I took the day off work yesterday so I could hold The Girlfriend’s hand while she underwent a minor surgical procedure. Okay, I wasn’t allowed to actually hold her hand during the procedure, but I was out in the waiting room the whole time. Well, except for when her mom and I ran over to Village Inn for a quick plate of eggs and bacon with a side of pancakes. But we were there when the doctor came looking for us to tell us we could go see her in the recovery room, and that’s what counts, right? In any event, she’s doing fine, thanks for wondering.

Later, finding myself with a free afternoon and nothing better to do, I decided to drop into Beans and Brews for a Starbucks-style coffee-and-milk beverage and an hour or so of recreational reading. The particular Beans and Brews I visited is just down the street from a high school, and, as school had just let out for the day, the place was crowded with gangly, gawky young men dressed in their unofficial uniforms of baggy jeans and dark-colored hoodies, all eager to get their daily caffiene buzz on. I slipped through their gauntlet, bought a mochaccino, and found a sofa to settle into with my book.
I’d been reading for a few minutes when I suddenly heard Steve Perry belting out “Don’t Stop Believin’.” This was a bit puzzling because the coffee-house’s PA system had been — still was, in fact — playing some anonymously mopey rock song that I couldn’t name if you held a gun to my head. I looked around to see who’d brought in a competing music-player… and was surprised to see one of the hooded teenage boys pulling a cellphone from his pocket. The kid was using a song that had charted before he was even conceived as his ringtone. I grinned, thinking to myself that there might be some hope for the future after all.

Then the in-store music switched to an artist I recognized — Warren Zevon — and I overheard the young barista telling his friends to listen to the amazingly cool song that was just starting. “I just love this one,” he said, “It’s called ‘Werewolves of Thunder‘.”
Doh.
I turned my attention back to my book and tried not to feel smugly old…

I’ve believed for some time now that we Americans are turning ourselves into a nation of infantilized wussies. Seriously. We worry constantly about achieving “closure” for every little childhood trauma, we dress ourselves in soft ‘n’ cuddly fleece outfits that resemble nothing so much as overgrown jammies (all they need are the sewn-in feet), and we’re downright obsessed with safety. Cops pulling you over for not wearing your seatbelt, those obnoxious seals that have to be removed from all of our food and medicine containers, warnings on the sides of our coffee cups that the contents may be hot (duh!)… it’s enough to make me want to run out and do something positively reckless, like run with the bulls in Pamplona or wave freshly baked cupcakes at the women coming out of Gold’s Gym.

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Okay, the following is a bit of a departure from this week’s Talkin’ Books theme, but it’s so in line with my general philosophy that I thought it bore immediate repeating here. From a blog called Hooptyrides comes the Idiots Rule:

Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate.

–Mr. Jalopy

Yep, that about says it all…

[Ed. note: Actually, on re-reading the source of this quote I see that the original entry was actually “Idiots Rule,” not “The Idiots Rule.” That puts a slightly different spin on things, doesn’t it? Oh well, I still agree with the sentiment…]

For the record, I did not write the following. Somebody sent it to me via e-mail, along with the usual daily batch of unfunny joke-type spams. However, this certainly seems in the spirit of something I would write, and it amused Anne when I showed it to her, so I’m going to post it up here. I’ve done some minor editing to correct eccentric capitalization and such, so apologies to whoever originally wrote it:

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Lileks on modern movie-going:

I haven’t stood in line for a ticket in a long time – I get them from the kiosk in the lobby well in advance, because I hate lines of any sort. On the other hand, it moves us towards the depopulation of the theater staff; I still remember ticket booths, not counters – some poor soul locked in a capsule under the marquee, doling out tickets from a great spool. Then there’s the fellow who rips the ticket in half – not exactly a demanding job, but it always seemed to have authority. Only I can rip the ticket. Should you rip the ticket, it is useless. By destroying it, I fulfill its value. Hail me, for I am the Head Usher. These will be anachronisms soon enough, and one more human interaction, heretofore ubiquitous, will replaced with a beep and a green light.

 

Wow: from techno-glee to rueful nostalgic regret in one paragraph. That’s a record.

As a former movie-theater usher, and one who isn’t ashamed to admit that I quite enjoyed the job, I have to give props to ol’ Jimmy. He perfectly captures the banal self-importance of those who control public access to the cinematic inner sanctum. He also paints, for me, a grim view of a very-near future in which movie-goers shuffle efficiently and mirthlessly past automated ticketing kiosks and snack-dispensing cubicles and barcode-scanning gateways. Hell, that future is already here in some places. Personal anecdote: a few months back, I happened to be in Los Angeles, where I went to see a movie at a place called The Grove It’s a beautiful theater in many respects, but one which is suspiciously lacking in the human touch. I bought my tickets from an ATM-style dispenser, and then I ordered my concessions with a touch-screen panel and paid by swiping my debit card. When my number was called, a concessionaire handed me a sack of corn and an empty cup, which I filled myself at a self-service soda fountain. It was all very quick and efficient, no doubt a boon for the place’s managers, who only have to schedule a minimal staff and who don’t have to deal with queues of impatient people. But it just felt… cold. A little too much like something out of THX-1138.

