Critical Mass

Natalie has had three hairstyles since I’ve known her.

Twists, which I was quickly corrected are not little braids.  All the women I grew up with were Asian so I get a pass on this.  The Twist looks simple but it’s a six hour ordeal that happens every two or three weeks.  On occasion, Natalie will attempt this on a weeknight after work.  This never works out right and sometime around midnight she falls asleep with exhaustion and wakes at five the next morning to finish lest she arrive at work with half a head twisted and the other half as…

The Fro.  This is my favorite.  It’s exactly what it sounds like, a big Cleopatra Jones And The Casino Of Gold afro.

Afros should only be worn by black people (much like blue contacts lenses and LL Bean should only be worn by white people).  White people with afros confuse the hell out of me.  The same goes with white people and dreadlocks.  This may also be Natalie’s favorite hairstyle but since she’s a professional woman and fears the judgment that may be levied against her, she seldom wears this style outside of vacations, weekends or if she fell asleep the night she intended to re-twist her hair (see previous paragraph).

The irony of an attorney fearing judgment is not lost on me.

The last and current look is the Straight Hair.  If it has an actual name, I don’t know what it is and am going to refer to it as “The Straight Hair.”  This was done for the wedding.  It offers more options than the previous two lending to the concept of women growing their hair before their wedding so they can “wear it up.”  I always questioned this practice and why they just didn’t cut it.  Wearing your hair up is something you do when you have long hair and need to get it out of the way for a situation like cleaning the baseboards, chasing children or spelunking but when you’re the lady about town you want to let those locks flow.  Spending months growing your hair out only sweep it up at your wedding and then cut it afterwards escapes me.

I questioned whether I would like that the hair Natalie had in our wedding photos would be hair I may likely never see again.  If I liked it, then I wanted more of it.  If I hated it, enjoy your wedding photos for the rest of your life.

I worked with a woman who had very pretty naturally blonde long hair and complained about it.  Complained about maintaining it.  Complained about the heat.  Complained it was uncomfortable.  I asked why she didn’t cute it and she said, “If you had hair like this, would you cut it?”  I didn’t tell her but the answer was, “Yes.”  Once of the three hundred and nine differences between men and women is that men do things for comfort, women do them to impress other women.  I have never gotten a haircut, taken a picture of it with my cell phone and sent it to my brother.

The Straight Hair look was always temporary and I was warned of this.  Like most things, I really didn’t have much of a say in this.  Every few weeks Natalie gets her hair “done” and she’s gone for several hours and returns cute and happy.

So Natalie came downstairs and on the news a woman was being interviewed and she made a comment she liked her hair.  I agreed.  She then said something along the lines of how much she disliked her current hair.

I have to interject something here.  I like Natalie’s hair.  I have for the six months she’s worn it like this.  This last time she had it cut I thought the woman took a little too much off.  Just enough to make me not like it as much.  I didn’t say anything.  Neither of us had…

…until now.

“I don’t like it much, either.”  The words came out of my mouth and I had actually examined each one before I said it and still felt the need soften the blow.  “I liked the other cuts.  This one just seems too short in the back.”

Quiet.

Natalie got up and walked upstairs and said, “It’s nice to know you hate my hair.”

Hate?  Did I say “Hate?”

I quickly rewind my Mental Tivo.  Bloop bloop (this is the sound Mental Tivo makes).  I don’t see the word “hate.”

“Natalie?  Nat?”  Nothing.  I get up to follow apologizing all the way.  “I’m sorry.  I love you.”  I repeat this several times like she didn’t understand it the first six times.  “I thought you wanted me to be honest.”

Early in our relationship, Natalie made meat loaf and asked if I liked it and I said, “Yes.”  She then asked if I didn’t like it would I tell her and I said, “No.”  I have always been cautious of other people’s feelings (although often unsuccessfully).  Never having been in a relationship that lasted more than six months I didn’t understand the long-term ramifications of this which would be a lifetime of bad meat loaf.

I know a woman who’s grandmother makes Buckeyes, which for those not in the know, is peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.  I know you’re thinking, “Nothing wrong there.”  She and her entire ungrateful family hates these delicious treats and every Christmas the grandmother makes several Tupperware containers full of hundreds of these which die a very slow death in this family’s freezer unless my brother or I have our way with them.  This is because thirty years ago someone told this woman they love these Buckeyes (or rather didn’t have the heart to tell her they didn’t).

