Monthly Archives: April 2010
In a long discussion with Phi about the whole Phoebe Prince mess, the subject of friendships in the lower echelons of high school popularity. He commented that when he was younger he had friendships but no group of friends. It’s a distinction that I hadn’t actually put a whole lot of thought into. Thinking about my own experience, it’s not exactly true for me, but it’s at least as true or not.
I didn’t have a dearth of friends. I was fortunate to go to a school with over 4,000 students where simply numbers suggested that you would find someone you were compatible with. I actually did better than that, having at least someone I was friendly with in each class. Sometimes a group of people. Were they friends? Not exactly. But we were at least friendly acquaintances. Don’t get me wrong, I had genuine friends, too. Not a large number, but I never really wanted a large number.
And there were sort of groups. There was a group of us that would get to school at an ungawdly hour of the morning so that we could get a good parking space. My best friend Clint also had some friends that I was very friendly with. Andrea Carmine and that gang. But these were casual and makeshift groups and while I was friendly with them, with the exception of The Early Bird Club, the connection was pretty weak and through a bilateral friendship. I was friends with one of them and so I got to know them. The only way it would go beyond that is if I had a class with them and I rarely did (it was, after all, a school of 4,000). Never a group big enough and close enough that I would have a natural destination when entering a classroom or the lunchroom or whatever.
So when it came to actual groups, I was not hugely successful. Unless I had an ambassador conduits like Clint or Andrea, I had a lot of trouble breaking in. It’s pretty frustrating to look back on. Mostly because I really had no one but myself to blame. I didn’t have the social confidence yet I would eventually acquire. I lacked drive. I was a little too comfortable by myself.
Beyond that, I also failed to realize how to lay groundwork for group activities. I never participated in any extracurricular activities. I disliked Mayne High School with a passion and didn’t want to contribute to it in the slightest. I didn’t fully realize the social implications of that. Further, I segregated myself by declining to be in honors classes. I lost touch with a whole lot of the friendships I had made before the tracking began. I retouched base with them at the High School Reunion and was reminded of what I had missed out on. Besides honors students, the most natural fit was oddly band. It was Clint’s friends from band that I got along with the most. The problem was that I wasn’t the least bit musical.
I have a lot of regrets about my socialization in high school. I see so many missed opportunities. Since making friends was difficult, since I had more robust social life apart from the school, and since I didn’t need a whole lot of friends most of the time, I just didn’t extend the effort I could have. Most of the time this didn’t matter, but I look back and shake my head at the times it did. Most particularly, I had no one to sit with at lunch. I don’t know how exactly it happened, but it seemed that every semester I would end up tossed with the 1/3 of the school that I didn’t know. That’s a mild exaggeration as I did have a couple good semesters with Clint and I made do a couple other semesters, but when there are 1,300 people in the cafeteria at any given lunch period, there’s no excuse for ever sitting alone. Or having to sit with a group of people that you really don’t like but are there.
All of this made it so strange that at my high school reunion, I ended up sitting at a random table, introducing myself to a group of people that I didn’t know, and made three friends. When we parted ways I told them that I wish I had known them back in the day. My bad.
It’s one of the notable things in popular entertainment and advertising that while variations are allowed in the attractiveness of men, the same is not true of women. With the exception of character for whom fatness is integral to the part (and even then they are sometimes played by future anorexics that were never fat to begin with). But the rest of the time, unattractive means “hot but with braces and kooky glasses” or in other cases “hot but referred to as ugly.”
From which is born the term Liz Lemon Ugly. Liz Lemon is the main character on 30 Rock played by Tina Fey. According to Chloe Angyal, Liz Lemon is an archetype for the character that is deemed ugly by the characters on the show so that the audience knows that the character is supposed to be ugly because there is no way of knowing that by looking at their beautiful faces.
