Movies I Shouldn't Like, Part 1

Way back, when mastodons still roamed the Earth and I was still in college, I had a conductor who stood in front of the chorus and told us that we needed to know whether a piece of music that we liked was "bad", if it was universally seen among the classical music elite as lacking in some way.

She went on to say that we all like a few of these pieces, something that everyone else sees as not worth the time of our well-honed ears. This was fine, she said, but if we knew what was good for us, we'd like them in secret.

I rolled my eyes about it at the time, believing with all the fierce integrity of one's early twenties that a piece of music is only really great if you, yourself, love it. Even if everyone else on the planet hates it, it can still be great to you, so why be afraid to trumpet that from the rooftops? (How else would you explain Phillip Glass, for example?)

Along with my pragmatic thirties, I have acknowledged a certain inevitability that what she said long ago holds some truth. There are some things that shouldn't be discussed with the sort of vigor that this sort of thing brings, this love of something you know full well everyone else thinks is mediocre. Certainly not in polite company.

This brings us, this evening, to You've Got Mail. (Spoiler alert, but geez, if you haven't seen it in the last ten years, that's not really my problem, is it?) I mean, it's a remake of a Jimmy Stewart movie. Have you ever seen a Jimmy Stewart movie and thought, "This would be so much better without him?" I just did a quick scan of a couple of websites with movie ratings and it gets a pretty solid 6/10. Not horrible, but not great.

I have seen this damn movie about a hundred times. It's like a bloody magnet. The cursor on my cable guide is inevitably drawn to it whenever it appears. For heaven's sake, it's not even the best movie that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have made together, but I'm watching it again right this very second.

Maybe it's the shrug Tom Hanks gives her at the end, that "sorry it's me, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that now," all rolled into one little movement. Maybe it's him bringing her daises and desperately trying to give away that he's NY152 (yes, I know the screen names they used, off the top of my head) but not quite having the guts to say it yet, when he visits her while she's sick. Maybe it's the way they both fake typing about 700 words per minute, or the totally unrealistic way that their "internet" works, especially for 1998. Maybe it was Tom Hanks and the speech about the "goddamn piazza" when he's on the treadmill.

Heck, I don't have an explanation for it. I'm embarrassed to even post this. But dammit, I like this movie, and I don't care who knows it.

What's worse, though, is that this isn't even close to being the "worst" movie that I secretly love. That's what the "Part 1" in the post title is all about. As I get my courage up, I plan to reveal all five or so of them. And oh, boy, some of them are bad.

(Now, if you could conveniently forget this whole thing and go back to thinking of me as a culture snob, I'd appreciate it.)

To the Networks:

Hi there. Let's get right to the point.

There are some shows that are going to be really popular, and there are some shows that will have smaller audiences. It's time that you embraced the idea that, by definition, not every show is going to be in the top ten.

If you have shows that are good, well-written, well-acted, and they have loyal, but (gasp!) smaller than top ten audiences, just keep the show for cryin' in the sink. I bet you there are some advertisers who can't afford to buy time during your blockbuster shows, but who would be more than willing to pay for some time on a middling-popularity sort of show.

Let me 'splain to you why this would be good. We, the viewers, wouldn't see the same blessed ads over and over again. Do you know what we do when we're inundated with the same damn ad over and over? We ignore it. It becomes part of the furniture. Some of us are so aggrieved that we mute the damn things, we're so sick of them.

So what do you think would happen if you had a wider variety of advertisers, based on a wider variety of fees? We'd pay more attention to ads! They might, you know, actually work, to make us want to buy things. You can back up your ability to sell their product.

And you know what else? Stop counter-programming popular shows with other shows that would be of interest to the same audience that watches the show you're programming it against. That just sucks. Some of us have to TiVo to see stuff because we're busy with the kiddos, or we, you know, just want to turn off the TV every now and again. Most of us don't have two TiVos or a dual-tuner one, so you make us have to choose.

Out of spite, I always choose the established show over the new one. Do you know why? Because you could have chosen any time to put it on, but you intentionally made me choose. You're the one causing the conflict, so I ignore the new show. This is why I don't watch Heroes, though I've tried to find my way into it with the Sci-Fi reruns (sadly, to no avail, because it just doesn't seem to hook me in). I know I can watch 'em online, too, but I didn't find that out until later, when I'd already tried a few reruns and didn't find it pulling me in.