But this wasn’t the case with the meat loaf.  I liked the meat loaf and reminded her of the story and was quickly told she didn’t care about the meat loaf.  She cares about her hair… that and I have the eating habits of a goat so discretion with food is not my strong suit.

What I thought was I had a pass as soon as she said she didn’t like it and I could then agree.  This isn’t the case.  I’m reminded of the line “Nobody picks on my little brother but me.”  I left her alone having done all I could and a few minutes later she came down, accepted a hug, apologized and explained the rules to me.  If she comes home with a Cyndi Lauper waffle etched into the side of her head and a length dyed Seguin Blue I should just smile and tell her she’s pretty.

Note to self: stop making fun of her dress that reminds you of a men’s dress shirt or a 1960s nurses uniform.  You’re probably making her cry… you big jerk.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Natalie works a lot.  Saving the world takes effort.  I’d like to think this blog is my contribution to making the world a better place but who are we kidding… it’s mostly a way to keep myself (and you) distracted and make your jobs more tolerable.

Natalie, on the other hand, works constantly.  It isn’t unusual for her to work her full day and come home and sit in a phone conference for another two hours a few nights during the week.  I have already been told she has work to do Sunday.  During this time I don’t bother her except on the rare occasion I enter the room to get something (usually a cable or a comic book) keeping my noise and time in her space to a minimum.

The other day she said she needs a Stacy* at home for her organizing.  Stacy is her legal secretary at work that keeps her pointed in the right direction.  She’s the Odd Job to Natalie’s Blofeld.  The one who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Since we can’t afford another Stacy and I suggested she needs a Vanessa.

Vanessa is my friend Jon’s seventeen year old niece.

She’s a senior in high school and applying for colleges so I figure she is going to need stuff on a resume.  Maybe some kind of course credit.  I picture it working something like this:

We have two bedrooms one of which has become a defacto Guest Room/Junk Room/Natalie’s Office.  We set out a small TV table and one of our ottomans at the top of the staircase with a desk lamp.  We get Vanessa a little pant suit (I envision very similar if not exactly to what Natalie would be wearing the same day).  Vanessa sits outside the door at the top of the staircase with a Bluetooth and a laptop making phone calls, arranging meetings and getting her coffee from the Starbucks across from the Walmart.  She would do a little filing, laugh at Natalie’s jokes and take her breaks in my kitchen where she would read Natalie’s old Domino and Architecture Digest magazines uninterrupted for an hour.  Maybe the two of them would bond over shoes at the Payless and Natalie would gives her advice about being a woman in America.  At times I would try to see my wife and it would go something like this:

JIM goes to open the door at the top of the staircase.

VANESSA: I’m sorry.  You can’t go in there.

JIM: I want to see Natalie.

VANESSA: She’s not in right now.

JIM: Yes she is.  I’ve been downstairs for two hours playing Gears Of War 2 and she hasn’t left.  I saw you go downstairs and get two cups of coffee and you’re drinking one.

VANESSA: Do you have an appointment?

JIM: She’s my wife.  I don’t need an appointment.

VANESSA: Sir, don’t make me call security.

JIM: This is my house.  Natalie screams when the toilet overflows.  I am the security here.

VANESSA: Sir, there is no need for that tone.  You can make an appointment or you can leave a message.

JIM: But… I just wanted to know what she wanted for dinner.

VANESSA: Make an appointment or you can leave a message.

JIM: Fine.  I’ll leave a message.

VANESSA: Very well.  Do you have a business card or a number she can reach you at?

This ends with a frustrated Jim going back to his Xbox 360 and Vanessa goes back to updating her Facebook page, Twittering, text messaging, writing a blog to dodge real work or whatever it is kids do these days.  At the end of the semester Natalie would write her a letter of recommendation good at pretty much anywhere accept at FoxNews (where Natalie is considered an Enemy Of The State).

I realize that my brother and I were essentially personal assistants to my dad when we were taught to mow the lawn at age ten or shovel snow from the driveway.  Sure, these are chores and there are parents that don’t make to their kids do chores but my father would call those kids lazy and their parents suckers.  He also said allowance without chores is called welfare.  We once complained we didn’t have a remote control television and he told us he had two remotes.  When I asked to see them he made me get up and change the channel so he could watch Magnum PI.