I sort of take objection to the characterization of Lemon. I have been watching a lot of 30 Rock during the move and few negative comments are made about physical non-beauty. Her lackluster romantic life is mostly attributed to her social ineptitude. Be that as it may, Angyal’s point still stands. Indeed, Fey was indeed used as the “ugly woman” in the movie The Invention of Lies. And the crucial difference between popular and attractive characters and characters cut from a more inconspicuous cloth has far less to do with the attractiveness of the actress in question (few are anything but beautiful) and more to do with what the characters say and context.
Angyal wants to see this change. I agree. There’s no reason why television can have room for men across the spectrum but not women. The problem is that Angyal and I are in the minority. This is an area where I would argue that men are not really the culprits here. Guys not only appreciate women in more size and shapes than we’re given credit for, but we seem to appreciate them in more size and shapes than women themselves do.
There’s been a push lately towards showing real-size women and plus-size women in advertising aimed at women. The idea is that ordinary women will relate better to more ordinary women in advertisements. I think it’s fair to say that men are more broadly represented not only because women are alleged to have much more tolerance for different kinds of men (an allegation I’m not sure is true in scope) but also because men are more likely to bond with guys as flawed as they are. We see a guy like Rob Riggle and see a little bit of ourselves and relate. Meanwhile, we often become excessively critical of guys that become heart-throbs. Bruce Willis up, Tom Cruise down.
Women… don’t seem to work that way. With the exception of a fascination for certain actresses (Angelina Jolie comes to mind), they seem to line up behind whomever it is that men are supposed to line up behind. Indeed, it seems at times that they flock to Kate Moss and then get upset at men for being fixated on waifs. Not that there aren’t men that consider anybody above a size two to be fat, but there seems to be far more women. The patriarchy is so successful in this regard that it no longer requires further male involvement.
Well. Further straight male involvement.
Liz Pulliam Weston has a list of things that you should buy used and new.
From the “Don’t Buy New” list:
1. Books – Agreed. Unless there is something that you’re seriously itching for that’s new, buying used is as close to a no-brainer as it comes.
2. CDs and DVDs – This can be risky because scratches can disrupt the play. Further, it can be a bigger problem finding what you want. The savings are also not that great. To pick a random example, if you go to Amazon.com, Chris Isaak’s seminal Forever Blue is $3-4 used (including shipping), $6-10 new (including shipping), and $10 for the MP3s (no shipping). If you want to haggle over a couple bucks, go for it. But there’s something to be said for getting a nice, new CD.
3. Kids’ Toys – Not a good idea for gifts, but the rest of the time probably not a bad idea.
4. Jewelry – If you’re buying for yourself, sure. Buying it for a loved one can be risky.
5. Sports equipment – Check!
6. Timeshares – Now there’s an interesting idea. Not sure timeshares would be my thing, but I don’t know it would have occurred to me to buy used.
7. Vehicles – This probably deserves a post of its own. In the meantime, there are more reasons to buy a new car than the new car smell. For most people, buying used is the more economical thing. However, we make money to spend it on things. The money spent on a new car is not entirely wasted, depending on what your priorities and options are. Unless your car is important to you in a non-utilitarian way or you’re hyper-worried about reliability, though, I agree.
8. Software and console games – Same issue as with the DVDs. The two used Playstation games I bought used did not work out. At all. Getting half off isn’t necessarily worth it if you have to buy it twice.
9. Office Furniture – I bought a used office chair once that spilled grease all over my carpet. Office furniture can also be one of those personal things where you have a strong preference for one or the other. Otherwise, though, getting used isn’t a bad idea.
10. Hand Tools – Okay.
From the “Don’t Buy Used” list:
1. Laptops – Actually no. If you don’t need a particularly powerful laptop, you can get a used one for 20% of the price of a new one. When companies upgrade, you can buy their old ones through intermediary and they’re often really good laptops replaced for no reason but their age. If it breaks? You can get another. Or you can learn how to replace parts. If you need a more powerful laptop, you can also get some good refurbished ones. Even without warranties, it can still be a pretty good deal. I’ve bought several used Thinkpads for myself and others and they have all worked out splendidly. A lot of the time, Weston is right. But it depends on what you need.
That’s actually the one one on that list that I take issue with.
Roethlisberger maintains his innocence, but apologizes to his family and fans for the negative attention.
