let it go this long.

Ross was distracted, pulling out into the stream of traffic, and a woman darted in front of him without looking. She looked vaguely Mexican, he thought. It was her ancestors who did this. Her ancestors counted all the days, centuries and millennia of them, and finally stopped for reasons he will never know. And now he’s going from mall to mall, like a retail Ahab searching for his white whale.

Ross rolled down the window and stuck his head and his fist out. “Damn you, Mayans!” he screamed at the Mexican-looking woman. “Damn you all to hell!”

The woman stopped and gaped at him. “Merry Christmas to you, too, buddy.”

I thought that 'Weekend' would never end

We Netflixed the movie Weekend and did not care for it. It was disappointing because I had read rave reviews and it got very high marks on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. It is part of the Criterion Collection of DVDs, which gave me high hopes because that company usually chooses to preserve time-tested movies with high reputations.

Weekend is a British indie-type movie about these guys who meet at a club, have a one-night stand and over the course of a weekend, start having feelings for one another just before one of the guys has to move to America for two years. It was affecting on the level that the two were taking tentative steps toward a relationship when one drops the bomb that he’s leaving the country Sunday afternoon. Then it was poignant to see the two express their feelings, with the shy guy finally able to be gay in public.

It was mostly just an annoying movie. They were not only mumbling but mumbling with British accents, which makes it worse. Most of the movie was two guys having a conversation late into the night, with the monotony thankfully broken up by as hardcore sex scenes as an unrated non-porn movie could get away with. For me, the effect of all this talking was like being sober at a party where very drunk and/or high people are having a lengthy chat about their childhoods and relationships and the one never knew his parents and the other’s boyfriend cheated on him and ZZZZZZZ. You see these people at parties and from your vantage point of sobriety, you think, “My God, these people couldn’t be any more annoying.” It was long stretches of this.

I couldn’t really identify with these characters at all. First off, they spent a Saturday night inhaling mounds of cocaine, which I certainly never did, even in my young and single days. I just hope people don’t see this carousing and stuff in Weekend as “the real gay experience.” Sometimes I wonder if people don’t care for the gays because they think we lead these debauched lifestyles. Not all of us. Steve and I watched these coke-snorting people while sitting on the couch sober on a Friday night, trying not to fall asleep at 11 p.m. and with cats napping on and around us as the Christmas tree lights blinked. How debauched.

I keep striking out with Netflix movies and maybe I should just leave the picks to Steve. I just keep not liking a lot of these critically acclaimed movies. We watched The French Connection, which has a very good reputation and I just didn’t care for it. I just got nothing from it beyond the fact that it had a beginning, middle and end. A few years ago, we saw Repulsion, which people love, and I thought it was godawful. Catherine Deneuve’s character was such a sad sack that I couldn’t have cared less whether she went mad or what happened to her.

Maybe I should just leave the Netflix decisions to Steve. I’m tired of apologizing for the preceding movie once the credits roll.

It’s Christmas present wrapping night!

Oh, yay! Tonight is the big night! I wait all year for this! It’s Christmas present wrapping night! Last night I could barely sleep! Visions of red and green wrapping paper were dancing through my head! I’m so psyched! I’m so excited!

I’m so … weird.

Yeah, I’m that odd duck who actually loves wrapping presents. I normally like to wrap solitary presents through the year but then when Christmas comes, it’s like that times 30 because I have so many more presents to wrap. I have wrapping night every year and get most of it done in one shot. I put Christmas music on and hum along like one of Santa’s elves. I even wrap a lot of Steve’s presents, just for fun.

I’m not sure why I like wrapping so much because I really don’t care for shopping. I like to be generous and give but when it comes to trekking to store after store to find something and standing in line with half of New Castle County, it’s a circle of hell. The fun really starts once I get everything home and can organize it and wrap it. There’s nothing more satisfying then seeing piles of rectangles wrapped in paper with Santas and gingerbread men and Christmas trees on them. It’s just part of my sense of anal retentiveness. I was always that way. As a kid, I would get a kick out of spending Christmas Eve meticulously arranging my presents under the tree until I found an arrangement I liked.

I don’t do anything fancy when I wrap. I never use bows or ribbons because then you can’t stack the presents. I just get cheap paper because you’re just going to rip it anyway. There’s a secret to wrapping efficiently: Wrap the bigger packages first and then use the leftover scraps of paper to wrap smaller packages. That way, you can save some paper for next Christmas!

Now you know.

Every present must be wrapped. I won’t leave anything in an Amazon box and present it to the recipient; the gift must be in wrapping paper. I bought some little boxes for gift cards but even though the boxes have Christmas designs on them, I still wrap them. That way, I can stick the gift tag on the paper and not the box so the recipient can use the box. If I ever had enough money to give someone a car for present, I would not stop at putting a big red bow on the roof. I would insist on buying $300 worth of paper and covering the whole car. I’m sure if I could afford a car for someone, I would be able to spring for wrapping paper.

I am galled by the existence of gift bags. I don’t use them unless I’m buying booze or something that you can’t easily wrap. If I were to use gift bags, I wouldn’t be able to wrap the present, and where’s the fun in that? Plus, it would be much more expensive to buy gift bags for everything for Christmas, rather than just some dollar store paper. Yes, I’m the odd duck who goes out of his way not to use a convenience that most people appreciate.

You know what? I just had a sad thought. Tomorrow, wrapping night will be over and I won’t be able to wrap en masse until next Christmas.

Sigh. No wonder people get so depressed around the holidays.

A Half-Assed Christmas

Every year, there’s that certain someone on your Christmas list for whom you feel an obligation to buy but for whom you don’t really want to go to trouble. You don’t want to think too hard about what this person wants but just want to pick up something that screams “gift.” Well, good news. Here is a comprehensive list of some … unique … gifts that are sure to please anyone. *

Pizza Hut Perfume
Guiding Light: The Complete Series (all 18,000 episodes ever produced for TV and radio, from 1937 to 2009, in a DVD/CD box set)
Membership to the Mayo of the Month Club
Prolapse: A Pictorial Guide
Eagles season tickets
A Christmas turkey seasoned with mistletoe, candycane dust and cinnamon
A new iPad Macro (32-inch screen)
Parker Brothers’ new board game The Blame Game
An autobiography of Honey Boo Boo, written without a ghostwriter
$10 gift card to Louis Vuitton
New iPad app Shit Pickers to examine your excrement to diagnose your health
A truckload of Romney for Amercia T-shirts
PSY’s Greatest Hit collection
Stolen ultrasound of Kate Middleton’s baby
Heil, Honey, I’m Home: The Complete Series
Tickets to a Nikka Costa concert
Velvet painting of Paul Ryan on a weight bench
Blank cassette tapes
Autographed script of Liz and Dick
100% wool bra
A date with Taylor Swift (followed by a catty song about you by Taylor Swift)
Mayan wall calendar

* I am never wrong.

