Dick Clark

Didn’t Dick Clark seem to be one of those rare celebrities whom just about everyone liked? I’m sure there were some people who didn’t like him, since everyone is disliked by somebody, but he just seemed so well regarded for so many decades. There aren’t too many people you can say that about.

I always liked Dick Clark but didn’t think all that much about him, probably because he was just so familiar during my lifetime and a few decades before. He was just a part of our culture. Pretty much everyone has seen the New Year’s Eve specials. People of a certain age watched American Bandstand and I remember watching it on Saturdays, along with Soul Train. Didn’t Dick also host $25,000 Pyramid? I watched that game show all the time but I don’t remember the host. There was also the immortal TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Clark and Ed McMahon. The man did a lot.

It’s extraordinary to think of how much of pop music history Dick Clark witnessed firsthand and had a hand in creating. Between him and Don Cornelius, the two of them saw just about everyone who would make it in music someday. I was watching a retrospective of the artists on American Bandstand and it was sort of breathtaking how many big artists got their starts on the show. They showed the Jackson 5 getting their big break on Bandstand, Sonny and Cher in black and white, Barry Manilow, Bon Jovi, John Travolta talking about the upcoming Saturday Night Fever, Neil Diamond, a barely-old-enough-to-drive Janet Jackson, Gloria Estefan and a very green Madonna telling Dick she wanted “to conquer the world.”

How amazing is it that he was there at the start of so many stellar careers? How lucky was Dick Clark?

The first New Year’s Eve after he had his stroke, Dick showed up at Times Square barely able to speak. That had to be one of the saddest things I’d ever seen on TV — America’s eternal teenager laid low. It brought a big “thud” to the ball dropping.

But the more I think about it now, the fact that Dick Clark continued to go to New Year’s Eve was not depressing but triumphant. The guy was in his 80s and even a stroke couldn’t keep him away from Times Square. He was in his 80s and was worse for wear but he was still there, a witness to pop culture. How lucky he was to do what he did.

Age Is More Than a Number

I disagree with the saying that “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” Or maybe I agree with it since the double negative makes the statement actually mean “Age is something but a number.” Or is it a triple negative with that “but,” leaving the original point intact? My 37-year-old head is confused.

My point is that age certainly does signify something more than a number. We infer meaning from so many aspects of our lives — profession, geographic location, physical appearance, education — that why should age be the one attribute free of any semiotic meaning? It seems like “Age ain’t nothing but a number” is just something that people say when they want to justify hooking up with someone significantly older or younger than they are.

Investing age with meaning doesn’t have to be all judgment and snickering all the time. If we treated all people equally regardless of age, we would lose the following benefits of our society:

Medicare
Social Security
Protection of children from pornography
Senior discounts at stores
Child labor laws
Dispensation from fasting for Catholics over 65
Child protective services
Free transportation for seniors
Free admission for kids to various events
Statutory rape laws
Pedophilia laws
General respect for the elderly

I’m exaggerating a little here because certain of the above are not guaranteed to people solely due to their chronological ages. For example, we protect kids from abuse because they’re unable to defend themselves as well as adults, not just because their ages are in single digits, and we offer healthcare to the elderly because they cannot very well work until they die. Conversely, we wouldn’t deny the above benefits to people who are more capable than their peers. We won’t deny Medicare to 65-year-olds who run marathons and we won’t stop protecting kids from abuse just because they look like they can take care of themselves. It works both ways.

People can’t only disregard age when it flatters them while continuing to accrue age’s benefits. My age isn’t the totality of me but I will not deny that my age definitely has real meaning rather than just being two random numbers. To say that a person’s chronological age has no meaning is almost to deny time itself.

Locally Grown Apathy

Chalk this up to my ignorance or irresponsibility but I just don’t have any interest in whether or not my food is locally grown. If you care, then by all means you should support something you’re passionate about, but this is just not an issue that I care about at all. I can’t muster enough passion on this to power a CFL.

If someone makes me something from the garden, I’ll happily accept it since it came from someone I know. I certainly won’t turn my nose up at something locally grown but I don’t require it. However, if I’m dispassionately buying food from a restaurant or supermarket, I’m not that interested in where the food came from, except as a point of curiosity. You can serve me mushrooms from Kennett Square or fly them in from Thailand; I don’t give a shit.

You can be honest with me: Am I horrible?

The thing is that my Dad worked in the Acme warehouse for decades so I support larger supermarkets because they literally and figuratively put meat on our table for years. I understand that supporting locally grown food supports the economy but shopping at a big supermarket also must have some positive effect on the economy. Those employees at my Acme have jobs because people continue to shop there.

Another reason I haven’t hopped on the local food train is cost. I was just reading about local businesses that are popping up all over Brooklyn selling food and beverages that are totally grown within the borough. That’s great but I just don’t have the cash to spend $9 on a jar of jam or $6 on artisanal mayo. I just … the money isn’t there. I do not have it. More accurately, of course I do have $15 but extrapolate that into buying nothing but local artisanal food every week and it would become ridiculously expensive and I need to spend that money on other things. I don’t give enough of a shit to make that kind of sacrifice.