Alleged victim requested that the DA did not pursue the taste.
The rape kit proved to be “inconclusive.”
No indication of a civil suit. It really appears that money was not the motive here.
Indication of a civil suit. Or an intended settlement, at least.
When I was growing up, there was one radio station that pre-high school kids listened to up until the rap tsunami hit: Slam 103. Slam was mostly a Pop 40 radio station, for the most part, but it had a morning show with that wacky sidekick that people my age found amusing for reasons that elude me now. They played a wider variety of stuff, though, than did most stations. They actually discovered some talent that you have heard. They also shook things up with some techno stuff. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was what I would call a good radio station, but it was really quite popular with the young crowd and was in the top five along with a pop station, an easy listening station, and two country stations.
I drifted out of touch with Slam when I got into high school and stopped riding the bus. I really didn’t care for the techno stuff and I found that there were a couple other stations I liked better, but it still maintained a spot on my speed-dial. But it was still a popular enough station that they had billboards up and stickers posted everywhere. Then the company that owned Slam changed management. It was apparently management’s view that man, if this station is doing well now with their atypical programming, imagine how much better it would be doing if we made it like all of the other stations. So they instituted a policy where they wouldn’t play any songs that had not already been receiving airplay elsewhere for a full month. No more great discoveries. They also replaced much of the DJing with national hosts.
And over time, Slam 103 not only became not particularly worthy of my attention (it lost its spot on my speed dial), but became utterly irrelevant. The last time I looked up the ratings, it had fallen out of the top dozen. I’d hear about some DJ from that station coming back to Colosse and would find out that he left for some mid-range market in the midwest, which I was unaware of because, well, nobody cared about Slam anymore. After a while, it ceased being Slam 102 and became Steam 102 with HOT dance music all the time and then became something else a couple more times into relative oblivion.
Several years later, a radio station came out of nowhere and was an overnight sensation. They played a lot of the same music as the other stations, but they kept the chatter to a minimum. They made a point of this by making fun of pointless chatter and prizes that nobody cared about. It was in the top three within six months. Apparently, the idea all along had been that it would be a placeholder until it could be sold to someone else. They were bought out by ClearChannel. ClearChannel, impressed by its success, initially said that they would keep things as much the same as possible as they could since the station was doing so well. Then they decided, wouldn’t it be better if they had a morning show? People like morning shows. And hey, we should have contests! And before long… well, you know the story. It’s ratings fell, it became one of ClearChannel’s weakest properties, and they sold it to a company that switched to Tejano.
More than anything, that’s what drives (or drove) me crazy about radio. It’s not the limited playlist or that you can hear the same song on six different stations at once. I can understand why a formulaic playlist would be advantageous. I can understand why they would stick with what works. But on at least two occasions, they took something that was working fine and they completely broke it. Rather than saying “Hey, this new model seems to be working out. I wonder if we can try this elsewhere?” they think about how much better it would be if they took away everything that was unique about it and made it sound like everything else. Like they can’t even begin to imagine that in a world where a formula works, something that differs from the formula may have its own appeal even if the formula is successful where it is.
In the end, I guess radio stations have learned somewhat. The whole Jack-FM phenomenon is rather similar to the second radio station I talked about. More music, less chatter. And it’s also built on the premise that different can be good. Some stations only need a playlist of a few hundred songs, but if in a world of 500 one participant in the market plays 1000, that might get its own niche market. Jack-FM doesn’t exist in the Colosse market, but a couple years later an updial station took much of what made it successful and ran with it. Meanwhile, one of Slam’s cheif competitors from back in the day was – when I left Colosse – the number one station in the city.
* – You could tell because any time they talked about anything local, they would have someone else speaking.
