Gripes and Grumbles

Feb242012

I Don’t Even Know What to Call This One

Does everybody remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer and Flanders go to Vegas, get completely devastated, and wake up married to a couple of vulgar, gold-digging floozies? And then Flanders actually tries to live with his new “Vegas wife,” only to have her give up on her find-a-sugar-daddy scheme and run away because she just can’t take any more of his saccharine piousness? (The second part may have been a separate episode… I don’t remember for certain anymore.) As I recall, Flanders’ Vegas wife flees in the middle of the night, Amityville Horror style, yelling back over her shoulder something to effect of, “Just stop being so goody-goody all the time!” Does that ring a bell?

Yeah, that’s how I feel a lot of the time living in Utah. I mean, honestly, is there any other place in the known universe — or at least a place that doesn’t have a minaret in the middle of town — where this outfit would be considered immodest?

The young lady in the photo is Brittany Molina, a 21-year-old student at Brigham Young University, who experienced a moment of Internet fame last week because this unremarkable ensemble of a sweater, dress, leggings, and knee-high boots evidently proved too provocative for the tender sensibilities of some anonymous bluenose. As recounted on the Salt Lake Tribune‘s Movie Cricket blog, Brittany was on the BYU campus, minding her own business, when a young man she didn’t know walked up, handed her a note, and then scuttled off before she could read it. She thought at first it may have been a Valentine from a shy admirer, but it turned out to be something very different. The note read:

“You may want to consider that what you’re wearing has a negative effect
on men (and women) around you. Many people come to this university
because they feel safe, morally as well as physically, here. They expect
others to abide by the Honor Code that we all agreed on. Please
consider your commitment to the Honor Code (which you agreed to) when
dressing each day. Thank you.”

Now, I should probably explain for some of my Loyal Readers that BYU, which is owned by the Mormon Church, expects its students to follow a rigid set of rules — the aforementioned Honor Code — which regulates everything from attire and grooming to where students are allowed to live (BYU has to approve off-campus housing) to sexual behavior. Especially sexual behavior, which not-too-surprisingly seems to be the pitfall that trips up most Code violators, at least in the cases that come to the public’s attention. So just how strict are these rules? Well, believe it or not, they were a major factor in determining which local college I would attend following high school. Yes, yours truly applied to the Y back in my college-application days. And lest you think that seems, well, odd, I’ll be honest and admit that I was incredibly naive, knew little about the place, and chose to apply there largely because it was close to home and I wasn’t interested in going too far away for school. I even got accepted, on a provisional basis pending submission of a letter from my Mormon bishop or other ecclesiastical leader (this was a bit of a problem for me, given that I’ve been indifferent to religion since I was a small boy; I briefly considered writing my own letter and signing it “Master Yoda of Dagobah”) and, of course, my signature on a document promising I would obey this precious Honor Code of theirs. A handy rule book accompanied the acceptance letter so I could familiarize myself with the Code. I dutifully read through it, becoming more and more convinced with each new line of text that somebody, somewhere, was putting me on. It all seemed so… unnecessary.

Two items stand out in my memory as particularly insufferable: men were required to be clean-shaven (mustaches were allowed, although the Code’s phrasing on this point made it sound like they were grudgingly accepted at best, but beards and stubble were absolutely verboten), and you had to wear socks with your shoes. Leaving aside the fact that this was 1987 and I was still occasionally emulating Don Johnson’s Miami Vice look at the time, I couldn’t understand why a university, an institution of higher learning, a place whose mission is to educate and whose informal role is to help you learn how to be an independent adult, ought to have the slightest concern over whether I was wearing socks. I admittedly have something of a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian streak — I reflexively resent being told what to do, especially when I think I’m being told to do something stupid — but this was nothing short of insane micromanaging, as far as I was concerned. I was utterly repelled. However, I can thank my brush with the Honor Code for one thing, at least. It made a big life decision very simple for me. A week later, I was enrolled at BYU’s crosstown rival (and complete cosmological opposite), the University of Utah.