And I’m sorry, not to impugn the motives of people who are passionate about locally grown food, but given that Brooklyn is the Mecca of hipsters with trust funds, I have to ask: Is paying a premium for mayo with a fancy label just another pose for some people to strike, hoping everyone is watching?

Anyhoo, the answer is no. For me, it’s Smuckers preserves and Kraft mayo with a coupon, picked up at the dreaded Big Box Acme.

OooooOOOOOOOhhhhh … Biiiigg Booooxxx! (read in scary ghost voice)

Shopping locally is an important cause but there are a lot of important causes in the world and I’d like a break from this one, please. I recycle. I try to save energy. I drive a fuel efficient car. There may be some locavores who do not do any of the above and that’s OK because nobody is the Christ of the environment. We can’t all do everything perfectly but if you care about this cause and I care about that one, then maybe we can team up and have a positive effect.

Macbeth

… and now our goddamn washer broke. Great!

We resolved this pretty fast. It broke Sunday and by Wednesday, we had the new one. I was still less than happy about the expense because nobody likes to shell out for new appliances at the spur of the moment. I didn’t want to wait to get a new one because it’s annoying to live without a washer and have to wash your clothes at Laundromats and parents’ houses. We went without a dishwasher and dryer for months because there are other ways to dry clothes and wash dishes but I’ll be damned if I’m beating my clothes on a rock.

I guess it wasn’t that much of a surprise that the thing finally went. The old washer was so ‘70s that I’m surprised it didn’t come in avocado green. We got six years out of it after moving into our house so we can’t really complain because even when we moved in, it looked like it wasn’t long for this world. It had started doing weird things lately like getting stuck on the first cycle for 45 minutes so I had a feeling it was on its last legs.

The washer is about the last major appliance in our house to go. We already replaced the dryer, dishwasher and oven. We even bought a new HVAC system and windows and replaced some old water pipes just for the hell of it. The one replacement that still looms: The hot water heater.

Steve tells me not to say that too loud because the hot water heater might very well break. But what the hell. In the spirit of Friday the 13^th, I’m going to break a bunch of superstitions today.

I don’t think I’m terribly superstitious, aside from my quirk of leaving the room during a tied Phillies or Eagles game when the team might be about to score (this has worked and I have missed a few great plays but my team has still won, which is what matters). I sort of believe in jinxes, like not saying someone will win something because then they will lose. But this may be due more to my pessimistic nature than anything else. Of course, I do have religious beliefs that some people might see as superstitious.

I don’t believe at all in things like Friday the 13^th being bad luck. In our house, it’s usually a holiday and Steve watches the titular movies. Plus, how bad can Friday the 13^th really be? It’s still a Friday so for most people, the work week is over. I don’t think 13 is an unlucky number and would get a kick out of staying on the 13^th floor in any hotel that would have one.

I don’t care about black cats (good, considering that Cerys is a few white patches and stripes away from being black) or breaking mirrors or walking under ladders or anything like that. I don’t even think about that stuff.

One superstition I scoff at is the idea that saying Macbeth during a play or rehearsal is bad luck. Most performers have been on shows that have had so many disastrous moments that how could mentioning Macbeth by name have made things any worse? It just used to amuse the piss out of me when people minced around saying “the Scottish play.” There were enough people in all those years of theater that I couldn’t stand that I regret not stripping naked and yelling “MACBETH” repeatedly while forming a conga line, just to horrify those people.

In fact, I will now make up for some lost opportunities.

MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH!

And if the Macbeth superstition doesn’t horrify you, the image of me screaming it, naked with ass wiggling, should.

What a Disaster

I won’t be seeing Titanic in 3-D. I have no desire to plunk down $22 or whatever to see a movie I thought was OK in an extra dimension. This experience is for fanboys and fangirls and I’m not one of them.

I don’t even remember Titanic that well as I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces since I saw it in the theater in 1998. The set design and recreation of the ship were impeccable and that alone made it worth seeing. The disaster itself was well done. I hated the script as Rose and Jack had to keep repeating “Do you trust me, Rose?” and “I trust you, Jack” 400 times a second. It could have been a better movie with a different screenwriter.

Gloria Stuart was good. Leonardo DiCaprio was fine and I love Kate Winslet in pretty much anything. I thought it was funny when she recently said “My Heart Will Go on” makes her throw up when she hears it now. She said someone always plays the song whenever she goes to a restaurant or bar and I'm sure that is very tiresome. God knows that in 1998, the sound of that Irish flute or whatever was ipecac. The song bludgeoned me to death via constant airplay that it overwhelmed any of the merits of the song, like “I Will Always Love You.”

That said, I absolutely love disaster movies. I will watch any disaster movie, no matter how implausible. We Netflixed a lot of classic movies in this genre. I loved The Poseidon Adventure, particularly for poor Shelly Winters, who has drowned in every movie we’ve seen her in. The Towering Inferno was great and a little ridiculous and kind of upsetting. I wonder if they’ve shown this on TV since 9/11, what with people falling out of a burning skyscraper and all.