But NBC, you put Heroes against 24. You made me choose, so I stuck with the network that DIDN'T make me choose. You lose a viewer, not that it much matters because that particular show is a hit without me and my ilk.

Instead of whacking all the shows that have the potential to attract the same sort of audience into the same damn time slot in some sort of network-based game of chicken, hows about programming them against unlike competition, so that people of differing tastes are served at the same time, albeit maybe (say it's not so) by your network at that particular time.

Now, I notice that the show "Thank God You're Here", which could be interesting to people who like comedy improv on against 24. You might not think that comedy improv and terrorism drama overlap, but I bet you a lot of the 24 watchers would give "Thank God You're Here" a try if they weren't on against each other. I think they're probably both younger audiences who like offbeat, break-the-rules sort of shows.

Why, when there are a week's worth of other choices? Why doesn't anyone put anything on against some of those asinine half-hour sitcoms or plethora of reality game shows?

Oh, screw it. The networks aren't listening to me, anyway.

Do You Do Public Speaking?

Well, if you do, and I mean even just the occasional presentation at work, I have an odd piece of advice for you. Even if you like to write fiction, I think this will still help you.

Go download a podcast. Fast forward it past the goofy music and whatnot at the beginning until you get to the meat of the thing. Ideally, you'll grab one that has either one, or maybe just two speakers.

Open your favorite text editor. Put on some headphones. Arrange your media player so you can see the pause/play button behind the text editor. Press play, and start transcribing what's said. (You'll have to pause from time to time to catch up unless they talk deliberately or you type even faster than I do, but I'm over 100 wpm, so good luck there.)

Then, as you get used to it, start editing what they say for readability. Eliminate false starts and re-order sentences that are poorly structured. If they make up words and it's not a "fun" word invention, but because their vocabulary didn't supply the right one, correct it.

Do about five minutes. Go up to ten if you can take it. Do that every once in awhile. Don't do the same podcast twice so you'll really have to listen. It'll take you about an hour maybe, at first, to do ten minutes of audio. You'll slowly get faster. But that's not why you're doing this.

When you write down what someone says when they are speaking to impart information in the clearest, most interesting way possible (because, if that's not the point of a good podcast, I can't think of a reason for them to be) you will really begin to see what works and what doesn't.

I can now hear all the run-on sentences that come out of my mouth. I know where to break them to make the ideas easier to understand. Best of all, I have a much better sense of how long I have to get an idea across before the people listening start to think, "Oh, please. Just hurry up."

I am sad to tell you that the more questionable the subject of the podcast, the more of a scam it sounds like, the better the public speaking is. It's clean, quick, easy to follow. It makes the listeners feel smart and involved, and it draws them in. I can see how the scams work now. They make their pigeons feel so much a part of what's being proposed that I'm surprised there aren't more people taken in by them.

Do yourself a favor. If you have to speak to more than two or three people on a even a semi-regular basis, it's worth the work just to really hear what does and doesn't work in our fine, fine language. I really think it will work for you. (And it will only cost you $39.97, payable in five installments.)

Pier 1 Trip, Target Trip

I have a feed that tells me when website shops are having sales, and one day recently, a Pier 1 sale popped in there.

I looked at the stuff and was surprised to see that they sell children's toys. Some of them were cute, and really cheap when they were on sale, too. However, the shipping costs seemed a little high, and it was about time for the B and I to go out now that both of us are feeling better.

I mapped out the closest Pier 1, realized then that I had seen it before and that it wasn't very far away, and got us ready to go. It wasn't until we walked in that I realized what a colossally bad idea it was.

You see, she's very excited to be walking. She doesn't tolerate the stroller as well as she used to, and I like her to be able to move around a little on her own, anyway.

But just picture a Pier 1 in your head. All sorts of glasses and dishes, along with other smallish doo-dads made out of glass. Whoever does the shelving there obviously never intended for anyone with a small child to go through there, because everything that a kid could grab, throw on the ground, and break, is right at her eye level.

Or maybe that's a good source of revenue, parents paying for the stuff their kids break.

None of their children's toys were in the store I went to. Looks like it's mainly a website thing, or maybe just larger Pier 1 stores. I, quite wisely, I think, decided to beat it out of there before I was the proud owner of some multi-colored, formerly shabby-chic glass shards.

