Sometimes you see something and you recognize immediately that it’s not a good idea. This happened to me the other day when I was watching a Cleveland Indians exhibition game on television. Yes, I really do that.
When Cleveland was at bat somebody got the bright idea to play an audio clip of a bugle call to which the crowd in attendance was supposed to respond by shouting, “Charge!” The actual response was, to say the least, uninspired and the announcer allowed that maybe the spring training crowd wasn’t as into it as the crowd would be in the regular season, but I don’t think that was the problem.
I think it’s a bad idea to play a bugle call for a cavalry charge at an INDIANS game. Whose side did you think the crowd would be on anyway? They’re Cleveland fans, they’re for the Indians. You don’t play a bugle call to inspire the Indians, do you? See what I mean? That was a bad idea right from the get go.
Here’s another one. I’m driving down the road last Saturday on a comparatively warm, officially spring day. Out on the sidewalk is a man with a white cane out for a walk. Good idea. But he’s wearing earphones. Bad idea. I’m not trying to dump on the visually challenged community and I never go for one of my walks without my iPod but if your vision is already bad enough to merit a white cane don’t you think you ought to be paying attention to the sounds of a busy street? Another one that should have been identified as a bad idea right away.
Sometimes something seems like a good idea until you realize that the law of unintended consequences has come into play. Or as we put it here, “nothing causes problems like solutions.” The 18th amendment to the constitution was to control the influence of demon rum. While almost everyone has some story about a funny thing that happened to someone while drunk, we’re finally learning that there’s not much funny that can happen when you put a drunk behind the wheel. And, truth be told, people who are drunk are a lot less funny to people who aren’t drunk than they like to think.
So, okay, the creation of prohibition seemed like a good idea at the time. Ratification began with Mississippi in January of 1918 and was certified before the end of January, 1919. Probably the only time since the Civil War that Mississippi has been ahead of anybody about anything. Rhode Island, to its eternal credit, was the only state to reject the amendment. This bright idea brought us such things as “bathtub gin” and “near beer,” artificially concocted substitutes which were about as good an idea as your average home meth lab is today, maybe with less quality control. It was said at the time that whoever named it “near beer” was a lousy judge of distance. My mother theorized once that it was bad home-made booze that killed her father.
The other problem caused by this solution was the growth of organized crime. Outlawing alcohol didn’t make the demand for it go away, it just made the supply go underground. Whenever there’s a demand for a product or a service somebody will find a way to meet it, and probably at a profit if they have any business sense at all. So America practically handed a cash cow to people willing to engage in illegal activity and said, “Here you go. Milk it for all it’s worth.”
Did you know that of the 27 amendments to the constitution that have been ratified ONLY the 18th was repealed? And once we got around to it we did it pretty quickly too. The 21st amendment repealed the 18th and was ratified in less than 10 months. South Carolina was the only state to outright reject the 21st amendment by the way.
All of this came to mind when I heard on the news that New Hampshire’s House of Representatives has passed a law to allow medical marijuana in the Granite State. It goes to the Senate next and if it passes there it’s on to the Governor. John Lynch is a very popular guy in these parts because, as a friend of mine pointed out, he’s the best darn high school principal we’ve ever had.
Which is a lot of what the Governor does in New Hampshire. He shows up at the smile-and-wave events, looks stern when there’s something involving the law, and is always appropriately somber at an important funeral or disaster. He’s a good barometer of the public sentiment on the issues and he does it without getting caught looking at polls.
Not because I use it, I don’t - I’m flaky enough already, but we need to legalize marijuana and probably some other drugs because it’s obvious that the whole drug war is a disaster along the lines of the 18th amendment. We’re legislating against an activity that an awful lot of people want to participate in that doesn’t really harm anyone but the user.
Protecting us from ourselves never really works. Part of freedom is the right to make bad choices and then having to live with them … unless she changes the locks and throws your stuff into the street.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Review: "Ghost Town"
Ghost Town (PG-13)
This is one we can sum up in one line: W.C. Fields meets Ebenezer Scrooge and hold the Holiday part. The tag line for the film is, “He sees dead people…and they annoy him.” And by the way, the living annoy him too.
