Meccanized

Dear Woman On the 3,

You are so griding my gears right now.  Sitting across from me, yelling into your cell phone, repeating the phrase “O.M.G.  It was Hi-Larious, Becky.”

I don’t know who Becky is, but if she thinks your stupid story about how you passed some guy your number at Rickhouse is, indeed, Hi-Larious, I hate her too.

I am the first person to champion loud phone conversations on the street.  In fact, I’d say that more often than not, if I’m walking around, I’m on the phone.  Walking from Point A to Point B provides the perfect dead time to make and return phone calls.   But on the sidewalk, with a zillion people caught up in their own chats, said phone calls are unobtrusive.

On the 3, a small enclosed space that is bad enough without your whiny voice, high-pitched chortle and staggering insecurities being broadcast through it, they are pretty damn obtrusive.

Where is the bus justice in the world?  I sit quietly and always give up my seat for the elderly and am repaid by the universe by getting sat on, drooled on and groped by middle-aged men just “trying to find the ’stop requested’ button on the bar by the back door” (here’s a hint — it’s not anywhere near my chest).  You’re using Muni as your own personal phone booth and the worst you get is a written slap on the wrist on this blog.

If the guy you met at Rickhouse actually calls, I sure hope I’m not on the bus when you answer.

Meccanized.

Sincerely,

Lindsay

Terminator: Salvation sucked so much that I was rooting for Skynet.

I loathe McG (whose “name” irritates me to my very core) with every fiber of my being at the moment.  At one point, I actually leaned over to my movie buddy and asked if we could leave (and I NEVER leave movies — I sat through “The Unborn” for pete’s sake).  Do you have any idea how much I have to hate a movie (or a director) for me to want to leave it?  Imagine me making that gesture where you hold your arms apart really far.  Then imagine that my arms are as big and endless as McG’s ego.  That’s how much.

I love the Terminator series.  I even defended “Rise of the Machines” as a fun addition to the first two quality films.  And T4 could have been good.  It could have been good, that is, if McG didn’t make the colossal mistake of thinking that he was up for the task of directing it.  It’s like he fell into the classic “we’ll fix it in post” trap…only he forgot the part about fixing it in post.

McG makes me long for the explosions and ridiculous slow-motion sequences of Michael Bay — at least good ‘ol Mikey doesn’t try to do anything other than mindless action.

It goes without saying who is Meccanized in this post.

I, Lindsay Mecca, accept that I have a problem…with Robert Pattinson.

Two problems, actually.

1)    I can’t get enough of him.  Those eyebrows.  The charisma.  And, oh, that hair.
2)    I can’t decide if I love him or hate him.

The first problem seems to resolve itself (or make itself worse, depending on your perspective) because HE IS EVERYWHERE.  You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Rob Pattinson likeness in some form.

The second…well, that’s a tougher issue.  On the one hand, he’s maybe the biggest tool in Hollywood (in and of itself a veritable toolbox) and I feel like I lose brain cells when I listen to him in interviews.  (Though he’s not as bad as Kristen Stewart, who I liken to a gaping whole on the screen where an actress should be.)  On the other…yum.  To elaborate, Twilight was scarily engaging, largely due to him and his Brando-esque charisma.  (Somewhere, Marlon Brando is rolling over in his grave…metaphorically, of course.  He’s too fat to turn over fully in that tiny wooden box.)

Yikes, I am being mean in this post.  For those of you who have never seen me mean, this is what it looks like.

Anyway, I see the faux-brooding and the questionable personal hygiene of the lanky, handsome Brit in question and think he is just asking for Meccanization.  Then my heart flutters a bit and I find myself shelling out $3.95 for a copy of US Weekly (ok, fine, $19.95 for US, People, OK!, Life and Style and Teen Beat) and I am suddenly struck by a strong urge to self-Meccanize.

Opinions?

You know what really winds me around the axle?  (Someone who shall remain nameless but who lives with my mom and answers to the name “dad” told me that I needed to find a new phrase for “grind my gears,” because, according to him, “when you read all the posts in a row, it gets a bit repetitive.”)

