Can’t We All Just Get Along: A Word on Grown-Ups

Can I talk to you for five minutes about grown-ups?  I feel justified in addressing this subject for several reasons.  For one, I have recently become a quarter-centurion and am considered by some of the more spiteful members of society to be one of those very people of whom I intend to speak.  For another thing, I have spent the better part of the past two years working with, for, around, and (**insert other preposition except aboard, between, and betwixt**) grown-ups.  In my capacity as pseudo-adult and entry level employee I have meticulously observed the ways of the grown-ups as if I was Jane Goodall and they were the Oakland Raiders.  This essay is a preliminary report of my findings.

(An article of clarification: By “grown-up” I mean any and all human persons over the age of thirty-five.  I also mean any person between the age of twenty-three and thirty-five whose life includes any two of the following: a spouse, a child, a mortgage, a 401k, a crock pot, a graduate degree, a pet cat, a mattress valued at over $700, frequent flyer miles.)

Most people entering the grown-up world have a skewed impression of what they will find there.  This is because, for the first two decades of our lives, our interactions with adults are always on their terms.  They teach our classes, coach our teams, preach our sermons, and sire our siblings.  They dress better than we do, cry less than we do, and use words like “dilapidated.”  In this way, they are able to convince younger generations that they are mature, responsible citizens who have figured stuff out and generally have their lives in order.

Well, after two years of eavesdropping on secretary gossip hour (aka “lunch”) and being cc’d on catty email exchanges, I can report that grown-ups categorically and unequivocally do not have their stuff [sic] together.  Look past their business casual attire and improved vocabularies and you will find most working adults to be as petty and insecure as your average fraternity pledge.  It’s shocking and more than a little disappointing.  I was told the drama and backstabbing would end after cheerleading camp.  Apparently not.  Turns out the “grown up” in grown-up is almost as big a misnomer as the “Dr” in Dr. Phil.

Fireworks and Freedom

I am posting to let you know that I will not be posting today.  I have been given the day off of work to reflect on how superior America is to the rest of the world in every possible way except soccer.  You should be doing the same thing.  Which means you should not be visiting my site today or, for that matter, doing anything besides listening to Springsteen, eating ice cream sandwiches, and blowing stuff up.

Happy 4th.

I’ll see you later this week.

Hey! Teachers! Leave those signs at home!

Note to Readers: What follows is an emotionally driven, largely uninformed rant about a current political issue.  I try to keep these [Glenn] Beckian tirades to a minimum, but this particular issue has pissed me off to a degree that I cannot keep it to myself.  If you’ve already consumed your standard allowance of political commentary this week, feel free to stop reading now and return next week for another article on Ray J or cheerleaders or something more palatable like that.

You know what I hate?  Morning drive radio shows.  The pithy banter, the corny sound effects, the intentionally controversial call-in questions (what’s the craziest thing you’ve had sex with?).  It all combines to make most morning shows feel like a hybrid of terrible standup and daytime programming on Telemundo.

I made the mistake of tuning into a morning drive show on my commute to work last week and was about to end the agony and return to my Avril Lavigne mix when I heard a news story that took all of my morning drive show anger and redirected it toward the teachers of the San Juan Capistrano Unified School District.  It seems the fair educators of Capistrano got their glue sticks all in a twist and are now on strike in response to a district mandate that they take a 10% pay cut.

Teachers ditch class to display the fruits of their "arts and crafts" time.

I don’t pretend to understand anything about union negotiations or the joys of marching through suburbia waving signs, but there are several things about this story which strike me as ironic/enraging.  The first is the fact that these are teachers on strike.

These are the high priests of the public service pantheon.  Teachers are middle-class Mother Theresa’s – longsuffering saints, faithfully plying their trade in the thankless brutality of the public school system.  Part babysitter, part pillar of intellect, part Princess Di, these are the men and women who forsook the fame and riches which would have been theirs to mentor our children.  They are selfless servants who give of themselves and ask for nothing but the smile of a child in return.

Until you touch their paycheck, that is.  Then it’s, “screw you kiddies.  Have fun with that sub for the next week, Mrs. Busywork has to go shout at passing motorists.”  Not surprisingly, the majority of the district’s students have skipped school since the strike began.  Where they could have been learning life skills like cursive and dividing by Pi, they are now sitting at home pestering their parents and playing Call of Duty. That’s the fun thing about going to school in California.  Whereas kids in other states have to pray to God for snow days, kids in California can simply phone their local union rep and ask for labor strife.

The Charlie Sheen of Mobile Phones: A Word on the iPhone

Can I talk to you for five minutes about the iPhone?  When it comes to the iPhone, there seem to be two kinds of people in the world: people who love their iPhone, and people who love someone else’s iPhone.  Not since the discovery of fermented grape juice has a consumer product been met with such universal acclaim.  And still the iPhone empire grows.  With a recent Media-Pollster study revealing that “iPhone” has supplanted “boobs” as the second most popular word on the internet, it has become clear that it’s an iPhone world, the rest of us are just living in it.  (“Freecreditreport.com” remains the most popular word on the internet, in case you were wondering.)

