You look Incredible!

This has got to stop.

After another futile day spent shopping for a pair of jeans, I'm about ready to hit up the Goodwill and buy some dead man's pants made back before the world lost its damn mind.

Every pair of jeans now comes with the descriptor "sits just below the waist." This does not mean, as you might imagine, that the jeans go right under a man's navel, thereby covering the man's butt and allowing room for a man's genitlia in the front.

No, 'sits below the waist' means "sits so low that every time you so much as sit in a chair and stand back up, you'll be tugging them back up over your ass, and crushing your nuts when you do so because there's no room in there for your junk." Actually, that's giving these pants too much credit. Even with a belt, as you walk around throughout the day, they're constantly working their way over the butt and down the legs. So you're either hanging in the breeze, or constantly adjusting your pants.

Now, I can understand the necessity of indelicate wardrobe-adjustments if the tradeoff is a pleasing aesthetic effect. If these pants made me look like the bottom half of Brad Pitt, or something, I would happily put up with constantly adjusting them. But they don't. They ride so low that they erase your ass in the back and emphasize your gut in the front. Basically, they make anyone who wears them look like Mr. Incredible: a giant tub of pudding on top of two spindly li'l legs:

Look out, ladies.

I'm sure any woman who reads this isn't exactly overflowing with sympathy, because women have been putting up with this for years. Not only do they contend with the ass-erasing, muffin-toping, butt-cleavage pants, but so much more clothing that is ill-fitting, uncomfortable, and unflattering. But let's be fair, ladies: they sold it to you because you bought it.

And now, sadly, it looks like not enough men put on these ridiculous nut-crushing plumbers-butt pants and said "you may insert these trousers forcibly into your rectum, Old Navy and The Gap, because my self-esteem is not hinged upon dressing trendily when the trends are fucktarded, so I shan't be buying your bullshit jeans." Nope. Have we finally lost our common sense, men? Have we finally lost that dignity that kept us from wearing ridiculous clothing just to chase a trend?

Given how many dudes I saw in calf-length plaid shorts this summer, I'm guessing yes.

Maybe I'll take up kilts.

In a word: Peacemaker

You pay too much money for tickets, even without the fees.  You pay a little too much for parking.  You pay a little too much for drinks at the venue.  You stand in front of a stage and you get jostled a little too much, shoved a little too much, pushed a little too much.  The music is a little too loud.  You're gonna stay out a little too late, and morning will come a little too soon.

And you do it because when they play, they open a tap in your brain and release a flood of happy memories: how she came bounding back to you through the crowd to dance during Green and Dumb.  How you sang "Mexico" in Mexico.  How "Nada" saved your life in Los Angeles.  How Charlie told you the band who played that Jean Luc Picard song was doing a concert, and you went and they played for four amazing hours.  How you watched the pregnant hippie dance at the Sedona show.   Justin, Charlie, Ted, Erin, Autumn, Shannon, Jake, Taylor.  So many friends, and so many shows, and so many good songs and you know every single word.

And it's worth every single 'little too' to open that tap, to remember every good time while you're having a new good time, to hold up your bottle (and if your bottle's empty, help yourself to mine) and say: "Here's to life."

It Was Great When It All Began . . .

The Rocky Horror Picture Show just turned 35 years old.  Here's my thoughts on the subject:

I was fifteen years old, and I was a sheltered Christian kid who had somehow landed a girlfriend who was 1) a year older than I, and 2) one of two goth kids in the entire town of Prescott, Arizona.   She listened to The Cure and Bauhaus and wore black lipstick.  I listened to DC Talk and the Newsboys and wore shirts with a Jesus fish on them.  Yeah. I don't get it either.

A few weeks before she let me touch her boobs (!), and a few weeks before she gave me a little vial of her blood to wear around my neck,  she asked me if I had ever seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I hadn't.  R-rated movies were forbidden in our household, and even if they weren't, the picture on the cover of the VHS box she showed me certainly would never have gotten in the door.  There was a man dressed in women's clothes, with high heels and fishnets and a full face of makeup.

She invited a couple of friends over to her house, and put the movie on.  I expected we'd sit and make out the whole time, as usual, but she was  really into the movie.  It seemed like she knew the script backwards and forwards; she knew where every pause in the dialog was, and she had something witty to say at every one.  She and her friends even knew the Time Warp dance.  For my part, I just sat and stared, transfixed.

The songs!  I'd never heard anything like it!  They had the sexy swagger of the rock music I was just starting to listen to, but the clever lyrics of a Broadway musical.   Then there was the lingerie, the transvestism, the homoerotic undertones, the Susan Sarandon in a bra and panties . . . I was sold.    Then, after I had thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, my goth girlfriend told me I *had* to see it in the theater to get the full experience.

