So Suze Me

The other evening I was eating dinner with Mom and Dad, and Mom said the following:

"Suze Orman says you should save your money.  So save your money."

I agree.  I should save my money.  But, stuff keeps happening that costs money.  So then I have to spend it.  Still, the point is valid, which is why whenever my parents ask me to eat dinner, I say, "Yes," since it means I'll be saving money.

Anyway, I am vaguely aware Suze Orman is a chick on TV who gives financial advice, but I've never actually seen her do her thing.  So today when I was reading CNN, I saw an article about Suze Orman telling me what I can and can't afford, and clicked on it out of curiositiy.

People were writing in asking Suze for advice.  The first letter was from a woman who, with her husband, owes $130,000 in student loans.  Her husband works in sales and she has her own Mary Kay business and has recently started her own cake-decorating business.  The woman was writing in wondering if her husband can afford to waste money on his passion for the Redskins, which includes buying high priced Redskins memorabilia, and investing in an expensive home entertainment room.

So, Suze crunches the numbers and decides they can't afford the Redskins hobby, because the Redskins hobby is costing them roughly $7,000 a year.

But in my opinion Suze missed a huge red flag.  Don't get me wrong, spending $7,000 a year on a sports hobby is a little extreme, in my opinion, for a family that makes $100,000 per year, like this one.  But, at least with a sports hobby you get what you pay for.  Sure, you're wasting your money, but you're exchanging money for actual services, products, entertainment, etc.

The red flag:  One thing the family should really cut out is the wife's Mary Kay "business."

Mary Kay is a multi-level marketing company.  When the wife says she has her own "business" she means she sells Mary Kay products to other people and also attempts to sign other people up to sell Mary Kay products.  She can sign up an unlimited amount of people, and they can sign up an unlimited amount of people, and the people who signed her up in the first place can sign up an unlimited amount of people, which means, by design, by the very laws of supply and demand, it will be impossible for the majority of these people to make any money off of their so-called businesses.  It's a pyramid scheme, but it's legal because there are products being sold.

This is why real sales jobs usually have salesmen work off of specific lists or specific territories, so they don't over-saturate the market.  A lot of times multi-level marketers will tell you starting your own "business" is no different from opening a franchise restaurant.  But guess what?  Franchise restaurants have rules on where they can be located in relation to other restaurants of the same franchise, specifically to make supply and demand work. 

It's especially difficult to see any measure of success from a multi-level marketing business when you attempt to run the business as supplementary and in your spare time.  They're usually advertised as easy ways to get rich quick without much work, which is the opposite of what they are.  In reality, in order to get any return and be able to live off of it, chances are you'll have to have at least one real job, and then work at least full time on your multi-level marketing business, as well, probably earning less than you could make getting an hourly wage, which, you're not going to get.

Now, I don't know the specifics of how Mary Kay is run, and I haven't heard the same horror stories about Mary Kay as I have about Amway/Quixtar, but the fundamentals of multi-level marketing remain the same, and if I was Suze Orman, I would immediately recommend not dumping any money into those kinds of ventures as a way to immediately save money.

The upside of all this?  It is pretty entertaining to read up on all the reasons why multi-level marketing doesn't work.  It's also entertaining, but sad, to read the testimonies of the poor souls who have lost everything thanks to these deceptive companies.  And, reading is a hobby that can cost virtually nothing.

In which Charlotte Roasts Me

I think the spiders who live around my apartment building are trying to kill me.  But it wasn't always like that.

I used to think the spiders were just forgetful.  See, they constantly build their webs in areas I routinely walk through.  So, maybe I don't use my back door for a couple days.  The spider that lives back there thinks it's cool to build a web spanning between my door and the porch railing, and no sooner is it complete than I come home one afternoon and walk right through it.  I figured, if I went through that way every single day the spider would probably give up, but since I only use that entrance some times, the spider forgets.  The same could be said for my front door.  And the passage way back to the recycling bins.

The other evening, however, when I was returning from the store, I walked through yet another web and a thought struck me:

Maybe the spiders are building their webs in high traffic areas in a specific attempt to capture me.  Once captured, I'll be helpless and they'll eat me.

Unfortunately for the spiders, if this is their plan, they did not take into account the fact that I am much too strong for their pitiful webs and can easily smash through them like Godzilla through Tokyo.

To be fair, aside from these attempts on my life, I like the spiders at this apartment better than the ones in my last apartment.  I haven't seen a single spider indoors since I've moved here, which means they're respecting my boundaries, even if they are using those boundaries as choice spots for traps.

Also, the other day, one of them spelled out "Some Pig" in her web, right over my front door, which I thought was hilarious, if a little close to the bone (I was carrying home a pizza when I first saw it).