Apropos of Nothing

Here’s an unfortunate use of hyphens: “No one is having champagne-and-caviar-ice-sculpture parties anymore,” Winston says. “Those days are long gone.” I would hope those days are over because you just described an ice sculpture made of champagne and caviar, which would probably look like really dirty snow. It should be “champagne and caviar ice-sculpture parties.” Your hyphen privileges are revoked.

I don’t understand the appeal of Ryan Gosling and I don’t know why there’s an outcry for him to be named People’s sexiest man alive. He’s not unattractive but I think he looks like … just a person. He’s beige.

I saw the most heartwarmingly horrific commercial for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Jennifer Anniston is talking to two bald children about what they want for Christmas. “My hair back,” said one bald girl. “And no more cancer,” said the other bald girl. And I collapsed in a quivering pile of jelly and threw a blank check at the TV. Now there’s another commercial that will make me run out of the room?! This is as bad as Sarah MacLachlan and the abused animals.   

I recently saw the British spelling “faeces.” Those people can even make shit infinitely classier.

I only recent realized what a Dutch oven is. I had just been calling it what it is: a pot with a lid. Why does it need some special name? It’s just a container, like every other pot.

I have a sinking feeling the Eagles will keep Andy Reid on next season. I wonder if they’re firing all the rest of the staff so Jeff Lurie can say, “Andy didn’t have the right coaching staff but with new people in place, we’re confident he can win next year.” If this happens, I expect to look toward Philadelphia and see the horizon burning.

I hate to see a good book end

Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot was my big read during my late-summer vacation. I was taken by the various trials and dilemmas of recent college graduate Madeleine, a literature student who had turned to traditional romantic novels at a time in the ‘80s when deconstruction was all the rage. She marries the depressed Leonard in a fit of romanticism but later finds that as her husband had advocated to her, love is an illusion. After Leonard abandons Madeleine and her ex Mitchell returns, to her credit, rather than accept the romanticism of an old flame’s return, she opts for a third way: Independence. The characters are a thoughtful embodiment of the Jane Austen-Jacques Derrida axis of literature. I enjoyed this book, although it wasn’t as towering as Eugenides’ Middlesex.

American Wife was a barely veiled fictionalization of the life of Laura Bush. I’m not sure how many of the details are true but the hints are there: Alice Blackwell is a librarian who marries a party boy from a rich family who buys a baseball team and later finds God, serves two terms as president and gets involved in a war in Iraq. Alice’s character is compelling and sympathetic on her own, regardless of how much she may or may not resemble the former first lady in details that are ultimately unknowable. The central tension in Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel is the conflict between Alice’s closely held liberal beliefs and the degree to which she is culpable for standing by while her husband pursued policies that her conscience rejected. This is a fascinating look into the compromises any couple makes in a marriage and in the first couple’s situation, there is the nagging feeling that the things they sublimated for the other will come back to haunt them.

In the midst of planning a wedding, it was enlightening to read Dan Savage’s account of his own reluctant nuptials, The Commitment. In contrast to Savage, I never needed to be convinced that marriage was the best course for our relationship. This book was mostly about his thought process and how he allowed himself to be convinced. He wrote this several years ago and from that perspective, things looked pretty dire for the prospects for gay marriage, a reminder of the sea change that’s taken place in half a decade.

Video Slut was diverting. Sharon Oreck dished on the details of producing videos for many an ‘80s musical icon. I wasn’t that interested in Oreck’s interludes of her personal life, so I skipped those. It was much more entertaining to read how a terrified Madonna jumped screaming off a high dive for the “Like a Prayer” video or how they had to make purple woolen bikini briefs for Prince to keep his junk warm in a bathtub during the shooting of “When Doves Cry.” Oreck wrote with an exaggerated style that might make you call into question the exact details of her stories but she's so entertaining, you don't really care if she's telling a tall tale.

Don DeLillo’s short story collection, The Angel Esmeralda, was just OK. I found a lot of the stories to be unmemorable. The exception was the title story, which stood head and shoulders above everything else. It’s the story of two nuns in the Bronx who try to befriend 12-year-old Esmeralda, who is later raped and thrown off a building. Esmeralda then briefly becomes a posthumous religious touchstone as people begin seeing a vision of her on a billboard. It was a deeply moving way of depicting a character like the elderly Sister Edgar, who had become beaten down before the vision of a murdered 12-year-old restored some of her faith.

Reading "The Angel Esmeralda" inspired me to re-read the novel of which the story was part, DeLillo’s Underworld. This is my all-time favorite. I read it over 10 years ago and while so much of the book’s sweeping, poetic narrative has stayed with me, how much I remembered very specific turns of phrase, I was surprised at how much I forgot. Underworld has a tremendous scope, covering the entire Cold War, and I guess if I had to tell someone what it’s about, I’d say it’s about how what we try to bury will always resurface.

Underworld is 827 pages and now I’m about to tackle another doorstop, Anna Karenina. I like reading big books and I recently realized why: Because when it’s a really good book, I hate to see it end.

Flipping back and forth between 'Monday Night Football' and 'Liz and Dick'

You know the state of the Eagles is a mess when instead of watching a Monday night game in full, I decide to flip between the game and the Lifetime movie Liz and Dick, with Lindsay Lohan trying to act her way out of a paper bag as Elizabeth Taylor. Both the game and the movie were a demoralizing disaster, barely appreciable on a serious or ironic level. Both were a shadow of their former selves. I knew all this going in but hey, what else was I going to do on a Monday night?

To start with on Lifetime, there’s Lindsay, made up to look like Liz. They actually almost pull it off and her makeup doesn’t look too bad. I can almost see Taylor in a few shots. Lohan’s voice, however, is flat and hoarse, a far cry from Taylor’s sort of breathy sound. First, she and Richard Burton are being interviewed while sitting in director’s chairs, wearing all black in a black room. I’m assuming it’s all a profound metaphor for death. Then the two cavort on the set of Cleopatra. The scenes are edited so fast I am getting whiplash.

The Eagles-Panthers game is already in progress when I flip over, in no hurry to get there. Already the score is 14-3 Panthers in the first quarter. For the eighth time this fall, I sigh heavily.

Back to Liz and Dick. Christ on a cracker, is this script awful. Did all this stuff actually happen? They have Burton and Taylor sitting around and in walks Eddie Fisher. Burton tells Fisher he is sleeping with La Taylor and makes her choose between the two men. I mean, did that happen? Was the reality as clunkily written as that scene?