The iPhone is enjoying a wave of popularity reminiscent of Barack Obama circa December 2008, and nary a dissenting opinion is to be found anywhere.  In the name of open discourse and a free society, this cannot stand.  Someone must give us a reason to hate the iPhone.  Alright fine, I’ll do it.  Take it from me, the iPhone sucks something awful.  It is to mobile phones what Charlie Sheen is to husbands.  Which is to say: the worst.

Contrary to most things I write about on this site, I actually know what I’m talking about here.  This is because I have been an iPhone user for almost a year now; beginning last summer when my employer decided that looking cool and having constant access to celebrity news through the TMZ app were essential functions of my job.

John Mayer on Health Care

John Mayer’s mouth has been in the news a lot lately.  Strangely enough, this has nothing to do with music, facial hair, or alleged dalliances with Taylor Swift.   Rather, the news centers around Mr. Mayer’s fondness for the “interview overshare.”

Thanks to recent interviews with Playboy and Rolling Stone we now know, for example, that John loves having sex with Jessica Simpson, that he isn’t really into black chicks, that he’s way into video games, and that he smokes more weed than Willie Nelson at Bonnaroo.

John Mayer is the anti-Tiger Woods.  He says whatever he’s thinking with little thought to how it might impact his image or fan base.  Of course, this bluntness could itself be a strategic effort to craft an image as a freewheeling sound bite machine, but even so, I appreciate his entertaining, occasionally disturbing candor far more than the cookie-cutter, agent-produced press releases we get from the other attention puppets in Hollywood.

That said, I read another of John’s soundbites recently which makes me like him even more than I did after seeing his cameo on “Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory“.  With one sentence, he went from being merely amusing to being downright respectable.

Here’s how it went down.

He was giving an interview and, of course, the discussion ended up on his political views.  More specifically, the “journalist” wanted to know about his thoughts on health care.  With his response, he articulated the perfect and – in my mind – only acceptable response by a celebrity to a question of a political, social, or scientific nature.  In fact, if a movie/rock/reality star is not reading a script, singing a song, or making a drunken fool of himself during a routine traffic stop, this is the only thing I want to hear them say.  I’m talking to you, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Hayden Panettiere, and Green Day.

Interviewer: What do you think about health care? Would you take the public option?

John Mayer: Have you ever heard me play guitar? I’m really f***ing good. You know what I’m bad at? Answering questions about public health care. This is not in my wheelhouse. Do you have any questions about music?

Census? Cens THIS!

New post on The Talking Mirror.  Check it out:

The 2nd Chapter of Luke: Reinterpreted for 2010

Road Rage: A Word on Liberal Bumper Stickers

Originally published 11/17/2009 on thetalkingmirror.com

Can I talk to you for five minutes about liberal bumper stickers?  Actually, I just want to talk about one.  I’ve only asked for five minutes of your time so I’ll have to save “Not my President”, “Meat is Murder”, and “The blood of New Orleans is on Republican hands” for another day.  I’m going to give up my ranting rights with those stickers to talk about another one that is more infectious than all other liberal stickers combined (probably because it has lots of pictures and only one word).  Indeed, the only thing liberals enjoy putting on their cars more than this sticker is a Subaru logo and Oregon plates.

I’m sure you’ve seen this sticker.  It was probably plastered to the ass end of a Prius outside a farmer’s market or college book store or abortion clinic in Vermont and you probably didn’t even look twice at it.  Maybe you thought it was clever.  Maybe you were dimly accepting of its message.  Well you were wrong.  It’s not clever, it’s not cute, it’s not creative.  It’s ignorant.  It also happens to be one of the three things a human being can do to make me instantly dislike them and discount everything they say from that point further:

1)      They can talk during an episode of LOST.

2)      They can say (during LOST or at any other time), “You know, George Lopez is actually pretty funny.”

3)      They can put a “Coexist” sticker on the bumper of their car.

For anyone remotely familiar with my political leanings (i.e. mostly confused but leaning toward conservative), it should come as no surprise that I despise these stickers.  What may surprise you is that the mere sight of a Coexist sticker is enough to induce a rage blackout during which vehicular homicide is given serious consideration.  (Note: The irony of this reversal of the sticker’s message is not lost on me.)

Apocalypse Yesterday: A Word on California

Originally published 11/3/2009 on thetalkingmirror.com

Can I talk to you for five minutes about California, or, to quote 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy, The Gaypublic of Drugifornia? There was once a dream that was California. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile. At the edge of the continent, past the purple mountains and fruity plains, was to be a found a sanctuary where America’s huddled masses could forget about breathing free and indulge their true passions: fame, frappuccinos, and fornication. This was not a state. It was a shining beacon to beaches, bikinis, biker gangs, burritos, boob jobs, bongs, and the other cornerstones of a developed society.

Unfortunately, Californians are as bad at whispering as they are at putting out wild fires or being straight. They peddled their dream through teen soap operas, Colin Hanks movies, and pop/punk songs to a waiting world and it died quicker than a security guard at a Raiders game. What remains is the bombed out shell of a state that has all the charm of Miami in the 80s except with higher taxes and slightly less cocaine.

Thanks to California, we now know the answer to the age-old quandary: what would happen if 30 million addicts, war protesters, child actors and sex offenders banded together and took over a country? What happens is a deficit of $26.3 billion, an unemployment rate of 9.3%, humans breeding with goats, and a thousand other maladies born from a populace that is heavy on opinions and light on fully-functioning brains.