The Original F-Word

See...this is the problem...

There's a full page ad in this week's Entertainment Weekly magazine. (Yes, I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly. I follow the world of entertainment and I like to be updated weekly. So I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly.)

So, this ad.

It's for a new CW Network show, entitled Life Unexpected. I don't know what to expect of life and I don't intend to watch so I don't care about the show. This is not about the show.

Well, it is, and it isn't.

First of all, the tag line at the top of the ad is:

"Juno meets Gilmore Girls."

That's nice, I guess. But I don't care. I saw Juno and it was okay but I've never seen Gilmore Girls. So I don't care.

Then there's a photo of the three stars in their character costumes.

I don't know the three stars and their character costumes are so SELECTED and PRECISE and HIP and CALCULATED with their emblem-ed T-shirts and leather jackets and half-laced boots and faded jeans and the characters are so PERFECTLY HAIR-ED that I don't want to have anything to do with the show.

But that's not the point.

The point is the second tagline, the show's catchphrase, attached to the bottom of the ad.

You ready?

"Family is the new F-word."

I'll pause a moment here for you to let that sink in.

"Family is the new F-word."

Here's my problem:

The 20-something studio executive who came up with that line probably got a raise. When he or she brought it up at the sales meeting, there was probably a rhapsody of oohs and aahs in the room and pencils and styrofoam coffee cups were probably tossed in the air in amazement at the unbridled brilliance and cleverness of that line.

To me, it's just so damned glib and cynical that I can't stand it.

First of all, you 20-something studio exec, what do you think is the first word that comes to mind when anybody reads that tagline?

"Family?" No.

"The original F-word?" Yes!

So you don't think about family. You don't think about warmth. You don't think about caring or loving or humanity or even the perfect hair of the actors in the show. You think about the original F-word.

Is that what you set out to do?

You will say "NO!" I will say "YES!" That IS what you set out to do. You did not want the world to say, "Oh, yes, I want to watch this family show." You wanted the world to say, "Oooh! How clever to remind us of the original F-word in the context of this family show!"

What you have done, in essence, is, you have connected the word "family" to the original "F-word" so that when we think of the former, we think of the latter. Inevitably. Inexorably.

You jerk, whoever you are.

I will not watch your show, because I don't like your costumes or your hair.

But mainly I will not watch your show because I despise your smug manipulation of the language under the guise of cleverness.

The original F-word you.

Probably Best to Skip This Entry

So...public rest rooms. For guys. (Sorry, this is the only kind I'm qualified to address.)

Question.

If you're a guy, and you walk into a public rest room, and there are three empty urinals staring at you, which one do you use?

Better question, which one DON'T you use?

Why, the one in the middle, of course.

Because, by using either the one on the right or the one on the left, there is AT LEAST the possibility that the next guy into the rest room will not be standing directly next to you. Why is it a good thing to not have a guy standing directly next to you?

Well, it just is, that's all.

And if you're a guy, using the urinal, please do not sing. Or hum. Or whistle.

I've been in rest rooms where this happens.

My first question to you songbirds is this: What, really, is there to hum about? Sure, it's a relieving, pleasant thing you are doing. We who are in the rest room with you already know that. By definition, we are happy for you. We do not need you to serenade us while you are taking a leak. Because, truth be told, all your little concert is doing for us is holding up our progress, if you know what I mean. We cannot concentrate while you are warbling to your...whatever. And, look, if you do feel it's necessary to sing or hum or whistle while you're addressing the urinal, please, for the love of God, sing or hum or whistle something that is not familiar to us. I mean, if you sing or hum or whistle "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree" while you're whizzing away, even when you leave, the damn tune is gonna be in our brains, and we STILL will not be able to concentrate on the task at hand. A friend of mine once told me that when you get a tune stuck in your head, the only way to eliminate it is to replace it with "The Girl From Ipanema." He never told me how to get rid of "The Girl From Ipanema," however.

And, say you're in a rest room situation where a number of guys are waiting to use, as it were. Say you get to the urinal before your buddy, who is behind you in line. Don't, please, keep your conversation with your buddy going while you're going. "Yeah, I think they're gonna have a good infield, but they're not gonna be able to hit." "You think so?" "Oh, yeah, they got a lot of trouble in the middle of the order!" Again, it's all about concentration. For one thing, I may want to join in the conversation, because I just may think the middle of the order is okay, but how can I keep my mind on my business when I'm thinking about the Red Sox OBP? Plus, add to that the intimidation factor. With your oh, so casual conversation, here's what you're telling the rest of us mutes: "Hey, look what I can do! I can pee and talk at the same time!" It makes a guy just want to zip up and go back to the table.