Months later, after the girl left me to sleep with some dude at band camp (I felt a weird pang the first time I saw American Pie), I finally got a chance to drive the two hours to the big city of Phoenix to see the movie in a theater.  I borrowed a leather jacket from a friend of mine (who told me that Rocky sucked, but I could use the coat if I wanted) and pulled together a half-assed Eddie costume.

I want to say that seeing Rocky with a live cast, in a theater full of like-minded drama nerds, was some kind of revelation, an awakening, a feeling of being in harmony with fellow outcasts -- I want to say that because that's what most people say.  It was definitely a blast, and it definitely demonstrated that there were far stranger things on earth than a girl who wears black lipstick and listens to the Cure.  It didn't feel like coming home, but it did feel like a much-needed expanding of my small-town mind.  Queers!  Transvestites! Boys kissing boys kissing girls kissing girls!  Jokes about people masturbating in the back row!  The girl playing Columbia wearing a thong!  But at the heart of it was still that clever, fun movie, where the hero is maybe the bitchy queen who isn't so great at relationships, but really just wants to expand everybody's mind and have a good time.

Even though people made fun of "I'm Coming Home," my favorite song, I still wanted to go back.  I downloaded a script and studied the call-and-response lines and added a few of my own.  For the next couple of years, my buddies and I made the trek down to Phoenix at least once a month, catching the midnight show and driving home as the sun was coming up.  I bought the anniversary edition soundtrack, the karaoke CD, some posters, the VHS video, the DVD . . .and through the years, I saw the live show as often as I could.

The last time I went to see Rocky live, I was in the cast.  There I was, 30 years old, my wife eight months pregnant, and I strapped on the high heels, the fishnets, the bodice, and performed an energetic (if imperfect) rendition of Frank N. Furter.  I'm sure some people were embarrassed on my behalf.  I know my wife was -- she still mentions it occasionally. 

But for me, dreaming that character and being that character, running around a theater dressed like Frank N. Furter, felt like a last step from that small-town kid to a grown man who knows his place in the world.  And for that, I will always love the Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the many guides through the turbulent passageways of growing into myself.

Hey.  I belted out "Sweet Transvestite" while DANCING on four-inch heels in front of a hundred people.  I fear absolutely nothing after that.

In a Word: Security

With a deep bow to Lore Sjoberg's One Word comics, here's what I hope is a recurring feature on what I hope will be a continuing blog.

Security

Today, I got a call telling me that I needed to pay my car payment.  Money's been tight, so I had been putting it off.  The woman on the phone was sympathetic, even friendly, until the time came to end the call.  "So when will you be making a payment?  Will it be today?  I can take a payment right now, if you'd like . . ."

I declined.  I don't like making payments over the phone.  I told her I could just log in to the website and pay it, like I do every month. 

Would that were the case.

I opened the leaseholder's website and put in my login.  It kicked back an error -- either my login or password was wrong.  Then I remembered that for increased security, they had made me change my login from a gmail address to a unique login name. 

I chose, of course, a login that I use for at least four other sites.  It's just easier to remember that way.

They also insisted I make a new password that would be longer and harder for a bot to brute force.

I chose, of course, a password I use for at least four other sites.  It's just easier to remember that way.

My memory jogged, I put in the correct login and password.  Then, for added security, the site fed me a question I had, apparently, answered at some point:  "what's your favorite TV show?"

What is my favorite TV show?  What was my favorite show a month ago, when I put in the answer?  Was it the X-Files, a rediscovered gem?  Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  Did I capitalize, or did I think it'd be easier to remember it was all lower-case?  Why didn't they serve up the question about what model my first car was?  At least I could have looked that up online.

After several attempts to read my own mind, I was locked out of the account.  For my security, I had to re-enter my account number to get back in.  The account number that's on all of the paper bills I don't get since I switched to paperless billing.

So I called the help number again.  After several prompts to enter my account number, I banged on 0 until the computer hung up on me.  I called back and played along until I got a person.

Like the woman who called to urge me to pay the bill, this woman was friendly and sympathetic, until I asked her to give me my account number.

"We cannot give out that information over the phone, for security purposes.  I can mail the number to you."

"Can't you just send it to my email?"

"No. We are unable to send email outside our intranet. Do you have a fax machine?"

"No, I do not, because this is not 1975, it's 2010.  Please transfer me to someone who can help me."

So she kicked me up the call-center ladder one rung.  The next lady was a little less polite to start, and even quicker to shut me down.  She would be happy to mail or fax the number, but absolutely could not give it over the phone or email. 

"Why won't you let me give you money?  I'm trying so hard to give you money.  I really don't care if someone else gets my account number and pays my car payment for me.  Let's do this."

No dice.  I demanded to be kicked up another rung in the responsibility ladder.  She said she'd happily transfer me to someone else who would tell me 'no.'

While I waited on hold, I went to a fax-to-email service online.  I gave them a credit card for a free trial, and they generated a junk phone number that could receive faxes and email them to me.  When I spoke to the next woman, I grumbled about archaic technology, suggested she send it by carrier pigeon, and finally gave her the fax number.

