Howard and I took on Texting vs. Drinking while driving in the Perpetual Post.
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In the brief history of cell phones, has there ever been a critical text message? One which actually helped to avert a crisis? Not a ‘your ex is at the party!!’ crisis. I’m talking a genuine disaster, prevented by a buzzing cell phone with a postage-stamp-sized message of 160 characters or less? No. I’m pretty sure not. They don’t even use that shit on 24. If Jack Bauer needs to let someone know that a building is about to explode unless they cut the blue wire, he calls.
This is why I am unsympathetic toward texting while driving: because it’s never urgent. At the very least, it’s never more urgent than not crashing your car. Is there anything you might need to say via text message that can’t wait until you are no longer responsible for keeping a moving vehicle from hitting anything?
Or maybe you text in the car because you’re bored. Is just plain driving not interesting enough anymore? Watching the scenery hurtle past you at 60mph while other cars weave in and out of your way doesn’t hold your attention the way it used to? Then pull over. Maybe you’ll like walking better. Because you’ll be doing a more lot of that when you flip your car over a median because you were texting to let your friend know that you’ve been thinking of trying out for The Amazing Race. Actually, scratch that. At that point, you’ll be thrilled if you’re walking.
Before I continue to get my crabby geezer on, I would like to note that I am a huge fan of texting. I don’t really know what I like about it so much; but since I manage to send about nine million texts a month, there must be something about the format that appeals to me. Still, even when a blinding flash of brilliance strikes while I’m in traffic and I feel the overwhelming urge to express it to someone via text, I hold my thumbs.
I’m not saying it’s easy. We as a society are accustomed to multitasking to the point of utter uselessness, and we have conditioned ourselves to expect instant gratification. We want same day delivery and 24 hour customer service. We put pizza on a bagel so we can eat pizza anytime. Nobody listens to voicemails anymore; even text messaging is apparently beginning to fall by the wayside as people begin to IM each other through their phones.
But there are still some things you have to wait for, and texting, if you’re driving, is one of them. Just like you have to wait until you get out of the tub to use your hair dryer. Some things are just so dangerous that they’re not worth doing in the instant they occur to you. Unless it’s worth risking life and limb to let your old roommate know that it’s Shark Week, wait until you get where you’re going.
Howard and I took this topic on in Friday’s Perpetual Post:
I’ve spent countless carefree, enjoyable hours surfing the internet, but if there were a way to add all of that time up and show me exactly how much of my sweet life I’ve wasted reading gossip blogs and msn.com relationship advice, I would probably weep and throw myself off a cliff. I know that at this point I’ve spent months of my life playing around on the internet. Maybe even years. YEARS spent staring at a glowing screen and scrolling through photos of celebrities clambering out of limos. What have I really gained from all of that restless, pointless clicking and endless consumption of cheap news and useless information? Where did the time go? Can I have it back? If I could have it back, wouldn’t I just waste it in a similarly pointless, trivial manner? Or would I write the great American novel?
I guess the definition of a waste of time is different for everyone. However unlikely, there may be some who bemoan the years they frittered away reading Joyce, seeking spiritual enlightenment and spending time with their children. Still, my definition of a waste of time is unfortunately going to have to include the hours I’ve spent watching videos of cats playing with boxes, reading reviews of terrible 80s movies, and searching for pictures of Basking sharks (because have you seen those things?!). And I have the power of Google to thank for most of those experiences.
An article on The Atlantic.com called ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid’ suggested that the ease with which the internet allows us to move quickly from one thing to another is rewiring us to be less able to focus on one thing for long periods of time. I didn’t finish the article but it looked interesting. Anyway I’ll finish writing this in a minute. First I’m going to go check my bank balance online. While I’m doing that, I will remember that I wanted to buy this recipe book on Amazon, and once I’m on their website I will be sidetracked by a link to a fabulous quiche recipe. Then I’ll Google ‘quiche recipe’ to see if I can find a better one, which will remind me that I’ve always wondered how long it takes for eggs to go bad, which will lead me to a video of a dancing chicken, which will lead me to a video of a dancing robot, which will remind me of this website I used to visit that had comics about robots, and when I get to that website I will remember that I meant to email an old friend who likes robots. But before I get to that, I want to read a movie review of Tron, and I’m hoping that review will totally slam it, so I go to The Onion AV club, which reminds me that I haven’t read Dan Savage in awhile, so I’ll catch up on the last few months of his sex advice columns, at which point I look at the clock and realize I’ve spent three hours staring at the computer with very little to show for it. And I could have been playing with the dog, or making a quiche, or calling my grandmother just to say hi.
