Tar-zen's Day Off - Part I

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

This past week, I did something monumental:  I left my house.  For an entire day.  And, OK, so maybe that doesn’t seem like such a watershed event, but then again, I’m the kind of person who, aside from occasionally finding myself semi-conscious at Lowe’s, really just leaves the house to buy groceries and do laundry…and basically I live next door to a grocery store and across the street from a laundromat.  So, it’s not like I have to go that far.  And it’s not like it’s that much of a safari, either.  One time I was going to the store, and it started to rain, so I had to run.  That’s about as exciting as its ever gotten.

I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like if I had a stalker.  That person would die of boredom, I have no doubt, and the only way I’d even find out about it is if the pizza delivery guy showed up at my door one day and said, “Here’s your pizza.  And there’s some dead guy lying out on your curb.”  It would be like an opening scene from Law and Order, and in the end, I’d probably get arrested for depraved indifference to a maniac.   And even if my stalker didn’t die of chronic ennui waiting for me to do something stalker-worthy, I’d probably just find a Post-It note stuck on my door one day that said, “I can’t take it anymore.  I quit.”

Anyway, this week I decided to take a day off from my regularly-scheduled, rather sedate life and go to Toledo  (Ohio, not Spain—I only took one day off, and besides, if I ever went to Spain, I’d call my stalker first just to let him know that there was hope for me yet).  I went there for a guitar festival and to see Jennifer Batten play because I am definitely a fan of hers. But in the course of my journey, I discovered something: after a certain age, being a fan of anyone or anything is more difficult than you’d think because at a certain point, you just have to start making it up as you go along.  But that, as it turns out, isn’t such a bad thing for someone like me.

Now, plenty of grown-ups like plenty of things, but being a “liker” is different than being a “fan.”  The word “fan,” after all, is really just a shortened form of “fanatic,” and I don’t know too many grown-ups who like to describe themselves as “fanatics.”  I mean, there’s just a certain point at which it begins to take on a negative spin that can get you into a whole lot of trouble with a whole lot of government agencies.  Besides, adults are supposed to be level-headed and rational, and if there are two things you don’t usually see in a fanatic, it’s an even-temper and common sense. 

Children are, of course, the best fans on earth because children are inherently fanatical.  About everything.  I mean, you can put kids down on a grassy patch, and they’ll start running around in circles screaming about how great grass is.  And when you take them off the grass, they let out these blood-curdling screams like you’re just killing them…until, of course, you put them down on the pavement, at which point they become fanatical about that.  Children have a ton of energy and really, really short attention spans, so they’re just tailor-made to be fans.  All you have to do is point them in the right direction.

But imagine if adults had that kind of energy and distractibility.  Imagine having the cubicle next to that guy.  He’d spend all day running around in a circle in there screaming “I love this office!  I love this office!”  Imagine being in a staff meeting with someone who spends the whole time jumping up and down yelling, “I love this project!  I love this project!”  “But Jeffrey, we’re going to be done with it next week.”  “No, but why?  Why can’t we keep doing it?  I’m doing it!  I’m doing it more and you can’t stop me!”  “But Jeffrey, the client—“  “I hate the client!  He’s wrecking everything!”  And then the wailing and the sobbing and the pleading would start.  Eventually, he’d end up rolling around on the floor screaming while everyone else tried not to notice.  “He does this every time we have a meeting.”  “Just ignore him.  He has to learn that he can’t always get his way.”  “Yeah, but isn’t he our manager?”

Of course, as children turn into teenagers, things do start to change.  Teenagers roll around on the floor less…or at least for different reasons.  And being a fan starts to take on another dimension.  Teenagers won’t be fans of just anything like children will be, and even when they are fans of somebody, they often won’t admit it because other teenagers might not think it’s cool.  But that only lasts so long.  At some point, teenage fans discover that they are not alone, and then all that repressed fanaticism boils over.  There’s mass screaming and crying and swooning and fainting.  And if they’re Justin Bieber fans, there are also usually a few death threats involved.

One of the strangest incarnations of teenage fanaticism, though, has to be the throwing of underwear at a performer during a concert.  I think that happened to Elvis a lot, and as far as the Beatles went, it was like an undergarment bomb exploded every time they went on stage. A friend of mine told me that just recently, someone threw a bra at Joan Jett during a concert.  So, you know, it happens, but you have to admit, the whole practice is a little strange.  I mean, c’mon people—it’s underwear.  If fans were throwing money or even coupons, that would be one thing.  But it’s underwear, for Christ’s sake.  What are you supposed to do with an entire stage covered with that?  Just think of the safety issues.

It’s also strangely (and thankfully) a practice largely confined to teenage girls.  I mean, can you see some guy lobbing a jock strap at Steven Tyler or Eric Clapton?  Do you suppose John Lennon ever worried about getting beaned with a pair of boxer shorts?  I don’t think even female performers have to worry about that kind of thing because from what I’ve seen, guys just aren’t that willing to part with their underwear.  They’ll yell and scream and carry on, but they’re not giving up their drawers.