Back at the Linc, there are a lot of empty seats. I’m assuming they didn’t black out the game because the tickets had already been sold and people just didn’t feel like showing up to the game. It’s depressing to see all those unoccupied seats and makes me despair that it might take awhile for the team to get back to the playoffs. I also realize that I just don’t care for ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage. Something about it is very quiet and deflating, even during a more interesting game. I wonder who got fired for scheduling this crapathon on prime time.

Oh, look, Theresa Russell, who played a very different Liz in Whore, is playing Liz Taylor’s mother. She isn’t bad, actually. She doesn’t call attention to herself and doesn’t overplay it. And the guy who plays Creed on The Office is some agent. It’s nice to see familiar faces to lighten this disaster.

Touchdown! The Eagles are on the board! I don’t know who this guy Bryce Brown is but he’s been running a lot so maybe that’s a ray of hope for the team. They miss the two-point conversion, which would have tied the game. Oh, well.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is hung over on her yacht. Lying down to sunbathe, she asks the waiter for two bloody Marys. “I ordered breakfast,” she tells Richard as he joins her. I thought that line was actually a little funny. Later, Burton’s brother falls down the steps and hurts himself. “I’m sorry,” the doctor tells Mr. and Mrs. Burton in the hospital. “It’s his spine. He’ll never walk again.” And walks away. Would a doctor actually say that? Wouldn’t you soft-pedal it so it’s honest but slightly less brutal?

Isn’t that Allen Iverson at the game?

Liz and Dick seems to suffer from one of the most unfortunate tendencies of biopics: Stating a thesis about a character instead of showing it. A bored Taylor states outright that she has been so busy all her life that she never learned to just do nothing. Hey, why show when you can tell?

Hey, at least Alex Henery seems to be doing well. So there’s that.

Then on Lifetime, it’s the ultimate insult: Lohan’s impression of Taylor’s ferocious performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “That better not have been a full bottle, George,” she chides Burton after he breaks a bottle. “You can’t afford to waste good liquor — not on your salary.” This is one of the most amateurish line readings I’ve ever heard. Lohan has none of the venom or fire that made this dialogue classic. It’s like second graders trying to perform Edward Albee. It’s like the worst Saturday Night Live parody you’ve ever seen. To be fair, Lohan is punching above her weight class here, trying to pull off a challenging part in Virginia Woolf. But Taylor nailed it and Lohan didn’t even come close. They say Lindsay Lohan wasted her acting talent on booze and drugs and running around and even though I’ve never seen her in much, what I’ve seen does not give me a good impression of talent. Judging by Liz and Dick, she just didn’t have a lot of talent to waste in the first place.

Halftime and the score is 15-14 Eagles. Maybe they’ll stop the losing streak at six games but I’m not staying up to watch it. I hate to say it but the outcome barely matters this late in the season. Rather than being in a bad mood and tired on a Tuesday, I’d rather just be in a bad mood.

So that was that, switching between one train wreck and another. Both Lifetime movies and Eagles games used to be a lot more fun than this. It was a night to forget.

JR's Last Cliffhanger

So the second season of the reboot of Dallas will probably be … awkward … following Larry Hagman’s death. They had already started shooting some episodes. I imagine they will do at least part of this season since there is a lot they can milk from JR Ewing’s death. Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy has been good friends for 35 years so there will probably be some real pathos as they mourn on screen. I wonder if they will write it as a death from natural causes or do like with Jock Ewing, where he was “in South America on business” for months before dying in an off-screen plane crash.

JR’s death, though, is the one that hits the show by far the hardest. I think he’s one of the greatest TV characters of all time. There’s a website called TV Tropes that has a category of Magnificent Bastard and JR was the originator. He was so despicable and you wanted to see him get his comeuppance but also wanted to see him win. The best episodes of Dallas were the ones that ended with him reveling in some scheme and flashing his million-dollar shit-eating grin. Without characters like JR Ewing, we wouldn’t have anti-heroes like Walter White.

As much as I did enjoy the reboot of Dallas, this should be the last season because the heart of the show is dead. The whole thing didn’t really get going until Hagman came out of his depression in the first episode and flashed the aforementioned smile. The episodes were lacking somewhat in energy without the interaction between him and Sue Ellen.

The smartest thing the Dallas producers did was just continue the show’s plot 21 years after the original ended. There had been rumors for years that they would remake it entirely with a new cast and that would have been horrifying, especially since Jennifer Lopez was rumored to be the new Sue Ellen. What fans really want to see is the original cast reunited. The intrigue with John Ross and Christopher and the next generation was fun but I kind of spent their scenes waiting for the patriarchs and matriarchs to reappear. There are plenty of people like my brother and I who can quote chapter and verse from the first 14 seasons and it was a treat for us to revisit some old plot lines and nuances. One thing they should have followed up on is that Christopher’s birth parents are JR and Kristin, who was Sue Ellen’s sister and the woman who infamously shot JR. I don’t think the series ever mentioned that salacious bit of gossip again and only Bobby ever knew it. Now I don’t know if they’ll revisit that plot point.

It’s a shame because the last season of the show really hit its stride in the last few minutes of the last episode. They had a good fake-out going with John Ross and Christopher supposedly working together, and it looked like the show would take a turn for the bland until their rivalry reignited after – what else? – some devious advice from JR. Then there was the big reveal that Christopher’s estranged wife was the daughter of Cliff Barnes, which I thought they pulled off fantastically well. This also makes Christopher’s wife his adoptive half-cousin, which would have made for some delicious twists and angst, and now who knows what will happen.

At least I have 14 years of DVDs to console me.

Consume

By Brian McCurdy


Jane finished her piece of apple pie and slid the plate aside. She pulled over her circulars and started digging into them in earnest.

Let’s see … Wal-Mart stays open all night but the Black Friday deals really start at midnight. Target’s doors open at midnight. Best Buy opens at 3 a.m. Kohl’s is the straggler, opening at 4. She started a list on her legal pad.

“Aunt Jane, what are you writing?” her nephew Bobby asked, chocolate cookie in hand.

“Oh, just my list of shopping strategy. I have a lot to cover in the next few hours so I need to get organized.”

“Look at you, so methodical,” said her sister Charlene. “Much more organized than me. I’ll be lucky if I start in mid-December.”

“I enjoy it. It’s a lot of work but I do like to give.”

Charlene cut herself a piece of pumpkin pie and offered Jane a cup of coffee, which she eagerly accepted. Their father switched on the Bears-Cowboys game and Charlene’s husband watched it with him. Their brother went outside for a cigarette. A few of the kids swarmed around the table for brownies and cookies.

