Some Advice I Got from my Step-Mom, Once

I was seventeen years old and kaa-razy about one “K,” my very first girlfriend. She made me want to be smarter, better looking, more driven, a better dresser/kisser/person, i.e., all of the things I wasn’t when I was... sixteen. The only problem was, she wasn’t crazy about me.

So I sat K down and told her I was crazy about her and asked her if she was crazy about me.

Having only dated me for one month, being only seventeen herself, and being not crazy about me, K didn’t know. She wasn’t sure.

Thanks to some advice I’d recently gotten from my step-mom, I told K “Well, I don’t want to date anyone who isn’t absolutely-crazy about me!”

So, we broke up.

I was devastated.
I told all my friends that it was “Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.”
Blah, blah, blah...

What was my step-mom’s advice? I shouldn’t date someone unless they’re absolutely-crazy about me.

Fast forward a decade: I’m 27 and single.

However, in spite of this occasionally frustrating fact, I still think my step-mom’s advice is sound, but I also like to think I’ve learned a few things about it.

Thing 1: The advice actually cuts in both directions, i.e., not only should I not date people who aren’t crazy about me, but I shouldn’t date people I’m not crazy about.

Thing 2: What it means for me to be crazy about someone (I seem to need to feel compelled to better myself, ala Pip in Great Expectations... Yeah...), isn’t necessarily the same as what it means for them to be crazy about me.

Occupy Lake Oswego?

“I’m sure it’ll be respectful.”

That’s what my coworker said when she told me about the “Occupy the Lake” event originally planned for Saturday, March 10th.

I, however, wasn’t so sure.

I know how people in the Portland-Metro area tend to view Lake Oswego.

And I, too, had read the “Lake Affront” article in the March 7th Willamette Week.

Respectful isn’t the word that comes to mind.

Believe me, I get it: Lake Oswego can seem awfully rich, awfully white, and awfully full of itself.

I get it because I grew up here. Because I left for college and, for a time, saw exactly and only what so many people in the Portland-Metro Area seem to see.

And yet, now, I work here, live here, and, strange as it may seem for someone in their twenties with a couple of degrees in philosophy, no less, love here.

I love that Lake Oswego is very easy to dislike and problematize (racist tweets!?!), and pretty hard to understand.
I love that it sits on a lake and a river.
I love that it’s still got farmland, hidden in its hills.
I love that, for every Lake Oswego mom with fairly obvious plastic surgery, there are eight or so whom seem to have figured out the trick to aging well.
That for every a$$hole I meet, there are ten or so guys I’d love to grab a drink with.
That for every one of those kids I see driving too fast in their parents’ BMWs, there are at least ten kids I’d be damn-proud to call my own, someday, eventually...

I think my feelings towards Lake Oswego are most akin to British theologian/essayist/silly-man G.K. Chesterton’s definition of patriotism and relationship to the universe:

My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

Sure, Lake Oswego has its problems, but whose hometown doesn’t?

Dear would-be Lake Occupiers: Having full-access to Lake Oswego has previously been the function of a choice, a choice that many people--including my own parents--have made for themselves and their families; however, as it now appears that this choice was apparently made under the mistaken belief that the lake was private, something like a beautiful back yard for people to share with somewhere around a thousand other people, what is to be done?

I’ve got two questions I think you need to ask yourselves before you try and answer this question: First, if you lived on Lake Oswego and had full-access to the lake, how would you want this situation to be handled? Second, if you really want full-access to Lake Oswego, but currently don’t have it, why aren’t you willing to take the routes that so many have taken before in order to get it?

Movie Review: Double Dip: Say Anything and Chronicle

In Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything, your parents f*ck you up and you get to lose your virginity to John Cusack:

Sorry, John Cusack:

In Chronicle, directed by Josh Trank and written by John Landis, one of my new heroes (he gets Schopenhauer and Plato into the movie, sorta), your parents also f*ck you up, and while you don’t get to lose your virginity to John Cusak, you do almost get a blow-job from a cute girl with pink hair (and some pretty awesome telekinetic powers).

Movie Review: Double-Dip: Contraband and The Artist

Contraband:

In Contraband, Mark Wahlberg’s character's life gets out’a whack when his brother-in-law (Banshee from the most recent X-Men movie) throws drugs off a boat and gets in trouble with some scary guy (Giovani Ribisi, over-acting, maybe...) who comes after Mark Wahlberg’s family (Kate Beckinsale + soccer-playing kids) and Mark has no choice but to go down to Panama to try and get his hands on some funny-money--MARK WAHLBERG IS THE BEST SMUGGLER EVER--but winds up also getting his hands on the drugs that the scary guy really wanted all along because he really works for Mark’s blood brother, a guy whose construction business is going under thanks to his coke/booze/loan-shark problems that Mark was totally unawares of, and who tries to kill Mark’s wife, which makes him angry:

The Artist:

In The Artist, Jean Dujardin’s character's life gets out’a whack when the movie industry moves from silent films to talkies and he refuses to adjust, for reasons all-too human:

The choice is ours.