And luckily, it’s a totally age-related thing, too.  After all, the bigger and more sensible you get, the bigger and more sensible your underwear gets, and at a certain point, you’re not just throwing your panties on stage; you’re tossing a big ol’ pair of grandma pants up there.  And not only is there something that just seems offensive about that, there actually is something offensive about it.  Imagine being a musician trying to play a song and having a pair of underwear the size of bed sheet come flying at you.  It wouldn’t just be bothersome.  It would be traumatic. “I keep having this nightmare, Doctor, and all I see are these huge underpants with big teeth and claws coming at me.”  It would be a miracle if that performer was ever even able to get on a stage again.

As fans get a little bit older, they eventually just start taking over the look of whomever they happen to be into.  When I was in college in the 80s, you had three choices:  British punk, New Wave, or preppie.  I bounced between New Wave and preppie because with New Wave, you got shoulder pads, and with preppie, you got Weejuns.  It was very practical.  I personally didn’t have enough safety pins to pull off punk, and wearing a mohawk involved putting too much gunk in my hair.  Besides, I was from the suburbs.  We didn’t really know what punk even was, but we were pretty sure it was scary and kind of bad.  Of course, there were always a couple of Madonnas around then, too, and that was cool unless some Pat Benatars showed up, in which case there was likely to be a fight.  My personal favorites were the people who were into Grace Jones.  They were all men, of course, but at least they could work the look.  And they went well with the Princes, who were, of course, all women.

After a certain point, though, the real world sets in and that kind of fandom gets impractical.  After all, you can’t really show up for your job at the bank dressed in a Lady Gaga meat dress, and not too many people want stock advice from someone doing a gangsta rap look.  I mean, when you get to the point where you have to dig your Day-Timer out of the crotch of your pants hanging somewhere down around your knees, you know it’s time to trade in your bling for a Blackberry.  Past a certain age in life, you just have to accept the fact that dressing like a pimp is only appropriate if you actually are a pimp.

But that’s when being a fan starts to get hard because you have no plan to follow.  Sure, there might be mass hysteria, but you’re too tired to participate in it for more than ten minutes.  Besides, you might pull a muscle.  And you’re no longer willing to risk getting your spleen bruised by standing directly in front of a giant stage speaker because while the physical pain would suck, the medical bills would kill you.  And if you start screaming and yelling and carrying on like you did when you were a teenager, people will look at you funny…and then they’ll call the cops on you.  And while I’m sure that being a 40 year-old woman dressed up as, say, Hannah Montana isn’t actually illegal in most states, I don’t know too many people who want to have their sorry asses dragged into a police station for questioning over it.  So, the challenge of being a middle-aged fan is figuring out how to express your fanaticism without incurring a hospital bill or triggering a police investigation.

Then again, while it can be fraught with danger, the absolute lack of direction for fans over 40 is a really good thing for people like me because I’m really pretty terrible at being a fan.  And I always have been.  I wasn’t the kind of little kid you could put down on the lawn and watch run around screaming about what a wonderful thing grass is.  I was allergic to grass.  If you put me down on a patch of it, the only thing you got to watch was me getting hives. And I wasn’t the kind of teenage fan who ever even considered throwing a pair of underwear at a performer.  I liked my underwear.  I needed my underwear.  And my mom would’ve killed me if she found out that I was just randomly throwing it at people because, hey, underwear is expensive, and it’s not like it grows on trees.

Ultimately, I think that being a fan over 40 is kind of like the great equalizer.  It’s the point at which inherently terrible fans like me get to catch up.  It’s where just saying, “I’m a fan” is enough to qualify you as a fan.  The most you’ll ever have to do after that is enter your credit card numbers into the Ticketmaster website, and there’s certainly no reason for you to dress up or scream and carry on just to do that.  But beyond even that, being a Jennifer Batten fan over 40 is kind of like sweet revenge for all incompetent fans everywhere.  Batten is basically an electric guitar virtuoso who does a multi-media show, and the whole point of going to see her is that you show up, sit down, and shut up.  You’re supposed to watch and listen.  If you got up and started jigging around and screaming and flinging undergarments hither and yon, about half the audience would probably call the police.  Hell, Jennifer Batten would probably stop and call the cops on you herself.  If nothing else, you’d almost certainly get some of the most memorable WTF looks in music history.  It’s the kind of situation where a calm fan is a good fan, and given that I am often positively inert, my prowess at being a fan is very nearly the stuff of legends.

So, this past weekend, I went to Toledo.  I saw an amazing musician play an incredible show.  But even more than that, I actually was a fan.  And it was wonderful because what I discovered is that it’s virtually impossible to fail at being a fan when you’re over 40.  No one expects anything from you.  You just have to utter the magic phrase, “I’m a fan,” and you are one. Technically, you don’t even have to show up for anything.  So if you do, it’s like you’re a super-fan.  And for someone like me, that’s like heaven on earth.  It’s the best of all possible worlds.  Of course, the festival itself and all that the trip entailed would’ve made my imaginary stalker proud, and I would definitely have been someone worth following on that day and maybe even for several days before that.  But that, Dear Readers, is a whole other story…

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy. 