Greg Kinnear is Frank our combination Jacob Marley/Ghost of Christmas Present. Frank’s been caught cheating on his wife but before he knows how much she knows, Frank catches a bus…or you could more accurately say the bus catches Frank. This is how we meet Frank’s ghost.
Ricky Gervais is a dentist named Bertram Pincus who chose his profession because, “90% of the people I come in contact with have cotton wool stuffed in their mouth.” Bertram also died, while having a colonoscopy or something equally enchanting, but for just under seven minutes. As a result, he sees dead people. Turns out New York, where the film is set, is lousy with ghosts who are there because of unfinished business. Suddenly Bertram can see them, hear them and, they hope, help them.
Frank’s ghost manages to get more or less exclusive access to Bertram so that he can torpedo the engagement of Frank’s widow Gwen (Tea Leoni). Bertram, once he notices Gwen, is quite taken with her although she plans to marry Richard (Bill Campbell) an attorney so righteous you want to him to lose the girl.
Although Gwen’s familiar with Bertram from his not holding elevators for her, stealing cabs she has hailed and generally being a Fieldsian misanthropic jerk, she does find that he makes her laugh and she likes that. But there’s lingering tension for a couple of reasons. One, first impressions (Bertram really is a jerk remember) never really go away. Two, Frank never really goes away either although Gwen doesn’t know he’s there.
The moment of Christmas Future comes from Bertram’s associate in the Dental Office. Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi) tries to get along with Pincus because Prashar’s a nice guy but after exchanges like one where Bertram asks him, “How would you extract information from a hostile?” even the patient dentist from India loses patience. He advises Pincus, “…this business of being such a fucking prick, what is it getting [you].”
Gervais is a delightfully consistent cur and his eventual transformation does make sense in a way that Scrooge’s never did for me. Maybe because Tea Leoni is cuter than any of Dickens’s ghosts and Bertram’s desolate smallness is worth giving up for her. Greg Kinnear is charmingly and unapologetically smarmy. You can see where this particular brand of low-life would be appealing.
Co-writer and director David Koepp has some impressively varied screenplays to his credit but brought a nice touch with some interesting twists to a romantic comedy that really is a comedy without having to resort to slapstick. Maybe he should team up again with Ricky and remake Fields’s classic, “Mississippi.” He’d make an interesting Commodore Jackson.
This is one we can sum up in one line: W.C. Fields meets Ebenezer Scrooge and hold the Holiday part. The tag line for the film is, “He sees dead people…and they annoy him.” And by the way, the living annoy him too.
Greg Kinnear is Frank our combination Jacob Marley/Ghost of Christmas Present. Frank’s been caught cheating on his wife but before he knows how much she knows, Frank catches a bus…or you could more accurately say the bus catches Frank. This is how we meet Frank’s ghost.
Ricky Gervais is a dentist named Bertram Pincus who chose his profession because, “90% of the people I come in contact with have cotton wool stuffed in their mouth.” Bertram also died, while having a colonoscopy or something equally enchanting, but for just under seven minutes. As a result, he sees dead people. Turns out New York, where the film is set, is lousy with ghosts who are there because of unfinished business. Suddenly Bertram can see them, hear them and, they hope, help them.
Frank’s ghost manages to get more or less exclusive access to Bertram so that he can torpedo the engagement of Frank’s widow Gwen (Tea Leoni). Bertram, once he notices Gwen, is quite taken with her although she plans to marry Richard (Bill Campbell) an attorney so righteous you want to him to lose the girl.
Although Gwen’s familiar with Bertram from his not holding elevators for her, stealing cabs she has hailed and generally being a Fieldsian misanthropic jerk, she does find that he makes her laugh and she likes that. But there’s lingering tension for a couple of reasons. One, first impressions (Bertram really is a jerk remember) never really go away. Two, Frank never really goes away either although Gwen doesn’t know he’s there.