One more thing for anybody still with me here...

You young dads who are instructing your kids on how to use the public rest room. I know--it's an important part of the dad-son teaching process, and I respect it. But...before you embark upon the training session, take the little tyke aside and tell him this:

"Billy, now we're going to go in here and we're going to go to the bathroom like grownups. Pretty soon, you'll be able to do this all by yourself. Now...the only thing you really need to know before you go in there, is this: Do not talk to the other fellas while they are using the rest room. Do not ask them what they are doing. Do not point to them and say, "Look, Daddy, that man didn't wash his hands like he's supposed to." And also, please, tell them not to sing. It's good to train them early for stuff like that.

Oh, yes...and for you sign-makers out there. It took me a good long time before I was able to understand precisely what "Baby Changing Station" meant when it's plastered on the outside of a men's room door. For a split second, yes, I'll admit it, I thought this might be a room where you could exchange your baby for another one. Rewrite, please.

"Well, if I was on patrol, maybe..."

A cop just said the above to me. After he handed me a $150 ("Well, the State sets this, not us.") ticket for running a stop sign.

I had asked him, very politely, after he brought the ticket back to me, why, given that I had slowed down at the 4-stop sign intersection, and given that I did put my foot on the brake (though my car never did stop) and given that there was NOBODY anywhere else in the intersection, and given that I had stopped at that intersection EVERY TIME about 50 times a week for the past ten years, given all that, I asked him, did he, or anybody who wears the uniform he wears, EVER consider the possibility of, MAYBE, suggesting to me that, hey, i know there was nobody in the intersection but, hey, you know, guy, you do need to stop. You know...a WARNING. I know they give WARNINGS. And I, the milquetoastiest of drivers, would be the first to be SO GRATEFUL for a WARNING, that I would think sometime, somewhere SOME COP would consider just giving a guy a WARNING just to see what GRATITUDE is like.

But this is what he said when I asked him if they ever just gave warnings in simple, harmless situations like these:

"Well, if I was on patrol, maybe I would. But I'm on traffic detail."

"Oh! So your entire point is to catch me?"

"Yes."

Look, I know the life of a policeman is a dangerous one. I know that I would not be comfortable in a town without a police force. I know the good police do.

But GOD.

A hundred and fifty bucks, not because I did what I did, but because the cop was WAITING for me to do what I did, even though there were no other vehicles anywhere near me, and nobody was in danger.

I think, maybe, a four second conversation with me before writing out the citation would have convinced this guy that I'm not a $150 criminal.

However, I think (and now I get really pissed), this guy was on a training program.

Because as soon as he stopped me, another cruiser drove up behind him and waited until he was finished. When I drove by the same intersection later on my way home, he had stopped another car, and the second cruiser was driving up behind him again.

I hope he got $150 worth of training.

I will get over this.

But the next time I see a police car take a right turn onto Moore from Andrews Street, at the stop sign, without stopping, which happens ALL THE TIME...

Well....Well...I'll be darned angry.

I wish I drank.

It's (Not That) Complicated

So, with the new HDTV and Blu Ray player in place, I hardly ever go OUT to the movies anymore. I mean, I have something like 125 movies in my Netflix streaming queue, some of them in HD. My God. Why spend ten bucks or more to see something I will be able to see more comfortably in, say, three months time at home?

Well, sometimes you just hafta, you know what I mean?

If there's a movie opening in December and it features Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, with a supporting role played by John Krasinski, going to the multiplex automatically appears on the agenda.

Nancy Meyers, the writer director of IT'S COMPLICATED, has some cred. PRIVATE BENJAMIN, the remake of FATHER OF THE BRIDE, SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE. Pretty decent stuff. And the cast. Come on. Heavy hitters.

And that's...almost the problem here.

Not that there's a problem.

Well, there is. But not a huge one.

It's about a 20-minute problem. Somewhere in IT'S COMPLICATED is twenty minutes of film that needed to be left on the cutting room floor. Or, these days, in the "Save It For The DVD" file on the Mac. The great cast is a problem because they pretty much make those twenty minutes, wherever they are, interesting. Just as interesting as they make the other hundred minutes of the film. So when you look at the twenty minutes, you say, what's the problem? Then you get home late for dinner, and you see the problem.