I can even enjoy the stupid disaster movies. The Day After Tomorrow was laughable, particularly when they outran the waves of ice. It was so dumb that it could actually turn people away from believing in climate change. It was the same with 2012. The sight of John Cusack’s limo outrunning gaping chasms in the Earth was so ridiculous that it would make me doubt the Mayan prophecy entirely, if I already didn’t buy any of it.

But was dumb as those movies were, I still enjoyed them. There’s something about impending death on a mass scale that must speak to me.

Brian tells it like it is on telling it like it is

Sometimes the sentiment that “So-and-so tells it like it is” can really mean “So-and-so is an asshole.” It’s a polite way of excusing unreasonable behavior. You know who else “tells it like it is”? Your crotchety great uncle, using the N-word and the F-word and every other derogatory word during Thanksgiving dinner. What a character.

This can be especially true in politics, when outspoken elected officials say offensive things and people laud their honesty. I believe this is the appeal of Gov. Chris Christie: He tells it like it is, telling unionized teachers to go to hell and making crude remarks to young women at town hall meetings. If we were to tell it like it is about this guy, we’d be calling him a morbidly obese prick.

Oh, do my words offend you? Well, I’m just telling it like it is. Just shake your head and chuckle at what a character I am.

You can forgive that sort of bluntness in family or friends but I don’t understand why brutal honesty is such a prime selling point for presidential candidates. Ross Perot told it like it was and he was a great novelty act but the nation took a second look and realized it didn’t really want him as a leader. If “telling it like it is” is a reason for you to vote someone in to office, you should just vote for anyone with a big fucking mouth. Sophia Petrillo and Archie Bunker would have been your candidates.

It’s nice to admire candid candidates but that one shouldn’t consider the style of expression over the substance of the message. I wonder how much of the conflict between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum boils down to the honest Santorum vs. the slick Romney. What matters as far as those two is the actual positions they espouse, not simply that one might flip-flop and the other might be brutally honest. I would hope anyone who votes for Santorum would actually agree with his positions, not just admire how stentorian he is. I can almost hear people saying, “I don’t agree with him but I admire how he speaks his mind.” So what. Millions of people speak their minds and they’re not qualified for higher office. What we need are leadership skills and workable solutions to problems, not just personalities.

Honesty is a good human trait but I don’t think it’s necessarily a good trait for an elected official. I think to lead this country, you need to be able to deliver a whole pile of steaming bullshit when the situation calls for it. Presidents need to be able to get their hands messy with the sausage of laws and not just approach everything with childlike honesty. You need to approach that job with at least a small degree of savvy and not just open your big mouth whenever you want.

Slow Down

I have started driving a little slower during my commute from work. I read somewhere that every 5 mph that you drive over 60 mph decreases your fuel efficiency by a certain amount, so I’m sticking to 60. This is a switch from my usual tearing down 202 like a bat out of hell.

Yes, I’m that guy puttering along on the right lane. I only started last week so I don’t know yet if it’s making a difference. It’s not taking any longer to get to or from work. I’m only doing this during my commute since Steve would probably laugh at me doing only the speed limit on I-495 when we’re out on the weekends. Incidentally, I’m taking I-95 more in Delaware since it’s apparently a shorter route so maybe that will help my gas mileage.

With gas prices so laughably insane, I’ll give it a shot and see if it helps. Gas is a little cheaper in Delaware, especially at BJ’s but it’s still like $3.75, not much cheaper than the BP down the street. I try to get gas near home since it’s a little cheaper. I once went way down almost to empty because we had an office Christmas party way up in New Hope so I went all the way home on fumes to get to BJ’s for cheap gas. The warning light came on and everything. BJ’s gas can be a pain, though. There’s usually a long line and the pumps are slow. They say the pumps will reach around if your gas tank is on the opposite side but they really don’t.

There are certain things I won’t do to increase gas mileage. I have read that some of the more extreme “hypermilers” will tailgate trucks and turn off their engines so the drag pulls them along. Ain’t no way. They also say you shouldn’t sit idle at a red light or in traffic for more than 30 seconds or something but I’m not shifting gears and turning on and off my engine every five seconds while crawling on 202. However, I am trying to coast along a little, especially downhill.

It does help that I’m able to work from home one day a week. I save gas and sanity. Plus, I get a lot done at home as I can “stay” late since I’m already home and I can get laundry and stuff done. My commute will get easier when the schools get out and people start taking more days off in the summer. The springtime is the worst for driving since I swear people come out of the woodwork to enjoy the weather and run errands at 8 a.m. that could easily wait until after rush hour.

My car is just about to hit 100,000 miles in less than five years. I will hang on to my Civic as long as I possibly can and knock on wood, it should last for some time longer. I had considered some type of hybrid but I’m not sure how cost effective it would be. It’s extra money up front and I don’t know how long it would be before I save some on gas. I had read about one electric car that they only go 40 miles before they need a charge and that would not work for me since my commute is 30-some miles each way. What am I going to do, charge it up at lunch? Who am I kidding anyway? We all know I’m just going to trade my Civic in for another one. When the time comes, I should get one in the same shade of red and see who notices it’s a new car.

Still, it’s annoying to slow down on the highway and get passed by everyone, almost emasculating, but I’d rather have a little extra cash.