Movie Review Douple Dip: TTSS and A Dangerous Method

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a wonderfully crafted, slow movie about how complicated, convoluted, and forlorn life can be when we repress our sexual desires:



A Dangerous Method is a wonderfully crafted, slow movie about how complicated, convoluted, and sexy life can be when we stop repressing our sexual desires:



The choice is ours, sort'a...

Movie Review DOUBLE-DIP: Melancholia and MI 4

Melancholia:

          Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland and that guy from True Blood and Generation Kill:



(Alexander Skarsgard) And so many other talented people that I’m, frankly, flabbergasted the movie wasn’t more widely released... Wait, no I’m not: Melancholia is a beautiful (the shots/lighting/misenscene, the pace, the music), mesmerising film about how we--you, me, and everyone else we know--deal with our awareness of our own mortality, of what Hegel/others have called the “Absolute Master” (death).

Option 1: Avoid thinking about it, but also secretly obsess about it (Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character’s response).

Option 2: Lie to ourselves about it/make up comforting stories that make it seem less scary, less abyssal, less unknowable (the child in the film’s response).

            Option 3: Live as if we’re already dead (Kirsten Dunst’s character’s response), i.e., mourn the loss of life prior to losing it (MELANCHOLIA, also what most people understand Socrates to be saying in The Apology about what it means to be a philosopher...).
            Option 4: Lie to others about it while, supposedly, being honest with ourselves (Kiefer’s character’s response).


Mission Impossible 4:

            In MI 4, we’re also... ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

However, unlike Melancholia and its fateful, lovely blue-green planet, our mortality will be wrought upon us by human hands and nuclear weapons:

In MI 4, however, we’re presented with an alternative to the above four possible responses, a possible response that was GLARINGLY absent in Melancholia (as a function of just how sh*tty/broken everyone in that film was): Have a “well-functioning team,” i.e., surround ourselves with people we can trust to help us face death with courage, integrity, laughter, etc...

           Of course, in MI 4, the well-functioning team manages to avoid their deaths; Tom Cruise proving himself to still be the immortal Lestat:
 


Unfortunately for the rest of us, we’re just not vampires, ultimately. Actually, fortunately for the rest of us...

I CAN HELP WHOMEVER'S NEXT!!!

            It was a little out of the blue, a little after the fact, and almost an aside when my assistant manager pulled me into the back of our store the other day and said, “Hey, don’t say ‘I can help whoever’s [sic] next’ any more. J.P. [our district manager] says he doesn’t want to hear that phrase come out of anybody’s mouth, it depersonalizes...” blah, blah, blah.
            My A$$.M. was referring to instances in which me or another of my coworkers are working the register. We’ve just finished a transaction/interaction/whatever with a customer and are now able to help someone else, someone new, i.e., whomever’s next. And there’s a line of people, a line which may/may not be well formed. And nobody seems to have ID’d that there’s an opening at our register because nobody removes themselves from said line for the purpose of beginning a new transaction/interaction/whatever with us.

“What should I say?”

“Just say ‘Hey’ or ‘Hi,’” said my Assist-M., waving his hand in the air demonstratively. “Less mechanical, more personal, more human.”

            My face has gone red by this point. I grit my teeth. I hate, hate, hate having language, especially useful language, taken away from me. I also hate having to use language that sucks,“But ‘Hey’ or ‘Hi’ don’t necessarily communicate that I can help whomever’s next!?!”
            “But John [our D.M.] doesn’t want to hear that anymore, ‘I can help whoever’s [sic] next,’” said my assistant Man., his face slack and disinterested.
            “But it doesn’t need to be said like that,” I said, face still red.

“But people have been saying it like that. You don’t say it like that.”

“So, rather than correct someone else’s abuse of an effective phrase, you want to take that phrase away from someone like me, someone who uses it properly and in a way that doesn’t depersonalize others?!? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Just do it. Don’t argue with me...”

            And I’m reminded of what Kant says in his “Perpetual Peace” essay: “Do your job when you’re supposed to do your job, argue about it some other time and some other place." So I ask my Asst. Mnger. “Can I email John and argue my case?”
            “No. He’s got more important shit to deal with right now.”
            No!?! MORE IMPORTANT SH!T TO DEAL WITH RIGHT NOW?!? BUT I CAN HELP WHOMEVER’S NEXT!!!