No ground is broken here. Unless you consider an adult film made and performed by adults ground breaking. And you might.

Meryl and Alec are divorced. They are the parents of the three MOST WELL ADJUSTED GROWN CHILDREN IN HISTORY. They are so well-adjusted, one of them is going to marry Krasinski, who is KING of the well-adjusted on film and on TV these days. Alec has married a hot Latina (her kid is named Pedro and she is dark and beautiful, so I take the leap) who is twenty-five years his junior and who broke up with him once to go have her kid with another guy. We know Alec is not going to succeed here. Meryl is succeeding as a restaurant owner and chef. She is adding on to her house and Steve Martin is her architect. Alec wants to come back to Meryl, Meryl is hot for Alec but likes Steve, Steve likes Meryl and he's going through the throes of divorce. We see plot points coming at us from miles away.

But these actors are just so damned good.

And Meryl is the best.

She has to be, to carry off the somewhat fantastical fancies she has to accommodate in the screenplay. We stay with her because we know she can do this. Otherwise, we would go out for popcorn. Nobody but Meryl could play this character believably. Because hers is not really a believable character.

Alec is believable, because he's been written and seen a million times before.

Steve is believable because we just plain like him no matter what he does on film, and what he does here is restrained and honest and downright nice.

I've heard people recently say that Krasinski always plays "Jim," the character he plays on THE OFFICE. A legitimate critique.

Still--go find somebody who does this better than he does.

Jimmy Stewart never played a wide range of types in the movies.

And Stewart may have been the best film actor ever.

In the final analysis, IT'S COMPLICATED just isn't. It tries to be. But by the time we get past the 90-minute mark, the complications seem forced and impossible. I'm thinking this happens about the time Meryl lights up the joint. Yeah. There.

Still, you wanna see movie acting?

See it.

Wait till you get it at home, maybe.

But do see it.

And, if you can, see Meryl in JULIE AND JULIA. Then compare that to this.

She is the best.

Have I said that already?

Irratating

So I sign up for this online voice-over service. I had been associated with the service for a couple of years, but as the end of 2009 approached and I needed stuff to write off, I figured I'd sign up as a premium member and take advantage of the service in a more meaningful way. I mean, I have a relatively decent recording set-up at home and, what the hell, if this service could nail me a few tiny-paying jobs here and there, what's the harm? As soon as I paid the premium fee, I was sent a number of audition opportunities and I made the audition recordings at home and sent them out and hoped for the best. Just like everything else I do as a writer/performer, I was working ON SPEC. I'm used to it. Rejection is the Tonto to my Lone Ranger. Not all that helpful, but always there.

I've auditioned for maybe five V.O. gigs, with no results yet. Fine. No problem. As I say, it's easy to make a recording and send it out online. No skin off my nose.

Today, though, I discovered that one of the "premium" services I receive is that Voice Seekers are allowed and even encouraged to "tag" my demo reel. This means that a Voice Seeker can listen to my online reel, which is a professionally-made 2 minutes of me reading copy, and then "tag" my reel. Tagging simply means the Voice Seeker can apply a word of reaction to my reel, and that word is listed as a tag. The first three words I received as tags were "exciting," "professional" and "sense of humor," which is technically three words, but who's quibbling. I don't know where these tags originated, and for all I know, they just came from the service trying to make me feel good.

But about fifteen minutes ago, I received an email from the service titled, "Congratulations! You have been tagged!" This meant that another Voice Seeker had listened to my reel, and applied a tag to it. I checked it out.

There, in addition to "professional," "exciting" and "sense of humor," was the tag "irratating."

Think about it. There's somebody out there, who is seeking voice over talent, who, therefore, is a person in a position to hire people, to be the BOSS of another person, who CAN'T FRIGGIN' SPELL!

Listen, if you're gonna dump on me, at least, for the love of God, use spell check. Some words are not caught by spell check, but IRRATATING certainly would be.

Now, this incident kind of spills over into the rest of my work life.

There are, out there, people in CHARGE OF US, who DO NOT KNOW WDF THEY ARE DOING!

And yet, they are in charge of us.

They write things about us.

They write anything they want to write about us.