The moment of Christmas Future comes from Bertram’s associate in the Dental Office. Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi) tries to get along with Pincus because Prashar’s a nice guy but after exchanges like one where Bertram asks him, “How would you extract information from a hostile?” even the patient dentist from India loses patience. He advises Pincus, “…this business of being such a fucking prick, what is it getting [you].”
Gervais is a delightfully consistent cur and his eventual transformation does make sense in a way that Scrooge’s never did for me. Maybe because Tea Leoni is cuter than any of Dickens’s ghosts and Bertram’s desolate smallness is worth giving up for her. Greg Kinnear is charmingly and unapologetically smarmy. You can see where this particular brand of low-life would be appealing.
Co-writer and director David Koepp has some impressively varied screenplays to his credit but brought a nice touch with some interesting twists to a romantic comedy that really is a comedy without having to resort to slapstick. Maybe he should team up again with Ricky and remake Fields’s classic, “Mississippi.” He’d make an interesting Commodore Jackson.
And The Award Goes To...
Andy Warhol notwithstanding, we may not all get our 15 minutes of fame. Chances are we will get a trophy though. Whether you live in Calais, Maine, New Canaan, Connecticut, or Sheep Dip, South Dakota you’re going to win an award at some time in your life. And it’ll probably even be on television.
I know this because while I was scanning the T-V listings last week I found the notation that the “World Magic Awards” would be presented one night from 8 to 10 on “MyNetwork TV”. I mean no disrespect to the practitioners of prestidigitation but do we really need to broadcast their awards show?
Alright I guess the first argument is, if it’s on “MyNetwork TV” it’s probably still only seen by a small circle of family, friends and a few old classmates wondering whatever happened to the kid who wore the white tie and tails to school all the time. But this is really a symptom of a larger problem. As with most well intended nonsense it starts when we’re very young.
If you’re 5 or 6 years old it’s pretty neat to get a trophy for being on the t-ball team or for participating in Ms. Overbearing’s Dance Recital but by the time you hit 10 you probably know that you’re being patronized. If the kid who hit .600 and led your little league in everything and I got the same trophy I would have learned two things. First, the trophy doesn’t really mean much and second that the kid who hit .600 got screwed. He deserves more recognition than I got because he did more or did it so much better than I did that there should be some distinction for that.
But we all want recognition for something so the tendency is to slice the baloney so thin that everybody gets a piece...but it’s utterly worthless. So that’s bad enough but there’s something even worse. No matter how silly the award is, no matter how thinly we’ve sliced the baloney to give everybody a chance to win, somebody thinks it has to be televised.
“Live from Wilmington, Vermont it’s the first annual Small Market Tenor-Voiced New England Disc Jockeys Awards. Good evening and welcome to the White House Inn in Wilmington, Vermont where tonight we’ve gathered some of the most talented young to middle age non-descript announcers from communities all over New England who make as much in one night doing a club gig as they make in a week on the air. But they crave recognition and tonight at least one of them will get it.”
I will admit that there are a couple of awards shows that I do watch. I watch the Oscars every year because I’m generally interested in movies and because I hope each year that composer Thomas Newman, who is becoming the Susan Lucci of the Academy Awards, will get the trophy he’s deserved several times over. And my wife and I make an annual trip to Cooperstown, New York for the baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. So I am not without responsibility for the proliferation of these things although I consider it a limited liability.
I don’t watch the Emmys because I don’t watch enough television to have a rooting interest. The Grammys were always just phony. In 1965 when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity the Grammy for best song went to Louis Armstrong for “Hello Dolly.” Great for Louie but totally out of touch with the reality of pop music. Although I’ve always found it amusing that for the first several years they handed out the same trophies year after year. They’d just go over to Henry Mancini’s house and borrow his from previous years and hand those to the winners so the winners would have something to accept. The Tonys, the Espys, The Golden Globes (unless Newman is nominated), the MTV awards, the Peoples Choice Awards, you name the award – I give it a miss.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Recession and weight loss solved!
It’s time once again for us to take a jaundiced look at the weekend news coverage in our little corner of New England. Local broadcast news on the weekends tends to be an especially disaster and crime driven endeavor.
