Well, there's three hours I'll never see again. CA has a very different structure for handling traffic complaints from MA. First, you can do "traffic school" to get points off for violations. Second, you have to put money up front to get a trial. Third, everything car related (except insurance) just costs a lot more.
I drive fast. I get bored and my mind wanders if I don't, plus, if I can get somewhere in a half hour, why take 45 minutes? But I do this when I'm alert. I maintain good situational awareness of what's ahead and who is coming from behind. I try to position my car so that other people can pass me or merge. I don't drive in truck blind spots if I can help it. I keep options open for evasive maneuvers. I really good at knowing the most likely car to cut me off and how much time I'll likely have to cope with it. I like to think I'm a good driver, in other words.
I haven't had an at fault accident since the week after I got my license 20 years an 11 months ago and had the most embarrassing accident ever. (Only other accidents: I spun out at the bottom of a very steep hill in an ice storm and just stopped clear of everything with no one behind me; I was rear ended once while sitting at a light, the people behind me just misjudged the distance; and there was that weirdness recently with Janet McQueen backing into me in a parking lot while I honked furiously to get her attention and failed.) Yes, speed can exacerbate the damage of an accident but, within certain limits, speed doesn't cause accidents. (Variance in speed is a bigger issue than absolute speed in predicting accidents - setting speed limits too far below the design speed leads to more accidents for this reason.) So I nearly always keep my speed below a reasonable threshold.
I haven't had a ticket in something like 14 years. Until this year. My theory is that the economy pushed the ticketing threshold lower. Plus, the circumstances of that first ticket were such that I thought I was going to be run off the road, so I sped up to get out of the way of the crazy guy- who happened to be the cop running without lights. But hey, why bother fighting it when there's traffic school? I thought I had a decade or so before another ticket came along.
Anyhow, I was going a bit fast, but not too fast and not nearly as fast as the officer claimed - based on pacing me for 15 seconds from so far back as to be laughable. Even for the speed the ticket is at, I got mocked at the office for getting a ticket at "the standard cruising speed". So I'm challenging the ticket. It's pretty much my word against hers, so I'll probably have to pay it but that was not a reasonable ticket. My primary strategy is to hope my officer doesn't show up, which results in a ticket dismissal. Considering that 70% of the people in my courtroom who were there for a trial had theirs dismissed, I'm holding out hope. Especially now that I have my court date.
Yep. Yours truly will be in traffic court the Friday afternoon of 9/11. What do you think? Will my ticketing officer be participating in a remembrance ceremony, or feeling all self righteous and determined to show up and make the case?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
New Suz: Hot Pursuit
Another fun read! Oddly, Amazon hasn't pestered me about Hot Pursuit yet. Ever since I got my Barnes and Noble gift certs that kept me from my occasional Amazon purchase, they've been emailing me suggested novels with greater frequency. Probably they don't get that she's my favorite author because I tend to buy my books at booksignings. Yes, I'm a superfangrrl, but that's because I like Suzanne Brockmann's ability to tell a story.
Hot Pursuit is a little different and a little bit the same. It's a continuation of the Troubleshooter's series with the intertwined subplots told from different characters' points of view (POV). The subplots usually start off vastly removed from the main plot only to tangle in at the end of the book, but in this case, they all support he suspense plot pretty closely from the beginning.
I really enjoyed it. There was a lot of sex. Lots. Some romances, even some of Suz's are pretty stingy with it. Not this one. Clearly the author believes healthy adult relationships include sex. And we're getting to see characters demonstrate healthy adult relationships. (If Sam and Alyssa are too pukey-cute-perfect for you, skim the first two pages of Chapter 3.) Dan Gillman puts the moves on and makes it work in a manner that I thought rather accurately represented your average hot guy rather than your average romance hero, and good for him. While there are an overabundance of overbeautiful women, one of the main POV characters is just a normal woman, which can be a relief.
I read this book really fast - I tried to slow down to "savor" it and failed. The story kept going, I kept wanting to know what was going to happen and when and how. And right now! I did guess the baddy bad right off. Didn't matter. It was fun to catch up with Sam, Alyssa, Ash, Izzy!, Dan, Lopez, Vlachik, Savannah, Jules, and Robin and meet Maria and Jenn.
Minuses:
Still and all, fun book with characters who lead by example how to try and live a balanced life and respect your friends and colleagues. Some will read that as "political" but I would prefer to live in a world with that respect and enjoy it. I hope you will too. Go buy it.
Hot Pursuit is a little different and a little bit the same. It's a continuation of the Troubleshooter's series with the intertwined subplots told from different characters' points of view (POV). The subplots usually start off vastly removed from the main plot only to tangle in at the end of the book, but in this case, they all support he suspense plot pretty closely from the beginning.