Farhad Manjoo suggests six ways to improve our cell phone industry in the United States. Most are hard to disagree with, but I found one:
You have the right to unlock your phone. When you get a phone as part of a new cell plan, there’s a good chance that Verizon, Sprint, or whoever else has “locked” the device. This means that the phone won’t work on another carrier. The companies do this because they want to recoup the subsidy you’re getting for buying a phone along with a cell contract. For instance, AT&T gives you a price break on the iPhone when you sign up for two years of AT&T service (the full price of a 16GB iPhone 3GS is $599, but you pay only $199 when you sign the contract). Because it’s helping you pay for your device, AT&T locks the phone so that you can’t take it to a rival like T-Mobile.
Sometimes I get the feeling that when people say things like “Oh, I wish that our cell phone system were more like the rest of the world’s with open standards,” they’re kind of thinking that they’ll get to stick it to AT&T. In reality, they’re sticking it not to AT&T, which is already close to being there, but to the much-celebrated Verizon.
If it weren’t Manjoo and if he didn’t hone in on AT&T and T-Mobile, I would suspect that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But he does and I believe he’s being disingenuous. You see, Manjoo is an iPhone user and iPhone users by default have to believe the worst of AT&T. AT&T locks their phones and that is unconscionable. Ergo, the government should force AT&T (and T-Mobile) to unlock their phones.
What he’s leaving out is that Verizon, which all right-thinking iPhone users love, and Sprint and most carriers who are not AT&T or T-Mobile don’t use SIM cards and their phones technologically cannot be unlocked. So what Manjoo would do is punish the evil AT&T and (innocent bystander) T-Mobile. Verizon, meanwhile, would get a free pass. Further, it would be punishing AT&T and T-Mobile for using a more open standard over the closed one that Verizon uses.
If we really want open cell phones like they have in Europe and the rest of the world, we sould not be punishing GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, but would rather be punishing CDMA networks like more-or-less everybody else. The law would not say then that “If you use SIM cards, you must allow unlocked phones” but rather “If you make and market phones in the United States, they must be GSM-compatible and must be able to be unlocked.” That way, makers of CDMA phones would have to include GSM capability in addition to CDMA capability. This would be a logistical challenge and would make the phones more expensive. This would be unfair to Verizon and Sprint and generous to AT&T, but it would be rewarding AT&T for doing something good and right and decent (which I know is against the rules because they’re mean to iPhone users).
It would strongly incentivize switching over to GSM or some sort of open technology. Now, Verizon is moving from CDMA to LTE. LTE is a more open standard akin to GSM, but it can be made proprietary. You can absolutely bet that if carriers with open-standard networks are met with a burden that those with proprietary standards are not, not only will Verizon go as proprietary as they can but AT&T and T-Mobile (also moving to LTE) will do the same. I agree with Manjoo that a law should be passed or a regulation put in place, but I think it should be one far more aimed at Verizon, Sprint, and the other CDMA carriers. Even if that means being nice to AT&T.
However, the counterargument to such a law is very clear. Essentially, opponents will be able to say “But the phones will cost more!” because, well, they will. If you can take my AT&T phone and walk it over to T-Mobile, AT&T is either going to stop subsidizing your phones or they are going to ramp up their cancellation fees big time. And who could blame them? They helped you buy their phone. So get used to the idea of a cell phone costing $600 instead of $200. Personally, I think this is a positive development. However, a lot of non-geeks would rather have their phone paid for. At the very least, you’re going to have to let the carriers keep a phone locked for the duration of the contract.
By the way, they can’t even do that now. At least not with devices made by companies not named Apple.
When they talk about how mean AT&T locks their phones, let’s be upfront about something. They’re not talking about AT&T locking phones; nobody is talking about anything but the iPhone. You want to know how much it’s going to cost me to unlock my HTC model? $3. It’s not even a question of whether AT&T will let me do it or not and in fact sometimes they will help. I would be doing so through an intermediary with HTC, the phone’s manufacturer. If you can’t do that with the iPhone, look not to AT&T but to Apple. And before we start talking about how the meanies at AT&T won’t let them because AT&T is holding the phone hostage, remember that Apple was the one that lined their pockets with that deal. We know they didn’t have to because Apple’s competitors did and do not concede exclusivity. Sure, AT&T paid Apple a pretty penny to prevent things like that happening. But it was Apple that took the money and pocketed it. They certainly didn’t pass the savings on to you.