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Space For The Papa

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Every now and then, I have these odd moments when I realize that I’m exactly like my parents.  For the most part, of course, I like to believe that I’m my own person.  I have my own ideas about how the world should work and about what’s important.  My mother, for example, thinks that panicking is a complete and utter waste of time.  I, however, believe that panicking is a skill that should be practiced and practiced often, even if it means freaking out over pretty much nothing at all.  And I have my own concerns, too.  I mean, my father worries about things like running out of empty cardboard boxes and bungee cords; I worry about things like renting an apartment and having the landlord tell me that I should definitely let him know “if the snakes come back.” So, in as far as being your own person means having your own problems, I’m definitely my own person.

Then again, it’s not so strange to think that I’m going to be like my parents in some ways.  After all, these are the first people who took a shot at defining “normal” for me, and the older I get, the more I realize that there is a distinct possibility that my parents had no clue what they were talking about when they did it.  In our family, “normal” really just means “not radically abnormal,” and even if something falls into the “radically abnormal” category, we’re still kind of willing to keep it around if it’s not too dangerous and sort of fun.

I mean, as kids, my little sister and I used to buy rolls of caps even though neither of us had a cap gun.  We’d just lay out the rolls in the backyard and hit them with a metal bar.  And occasionally, we’d scream and yell, too.  We figured that if we did it just right, the neighbors would think there was gunplay at our house.  I don’t know why we wanted them to think that, but we did.  Of course, we also used to tack bottle caps onto the bottoms of our tennis shoes and walk around pretending we were wearing golf cleats.  So, we were a little strange, but then again, one of our friends down the street was a boy who used to come over and dress up in my mom’s old evening gowns, and I guess that in the ultimate scheme of things, being a gun-toting golfer kind of paled in comparison to being a pre-pubescent transvestite.  But he was a nice kid, and in all honesty, he could pull off a red strapless dress better than anyone else in the neighborhood.  And that counted for something with us.

Anyway, one of the many, many odd things that my father used to do was to go out and wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.  And that’s exactly how he termed it.  He wasn’t going over to Pay ‘N Pak to get a few things.  He wasn’t going out to buy some stuff.  He was going to “wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.”  And that’s exactly what he did, too. I don’t think my mom ever had to worry about anything with him except that he was going to spend every penny they had buying stuff there.

One day, I’d been out with my dad running some errands, and as we were getting ready to head home, he looked over at me and said, “Let’s go wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.”  I, of course, agreed.  I mean, being asked to accompany my dad on a trip to Pay ‘N Pak was like being invited to go on a safari with British royalty.  In my family, it was an absolute honor second only to being allowed to use the lawnmower. 

Anyway, we headed off toward the gleaming green sign in the distance.  Now, what Pay ‘N Pak actually was is a little hard to describe.  In some ways, it was like the forerunner of Lowe’s and Home Depot in that they specialized in building materials.  But they also carried auto parts and sporting goods, and really, there was no telling what you might find there.  It was one of the original stores aimed at the residential do-it-yourself crowd, and they had pretty much everything you would need for that.  They were really one of the first warehouse stores around, and going there was quite an adventure, especially with my dad. 

So, we went in, and I quickly discovered that my dad wasn’t lying about the “wandering aimlessly” part of that trip.  We just went from aisle to aisle looking at things and just getting more and more sucked into the experience.  It was what my wide-eyed, 10 year-old brain imagined an acid trip would be like.  You see, one of the ways that my father and I are alike is that whenever we see some object, we immediately start thinking of things we could make with it.  And of course, Pay ‘N Pak was filled with nothing but things you could make things with.  So, there we were, mesmerized to the point of hypnosis by displays of plumbing supplies and endless rolls of electrical wiring and shiny, shiny tools, and at one point, I think my father may have had to loan me his handkerchief to wipe a little drool off my chin.

Finally, we ended up in front of a large bin full of some kind of electrical switches and gadgets that were on clearance.  I didn’t know what any of them did, but I thought they were very pretty with all their different colored wires and clicking switches.  I wanted all of them, and if I had had any money when I was a kid, that’s where it would’ve gone.  Anyway, my dad sorted carefully through the bin for a while and finally picked out some to buy.  While we were waiting in the check-out line, I turned to him and asked, “What are those things anyway?”  He held one up, turned it over a few times, clicked its switches, and then said, “I have no idea.”  I’m pretty sure that’s why he felt he needed a whole bag of them.