I really enjoyed it. There was a lot of sex. Lots. Some romances, even some of Suz's are pretty stingy with it. Not this one. Clearly the author believes healthy adult relationships include sex. And we're getting to see characters demonstrate healthy adult relationships. (If Sam and Alyssa are too pukey-cute-perfect for you, skim the first two pages of Chapter 3.) Dan Gillman puts the moves on and makes it work in a manner that I thought rather accurately represented your average hot guy rather than your average romance hero, and good for him. While there are an overabundance of overbeautiful women, one of the main POV characters is just a normal woman, which can be a relief.
I read this book really fast - I tried to slow down to "savor" it and failed. The story kept going, I kept wanting to know what was going to happen and when and how. And right now! I did guess the baddy bad right off. Didn't matter. It was fun to catch up with Sam, Alyssa, Ash, Izzy!, Dan, Lopez, Vlachik, Savannah, Jules, and Robin and meet Maria and Jenn.
Minuses:
- It was less fun to meet cop Mick - I found his encounter with Sam and Alyssa to be eerily close to the "Gate's-gate" altercation. (But is Mick Snape or Voldemort?) There is good reason to have characters who are not always good in all aspects of their being - they are more human.
- Suz uses the word "absolutely" a lot. Always has done, but it really stood out for me in this book.
- Creepy serial killer who likes teeth. A different integration made it not as creepy as serial killer from ITS, but I could do with fewer serial killers in my reading. Makes me reconsider my comfort with the little box of babyteeth I still own with contributions from me, my brother, and the cat.
Still and all, fun book with characters who lead by example how to try and live a balanced life and respect your friends and colleagues. Some will read that as "political" but I would prefer to live in a world with that respect and enjoy it. I hope you will too. Go buy it.
Birthers: kinda funny, kinda not
Considering that Obama was running against a legitimate American citizen who was not actually born in America, this whole "where was Obama born? he tain't Amar'kin" thing is funny. The fact that it gets news time on freaking CNN and other supposed News outlets is not. It was debunked BEFORE the election. Conspiracy theorists should be covered by the likes of the Weekly World News, not CNN. When actual evidence only changes the complaint, one needn't even bother. Even so, one aspect that I haven't seen published before, however, is this: regardless of documentation, think about how reasonable it would be from the POV of Obama's mom to travel to Kenya while heavily gravid in 1961. (To be fair, maybe other people have blogged about it, but it's hard to find.)
Remember when everyone thought Angelina Jolie was batshit crazy for flying to Africa to give birth for the first time? [I thought was actually kind of cool, considering her reason of wanting to "equalize" her kids' origins, and her monumental cash resources and UN connections.] And how absurd it was for Palin to fly from Dallas to Alaska within 24 hours of giving birth while claiming to be in labor? [Which is just confusing.]
Now imagine a pregnant teenager in 1961 who is 7 or 8 months pregnant, and she's planning to fly to 1961 Kenya for maternity care and delivery?????? Possible. Not credible. Not probable. Batshit crazy, in fact.
I can think of reasons to travel late in pregnancy:
- you believe you absolutely must have your child born in a certain country or state to gain certain lifelong benefits
- you have been detained somewhere apart from your family and want to be near your family for the birth and they cannot travel to you
Not so much this reason:
- your job has sent you round the world and you want to be home for the birth. Because in this case, my assumption is that someone willing to live and work abroad would also be willing to give birth abroad - for instance, see "Kumquat Cometh" in the sidebar, who was born in Italy to American and Irish parents
And not so much this reason:
- husband's parents live in foreign country and you might think maybe it's a good idea to meet them before you have... oh, never mind.
I've got a question for you moms out there:
- When you had your first baby, did you travel long distance (more than 4 hours) for the birth?
- Did you prefer to have your mother or your Mother-in-Law there? ("Neither one" is also a fair response!)
- Would you have spent over 24 hours in the air, traveling on 3 to 5 planes to get to the MIL you've never met if you were already living near your mom?
- Would you go to a foreign country late in pregnancy to meet your your in laws?
- Would you rather spend money to travel for the delivery or to get your nursery set up?
Consider once again that it was 1961. Remember air travel in 1961? (Neither do I, but I read a lot.) Regular people didn't travel by air often if at all, most certainly not dark skinned minorities and women. Obama's dad must have been hot stuff to justify flying him to America in the first place. It might be something a regular family expected to do once in their lifetime. (Businessmen took to it quite handily when prices dropped heading into the '50s.)
Today, when there are lots of flights leaving almost every day for every destination, it would take:
Even assuming that 2 of those segments could be combined, that's 2-3 layovers. Back in the day, there might have been a day or a week between scheduled flights to exotic destinations. If you could *get* a flight to Kenya from London.
