Welcome Back in 30 Seconds or Less

You (my faithful reader) may not have noticed, but I've been out of the blogosphere for awhile.  I'm not sure why... I just felt blogged out.  The new semester at school started up, and I'm teaching some classes that I really enjoy.  And I've been expending my writing energy on some other things.  So, without any intentional decision, I just sort of wandered away from the blog and found that the stroll has been to my liking.  Occasionally I wondered as I wandered (the Christmas carol allusion seems to have some relevance in northern Indiana as there is still snow on the ground) if I might write up some thought or experience I had--it's not as though nothing has been happening in my mind or life.  But the impression was never strong enough for me to find my way back to this erstwhile clearing in the forest that increasingly seems to have become overgrown with weeds (all metaphorically speaking, of course).  All that changed last night.

We're into spring outdoor soccer season for son #2.  He has a couple of months left until he can drive, so dad's taxi service has resumed operation.  Last night practice was at an elementary school on the north side of town, where most people in our area live; we live on the south side so there is always a fair bit of driving involved for such events.  It is not time-effective to drop him off and go home, so instead I pop down to the Barnes & Noble for an hour and occupy myself with bookish things and libations from the Starbucks.  I see a former student and a current student, and chat with them a bit.  I'm mildly interested to learn that they are romantically involved.  But none of that has much to do with my story.

I have passed on a genetic disease called Raynaud's Syndrome to at least two of my sons.  When it's cold out (and sometimes even when it is not), the blood vessels in our fingers and toes constrict more than they are supposed to, and this can lead to these digits turning white.  It is a little bit freaky for people when they see it the first time, because (literally, I think) all the blood is drained out of some portion of them (the fingers, not the people seeing it).  As far as genetic diseases go, it's really not too bad.  I'm not looking for sympathy.  It's quite manageable, and I don't think it keeps me from living a full and productive life.  I'm on the mailing list for the quarterly newsletter from the Raynaud's Association of America (or some such name) in which they peddle electric socks and feature the testimonies of fellow genetic mutants with whom we can empathize.  That only has a little bit to do with my story.

The real story begins with son #2 getting done with practice and showing me his pearly white fingers and telling me how cold he is (remember there is still snow on the ground around here).  So he makes a pitch to stop at McDonalds and get some hot chocolate off the dollar menu.  I agree, since I know there is a McDonalds right on the way, and I feel some guilt for passing on that part of my genes to him (though I don't recall consciously deciding to give him that part of my DNA--so should I really feel guilty?) and because I've just enjoyed a $5 latte myself.  When we're in the drive-thru he says, "can you ask if they have caramel hot chocolate?"  I'm pretty sure they don't, so I agree to ask.  It turns out that they do, but of course it is not on the dollar menu.  But what am I supposed to do now?  Say to the drive-thru speaker/person:  "OK, I was just taking a poll; I really just want the cheap stuff."  So I pull up to the first window and cough up $2.67.  But there I see a sign that says, "Your 30 seconds start at the next window."  That catches my eye, so I read the fine print.  It says that I'm guaranteed to get my order at the next window within 30 seconds of pulling up or I get a coupon good for my next visit to McDonalds.  Always up for a contest, I instruct son #2 to stop doing whatever it is that he's normally doing on his phone and pull up a timer.  We pull up to the next window, and the clock begins.

There is a clerk there filling up some fountain drink, and I see behind her sitting on the counter a cup of what looks like it could contain a caramel hot chocolate.  So initially I'm a little disappointed.  But the clerk doesn't seem to see it and continues on with her job at the fountain.  I glance over to the stopwatch app and see that we're up to 20 seconds already, and no indication that the clerk knows that we are there or that the cup is behind her.  I try not to make any sudden movements that might alert her to our presence.  Now the clock hits 30 seconds, and still no service from the window, so son #2 and I start a little victory dance in our seats. Now she sees us and opens the window and hands us the beverage.  I hold the timer up to her to show that we are clearly past the guaranteed time of service, which I take to be legally binding.  She sees it and instantly understands what has happened.  Here, as best as I remember it, is a transcript of the ensuing conversation (and to help you have the full picture, she fits the stereotype of a McDonalds worker pretty well, and I've capitalized the words which were particularly stressed in her speech):

Her:  You were NOT timing me.  [I don't sense that this was a question, but more of a statement that seems to define reality itself.]
Me:  Well actually...
Her:  Listen, I was distracted.  Now TAKE your drink and go.
Me:  But isn't there a guarantee for this sort of thing? [I say, pointing to the sign on the window that seems to unambiguously say as much.]
Her:  Get AWAY from my window!