Meanwhile, it’s White Knight Verizon that has locked phones that cannot be unlocked under any circumstances.
Back when it was a more topical thing to discuss, Ordinary Gentleman Matthew Schmitz made the following observation about St. Patrick’s Day:
Being half Irish myself, I think there are many good reasons to celebrate St. Patty’s, not least Ireland’s impressive religious and literary heritage. But I think it is weird that one of the reasons the holiday exists is to give the privileged a chance to dress up in the drag of historical oppression.
There are a couple of issues here. The first, pertaining to St. Patrick’s Day itself, is handled in the comment section. Actually, it really is about the beer, for the most part. Whites are also known to celebrate Cinco De Mayo and non-Christians celebrate Mardi Gras. There’s a party! Why pass it up?
But I think Schmitz brings up another interesting point. There really is the tendency of Americans to celebrate the closest non-British ethnicity that they can. A lot of people claim Irish heritage when it’s really pretty minimal. My friend Silke Modaber, white as white can be on 7/8 of her family, embraced the other 1/8 Lebanese*. Could it be that, though Schmitz is wrong about St. Paddy’s Day that he is right about the need for whites to find some sort of ethnic identity so that they can claim victimhood (or perhaps disclaim oppressorship)?
I’m actually skeptical of that, too. As many point out in the League’s comment section, a number of people that play up their Irish heritage couldn’t even tell you the ways that they were done wrong. I rarely hear anything about Those Bastard Brits or anything of the like. Silke never said anything about the Lebanese done wrong and only very briefly, right in the aftermath of 9/11, expressed any concern that she would have a target on her back because of her indistinguishable, Anglicized last name. No, she liked her Lebanese branch because it was where she got the ability to get a great tan. Beyond that, though, it made her interesting.
That’s something I missed out on. My last name is English. My mother’s last name is German. My grandmothers’ last names are English and English. In this country, there is nothing more dull than that. The only thing I get out of it is a joke (always made when someone points out their Polish or Portuguese or whatever heritage) is a reference to my “oppressing ancestors” or (in more comfortable company) a quip about how my ancestors probably oppressed their ancestors (somewhat unlikely, given that my roots are not particularly high-class). And really, all that is to me is a way to say that when it comes to interesting family history, I got nuthin’. I’m not (insofar as I know) even the cool kind of Anglo-American whose great-times-x grandparents came over on the mayflower.
If I had Irish ancestry, you bet I would play that up. The closest I come is some Scottish in there somewhere. And the German, of course. Germans are not quite as constrained as the English, but they’re not that far behind. German immigration occurred pretty early in the Republic. Besides which, Germany as we now know it is a relatively young country. There’s a lot of interesting there with the Saxons and whatnot, but it’s not something that most people, unless burdened with a very German name or in a heavily German part of the country, as translatable. They were Germanic People and Prussians and Saxons. At least Scandanavians have the Viking imagery. Germans have sausage. And the thing that the German-Germans are best known historically is recent history and is not something people choose to be associated with.
And the Brits. What can you say about the Brits. We’re proud British-Americans, except that of course the afterhyphen people had to go war against the pre-hyphen people a couple times before we got settled and if you embrace the pre-hyphen too much, well, you’re just identifying with the enemy (not that it bothers some southerners in the case of a different war, but I digress). And it wasn’t even an age-old grudge or a grudge we could really hold.
That’s not to say the Brits don’t have an interesting history. They do… but not in a grand sort of way. They were once an awesome power, but they declined to be sufficiently interesting or dramatic to have a real tragic downfall the same way that, say, Rome did. The Brits went, they saw, they conquered, they got beat a few times, and they gave up a few times without even fighting. I guess if I had to choose an old country with which I identify other than the US it’s the Brits. I have an aunt that’s an Anglophile, but I pretty much fail to see the point. We’re not different enough for it to be interesting and if we’re looking at like countries to identify with, I identify with Australia. England is the Dad, Ireland the nutty uncle, and Australia and Canada the siblings. It’s against the rules for Dads to be interesting.