“So what’s the game plan?” asked Charlene.

“Well,” Jane said, consulting her checklist, “Wal-Mart is open 24 hours as usual so I can get some DVDs for mom and dad and some CDs for the kids. I figure they have a good price on that stuff year round, so I can get those there first.”

“Right.”

“Then the big Black Friday sale starts at midnight so I can kill time til then. Hopefully, I’ll be first in line for a new 51-inch TV. I’ve been in the market for one for awhile.”

“Good for you. You do need to get rid of that old CRT. I can’t believe you still watch it.”

“I know. I’ve just been waiting for a good sale. Anyway, after that, I can head to Target to pick up some clothes and maybe a coat for Rob. He could use one. At 3, I’ll go to Best Buy. I would love one of those iPads.”

“Well, good luck. They may very well be sold out unless you’re in line early.”

“I figure I can get in line by 1 or 1:30 so I might be OK,” says Jane. “Anyway, if I don’t get an iPad, no big deal. But I thought I’d give it a shot. I can also pick up any CDs or DVDs I didn’t get at Wal-Mart. After that, I’ll check out house wares at Kohl’s when they open at 4.”

Brother Rob, catching wind of the conversation during halftime, walked over. “What a day. I guess you’ll be ready for a nap by then.”

“Yeah, I usually sleep for a bit when I get home,” Jane said. “Which makes it all the more important to stay awake tonight.”

Jane walked into the kitchen to top off her half-empty cup of coffee. Her family always ate Thanksgiving at a normal dinner hour, rather than early afternoon, so after dinner, clean-up and a leisurely dessert, it was almost 9.

She looked around the dining room and tried to match the present with the person.

Mom: How I Met Your Mother season 6.

Dad: Apocalypse Now special edition.

Tracy: Rihanna CD

Bobby: Drake CD

Rob: Missoni overcoat

Charlene: Pfaltzgraf flatware

In her mind’s eye, Jane started planning her routes through the stores. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s. She could almost see the aisles and see herself moving down them, nimble fingers picking through the merchandise.

A little while later, she went to the bedroom to find her coat. “Well, I’d best be off, everyone. It’s getting late and I’d like to get there before the real crowds gather.”

“OK, then,” said her mom. “Thanks for coming. Good to see you. And good luck out there. Happy hunting.”

“Yeah, don’t get trampled on or anything,” her dad laughed.

“You know me. I’m more likely to be the one doing the trampling,” said Jane.

They all laughed. “We’ll talk to you soon about Christmas,” dad told her.

She left amid kisses and hugs. Jane pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot at 10:02. She waited through three cycles to make the left turn. It was already packed and she had to drive up and down several aisles to find a spot.

She groaned. She left too late. Maybe she should have skipped dessert. All that time wasted drinking coffee.

Finally, she found a spot far away from the main entrance. List in hand, she half ran into the store.

She climbed through aisles of women’s clothes and produce and office supplies, moving deftly around the crowds. Wal-Mart was ablaze in red and green and fluorescent lights and roll-back smiley faces. Johnny Mathis sang “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

The other shoppers pushed their blue carts deliberately down the aisles, half full with all manner of CDs and T-shirts and books. Some wore sweats or pajama pants, while some wore dresses or sweaters, coming directly from turkey and green bean casserole and apple pie. All had alert looks on their faces, their eyes focused on everything and nothing particular with the brightness of a laser.

At the back of the store, there was already a line for the electronics. Jane counted seven people. “Damn,” she muttered. The competition was starting earlier than she anticipated.

The CDs and DVDs would have to wait, then. She could get them later at Target or Best Buy, so it really wasn’t a big deal. She got in line. 

Her laser-like eyes swept the electronics section. There was a 46-inch Samsung that was probably plasma, which she didn’t care for. Another was a 60-inch, which was just too big. Finally, her eyes alighted on the prize: A 51-inch LG, an LED model. Perfect.

She tried to hear what the people in front of her were saying. They seemed to be interested in the 60-inch model, so they wouldn’t be in competition with her. That left five people and two appeared to be a couple so it was really four people potentially in competition for the LG. There were plenty of models, though, so she might not have to worry about anyone else.

She plotted her route directly to the TV, where she would stand and wave down an employee to help her move it. If somebody else got there first, she would just have to settle for her second choice, a 46-inch LED Sony. It was a little smaller but it would have to do.

Jane checked her watch. Just 10:12. Over an hour and 45 minutes to go. Thoughts of presents and credit cards rolled over in her head like tumbling waves, consuming her.

I had the most murderous dream

I dreamed one of my friends murdered another friend. In the haze of sleep, it wasn’t clear who the friends were. They were most likely composites of people I know; like how you know who people are in the dream but when you wake up, you realize the people weren’t as you know them in the waking world.

I had gone over to this friend’s apartment and he told me how he killed the other person. The victim went to the apartment and the murderer asked him to check his TV’s connections because the TV wasn’t working. The murderer had spilled some water behind the TV and left a live electrical connection in the puddle. When the victim went behind the TV to check on the wiring, he got electrocuted.

So that was more a nightmare than a dream. I’ve been having these horrible sporadic nightmares lately. Sometimes they’ve been genuinely unpleasant subjects, like when I dreamed someone was lying on top of me and choking me. Sometimes the nightmares have been those types that upset you in the moment but when you clear your head and reflect back, they don’t seem so bad and you feel stupid for being so upset.

Now for something lighter. I later dreamed that I had moved into a house that I always coveted, which my childhood friend lived in. You know how large buildings sway a little? This house also swayed — a lot. I was sitting in the bedroom and it swayed all the way across the street to the point where it would have been sitting in the middle of traffic. It just kept moving and never snapped back.

I looked out the window and noted how close my bedroom was to the Delaware River. It was flowing so close to my window that any flooding would have killed me in my sleep. Then the whole house went on a magic journey beneath the river. The river turned into a pool and we (whoever else was in the dream) ended up staring at the people looking into the pool. I thought that was whimsical.

America is a lock-in

Once your territory agrees to become part of the United States, it hands over its figurative car keys to the host. Then this party becomes a lock-in, a New Year’s Eve party in which everyone must stay over and guests are not allowed to leave early for fear that they might drive drunk. Alright?

People from 50 states have started petitions for secession and I’m guessing they’re unhappy with Obama’s election. There are a number of obvious reasons why wanting your state to become a sovereign nation due to an election result is profoundly stupid. Shall we count the ways?

