Things I Hate – Regular Guy

A Day Late and Many Dollars Short

brian — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 19:38:20 +0000

I made a private promise that I would blog every day in March. I didn’t share this with anyone because I know myself and had low expectations. But here is my first post of March explaining why I didn’t post on the 1st of March.

The problems started a while back. We randomly lost Internet one day. I went through rigamarole with Comcast online and eventually got the service restored. At the end of the call, I agreed that a tech did not need to come out because everything was working.

Plus, I might have to pay for that service call. Mind you, I can afford to do that. The idea just didn’t appeal to me if everything was fixed.

Fast forward a few weeks and we start having random dropouts. The only solution is to turn off both the modem and router and turn them back on. High-level stuff.

Then it starts happening more. Like, every 30-60 minutes sometimes. So I contact Comcast again, this time on Feb. 28. They immediately tell me I need a new modem – which is not untrue because I have increased the speed of our package, but that shouldn’t be causing the problem. I tell them we need someone to come look at the line into the house.

So they schedule that. Then they try to move up our appointment for a time I told them we were not available. So I get snippy in the Twitter DM thread and they schedule us for the afternoon of March 1.

The first thing the guy does is say we need a new modem. Then he spends a while working on the outside lines, which had been damaged by squirrels. That gets repaired, and he tells us that everything is working fine.

Then it dies again. Reset. Dies again. So I do what any smart person should do – grudgingly admit they may have been right and head out to Target to get a new modem.

Setup is easy, peasy. We climb into bed. Maria turns on our Fire Stick.

And it dies again. At this point, I’m gutted. It can’t be our router. It just can’t. I don’t know why I refuse to accept this, but I do. So I do a factory reset of the router. Then another when it won’t connect. Then a third. At some point in there, I order a new mesh router package on Amazon.

My router finally connects. Then is not connected when I wake up in the middle of the night. I resign myself to us having to just use the hard-wired connection to the modem and the data on our phones until the new router shows up. Until …

Target has pretty much the same router for the same price. So I got it this morning. And it’s easy to set up. Now we have Internet again, hopefully for good.

So that’s why I will write a blog post every day in March except one.

Change the Focus

brian — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:18:19 +0000

I have a complicated relationship with pop culture. I really enjoy pretty much all forms of entertainment and am fascinated by the people that can do those sorts of things. But I hate the attendant drooling over every single aspect of these people’s lives, especially when people start getting obsessed with bad things that happen to bad people.

Amanda Bynes is self-destructive. Then stop giving her the attention. Kim and Kanye gave their baby a weird name. Why does that matter? Paula Deen is racist. We get it. Move on, let her career fall apart and stop picking it apart.

This last one bugs me the most because, at the same time, a true leader in entertainment died and gets a sliver of the attention. Part of this is because Gary David Goldberg didn’t want the spotlight, but when you hear what happened when he randomly struck up a conversation with actor Ike Barinholtz (Morgan from “The Mindy Project), you should realize that he deserved attention for simply being a good human being. Oh, and he created “Family Ties” and “Spin City” and won numerous writing awards.

Why do we celebrate those who bring out the worst in themselves? I know I will never get an answer and people will tell me how much fun it is to watch a trainwreck. Yeah, it can be entertaining, but what do you accomplish by standing alongside the smoldering wreckage and continuing to talk about the trainwreck while ignoring those people who didn’t crash?

So instead of posting or commenting on or sharing that horrific, but insipid, video of Paul Deen being the racist we know she is, take some time to read this tribute to Gary David Goldberg from Ken Levine, another television comedy legend.

He took advantage of his leverage at Paramount to create a day care center for working parents. Not a palatial office (his office was small and dark – his second cave?), not use of the corporate jet. A day care center for below-the-line studio employees who didn’t have the luxury of hot and cold running nannies. No studio up until that time even considered it. Paramount’s day care center is still operational today.