So plan on at least one overnight in a foreign country.
Now think again about who is paying for this. It costs about $3000 round trip per person to do this today and from other cost estimates I've looked up on the interwebs, likely cost 4 times as much in 1961 relative to today's dollars. So think $12,000 in today's dollars - 25% of the median American income before taxes - for a pregnant college student to fly to somewhere where she doesn't speak the language, to give birth to her first child. Non-stewardess women traveling alone were rare and she wouldn't have gone without her husband. Assuming the airlines even let pregnant women fly. I also looked up 1960s incomes - about $6000/year per household and the tickets then were likely $1000 to $3000 for Kenya so my point holds. Still seeming even remotely viable to spend a year's after tax income to fly two people to Kenya? Who would have paid for it?
And would you still have gone during peak yellow fever season when the vaccination was required to return to the US and was not safe for pregnant women? Yeah, I thought not.
But as always, proof just makes the conspiracy theorists more rabid in their belief that there is somehow other proof being withheld. That being said, anyone who cast even the tiniest of aspersions on Anjelina for going to Africa or France to give birth cannot in any way give credence to this birther nonsense. For that matter, neither can anyone sensible in any way at all.
Remember when everyone thought Angelina Jolie was batshit crazy for flying to Africa to give birth for the first time? [I thought was actually kind of cool, considering her reason of wanting to "equalize" her kids' origins, and her monumental cash resources and UN connections.] And how absurd it was for Palin to fly from Dallas to Alaska within 24 hours of giving birth while claiming to be in labor? [Which is just confusing.]
Now imagine a pregnant teenager in 1961 who is 7 or 8 months pregnant, and she's planning to fly to 1961 Kenya for maternity care and delivery?????? Possible. Not credible. Not probable. Batshit crazy, in fact.
I can think of reasons to travel late in pregnancy:
- you believe you absolutely must have your child born in a certain country or state to gain certain lifelong benefits
- you have been detained somewhere apart from your family and want to be near your family for the birth and they cannot travel to you
Not so much this reason:
- your job has sent you round the world and you want to be home for the birth. Because in this case, my assumption is that someone willing to live and work abroad would also be willing to give birth abroad - for instance, see "Kumquat Cometh" in the sidebar, who was born in Italy to American and Irish parents
And not so much this reason:
- husband's parents live in foreign country and you might think maybe it's a good idea to meet them before you have... oh, never mind.
I've got a question for you moms out there:
- When you had your first baby, did you travel long distance (more than 4 hours) for the birth?
- Did you prefer to have your mother or your Mother-in-Law there? ("Neither one" is also a fair response!)
- Would you have spent over 24 hours in the air, traveling on 3 to 5 planes to get to the MIL you've never met if you were already living near your mom?
- Would you go to a foreign country late in pregnancy to meet your your in laws?
- Would you rather spend money to travel for the delivery or to get your nursery set up?
Consider once again that it was 1961. Remember air travel in 1961? (Neither do I, but I read a lot.) Regular people didn't travel by air often if at all, most certainly not dark skinned minorities and women. Obama's dad must have been hot stuff to justify flying him to America in the first place. It might be something a regular family expected to do once in their lifetime. (Businessmen took to it quite handily when prices dropped heading into the '50s.)
Today, when there are lots of flights leaving almost every day for every destination, it would take:
- 3.5 hours from Hawaii to San Fran
- 6.0 hours from San Fran to NYC
- 5.0 hours from NYC to London (First transatlantic flight w/o refueling, 1957)
- 9.5 hours from London to Kenya
Even assuming that 2 of those segments could be combined, that's 2-3 layovers. Back in the day, there might have been a day or a week between scheduled flights to exotic destinations. If you could *get* a flight to Kenya from London.
So plan on at least one overnight in a foreign country.Now think again about who is paying for this. It costs about $3000 round trip per person to do this today and from other cost estimates I've looked up on the interwebs, likely cost 4 times as much in 1961 relative to today's dollars. So think $12,000 in today's dollars - 25% of the median American income before taxes - for a pregnant college student to fly to somewhere where she doesn't speak the language, to give birth to her first child. Non-stewardess women traveling alone were rare and she wouldn't have gone without her husband. Assuming the airlines even let pregnant women fly. I also looked up 1960s incomes - about $6000/year per household and the tickets then were likely $1000 to $3000 for Kenya so my point holds. Still seeming even remotely viable to spend a year's after tax income to fly two people to Kenya? Who would have paid for it?
And would you still have gone during peak yellow fever season when the vaccination was required to return to the US and was not safe for pregnant women? Yeah, I thought not.
But as always, proof just makes the conspiracy theorists more rabid in their belief that there is somehow other proof being withheld. That being said, anyone who cast even the tiniest of aspersions on Anjelina for going to Africa or France to give birth cannot in any way give credence to this birther nonsense. For that matter, neither can anyone sensible in any way at all.