The day wasn't a total loss, though. We had some play time outside (look for a post about that soon) and I also took the B to Target to stock on up Targetty things. And speaking of Target, I really like the little section at the front of the Targets I've been in recently, where they have bins of stuff for $1 and other bins of 2/$5. There's kid stuff in there most of the time, and some of it is really cute.

That being said, yesterday they had these board books about zoo animals, and there's a rubber version of whatever animal the book is about embedded on the last page, with the rest of the book cut through over it so you can see the rubber animal on each page. When you press on the animal, it squeaks. Our Target had the elephant, panda, and hippo, but the back of the books say there's a tiger one too.

So, if you're reading this and you're going off to your local Target, drop me a line. If no one else has found me the tiger version and you don't mind looking for it, I'd be glad to reimburse you the buck and the shipping if you find the tiger one. The B really likes these books and some collector in me would love to have the whole set.

Tax Man

Tonight at 6:00, I met with a charming man with an MBA on his wall. He took the planner he'd emailed me that I printed and filled out (which he makes easy to do as long as you keep the tax papers that arrive in the mail) along with a few pieces of paper from me. He made small talk as he typed, asking about the B while his wife chided me from the outer office for not bringing her with me.

(Mind you, I'd only been there once before, about a year ago, to have our taxes done last year. They are smart businesspeople, to have such information at their fingertips, the sort of stuff that makes people feel at home there.)

After a story about his four year-old grandson, I heard the printer start printing. He got up, telling me that the B would grow up faster that I could imagine, and came back with our completed tax forms. He got us what I'm sure is the largest amount we could possibly be entitled to on the up-and-up back as a refund. He continued the small talk as he used two self-inking stamps to address my federal and state return envelopes, then went nuts with a stapler, attaching the mister's W-2 to both.

I glanced at the clock on his wall. It said 6:12. I was already writing out his check, and he told me the fee amount as he handed over the envelopes to me. It was an embarrassingly tiny percentage of the money he'd just gotten us back on our taxes. I filled the figure in on the check and handed it over to him.

He shook my hand and we got up, moving back to the outer office, where I was made to promise that the baby would come with me the next time.

Holy frickin' heck, I love finding a place where I know I'm getting a good deal, where I feel better leaving the joint than I did when I walked in. I was stressing hard about the taxes last year when I found this place. I stressed again this year that it would be an awful ordeal, even though this place worked out so well last year.

I am so glad to have been wrong. One weight, gone from my shoulders.

Review: Cocoa Peeps

cocoa peeps
Originally uploaded by cammom.

I've read a lot of smack about the new Cocoa Peeps, and I have to say, now that I've hunted down a pack of them and tried them, I don't see what's not to like.

Many people dislike traditional Peeps because they're too sweet, and there's no such issue here. The marshmallow on the inside is pretty mellow, and the cocoa on the outside is sweet without being overbearing.

Imagine a cup of cocoa with marshmallows, but with the ratio reversed...a lot of rich marshmallow taste, tinged with a chocolate flavor. And who doesn't like hot chocolate?

All in all, I liked 'em. Good luck finding them, though. I looked all over the place, all the places that normally carry the pink and yellow and blue variety, but it wasn't until I really hunted around the shelves at Target that I finally got some.

(And thanks to cammom who had a CC-licensed photo of the package on Flickr for me to put here so you'd all know what they look like. I forgot to take a picture of mine until, well, it was too late. I suppose I could take a picture of my hips, because that's what they look like now.)

Pet Peeve: Log In/Log On

Repeat after me, people on television talking about websites. (I think this whole thing may be the fault of the Today Show, because I heard this horrifying thing there a long time before it became as pervasive as it is now.)

If you enter a URL in your location bar and your browser loads up the website, which you can then use to view the information the talking head on the television was sending you to without entering a username and password, then you do NOT "log in" or "log on" to that site. A URL is not a login. (sigh) If you need a verb, which I suppose you do, I suggest "navigate to". Although that's scary to the people who fear multi-syllable words. Maybe "point your browser to..." if you must.

If you don't know what either of those means, you should either get someone hip to 'splain it to you or just sell the computer and go back to reading books, which is probably what most of us should be doing anyway.

And, if by some chance, television people, the website you are directing people to does require a login and password in order to view the content that you are sending them to, by all means tell them to "log in" or "log on". Because that's what they're doing.

Navigating your browser to a site via a URL does not equal log on.