Personally, I prefer learning about those people who do good and trying to find a way to weave that into my life in stead of wringing every last bit of schadenfreude out of finding our the details of how bad someone we already didn’t like it.

Budweiser Steals Idea for Commercial

brian — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:10:25 +0000

I don’t have a huge problem with Budweiser like some people do. Sure, I now prefer other beers to the “King of Beers,” but I had my days of loyal Bud drinking.

I also don’t get too bothered when some art form gets a commercial use. If I hear a favorite song or artist in a commercial, well, that’s just how the world works.

But a commercial Budweiser filmed in Canada for airing during the Super Bowl up there (yes, they do special commercials in Canada for an American football game) has me at odds with both of those two sentences.

The commercial below shows how a “flash mob” turned a rec league hockey game into a time to remember for the players on both teams. The popular hockey blog Puck Daddy posted some info about the story behind the commercial shoot.

The problem is, Budweiser didn’t have “an ingenious idea” as Greg Wyshynski wrote in the blog post. They just recycled an idea which Improv Everywhere did almost four years ago, just at a Little League baseball game. And IE didn’t have to pretend they were filming a documentary to pull off the stunt – they just did it. They also didn’t have to pay actors to be in the crowd. They used their ready cadre of “agents.” Read the story behind the “mission.”

But, wait. Improv Everywhere actually stole this idea … from themselves. The idea first came alive in 2004 with the “Best Gig Ever.” That night, IE found an unknown band and filled their Sunday evening concert with rabid fans.

One friend has already called me a Grinch on this, but it’s undeniable. I know people ~~steal~~ get inspiration all the time from other creative types, but this is pretty blatant and to pass it off as something that they just came up with themselves for the biggest commercial day on television is just pretty sad. I’m glad the players on those teams got to experience it, but they were merely tools for Budweiser to sell more beer. The band and the kids in the IE missions really just benefited from people trying to have fun and make someone’s experience special. So is Bud’s attempt to profit the “ingenious idea?”

Big Ten Network Drops the Ball

brian — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 18:22:48 +0000

Throughout the collegiate sports season, the Big Ten Network features a concept called Student U. This supplements the network’s normal coverage of conference athletics with broadcasts produced by university students. Since many of the schools have outstanding communications programs, this gives viewers extra coverage at a fraction of the cost.

For wrestling, this allows the network’s web site to stream more matches, many of which end up on TV in a delayed broadcast. This has really helped the network expand coverage of the niche sport, which is nice since the conference is the best in the nation. Aficionados of the sport like me don’t mind when we see it, as long as we can see it.

Unfortunately, when the conference tournament rolled around this weekend, the Big Ten Network went back to the old-school mindset of putting all its eggs in basketball’s basket. Only the conference finals will be broadcast by BTN, either over the air or online.

I know hoops has a bigger fan base, but to ignore the importance of the rest of the wrestling tournament is absurd. The Saturday evening semifinals are some of the best wrestling of the year. I’ve seen it live in the past and wish I could see it on TV this year.

Why can’t BTN stream the semis live and run them on TV later? They have a four-hour block running the same 30-minute show of basketball highlights Sunday morning. You can’t tell me that the students at the Medill School at Northwestern – the host site – can’t film and cut a two-hour program overnight. That can’t make that much more in advertising if it was cut in half to show two hours of wrestling. How can the network do such a great job covering one of the conference’s most powerful sports all year, then wash their hands of it for the sake of convenience just when it starts to get good?

So nutjobs like me will have to pour over Twitter feeds to get results and try to pretend we can imagine what the matches look like. But at least the hoops fans can see the same highlights four four hours Sunday morning.

Pack It In

brian — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:43:36 +0000

Maria and I went on a trip recently. Nothing fancy, just a weekend in Washington, D.C., to see some tennis and have a celebration for our 15^th anniversary a couple of months early.
As is our usual custom, we flew by the seat of our pants for most of our plans. That meant enjoying lunch the first night at a pub we just happen to read about in a guide book that afternoon.