Monday, July 27, 2009
George Lopez, kinda funny, kinda not
This saturday, comedian George Lopez was performing at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I'd never been to the venue and thought it seemed like a good opportunity to check it out. I did my usual last minute strategy of buying the tickets from the box office on the day of, hoping that good tickets would be dumped back into the system. (I figured worst case scenario was an afternoon and dinner in SB. Not too shabby either way.) I got an excellent ticket - better than I'd originally wanted to pay for, but I jumped at the chance of an aisle seat. Turned out I also paid for not having to walk up another 40 to 100 steps - a bargain.
I should probably say up front that while I've enjoyed GL's standup, I'm not a fan of his show. I've tried to watch it a couple times. It has never held my attention long enough for me to get into it and I channel surf right past it. My assumption was that a live show allows more leeway for adult topics and other things that aren't getting past the FCC and could be worth trying out, and his commercials were funny, so I went.
After a couple of hours on the road to get there, which was over an hour longer than it takes without traffic, I finally got there in the late afternoon. For the SB Bowl, you can park on the street for free or at the High School for $7. Since I was there early, I parked on the street figuring I could walk to downtown for dinner in 20-30 minutes. Since it only really takes 10-15 at my pace, that was a great decision. However, that was 10 from the *car* not 10 from the *Bowl*, for those who might do like me and just use the public garages downtown. I didn't get to my original food plan as I was distracted by shopping for a new water-friendly shirt at the outfitters.
If you saw my twitter, you know I was liquored up pretty good at this place called elements which had a great happy hour until 6:30 with really original drinks and the best fish (yellowtail) sandwich ever. I staggered over to the show in a fine state of amusement. I drunk dialed 2 people and talked with some neighbors out drinking on the porch. It was fun.
The walk up to the bowl killed a lot of my buzz but not all of it. There's a pretty steep hike up to the lower seats and then again to the higher seats. High heels were ok on the way up, but I really felt for the ladies in stilettos on the way back - 4-5" heels normally were 2-3" up and 7" back... The heart was pounding and I was sweating, and he did the joke I expected about having a new shuttle to take people up who couldn't make the walk.
Anyhow, the place was packed. I staggered in midway through the opening act who was pretty funny, in a geeky way. He was a nerdly white guy - I felt he was trying a little too hard to advance his "latino cred" with the audience, but he's done this for a while so I guess it works for him. For some reason the joke I remember best is "My wife's a Martinez, which means she's related to roughly a third of Mexico" which affected things like birthday meal planning and his ability to live through talking to any other woman.
Then... we watched a commercial. It was reasonably entertaining being full of celebrities we like to see including Obama, but it was a commercial. A loooong commercial for his upcoming late night talk show and how great he is. Um, ok, but I kinda want $10 off my next show for having to sit through the infomercial.
Then came the prime comedy. I'm not sure I'd pay big bucks to see George Lopez again. I did laugh a lot, but on the whole, I was turned off by enough stuff that I'd rate the show 3 of 5 stars. Good enough if you like him particularly, but not good enough to spend a lot of money on it, and don't take people whose senses of humor you're unsure of. He tried to do a theme of "Hey we're great (fine), kids these days are pussies (ok if handled well) but we sure don't want 'em to be homos (not cool), I still hate Erik Estrada from one incident in 1977 (WTF? Get a life), Latinos can be chubby (funny) and take a bunch of menial jobs (could be funny, wasn't so much), I used to be poor (some funny, some not), live life while you're young (fuck you), and hey aren't we great (fine)".
The "Hey aren't we great" message didn't mesh with the "they can't deport us while they still need us to raise their kids and water their lawns and do all these other jobs with low status and crappy pay" jokes. That was more depressing than funny. Although he was mostly positive about a strong work ethic, he kept telling an audience of 4000 people paying an average of $60 a head how they "have no free time or extra money". Uh-huh.
And I suppose necessarily the idea of growing up Latino in America is mixed up with growing up both poor and Latino in America for him because he grew up both. Some of the humor came from the culture, some of the humor came from growing up poor, but the two were strangely conflated. This would have been fine, but he seemed to think that being poor somehow made one a better person but only if they were Latino. He should be old enough and experienced enough to sort this out. Maybe he was just overplaying to a vastly majority Latino audience, but the experiences that EVERYONE shares from not having enough are pretty universal so I think separating the experiences of being poor from being Latino could help reach a broader audience. Doesn't mean they can't be used in the same joke, just don't mistake being poor for being Latino or vice versa. This has the added benefit of not ascribing the state of being poor to the group of people you're trying to elevate and motivate.
