I Just Want To Keep Reading

I was a little skeptical when I started reading "I Just Want My Pants Back." The first 35 or so pages made me wonder if this was another one of those implausible instances where a dorky looking underemployed guy has great success with women - the book version of "Knocked Up" or something.

But now that I'm almost done, I really like it.

The author, David Rosen, knows how to tease humor out of the most mundane situations. Here's his account of buying a lighter: "I slipped out to a bodega on the counter and bought a lighter. I chose the one featuring a photo of a Hispanic woman in a bikini eating a hot dog. It exuded class, and I was most certainly a gentleman." p. 161-162

And as squishy as it sounds to say this, I really like what he has to say about the bittersweet experience of growing up: "I just didn't want to spend the bulk of my waking hours on this planet yawning and sighing and waiting for five o'clock all for the little bits of green paper that eventually blew out of my life and into the hands of cabdrivers, bartenders, drug dealers, and bodega cashiers. But I hadn't found a reasonable altnerative yet. And it wasn't working at some "real" but equally uninspiring job until ten every night so I coudl afford more expensive jeans and double desserts. Although lately I'd thought I heard Tina mumble when picking out restaurants that a certain place might be too expensive. To expensive for me, is what she meant. There just had to be some way I could beat the system." p. 52

Now if only they'd make a movie out of it...

Postscript: On the book's web site, there's a "trailer" for the book. It looks like just clip art and random video segments, but I think this is the first time I've ever seen a trailer for a book.

Gimmicky, But Worth Reading. Sort Of.

I'm reading a book called "Not Quite What I Was Planning." It's a collection of six-word biographies.

Normally, I don't like gimmicks, but this one interests me (count the words in the title of this post. Go on, count 'em). Most of these biographies are by people I've never heard of (who are you, Jerry Richstein?) but there are a few D-list celebrities in here too, like Joan Rivers and Mario Batali.

Anyway, a lot of these biographies are sappy, like high school class mottos you get on your graduation day T-shirt or the tagline for a Hallmark Hall of Fame Special Presenation.

But then, some of them are good. A few of my favorites:

I was born some assembly required. -Eric Jordan

I am trying, in every regard. -Lionel Shriver

Time heals all wounds? Not quite. - Jonathan Miles

Risked it all; wasn't quite enough - Greta Orris

Employee of the Month, Part II

Once again, names have been altered a little to shield the unsuspecting. With advance apologies to Pista, whose observational style I'm mimicking.

Greg: When I was 16, I worked at the same restaurant as Greg, a twentysomething cook who had a violent temper. He was a boxer and once punched me in the stomach so hard I couldn't breath for about sixty seconds. He felt bad about it right away and asked me if I wanted some ice cream. When I said no, he said "How about a beer?" He would go crazy if he burned something or a recipe didn't turn out and threw a lot of potholders, rags and sometimes pots and pans. What do people like that, people who can't control their tempers, do in the real world?

Chris: Chris and I worked in the same office as Melody and Carol. Women outnumbered men in that office at least two to one, so I think he was glad when I got hired because it meant another guy would be working there. He didn't know my name for a long time, though, so usually addressed me as "Hey, man." He really wanted to talk sports. I did my best, but you can only conceal ignorance and apathy for so long. He got married and moved to the suburbs a year after I started working at his office.

Jason: Jason was my boss when I worked in a government office. He was rigid about some things, like phone etiquette and filing, and not at all about other things, like political corectness. He and another colleague once talked about women's pubic hair in a common area of the building. How he never got slapped with a sexual harassment suit or something is beyond me. He would also send mass text messages, usually about politics. At first I thought he was just sending them to me and was kind of annoyed by it. When I found out he was sending them to everyone in his phone, I was still annoyed.

Ted: The place where Ted and I worked was really into theme days. Almost every day of the week had a theme, be it "Fun Fridays" or "Breakfast Wednesdays." I thought everyone liked it, so I played along. (I won one a recipe box in some sort of office contest and as I walked up to get my prize, the head boss said "Good. Now you have somewhere to stash your pot.") About halfway through my time there I found out that Ted, for one, hated the false chipper-ness too. I didn't know employees had to buy a lot of the stuff for these productions until the day he gave me a ride to my other job in his Dodge Caravan because he had to run to the grocery store and buy muffins. These days were expensive, he grumbled, and boring and took away from real work. I was very glad to know that someone else felt the same way because I thought I was alone in my silent dread of these things. Ted's son was really good at karate or something and his other kid was really good at marching band - so good he spent a lot of weekends driving to marching tournaments to watch him or her (or maybe it was the same kid. I can't remember). Anyway, I sometimes think Ted was the only one in that office who had a soul.

Employee of the Month, Part I

Fellow worker drones are great.

If you think about it, you spend more time with these people than you do with your own family. I think the reason shows like "The Office" are so funny is because they capture how you're forced to play nice with people you work with even if you don't want to.

So far I've been really lucky because I have liked most of the people I've worked with (and I'm using past tense for a reason - I haven't worked with any of these people for at least two years.) Here's a summary of some of the women who've been employed at the same places where I've been a wage slave. Names have been changed (somewhat) to protect the innocent.