I love this part of traveling. You never know what you will find when you stop for a meal in a city like D.C. In fact, on the next night, we ended up meeting the brother of a guy I went to high school with at our dinner spot.

That coincidence, however, paled in comparison to what happened on our first night. We had settled in our booth with a couple of drinks and waited for our sandwiches when I saw it.

At first, I could not believe my eyes. It had been a long day, and I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but there was no mistaking it. A family of four walked into the bar and the father, probably about five to 10 years older than me, wore something that made my jaw drop.

A fanny pack.

I had one of those difficult moments when I wanted to stand up and laugh and point, but all I could do was nudge my wife and tell her to look at the people coming in the bar so she could get her own look at the situation. I hate having a conscience sometimes.

Now I don’t pretend to be any sort of fashion expert. On more than one occasion, I have had to change clothes just based on the look I get from my wife before we head out somewhere.

Even though I have those kinds of problems, however, I understand most of the fashion basics for guys. That means I know that no man should ever, ever, ever wear a fanny pack. Ever.

Ever.

I thought we came to an agreement on this about 15 years ago. We had the whole fanny pack craze. Weird Al made fun of them in a song. That means the jig is up. No more fanny packs, especially for men.

If you need to carry things, you put them in your pocket. If you can’t fit everything in your pockets, you ask your wife to put the rest in her purse. The problem here is that this guy’s wife also had on a fanny pack, which almost made me fall out of our booth.

In retrospect, I guess I should not have been surprised. If a woman doesn’t stop her husband from leaving the house with a fanny pack on, the odds are she will think wearing one of her own is a good idea.

To top it off, the Fanny Packs had two teenagers with them. I bet they spent the whole day praying that they didn’t run into anyone they knew. They probably have to beg their parents not to wear the things when they are in their hometown.

I guess things could have been worse though. The guy could have been carrying one of those man purses.

When I Was Young …

brian — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:28:21 +0000

I admire Andrew Dana Hudson. A graduate from Fordham University last May, he moved to India for a writing job after having no luck finding work near his home in Indiana. He chronicled his story today in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

There might not be room for us recent college graduates in the job market at home, but the world is a big place. I bet somewhere out there is an opportunity for each of us. So go.

I could never do something like this. Heading to a developing country to find a job would have never crossed my mind when I graduated college. Twenty years ago, after I got my diploma, my friends and I also faced uncertain economic times so I kind of understand Hudson’s dilemma.

That’s where the part about his piece I can’t understand comes from. Listen, I know the job market sucks. Only an idiot would argue that. But some of the whining coming from the younger generation – yes, this is me officially becoming a grumpy old man – just flummoxes me. Like this part of this article.

Two friends who studied psychology for four years now work off the books at a sandwich shop. Another, who got her master’s in development studies from Cambridge, became a barista at Starbucks.

Social science majors having trouble finding jobs? What a shocking new development in the world! You mean there are not businesses lining up to hire psychology majors right out of college. [Ralph Wiggum]That’s unpossible![/Ralph]

Dude, this has been happening for ever. I’m an English major. I luckily found a job within a few months of graduating, but it disappeared after a year. I was laid off for eight months before I was hired again, about two years after I graduated. And I was one of the lucky ones from my liberal arts college who could work in his chosen field for one of the two years after I got out of school.

Complaining about the job market is understandable, but stop acting like some of the things going on have only happened to your generation and that you are owed a job in the field you want and the pay scale you want without having to make compromises. There’s only so much sympathy to go around and a lot of people who want it. Entitled young adults dragging their crosses across the landscape will probably come at the bottom of most people’s lists.

Spell It Out

brian — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:40:15 +0000

The other day, an item from one of my local TV stations popped up on my Facebook page. Let’s start off by getting a simple fact out of the way – I’m not a big fan of TV news. I have worked in newspapers all my professional life, either on staff or as a freelancer, and have seen the way my broadcast counterparts get the job done.