Probably one of my favorite riffs was "stupid things the police are doing to catch Latinos": 1) tasers - "we all grew up with cords that didn't match the appliance like the red cord on the black lamp; shocking will not work on us." (funny, doesn't necessarily exclude others) 2) "Now they have something that shoots a bag of beans as a stunning mechanism. Um. It's beans. Aimed at Mexicans." He mimed getting hit, taking the beans for evaluation, and being sent back to get more for dinner. Got one of the biggest laughs and deserved it. Another big laugh was white people's weird food ideas like being vegan and how a Mexican cook will push food on you because if your belly doesn't stick out past your chi-chis, you haven't eaten enough. (Huge laugh, especially from the row of women with bellies out past their chi-chis in front of me.) Plus he kept talking about chi-chis which was entertaining too.
As to the grudge: Apparently EE didn't shake GL's hand at a public meet-n-greet when he was a teenager and he holds a grudge to this day. I don't know what any of the details were because he didn't say. But dude. Get over yourself. Be a better man. Shake hands with the brown kids and white kids and black (oh, I'm sorry, Dominican) kids so they never have to feel what you felt, but that little job of hate was extremely unattractive. Are you sure you're not Italian? They have a love for vendetta that you would be very comfortable with.
And he might want to reconsider the dumb-ass gay jokes, especially in Santa Barbara. Even in a Latino crowd the laughter was patchier for that. Seriously, "Don't name your kid Cody or he'll be gay" is funny? Totally lost me. Partly because who the fuck cares and partly because Cody is a perfectly normal cowboy name with a long cowboy tradition. Ragging on funky names is fine, but choose actual funky names, and rag on them for being something besides gay. He could have stripped out all the "gays are bad" references and only taken out about 2 minutes and not lost anything. It came off as old fashioned.
My biggest beef with the show was that he didn't build up Latinos by saying how great they were (aside from the work ethic and ability to craptacular jobs without whining), but by ragging on gays, blacks, and vegan white women. The vegan white woman is fair game because being vegan is a choice made by adults, but dude, the rest was just trying to say "see, we're not the lowest rank of the minorities" by reinforcing negative stereotypes of other marginalized minorities who are *born that way, you asshole*, which is just bullying behavior and not funny. At all. Trying so hard to paint Latinos as other rather than a great part of this melting pot didn't do your show any favors. Especially since I was sitting in a giant theater filled with successful Latinos who sure as shit aren't cutting anyone's lawn for slave wages, but are living (presumably) decent American lives while perhaps eating more beans and pork than some of their neighbors and having bigger family reunions. I suppose there's a fine line between "celebrating differences" and "reinforcing separationist ideas" and his show didn't fall on the right side of that line for me. I think it would only take some very slight tweaking to put it on the more inclusive side of that line.
I dug the fart jokes. They were part of his riff on growing older which for the most part I enjoyed. But the mixed message of "the youth of today are wussies" (could have got a LOT farther there instead of devolving to "gay names") along with the very clunky public service announcement delivery of "enjoy your youth", a message I've loathed since all those motivational speakers came to tell us that High School is the best time of our lives (fortunately not true), was just weird. You both revere and mock the youth? Ok, but do it better. That rah, rah youth message took away from the "growing old can be hilarious" message. Maybe if he tried harder to be funny and less hard to be a motivational speaker his routine would play better. And didn't overlap "youths suck" with "I wish I still was one".
The show as a whole just seemed a little too rough edged and bush league for a comedian of his stature and accomplishment. And for what I paid. I really think a couple of tweaks to the "themes" and it would have been a great show. As is, it was mediocre.
George, if you ever read this, try:
- "getting old is hilarious" not "your life is over when you age"
- "Latinos have great culture, but some of it is funny, or results in funny things"
- Try not to base your "Latinos are great ideas" on the theory that "other minorities suck more"
- keep the "we still have to worry about 'running while brown' and other police interaction jokes. FYI, the black guys are gonna get that too.
- food jokes are pretty universal, feel free to make fun of various choices but don't be a hater.
- stop with the Erik Estrada grudge. Be the better man and ask him on your show. Don't force an apology. Maybe get an explanation. Maybe you were super smelly that day and there was a prettier woman in line behind you. Maybe he was just an asshole. But give it up.
- what the fuck was with that commercial for your show? Half of that would have been totally fine and still a little much. Keep the Obama bit, but don't then go on to dis black people.
- really think about trying to reach a broader audience with the food and the growing up poor with grandma riffs. Separate poor from Latino as much as you can. Don't do such a great job of reinforcing stereotypes. (or if you do, use them for the cheap laugh up front and make the joke grow up through the show).
- Be motivational by NOT giving the dumb motivational messages, but by living the example and bringing the example into your comedy. If your joke is about how awesome it can be to be Latino despite all the other static on your life, the motivational message will come through.