Melody: Melody started her job at the office where I was a file clerk shortly after I was hired. She had a cryptic smile and held on to conversations for too long. She invited me to her church, sort of a pan-Christian megachurch in the suburbs, a lot even after she found out I was Catholic with no plans of converting and told me that I shouldn't call people imbeciles because that's what they used to call mentally retarded people in the 1800s. I don't think I ever called anyone an imbecile in her presence. It's not really a word I use.

Carol: Carol was the office manager at the same place where I worked with Melody. She was fond of sending mass e-mails saying things like "When you add paper to the copier be sure to fan through the edges so the bits of paper fall out!!! These jam the machine!!!!" She and I had coffee once after I had left and when I idly mentioned that for my new job I was going to have to take a drug test, she gulped on her coffee. "Oh my god," she said. "Are you going to pass?" That's when I realized Carol didn't know me as well as I thought she did.

Julianne: Julianne was strikingly beautiful and very, very mean. I don't know if it was genes or makeup, but her hair and eyes and lips and skin all matched or complemented each other perfectly and she dressed the way models in catalogs are dressed. She was an agressive feminist and was kind of hostile towards me - I don't know if those two things are related. Anyway, she often ripped my work to shreds and was visibly annoyed at just about every effort I made. The lone exception was the time I helped her on a project she would've failed at if not for me. The next day when I came into work, I found two chocolate-chip cookies, purchased from the coffee shop downstairs from our office, in a wax paper enveloped on my desk. They came with a note that said something like "Thanks for all your hard work." Those were good chocolate chip cookies.

Roslyn: Roslyn was a foxy student worker who had the same student-worker job I did. We never really hung out outside of work. One Friday or Saturday night, though, I was talking to her on my phone when my friend grabbed it from me and said something pretty R-rated about her and I. The next time I saw Roslyn, I told her I had been drunk (not true) and that I didn't know what my friend had said (also not true). I am pretty sure she saw through that smoke screen, but didn't let on.

Kelly: Kelly was two years older than me and one of my many bosses at another student-worker job. We're still pretty good friends. To date she has surprised me twice. The first time was when I found out she genuinely likes Britney Spears' music. The second time was when I found after the fact that she had been dating a guy we worked with who I thought was pretty below her station. At first I thought it had been a pointless fling, but then I later learned that she really liked him.

Temporarily Sated

I have complained, once or twice, about how hard a time I have finding good new music.

The good news: I won't be able to make that complaint for the next five minutes or so because I got the new Death Cab for Cutie Album, "Narrow Stairs."

At first, I was kind of disappointed with it. Their last one, "Plans," is one of my favorite CDs and is a tough act to follow.

But now, after having it for a few days, I've come to really like it, especially "Bixby Canyon Bridge" and "No Sunlight." The music here is a little rougher and has more of an edge. They get into the Wilco-ish idea of having all the instruments crash together at once, but the mournful lyrics and vocals I've come to know and appreciate are the same.

I have the suspicion...

...that "The Abstinence Teacher" by Tom Perrotta was one of those books I was supposed to find darkly humorous and ironic.

I didn't, but I liked it anyway.

Written humor is really hard for me to get, so I could only appreciate this book on its surface, which is a story about lonely pro-sex high school health teacher Ruth Ramsey and Tim Mason, the lonely, troubled born-again Christian whose abstinence-only church is making trouble for Ruth.

In an interview, Perrotta said this book was about "the culture wars" over sexual values and sex education. On that front, it's pretty easy to see where Perrotta's opinions lie - sex should be had frequently and treated frankly and abstinence/chastity are bad ideas.

As a novel, "The Abstinence Teacher" is easy to appreciate. Perrotta inhabits his characters well and succeds at creating the feeling that Stonewood Heights could be any suburb anywhere in America. My only complaint is that he's stuffed it with way too many supporting characters who aren't worth their presence in his book.

On an unrelated note, I hear they're making this into a movie, so that's good.

Birds, bees...Oh, I get it.

The 15-Second Movie Review

Here, I try a new approach to reviewing movies. The topic: "Speed Racer," which I saw this weekend.

Good:

• The visual effects. "Speed Racer" looks like it took place inside a psychedelic pinball machine, and I like psychedelic pinball machines.
• Emile Hirsch. Even though he's hardly in this movie (which should be in the Weird category since he plays the title character) I still have a lot of respect for him after seeing "Into the Wild."
• Eye Candy - cool cityscapes, impressive digital set pieces, Christina Ricci.

Weird:

• The fact that the Racer family has three sons and they're all about 20 years apart.
• Seeing Jack from "Lost" with hair.

Bad:

• The story line: Something about the company that sponsors the winning driver does well, so the races get fixed to rig stock prices... blah blah blah.
• The villian: He wasn't very villainous.
• Paying $8 to get into the movie. Ticket prices went up a quarter. Do you really need that extra 25 cents, Duluth 10? Huh? Do you really?