There are many great people in the industry, but laziness (see how many times a story they did is strangely similar to something you read in the newspaper that morning) and self-promotion are far too often the things I remember. To be fair, the over-aggressiveness of print types is often our calling card, so not everyone’s perfect. Luckily, in my second career in public relations, I have learned that there are lots of people behind the scenes in TV news who don’t fit the Ron Burgundy stereotype. Still, there are some people out there that need some help.

First of all, they posted a video of a small child getting excited every time the station’s news theme came on the air. Really? You’re posting a video someone sent you of their infant getting giddy over your news theme? Don’t hurt your shoulder patting yourself on the back, even for something as silly and random as that.

The second thing was what really raised my hackles. In the item, they said someone sent them a link “to a U-Tube video.”

U-Tube?

U-Tube?????

I know the kids these days like to shorten things to make it easier when they text and IM their friends and stuff, but for crissakes, this is a “professional” news organization shortening the name of a business. For all we know, U-Tube is some ripoff of Youtube.

To top it off, you know how much work these “pros” saved themselves? One freaking key stroke. Youtube is seven characters. U-Tube is six. Bravo, kids.

Is it worth saving one keystroke to try and look hip? Is it worth one keystroke to show that people in the newsroom might not take accuracy and professionalism seriously? But I guess if you’re getting excited because a child gets distracted by random music, the whole notion of acting like an adult has gone completely out the window.

Maybe it’s just me, but if people are going to wail and gnash their teeth every time a newspaper doesn’t get things perfect (if you don’t think they do, check out the comment board on any newspaper site), they shouldn’t endorse a TV station further dumbing down its communication.

Why Do We Need These Things?

brian — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:24:27 +0000

Sometimes, I have very complex philosophical views, especially when it comes to technology and business. You could say I’m almost the opposite of Amish.

You see, I think we have been given the kind of knowledge and imagination that we possess as a species in order to stretch the limits of what we can do. I think coming up with new ideas and products helps fulfill our purpose.

But once in a while, something comes along to make me wonder why we have this capability. This happens when I see something that just makes me shake my head and wonder if we’d be better off as primates.

Sadly, I had this feeling twice within a week recently.

The first time, I was only half paying attention to the TV. I had to ask my wife what I missed after I heard the possible side effects of whatever they were talking about.

Apparently, Brooke Shields endorses some beauty product called Latisse. This stuff has the potential, apparently, to really mess up your eyes if things don’t go right. But if it works, watch out, because it can help your eye lashes grow.

Yes, it’s Rogaine for eye lashes. You know, the one part of the body that men are so fixated on that women should risk eye damage to make sure they are of the appropriate length.

I can’t tell you how many times I have noticed a woman, only to turn away in disgust because she had really short eyelashes. Conversely, I have been busted so many times staring at a women’s eyelashes. It’s really embarrassing.

While I find the whole idea kind of silly, I can understand vanity in adults. I hate it when kids get dragged into it. That’s when we get things like denim diapers.

Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up. It’s a sad thing when you can’t tell if you’re watching a real commercial or some Saturday Night Live parody.

The whole concept boggles my mind so much, I can’t even get worked up over the questionable commercial that turns the baby in the blue jean diaper into some sort of sex symbol.

The ad is a kind of funny parody of so many fashion conscious commercials, but the joke doesn’t quite work because they are trying to act like it’s normal for parents to put a denim diaper on a kid. They try to work in some poop jokes for the immature audience – that would be people like me – but it just doesn’t work, again because there’s a denim diaper involved.

Listen, I like a pair of jeans as much as the next guy, but I’m worried when a business meeting about the possibility of a denim diaper doesn’t end with the phrase, “Are you kidding me? That’s stupid. This meeting is over!”

But I guess this is all part of the whole concept of stretching our brains out as much as we can. Sometimes when you stretch your muscles, you injure yourself. I just wonder if there’s any way to recover from an injury caused by eyelash growth and denim diapers. I guess this is something the Amish don’t have to worry about it.