Politicians mostly keep their mouths shut on Friday afternoon because if they say anything stupid it will be on the news, in the papers and in the blogosphere for at least two days before anyone can catch up with it on the Sunday morning talk shows. One of the first rules of politics is, or should be, don’t screw up on a slow news day.
So with that being the case the next staple of news, disasters, tend to get more play on weekend. That mudslide in the Italian Alps might not make the content cut on Wednesday when Congressman Slapjaw (R-Mississippi) is busy telling us why we should let AIG go belly up, while righteously ignoring that it will take the economies of half of the world with it. But on Saturday the Italian mudslide definitely runs, even though it sounds more like a cocktail than a news item. Disasters, though, are unreliable things. You can’t book them and have your staff prepped in advance.
Crime stories, however, are pretty reliable fodder for content because, lets face it, the people pulling crimes aren’t doing it while they wait to move up on the depth chart in the admissions department at M.I.T. No, they’re doing it either because it’s their best shot this side of a class action lawsuit to make a lot of money or because they think it’s their best opportunity just to make a living.
Here’s my favorite example from this past weekend as described by local media. A 23 year old Bronx, New York, man allegedly drove his BMW with New York license plates out of the I-95 toll booth in Hampton, New Hampshire at 80 miles per hour. State Police stopped the man and found he was driving on a suspended license.
That’s bad.
Police also found that he had a small amount of what they believe is marijuana. That’s not good either.
And seven ounces of what they believe is cocaine. That’s worse, isn’t it.
Maybe I was just raised too conservatively to be any fun or have any real vision. I don’t see the wisdom of driving around with cocaine and marijuana when my license has been suspended. But let’s be generous. These are hard times.
Let’s say that economic circumstances dictated that this young man had to take the risk associated with this activity because he has a child, certainly no more than a toddler, who needs a treatment for a medical condition. These days if that amounts to anything more than a loose tooth we’re talking a substantial amount of money. Well then you might think that this transaction would be lucrative enough to make the risk marginally acceptable. Of course that doesn’t account for the Beamer he’s driving but we’ll overlook that.
Doing 80 exiting the toll booth? Here’s where I have trouble making a case for the defendant. This is where we get to another line from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”. The appropriate line here is “This life is hard, man, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
But one man’s folly can be another man’s opportunity. And from this I have created an idea that can lift you out of financial hardship and help you lose weight at the same time. Ready?
Become a drug mule for a Mexican drug lord! You’ll be visiting glamorous places in some of North Americas busiest cities, meeting exciting people and making money, and lots of it, at the same time! And if taking off that extra 20 pounds is going to make you feel better about yourself remember this: you won’t have much of an appetite after you’ve swallowed 30 condoms stuffed with cocaine. It’s a money making, weight loss system that can’t miss. All you need is the wisdom to recognize an opportunity when it’s presented to you.
Now I just have to figure out how I make money on the deal. Watch for my infomercial though, I’ll have it up and running as soon as I can iron out that little wrinkle.
Politicians mostly keep their mouths shut on Friday afternoon because if they say anything stupid it will be on the news, in the papers and in the blogosphere for at least two days before anyone can catch up with it on the Sunday morning talk shows. One of the first rules of politics is, or should be, don’t screw up on a slow news day.
So with that being the case the next staple of news, disasters, tend to get more play on weekend. That mudslide in the Italian Alps might not make the content cut on Wednesday when Congressman Slapjaw (R-Mississippi) is busy telling us why we should let AIG go belly up, while righteously ignoring that it will take the economies of half of the world with it. But on Saturday the Italian mudslide definitely runs, even though it sounds more like a cocktail than a news item. Disasters, though, are unreliable things. You can’t book them and have your staff prepped in advance.
Crime stories, however, are pretty reliable fodder for content because, lets face it, the people pulling crimes aren’t doing it while they wait to move up on the depth chart in the admissions department at M.I.T. No, they’re doing it either because it’s their best shot this side of a class action lawsuit to make a lot of money or because they think it’s their best opportunity just to make a living.