I’m not going to claim that the internet has never taught me anything. It is thanks to Google that I’ve learned how to grow windowbox herbs and discovered that Timothy Olyphant from “Die Hard 4” also played the drug dealer in “Go”. The internet is incredible in its real-time validation of the most insignificant of my urges and thoughts. The faintest blip of an idea can lead me to far-reaching websites and galaxies of discovery. The problem is, with all of this information at my fingertips, my mind seems to be turning into a colander, and surfing the internet is like dipping it into the ocean. When I re-emerge from my internet travels, all the glorious trivia and minutia I’ve gathered over the hours immediately drains out and I forget all of the wonderful knowledge I’ve spent hours skimming over. Occasionally a small silvery fish will be left flopping in the colander—a rare fact that I’ve actually managed to retain—and it’s usually either the day’s weather forecast or something about Britney Spears.
Recently I’ve been trying to finish doing one thing at a time online before I move on to the next. This seems simple, but somehow it’s become incredibly difficult, perhaps because my mind is trained at this point to expect the instant gratification of every random whim that occurs to me while I’m in the middle of something that’s maybe not holding my attention perfectly. Perhaps I’m apartment hunting online or researching credit scores. Suddenly it will occur to me that I want to see a picture of that dress whats-her-face wore to the Oscars that one year—and BAM! That is enough of an incentive for me to drop what I’m doing and kneel at the shrine of Google. And when I find that actress’s dress, it might lead me to one of my favorite fashion blogs, and before I know it, an hour’s gone by and all of the good apartments are taken. And my credit score is still in the toilet.
It’s not been easy making this change, and I haven’t done nearly as well as I would have liked (while writing this article I Googled several different unrelated subjects, including the goblin sharks and the history of the Sapphire) but I’m getting there. And someday, when I’m old and I’m the only one at the card table who can play more than one round of gin rummy without wandering off to watch breakdancing videos on YouTube or surf for pancake recipes, maybe my brain will thank me.
“It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present, you know what I mean?”
–Edith Bouvier Beale
I was first introduced to Grey Gardens by a friend of mine who had seen it dozens of times and quoted it often. He said I absolutely had to see it, that it would change my life. While it was difficult for me to watch all the way through the first time, and I still have trouble getting through the whole thing whenever I watch it again, Grey Gardens is unforgettable. I think everyone should see it.
When the musical came out, I was oh so excited. My parents got me tickets to it for my birthday, and I highly enjoyed it (although the first act, which is not based on the movie, I could take or leave). The flamboyant and yet painfully intimate documentary film was well suited for the adaptation to Broadway musical. The addition of musical numbers did not seem glaringly out of place, since the documentary itself was alive with music and dance. The portrayal of the Beales on the stage was thoughtful and nuanced; loving yet honest.
Given that the Broadway musical was such a smash hit, I should not be surprised that a film remake of the original documentary, as was recently shown on HBO, soon followed. Truthfully, I can almost understand the desire to remake Grey Gardens; a work of such brilliance is sure to inspire its share of devoted followers, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that.
While I have come out against film remakes in the past, I don’t doubt that at least some fraction of them are made not with profit in mind but out of love and devotion to the original. When you remake a fictional film, even if it’s based on true events, you are in effect re-telling a story that was originally told using actors and a set and a script. Your version of Bonnie & Clyde may underline different themes and play up ideas that were less obvious in the original, and that’s fine. Your take is different, but it is recreated under the same circumstances as the original film, and in that regard, your version is just as legitimate.
Remaking a documentary, on the other hand, is not only ludicrous, but also pointless. How can you play up ideas that weren’t sufficiently developed during the original documentary of Grey Gardens, when all of the ideas and themes that existed in the original were introduced by the actual people themselves? Edie Beale and her mother were not actresses. They were performers, certainly, but they were not playing roles. They were being themselves-their own glorious, crazy, tragic selves. Why on earth would I ever want to watch two actresses attempt to portray the Beales, when I can watch the actual Beales? What aspects of their incredible lives could ever be better illuminated by an actor’s mimicry?
Both Little Edie and Big Edie are dead now, and both died in poverty, having seen little financial reward for starring in an incredibly popular documentary that laid bare the trappings of their astonishing lives. In one sense, I understand that a remake of Grey Gardens is supposed to serve as an homage to the Beales. But in a more real sense, I see it as a ghastly exploitation; replicating a documentary that itself bordered on exploitation, no matter how iconic and successful it became in the end. Let these two fearless, haunting women have the last word; see the original Grey Gardens, and skip the remake. As a devoted fan of the original, I plan to.
I am convinced that if I were locked away in solitary with no contact with the outside world except for Twitter, it would STILL irritate me.
For this week’s Perpetual Post, Howard and I took on the Obamas new dog. Someone had to! Find his side up here on Tuesday:
Of the many grievous errors committed by the Obama family during its first several months in the White House, high on the list is their recent adoption of a purebred Portuguese Water Dog, an elitist breed if ever there was one; the sort of dog that’s born with a silver shoe in its mouth. They’ve named the little patrician “Bo”, which is likely short for ‘Boristocrat’, or ‘Bommunity Organizer’. Or perhaps, ‘ABotion.’