It’s probably also relevant to note that BYU is located in Provo, Utah, the seat of Utah County, which comprises the geographical area called Utah Valley. (It’s the Utah-iest place in all of Utah! In more ways than one, actually…) Utah Valley lies directly south of the Salt Lake Valley (and Salt Lake County), which is where I live. Things are different down there. Seriously, almost mind-bogglingly different. Non-Utahns tend to think of Salt Lake City as repressed, uptight, and highly conservative, but SLC is practically San Francisco’s Castro District compared to the UC. I actually try to avoid going down there, as my beard and ponytail instantly brand me as an outsider, and I’m not exaggerating when I say people do stare. Honest to god, I sometimes feel so out of place there, I expect a bunch of the locals to surround me and start up with the Body Snatcher scream. Even some of my Mormon friends report feeling less than worthy when they’re visiting Provo.

Anyway, given my complete alienation from the BYU/Provo mindset, I have a hard time grasping what’s so terrible about Ms. Milano’s outfit. The consensus among my friends seems to be that her dress is too short to meet the Honor Code’s standard, as it falls well above her knees, and I suppose that makes sense. But still… this is offensive to someone? Really? I mean, it’s not as if she’s dressed like one of the girls in a ZZ Top video, or like Julia Roberts in the beginning of Pretty Woman (not, just between you and me, that I have a problem with either of those looks; I guess I lack the gene that codes for moral outrage as generated by displays of feminine anatomy).

A couple of people have pointed out that it doesn’t matter whether I, personally, see anything wrong with her outfit or not, she was in violation of the rules she agreed to follow. I suppose there’s no arguing that. Brittany presumably got a chance to read the rule book same as I did, and she had her chance to make a run for it, the same way I did. But instead she willingly entered into a contract with the Y to follow their wretched Code, and she’s got to face the consequences if she doesn’t live up to her obligation. And really I know this whole story is just a tempest in a teapot, probably already forgotten by everyone who read about it last week. Nevertheless, it sticks in my craw because, regardless of whether she actually did anything wrong under whatever standard you want to apply, this incident encapsulates so much of what I really, truly hate about my home state. The pervasive, heavy-handed moralizing; the sanctimony and intolerance for anyone who strays too far off program; the nosy preoccupation with what your neighbors are doing and how “cleanly” they’re living, along with the misguided belief that you have the right to say anything about it; the casual misogyny that blames a young woman’s clothing for a young man’s sinful feelings; and, of course, the passive-aggressive behavior. Good lord, this place must surely be the passive-aggressive capital of the world. People who grow up here have it pounded into their heads from an early age to always be polite and agreeable, so few willingly engage in a direct confrontation if they can avoid it. (I’ll admit I’m guilty of it, too, for what that’s worth.) Instead, they find other, less direct — and less honorable, in my opinion — ways to attack: sarcastic jibes that are excused as good-natured humor, or intense competitiveness in sports and other social activities, or talking about people behind their backs. Or handing someone an anonymous note and running away before they can read it. Frickin’ coward. I have to say Ms. Molina apparently handled this situation with far more aplomb than I could’ve managed. I would’ve chased the punk down, pinned him to a wall, and told him that if he’s got a problem, he’d better tell me to my face. And then I would’ve impressed upon him how much better it would be for him to mind his own damn business…

(Ed. Note: For the record, I am not accusing every Utahn, or even every Utah Mormon, of behaving like this. Nor do I want to hear the usual defense made whenever a non-Mormon starts griping about how things are here, i.e., “if you don’t like it, leave.” This is my home, too, guys, and I have no intention of moving away. Nevertheless, there some aspects of life here that are… difficult… if you don’t happen to belong to the majority faith. And Provo is just plain weird, no matter how you slice it; it’s the world as designed by Ned Flanders, and that’s no bull. If I had to live down there, I think I probably would end up fleeing in the middle of the night, Amityville Horror style.)