Say you’re a Republican in California and you’re upset about the Democratic victory and have filed a petition for your state to secede. You really think it’s fair that the millions of people in your state who voted for Obama should bend to your tantrum as your state declares independence from the union? What are Californians who oppose secession supposed to do, roll over because you’re unhappy? This election was close enough that’s it’s not like one state had 99 percent of the voters go for Romney. There are pockets of support for both candidates in every state, making the argument that any of these states should leave the country grossly selfish. Shall we disband as a nation and become 50 separate sovereign territories? Does any thinking person think this is a viable argument?

You can’t seriously support the concept of democracy and simultaneously declare that because your guy lost, your whole state should leave America.

I’m sure this is just crackpots being crackpots and there are bound to be a few of those in a nation with 300 million people. But the idea of secession, even if it’s unconstitutional, just pushes buttons with me. It’s almost heresy. By all means, let’s all form our own countries and fight one another. It worked out so well the first time we tried this in the 1860s, there’s no reason it can’t be a similarly smashing success in 2012.

This seems like drama for the sake of drama and if Romney had won, I’m sure some Obama crackpots would be starting secession petitions. I know that no matter what the outcome of any election, I would never leave this country. I would stay and try to find a workable solution.

And no, I don’t say “go ahead” to all the red states that want to secede. Those are our own people in those states, part of the same America. We need these states and we need their citizens.

If you have a problem with the election or anything else going on in this country, the solution isn’t to storm off in a huff and threaten to take your toys and leave. We would be a better nation if we all worked together to find acceptable solutions to our common problems. America is as great as it is because by and large our people, as diverse as they are, manage to come together most of the time. No president can unite this country. We must do that ourselves.  

The election is over. It ended. It’s done. (And thank Christ Almighty for that.) Let’s quit being drama queens, quit being bitter, quit gloating and actually accomplish something.

Will Starve for Oscar

I’m seeing photos of Matthew McConaughey looking like a gaunt pencil for whatever movie he’s doing next. I’m hearing about how Anne Hathaway lost a bunch of weight for Les Miserables, eating something like a square of oatmeal paste or something nasty like that per day.

Eww. If I were an actor and someone approached me with a great part but told me I’d have to emaciate myself to do it, I’d have three words for them. And those three words would be C, G and I. They would just have to reduce the size of my fat ass with technology.

I would have zero desire to eat nothing but air and Saltines for two months to play someone in a North Korean work camp with cholera. It can’t be healthy to lose so much weight in a short period of time. These celebrities usually say they were under doctor’s supervision when they crash diet but I’m skeptical. I’m sure they could find a Dr. Nick Riviera (valedictorian of Hollywood Upstairs Medical College) to referee their starvation. Doctors also supervise brides who lose weight on all-liquid diets, walking around with an IV up their noses, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Actors do this sort of thing, altering their bodies like silly putty, for Oscars. Sometimes it works and the last decade or so is littered with Oscar clips of actors and actresses who are unrecognizable. It’s admirable to put oneself through all sorts of training and physical regimens but their must be an easier way, what with 100 years of Hollywood sleight of hand, to get the same effect.

What I would jump at, however, is gaining some weight to make a movie. If I were to alter my body to get some work, I’d rather have some fun doing it. I’d much rather spend six months eating cheese omelets and chocolate-peanut butter ice cream than running 10 miles a day and rewarding myself with a luxurious dinner of kale on rice cakes.

Of course, you can endanger your health by gaining weight quickly just as easily as losing it fast. I wouldn’t go too extreme. I’d take a part with just a little weight gain so I could be a slothful fatass for a few months and then easily get back to normal. Maybe I could land the part of a chubby editor in a searing prestige drama. If I had the proper Method training, I could really commit to something like that.

I had the most suckered dream

I dreamed I was on a bus going through the city. We passed by my aunts and uncles eating at some sort of outdoor restaurant at 14^th Street and some other intersection.

I had lost some sort of bag with something important in it and was upset about this. One of the passengers says he’ll give me $5 to tell me where it is. The guy tells me I have to take the bus to 16^th Street and I can get the bag there.

The guy thinks this is funny because he thought I assumed I’d be getting the bag back immediately. However, I thought it was funny because not only did the guy tell me where to get my bag but he gave me $5 for my trouble. That would more than cover any bus fare or whatever for my inconvenience. Sucker!

Later I dreamed of Mount Rushmore but some of the faces were different. Charles Darwin was on it. He was wearing a monocle and sticking his tongue out at a president wearing a monocle (I’m assuming Franklin Roosevelt).

That seems random but it must have seeped into my unconscious when I heard people had been writing in Charles Darwin for president. You know, Darwin is one of those names you don’t really hear about. Not too many people today seem to be named Darwin. It’s the same with names like Churchill or Tesla. Where are these people? Did the gene pool die off?

Really makes you think.

Apropos of Nothing

I hate when the bar of soap gets down to the nub. It’s hard to use but I almost feel wasteful about throwing it away. Is this normal?

I’m disgusted that the NHL canceled the Winter Classic and so much of the hockey season. With no Flyers, and the Eagles players and management revealing themselves as incompetent, I have no local teams to tide me over until pitchers and catchers report. Don’t make me have to care about the NBA.

Why do we have the euphemism “bath tissue”? Are there really people whose faces would go beet red if they had to call it “toilet paper”?

There is nothing more offensive to the eye than campaign signs the day after the election. It’s bad enough during the campaigns but even worse on the morning after. All of us, regardless of political persuasion, should unite in our disdain for this. Get out the bulldozers and clean up America.

Since it didn’t snow last winter, I have a feeling that drivers are going to freak out even worse than normal this winter because “we’re not used to this.” Yes, it is difficult to summon memories of the snow that fell two whole years ago and remember how to drive in it.

American Horror Story: Asylum is just batshit insane. They are throwing every horror trope at the wall and seeing what sticks. We’ve had Nazis, insane people, aliens, demonic possession, werewolf-like creatures and God knows what else in just the first four episodes. It’s not a show that’s actually good but it is a guilty pleasure. Plus, I love Jessica Lange.

Commercials for tampons and toilet paper sometimes claim to “get real” by not using euphemisms or being delicate but they don’t nearly go far enough. Instead of blue liquid, use yellow or red on the pads and paper. Talk about “twat” and “piss.” That’s when shit will start to get real.

I was surprised when we ran out of candy on Halloween, and we had a lot to give out. We’re not usually home on that night so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Grampa, tell us about Nor'easter Athena

Nor’easter Athena? Sure, I remember that one well. It was way back in the autumn of ’12. If you ask more old timers like me, I’m sure they’d vividly remember that storm.