Here’s my favorite example from this past weekend as described by local media. A 23 year old Bronx, New York, man allegedly drove his BMW with New York license plates out of the I-95 toll booth in Hampton, New Hampshire at 80 miles per hour. State Police stopped the man and found he was driving on a suspended license.
That’s bad.
Police also found that he had a small amount of what they believe is marijuana. That’s not good either.
And seven ounces of what they believe is cocaine. That’s worse, isn’t it.
Maybe I was just raised too conservatively to be any fun or have any real vision. I don’t see the wisdom of driving around with cocaine and marijuana when my license has been suspended. But let’s be generous. These are hard times.
Let’s say that economic circumstances dictated that this young man had to take the risk associated with this activity because he has a child, certainly no more than a toddler, who needs a treatment for a medical condition. These days if that amounts to anything more than a loose tooth we’re talking a substantial amount of money. Well then you might think that this transaction would be lucrative enough to make the risk marginally acceptable. Of course that doesn’t account for the Beamer he’s driving but we’ll overlook that.
Doing 80 exiting the toll booth? Here’s where I have trouble making a case for the defendant. This is where we get to another line from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”. The appropriate line here is “This life is hard, man, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
But one man’s folly can be another man’s opportunity. And from this I have created an idea that can lift you out of financial hardship and help you lose weight at the same time. Ready?
Become a drug mule for a Mexican drug lord! You’ll be visiting glamorous places in some of North Americas busiest cities, meeting exciting people and making money, and lots of it, at the same time! And if taking off that extra 20 pounds is going to make you feel better about yourself remember this: you won’t have much of an appetite after you’ve swallowed 30 condoms stuffed with cocaine. It’s a money making, weight loss system that can’t miss. All you need is the wisdom to recognize an opportunity when it’s presented to you.
Now I just have to figure out how I make money on the deal. Watch for my infomercial though, I’ll have it up and running as soon as I can iron out that little wrinkle.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Vince, Billy and Ty
You’ve probably never heard the name Vincent Schlomi but you know him. That’s the name I found for him on Wikipedia. You would more than likely recognize recognize him if you had to pick him out of a line-up though, which wouldn’t surprise me at all because he looks like one of the villains from a Dick Tracy strip.
He’s Vince, the ShamWow/Slap-Chop guy, and he’s the most recent incarnation of a kind of pitch-man that’s probably as old as the game of pitching crap to an unwary public. He’s the East Coast counterpart to the Mid-America Billy Mays. Not that I mind either of them that much, I rarely hear them, because of the mute button on my TV’s remote control. But they are there, probably every day and they’re a reminder of a larger problem in our society, volume as a stand-in for enthusiasm.
My first memory of this type of person goes back to the days of Louise Morgan on Channel 7, a women's show that featured the cartoon “Crusader Rabbit,” which drew me to the TV like a college kid to a keg party. Since the show was primarily aimed at “home makers,” that may be where I saw my first pitch man. The salad master cookware guy who seemed to talk loud, very fast and at great length about waterless cookware. The advantage of which totally escaped me (still does for that matter) but I liked that he banged the pots and pans together to show…what? I have no idea.
The loud and fast approach has always been popular with some advertisers. I assume, with my usual native optimism, because it works. Whether it works or not it has lately spread over into the programming and that’s when it gets really annoying. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” is a case in point. Let’s leave aside the premise of the show, to spotlight the life of one family that for one reason or another is having a pretty rough time. It’s an update of the old “Queen for a Day” program that first aired on radio in the mid 1940s. I also won’t bother to go into the number of “Extreme Makeover” houses that have gone through or are on the verge of foreclosure. Nope, I want to talk about Ty Pennington.
Ty, take your meds. You’re just way too upbeat, too loud and way too hyperactive. And Ty, you’re 44 years old, you’re getting to the point where the 90s-hip, spiky-haired, t-shirt look is just …well … scary. There comes a time in all our lives when we have to accept that we are no longer 23. Ty, that day has come for you. You’re also making the other people on the show look ridiculous as they try (unsuccessfully) to feign the kind of over the top enthusiasm that you are boiling over with probably because your Ritalin prescription has gone unfilled.
