Meccanized

The Oscars are fast approaching — a favorite event of the year. Billy Crystal, song and dance, Ernst and Young, “It’s an honor just to be nominated (please, oh please),” secret envelopes, glitzy tedium, “I’d like to thank every breathing soul in the Western hemisphere…”.

Since the nominations were just announced, here’s my two cents along with some unbiased (ha!) perspective.

First, I think The Artist should win. Every award. Even ones it’s not nominated for. It’s an incredible movie. Delightful and unbelievably uplifting. Really a one-of-a-kind, special flick. Drop whatever you are doing and go see it. Multiple times. (Full disclosure: I was interning with The Weinstein Company when they acquired it. This does NOT imply that I had anything to do with Harvey Weinstein’s brilliant business decision to back the movie. But I like to think that my silent, happy cleaning of the conference rooms inspired him to purchase that silent, happy film.)

A few points on other Best Picture nominees: I was underwhelmed by The Descandants, but Moneyball was right down the strike zone and Hugo was a charmer.

I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw that The Help was on the list. I cried like a little girl when I read The Help, because it was such a moving and engaging story. I cried again after watching The Help, because I was so pissed that I invested a space in my Netflix queue and now had to wait 3 days to get The Mentalist, Season 1 Disc 2.

Tree of Life. First, my feeeeeeeelm opinion. Terrance Malick made the film he wanted without pandering to the average audience, so good for him. It’s visually beautiful and I really loved the middle segment about family and growing up. Unfortunately, that was 45 minutes of love in an otherwise abusive 2.5 hour relationship. The first segment was like back footage from Planet Earth, and there are no words to describe how useless the final segment was.  I found it so pretentious and overdone that I started laughing five minutes in and was asked to either quiet down or leave the theater. It was a tough choice, but I gutted it out ’cause I’m classy like that.  In my non-feeeeeeelm opinion – this movie is best enjoyed under the influence of a mind-altering substance. Perception bending isn’t my thing, ergo I would have rather driven needles through my eyes.

Oh, and did I mention that this year there was no greater movie than The Artist?

Best Actor: Three Haikus

Who’s this Bichir guy?

Where the eff is Fassbender…

…and Michael Shannon?

Phew! Gary Oldman…

Long overdue and Brad Pitt

Should win in ten years

Clooney’s just Clooney

Dujardin is amazing

Didn’t say a word!

Best Actress:

I’d bet a kidney that everyone was praying Meryl wouldn’t get a nomination for The Iron Lady. Let’s be honest, if Meryl is nominated, your chances are better buying a lottery ticket.

Big breakout performance for Rooney Mara. Good for her, the nomination will jump start her career. The performances in My Week With Marilyn and Albert Nobbs were supposed to have been good but I haven’t seen them yet. They will likely cancel each other out in the voting like desperate Republican candidates. (Santorum as Marilyn Monroe, Paul as Albert Nobbs… but that’s a blog for another day…)

A big omission here IMO was Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin). Didn’t love the movie (it made me question why anyone would want to have children), but her performance was solid.

Best Director:

All of the directors directed well (even Malick with Tree of Life…ugh, it pained me to say that), but Michel Hazanavicius set a new paradigm when he helmed The Artist, so this trophy belongs to him.

Original Screenplay: (the category I dream of winning one day…seriously, I practice my acceptance speech in the shower at least twice a week)

Although a bit ironic, The Artist should win here hands down. Inherently, the script was a masterpiece of detail, careful thought and impeccable staging. I must admit that the dialogue was a bit weak, though.

Best Song:

It had better be The Muppets or heads will roll. And thank God W.E. didn’t get nominated for this category like it did at the Golden Globes. I’d have to hang myself if Madonna were to give another smug, self-indulgent acceptance speech in her faux-British accent. “… MY movie, MY script, MY song, MY projector, MY popcorn, MY has-been persona…”

All in all, a good year for films! I am always up for a wild and crazy discussion of cinema, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments! I also will be catching up on the movies I’ve missed before February 26th, so join me if you have time. I promise I’ll keep the cinephile douche within me at bay and the conniption fits to a minimum.

P.S.  I really liked The Artist…

Flakiness. Aloofness. Lack of consideration.  Combine them and what do you have? A recipe that is almost guaranteed to give me a rage stroke.