I happen to like the personal interaction with other organic beings when I’m out in the world. And I worry about the kids of the future; I wonder what they’ll do for their first jobs if all those minimum-wage customer service positions we old-timers used to fill get automated. (I also wonder where today’s kids are going to go drink beer and make out when the time comes for them, because all the fields and canyons I used for those purposes now have houses sitting on them. But kids are clever, and I suppose they’ll find their own ways.)

We’ve got some degree of automation at the theaters around here, but I myself rarely use those automated ticket kiosks. Nope, not me. I’d rather have a couple seconds of face-time with the pretty teenaged girl at the counter. Call me crazy…

[Ed. note: if you’re squeamish about harsh language, be wary. F-bombs and other nastiness follows.]

Last night, right around the time I was posting the previous entry, I was startled by a sudden noise at my bedroom window. It was sort of like that sickening whump you hear when a bird ends its life against a pane of glass, but it also had a tinkling quality to it. The sound of something breaking.

For a brief, confused moment, I thought something had fallen inside the house, that a delicate knick-knack had somehow slipped off a shelf or something. But then I realized that my first impression was correct; something had hit the window. And I had a pretty good idea of what it must’ve been, too… you don’t usually get birds flying around at 11.30 at night, and I haven’t seen a bat around my neighborhood in years.

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I used to think, back in the dark old days of the Reagan era, that human civilization would most likely end in an instant of nuclear fire, one brief flash of horrible beauty and destruction followed by eternal silence and ashes. After this morning’s commute, however, I’ve decided the end is going to come more slowly and far less spectacularly, in a prolonged struggle without end that fools us all into thinking we’re making progress and moving ahead, when in reality we’re just creeping our lives away inch by inch as we all slowly go mad.

I’ve decided, in other words, that humanity’s end will come in one colossal traffic jam.

I can see it all now… future archeologists from an alien civilization pondering the bizarre death rituals that would require each individual to be wrapped in a sarcophagus of steel and plastic and placed on a long ribbon of concrete running between our cities. Would they assume we wanted to keep our dead near us, above ground and in plain sight? Would they assume we shared some mythological vision of the dead traveling onward to our final destination? Perhaps the other seats within these sarcophagi were intended for symbolic passengers, or beings that we thought we’d pick up along the way. The scraps and crumbs littering the floor and control surfaces of the sarcophagi would surely be interpreted as symbolic meals to feed the travelers on their journey into the afterlife, while the various electronic devices plugged into the mummified ears of the deceased were perhaps intended to provide a way for the living to speak to the dead. I suspect these future scientists from another world will shake their heads at the sad superstitions that left we foolish humans so isolated, so wedded to the idea of perpetual motion despite the ironic fact that we really weren’t getting anywhere at all.

Yes, I can see it all… and I think I’m going to take the train to work the rest of this week.

I’ve been planning to write something about the recent death of TV news anchorman Peter Jennings, but I obviously haven’t gotten around to it yet. My plan was to follow my usual obituary schtick and be simultaneously nostalgic and curmudgeonly as I discussed how Jennings’ passing marks the end of an era, which was, of course, a better time than our current Dark Age of debased superficiality. But it looks like someone has already beaten me to that angle:

…it seems certain that, at least stylistically, Jennings will have no heir. News managers today aren’t looking to hire Cary Grant, the man of distinction; they’re looking for Matt LeBlanc, the dude next door. In fact, if young reporters in 2005 were to emulate the air of aristocracy that rocketed Peter Jennings to stardom two decades ago, they’d likely be shown the door. Q-score focus groups interpret urbanity as snobbery these days, which may be why Jennings himself lost ratings supremacy to Tom Brokaw when the glamorous 1980s gave way to the naturalistic ’90s. Once the millennium arrived, forget it: His brand of romantic persona had been supplanted by Britney Spears making pig noses and reality-TV contestants eating and vomiting up live worms. …Male news anchors no longer exude savoir-faire… because Hollywood actors no longer exude it. Yesteryear’s debonair hero has passed the torch to today’s cute goofball mensch: Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Ashton Kutcher.

That’s from a piece on Salon called “Peter Jennings and the Death of Panache”, by Richard Speer. It’s worth a read, if you don’t mind sitting through a commercial to get to it. (Sorry, Salon’s difficult that way.)

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I don’t have time to go into detail right now, and my senses of propriety and self-preservation would prevent me from naming names anyhow. But I want to vent briefly about something:

It absolutely infuriates me when someone else’s mistakes wind up inconveniencing me, especially when those mistakes are due to stupidity and/or disorganization that could have and should have been avoided.

No, I can’t elaborate further. Suffice it to say that I’ve had a long, shitty day and I’m tired of having long, shitty days and being told “that’s just how it is” when I complain about them. That may be how it is, but it isn’t how it should be, and one of these days I’m going to figure out how to make things more like the latter than the former.

That is all. You may now resume your regularly scheduled Web surfing. Sorry to be a tease…