If you glance over to see what books I'm reading right now, you'll see that I've picked up Prisoner of Trebekistan by former Jeopardy! champ Bob Harris. This is because I received an e-mail today from the friendly folks at Sony Pictures Studios inviting me to a contestant audition on March 14th. Yikes! Guess I passed the online test, though.
I figure reading the book can't hurt, although it might psych me out a little...
Friday, February 15, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Why Strip Clubs Bother Me
A couple of months ago, to celebrate a coworker's last day, a group of us from work went out for drinks. This is not something I do frequently -- the last time I can recall doing this was well over 10 years ago. Anyway, we went to the local El Torito because they were the only place in town that had karaoke on Friday nights, and this was something a couple of us wanted to do.
Because I knew I had to drive a long distance home, I had two quick drinks and stopped so I would be sure to be sober when I left. As I sobered up rapidly, the rest of my party kept drinking. As I got levelheaded, they got reckless. The karaoke D.J. was terrible; he wouldn't play any of the songs that we wanted to sing to, and we got a little restless. One of my female coworkers suggested that we pick up our stakes and go elsewhere. When I inquired as to where she thought we should go, she replied, "City Lights."
City Lights is a strip club in a seedy area over by the airport. I blanched at this suggestion and replied that I had never been to a strip club and would prefer to keep it that way. Around the table the gasps of surprise were audible. No one could believe I had never been to a strip club. It was something that they did quite frequently.
The thing that surprised me about this was the fact that, of the seven people sitting around that table, five of them were women. When did women start hanging out at strip clubs? This fascinated and disgusted me simultaneously. My group began trying to convince me that going to a strip club was a fun experience and something I should try. One of the young ladies at my table, a girl barely twenty-one years of age, tried to convince me to give it a whirl by offering that a lot of her friends from high school worked as dancers at places like City Lights and that "they were all nice girls." For some reason, not only did this not convince me to go, but it depressed me to think of these "nice girls" taking off their clothes for a group of anonymous guys (and, apparently now, gals) so that they can get some weird jollies and hopefully have them stuff a few dollar bills into their g-strings.
Honestly, I have no problem with what people do in their bedrooms, so long as it's legal and consensual. I just find strip clubs to be so incredibly degrading to women, more so than even pornography. I guess my rationale is that if a woman is on the pages of Penthouse or some like-minded publication, she is turned into a fantasy-object for the viewer. Put that same woman on stage, dancing, wrapping herself around a stripper pole, and not only is it a very public exhibition with groups of people getting themselves lathered up at the show, but by the simple act of just being there and hearing the exhortations, the catcalls, the insults -- everything changes. In my opinion, the woman has declined from "fantasy object" to just "object," and all the way to "piece of meat."
I have heard that strippers, even at dives like City Lights, can make a lot of money. Well, all I can say is that I sure hope so. I'm sure that stripping for strangers takes a pretty big psychological toll on you. They'll need that money for therapy later on.
I dunno. Am I being stupid here, or do I have a point? In the meantime, I have an El Torito cocktail napkin signed by my coworkers that I can redeem for a lap dance (at their expense) at City Lights anytime in the future. Whoopee.
Because I knew I had to drive a long distance home, I had two quick drinks and stopped so I would be sure to be sober when I left. As I sobered up rapidly, the rest of my party kept drinking. As I got levelheaded, they got reckless. The karaoke D.J. was terrible; he wouldn't play any of the songs that we wanted to sing to, and we got a little restless. One of my female coworkers suggested that we pick up our stakes and go elsewhere. When I inquired as to where she thought we should go, she replied, "City Lights."
City Lights is a strip club in a seedy area over by the airport. I blanched at this suggestion and replied that I had never been to a strip club and would prefer to keep it that way. Around the table the gasps of surprise were audible. No one could believe I had never been to a strip club. It was something that they did quite frequently.
The thing that surprised me about this was the fact that, of the seven people sitting around that table, five of them were women. When did women start hanging out at strip clubs? This fascinated and disgusted me simultaneously. My group began trying to convince me that going to a strip club was a fun experience and something I should try. One of the young ladies at my table, a girl barely twenty-one years of age, tried to convince me to give it a whirl by offering that a lot of her friends from high school worked as dancers at places like City Lights and that "they were all nice girls." For some reason, not only did this not convince me to go, but it depressed me to think of these "nice girls" taking off their clothes for a group of anonymous guys (and, apparently now, gals) so that they can get some weird jollies and hopefully have them stuff a few dollar bills into their g-strings.