… but jury duty really grinds my gears. Especially the way this state conducts its juror summons. I’ve ranted a lot about this today, though, so I will simply sum up my experience:

On the plus side:

- The jury assembly room is really nice (though the chairs are horrific. I think I permanently lost an inch or two from having to hunch in them all day, and those are not inches I have to spare.).

- The instructional video went down smoothly with a big heaping spoonful of irony. 2 minutes in when the narrator said “You may not get selected for jury duty. Don’t worry — it’s nothing personal,” I started laughing pretty loudly and didn’t stop for … oh … the rest of the morning.

On the minus side:

- There is very much a social hierarchy in the land of Civic Duty not dissimilar to high school. And, also not dissimilar to high school, I was not one of the cool kids. I was working the whole time, brought my lunch instead of purchasing food, and actually asked questions of the clerks in front of the room (I’m curious about our city’s legal system … so sue me!).

- Anyone you meet while serving jury duty is a fairweather friend. A very nice 40-ish gentleman sat down next to me at the start of the day. We chatted, discussed our work and our hopes and dreams — it was very pleasant. I thought we had a real connection. They called his name and excused him, and it was like I didn’t even exist. I got a hurried and incomplete “nice to meet y…” as he gleefully fled the building. I felt so discarded.

So, all in all, an annoying thing to have to deal with but not a totally terrible experience.

And I forgot the biggest plus: the recommendations for how I could get out of serving, my favorite of which was to swallow a bunch of coins so I couldn’t make it through the metal detector at the entrance to the court house.

Jury duty, you are Meccanized.

You know what really grinds my gears?

When people say ATM Machine.  Automated Teller Machine…Machine.   Same for SCUBA gear, and The La Trattoria, but the ATM one has always annoyed me.

I heard this verbal misstep earlier today, and then had a “Oh, crap, did I just say that aloud” moment when I muttered “one too many machines” and had the man taking out cash in front of me glare in my general direction.

And I wonder why I get hit by strangers on the street.

Start ‘Em Young…

Calling someone “hot” can refer to a few things: sexiness (physical attributes and attractiveness), popularity, a fever. I ask you — do any of these possible interpretations of the word hot sound good when applied to a toddler?

Let’s consider this:

Sexy: Toddlers are awesome, but I think most people not Michael Jackson would agree that calling a toddler “hot” and referring to their attractiveness is the best way to get yourself a one way ticket to Prisonville. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life trying to nonchalantly let your neighbors know that you are a sex offender, probably better to avoid referring to a child like that.

Popular: Maybe your kid is the toast of the day care town, but it would be pretty lame to classify a toddler as hot in the “Hansel…so hot right now” sense. For one thing, most things toddlers do are objectively lame anyway (no one would bat an eye if I waddled a few steps and then fell down or managed to eat a meal without spilling food all over myself…well, maybe that second one would inspire some excitement), so it’s not like there is a cool – to – lame scale in play here. Second, while I will agree that there are definitely some pariahs in the young childhood sphere (you know, the weird kids who eat worms on the playground and put their pants on backwards), besides those outcasts, everyone falls in to the same pool of coolness.

Fever: This is just medically bad. Call a doctor.

So given this, how is it ok that Forbes, a supposedly respected publication, published pictures of the “10 Hottest Tots” and no one finds it creepy, offensive, a sad commentary on our society, or all 3?

Forbes, you are Meccanized. And for the sake of the two Pitt-Jolie kids NOT included in the slide show, Shiloh, Zahara, and Pax, you are also Meccanized.

It’s a 2-post day. That’s like a 3-alarm fire, only less hot. Or a 5-dog night…only less…fuzzy.

I was just informed that TiVo has added Domino’s Pizza delivery to its list of offerings.

Where do I even begin?

I will start with this. Part of me got really excited when I read this. You know which part? The obese, lazy part (which I keep well hidden using an elaborate system of girdles and a rigorous social schedule).