I know people are busy. I know things come up. I know the entire world doesn’t revolve around me and my plans. But I firmly believe there is a right way to flake out on someone – infrequently, proactively, with enough advance warning that the flake victim can salvage the time, and ideally through a phone call that provides a proper degree of contrition. Obviously, these can’t always be fully attained, but short of being trapped under some heavy, immovable object, it’s not that hard to come pretty close.

Which is why it is so irritating and disrespectful when people flake incorrectly.

A few days ago, I was quietly and respectfully (i.e. loudly and rantily) speaking to someone about this social phenomenon.  Somehow the discussion evolved into a contest about who had experienced the most absurd flake. He won the battle — I’m sad to say, I couldn’t top the text message cancellation he received half an hour before a Third Eye Blind concert offering: “Sorry, I can’t make it. I forgot I need to bandage my hamster’s leg.”

But in an effort to win the war, this morning I took a 90% amusing, 10% infuriating trip down memory lane to resurrect a few favorite personal examples of inappropriate flaking:

• Via e-mail, at 9:45 am before a 10 am team meeting: “I can’t make it. I need to finish knitting this doggie sweater by 10:30.” This one was irritating on multiple levels: you all know how I feel about dog fashions, especially knits.
• Via text, while I was waiting for a gentleman at a bar: “I ordered the Famous Chicken and it takes an hour to cook. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”  Note: I did not see him tomorrow. Or ever again. And just how famous can any one chicken really be?!?
• Via e-mail, ten minutes before a Boot Camp exercise class a friend had committed to attending with me: “Ate too much ice cream. Count me out.”
• Via text, fifteen minutes before a mutual friend’s surprise birthday dinner: “Got sucked into a Hoarders marathon. Have fun!” (Funny, but now that I think of it, I never saw THAT person again either.)
• Sent via text, about Valentine’s Day dinner. “Oh, that’s tonight? I’m still in San Mateo.” Stand back, ladies, this one’s mine.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with my own escalating flakiness, especially since I understand just how obnoxious it can be and how little effort it takes to be base-level considerate. It’s something I am really trying to focus on (hence a 2012 resolution to return phone calls, to be on time, to not cancel anything I commit to, etc.). Of course, my quest for personal betterment has only made me more sensitive to the overt expression of aloof, flaky alleles in other people’s genetic makeups…and it boggles my mind how often I see it happen.

Aloof flakers everywhere… you are Meccanized.

I am a heavy sleeper. I have slept through earthquakes, impromptu band rehearsals and the loudest fire alarm in the history of the world. It was so loud that the other people in the house figured no one could possibly sleep through it and so didn’t bother checking my room to see if I was there. When they didn’t see me outside, they assumed I had stayed the night elsewhere. As a result, had it actually been a real fire, I would have been in trouble.

But no depth of sleep could keep me from the ABSURDLY LOUD POUNDING on my door that occurred at 3:45 am on Saturday morning. Still half asleep, I staggered towards the door wondering who the hell might have decided to visit at that hour. In my previous life, random visits at odd hours weren’t that uncommon. Once, someone who shall remain nameless decided to throw pebbles at my window late at night in a romantic gesture…only in his inebriated state he misjudged the size of the “pebbles” and the location of my room and in reality hurled a small boulder that broke through my roommate’s window and nearly gave her a heart attack. But this kind of thing hadn’t yet happened in Virginia. Until Saturday.

3:45 am. Pounding. I asked who it was. I got back “It’s Julia and Amy.” “Um…” I said, “I don’t know you.” Their response? “We’re staying with you. We’ve been here all night.” Deciding what to do was entirely dependent on what genre of movie I had been suddenly and unwittingly thrust into. I was hoping for a RomCom. What I got was an after school special on teen drinking.

I could tell there was no real threat, but I was not letting Julia and Amy into my apartment. I’ll spare you the more boring details of what happened for the next hour, but suffice to say, the conversation that took place through my door was scintillating. I said the phrase “You don’t know me” at least five times. After reading the signed letter that I had taped to my door for UPS, they started referring to me by name, and it took me another 20 minutes to convince them that knowing my name did not, in fact, make me their friend. These two had no idea where they were, how they got there, where they needed to go or where there ride was. Finally, one became coherent enough to call her friend, find out where he was and relay to him the directions I gave to her to get to my building. Around 4:30, they were picked up and I got a loud, slurred “THAAAANNNKKK YOOOOUUUUU!!!!!” that probably woke everyone in a 2-mile radius.