Anyway, I was thinking back to that adventure the other day when a Lowe’s employee tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Can I help you find something?”  I was standing in front of a wood paneling display with absolutely no recollection of how I’d gotten there.  I vaguely remembered entering the store and seeing that I had a tube of vinyl floor adhesive in my hand, I assumed that I must’ve been fully conscious of my surroundings at some point, but somewhere between the grout aisle and a whole row of rubber tubing, I’d just been sucked into the zone.  So, I had wandered trance-like through the store until that employee brought me back.  “Is there something I can help you with?”  Of course, one part of my brain was like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly screaming “Help me!  Help me!” but the bigger part of my brain was busy wondering how hard it would be to panel the ceiling of my apartment with genuine simulated wood grain aluminum, so all I was able to get out was, “No, I’m fine.”

I’m not really sure of what happened next.  I only remember it in flashes.  Kitchen cabinets, closet organizers, plywood sheets, washer/dryer sets, venetian blinds, rebar, table saws, cases of batteries, rows of light bulbs, it’s all a blur to me.  And I don’t know how long I was in there, either.  All I know is that when I went in, it was light out, and when I got home, it was dark.  And I had a tube of floor adhesive, some silicon grout, a deluxe painter’s tool, a mini brush set, and a plastic storage case.  I felt like Anthony Perkins in The Manchurian Candidate, only everything was more beautiful and Angela Lansbury wasn’t there.

It wasn’t until I finally got around to thinking about the project I had to do, though, that I realized the way in which I am exactly like my father:  we are both on the universal quest for space.  And by “space” I don’t mean the Final Frontier.  I mean “storage.”  After all, you can only buy so many curious gadgets and electrical devices at Pay ‘N Pak, bring home so many cars and motorcycles from police auctions, and drag so much lumber out of dumpsters at construction sites before you find that you have no place to put all that stuff.  And that’s when the real challenge begins, and you realize that you have to create some storage space.

Now, my goal in life is to containerize everything I own.  I could happily live in a house made of nothing but clearly labeled Rubbermaid storage bins.  In fact, if I ever have a house, I want it to have giant flaps that come down all around it and tie together at the bottom.  And I’m going to install an enormous handle on the roof.  Basically, I want it to be like I’m living in my mother’s purse.  That way, if I decide to move, I can just pick up my whole house with a crane and put it down somewhere else.  That’s my dream in life.  I want to live in a giant carrying case.

My parents, though, have been a little more realistic about their storage issues.  My dad always has a stack of empty cardboard boxes at the ready, and he can build shelves out of virtually anything.  All the houses my parents have owned have had unfinished basements, and without fail, the first thing my father did to all those spaces was build closets.  In fact, in one house, he never finished the rest of the basement.  He just built two huge closets, and as far as he was concerned, the basement was finished. 

In the house my parents live in now, they really sort of outdid even themselves.  The place already had an attic and space above the garage, but in addition to the two garden sheds they built in the backyard, they also added a whole other room on the side of the house.  And it’s a big room, too.  In terms of square footage, I think it’s bigger than my whole apartment.  And nearly one-third of it is taken up by two gigantic closets, which were, of course, the first things my father built.  In fact, I think that if my mother hadn’t been involved with building the addition, there would just be four bare walls, a plywood floor, and those two beautiful closets. 

But probably the most outstanding thing about the addition is what’s underneath it.  My parents dug out a four-foot hole under the entire room and left it as a crawl space to use for storage.  The only problem is that they didn’t put a door on it.  Now, in their defense, part of the addition is built next to what used to be an exterior wall, and since the crawl space is underground, they would’ve had to dig the hole about five feet deeper if they wanted to put a door from the basement into it.  And I just don’t think they wanted to go to that much trouble.  Besides, if they had done that, then the crawl space would’ve just become an unfinished part of the basement, and my dad would’ve just built a closet in it.  So, the rest of the space would’ve gone to waste. 

As it stands now, some brave soul who is immune to being repeatedly bitten by spiders has to climb in there through what used to be a basement window.  No one in my actual family will do it, but it’s usually possible to pay off some unsuspecting neighborhood teenager to go in.  Once. Failing that, my parents have had good luck in talking my ex-brother-in-law into taking the plunge, which is quite the feat given that at 6’6”, he’s probably not the easiest person in the world for my parents to shove through a basement window.

The thing is that I can just imagine some archeologists 2000 years from now doing an excavation and discovering my parents’ house.  They would no doubt believe that my parents were some kind of royalty just based on the amount of stuff they had stored around.  And when they uncovered the crawl space, they would be certain that they had stumbled upon a treasure room just like the one in King Tut’s tomb.  They might even find my ex-brother-in-law’s mummified body in there.  Then the whole collection would be put on display in a museum, and people would come from far and wide and would pay good money just to gaze at a discarded oscilloscope, our old Christmas tree, a tiny stuffed alligator, and ten PC Jrs.