With that, she slams shut the translucent divider between us, which seems to consign us to separate universes--she to the world where she is the goddess because she controls the flow of nourishment (well... calories) to the outside world; we to that other world where we are the pawns of the gods and evidently have no recourse to injustice and cruel fate other than looking at each other saying "did that just happen?"

Anyway, it makes for a good story.  And with that I climb back upon this stump that has grown somewhat mossy and start making speeches again.  Since the meaning of the word seems to have significantly altered in our culture, I have no qualms making a "guarantee" that I'll write some more in the near future.

Saturday Night Dead

Continuing in the curmudgeonly theme of last post's "what is our culture coming to!?", today I'll whine about what is supposedly the acme of entertainment on television: Saturday Night Live.  We're big Mumford and Sons fans in our house, so when we heard they'd be the musical guests on the show this week, we set our mental calendars for last night.

It was a fun but tiring weekend, which included a trip to Indianapolis to watch son #2 make his varsity debut on the high school soccer team.  Friday night's game was lightening-ed out, but there were two on Saturday during bright sunshine and sustained 35 mph winds.  Then it was a hurried trip home to get son #3 to the high school's band-palooza at which he was a volunteer.  That got me home just in time to see ND prevail for the fourth week in a row on the football field.  Everyone else in the house was too tired to stay awake past 9:45pm, so they set the dvr to watch Saturday Night Live via recording on Sunday afternoon.  In one of my poorer decisions of the week, I decided to stay up and watch.

Talk about a massive waste of resources and what can only be called the nadir of culture (did I mention this would be curmudgeonly?)!  Are the comedians of our culture really so uncreative that the only way they know to get a laugh anymore is by appealing to sex?  I felt like a dirty old man sitting on my couch by myself peering through this magic window on the wall at the celebrity host doing an opening song-and-dance number where he ejaculated all around the studio.  The next skits were similarly raunchy.  It's a good thing I'm not God, because I probably would have nudged a meteor in the direction of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and taught them a lesson.  I know that recorded history shows that sex has been a main staple of entertainment for as long as there have been comedy acts.  Can we improve as a species in that regard?  We've done away with slavery; we've hugely increased life expectancy.  Is it too much to think that we might elevate mainstream comedy at least a notch or too above Sodom and Gomorrah?

Yes, Mumford and Sons did play a couple of numbers from their new album.  But it was nothing you can't find on YouTube already.  IMHO we'd all be better off if SNL would die off quickly.

The Dark Knight of My Soul (spoiler free)

Due to a curious turn of events, I saw the big movie twice this weekend.  Son #2 had been counting down the days to the release for a few months, and a couple of weeks back he talked me into being the chaperon for him and a couple of friends for the midnight showing on opening night (or rather, morning).  So we bought four tickets online, and I went to pick them up at the local megaplex.  In the meantime, the afore-mentioned son went on a trip to Honduras with our church where they distributed lots of care packages, did puppet shows for the kids, and had their own worldviews expanded.  (I do hope that the Hondurans benefited from the trip, but it is no secret that the massive short-term missions movement of this generation has a bigger effect on those who go than on those to whom they are going.   I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't go, just that we're cognizant and realistic about the effects (as an aside to this aside, my fine department has one of the premier scholars of such things; you can find his web presence here)).  On their way back, at a layover in Miami, he called and said, "Dad, I think I'm supposed to go to church camp next week."  He hadn't planned to go to camp, because he already missed a week of "voluntary" (read: you'd better choose to be here if you want us to think you take this seriously) soccer practices because of the Honduras trip.  The next week was the team camp portion of the voluntary summer practices.  So I say on the phone in my best counting-the-cost-voice, "OK, you do remember that soccer camp is next week?"  He was ready for that: "Yes I know, but Jesus is more important that soccer."  Parents can't help but be proud when their kids come to such conclusions on their own--even if "on their own" in this case means "in the middle of a bunch of other kids who are exerting positive peer pressure on each other".  So he got home that night, wrote an explanatory email to his coach (which was never acknowledged), and left the next morning for camp.  Sometime at Cedar Point the next day (which was somehow part of the "Jesus" that was more important than soccer camp), he realized that the cost of this decision included missing the midnight showing of Batman.  I got another call.  Not much to be done at that point.  I assured him that I wouldn't charge his friends for the tickets.