Before anyone says anything about how I handled things…my “too niceness” has been well documented, and I know most of you would have just called the police and been done with it. Fair enough. But what I found more interesting was how I felt after they had left. This whole incident made me feel old…and not really in a bad way.

I never pulled a Robert Downey Jr. and showed up at someone else’s house by mistake, but I’ve had my share of ridiculous nights. At some point, though it wouldn’t have been me telling the story, I probably would have thought it was funny to hear about a friend ending up on a stranger’s doorstep at 4:30 am or…say…waking up in the street 2 miles from campus wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a drapery of yellow caution tape. I probably would have even thought, “Man, I wish I could have been there.”

Now? I don’t really find it that funny or wish I could have been there. Saturday made me appreciate that the term “ridiculous night” means something entirely different to me in my old age. I think I can officially say that my “ridiculous nights” going forward most likely will not include finding myself coatless in a strange apartment complex at 4:30 am in 30-degree weather. Or dressing in heels that are too high for me to walk in without looking like I’m 8 and wearing my mom’s shoes. Or being so incapacitated that I need tons of help to get home safely.

I’ve crossed some threshold where that just doesn’t seem as funny as it used to. Instead, my ridiculous nights will consist of much more mature things. Like organizing a fake birthday party at a bouncy castle compound. Or splitting a bottle of wine and kicking butt at various Wii games. Or dancing my face off to ‘80s music and then eating my weight in pancakes at IHOP.

Still absurdly fun. Just a little more in control.

Who knew that the TSA had a blog?! And that this blog details the delightful smorgasbord of crap that TSA agents confiscate from airline travelers?! A spear gun here. 240 live fish there. Countless live and inert grenades. Consider my mind grapes blown.

Because I still believe in humanity, I am choosing to assume that no one is that stupid. Instead, I will assume that people do this for the same reason they show up in the ER with odd objects – bottles of shampoo, beepers, books (all true) — inside them: because they wanted to see if they could. (Ok, that may be the second reason people show up in the ER with objects inside them, but the first reason is outside of the scope of this blog.)

I understand that “well, maybe I’ll pull it off” feeling (important note: this refers only to the TSA portion of the above, NOT to the shampoo bottle/beeper/book portion). My weapon of choice? Mott’s apple sauce.

A few years ago, when I was a poor PR rep instead of a poor grad student, I did not want to pay an arm and a leg for food at the airport. So, before leaving my apartment, I put a container of apple sauce in my purse even though it was more than 3 oz and I was pretty sure it was considered a liquid/gel. Yeah, I’m a wild woman. I also apparently have the snack preferences of a risk-averse toddler.

While waiting in line to get my boarding pass, I began chatting with a cute guy. Mid-conversation, I imagined what he would say at our wedding: “When I saw her baggy sweatpants, baby blue neck pillow stained from years of soda and coffee spills during turbulence and her armload of celebrity gossip magazines, I knew I wanted to marry her.” Yes, this was the kind of unshakable love upon which so many Nicholas Sparks novels are based. After we both had our documents in hand, we proceeded to security together.

And then things got…embarrassing. A TSA agent pulled the apple sauce out of my purse and informed me that it could not be carried on. I gave him my best “I’m small and hungry” face to no avail. I argued with him about the classification of the product as a gel. He wouldn’t budge. Meanwhile, my gentleman friend had slowly edged away, moved to a different security line and was already removing his shoes. I can’t imagine why – what man wouldn’t want to hang with a 26-year-old woman making a scene about a container of apple sauce?

The TSA agent gave me the option of throwing out the apple sauce or eating it before I proceeded through the checkpoint. I locked eyes with my man, now through the X-ray machine. I had a tough decision to make. Potential future bliss and lifelong companionship? Or No Sugar Added, Vitamin C-rich apple deliciousness?

As I sat there snacking, I sarcastically thanked the TSA agent for costing me a chance with my soul mate. And in a moment I’ll never forget, the TSA agent looked me right in the eye and said “Your soul mate would have stood by you while you ate your apple sauce.” Wise words, Mr. TSA agent. Wise words.

Tell me your airport security war stories!

A few weeks ago, I joked with a friend who commented on (i.e. mocked) my increased activity on Facebook that my self image was in part predicated upon how many people like my Facebook statuses. I was entirely kidding. At the time.

Today, I entered an entirely new realm of lame. And for the girl who chortled and asked “Are you going to test me for Coke?” when Pepsi told her there would be a drug test before starting her internship, that is saying a lot.