So people gravitate towards those parts of their history that are most interesting. The Irish are, if nothing else, interesting. And the things we identify with Ireland are silly (little men and their rainbow-gold!), goofy (Superstition! Luck!) and fun (Beer!). Few really care about the potatoes.
* – In her defense, the 1/8 is where she got her last name from. Be that as it may, nobody would know it was a Lebanese name unless they were told.
What happens if your a preacher or pastor of priest who has lost the faith?
Deadspin is doing some interesting write-ups on wrestlers that have passed away, including two long-time favorites of mine, Andre the Giant and The Big Boss Man.
I’ve expressed in the past a belief that while I am not all that supportive of player/athlete unions that I have an exception for NFL players who really are used and discarded, often in broken bodies. The NFL is taking some action to help those with neurological damage. Good.
Will the new calorie-discloser requirements make consumers less price-conscious?
Does anyone really care about Jesse James? Or is the media trying to find another Tiger Woods? But Jesse was never Tiger. Shortly after the OJ Simpson thing, there was a celebrity murder in Colosse. The local media tried like hell to make it into an OJ Simpson affair, but everybody knew who did it, doubt was not within reason, and the victim was never as big a deal as OJ Simpson.
Lori Gottlieb, the author of The Case For Settling, writes about five deal-breakers that shouldn’t be.
Are good dads making the mothers feel bad? Or are good dads stepping up to cover for bad moms? Or are moms who erroneously feel that they’re bad moms requesting help they don’t actually need?
The Case Against The Case Against MSG.
Is the range factor of electric cars overestimated? Much of the time it probably is. The problem is that even if you have a car that can do what you need it to do the vast majority of the time, it’s the exceptions that you notice. I may not use the four seats in my car often, but you can bet I’m awfully glad to have them when I do need them.
When I was growing up, there was the annual ritual of buying school supplies. They included the typical things such as pencils and papers. The big buy, however, was the binder. Each year we got one because they only lasted a year. They actually lasted less than a year, but we made do with the misaligned claws and torn pockets because we couldn’t convince our parents to buy a new one in March. And we didn’t want to. By that time we usually got attached to it. It was the one school supply that was also a fashion statement. I can’t remember what the girls got as they did not yet exist to me until about the fourth grade, but the boys would get He-Man or Thundercats or Batman or something like it and it defined us.
In the fourth grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Nelson that I had such a crush on that I faked bad vision in order to get attention from her. Just about all the boys had crushes on her. Best. Behaved. Class. Ever.
Anyhow, that year my binder fell apart before the fall semester was even over. I probably could have convinced Mom to get me a new one, but either I feared I would get in trouble or I decided to get creative. So what I did was take all of the binders from years past, take some duct tape to them, and create the Mega-Binder. Actually, I created two because I had so many. I gave the second to my neighbor and periodic friend Toby Crowell. He was as excited as I was about having the two biggest binders in school.
We showed the binders to everybody in sight and they all thought it was pretty cool. At least the boys did, and their opinions were the one that counted. At some point a couple days in I showed Mrs. Nelson. Normally one of the nicest, kindest, warmest teachers I ever had… she blew a gasket. Before I knew it she was screaming at me in front of the whole class about how of course she had noticed it and had been biting her tongue but if I really wanted to know what she thought about it she thought that it was an absolutely grotesque example of our wasteful consumer society and of class inequality where some boys would buy five binders and tear them apart while there were young boys in this country that couldn’t even afford one good binder.
I didn’t really understand what the inequality between our elementary school classes had much to do with anything and as far as I knew everybody could afford school supplies. I didn’t really understand what she was talking about at all except for that she was obviously real mad about something some class was doing wrong. What I really didn’t understand was that she didn’t understand that they were used and otherwise discarded binders save for the fact that I couldn’t bear to throw anything away because it seemed so wasteful. Not able to understand much of anything, I just tried not to cry. I can’t recall how successful I was or was not.
The binder never saw the light of day again. Toby had heard what happened and he threw his out. I couldn’t, though. It seemed wasteful.