Since my wife had absolutely no interest in going to the movie, and all my kids were at camp, I asked my brother-in-law and his two sons if they'd like to go.  They jumped at the chance, because that is the sort of thing that we're all conditioned to jump at.  The account of my evening more properly belongs as another example in Farmer Lenny's very fine blog posting here on cultural peer pressure.  It is certainly the culturally cool thing to go to the midnight opening of this week's event of the decade.  We met there at 11:15, and the entire parking lot was already full.  The moving was showing on eight screens  (maybe more).  We couldn't find even two seats together in the comfortable viewing zones of the theatre, so the four of us sat together in the second row in front of this massive screen, clear on the right side (next to the speaker that the baby crying comes out of during the public service announcement about not adding your own sound track to the movie).  There was a very large human in the seat next to me (not one of my relatives) who took more than his share of our common armrest, and throughout the night he perpetually bounced his legs with sufficient force to impart enough momentum to our row of seats that if harnessed could have equaled the power output of the fusion generator in the movie.  Previews these days are edited into a chaotic stream of half-second shots with a thumping soundtrack; when seen from my viewing angle and heard primarily through the right-front floor speaker, the twenty-five minutes of these gave me a good dose of vertigo.  The last midnight opening I went to was The Return of the King.  I actually dozed off in that one somewhere around hour three.  So this time before leaving home I brewed a pot of coffee and took it with me in a thermal mug.  In the excitement of the build up before the movie started, I drained the whole thing.  By about an hour and a half into the movie, my bladder was talking to me.  I didn't want to leave to answer it, because I was already slightly confused by the story line (mostly since I couldn't understand much of Bane's dialog through the one-channel speaker system).  I guess the upside of that is that either the caffeine or the need to relieve myself kept me awake just fine.  My other strategy for staying awake was to snack on something throughout the movie.  I brought a sandwich baggie full of my homemade trail mix of peanuts, raisins, and chocolate chips.  (Technically, I suppose this is against the policy of the cinema (as was the coffee), but I promise you that it didn't cost them any money since there is no way that I'd be paying movie prices for my snacks.)  Unfortunately the chocolate chips melted into a sticky mass.  After the movie, my nephews were sure we should wait until the end of the credits because there would probably be some secret message or hilarious hidden scene (like superheros sitting in a diner eating sandwiches together).  There wasn't.  And that delayed us sufficiently to be stuck in the parking lot traffic for thirty minutes with the hordes of people who couldn't wait to get away from what was the greatest experience of their lives.  At home I climbed in bed and watched the clock flip to 4:00am.  The coffee and adrenaline kept me pretty well awake until the sun started to come up.

Was it worth it? I can say that I was among the very first to see the movie. But now the "very first" are "almost everyone". What used to be an exclusive midnight event that came with bragging rights, has now become the expectation. My boys got home the next day and wanted to go see the movie. I took them, and said we better get there early so we get decent seats. We didn't make it as early as I thought we needed to. We only got to the door of the theatre 30 minutes before showtime, on the Friday night opening at 7:05 pm, which I figured would be among the most popular show times. There were only four other people there. By opening night, everyone had already seen it. It was yesterday's news (or rather, this morning's news).

If anyone still cares in a day or two, I'll write up what I actually thought about the movie.