I watch my brother and nephew and they have a very father/son/partner relationship.  Very much a Batman/Robin thing happening there.  Years ago I asked my brother does he ever think about how old our father is (who was 49 when I was born) and he told me he doesn’t even think of dad as dad but more like the guy that lives with us.  When I watch Alex and Bobby together that’s what they seem like.  Like they’re hanging out.

Except every now and again Bobby gets some cheap labor out of Alex.

*Stacy is not the real name of Natalie’s secretary but when I told her I was writing this blog she said I should get her permission and quite frankly I am too lazy to do that.  Vanessa, however, can handle the fame and fortune that comes with getting mentioned in my blog.

Flick In A Box

I have become very fond of the RedBox.

For those of you not in the know, the RedBox is a movie vending machine who’s only real flaw is I have to go to Walmart to use it (although I have seen them in Kangaroos and McDonalds).  You use a touchscreen and pick from a selection of mostly new releases, swipe your debit card and it slides a movie out at you… bring it back tomorrow by 9:00p.  You can go to their website and reserve a movie and when you get there they charge you $1.07 and you go home with a copy of a movie where Academy Award nominee Liam Neeson punches people in the throat for one hundred and twenty minutes because his daughter doesn’t listen.

I love the RedBox.

I know what you’re thinking.

Hey dumbass, what’s the difference between the RedBox and the Self-Checkout Lane you were bitching about last week?

Firstly, stop calling me dumbass.  Secondly, when I ask for a copy of The Third Man at the RedBox and it laughs at me and points out we’re in the breezeway of the Walmart and says:

Keep that arty Ingmar Kurosawa bullshit to yourself.  Here’s a copy of Transporter 3 and a warm cup of shut the hell up.  (Mumbling)…  The Third Man… you think you’re better than me?

It’s exactly what it pretends to be: a vending machine for movies.  If the red light is on, Grape Crush is out, choose another drink.  The Self-Checkout actually makes me work.  I have to get my own crap, scan my own crap and bag my own crap.  At the RedBox I stand there and make a selection and it just gives it to me.

At a Blockbuster I was going to have to show up anyway.  Going to have to pick out my own movie anyway and stand in a line and because I never carry cash, swipe my card anyway.  What the RedBox doesn’t have is ten thousand titles to choose from or my having to hover around the counter waiting for someone to dropoff a copy of Hotel For Dogs.

It eliminates the blue-shirted counter monkey.

Part of my pleasure of the RedBox is when it comes to movies, the less interaction I have, the better.  I once watched a Blockbuster monkey when asked where The Rocky Horror Picture Show was asked had she checked under ‘R’ in Horror.  There are three things wrong with that comment.  A) If you don’t know what something is your dumbass should know enough to look it up so you don’t B) look like the asshole who thinks Rocky Horror is a horror movie and C) doesn’t give the customer the simple courtesy to assume she knows movies, like books, music, telephone, dictionary and encyclopedia entries (as well as everything else in a first world nation) are alphabetized.

Then again, I worked in Spec’s Music and Movies where a guy couldn’t find something and when I went to the wall and pulled it out in under ten seconds he was amazed and asked me how I did it.  I told him that wall was alphabetized.  He was flabbergasted.  Apparently he thought we just jammed stuff wherever there was space and crossed our fingers we’d find it later.  Two minutes later he complained he couldn’t find Ted Nugent and I explained it’s filed by last name.  Two minutes after that he couldn’t find Judas Priest and I explained that’s a band name, not a person.

I then took my break, got some TCBY and wept for the future.

My biggest problem with the RedBox is that people who don’t know what they are doing use it.  The descriptions are fairly Spartan and I find myself standing behind people who have to read the description of every movie to see if Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus in 3D (starring Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson) is worth the dollar or should they just go home and watch the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on PBS.

For the love of Kubrick it has a giant shark attacking a giant octopus and eighties pop icon/hat magnate Debbie Gibson… what more information do you need?

And so you all know that isn’t just a ridiculous title I fabricated and something I photoshopped…

Can’t fake that shit.  How quickly we go from Broadway to Sci-Fi Channel at 3:00a on a Tuesday.