It was a cold and blustery day, as I recall. Oh, I can remember leaving work one afternoon and seeing the rain turn to freezing rain and then to sleet. The air temperature was dancing on the fine line between wet and frozen. Later that night, the sleet was hitting the bathroom skylight and you could just hear the sound ringing all through the house. The sound of winter coming early, it was. Then the next morning, as I drove to work and saw the sporadic patches of wet snow on the ground …

… Well, a person doesn’t soon forget a sight like that.

So that was Athena, gone down in the annals of weather history. Remind me some other time to tell you about the other named weather phenomena of that bygone age.

Like Thunderstorm Clarissa. This was in July of ’13, in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Oh, there were great peals of thunder and strikes of lightning so bright it was like a fire come down from Heaven. Must have been a quarter inch of rain that day. Windy, too. Turned my umbrella inside out, the wind did.

And I can’t forget Fog Mitchell. As I recall, it was a humid morning one September in the Teens. The fog was thicker than any pea soup you could get in a restaurant back then. The middle of the morning and you had to keep your headlights on, you did. And it still barely helped.

Well, my memory isn’t what it used to be when I was a young man. Thank God they thought to name all those storms. It really helps us keep them straight for posterity.  

A Vote for Disillusionment

No matter who wins the presidential election today, I’ll still be disillusioned. More accurately, I was never really illusioned in the first place because I’ve been trying to be realistic. It kills me to see the Romney ad with the woman jogging and thinking, “Hope and change were just campaign slogans.” Gasp! Next you’ll tell me “I like Ike” was just a slogan.

Yeah, no shit “hope and change” were campaign slogans. I was optimistic in 2008 about Obama but I never thought he would wave some kind of magic wand and solve all the country’s problems. I voted for Obama then and I’m voting for him tomorrow but even in the giddiness of 2008, I knew he would run into the same problems every president does when the party ends and the hangover starts. No president can live up to his billing during the campaign and that’s not necessarily a failure.

So in the past few years, when I would see the snarky bumper stickers and hear the snarky comments saying, “Where’s your hope and change now?” I would just think, “Yes, those were slogans and the reality is more complicated and cannot fit into a sound bite.”

I’m not a total cynic because I do see some evidence of hope and change: Bin Laden is dead, there is healthcare reform, we are taking slow steps to economic recovery and gay marriage is more plausible than it was at the start of the decade. But I never believed any presidential candidate when they promised us all ponies. I do believe this country will march toward progress but it will be a clusterfuck at times watching it happen. Washington runs like a cliquey, back-stabbing, petty high school — the way it always has — and there’s no reason to think it’s going to stop anytime soon. I believe that this country is wonderful overall but in individual snapshots, it can sometimes be deflating to look at.

I’m not all that wise in this area but I do try to take a look at the long sweep of history rather than the momentary horse race of polls and pundits. I try to look at the big picture when people say things like, “This country is the most divided it’s ever been” (Really? Even more than during the Civil War?) or “This is the most important presidential election ever” (we’ve been having the most important election ever every four years since 2000).

No matter who wins today, the Union will survive because it’s built to do so. For Americans who didn’t like the Bush administration, we still made it through. For Americans who didn’t like the Obama administration, we all made it through the first term. Even in disillusionment, there can be a kind of wary hope. The key for me is not getting too high or too low.

What's wrong with these people?

I saw a picture of a Giants fan using what looked like a road construction sign to break the windows of a bus in San Francisco after his team’s World Series victory. It would never occur to me to do that after a championship win. Granted, I don’t have much experience with winning Philadelphia teams but during the one win of my adult life, I just screamed and jumped around. There was no vandalism. I was home and sober so I can’t say I had any drunken mob mentality influencing me, but still.

So I wonder what’s wrong with these people. Why does something wonderful = destruction of property? Why act like an ass? Why not just savor the victory and if you go a little crazy, do something harmless like taking your shirt off and running around in the street?

It’s not like something horrific happened and people are rioting to vent their frustration. Their team won the World Series. They did not lose. Hell, even through the approximately 3,500 losing championship games I’ve sat through, I’ve never had any inclination to carry on like an asshole and destroy something. I just kind of sighed and went to bed after it was over.

And what is wrong with the dimwitted, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who comment on so many online articles and videos? I read about a woman who posted a video about her experience with sexual harassment with the skeptics group to which she belonged. People ended up calling her a slut and hoping she got raped. What is the problem with these horrible people? Where does it come from when you hope for someone else’s sexual assault? Who are these trolls?

Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon was also talking about how she never reads the comments on her columns because they are so nasty and I can't blame her.I can't stand Williams' writing most of the time since she takes an obvious stance toward a common tragedy and then makes a hacky, melodramatic point about it. (After the Dark Knight Rises shooting, she wrote "We long for togetherness at the movies. After the Aurora shooting, the theater experience will never be the same," which I thought was over-reactive bullshit even during the initial shock of the shooting.) Still, I don't agree with her but I have never thought of posting some horrifying comment on her articles.

I never post nasty comments online. There were only two times I posted something disagreeable: When Garrison Keillor write something condescending about the gays and when an advice columnist advised someone that she had no obligation to visit her friend in the hospital after the friend got drunk and assaulted. In both cases, they just wrote something that got under my skin. I don't remember what I told these people in my comments but I'm pretty sure I didn't wish disease or rape on them.

What on earth is wrong with the people who are tweeting things like, "I'm not a racist but let's put the white back in White House"? There's no other way to interpret that statement than as racist. You're not saying you support a candidate, party or ideology. You're saying you support a skin color; that the skin color is your primary qualification for president. 

Wait ... you say you're not racist. I stand corrected. 

You can't preface a statement by saying "I'm not racist but" because that "but" usually undermines the first part of your sentence. People can't declare themselves to be with or without prejudice. That's something outsiders have to determine by looking at these people's behavior. Nobody is going to admit being racist. By the way, I'm not a misogynist but let's put all women back in the kitchen.

 

Hurricane Sandy

We made it through Hurricane Sandy unscathed and I’m very grateful we did, considering all the awful devastation in New York City and the Jersey shore. Our office was closed Monday and Tuesday so I just worked from home and got a normal amount of work done. We never lost power, surprisingly, and there was no flooding in the basement.

I did discover that our peeling ceiling is in fact a leak in the roof, rather than just wallpaper peeling due to humidity from the shower. I heard a drip in the ceiling Monday morning. Luckily, I was able to get into the crawl space and shove a bucket under the drip, so we’re OK until we can get a roofer out. Knock on wood, that seems to be the only leak.

One thing this hurricane taught me is that we can be resourceful. I didn’t make any kind of special purchases for this storm. Thursday night, I had done my regular food shopping and didn’t buy anything special. We have enough food in the house that we could survive for a few days and if we got desperate, there was always the Halloween candy we got for the trick or treaters. I never buy any booze or comfort food anyway before a storm.