Because THEY ARE IN CHARGE.

How did this happen, is my question?

Did this asshole who thinks my voice is "irratating" get out of "middel" school?

Full disclosure: the voice over service makes it very easy for "talent," which they tell me is what I am, to go into the files and remove tags we don't "agree with." Well, it's not that I didn't agree with the comment. I don't, but that wasn't my main reason for deleting the word.

I just couldn't stand the thought that somebody out there with the brain of a Ticonderoga Number 2 pencil eraser had the power to critique my work. I don't know who he or she is. He or she will never read this (or have it read to him or her). So all I can do is holler in the wilderness of cyberspace.

PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF ME! LEARN HOW TO SPELL!!!

Waiting for the Cable Guy

I am now officially off TiVo, and if you know me, you know this is a rather big deal. I've been a major TiVo advocate since 2003, to the point where I had two TiVo DVRs in my apartment up until last week. See, there'd be times, usually in September and October, when I'd need to catch three programs at once, one of them being the Red Sox and...well, the only way I could do it was by operating a couple of TiVo boxes. And a VHS recorder. It's complicated. And a little sick. But, as I tell anyone who'll listen, television is the only thing I do. I'm kinda like the shark in JAWS except for the making babies part. Substitute "watching TV" for making babies and I am the shark in JAWS. Except I don't swim. Okay, forget the shark in JAWS. But you get the idea.

Anyway, I purchased a nice 32-inch Samsung HD TV, so I acquired the Comcast HD box and DVR and after a week or so, it became clear to me that I didn't need TiVo anymore.

But as soon as I disconnected my TiVo boxes, the Comcast DVR broke down.

Backstory:

The Comcast DVR box I had was the third I had picked up from the Comcast office, which happens to be down the street from my house. The first two boxes I picked up already had the Comcast TiVo software installed. Except I didn't WANT the Comcast TiVo software installed, and, beyond that, if the Comcast TiVo software is installed in the box, you can't get it to work, because you don't have the various codes you are given to activate the damn Comcast TiVo box. Unfortunately, the clerks at Comcast just take the RECONDITIONED boxes out of their plastic RECONDITIONED bags and give you the box without knowing what's already programmed, which is why it took me three trips to Comcast to get a box that was not already programmed for TiVo.

Are you still with me?

I'm not.

So I get the third box and it works and three weeks later I stop TiVo and disconnect it and my second old Comcast non-DVR box (don 't ask) and bring that to Comcast. I get home, and the Comcast DVR now does not work.

I call Comcast. This is not the Comcast that is down the street from my house. Well, it is, but the person I'm talking to is not down the street from my house. God knows where she is. But I'm telling her I can no longer get any channels on my new Comcast DVR box. She sympathizes. I have talked to many Comcast phone operators and they are programmed to sympathize. Or empathize. Somethingthize. Anyway, she feels my pain and reboots my box (insert your own joke here) and I wait for something to happen. Nothing does. She reboots my box again. (Same joke, if you like.) Again, nothing happens. She says I need to make an appointment with a service guy. It's Tuesday. First open appointment is on Saturday. Does she understand whom she's talking to? She gives me the option to take the box back to my neighborhood Comcast in the morning. I keep the appointment, but take the box down anyway, covering all bases. I re-install it. It works fine. I cancel the appointment.

Next day, I record SEINFELD, which I do almost nightly, because I like to sit in front of the TV and watch SEINFELD while I dine. Eat. Whatever. I hit the "play" on the DVR and up comes Jerry and the gang.

But they are pausing. And tiling. And stopping. And going. And freezing. It is unwatchable.

I turn to live TV. It also is pausing. And tiling. And stopping. And going. And freezing. It also is unwatchable.

I call yet another Comcast operator. The tone of my voice gets me $20 off my next bill. Because she somethingthizes with me. She reboots my box (I am starting to enjoy this), and reboots it again. I think Comcast operators like to reboot people's boxes. Nothing works. Still freezing. Then I make another service appointment.

Get up the next day, and the TV seems fine. I cancel the appointment.

Last night, I record SEINFELD again. Again, the freezing. Live and Recorded freezing.

I call Comcast. Again with the somethingthizing. Again with the rebooting. Again with the nothing. I make another appointment.

Which is where I am now.

However, I know it's the box. I know this. It's not the connection. It's the box. I just didn't want to bring it back on my own. Not again. I wanted a cable guy to come here and bring a box to me. I have become that person.