I posted a status on Facebook…and nobody liked it. Nobody commented. There was no welcoming little red “1″ that popped up on the earth icon to indicate that anyone who subscribes to my feed thought I was funny or cool.

Yup…I just equated my Facebook status message being funny or cool to me being funny or cool. And what’s worse — I cared. I actually found myself re-reading my status and wondering what I should have said differently to make people like it. If ever there were someone to be Meccanized, it is me. Right now. RIGHT NOW.

It’s bad enough that I get so irate about my lack of Foursquare mayorships. With all I’ve managed to accomplish (I taught myself to juggle, dammit! I hunted down Mick Jagger!), have I really been sucked into the social media vortex so deeply that any part of my self-confidence can be impacted by Facebook “likes?”

I can’t be alone here (TELL ME I’M NOT ALONE HERE), and I am sure there is plenty of new psychology research that indicates this is an ever-growing phenomenon. I hope to avoid being a part of it, though. I think Facebook is too useful a tool to give up (i.e. I am hopelessly addicted to it), but I do not want to be the sort of user who lives and dies by others’ likes. I am writing this post so that every time I log-in and face a dearth of little red 1′s, I can remember how silly I felt yearning for virtual validation.

Of course, if I post this to Facebook, please, please like the link!!!!!

If the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that I will only remember to do things if I write them down. I made the mistake of telling this to someone on a date and three days later noticed “Rip P’s clothes off” sandwiched on my to-do list between “buy toilet paper” and “pick up the cleaning.”

So, to hold myself accountable, this year I am using this blog to highlight both my Charlottesville bucket list and my 2012 resolutions. I welcome help completing any and all of these things. For added incentive, at least 50% of these will likely be absurd enough to yield other blog posts, so if you’ve ever wanted to claim your place in Meccanized history, now is your chance!

Charlottesville Bucket List (this list is fluid, so additions are welcome):

- Eat a Gus Burger at The White Spot (extra points if it is consumed after midnight)

- Stargaze at the UVA Observatory

- Organize a fake birthday party at Bounce U

- Win a trivia night at McGrady’s (or Mellow Mushroom or Escafe. Really, I don’t care where we win, I just want to win.)

- Be taken to dinner at The Boar’s Head or Ivy Inn. For you SF folks, this is the Charlottesville equivalent of the Gary Danko item on my SF Bucket List.

- Even classier than the previous item, get dressed to the nines for dinner at IHOP

- Climb Old Rag again, this time on a clear day

- Win a game of pool at Rapture and shuffleboard at Boylan

- Bowl above a 117. Hopefully this will happen during my usual Tuesday night league, but if I have to go alone every weekend to the bowling alley until I roll at least a 118, so be it.

- Attend (and dance my face off at) every Love Canon show between now and June

- Have a one-night staycation at one of the local B&Bs

2012 Resolutions:

Personal Growth:

- Be kinder to myself

- Worry less about other people’s perceptions of me. Along with this, be more confident in my own thoughts and actions.

- Be more positive. I tend to assume the worst about most situations to avoid being caught off guard if things go south. At best it’s draining and at worst it ruins a lot of potential fun.

- Every day, write down one thing about my life that I am grateful for. Each week, read through the list.

- Do not let the actions of others define my happiness.

Interpersonal Relationships:

- Be more honest with others about my feelings. Be brave enough to be vulnerable.

- Don’t expend a single iota of mental or physical energy on people who make me feel less than great. Devote more mental and physical energy to those who are just incredible and who I know I am lucky to have around.

- Stop being a flake; barring a family emergency or being trapped under something heavy, if I commit to something, I will go.

- Return phone calls within 24 hours

- When in the company of other people, do not check my iPhone for new e-mail/texts/FB notifications/etc. more than once

Looking Towards NYC:

- Purge my apartment and donate at least 5 big bags of clothes/books/etc. to charity.

- Leave Charlottesville feeling as if I have done everything I wanted to do with the people I wanted to do it with.

- Find a great apartment in NYC that a) makes me feel comfortable and at home in a place that has always made me feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed b) doesn’t require me to prostitute myself to pay rent

- Be a NYC tourist without shame

- Go to shows – Broadway, stand-up, tiny theaters, etc. – at least once a month.

- Join a city sports league (a la kickball in SF)

- Don’t bankrupt Pepsi

General To Do’s:

- Learn to drive a manual transmission

- Learn to shoot a pistol

- Make a Turducken

- Publish a piece of original fiction

- Read the news every day