Nov192011

Lament for Bill Mantlo

One of my favorite ways of disposing of my allowance when I was a kid was a comic book called The Micronauts. It was based on a line of imported Japanese toys — Loyal Readers of a certain age may remember them — and, like pretty much everything else around that time, it was heavily influenced by Star Wars, in particular by the Star Wars comics that were being published by the same company, Marvel. Despite its derivative elements, though, Micronauts quickly established its own rich identity. Its pages were filled with all sorts of wild ideas and concepts: another universe nestled within our own at a sub-microscopic level; a brave space explorer whose body spent 1,000 years in suspended animation while his conscious mind, merged with that of his robot co-pilot, traveled to the literal edge of their universe; and the decadent, violent society they returned to, where the rich and powerful prolonged their lives to near-infinity by replacing worn-out body parts with components harvested from the poor. It was all pretty heady stuff for a ten-year-old living in a sleepy little town in parochial old Utah, and it left a big impression.

Micronauts ran for five years, 1979 to 1984, resulting in 59 regular issues and two double-length “annuals.” Remarkably, all of those issues save one were written by the same man, a guy named Bill Mantlo. Even more remarkably, Mantlo was simultaneously scripting all the issues for another toy-based comic, Rom Spaceknight, as well as contributing to other titles such as The Incredible Hulk, Spectacular Spider-Man, Thor, and Iron Man, a simply amazing level of productivity. By the late ’80s, however, Mantlo was pretty well finished with comics; he left the industry, reinvented himself, and shortly became one of the great “where are they now?” mysteries from the pop culture of that era.

Earlier this week, I learned the fate of Bill Mantlo, and it isn’t pretty. In 1992, he was struck by a car while rollerblading. It was a hit-and-run; the driver has never been found. Mantlo survived, but honestly it would’ve been better for him if he hadn’t. He sustained massive brain injuries and was left severely impaired, both mentally and physically. But the accident was only the beginning of the real nightmare for Mantlo and his family. Although he made significant progress in his early rehabilitation, his insurance company soon started balking at the cost of the rehab, pressuring Mantlo’s brother Mike — who has been handling his affairs since the accident — to find cheaper and cheaper facilities. Finally, the insurer decreed — contrary to the opinions of doctors, mind you — that further rehab was “unnecessary.” Mantlo was cut off altogether. Mike was forced to liquidate everything Bill owned to qualify him for Medicare, and today Bill Mantlo, once such a prolific and creative force to be reckoned with, is warehoused in a geriatric nursing home in Queens, the only place his family could afford to send him. He is penniless and helpless. What progress he’d once made toward recovery has entirely dissipated without continuing therapy. His quality of life is essentially nonexistent. He is simply waiting to die.

That’s the executive summary; you can read all the details here. It’s a long article, but it’s well worth your time, and I highly recommend that you read it and ponder it. Consider it a cautionary tale of how thoroughly a human life can be destroyed, short of death itself. And keep in mind that Bill Mantlo was one of the “lucky” ones. He had health insurance.

For me, this sad story constitutes just one more outrageous piece of evidence that the way we handle healthcare in this country is seriously broken. Conservative politicians scared a lot of people silly a couple years ago by claiming that a single-payer health system would lead to rationing of care and so-called “death panels,” but what was Bill Mantlo subjected to if not rationing? And what were the faceless, implacable bureaucrats who decided his fate if not the equivalent of those dread death panels? Actually, they were worse than a “death” panel, because they condemned him not to death itself, but to a lingering, living hell until he finally gets around to dying. And they made that decision entirely on how much he was going to cost them, not whether he was responding to care or was still capable of improvement. If the United States truly is, as I’ve always been told, the richest country on earth, the best country on earth, how can we in good conscience abandon a human life in this way? The dirty truth behind our for-profit insurance industry is that insurers are more concerned with the dividends of their shareholders than the needs of their policy holders. People carry insurance as a hedge against anything really bad ever happening to us, but if anything really bad does happen, the insurance companies fight like hell to not actually help you, and that is just wrong. No… it’s obscene. Our society’s treatment of the long-term ill isn’t quite as perverted as what Bill Mantlo imagined in the pages of The Mirconauts, i.e., Baron Karza’s evil body banks, but in my book, it is just about as cruel and inhumane. I wish more people could see that and agree to change it.

Aug152011

Self-Awareness

Not much to say, only that this struck a chord with me…

Word. Source.