I should probably say up front that while I've enjoyed GL's standup, I'm not a fan of his show. I've tried to watch it a couple times. It has never held my attention long enough for me to get into it and I channel surf right past it. My assumption was that a live show allows more leeway for adult topics and other things that aren't getting past the FCC and could be worth trying out, and his commercials were funny, so I went.
After a couple of hours on the road to get there, which was over an hour longer than it takes without traffic, I finally got there in the late afternoon. For the SB Bowl, you can park on the street for free or at the High School for $7. Since I was there early, I parked on the street figuring I could walk to downtown for dinner in 20-30 minutes. Since it only really takes 10-15 at my pace, that was a great decision. However, that was 10 from the *car* not 10 from the *Bowl*, for those who might do like me and just use the public garages downtown. I didn't get to my original food plan as I was distracted by shopping for a new water-friendly shirt at the outfitters.
If you saw my twitter, you know I was liquored up pretty good at this place called elements which had a great happy hour until 6:30 with really original drinks and the best fish (yellowtail) sandwich ever. I staggered over to the show in a fine state of amusement. I drunk dialed 2 people and talked with some neighbors out drinking on the porch. It was fun.
The walk up to the bowl killed a lot of my buzz but not all of it. There's a pretty steep hike up to the lower seats and then again to the higher seats. High heels were ok on the way up, but I really felt for the ladies in stilettos on the way back - 4-5" heels normally were 2-3" up and 7" back... The heart was pounding and I was sweating, and he did the joke I expected about having a new shuttle to take people up who couldn't make the walk.
Anyhow, the place was packed. I staggered in midway through the opening act who was pretty funny, in a geeky way. He was a nerdly white guy - I felt he was trying a little too hard to advance his "latino cred" with the audience, but he's done this for a while so I guess it works for him. For some reason the joke I remember best is "My wife's a Martinez, which means she's related to roughly a third of Mexico" which affected things like birthday meal planning and his ability to live through talking to any other woman.
Then... we watched a commercial. It was reasonably entertaining being full of celebrities we like to see including Obama, but it was a commercial. A loooong commercial for his upcoming late night talk show and how great he is. Um, ok, but I kinda want $10 off my next show for having to sit through the infomercial.
Then came the prime comedy. I'm not sure I'd pay big bucks to see George Lopez again. I did laugh a lot, but on the whole, I was turned off by enough stuff that I'd rate the show 3 of 5 stars. Good enough if you like him particularly, but not good enough to spend a lot of money on it, and don't take people whose senses of humor you're unsure of. He tried to do a theme of "Hey we're great (fine), kids these days are pussies (ok if handled well) but we sure don't want 'em to be homos (not cool), I still hate Erik Estrada from one incident in 1977 (WTF? Get a life), Latinos can be chubby (funny) and take a bunch of menial jobs (could be funny, wasn't so much), I used to be poor (some funny, some not), live life while you're young (fuck you), and hey aren't we great (fine)".
The "Hey aren't we great" message didn't mesh with the "they can't deport us while they still need us to raise their kids and water their lawns and do all these other jobs with low status and crappy pay" jokes. That was more depressing than funny. Although he was mostly positive about a strong work ethic, he kept telling an audience of 4000 people paying an average of $60 a head how they "have no free time or extra money". Uh-huh.
And I suppose necessarily the idea of growing up Latino in America is mixed up with growing up both poor and Latino in America for him because he grew up both. Some of the humor came from the culture, some of the humor came from growing up poor, but the two were strangely conflated. This would have been fine, but he seemed to think that being poor somehow made one a better person but only if they were Latino. He should be old enough and experienced enough to sort this out. Maybe he was just overplaying to a vastly majority Latino audience, but the experiences that EVERYONE shares from not having enough are pretty universal so I think separating the experiences of being poor from being Latino could help reach a broader audience. Doesn't mean they can't be used in the same joke, just don't mistake being poor for being Latino or vice versa. This has the added benefit of not ascribing the state of being poor to the group of people you're trying to elevate and motivate.
Probably one of my favorite riffs was "stupid things the police are doing to catch Latinos": 1) tasers - "we all grew up with cords that didn't match the appliance like the red cord on the black lamp; shocking will not work on us." (funny, doesn't necessarily exclude others) 2) "Now they have something that shoots a bag of beans as a stunning mechanism. Um. It's beans. Aimed at Mexicans." He mimed getting hit, taking the beans for evaluation, and being sent back to get more for dinner. Got one of the biggest laughs and deserved it. Another big laugh was white people's weird food ideas like being vegan and how a Mexican cook will push food on you because if your belly doesn't stick out past your chi-chis, you haven't eaten enough. (Huge laugh, especially from the row of women with bellies out past their chi-chis in front of me.) Plus he kept talking about chi-chis which was entertaining too.