Ty. Focus. Chill out. Stop shouting. Stop trying to be the fastest guy walking on a 2 by 4. There’s no prize for that Ty. Although if you can settle down, just a little, I’ll talk to Vince and see if I can get you a free Slap-Chop as a reward.
He’s Vince, the ShamWow/Slap-Chop guy, and he’s the most recent incarnation of a kind of pitch-man that’s probably as old as the game of pitching crap to an unwary public. He’s the East Coast counterpart to the Mid-America Billy Mays. Not that I mind either of them that much, I rarely hear them, because of the mute button on my TV’s remote control. But they are there, probably every day and they’re a reminder of a larger problem in our society, volume as a stand-in for enthusiasm.
My first memory of this type of person goes back to the days of Louise Morgan on Channel 7, a women's show that featured the cartoon “Crusader Rabbit,” which drew me to the TV like a college kid to a keg party. Since the show was primarily aimed at “home makers,” that may be where I saw my first pitch man. The salad master cookware guy who seemed to talk loud, very fast and at great length about waterless cookware. The advantage of which totally escaped me (still does for that matter) but I liked that he banged the pots and pans together to show…what? I have no idea.
The loud and fast approach has always been popular with some advertisers. I assume, with my usual native optimism, because it works. Whether it works or not it has lately spread over into the programming and that’s when it gets really annoying. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” is a case in point. Let’s leave aside the premise of the show, to spotlight the life of one family that for one reason or another is having a pretty rough time. It’s an update of the old “Queen for a Day” program that first aired on radio in the mid 1940s. I also won’t bother to go into the number of “Extreme Makeover” houses that have gone through or are on the verge of foreclosure. Nope, I want to talk about Ty Pennington.
Ty, take your meds. You’re just way too upbeat, too loud and way too hyperactive. And Ty, you’re 44 years old, you’re getting to the point where the 90s-hip, spiky-haired, t-shirt look is just …well … scary. There comes a time in all our lives when we have to accept that we are no longer 23. Ty, that day has come for you. You’re also making the other people on the show look ridiculous as they try (unsuccessfully) to feign the kind of over the top enthusiasm that you are boiling over with probably because your Ritalin prescription has gone unfilled.
Ty. Focus. Chill out. Stop shouting. Stop trying to be the fastest guy walking on a 2 by 4. There’s no prize for that Ty. Although if you can settle down, just a little, I’ll talk to Vince and see if I can get you a free Slap-Chop as a reward.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Facing Down Facebook
Looking back it was probably only a matter of time. I’m being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century whether I like it or not. So far I’m not that impressed.
I may have been the last kid on my block to get a cell phone and I’m still not completely sure that it was a good idea. I just don’t have that much to say. Or at least not so much that I have to be able to say it at any time, in any location. And I definitely don’t need to hear what others have to say instantly no matter where I am.
So I compromised. I have a cell phone and when I need to make a call I turn it on. Or if you let me know you’ll be calling me, I’ll turn it on for that too…maybe. To me it’s still an undependable means of communication. There are too many places where it either doesn’t work or you can’t actually understand what the person you’re trying to converse with is saying for it to be relied upon. They’re great at providing the illusion of communication though, which is probably all that most people want anyway.
Now that you know that about me you probably won’t be all that surprised to hear that I haven’t joined any of the “social networking” sites. Live Journal, My Space and whatever else you can come up with have all expanded beautifully without me. Until now.
A week or so ago I got an invitation to join “Facebook.” Since it came from one of my favorite people I couldn’t very well decline an invitation to be their “friend”. So now I’m on Facebook and I feel like a dog that caught a car. Now that I’ve got it I don’t have the least idea of what to do with it.
For one thing there’s the whole “friends” issue. As a matter of fact that one may go beyond “issue” all the way to “problem.” You see, I think my friends already know who they are. They know they are my friends because I’ve spent time talking with them, working with them, doing things with them. Maybe it’s my flinty New Englander make up, but if you know me and you’re not sure if we’re friends we probably aren’t friends. That would make us acquaintances. Which is okay too.