I didn’t buy any bottled water either but just filled pitchers with tap water. During Hurricane Irene, I discovered that bottled water was gone from stores and all of Delaware was in a death panic and figured, “I’m not running around looking for water. We have filtered water from the fridge so I’ll use that.” When the crisis passes, I’ll just use the water for coffee or something so it’s not wasted. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before last year. I didn’t buy extra ice, either. I just got ice from the icemaker and put it in containers. If the power failed, I would just fill coolers with the ice and put the perishables in there.

Plus, we technically could still cook since I could light the gas burners or use the BBQ grill. We’re lucky to live in a built-up area and can walk to places to get food if we need to.

We have a bunch of batteries in bulk that we got from BJ’s so we didn’t need to buy those. We also have an insane amount of candles already and I found a bunch of old candles in the basement. So we were lucky enough that we made do with what we had in the house. I was even able to get a bucket to fix the drip without going out for any supplies. All this underlines two things: How much crap we have in our house that we don’t even know about and how we can survive on what we have on hand without freaking out and running around shopping.

Thank God this storm fell well after my supermarket day so I didn’t have to deal with hordes of people shopping for a nuclear winter rather than a two-day hurricane. Hurricanes Sandy and Irene have shown me how similar the hurricane preparation is to snow preparation and that’s unfortunate. Hurricanes actually are serious business and we do need to be prepared with food and supplies, so a little freaking out is justifiable. But from what I heard, people weren’t food shopping with much more intensity last week than they do when the forecast is 4 to 6 inches of snow. There’s something out of whack there because 4 to 6 inches of snow are truly nothing to worry about unless you’re elderly. So next winter, when everyone flips the fuck out before a mundane snowstorm, I’ll be asking why they’re acting like a destructive hurricane is coming.

Not a Drop to Drink

By Brian McCurdy

Very rapidly, the day was becoming long and tense. Lowering skies were just starting to spit down on them as they hustled across the parking lot. A woman shuffled to her car with a cart with several pounds of butter, three gallons of milk and some potato chips. Another guy walked to his car struggling to carry an oil lamp, a mag light and a large pack of batteries. 

In the last day or so, Madeleine and Rob had become quite familiar with the subtle gradations between the colors of the hurricane clouds. Late yesterday afternoon the clouds looked sort of charcoal. By that morning they had progressed to a slate color. Now, before dusk, they settled on gunmetal. 

They streamed into the store with the rest of the crowd. It was too much to hope that Wal-Mart would be anything less than a mob scene. There was a steady stream toward the grocery aisles with a tributary breaking off and moving toward housewares and hardware. The evening before the hurricane, the store looked like the rains and winds had already hit and left a trail of destruction. Ron and Madeleine walked past the devastated bread aisle and ravaged dairy case. 

It was slim pickins at the bottled water section. Most of it was gone except for a few cases of generic Wal-Mart brand bottled water.

“Are you kidding me?” Rob said. “Generic water? I can’t drink this.   
 

“We’re running out of time,” Madeleine said. “The storm will be here overnight.    
   

“How far does someone have to go to get a decent case of Dasani? Or at least some Aquafina. Something potable. Honestly.”   

“I know but at this point, we may just have to take whatever we can get, babe.”   

Rob bent down and checked out the labels on the bottles. “I know, I know. I really didn’t think every store would be sold out.”     

“Seriously. Acme. Target. Super Fresh. Pathmark. Wawa. CVS. No water.”  

“And I don’t want to be stuck inside for a few days and they tell me we can’t drink the water because it’s contaminated. Or we have to boil it and the power’s out and we can’t.”

“BJ’s. Walgreens. Seven-Eleven. Nothing.” 

A woman wandered by and at the sight of the generic bottled water, her eyes widened. She put a case in her cart, with an eye on Rob and Madeleine.
    

“Maybe we should just …”        

“No,” Rob interrupted. “I hate to sound like a diva but I just don’t want this water. If we’re stuck inside by a fallen tree or something, I just don’t know that I can drink this stuff.”          

“We’re running out of options.”    

   

A guy in a blue Wal-Mart smock, taking inventory, walked by. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”         

“Yeah, we’re just having no luck with bottled water today. Deer Park, Nestle, Fiji, anything.” 

“You know what you could do,” the employee suggested, “is head to housewares and get a couple pitchers. Then just fill them with tap water at home. You’ll have enough to get through the storm and you can reuse the containers. It’s probably cheaper than buying all that bottled water anyway.”      

Madeleine and Rob looked at the guy like he had three heads.          

“Tap water?” Madeleine said. “I’m sorry … tap water?”         

“No. I’m not doing that,” Rob insisted. “Not tap water. What is this, Malawi?”         

The couple pushed their way through streams of people and left the store. Rob was already looking at his phone, trying to find any stores in the area they hadn’t already scoured. Water quest continued.

Ann Coulter is a troll

The latest thing is that Ann Coulter called Obama a retard on Twitter. She must know that the R-word has been the third rail and even though people from my generation used the term as a general insult, it’s been regarded as offensive for awhile now. So Coulter is trolling again; using some obnoxious slur to get a rise out of people. I know you’re not supposed to feed the online troll since the best way to get these people to go away is to ignore them …

… but this blog does not have a national platform that would feed into Coulter’s ego so indulge me for a few paragraphs because I’m going to be nasty. The best possible response to these types of people is the extraordinarily graceful letter from the man with Down syndrome but I don't have it in me today to replicate that.

This isn’t the first time Coulter has acted like an asshole in public. She once called John Edwards a faggot. Edwards is a lot of things (“morally bankrupt” would be a better term) but I wouldn’t use the F-word. The fact that she did just betrays an immaturity. Teenagers use the word sometimes not to refer to sexuality but because it’s the first naughty word that pops into their heads and they know it will get them attention. It’s like calling someone an asshole when he cuts you off in traffic. There’s no great thought behind this. We do this because it’s just a nasty term. 

So Coulter using the R-word or the F-word has no thought behind it. It’s just the rambling of some imbecile who recently learned a curse word and knows it will get her attention. She’s usually doing this because she’s making the talk show rounds to promote some book (probably called Liberals Are Faggots or some other erudite title) but this kind of knee-jerk name-calling is beneath someone who wants to call herself an intellectual or pundit.

Coulter is what would happen if you gave a national platform to the darkest, most ignorant anonymous commenters of some general interest website.