Of course, all that really makes you wonder if everything we think we know about the ancient Egyptians is wrong.  Maybe they were just people like my parents.  I mean, maybe the Sphinx was just the ancient equivalent of a lawn ornament that someone picked up at a scratch-and-dent clearance at the ancient version of Costco. Maybe all those gold trinkets were just mystery gadgets from the ancient prototype for Pay ‘N Pak.  Maybe the Pharaohs were just nice people living in the suburbs who figured, “Well, we might as well get some stuff since we’ve got this whole pyramid to fill up.”   I can just picture a bunch of ancient Egyptian settlers trying to escape from the rat race of city life standing out in the desert in t-shirts that say “Go big or go home.”

I, myself, don’t have a suburban pyramid.  I live in an apartment the size of a coffee cup, and in fact, my current stock of building supplies is just for sticking the edge of the kitchen floor back down.  But after I’ve got the floor back where it belongs, I’ve got a 1950s metal cabinet just waiting to be moved over there and filled up with stuff.  So, I can’t work on the grand scale that my father, the true master of space, does, but I’ve definitely got the potential.  And it’s funny that as much time as we spend as adults convincing ourselves that we’re nothing like the people who raised us, the simple truth is that every now and then, we’re exactly like them.  And there’s something sort of nice about that because a family tradition, no matter what kind of foible or downright nutty thinking it’s based on, is still a family tradition.  And I think it’s good to pass something more than just your genes down the generational line.  But beyond all that, when you really stop to think about it, there’s just a certain amount of practicality to it all.  I mean, I don’t know about you, Dear Readers, but I don’t know too many people who couldn’t make good use of a little more closet space.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy. 

 
© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.

With a Little Luck...

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to a song called “Hooligan’s Holiday,” and it reminded me that St. Patrick’s Day is coming right up.  Now, I have to admit that I’ve never had any great feeling for St. Patrick’s Day.  When I was a kid, all it meant was that you had to wear a green shirt to school or all the other kids would pinch you.  In fact, some of them would walk right up and slap you.  And to me, an entire day devoted to avoiding bodily harm just isn’t much of a holiday, especially if you’re not even Irish.

Of course, when I got into college, St. Patrick’s Day was more of a “drink-at-will” kind of thing.  It was perfectly fine to be drunk at ten o’clock in the morning on that day.  But then again, it was college.  It was pretty much OK to be drunk by ten o’clock in the morning on any day.  So, it’s not like St. Patrick’s was all that big a thing.

After I graduated and got my first professional job, St. Patrick’s became one of those holidays whose hype kind of outweighed its reality.  It was fun, of course, to think about going out to a bar with your co-workers and having a few beers, but the problem was that most of time, St. Patrick’s occurred on a weekday.  So that meant that you’d be sitting at your desk paying for that night out all the next day. 

You could always call in sick, but it doesn’t take a genius employer to figure out that anyone who calls in sick on the day after St. Patrick’s Day isn’t really sick.  I mean, you can make up a good excuse like you have an ear infection or something, but trust me, it won’t work.  Even if you actually have an ear infection. 

And sure, you could just try being honest about it.  I did that once, actually.  I was working for a guy I’d known since graduate school, and I’d been out partying the night before.  So, I just called in and said that I was too hung over to come to work.  I thought he was going to fire me on the spot.  The next thing I knew, I was just blathering out a veritable smorgasbord of more reputable symptoms and illnesses: “Did I say I was hung over?  I’m sorry, I meant to say that I’ve got an ear infection…and a worrisome growth on my arm…and I can’t see out of my left eye…and I was bitten by a rabid dog.”  And, OK, I just threw the rabies thing in at the end out of sheer desperation, but I personally think it’s what ultimately saved my job.  I mean, no one is going to take the chance of making someone who might have rabies come to work.  At any rate, I learned an important lesson from the experience:  the truth is a powerful thing.  Don’t use it unless you have to.

These days, I think I’ve reached a point where drinking just takes more effort than I want to put into it.  I mean, if I go out, I have to put on clean clothes and iron a shirt.  I have to make sure I’m wearing matching socks…or that I’m wearing socks at all.  I have to go to the ATM and get some money.  And since I’m at an age where the letters “DUI” actually mean something to me, I have to figure out how I’m going to get to and from the bar.  And considering that I can’t be bothered on most days to go check my mailbox in the entryway downstairs, going out to a bar is a project somewhat akin to climbing Mount Everest for me.  Just thinking about it is making me want to go lie down for a while.

But beyond that, I think I don’t go out on St. Patrick’s Day because of leprechauns.  I don’t find them scary in quite the same way that I find Cupid terrifying, largely because they don’t seem as prone to physical violence and can’t fly, but leprechauns are just confusing.  And given that I take my cue on how to celebrate holidays based on what their holiday characters do, that kind of confusion is not a good thing.