So I guess I could search Facebook to find acquaintances and ask them to “friend” me but here’s a couple of problems I have with that. If you’re an acquaintance of mine and we haven’t already established a friendship, then probably neither one of us wants that kind of relationship. I could probably force the issue by asking you to “friend” me and build up my number of Facebook “friends” but I’m not that insecure. By the way, is there a Facebook etiquette that says that if somebody wants to “friend” you, you have to go along with it? I know there’s an ignore button but do people actually use it?
The other day during an email exchange with a friend I asked her if she is on Facebook and, yup, she is. Now I suppose I could have gone onto Facebook and “friended” her. (Spell-check didn’t care for that word at all and I’m not crazy about it either but jargon is always part of the experience.) But what would be the point? She already knows she’s a friend of mine. I know that I’m a friend of hers. We’re in fairly regular communication soooooo…?
I believe that all I really need to know I learned from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”. Eddie is a low level hood in Boston’s mob and he’s having problems that have led him to open discussions of a sensitive nature with a member of the federal law enforcement community. Drawing from memory, at one point Eddie’s contact, Dave Foley asks, “Is there anything you need, Eddie?” “I need a good leavin’ alone,” says Eddie. Eddie is my kind of guy.
I may have been the last kid on my block to get a cell phone and I’m still not completely sure that it was a good idea. I just don’t have that much to say. Or at least not so much that I have to be able to say it at any time, in any location. And I definitely don’t need to hear what others have to say instantly no matter where I am.
So I compromised. I have a cell phone and when I need to make a call I turn it on. Or if you let me know you’ll be calling me, I’ll turn it on for that too…maybe. To me it’s still an undependable means of communication. There are too many places where it either doesn’t work or you can’t actually understand what the person you’re trying to converse with is saying for it to be relied upon. They’re great at providing the illusion of communication though, which is probably all that most people want anyway.
Now that you know that about me you probably won’t be all that surprised to hear that I haven’t joined any of the “social networking” sites. Live Journal, My Space and whatever else you can come up with have all expanded beautifully without me. Until now.
A week or so ago I got an invitation to join “Facebook.” Since it came from one of my favorite people I couldn’t very well decline an invitation to be their “friend”. So now I’m on Facebook and I feel like a dog that caught a car. Now that I’ve got it I don’t have the least idea of what to do with it.
For one thing there’s the whole “friends” issue. As a matter of fact that one may go beyond “issue” all the way to “problem.” You see, I think my friends already know who they are. They know they are my friends because I’ve spent time talking with them, working with them, doing things with them. Maybe it’s my flinty New Englander make up, but if you know me and you’re not sure if we’re friends we probably aren’t friends. That would make us acquaintances. Which is okay too.
So I guess I could search Facebook to find acquaintances and ask them to “friend” me but here’s a couple of problems I have with that. If you’re an acquaintance of mine and we haven’t already established a friendship, then probably neither one of us wants that kind of relationship. I could probably force the issue by asking you to “friend” me and build up my number of Facebook “friends” but I’m not that insecure. By the way, is there a Facebook etiquette that says that if somebody wants to “friend” you, you have to go along with it? I know there’s an ignore button but do people actually use it?
The other day during an email exchange with a friend I asked her if she is on Facebook and, yup, she is. Now I suppose I could have gone onto Facebook and “friended” her. (Spell-check didn’t care for that word at all and I’m not crazy about it either but jargon is always part of the experience.) But what would be the point? She already knows she’s a friend of mine. I know that I’m a friend of hers. We’re in fairly regular communication soooooo…?
I believe that all I really need to know I learned from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”. Eddie is a low level hood in Boston’s mob and he’s having problems that have led him to open discussions of a sensitive nature with a member of the federal law enforcement community. Drawing from memory, at one point Eddie’s contact, Dave Foley asks, “Is there anything you need, Eddie?” “I need a good leavin’ alone,” says Eddie. Eddie is my kind of guy.
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