I have a friend that owns an adult video store (which isn’t as cool/creepy as you’d think).  He tells me stories of people that will spend an hour trying to pick out a movie and ask him for suggestions.  Really?  Are you that particular about your porn?  You understand the girl on the box cover won’t look nearly that hot in the movie which is to be expected if that was what you did for forty hours a week.  I look busted carrying groceries in from the car. I guess if it was my hard-earned money I’d wanted the hottest moms/daughters money could buy.  My friend spends most of his time at work watching old episodes of HBO series like Oz and Sopranos and every now and again something he’s rented with Keanu Reeves.  Inevitably someone will ask what he’s watching because it looks good (because it’s an actual movie that had writers and actors (or Keanu Reeves)).  They’ll ask if they can rent that and he’ll kindly tell them yes and give them directions to Blockbuster.

Back to the blue-shirted counter monkeys.

When I worked in video stores my opinion was valued. This isn’t because my opinion was better than anyone else’s but because I asked the right questions.  When someone asked me for an action movie suggestion I would ask what they liked.  If they told me Terminator 2 or Predator I had to try a little.  If they told me they liked Steven Segal movies I would just hand them anything with Michael Dudikoff on the cover.  I wasn’t picking movies out for them as much as filtering movies based on information they gave me.  I often gave them movies I’d never seen.  I once made the mistake of giving a woman Die Hard and essentially ruining her for everything I suggested after.

Who gives a crap about the opinion of the guy behind the counter.  I always like to find that shelf where the employees pick their favorite movies and see what I am dealing with (I often notice most of their picks are seldom more than ten years old).  I worked with a girl that thought the Oscar for Best Picture should go to whatever movie made the most money since that was the movie people liked the most.

And 2000 Academy Award for Best Picture goes to Mission: Impossible II.

For all you know that guy behind the counter is a complete psycho and you’re four dollars and two hours of your life shouldn’t be trusted to him.

I found Meryl Steep’s performance in Doubt to be common and Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance predictable.  Amy Adams seems to be the Hollywood’s It Girl and her acting skills are limited to perky and perkier.  Overall I found it lacked the nuance and tension of Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift.

I love my mom but she’ll tell you she didn’t like The Shawshank Redemption because there wasn’t enough action.

Do Androids Dream Of Retail Sheep?

I found myself in Walmart on a Saturday night with container of barbecued chicken chunks and a DVD of Smokey And The Bandit.  This is what I devolve into if left to my own devices when Natalie is out of town for a few days.  There are something close to three hundred checkout lanes at my Walmart which never utilizes more than six.  To add insult to injury, they have the double lanes.  You know the ones, where there is a cashier behind or on the other side another cashier… who’s never open.

I picture Robert Preston from The Music Man selling some CEO who never shops in a Walmart these new-fangled cashier stations.

For only a couple million dollars we can retrofit thousands of your stores with dual lanes so when the first three hundred lanes are filled… BAM! Another three hundred lanes!

Ready to go home and eat this chicken with my bare fingers and get knee deep into some 1977 Burton Leon Reynolds, I walk the lanes hoping someone in management opens another lane and instead come face-to-face with my retail nemesis:

The Self-Checkout Lane.

There are many reasons I hate the self-checkout lane.  First of all, it isn’t always open.  This makes no sense to me the same way I don’t understand why I can’t swipe my card and pump my own gas twenty-four hours a day.  Someone once told me it’s probably the liability on an unattended gas station to which I told them they were putting too much faith in twenty-two year old Teylor in the cashieraquarium who probably couldn’t do much during operating hours if I 1) set someone on fire or 2) set the gas station on fire.  How many people know where that kill switch is and even if I did, I think the gas station exploding around me combined with the simultaneous shitting of my own pants would give me reason to forget as I cowered, crying in a fetal position like a nine year old girl at R Kelly’s house.

The self-checkout lane is taking American jobs.  Not all of them.  Mary Beth in her blue vest and Bike Week 1997 t-shirt has to stand there behind her podium at the Wally World if one of can’t figure out what the hell we’re doing which is probably going to happen since I am not a cashier.

The first time I saw one of these contraptions was in a K-Mart when I couldn’t find a cashier and the customer service person pointed out the self-checkout which were the only lanes open.  I thought to myself why don’t you drag your red-vested ass down here and dispense some customer service and ring me out.