Minutes later, the fax showed up -- as a PDF file in my email.

Here's how tight the car company's security is:  in order to get my super-sekrit account number, I gave them the last four digits of my social security number (easy enough to find online), my home address (ditto), and a random fax number.  Rather than sending an email to the address they had on file that was associated with the account, they sent a fax out blind to a number that, for all they knew, was in Leroy's Den of Money Laundering and Thievery.  It was none of their doing that the fax went where it was supposed to -- my freakin' email.



I've decided that any organization that insists on using a fax machine gets the same double-barreled red-eyed rage usually reserved for companies that don't take credit cards, and people who insist on writing checks for groceries.  This is outdated technology that has been replaced by something easier and better, and was replaced over a decade ago.

For my security, next time just text it to my phone, okay?

New Look, New Thoughts.

So I figured it's about time I stopped wasting hours refreshing metafilter and boingboing, and spent a little more time writing on my own blog.  Which meant a long-overdue facelift. 

This blog will now focus on my curmudgeonly rants about politics and pop culture, my observations of human behavior, and the occasional adorable story about my adorable child.

Hopefully, it will also go on longer than a couple of posts before I taper off again.

Fun With Anachronisms!

Today I went to a Hollywood Video for the first time in at least two years. Since technology's gotten better at delivering streaming video or downloaded video, it just seemed like too much work to go to a video store. If I couldn't get it on Netflix, Netflix streaming, or certain illicit methods, I just didn't watch it. But today, we needed a movie for Jess to watch for a class tonight, and all of my legit and less legit methods failed. So, the video store.

Walking through those shelves of poorly-alphabetized DVDs was like going back in time. I got hit by little snippets of memory and blasts of nostalgia: renting R-rated foreign films as a teenager, hoping for nudity; running through the video store with Jess while we were in college, picking three dumb movies and watching all of them in a night; picking a movie with three or four friends, bickering and laughing until we settled on something we'd all seen before. Just being in there made me happy. I grabbed the movie we needed, chatted with the clerk, checked some release dates, and walked out.

There's something about that whole transaction that's inherently more satisfying for me than dowloading or streaming a movie. For one thing, there's a finite set of films in a video store. Sometimes, limited selection is the only thing that gets me moving -- usually, Jess and I decide to watch a movie, then we spend an hour looking through Netflix's streaming selections, and then it's too late to watch a movie.

So a limited selection actually helps, and so does the physical arrangement of movies on a shelf. The DVD art can catch your attention, make you pause and consider something you might not have heard of. You can also just wander the aisles, just browsing, letting your eyes fall where they may, surrounded by hundreds of DVDs just waiting to entertain you.

Sure, I can browse movies online, and can even see tiny pictures of the box cover. But it hits my eyes the same way all information does these days -- with me sitting on my ass, perched over my laptop or lounging in front of the desktop computer. That time spent doing a physical version of something I usually do online, and how happy the simple chore made me, illustrated that my other four senses are starving for input.

Maybe we need some physical transactions and human interactions in the world, after all. Maybe it's not a good thing to have every movie ever made available at our fingertips. Maybe there ought to be a place in the world for the video store. I suppose video stores are doomed, but after today, I'll be sad to see them go.

What's "enough?"

Tonight, my son fell asleep downstairs while we were watching a movie. I watched him sleep for a while, and felt a little choked up. Nothing new there -- seeing him so helpless, so beautiful, so wonderful, it usually makes me a little emotional.

But then I picked him up and carried him upstairs, and I thought to myself, 'wow, he's getting heavy.' And then I wondered how much longer I'd be able to hold him. And I began to cry. This is the flip side of the joy of watching him turn into a person. Every day, there's more there there; he can crawl! He can stand up! He can almost talk! But that other side is that every day, we mourn a little the baby he was yesterday. We love him and only love him more and more, but we'll never see that baby again. That's the joy and that's the tragedy.

And then I thought -- and here's where the tears really came full force -- "did I hold him enough when he was small enough to hold?" And the answer, of course, of course, is 'no.' Not even if I clasped him to my chest non-stop day and night. And I didn't, of course -- I had websites to look at and meals to cook and movies to watch. We should always and ever spend more time with those we love, but we can never spend enough time, and that is another joy and another tragedy.

I could never, ever hold him enough for me. I could never love him enough for me. And I realize that this pain is not the barest tip of a very, very long knife, and I am afraid and amazed. I think of my mother and father, and I know they wonder if they held me enough, if they loved me enough. And they probably feel like they didn't -- how could they? But you did, mom and dad, you did, and I hope I can, too.

This is learning how to celebrate and mourn, to love a hurt that will only hurt deeper with time. This is learning to sing while your heart bleeds.

Is it enough? It never will be, and always has to be.