I will tell him (or her) that when the service is rebooted, it's fine, but when I record anything, it all goes to hell.

I hope to God he (or she) buys this, because I don't want to spend an hour watching him (or her) traipsing around my cluttered apartment trying to fix something. Just give me another box. That's all I need.

Preferably a new one. But that won't happen, because, I am told, all local Comcast DVR boxes are RECONDITIONED!

I am now within 20 minutes of the scheduled two-hour slot when the cable guy (or girl) is supposed to be here.

I am afraid. I am very afraid.

In Case You Missed Them...

It's the time of year when Ten Best Lists start appearing everywhere. Such lists are essentially inconsequential, given the subjective nature of it all, but every once in a while a peek at a Ten Best List will prompt me to check out a movie or a book that I normally would bypass. Such was the case this past week when I came upon a couple of Ten Best Lists in Entertainment Weekly.

(What, you thought I kept The Economist on the magazine rack in my bathroom?)

((Before I continue, however, I want to report that a play of mine appeared on a Ten Worst List in a local newspaper a couple of years ago. I subsequently discovered that the "critic" who compiled the list had not reviewed the play for publication. In other words, he told the world my play sucked [It did not, incidentally. It's called THE BIG APPLE and it's kind of funny in a frightening sort of way.] but did not have the guts to explain why. He just stuck it on his friggin' Ten Worst List. Boom. Like that. When word got back to the "critic" that I was upset because of his cowardice, he became all huffy and harumphy and continued to refuse to write a review. Therefore, I determined that, in any future reference to this "critic," I will always identify him as a "critic" in quotation marks. It's my little rebuttal.))

Anyway...

My scan of the Entertainment Weekly lists sent me to two films: ADVENTURELAND and (500) DAYS OF SUMMER.

ADVENTURELAND is written and directed by Greg Mottola, and features Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. Kristen's face is splashed over the entire checkout line universe as one of those TWILIGHT people. Eisenberg's claims to fame include something called ZOMBIELAND which must have generated some kind of interest because he's "in development" with ZOMBIELAND 2. He was also in M. Night Shyamalan's THE VILLAGE, which pretty much explains why he's not a household name. In any case, ADVENTURELAND is a relatively predictable coming-of-age movie, with "relatively' being the operative phrase here. What I mean is, that while what you expect to happen pretty much happens, the honesty and humor with which Mottola and his actors find their way to their conclusion is refreshing. And Stewart, who has the smoldering good looks one would expect from the female star of a vampire movie, turns in a nicely nuanced performance in a prickly, challenging role. "Coming of age" is not really applicable here, I think, because these characters are post-college, and any "of age" has pretty much come and gone. But their little story here is genuinely compelling, and the two stars stay with Mottola's through-line stride-by-stride.

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is an even later coming of age story, directed by Marc Webb, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webb, and featuring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I had seen him recently hosting SNL, and, of course, I had no idea who he was or what he had done to earn that job. Turns out he was on the TV series THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN and got the SNL gig because of the success of (500) DAYS. She has been around playing annoying cuties here and there, and I think I saw her for the first time on WEEDS a few seasons ago, being cute and annoying Justin Kirk's "Andy," among others. The storyline here, we've also seen before, because it would be very difficult to tell a love story, or write a romantic comedy, which breaks new ground in terms of the basic story. What's nice here, as in ADVENTURELAND, is that the writing is truthful and really funny, as opposed to being dishonest and faux funny. Plus, where we end up is in a little different place from where we usually end up in such films (although not really--there's a tag ending that we really could have done without--although not really). Both lead actors are terrific, and even if you've been annoyed by Zooey in the past, check this out. She will probably annoy you again, but that's kind of the point, unless you put yourself into the mindset of Gordon-Levitt's character, which you will, if you're a guy. And I am. And I did. Even though my age is going, rather than coming.

While neither of these films reaches the heights of the iconic SAY ANYTHING, each has its own charm, and each would be an especially fine New Year's Eve rental for those of you not braving the lunacy outside the house.

Me, I'll be watching Woody Allen's RADIO DAYS, as always. The best New Year's Even movie ever. Well, let's call it the "sweetest, most nostalgic" New Year's Eve movie ever.

Because there is, of course, THE APARTMENT, which is KING of them all.