The second time I was in a Walmart buying a copy of Trainspotting and the machine beeped at me because it didn’t know I was thirty-four so it sends some sixteen year old cashier to verify this.  Again, if you’re already here, why don’t you ring me up?

I once stuck some apples on there only to find it complicates things more because no matter how smart 1) evolution or 2) the intelligent creator is, neither of them thought far enough in advance to make apples with a UPC code.

WALMART CASHIER: What kind of apples are these?

JIM: Red.

WALMART CASHIER: I mean what kind?  Granny Smith.  Macintosh.

JIM: Hell if I know.  I am just trying to eat more fruit.

WALMART CASHIER: Well I can’t ring them up–

JIM: You know what?  Here (hands her a box of candy).  Ring these Raisinettes up instead.  They got raisins in them.  I tried.

They’ve essentially taken a working process and to save themselves money, replaced experienced  cashiers with people who have no idea what they’re doing.  Namely, me.

I already have a job, thank you.

When I worked in banking I once heard of prototype branch that had a manager, one teller and one new account rep.  That’s it.  Everything else was kiosks with monitors and somewhere was a call center in Salina and you would belly up to this kiosk and someone would decline you a loan.  The teller windows were just ATM screens and one station for the one live person who worked there.

I am sure this was a problem in the mid-seventies when they did away with gas station attendants.  Some states still have them.  The only one I ever recall seeing was on a road trip to Pennsylvania in 1990 when my brother stopped his car and some dude snatched the pump before he got it and Bobby had that WTF look on his face before he realized the guy worked there.

Our mistake.  We didn’t realize it was still 1955 in Alabama.  I say that knowing full and well you can’t pump your own gas in New Jersey but I hear that’s mostly because its inhabitants lack opposable thumbs.*

I try to imagine the disdain on my face had this practice never ceased and British Petroleum charged me $4.00 for gasoline and still expected me to tip someone.

I hate eating at Melting Pot because if I go out to eat I don’t want to cook my own food.  I’m not a chef.  If there was a restaurant where you made your own macaroni and cheese, hot dogs or ghetto omelets (which would be, for the uninitiated, omelets filled with sliced processed cheese and diced hot dogs and onions… obviously my father grew up during the depression)… that I could probably handle.  But I don’t want to be responsible for cooking my own pork knowing food poisoning is a skewer and a cheap bottle of wine away.

Next they’ll have me washing my own dishes as “part of the experience.”

My friend Nita once went to Melting Pot and it took forever for their ingredients (I won’t call it food) to come out and it did the waitress apologized because the kitchen was backed up to which Nita responded, “With what, chopping vegetables and meat?”

Walmart is a enormoporation with a history (like many other corporations) for sticking it to their employees with their thirty-nine hour work weeks and zero advancement and here is a woman in her blue vest whose job is to show me how to do her job.  Think about that for a minute.  This would be like finding your spouse cheating on you and you bring that dude into the house and show them how everything works.

This is how she likes her coffee in the morning.  You have to giggle the handle on the toilet so it stops running.  In the shower she likes to stand under the water and every so often you want to smack her ass when she doesn’t see it coming… she likes it like that.

There used to be four cashiers here and now there is one.  How long before we all know what we’re doing and we don’t need her anymore?  How long before they replace her with a sentient android?

I watch the Will Smith movie I, Robot (or iRobot when you realize they all look like there were designed by Apple)…

…knowing when it takes place I would be the age of the grandmother character and I envy that she gets to live in a world with FedEx robot delivery men and robot dog walkers.  Sure, I watch enough Battlestar Galactica and Terminator to know the of the impending robot rebellion but somewhere in there is probably twenty or thirty years of complete service competence.  Robots who always have the correct answer when I need help when I get lost in the Galleria by Orange Julius.  Who don’t jack up my order at the Taco Bell.  Who will be at my house to fix my cable at 2:15p and not between noon and four because they are precise and never run into complications.

And more importantly, I won’t have to ring my own groceries and undercook my own chicken on Valentine’s Day.

And let me be the first to welcome or robot overlords.  All hail the mighty 01110101!  What is your bidding, masters?

*I am sorry to anyone I have offended who has an affinity for New Jersey.  You seem like very nice people but you’re just so damn easy to make fun of.  If it’s any consolation, I really like the movie Garden State.