You're Doing It Wrong

Yesterday, I actually said this out loud to another person:

It’s supposed to be nice on Sunday. 52° and no rain.

We moved into our first house in Vancouver 8 years ago. The photos don’t accurately show how extensive the moving team was. My whole family helped us move. Other than the 1 car garage, I still love our funky little house. And someday I’m going to paint it or decorate it and show it how much.

The last couple of times I’ve used my atm card the animated window has advised me that I can get my money even quicker with some sort of myatm.com thing.

An atm transaction takes less than one minute. How much faster can they do it?

1. Sex in the City (watched at least 3 episodes and didn’t work for me)
2. Seinfeld (watched and laughed occasionally but never went out of my way for it)
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm (you’d think we’d love this but couldn’t make it through 1 ep)
4. Family Guy (ditto)
5. Six Feet Under (watched a few and liked but not enough to track down the whole series)
6. Farscape (everyone tells me I should try again)

Do you ever look around and mourn for stuff that we used to use all the time and is now disappearing? For example, phone booths. Or travel agents.

There’s one thing that you’d expect to be obsolete. Something that the Internet and cellphones would seem to make less necessary. Yet somehow there are more than ever. I want less of these. I want to call someone or write an email and say: come on, enough already.

I’m talking about phonebooks.

I kid you not we have received at least new 5 phonebooks in the last month. Not counting the Portland books I swiped from [omitted] because a good set of Portland books can come in handy to the Vancouver resident.

We got a Verizon book, a Clark County book, several versions of the yellow pages including one “mini” book which is completely worthless. They’re almost all completely worthless. I tried to find a sewing store not long ago and found TWO listed in my new phone books that not only were no longer in business but from the look of the moldy newspapers on the floor and dusty wires hanging from the ceiling, had not been in business for a long time. And this could inspire a whole tangent about how sad it is that sewing stores are disappearing but we’ll save that for another time.

Where does one put all these phonebooks? Well, yes, the recycling is a good choice but let’s say that you felt that phonebooks had valuable information that you needed to keep close by in your home. Where would you put them? Ours go in a drawer of an ancient end table. That drawer is now full and can accept no more phonebooks. Please don’t send any. AND should we ever need something heavy to barricade the front door from zombies. We are good to go.

I’m reading Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace which was reviewed in the NYT yesterday. I didn’t understand the review much better than I understood Fosty’s 10,000 word review/article (the book is a collection of non-fiction pieces) on this book about English usage and usage in general. Both probably had valid observations but these got lost among the big words and postmodern deconstructionalist modality of principle (principal?) rhetoric. No one’s going to run to the dictionary for a book review. Didn’t one of those Strunk or White guys say something about writing clearly and so people can understand you without trying too hard?

When I started this post I intended to write that reading an article on usage, even one that was hard to read, has made me self-conscious about usage. But apparently not enough to keep me from complaining about writers who are a jillion times smarter than me. Than I. Whatever.

My return flight from Las Vegas was at 8am and it was overbooked. You can’t believe how many people are staggering around Las Vegas airport before 8am on a Sunday morning. Two people boarded the plane holding boxes with freshly made pizzas. I wasn’t too happy when they sat behind me.

I wasn’t even hungover and it smelled vile. Who brings pizza onto a plane at 8am? In Las Vegas?

The flight was overbooked and these folks had volunteered their seats so the flight attendant came and got them and took them off the flight. I looked at the girl next to me and said: Good. I didn’t want to smell pizza for the next two hours. She nodded and said: I was thinking the same thing.

This was what was happening in Portland today. Aren’t we done with winter yet?

I have many tales to tell not related to weather. Come back soon.

Look what was waiting for me when I got home:

Guess where I was this weekend?

Sorry, I haven’t had good post in awhile. I think I have a good one here but too worn out to do it today, stay tuned.

A few highlights: sunny, coat-free weather; refreshing adult beverages; The Cult.

And meanwhile: congrats to Brian Van’t Hul who won an Oscar tonight. I worked with Brian at Panavision a hundred years ago and was thrilled to see him on stage tonight.