Dancing on Carrie’s Grave

brian — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:38:17 +0000

A photocopy from a 1998 “Word of the Day” calendar hangs on a wall in my workspace. The word for January 13 of that year is “schadenfreude.”

enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others

I bring this up because I can see the photocopy right over my monitor as I chuckle softly with each passing review of the upcoming “Sex and the City 2” theatrical release. I know, I know. I’m really stepping out onto a limb bashing this franchise, but some of the backlash has been so delightful I can’t help it.

First, we have Lindy West, who skewered the flick for The Stranger. I think I love her more than Sara Jessica Parker’s tiresome character loves fancy shoes or something like that. (Be mindful that the link has some naughty words in it. I censored one here.)

SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled **** like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.

The second gem came from Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir.

Indeed, this movie’s offensive on many levels, but Arabs and Muslims don’t get to feel special. It relies on stupid stereotypes because it’s a stupid movie that’s offensive to virtually everyone. It’s offensive to the demographic it claims to adore — straight women and gay men — who are depicted, more than ever, as hopelessly obsessed with the surface of things, to the point where they forget there’s anything below that. The only reason it isn’t offensive to straight men is that there aren’t any ….

For a moment, I paused to consider whether my cattiness about something so obviously aimed away from me really mattered. After all, don’t I enjoy losing myself in movies that glorify the basest emotions of men. Things like the Sex and the City productions highlight some of the worst things about women, in my opinion. Don’t Knocked Up and Superbad and Old School do the same for men?

Yes, they do, but there’s a critical difference. Deep down, many guys want to be that way. Sure, we love our wives and families, but if we could sit around and go from party to party after starting a fraternity in our 40s and trade dick jokes as we completely let ourselves go, we’d probably do it in a heartbeat.

I don’t know many women who want to be high-maintenance, self-absorbed, superficial whiners more worried about chasing men than making a difference in the world. Why do you think we need you guys to save us from ourselves?

That’s not to say there’s no room for that kind of escapism for women. The show, which I have only seen peripherally, succeeded because it did tap into something many women desire. Living a glamorous lifestyle with close friends by your side is something fun to imagine.

But when they beat it into the ground and the characters have to “escape” lives “damaged” by the recession (i.e. they have two medium-sized New York apartments instead of one monstrous one) to go visit the Middle East where they can turn the women onto shoes you need a mortgage from, you have to wonder whether they really understand how the imaginations of normal people work.

Book Review: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About

brian — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:55:22 +0000

I don’t remember if I learned about Mil Millington through his website or his book first. Both have the same title – Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. The premise had very little depth. Millington, a British writer, has a German girlfriend who he argued with a lot. So he put the substance of those arguments online. Then someone convinced him to turn them into a novel.

The book came out in 2002. I have had it on my reading list for a few years now and finally got it from the library a month or so ago. After reading the book and taking the whole situation into careful consideration, I have one thing to say.

You should have stopped at the website, Mil.

I have a thing about always finishing books. This one required me to renew it from the library twice. I still had to push out the final 100 pages or so in the last day or two before it was due. I almost just gave up, but needed to see if something saved the whole exercise at the end. That didn’t happen.

The concept of taking the small arguments between a couple and weaving a story around them should not be too difficult. Millington, however, created such horrible, unlikeable characters that nothing really mattered. You realized these weren’t just arguments that we all have. These people just had no redeeming qualities.

Maybe that’s how he and his girlfriend are in real life. Maybe this ranks in some subset of British humor that I just don’t get. After all, he won accolades for the book when it was published and has enjoyed a successful career since then.

I just don’t get it. Taking the worst part of a relationship, pretending that it’s normal to hate everything about each other and mixing in a weak and directionless story about the guy’s job doesn’t really rank as a ground-breaking achievement in humor to me.

The good thing is, if he and his girlfriend really disagree on everything, I guess one of them will think this is the most amazingly intelligent opinion on the book ever.