It’s like nobody’s paid her any attention for a few hours so she farts and hopes people notice. Then she laughs and tells everyone to lighten up. That’s what she did with Edwards. When people criticized her for saying the F-word, she countered by saying it’s a schoolyard taunt and people should lighten up. But should someone who wants to be taken seriously as an author be using schoolyard taunts? If you’re going to insult someone, at least say something clever with some substance behind it. Don’t just grab the first slur that pops into your head. Act like an author and not a troll.

Turnabout is fair play. I wonder what Coulter would do if someone called her something nasty on live television. I wonder if she can take what she dishes out.

What goes through my mind while waiting in line three hours for a roller coaster

This line goes so far ahead that I can’t even see the configuration ahead of us. It looks like it turns perpendicular at some point but I can’t be sure.

What on earth are these girls ahead of us talking about? She slept with Don while her friend was in the room? Who are these people?

I love Millennium Force. Hopefully, today’s ride will be more fun than last night’s in the rain. The feeling of rain pelting my face at 60 mph was … I guess you’d call it bracing.

I don’t care about smart phones but having one would give me more to do while waiting.

2+2=4. 2+2=4. I can see why this is so popular!

The wind off Lake Erie is very chilling today. Why didn’t I bring a warmer coat? I guess I’ll have to break down and buy a hat at a gift store. You know, they say a lot of your body heat escapes through your head so you really should cover up in the cold. I’ve just never been one for hats so I don’t really have any. I finally had to buy a baseball hat so my head didn’t get sunburned on the beach but I only wear that reluctantly. Isn’t sunburn on your head the worst? I tried spraying sunscreen on my scalp but it stings a little and I don’t want it in my hair. So, a hat it is then.

Wow! Look how far we’ve come in two hours! I’d hate to be one of the suckers in line way back there!

If you want an engrossing read, look up “List of amusement park accidents” on Wikipedia. Or is it “List of amusement park deaths”?

Where should we eat dinner tonight? I know I’ll be ready to eat by the time we’re off this ride. I guess I should have something light, since we’ll be spending our evening going upside down and through corkscrews.

Know what would suck? If we got right up to the front of the line and they closed it due to high winds.

It’s strange to be standing in line and seeing all these people wearing high school and college sports T-shirts and I don’t know any of the schools because we’re in Ohio.

This ride has three trains and each seats 36 people. That means, if my math is correct, that 108 people graduate from this line every time the ride rotates through three trains. That must mean there are a few thousand people in this line.

Did I turn off the oven?

This guy in the green hoodie is amusing. He’s getting close to the front of the line and yelling excitedly, trying to get everyone enthused about nearly getting on the ride. It’s something to do.

They should just call the fast pass line the “la-dee-da” line.

Maybe I’ll buy a new pair of pants.

Almost there! Look how far we’ve come! Now we’re actually up to the ride. Four more cars and we can get on!

Getting on now. Let’s buckle up. I love roller coasters!

A really rollicking yet respectfully mournful funeral

What song makes for a really good funeral? I mean, a really rollicking yet respectfully mournful funeral?

People certainly have some odd choices for music to be played when their coffin is being lowered into the ground. Some British group took a survey of popular death music and Adele’s “Someone Like You” is on the list. This seems bizarre. It’s like Adele is not only breaking up with her boyfriend, but she’s breaking up with everyone she ever knew. If you read the lines “Never mind/ I’ll find someone like you” as addressed to an entire group of loved ones, it’s really cold and dismissive. I wonder if the people who pick this song just figure, “It’s sad and people cry at it. We’ll go with Adele.”

Besides, as I’ve said repeatedly, “Someone Like You” annoys rather than moves me. I would be the one dry-eyed person at the procession out of the church where they play this. The song would actually make me feel better if I were upset because I would focus my feelings into a vague aggravation.

A few of the songs on the funeral survey are either appropriate or amusing. “My Way” is maudlin enough that it actually works much better at a gravesite than at karaoke when an old man sings it as people are actually trying to forget their troubles. I’ll give a pass to “Wind Beneath My Wings” because I find it cheesy but it would probably be comforting in the face of death. I guess “My Heart Will Go on” would be fine. “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” totally works for people who have a sense of humor and would laugh to keep from crying.

On the down side, we have “I Will Always Love You,” which is a break-up song and Whitney Houston’s vocals would probably wake the deceased. “Unforgettable” would only be OK if it’s the Nat King Cole version because the one by his crackhead daughter is a creepy duet with her dead father.

And then we have “Wonderful World,” as croaked out by Louis Armstrong. Enough people seem to like this that it’s inevitable that I will go to a funeral one day where they play this. And I will struggle mightily to suppress my laughter at the horrific vocals.

For future reference for anyone who plans on dying someday, here is a list of other songs that might be inappropriate at a funeral: “Blasphemous Rumours” by Depeche Mode, “Dig My Grave” by They Might Be Giants, “All by Myself” by Eric Carmen, “Without You” by Harry Nilsson, “Alone” by Heart, “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder, “Mer Girl” by Madonna, “Heresy” by Nine Inch Nails or “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles.

You all know the drill with me. Play “Being Boring” by the Pet Shop Boys at my funeral. Seriously.

Food?

I have a few questions about food.

I don’t really get the idea behind wraps. My God, they’re everywhere. Walk down Main Street in Newark and it’s like the Wrap District. Every restaurant is pita. The name of every place has a poetic variation available on “wrap” or “pita.” I don’t get the idea behind wraps. I’ll just take regular bread with my sandwich, thanks. I guess the idea is that wraps are healthier than bread but I don’t eat out often enough to have some critical mass of bread so I can afford some tasty bread when I go out. Wraps to me have the appeal of cardboard. I also don’t like the messiness of wraps. I can’t stand food that falls all over the place so I’m not eating some drippy mess wrapped in pita. I’m not a big fan of sandwiches for dinner anyway. I think it’s funny how people think wrapping the same crap in pita makes it healthier. That Big Mac is the same toxic shit no matter what it’s wrapped in. The bread isn’t why you’re fat.

What is a “gastropub”? Isn’t it just a bar that serves food? Or a restaurant with a liquor license? Doesn’t that describe pretty much every establishment? It seems to me that it’s just a way to get people to consider a non-exceptional experience as exceptional. “Woo! This new gastropub, the Hipster’s Beard in Northern Liberties, serves high-end hamburgers and microbrewed beer! Totally different from a regular bar or restaurant! I’ll pay a premium for that!”

I am not at all a foodie so a lot of high-end foods are lost on my. My palate just isn’t sophisticated enough. I also could never be a restaurant reviewer because I have this inability to identify tastes and smells. I would eat something and only be able to say “it tastes good” without identifying what “it” is.

Is it lunchtime yet?