And I will continue with this. Domino’s? Really? Not only is it the worst pizza in existence (I feel like one Evan Solomon is going to give me hell for making that point), but also the company is run by that whack-job Tom Monaghan. Perhaps you remember him from his antics a few years ago to fulfill his lifelong dream to create a town compromised entirely of orthodox Catholics — you know, the kind of wholesome, salt of the earth place where pharmacies ban contraception and little boys are encouraged to grow up and join the priesthood.

So I feel the need to Meccanize two things here:
1) The enormous (literally and figuratively) part of the population that is excited about this announcement, for whom picking up the telephone is too much effort.
2) TiVo, for encouraging this laziness and for inflicting the world with a double-lame: bad pizza and indirectly supporting radical religious ideals.

Almost as disgusted right now as I was last night watching Bear Grylls rip apart a sea cucumber with his teeth… or this morning when I found out his son’s name is Marmaduke.

You know what really grinds my gears? This.

I know the Internet revolution has blurred the lines between reality and virtual reality, but really?

A woman caught her husband’s avatar having sex with a virtual prostitute in Second Life and she divorced him. Of course, this is after they got married in a Second Life ceremony that was a far bigger deal than their real wedding. She even hired an online private detective to follow him around. “He never did anything in real life, but I had my suspicions about what he was doing in Second Life.”

I expected the accused to set this crazy lady straight, offering at least a “Woman, what I do online is my own business.” But no, instead, he jumps right onto the ridiculous bandwagon: “We weren’t even having cyber sex or anything like that, we were just chatting and hanging out together.”

And sure, I know that emotional cheating can be as real as actual cheating, but this isn’t even emotional cheating — this woman is pissed because she feels like her husband really cheated on her. To these people, Second Life is so real that what happens in directly correlates to what happens in real life.

And you know what, I’ll dive into the crazy for a sec — they aren’t even actually divorced yet and she already is involved in a new relationship with a man she met playing World of Warcraft. Talk about www.tacky.com.

People who can’t separate the reality from virtual reality, you are Meccanized.

And yet another thing that really grinds my gears: Michael Bay.

I was at the movies last night, taking in Saw V (go ahead…judge), and I saw something infinitely more disturbing than the image of a man getting torn in half by a pendulum with “inferior blades”: a preview for next Michael Bay film. And what kills me the most is that, based on the trailer, I actually want to see it.

This is why I hate Michael Bay — his ideas are great, and they are usually enough to suck in unsuspecting (or, in my case, suspecting but always gullible) viewer. The problem is his execution. Imagine you have in front of you a really delicious filet mignon — tender, juicy, delicious. Now, imagine taking that filet, burning it beyond recognition, and covering it in mayo (and cilantro). Then smear your shoe on it a few times, beat it with a rusty bat, and lay it in the street and let a garbage truck roll over it a few times. Then go and pick it up from the pavement. What used to be a filet that would have made a damn fine meal now is something so gross and deformed you wouldn’t even give it to the homeless man who sleeps outside your building (or pees on your building, as the case may be). This is what Michael Bay does to a good idea.

Take “The Island” for example. What was an interesting bio-ethical dilemma became a loud, totally incongruous, totally unoriginal 2 hours that were saved only by the fact that my friend had a credit on the movie.

And Pearl Harbor? Well, I won’t get into the details, but I had to choke back vomit several times, as did several WWII vets who actually left the theater in disgust. I was happy beyond words when I heard “The End of an Act” in “Team America: World Police.”

(And sure, point out my hypocrisy — I love “The Rock” and “Bad Boys.” But I would argue that those are the types of movies Michael Bay should be tackling — ones where plot holes make absolutely zero difference, where explosions every 20 seconds are ok, and where Nicholas Cage dropping to his knees and screaming “Noooooooo!” while waving flares fit perfectly into the story.)

Of course, ultimately, this is my problem and not Michael Bay’s — I know full well what his movies are like, and yet I keep buying tickets, essentially saying with my $10.50 “It’s ok, Michael, I know you hit me because you love me.” However, this is my blog, and Michael Bay, rolling in dough out there in L.A., just pisses me off.

Michael Bay, you are Meccanized. (But I will still go see “The Unborn” when it comes out, and I expect at least a few of you reading to come with me.)