I mean, leprechauns aren’t jolly.  And jolliness is kind of important in a holiday character.  Think about what Christmas would be like if Santa was just some crabby old crank.  He’d come tumbling down your chimney, throw some presents at your tree, and complain about the cookies you left for him.  He’d probably give your presents a good, swift kick before he left, spit on your stockings before he climbed back out, and pry a couple of shingles off your roof just for good measure before he took off.  Luckily that isn’t what happens, but it points out just how important Santa’s general level of jolliness actually is.  If he wasn’t jolly, he’s just be a fat guy on a rampage breaking into your house.

But leprechauns aren’t jolly or even particularly friendly.  They’re solitary woodland fairy-people.  They hang out in the forest and make shoes.  They don’t want to know where you live, and they don’t want you to know where they live.  They don’t want to come to your house, and they don’t want you coming to their houses.  They don’t even like to hang out with each other.  So what’s that supposed to tell us about celebrating St. Patrick’s Day?  That it’s best if you just spend it at home drinking by yourself and resoling your loafers?

And leprechauns also aren’t proactive, and that’s actually a bigger deal in a holiday character than you’d think.  I mean, Halloween witches aren’t exactly friendly, but they’re decisive.  They’re going to seek you out and scare the crap out of you.  That’s their deal.  They take action.  And the Easter Bunny doesn’t wait around for people to ask for a basket of candy.  You don’t have to put in a request or send a letter.  He just brings you an Easter basket.  Even if you’re diabetic…or Jewish.  Witches, the Easter Bunny—these are not holiday characters who wait around waiting for something to happen.  They spring into action.  They provide guidance for people like me.

But leprechauns spend most of their time running away from people.  They have no plan for you.  They don’t even want to know you.  So, what’s the message here?  That beyond sitting on your couch drinking alone and fixing your shoes, you should also refuse to answer the phone?  If someone comes to your door, you should hide in the closet?  What kind of a holiday is that? 

And don’t even try to kid yourself into believing that leprechauns are on your side.  They aren’t.  They don’t give a rip about your happiness or well-being.  I mean, Santa wants you to be nice, and he’s willing to bribe you with presents for it.  The Pilgrims want you to be thankful, and they’re willing to feed you to get that.  The Easter Bunny wants you to eat candy, so he brings you some candy.  And Cupid wants you to fall in love, so he shoots you in the chest to get you there. 

But leprechauns just want you to leave them alone. They aren’t going to search you out.  They don’t want to give you their secret pots of gold.  They already don’t like you, and they’re not trying to hide it.  They’re not really against you (because that would involve being pro-active), but make no mistake—they’re not for you, either.  They really have no investment in you at all. They just don’t want you to steal their pots of gold.  So, if you take your cue from the leprechauns, you just spend St. Patrick’s Day at home alone, drinking, putting new soles on your shoes, fearing that you’re going to get robbed, and alternately hiding from the phone and your own front door.

All in all, I think that if you follow the leprechauns’ example, you’re going to have a pretty crappy St. Patrick’s Day.  But luckily, most people don’t follow the leprechauns.  Most people go out and get drunk with total strangers.  They’re very social.  And they don’t worry about losing their pots of gold.  In fact, many people lose their wallets and car keys at some point during the drunken revelry and don’t even notice.  And people don’t hide when the phone rings.  I mean, if you’ve had enough to drink, you’ll randomly answer someone else’s phone, and the only reason you’ll hang out in a closet is if someone else is in there with you.

When you really think about it, most people do the exact opposite of what the leprechauns do on St. Patrick’s Day.  And maybe that’s the point.  I mean, if you look at the history of Ireland, the list of other countries and groups that have had a boot on the neck of the Irish people is long and distinguished.  And yet the Irish themselves just refuse to be squished.  They just keep getting back up, and there’s really something admirable about that.  Maybe not following the leprechauns is what the holiday is really about.  So, maybe this year I’ll break with my own slugabed tradition, iron my favorite green shirt, and go out for a beer.  After all, there is a saying that on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish.  And, you know, there just may be something to that.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Over the Airwaves...

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

This past week has been, well, kind of boring.  Here in the Midwest, we’ve had rain nearly every day, and even when it hasn’t been raining, the sun hasn’t been out much.  But I think weeks like this one offer a great opportunity to sit back and reflect on life.  You have time to relax and reconnect with the things you love.  And for me, reconnecting with what I love means only one thing:  television.

I love television.  I really do.  I’ll happily sit through a four-hour layover in any airport anywhere as long as there’s TV.  I’ll visit a total stranger in the hospital if the room has a television.  And while I’m not entirely sure there is such a thing as the afterlife, I know that if there is one, there’s going to be TV.  I can’t possibly imagine eternity without it. 

Television is to me what Facebook is to a teenager, only in some ways, I think it’s even better because you don’t really have to interact with TV.  It won’t cyberbully you or let you drunk-post embarrassing nude pictures of yourself.  It doesn’t think you’re a jerk.  It doesn’t think you’re anything.  It’s a television. 