May252011

From the Department of Needless Complication

Walking to the office from the train today, I noticed a workman refreshing the paint on some traffic-barrier poles near my building. The poles were glistening in the strengthening morning sunlight, and there were signs taped to the pavement around them warning off the unwary who might brush against them. Something about this scene was so reminiscent of the television fantasies of urban life I’d been exposed to as a very small boy — think Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and about a billion cop shows set in the gritty decay of ’70s-vintage New York — that I couldn’t help but smile. But then I noticed something weird about those warning signs. One of them read “Almost Dry Paint,” which seemed like an unnecessarily specific descriptor. And then the sign next to the pole the man was still slathering with Battleship Gray read “Undry Paint.”

“Undry?” It’s bad enough that we now apparently feel it necessary to define different categories of wetness, but “Undry?” Really? Is that even a word? Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned clarity — not to mention concision — of “Wet?” Seriously, what could be more straightforward and absolutely not in need of elaboration than the traditional phrasing related to the transferability of newly applied paint? What the hell is wrong with the 21st century anyhow? It almost like society is adopting the foolishly complex language of the Coneheads and saying things like “electric incandescent illumination unit” instead of “lamp,” because, oh I don’t know, we’re living in the future or something, and everyone knows that people in the future speak in pointlessly convoluted ways. Because it’s the future, man. Arg.

Apr272011

Oh, Lord, It Just Gets Worse…

Following up on that entry about movie release dates making one feel old, here’s this:

Notice that my age — not to mention most of my personal landmark films — aren’t even represented. Because this chart isn’t aimed at we “older people.”

Ouch. Thanks a lot, xkcd. I’m just going to go sit in my rocking chair with a nice bowl of bread and milk now.

Apr232011

Memo

ATTN: Owners of the Peppermill Concert Hall, West Wendover, NV

I just heard your latest radio spot advertising upcoming performances. It sounds like a great line-up over the next couple months. I enjoy your smaller, more intimate venue and I’m grateful for the opportunity you give to older artists who can no longer fill the big arenas, but still love to perform for their fans.

However, I would like to mention that Rick Springfield does have male fans. No, really. Trust me on this point. Prefacing his segment of the ad with a voiceover saying, “Hey, ladies….” and suggesting that a Rick concert is a perfect girls’ night out — which it is, I won’t deny — is somewhat alienating to those of us who love his music but also sport that Y chromosome. Just something to consider…

Nov092010

A Work-Related Gripe

I wish there was some way of making clear to the account people I work with — despite what they seem to believe, I don’t actually work for them — that the time I spend on the phone with them updating them on the status of their projects is time I could be, you know, working on their projects.

I’m just sayin’.

Not to belabor the point, but this is a tremendous pet peeve of mine. I know my job; I know the schedule. I know they’ve got people above them calling every fifteen minutes, probably because those folks in turn have people above them who are calling every ten minutes. But I also know that account people have a nasty tendency to make promises their butts can’t keep, rather than setting realistic expectations, and that they also tend to think that their projects are the only ones that matter, indeed the only ones that even exist in this whole big corporate universe. Well, sorry, kids, but here’s the score: you are not the only account person sending me work, and everybody says their particular job is urgent. It’s all urgent, okay? So just take a number and chill; I’ll get your project done. But I’ll get it done a lot faster if you quit bugging me all the damn time…

Sep032010

Scott Pilgrim Versus, Well, Me

Okay, pop culture, I get it. You have finally beaten me. Your insatiable entertainment juggernaut held me in its warm embrace for a brief, glorious moment of my youth, but then predictably, inevitably, churned onward toward newer and flashier things, leaving me stranded on the side of a one-way road that’s rapidly diminishing into the rear-view. So I guess it’s time for me to surrender to the obvious and admit that my day is past, my sensibilities are out of touch, and I am no longer even remotely cool.