Blue Line Batman

Here's a story.  Part of it is true.  The other part is fiction.  See if you can tell which is which.

I was riding the train today and when it came to my stop, I stood up to get out.  As I stood up, a girl moved to sit in the seat in front of me.  In the process of brushing by each other, I elbowed her on the head.

"OW!" she said.

"Excuse me," I said.

Her posse suddenly gathered around.

"What did you do to her?" they demanded in a variety of ways, in between insults.

"Uh. . . accident. . . mistake," I stammered.

Just then, I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.  I looked up to see the famliar cowled visage of Batman.

"You girls leave this guy alone," Batman said in his trademark gravelly voice.

"We were just playin," the leader of the girls said, and they all went back to their business.

"Thanks Batman," I said.  "I thought for sure I was a goner."

"You're wrong," Batman said.  "People are basically good."

"I just meant --," I began, but Batman cut me off.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to be a villain," he said.

"Sure," I said, edging passed him towards the door.

"I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be," I heard Batman continuing as I stepped off of the train and onto the platform.

The doors slid shut and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Some people just don't know how to end a conversation gracefully.

The Charming Fixtures

I'd like to start a one man band.  I'll give it a name, so that people will think it's really a group, but it will just be me.  I'll be "The Charming Fixtures."  It will be plural to be extra tricky.  Across the nation, conversations like this will occur:

Hipster 1:  My favorite band is The Charming Fixtures.

Hipster 2: Oh yeah, I love them.

Hipster 1:  Pff.  Them?  It's one guy.  (Rolls eyes)

My first album will be a concept album about an alternate universe in which Rod Serling did not become a writer, but became an interior decorator for the stars, instead.  Among his clients: George Reeves, Adam West and a pizza delivery girl who he has a torrid affair with, but who is not a star, at first.  Later, it turns out she was Bettie Page all along.  It will be called "Claw Foot Bath Tub."

Problem: I don't know how to play any instruments.  I pretend like I can play the drums, but I want a better drummer for my album.  

Solution:  Even though I'm a one man band, I'll have a bunch of session musicians.  They won't technically be in the band, though.  It will be like "Pet Sounds" -- a billion musicians, none of them actually Beach Boys.

I will carefully select dialogue snippets from old "Twilight Zone" episodes to intersperse throughout the songs to create some semblance of a narrative.

My proposed track listing:

The Charming Fixtures

Claw Foot Bath Tub

1.) Overture

2.) Your Chair Rail is my Crown Moulding

3.) Don't Scratch my Hard Wood Floor

4.) The Ceiling Fan Stays

5.) (Humid Kitchen) Blues

6.) Free Heat

7.) Clothes Pin Mail Box

8.) My Love is like Hearing Your Neighbor Have Sex Through the Wall part I

9.) Pizza Need Not Apply

10.) Girl (Come Over and show me Where to Hang Pictures)

11.) My Love is like Hearing Your Neighbor Have Sex Through the Wall part II

12.) Hot Superman on Batman Action

13.) Oh My God, What's the Drama?

It will rock.

Top 10 films of 2008

Time for my top 10 movies of 2008.  As usual, I'm not able to make my list until a couple months into 2009, when I've finally had a chance to see everything that I think is worth seeing.  As always, there's still stuff I'd like to see, but I'm satisfied with the list I've come up with.  It's in no particular order, but leaves the best for last.

BEST DOCUMENTARY:

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Werner Herzog's latest documentary, this one about the crazy outcasts and scientists who live and work in Antarctica, is beautiful, haunting, philosophical and funny.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR:

THE BOOK OF CALEB

I stumbled across this coming of age comedy via digital download.  The film didn't have an official wide release in 2008, but played festivals and limited engagements and has seen a DVD release.  This film is from a group of beginners and could use a bit of polishing, but is incredibly good considering how independent it is.  Writer/director Matthew Von Monahan should havea great career ahead of him.

BEST ANIMATED FILM:

WALL-E

Another miracle from Pixar.  Just when you think these geniuses can't top themsleves, they go ahead and do it anyway.  Funny, poignant and beautiful.

BEST MADE FOR TV MOVIE:

RECOUNT

What?  One of the best films of the year went direct to HBO?  This is the frightening and frustrating story of the election problems in Florida back in 2000.  This retelling almost makes sense of a confusing situation, until you realize it's impossible to make any sense out of it.  The great thing here is the variety of good roles and good performances, specifically Laura Dern as Kathryn Harris, but also Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Tom Wilkinson.

BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIES:

IRON MAN

THE DARK KNIGHT

IRON MAN took a second tier super hero and made a first tier super hero movie out of him, propelled by a great performance from Robert Downey, Jr., who seems made for the part.  Director Jon Favreau approaches the material head on and doesn't try to play cute, which counter-intuitively makes for a rather light-hearted and fun sci-fi/adventure film.  The killer special effects don't hurt, either.

Christopher Nolan delivers on the promise of his previous Batman films with THE DARK KNIGHT, the second highest grossing film of all time.  Best super hero movie ever?  Maybe.  It's a great example of its genre, but in achieving greatness it transcends the genre and becomes something else, which is something most great films have in common.

A lot has been said about Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker, which is as chilling as it is creative and compelling.  Whenever Ledger's on screen, you're on the edge of your seat.  Even more has been said about Ledger's too-early demise.  Less attention has been paid to the rest of the cast, and the filmmakers behind the scenes.

The emotional heart of the movie lies with Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, the one guy who's trying to do the right thing and play by the rules at the same time, in a city where no one's doing the right thing or following the rules.

The strength of the story-telling comes from the incredible magic trick Nolan plays on the audience -- he takes a conventional crime story and convinces the audience anything can happen.  Nolan somehow balances a film that ultimately turns out to be a crowd pleaser with constant threats that things may not turn out the way we want them to, and that's quite a trick when you're dealing with the kind of movie everyone thinks they already know.

BEST COMEDIES:

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

TROPIC THUNDER

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is one of the best romantic comedies ever made.  It benefits from a big cast, every member of which is funny, from the atypical leads to the colorful supporting characters.  The Hawaiian resort setting gives it a warm vibe that's hard to resist and Jason Segel's writing clearly comes from sharp and critical observations of his own experience as well as a healthy amusement with human nature.

TROPIC THUNDER is something we haven't seen in a long time -- a big budet comedy with just as much spectacle as laughs.  This one's a little more over the top and erratic, but I'd compare it in a sense to films from the 80s like GHOSTBUSTERS where the special effects were in service of the comedy, unlike the crass and cynical so-called action comedies of recent years which merely feature bad one-liners between explosions.  In what's becoming a running theme this year, the film benefits from its strong (and varied) cast -- Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Tom Cruise and Robert Downey, Jr., all at the top of their game, lampooning Hollywood, war movies, celebrity culture, and pretty much everything else.

MOST AMBITIOUS:

CHE

Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro unabashedly turn in a gigantic, sprawling, insane, in your face, no holds barred biopic about the revolutionary whose face college kids love to put on their dorm room walls and t-shirts:  Ernesto Che Guevara.

The film resists most of the usual crutches of the biopic genre -- we don't get to know the characters very well, we don't get much insight into people's motives and the "Why "of things, and we don't waste time dealing with interpersonal relationships.  What we know about Che we know from the look on Benicio Del Toro's face, buried beneath wild facial hair, dirt and sweat.

It's difficult to think of the entire epic as one single film, since even watching it in one day you see it in two sittings separated by an intermission.  I went into the film expecting to like the first half better, since it deals with the stuff I thought Che was most famous for -- the Cuban revolution.  This was when things went right with Che, when he set out do something and did it.  

I was worried I wouldn't enjoy the second half because I wasn't familiar with that part of history, I'd be seeing it after already sitting through two and a half hours, and it would be the shitty part of Che's life when everything goes wrong.  I was mistaken -- I liked the second half quite a bit, possibly better than the first -- an intense, action packed descent into madness and futility.

BEST FILM OF THE YEAR:

THE WRESTLER

This flick reminds me of STAR TREK.  Granted, so does everything else.  But check this out:

In STAR TREK VI, faced with a changing universe, Spock asks the following of his old buddy Kirk:

"Is it possible that you and I, in our old age, have outlived our usefulness?  Would that constitute a joke?"

My answer to Spock would be that you could look at it either as a joke, or a tragedy.  In THE WRESTLER, even though some might consider The Ram (Mickey Rouke) a joke -- a washed up relic of a bygone era, the definition of having outlived his usefulness -- he is actually a tragedy, and so is the film.  The Ram's fatal flaw?  He likes to do what he's best at, and it's killing him.

Meanwhile, the stuff he's not so good at, like relationships, would only make him stronger if he'd be able to sort them out.  But, wrestling is easy for The Ram, working on relationships is hard, and little setbacks easily become insurmountable obstacles.

In another era, The Ram might have been a warrior, or a hunter.  He might have died defending his country or providing for his people.  Even if he wasn't in action, people in those days didn't live as long as they do now.  In another time, The Ram wouldn't have had to face the last half of his life.  He would have gone out on top.