The only interaction you’re likely to have with it is changing the channel from time to time.  You can talk to it, of course, but trust me, it won’t talk back.  It’ll just keep making noise and showing you pictures because it’s like the Terminator:  “That’s what it does.  That’s all it does.  And it will not stop until you are dead.”  And even then, the cable company will probably keep sending you a bill.

But more than just a continual stream of sight and sound, one thing that I know for sure is that television has radically affected the way that I see the world.  I feel, for example, no need whatsoever to travel to any place I’ve ever seen on TV.  Why would I?  I’ve already seen it.  I mean, I saw a program on Borneo once, so as far as I’m concerned, I already know what I need to know about that place.  And what I know about that place is that it seems kind of humid and has a lot of bats in it.  That’s enough Borneo-related information for me.  If there’s more to be known, I’m sure someone will produce a show about it.

Beyond that, though, I think TV has also helped me to understand others better throughout my life.  When I was in 9^th grade, for example, a kid from New York transferred into our high school, and I think he was from either Brooklyn or Queens.  And right there, I was just sure that his father was a cab driver.  That, of course, made perfect sense to me.  In the late ‘70s, Taxi was one of the most popular sitcoms around, and where was it set?  New York.  And beyond that, it seemed like every cop show I watched was set in New York and always featured a cab driver who’d seen something suspicious or remembered having dropped off a blood-soaked man somewhere in a bad neighborhood.

Of course, there were other cop shows set in other places in that era.  Hawaii Five-O was on, and The Streets of San Francisco was around, too.  But I didn’t know anyone from Hawaii, and all I ever got from The Streets of San Francisco was the distinct impression that the entire city was uphill in every direction…and that it needed to be painted.  So, I couldn’t really connect with the non-New York police dramas.  Besides, it just seemed like there was better TV crime in New York.

Anyway, I was convinced that this kid’s father was a cab driver because to me, there were only three kinds of people living in New York:  police detectives, cab drivers, and victims.  Those were the choices.  (I thought all criminals on TV were just from “somewhere else”).   And I don’t know why I didn’t think the kid’s father wasn’t a police officer except that the kids in our school whose parents were in law enforcement usually either talked a lot about it or were total delinquents who no one ever saw because they spent all day everyday in the principal’s office. This kid just showed up for English class every day and did his homework.  Other than that, he was mystery.  So, to me, that was proof positive that his dad drove a taxi.

I suppose that I could’ve just asked him, but here’s the thing:  when he first arrived at school, our teacher had him introduce himself.  So, he said who he was and told a little bit about himself.  There was a quiet hush after he spoke, and then we all quietly turned to each other and whispered, “What did he say?”  He had such a thick New York accent that no one in our class of suburban Denver kids could understand a thing he said.  From what I remember of him, he was a nice enough kid.  But then again, he could’ve been saying the most horrible stuff, and I never would’ve known.  Whenever I talked to him, I just smiled and nodded. There are few things that TV doesn’t prepare you for, but an authentic regional accent is one of them. 

Of course, it never dawned on me either that no one in his or her right mind would leave a job as a cab driver in New York to take up the same profession in the suburbs of Denver.  In my neighborhood, cabs were regarded much like long distance was:  rare and expensive.  I mean, there could be any level of hullabaloo going on at my house, but it took only three words to bring everyone to immediate, reverend silence:  “it’s long distance.”  And the same thing went for cabs.  Any distance under 30 or 40 miles that could be traversed by foot did not require a taxi as far as anyone in my neighborhood was concerned.  It was just too expensive.  According to my father, just going from our house to the airport would’ve required a second mortgage.  And that must’ve been the common opinion because the only cabs I ever saw as a kid were on TV, and I was well into college before I actually rode in one.  So, I can’t imagine how anyone could’ve made a living as a cab driver in the suburbs back then.  You would’ve had to have charged $1000 a mile just to break even.

These days, I recognize that television may be a little slanted in its presentation, but I’m still sort of unconsciously swayed by it.  To this day, I’ve never been to New York.  At this point, I’ve seen so much Law and Order that I firmly believe that every New Yorker starts the day by tripping over a dead body lying on the stoop or out in the street.  I mean, seriously, don’t the police ever find any of these dead people first?  Can’t the cops just patrol around late at night looking for corpses so that everyone’s morning commute can start off on a more positive note?

Anyway, I think one of the other things that I really love about TV (and there are so many things that it’s actually difficult to choose) is that it’s comforting.  Many is the time, for example, that I’ve turned on the Doppler channel and just watched the weather loop play over and over again. It’s very relaxing, especially if you mute the sound so you don’t have to listen to all those annoying severe weather alerts.

But I have to admit that when it comes to being comforted by my television, nothing works quite as well as a good infomercial.  Of course, to get a good infomercial, you have to stay up until around 4 am, but it’s worth it.  You’ll drift off to sleep believing that not only will tomorrow be a great day but also that every delicious moment of the goodness is well within your grasp. 

Now, one thing you have to understand about TV commercials in general is that the audience basically breaks down into three categories:  people with money, people with debt, and people with problems. 