At least that’s how I felt about ten minutes into the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

First, though, a bit of backstory to explain how I came to be watching a film that hadn’t previously drawn so much as one iota of my interest…

Jul292010

Call It What You Want, It’s Still a Damned Remake

News today that a “contemporized adaptation” of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-on-Mars flick Total Recall is in the works. Never mind the question of whether the world is clamoring for yet another version of yet another story that’s already been told, or whether this particular story might benefit from being told again.* No, the thing that bugs me here is this obnoxious piece of jargon, “contemporized adaptation.” That, my friends, sounds to me like a marketing department trying to find some clever new way of saying “remake” without using the prefix “re-.” Because, I suppose, market research indicates that words beginning with “re-” too clearly state the obvious. “Reimagining,” “relaunch,” “reboot” — they all stink of a trip back to the same well, don’t they? So instead of using one of those words, dripping with all the negative connotations of creative bankruptcy, somebody sat around a conference table for hours to come up with this all-new term for the same old crap.

I can just imagine the pitch meeting for Total Recall, Take Two: A guy in a 5,000-dollar suit listens for a minute, then says with a slight, vaguely reptilian grin, “Wait a minute, this is just another bloody remake, right? We’ve done dozens of those in the last decade, why should I greenlight another one? Can’t you give me something original?” And he’s answered with, “No, no, it’s not a remake… it’s a contemporized adaptation.” And then, since Studio Suits are so easily dazzled by multisyllabic words, the first guy nods and says, “Oh, well, then, that sounds swell. Here’s a blank check.”

Guys, let me tell you something: it doesn’t matter how you say it. It doesn’t matter how you justify it. The fact is, you’re out of ideas. You’re lazy, you’re overly cautious, and you care more about extending brands than telling stories. And every one of these “contemporized adaptations” you keep cranking out just further proves my point. You know what? At this point, just remake it all, every movie from the last 50 years, and the sooner the better, because then maybe when it’s all been done over with sparkly CG effects and processed into murky 3D for maximum gimmick-appeal, we can get back to actually, you know, making movies, the kind you don’t have to make up words to describe.

Remakes. Grrr.

* For the record, I’m not really that big a fan of Total Recall. In fact, I outright loathed it when it was first released back in my old working-at-the-multiplex days. I don’t much enjoy “mind-f**k” movies anyhow, the ones that want to leave you guessing about what’s really happening to the characters and what’s only in their heads, and Recall was a pretty clumsy example of that genre. It was also ridiculously, cartoonishly violent (or so it seemed to me at the time; I’ve since seen worse), and it was just plain stupid in a lot of places. I could buy the alien instant-atmosphere-making machine, but Arnold and Rachel Ticotin looking completely unscathed in the final scene after having their eyes bugged four inches out of their skulls and then getting explosively recompressed? Uh, no. And don’t tell me this is proof that the whole movie was Arnold’s dream/memory implant. I already told you, I don’t like that mind-f**k crap. (I also dislike novels with unreliable narrators; I don’t like the feeling of some writer somewhere having a laugh at my expense.)

The biggest problem with Recall, though, is that it has no third act. Following a reasonably good set-up and middle portion, the writers obviously couldn’t figure out how to end it, so they just have Arnold shoot a bunch of people. Even though I hate remakes on general terms, you can actually make a pretty good argument in favor of remaking this one, assuming someone has come up with a solution to the problem of the third act. But of course, I don’t believe anyone has. Because most screenplays these days aren’t even as good as the dumb popcorn movies of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

And you know, now that I think about it, my attitude toward Total Recall has softened a lot in the last 20 years. Memories of it are bound up with memories of a good time in my life. And, as stupid as it was, it was still more entertaining than something like The Dark Knight. I’m really tired of all the Darkness with a capital D being sold as artistic significance in movies these days…

Jun182010

Damn Californicators!

Several of the blogs I follow have been commenting on an interactive map doohickey that lets you chart the people moving into and out of any part of the US you may be interested in. Naturally, I selected my home county, and this was the result I got:

As usual, click the image to enlarge it. If it’s not clear what you’re looking at, black lines indicate people moving into the area, while the red lines are folks who got the hell out of Dodge the same year. The heavier-weighted lines represent the number of people moving between any two destinations. One caveat: the statistics used are all two years old.
Notice where most of those black lines — the inbound lines — seem to originate. That’s right, the newcomers to the Salt Lake Valley are coming in the largest numbers from Southern California, thus appearing to validate one of the most enduring memes of Utah folk wisdom over the past couple of decades: the “Californicator.”