Nobody Ever Paid Admission For An Excuse

Have you ever seen American Movie?



I was always a fan of documentaries and I stumbled upon this while Google searching. The fact that it takes place one hundred miles south of where I grew up and my fiance's penchant for bad horror movies, put it to the top of my "to watch" list.

I was expecting to enjoy it. I wasn't expecting it to become one of my all time favorites.

This is the definition of comedic tragedy.

Five Dollar Shake

Pulp Fiction was on AMC tonight and, for a lack of anything else to watch, I tuned in. Not that I don't love the movie. I do. I just tend to shy away from watching movies on television that I own on DVD. I turned it on in time to see the famous date between Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega at Jack Rabbit Slims:

BUDDY
How 'bout you, Peggy Sue?

MIA
I'll have the Durwood Kirby burger
-- bloody -- and a five-dollar
shake.

BUDDY
How d'ya want that shake, Martin
and Lewis, or Amos and Andy?

MIA
Martin and Lewis.

VINCENT
Did you just order a five-dollar
shake?

MIA
Sure did.

VINCENT
A shake? Milk and ice cream?

MIA
Uh-huh.

VINCENT
It costs five dollars?

BUDDY
Yep.

VINCENT
You don't put bourbon in it or
anything?

BUDDY
Nope.

VINCENT
Just checking.

This movie was released in 1994. Today in 2010, if you walked into a TGI Fridays and ordered a shake, that sucker wouldn't cost less than seven bucks. Probably more if you wanted their specialty flavors.

I wonder how much this shit costs:

Loving someone and being "in love" are both like going on a grand vacation. The difference is, when "in love", one doesn't consider the long trip back home.

Emancipation From Social Networking

Have you ever heard of Dunbar's number?


Do you get the correlation between Dunbar's number and Facebook?


If not, does it concern anyone that we live in a culture that is becoming dominated by faux social hierarchies and artificial self-actualization at the expense of delicate anonymity?

As I become allergic to the waves of vapidity rising up like the heat off of a desert road, I abandoned my Facebook. It now lays like a rotting carcass for the carrion to pick apart. I only hope that they find more meat on it than the usual pickings.

'Did You Plug the Hole Yet, Daddy?'

The funny thing is, when Obama voters speak, these are the words they are really using:

"Do we have free healthcare yet, Daddy?"

"Do I have to pay for all the luxuries I couldn't afford, Daddy?"

"Will other countries stop being mean to us now, Daddy?"

Amongst Friends

I'm a man who craves deep, brain-engaging, thoughtful conversation outside of conventional banter. I have confided in my fiance (henceforth known as MsSisyphus) about how my social life suffers from a void of camaraderie. Not in an I-have-no-friends-woe-as-me-time-for-xbox-in-my-sweatpants-mopey sort of way. But in a I-haven't-heard-an-original-thought-or-idea-outside-of-my-home-or-the-internet-in-months kind of listlessness. It was getting to the point where I would rather not be social than to go out and be forced to look into the deep, dark chasm that was my life through the lens of everyone around me pea-cocking to Fergie and talking about the latest advances in Beer Pong. (They have yet to make opponents in a non-douche variety).

Then a couple weeks ago, a friend of MsSisyphus and I asked us over for drinks and a Brewer's game (you need the former to enjoy the latter this year). Our friend's husband is sort of a quiet guy. At least he was quiet around me. I knew he was big into philosophy so I posed the question: "I want read either Notes From The Underground or The Idiot (both by Dostoevsky), what should I choose?"

Direct hit.

We chatted about abstract philosophical concepts off and on for the rest of the night. Does God exist? If he does, does he care about us? Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Is life ultimately futile? Is Lamb of God's Laid to Rest the best metal song of the last five years? Am I The Walrus? The night went from the usual humdrum of "let's get together to give ourselves the illusion that we are doing something with our time" to sitting in a comfortable chair sipping a glass of $80 scotch discussing Dante and Voltaire.

Best of all, I don't know all that much about philosophy outside of high school and Bioshock so I learned a great deal about many interesting concepts. It was the breath of fresh air I needed after inhaling the suffocating smog of hackneyed palaver for too long.

Risking snobbery, I tell this story because, as a man, I constantly yearn for these types of discussions. But the opportunity to engage in them is few and far between. I sincerely believe that we have lost our ability to have meaningful conversations with each other. I blame three things:

1. Popular music - Try and talk about higher concepts with this going on:



2. Access to televisions - Another mindless distraction that arrests natural eloquence

3. Appetite for shitty alcohol - "I believe what Nietzsche said was correct in that 'fixed truths in religion and morality are an illusion. We created them, thus "God is dead" and morality is relative to the individual'. Bartender! Another Jager bomb please!"

It goes without saying that there is always a time and a place for getting smashed and acting stupid. I prefer weddings and work parties. But I don't always want to fill my times of communion in the eye of a hurricane created by fetid mating dances concocted from UV and dandelion wine.

Let us find a quiet bar and talk about complex ideas. Let us discuss politics and disagree amongst ourselves over old fashions and pints of beer. Let the soft warmth of good booze loosen our lips and let those other fools decipher whether or not we are learned men or just full of shit. It shouldn't matter to us anyway.