Now that humans live so long, it's not always enough to build up some for of success for yourself.  You have to keep it going, for the rest of your life.  Or, you have to be satisfied.  Otherwise, you've got a long road of disappointment ahead of you -- a slow march to the grave.

There is something bittersweet about the abuse The Ram takes in and out of the ring.  Because of the physical torture he endures, Marisa Tomei's exotic dancer character compares The Ram to Jesus Christ -- at least, the Jesus Christ she saw on screen in Mel Gibon's PASSION.  But, The Ram also absorbs emotional pain.  Just watch as he soak in the hatred as his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) screams at him.  He just sits there, head bowed, and takes it, just like he takes it in the ring.

I've liked Mickey Rourke ever since I saw him in BARFLY, in which he played a bum who hung out in bars picking fights and shacking up with broken women.  In BARFLY, Rourke's character also happened to have a way with words -- his brief poetic interludes hinted at something else going on beneath the tortured surface, a glimmer of hope that there's something more to life than boozing and brawling, even for this guy.

The Ram's own personal outlet doesn't have the same built in elevated status as something like poetry.  Wrestling isn't glamorous, or artistic, and the kind of people who put THE WRESTLER on their list of favorite movies for the year are not the kind of people who watch pro wrestling on TV, though the people who do watch pro wrestling will probably love this film when they find it on DVD.

Because The Ram is forced to live through the down half of his life, much like Benicio Del Toro's Che, the audience is forced to live through it, too.  A lesser movie would end just as The Ram seems to be putting things back together -- he has the strength to give up wrestling for his health, he's making a go of it at his minimum wage job, he has a successful outing with his daughter.  Most movies would roll credits there and let the audience imagine the rest.  But THE WRESTLER understands there are downs after the ups, and shows us what happens after the end credits.

Some complain the ending, when it finally comes, is too ambiguous.  They ask, what's the point?  I'd have the same complaints if it didn't end the way it did.  As it is, it's near perfect.  "Sweet Child O Mine" comes on the soundtrack, I get goose bumps, The Ram makes one last leap, and Bruce Springsteen counts down.

Snake-Eyes explores the one truly philosophical problem

A couple GI Joe action figures I received as free promo items shortly after I first started at my job have been hanging out on my desk for several years.  They spend most of their time hanging from  a couple file baskets, ready for action.

Over the last few weeks I've noticed a strange phenomenon.  Every day when I leave my desk, they're all fine.  When I get back to my desk in the morning, a ghastly sight awaits.

You see, Snake-Eyes commits suicide, every night.  He drops to his death from the hanging file basket and the next morning I find his broken body lying prostrate on the surface of my desk.

First, I scream, "Snake-Eyes NO!"  Then, as if I'm in that flick GROUNDHOG DAY, I pick him up and put him back where he belongs as if nothing happened.  I leave for the day, come back the next morning, and he's done it again.  His sword brother, Storm Shadow, both friend and foe, looks down at Snake-Eyes' body with deep remorse.

Today, after several days of repeated suicides, I got to wondering what Snake-Eyes' problem is.  Snake-Eyes is easily one of the coolest GI Joes.  He has a lot to live for and a lot going for him.  Let's review:

-- He's a grand master ninja

-- He's a real American hero

-- He's there (for me and you and the rest of the world in case Cobra attacks)

-- He knows stuff (and knowing is half the battle)

-- He's banging Scarlett (the other half of the battle)

Why would a dude like that want to end it all?

Maybe he saw the trailer for the upcoming movie and killed himself because of how lame it looks?

Maybe he read that he's being played by Ray Park in the movie, the dude who accidentally got famous for playing Darth Maul and now stars in every other movie based on a property lots of nerds like that requires a guy who doesn't talk or show his face?

Maybe it's post traumatic stress syndrome?

Or maybe he's just bummed out that he's mute as a result of a tragic helicopter accident?  I mean, if I couldn't talk I might kill myself, too.

Just think, poor Snake-Eyes can't even yell out, "I regret nothing!" before jumping to his doom.

I Know You Know That You're an April Fool

The only April Fool's day worth talking about is the one when I had my first kiss.

Me and my buddy Levi were in Jr. High and we were playing truth or dare with a couple chicks, teaming up to get them to kiss us.

We were too young and stupid to try to get them to kiss each other.

That night we arranged to go to the parking lot carnival with the girls, but both of them had to back out.  We went anyway, bought silly string, and shot each other with it.

When I got home my chick's best friend called and asked if I'd "go out" with her.  I said if she wanted to go out with me, she'd have to call me herself, because even then I was a control freak and attention whore.

So, she did.  And I said yes.

Three months later she dumped me.  APRIL FOOLS!