Honestly, I have no problem with what people do in their bedrooms, so long as it's legal and consensual. I just find strip clubs to be so incredibly degrading to women, more so than even pornography. I guess my rationale is that if a woman is on the pages of Penthouse or some like-minded publication, she is turned into a fantasy-object for the viewer. Put that same woman on stage, dancing, wrapping herself around a stripper pole, and not only is it a very public exhibition with groups of people getting themselves lathered up at the show, but by the simple act of just being there and hearing the exhortations, the catcalls, the insults -- everything changes. In my opinion, the woman has declined from "fantasy object" to just "object," and all the way to "piece of meat."
I have heard that strippers, even at dives like City Lights, can make a lot of money. Well, all I can say is that I sure hope so. I'm sure that stripping for strangers takes a pretty big psychological toll on you. They'll need that money for therapy later on.
I dunno. Am I being stupid here, or do I have a point? In the meantime, I have an El Torito cocktail napkin signed by my coworkers that I can redeem for a lap dance (at their expense) at City Lights anytime in the future. Whoopee.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
10 Random Things
At the insistence of Liz. Here's 10 random things about me.
1. I memorized the 50 states in alphabetical order when I was in the first grade and at one time could recite them in 14.5 seconds.
2. In my youth, I was able to put my feet behind my head and do other strange acts of contortion with my lower body. About 5 years ago, I tried it again. I was still able to do it, but my left knee hurt for about a week afterward and I swore I'd never do it again. In the last month or so, my left knee has been a source of agonizing pain, even though I've suffered no trauma to said joint. Is there a causal relationship here?
3. I usually order a brandy and soda at a bar.
4. Just the thought of going into a strip club fills me with shame and horror.
5. I stepped on a baby food jar when I was three and got 18 stitches in my tiny little foot.
6. The first words my wife-to-be ever spoke to me were, "You're Gumby, aren't you?"
7. I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue.
8. I'm quite content with the way my life turned out, but I wish I could get a do-over on two things.
9. I never win anything - at casinos, the lottery (save for two $100 prizes in an incredibly lucky five-month span), anything. One time, in a sweepstakes sponsored by Skin Bracer aftershave, I won fifth prize, a copy of Your Income Tax 1975, by J.K. Lasser. I won it in 1976.
10. I took the online qualification test for Jeopardy three nights ago. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.
1. I memorized the 50 states in alphabetical order when I was in the first grade and at one time could recite them in 14.5 seconds.
2. In my youth, I was able to put my feet behind my head and do other strange acts of contortion with my lower body. About 5 years ago, I tried it again. I was still able to do it, but my left knee hurt for about a week afterward and I swore I'd never do it again. In the last month or so, my left knee has been a source of agonizing pain, even though I've suffered no trauma to said joint. Is there a causal relationship here?
3. I usually order a brandy and soda at a bar.
4. Just the thought of going into a strip club fills me with shame and horror.
5. I stepped on a baby food jar when I was three and got 18 stitches in my tiny little foot.
6. The first words my wife-to-be ever spoke to me were, "You're Gumby, aren't you?"
7. I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue.
8. I'm quite content with the way my life turned out, but I wish I could get a do-over on two things.
9. I never win anything - at casinos, the lottery (save for two $100 prizes in an incredibly lucky five-month span), anything. One time, in a sweepstakes sponsored by Skin Bracer aftershave, I won fifth prize, a copy of Your Income Tax 1975, by J.K. Lasser. I won it in 1976.
10. I took the online qualification test for Jeopardy three nights ago. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.
The Insufferable Art Garfunkel
I was reading a little article in the New Yorker about Art Garfunkel and how he has posted on his website a list of every book he’s read since 1968. It totals some crazy number like 1023 books, and the vast majority are books that “normal” folks like you and me will probably never read – tomes by Proust and Kant and Spinoza and probably works by Homer, Socrates and Plato in the original Greek. Every now and then he throws a bone to the layman (he read The DaVinci Code, for example), just so he appears to be down-to-earth. This was all very fascinating, I love to read about what other people read, and sometimes it spurs me on to try something new in my own literary world. But then he has a quote, “I avoid fluff.” He continues, “The stuff that men are always reading on planes: I don’t read that,” and he goes on to disparage the whole subgenre of postmodern fiction, just because he didn’t care for Gravity’s Rainbow (he found it “fraudulent”.)