As to the grudge: Apparently EE didn't shake GL's hand at a public meet-n-greet when he was a teenager and he holds a grudge to this day. I don't know what any of the details were because he didn't say. But dude. Get over yourself. Be a better man. Shake hands with the brown kids and white kids and black (oh, I'm sorry, Dominican) kids so they never have to feel what you felt, but that little job of hate was extremely unattractive. Are you sure you're not Italian? They have a love for vendetta that you would be very comfortable with.
And he might want to reconsider the dumb-ass gay jokes, especially in Santa Barbara. Even in a Latino crowd the laughter was patchier for that. Seriously, "Don't name your kid Cody or he'll be gay" is funny? Totally lost me. Partly because who the fuck cares and partly because Cody is a perfectly normal cowboy name with a long cowboy tradition. Ragging on funky names is fine, but choose actual funky names, and rag on them for being something besides gay. He could have stripped out all the "gays are bad" references and only taken out about 2 minutes and not lost anything. It came off as old fashioned.
My biggest beef with the show was that he didn't build up Latinos by saying how great they were (aside from the work ethic and ability to craptacular jobs without whining), but by ragging on gays, blacks, and vegan white women. The vegan white woman is fair game because being vegan is a choice made by adults, but dude, the rest was just trying to say "see, we're not the lowest rank of the minorities" by reinforcing negative stereotypes of other marginalized minorities who are *born that way, you asshole*, which is just bullying behavior and not funny. At all. Trying so hard to paint Latinos as other rather than a great part of this melting pot didn't do your show any favors. Especially since I was sitting in a giant theater filled with successful Latinos who sure as shit aren't cutting anyone's lawn for slave wages, but are living (presumably) decent American lives while perhaps eating more beans and pork than some of their neighbors and having bigger family reunions. I suppose there's a fine line between "celebrating differences" and "reinforcing separationist ideas" and his show didn't fall on the right side of that line for me. I think it would only take some very slight tweaking to put it on the more inclusive side of that line.
I dug the fart jokes. They were part of his riff on growing older which for the most part I enjoyed. But the mixed message of "the youth of today are wussies" (could have got a LOT farther there instead of devolving to "gay names") along with the very clunky public service announcement delivery of "enjoy your youth", a message I've loathed since all those motivational speakers came to tell us that High School is the best time of our lives (fortunately not true), was just weird. You both revere and mock the youth? Ok, but do it better. That rah, rah youth message took away from the "growing old can be hilarious" message. Maybe if he tried harder to be funny and less hard to be a motivational speaker his routine would play better. And didn't overlap "youths suck" with "I wish I still was one".
The show as a whole just seemed a little too rough edged and bush league for a comedian of his stature and accomplishment. And for what I paid. I really think a couple of tweaks to the "themes" and it would have been a great show. As is, it was mediocre.
George, if you ever read this, try:
- "getting old is hilarious" not "your life is over when you age"
- "Latinos have great culture, but some of it is funny, or results in funny things"
- Try not to base your "Latinos are great ideas" on the theory that "other minorities suck more"
- keep the "we still have to worry about 'running while brown' and other police interaction jokes. FYI, the black guys are gonna get that too.
- food jokes are pretty universal, feel free to make fun of various choices but don't be a hater.
- stop with the Erik Estrada grudge. Be the better man and ask him on your show. Don't force an apology. Maybe get an explanation. Maybe you were super smelly that day and there was a prettier woman in line behind you. Maybe he was just an asshole. But give it up.
- what the fuck was with that commercial for your show? Half of that would have been totally fine and still a little much. Keep the Obama bit, but don't then go on to dis black people.
- really think about trying to reach a broader audience with the food and the growing up poor with grandma riffs. Separate poor from Latino as much as you can. Don't do such a great job of reinforcing stereotypes. (or if you do, use them for the cheap laugh up front and make the joke grow up through the show).
- Be motivational by NOT giving the dumb motivational messages, but by living the example and bringing the example into your comedy. If your joke is about how awesome it can be to be Latino despite all the other static on your life, the motivational message will come through.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
And I thought my place was small
We'll never need a vacuum cleaner! Take that Eureka!
Yep. Still alive. Got third place at trivia last night, but something about the new trivia moderator was extremely irritating, so it wasn't as much fun as usual.
Still and all, I had lunch outside with a friend, trivia night with $20 free dollars to spend on food and beer (at a place cheap enough for that to matter), and I got to talk with a friend from back east. All good things.
Yep. Still alive. Got third place at trivia last night, but something about the new trivia moderator was extremely irritating, so it wasn't as much fun as usual.