Commercials aimed at people with money tend to air at a certain time:  when people who have jobs aren’t at them.  They’re usually commercials for cars or electronics or beer.  Now, you’d probably think that beer commercials would be better aimed at people with debt and people with problems, but beer companies are smart.  They know that people with debt don’t have any money to buy beer.  And they know that people with problems can’t usually drink because it interferes with their medication.  People with money can afford to buy beer, and once they’re drunk, they can afford to impulse buy a bunch of other stuff.  So, it’s kind of a win-win situation.

People with debt are a whole other story.  Most of the commercials aimed toward them are ads for legal services, and they have a kind of help-I’m-slipping-down-the-side-of-a-big-hole sense of desperation about them.  They’re just about scaring you into action, and they usually give you some nightmarish visuals to underscore the tragedy that is your life.  It’s always stuff like someone losing an arm at work.  All your belongings going up in a huge ball of flame. The police running your sorry ass into the station.  Your children being chased by rats.  You know, that sort of thing.  A few pictures and some screaming.  That’s all it really takes.

It’s less about debt than it is about the consequences of having debt, and not surprisingly, most of these commercials air in the afternoon during all the judge shows.  I guess the advertisers figure that if your life is so tragic that you’re just sitting at home watching hour after hour of judge shows (and crying), you’re ripe for being terrorized by the mere suggestion of how much worse your life could get if you don’t call this toll-free number right now.

To find the commercials geared toward people with problems, though, you have do a little looking because these are the ads that take up most of extremely late-night television.  You have to  be up at 3 or 4 am in the morning to really bask in the magic that is this kind of advertising.  But then again, I think the advertisers must figure that if you’ve got problems, you can’t sleep.  So, you’ll be up.  Unless, of course, your problems are debt-related, in which case, you might be awake, but you’re probably hiding under the bed and can’t see the TV anyway.

Commercials for people with problems come in a variety of forms.  They can be regular-length ads or infomercials.  They can be about cosmetics, financial freedom, fitness, cooking, cutlery, vacuuming sealing, air filtering, whatever.  It really doesn’t matter because in the end, they all address the same problem:  you’re dissatisfied with who you are and the stinking life you got.  You want more.  And you don’t even really care what it is or who sells it to you.  You probably don’t even want to buy the product.  You just want someone to explain it to you.  Over and over again in a calm, predictable way.  And that’s where infomercials shine. 

And that’s what I love about infomercials—they are absolutely predictable.  Nothing ever goes wrong like it does in real life.  You can saw a suspension bridge in half, and this knife will still cut through a tomato.  You can pollute the air in this sealed chamber with plutonium, and this air filter will still make it clean enough for babies to breathe.  You can take a turkey that’s been buried at the North Pole for 10 years, and this countertop oven will still cook it in only 18 minutes.  The high-torque blenders never spin off their bases and spew avocado and mayonnaise all over the place.  The cosmetics never give anyone an itchy, peely rash.  The fitness programs never result in pulled muscles and torn ligaments.  The workbenches never collapse under the weight of half-ton truck, and the spiral saws never go awry and saw through a live electrical wire.  In The Magic Land of Infomercials, nothing ever doesn’t work exactly the way it should.

And I think it’s that promise of cosmic order that most appeals to people with problems.  The minute Ron Popeil says, “But wait, there’s more,” you just want to fall on your knees and cry out, “Yes, Ron, yes, there is more!  There is more!”  And suddenly you believe in better living through cutlery.  You’re convinced that the key to happiness is in being able to vacuum seal everything you own.  And if you had a spiral saw and a sturdy workbench, you would surely build a yacht and sail away, sipping all the while on delicious frozen drinks in their own mugs that take only 10 seconds to make. 

Life in The Magic Land of Infomercials is beautiful and calm, and you really do sort of have to love that because real life is real messy for the most part.  Things blow up in real life.  They catch on fire.  They self-destruct.  But that never happens on an infomercial, and even if you’re like me and never actually buy anything off TV, just having someone explain (at length) how beautiful life could be will send you off to sleep better than a glass of warm milk.  Ron Popeil doesn’t look anything like my mother (thank God), but he can tuck me in just as well.

Back when we were little kids, my sisters and I used to laugh about the fact that our grandfather had a TV in virtually every room.  It was funny because when television first started to become popular in the 1950s, he swore he’d never own a set.  But there is something about TV that just gets to you.  I grew up eating dinner with Mary Tyler Moore once a week and running home at lunchtime in the summer to see Perry Mason win a case.  These days, I’ll stay up until 2am just to see Captain Picard save the universe and to watch Tim Allen figure out that he’s being a jerk for the millionth time.  Television is just a part of my life, and it’s not a bad part, either.  So, it rains, it snows, it hails—whatever.  Somewhere on my TV, the sun is shining, and that’s all I need to know.  Well, that and where I put the remote control. 

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.  

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.