It's not just non-tech people who do this, either. Back when TechTV still was around, the people on their shows used to say this all the time. Nails on a blackboard, I tell you. Chinese water torture. If Jack Bauer thought I had information about the "nukuler bombs", he could skip cutting off my finger and just proceed to screaming, "Log on! Log on!" in my ear and I'd spill.

Now you may go about your business. Thank you for reading. Not that this will do any good, other than making me feel 0.000001% better about the whole thing.

Required Monthly Test

Can someone tell me why the "required monthly test" that my cable system runs turns my channel to QVC? I mean, of all channels, it's always QVC.

Is this a secret conspiracy to get people to buy overpriced computers and those ugly-ass dolls?

And does QVC pay extra for this honor? I wonder if it actually increases their sales.

(For the record, they were selling some ugly weathervane thing when it switched over just now. A great reminder why nothing I'd ever want at a price I'm willing to pay will ever be sold on that channel.)

Many Ways to Pay Tribute to Videogaming

About two minutes into this long-assed video of some guys doing some video game pantomiming (cooler than I'm making it sound) they do some Final Fantasy stuff, including the old "holding sword aloft" version of the post-battle celebration.

It's pretty good. Maybe it's even worth seven minutes of your life. So clicky clicky, huh?

Do You Listen to Many Podcasts?

Hoo, boy. If you don't, I can save you a lot of time looking.

I can tell you from experience that most of them are excruciating! They are either pseudo-intellectual claptrap, or they appear to be actively inciting people to either blindly give over their money (to "change their lives!") or encouraging them to do stupid, reckless, irresponsible, or extremely selfish things.

They instruct people on how to game search engine results (which I know many people do, but not quite as disingenuously as this). They talk about how to "get yours" and how to "not let other people get in your way". They ramble on about art in that way that makes my teeth grind, because they don't even have a clue what they mean and are much more interested in how to scoot through life doing very little work than they are in actually creating anything interesting.

Ugh. It's every stupid conversation you've ever overheard, only broadcast as though it's really, really, good advice.

And if you're wondering how I suddenly know this, I've found a way to make a little tiny bit of extra money while the B is sleeping by transcribing sections of podcasts. It really only works out if you can retain bits of text in your head while typing the bit you just heard a second ago, and if you type rather quickly and with few mistakes.

And no, I'm not telling you where. Most of you have "real jobs" for one, and don't need these micropayments, and for those of you for whom that's not true, I don't fancy the extra competition! The postings disappear quickly enough as it is.

However, it is nice to earn a little bit of money again, even if the amount is really small. Transcriptions are a bit like playing a game, sort of, but getting paid to do it. It's a game to see how quickly I can do it, how many times I can avoid having to rewind, how many of the names I can research quickly on Google to spell correctly.

So, in case any of you were wondering how I fill my time when the B naps, that's how I've been doing it for the last few weeks. But honestly, save yourself the time and avoid 90% of the podcasts out there. Some of them make me feel like my brain is trying to liquefy and seep out of my ears, if only to escape the nattering on.

Miss You, B

Is it weird that, fifteen months on now, I still miss the B when she's in her room sleeping? It's strange that I am so set on her getting plenty of rest (she's so much happier when she's slept enough, which she usually has) yet I usually end up trolling my own photostream at Flickr before I can go to sleep.

I wonder if this part ever wears off.

This was going a different way, but...

I was going to post about how I couldn't make a top five villains post. I saw everyone else's posts and wanted to join in, so I looked at my list of top fifty movies. It turns out that I don't like movies that have villains. The only villains in the movies on my list were Darth, Sauron, Voldemort, the Alien Queen, and possibly the MCP from Tron.

I realize that's five, and I guess you could count that as my list if you wanted to, but none of those feel like they should be on my list. There's just no real bad guys on my list!

So that was what I was going to write about, but when I opened my blog publishing page, I was assaulted by this:

WARNING
This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts. Save your post as a draft or (link removed) click here for more about what's going on and how to get your blog unlocked.

Which fucker out there reported my blog as a spam blog? I don't buy this robot BS. Now I have to wait for a human to OK my blog. Joy. I'm sure I'm in a 5000 person line for that to happen.

So thanks, you splogging assholes, for ruining it for the rest of us. You guys suck more than Hoover.

(And I can now finally publish this post now that I've been declared not spammy.)