Still and all, I had lunch outside with a friend, trivia night with $20 free dollars to spend on food and beer (at a place cheap enough for that to matter), and I got to talk with a friend from back east. All good things.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Islands in the Stream
The island trip was pretty good. We got a group rate since I went with a dozen other people from work. I took a high school friend, her oldest son, and her husband. They got in pretty late last night because her husband just flew in. We got the air mattress blown up for them, had some happy hour food and drinks to close down the Claim Jumper and got up hella early to hit the boat. The boat went out through the Santa Barbara Channel to Santa Cruz island. The guide on the boat said that about 1/3 of cataloged marine mammals are found in the channel at one time or another but there's a good chance of seeing something.
The boat ride was fairly smooth, but chilly. Thanks again to the scopalomine patch, there was no illness. We saw sea lions and dolphins both directions and the ones on the way back played with us a bit and showed off the baby dolphin! We did the first 3rd of the Nature Conservancy hike with good views with a naturalist guide who was able to tell us what berries were in the fox poop that was all along the trail. On the way back without the bigger group we saw more than a dozen lizards. And my friend did something I found hilarious but not fit for sharing in a google archived page. We joked about it all the way back down to the rocky beach.
My friend's son had brought a shovel to dig on the beach. However, the beach was mostly rocks, not sand. He was pretty disappointed not to be able to dig in the sand and the ranger gave him a good talking to about not digging up the island anywhere else. When we got back to the harbor, there's a good sand beach. He went at it like Mike Mulligan with his steam shovel for about an hour. It was hilarious how much this kid (age ten-ish) was enjoying digging a hole in the sand. After he dug a hole deep enough for him to sit in with barely his head showing, we went off to dinner.
The seafood restaurant was mobbed because there was some pirate festival going on in the harbor that we mostly missed. So we saw some people geared up like pirates of the Johnny Depp kind, not the Somali variety. We finally got seated and had a nice dinner that we plowed through. We're all pretty well done in from the sun and the surf after a nice low key but energetic day.
The boat ride was fairly smooth, but chilly. Thanks again to the scopalomine patch, there was no illness. We saw sea lions and dolphins both directions and the ones on the way back played with us a bit and showed off the baby dolphin! We did the first 3rd of the Nature Conservancy hike with good views with a naturalist guide who was able to tell us what berries were in the fox poop that was all along the trail. On the way back without the bigger group we saw more than a dozen lizards. And my friend did something I found hilarious but not fit for sharing in a google archived page. We joked about it all the way back down to the rocky beach.
My friend's son had brought a shovel to dig on the beach. However, the beach was mostly rocks, not sand. He was pretty disappointed not to be able to dig in the sand and the ranger gave him a good talking to about not digging up the island anywhere else. When we got back to the harbor, there's a good sand beach. He went at it like Mike Mulligan with his steam shovel for about an hour. It was hilarious how much this kid (age ten-ish) was enjoying digging a hole in the sand. After he dug a hole deep enough for him to sit in with barely his head showing, we went off to dinner.
The seafood restaurant was mobbed because there was some pirate festival going on in the harbor that we mostly missed. So we saw some people geared up like pirates of the Johnny Depp kind, not the Somali variety. We finally got seated and had a nice dinner that we plowed through. We're all pretty well done in from the sun and the surf after a nice low key but energetic day.
Chemistry?
Due to the boy having phone issues and me needing more attention than I get from him, I'm trying the Chemistry.com thing this weekend while it's free. I'm updating it on saturday night during prime date hours because I'm going to bed in a moment - had 4 hours of sleep last night after doing the kamikaze clean on the condo and waking up at 6am (6 AM!!!!) to go to Santa Cruz island. (It nearly killed me. I didn't realize how many piles of papers had accumulated for so long, and 6AM!!!!.) Anyhow, I only have 3 days to get this in so I hope someone replies in a way I can get to them before I have to pay.
But already, it's better than match. They have better categories for drinking/smoking and religion, and they do the sort for you instead of having you troll through thousands of things using your own dumb filters. They should have something about cat allergy but I digress. Anyway, I've responded postitively to 8 of the 10 potentials, and one is highly iffy, due to his having a cat and that being problematic for my breathing, but he also had the most fun intro and he scuba dives which washes away cat dander.
The thing that's killing me though? 20% of the guys have the same name as my brother.
But already, it's better than match. They have better categories for drinking/smoking and religion, and they do the sort for you instead of having you troll through thousands of things using your own dumb filters. They should have something about cat allergy but I digress. Anyway, I've responded postitively to 8 of the 10 potentials, and one is highly iffy, due to his having a cat and that being problematic for my breathing, but he also had the most fun intro and he scuba dives which washes away cat dander.
The thing that's killing me though? 20% of the guys have the same name as my brother.
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