In any event, the Obamas claim that this newest addition was chosen because their youngest daughter, “Malia”, is “allergic to most breeds of dog”; a flimsy excuse for a politically-charged adoption which was undertaken mainly for the purposes of legally joining the Obama and Kennedy families at long last. The wishes of the dog itself, who suffered a callous name-change at the hands of his new owners, were not taken into account, nor were the feelings of the millions of dogs who remain in shelters, left homeless and un-adopted by the First Family.
Indeed, if Malia truly does suffer from allergies, it is President Obama’s duty to show that affliction no mercy. The United States has never negotiated with allergens, nor should it now. President Obama’s shameless devotion to the health and wellness requirements of his young children makes America look soft on terror.
Not only are average Americans up-in-arms at this favortism; Canine-Americans are also exceedingly insulted by the Obama’s devastating slight to their homeless and shelter-dwelling brethren. In his blundering adoption of a pedigreed puppy, Obama has in effect just told Canine-Americans to roll over and play dead. Dogs of mixed descent are left to feel unrepresented, wondering sadly how they are supposed to take pride in their species, and whether they are in fact good boys.
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Howard and I once again engage in a debate in this week’s Perpetual Post. This time the topic is Stem Cells. Find his side here. Will we ever agree on anything???
Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to bring to your attention a growing problem that, if left unchecked, will rapidly proliferate into a variety of other problems with different disease-curing functions. I’m talking, of course, about Stem Cells. They’re here, they’re cells, and no matter what type of cell they decide to become at any given moment, (even an apple-pie cell) they’re always un-American.
It’s time we recognize these teeny, good for nothing or everything cells for what they really are; parasitic fame-whores, intent on destroying American values even as they help pump blood through aging American valves. These wanna-bes don’t care what kind of cells they have to morph into become rich and famous and attract all sorts of sleazy little groupie enzymes. Reinventing itself as a younger-looking cell with a taut new membrane and sexier stems every time you turn around, the stem cell is the Madonna of the research circuit. And I for one have had enough.
These slippery little cells will stop at nothing to grow with scientific encouragement and nurturing into the kinds of specialized cells needed to help individuals who suffer from arthritis and Parkinson’s. That’s all fine and good, if you have those diseases, which I am vaguely familiar with but not personally affected by— but more importantly, you have to wonder about such a cell. What kind of moral fiber can it possibly have? What sort of traditional values was it raised with? In my opinion, this drifter, this three-faces-of-Eve cell is bound to become a bad influence on any other cells it encounters. It will doubtless encourage every lowly and humdrum Bob-the-liver or Dolores-the-pancreatic cell to dream of a life spent as an impressive, high-profile heart or brain cell. Not every cell gets to do the glamorous job—unless it’s a stem cell. What kind of connections do these cells have, anyway? Where’s the rich uncle stem cell that started all of this? It’s nepotism at its most basic level!
We have entered a sad age when even the jobs of our own organs are being outsourced. An honest day’s work in the endocrine system is being snatched away from hard-working American cells that just want to make a living. So what if some of the cells that were proudly made in the USA aren’t up for the job—can’t we give them a second chance before turning immediately to foreign labor? Perhaps these American cells just need better healthcare.
If you’re looking for some kickass bluesy rock with a ridiculously talented female vocalist, don’t miss the awesome Fugitive Kind during their upcoming East Coast tour.
There is a a clip of them performing recently on Fox25 News here.
I LOVE this band. If you have a chance to see them at a venue near you while they’re on tour, I highly recommend going. They play a great live show and their newly released album ‘You’re Being Watched’ is fantastic. I used to complain that there weren’t enough bands out there with strong, powerful female singers, and then I found Fugitive Kind, and I shut up about it. They’re that good.
I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to watch the Inauguration today because I had to work. My plan was to go to the gym around noon so that I could at least watch it on the crappy tvs at the gym (which are always tuned to the Fox network, blech) while I ran on the treadmill or something.
And then! Lo and behold! Nature dropped 4 inches and counting of snow on Raleigh! If this were Boston, I’d be at work right now. But because it’s the beautiful beautiful south, everything is closed down today. My car sits nestled in the snow outside the apartment, and Brian and I sit nestled on the couch, drinking coffee and watching Barack Obama’s historic inauguration. I’m so thankful for days like this one. Somehow, snow days always manage to stretch on forever.
I have become involved with an exciting new journalistic endeavor, The Perpetual Post, which is the brainchild of Howard Megdal. For this week’s issue I wrote a devil’s advocate-style article condemning the old-fashionedness of print material in favor of internet-style reading.
Read it, along with Ted Berg’s rebuttal, here. Also, check out the rest of the issue. If I do say so myself, it’s a darn good read.
I Heard Tell 