Screw you, Art Garfunkel. No wonder Paul Simon went solo.
Literature snobs like Garfunkel just really get under my skin. I don’t give two whits if some guy wants to while away his leisure time reading Chaucer and Milton and Dante, in fact, I admire it. I’ve read quite a few classics out of a sense of duty, feeling that I wouldn’t be a rounded human being without them. I count Moby-Dick and Crime and Punishment among my favorite books of all time, and I’m a long time subscriber to the New Yorker, which screams “pretentious,” at least in my circles. But to put down a bunch of people because they may enjoy John Grisham or W.E.B. Griffin, Nicholas Sparks or Jan Karon, man, that stuff just really ticks me off. “I’m too good for that drivel,” is what Garfunkel seems to be saying, thumbing his nose at about 96.75% of the literature out there today.
One of my favorite authors and new literary hero (and someone Garfunkel wouldn’t deign to have in his library), Nick Hornby delivers a few zingers aimed at “literati” like Garfunkel in the preface to his book Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. This book, which is a collection of columns he wrote for some magazine that no one’s ever heard of, is a fascinating read. In his columns, he lists books he’s read in a particular month, and then gives a few comments about them. His earlier collection of columns, The Polysyllabic Spree, inspired me to try to find a few of the titles he spoke fondly of, and I’m sure that once I’m finished with this latest one, I will feel the same way.
Anyway, the preface to Housekeeping is the best part so far, with Hornby sticking up for everyone who has read something like The Notebook and liked it, while taking aim at “clever-dick” critics like Garfunkel. Hell, I’ll say it: I enjoyed Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Yep, gotta love chick-lit.
Nick Hornby also has some valuable advice in this preface. Something that I wish I had read about 30 years ago. Namely, if you start reading something and you don’t care for it, if you can’t make it through a page without falling asleep, then READ SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU’LL ENJOY. I can’t begin to tell you how long it took me to slog through One Hundred Years of Solitude. I guess I’m glad I read it, but I could have read a dozen other books that I might have enjoyed during that time. About two years ago, I got the book Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle. Now, T.C. Boyle is one of my very favorite authors ever, but there was something about this book that made it feel like I was reading it underwater. I didn’t enjoy it, the book felt like lead in my hands. But I felt guilty that I wasn’t reading it and liking it, so I read NOTHING rather than that doorstop. Finally, I got the guts to abandon it and move on, and now I’m currently reading like a madman (I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it!)
But, take a look at those books that I’ve recently read. Are they substantial enough? Do you think Art Garfunkel would approve?
Screw you, Art Garfunkel. No wonder Paul Simon went solo.
Literature snobs like Garfunkel just really get under my skin. I don’t give two whits if some guy wants to while away his leisure time reading Chaucer and Milton and Dante, in fact, I admire it. I’ve read quite a few classics out of a sense of duty, feeling that I wouldn’t be a rounded human being without them. I count Moby-Dick and Crime and Punishment among my favorite books of all time, and I’m a long time subscriber to the New Yorker, which screams “pretentious,” at least in my circles. But to put down a bunch of people because they may enjoy John Grisham or W.E.B. Griffin, Nicholas Sparks or Jan Karon, man, that stuff just really ticks me off. “I’m too good for that drivel,” is what Garfunkel seems to be saying, thumbing his nose at about 96.75% of the literature out there today.
One of my favorite authors and new literary hero (and someone Garfunkel wouldn’t deign to have in his library), Nick Hornby delivers a few zingers aimed at “literati” like Garfunkel in the preface to his book Housekeeping vs. The Dirt. This book, which is a collection of columns he wrote for some magazine that no one’s ever heard of, is a fascinating read. In his columns, he lists books he’s read in a particular month, and then gives a few comments about them. His earlier collection of columns, The Polysyllabic Spree, inspired me to try to find a few of the titles he spoke fondly of, and I’m sure that once I’m finished with this latest one, I will feel the same way.
Anyway, the preface to Housekeeping is the best part so far, with Hornby sticking up for everyone who has read something like The Notebook and liked it, while taking aim at “clever-dick” critics like Garfunkel. Hell, I’ll say it: I enjoyed Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Yep, gotta love chick-lit.
Nick Hornby also has some valuable advice in this preface. Something that I wish I had read about 30 years ago. Namely, if you start reading something and you don’t care for it, if you can’t make it through a page without falling asleep, then READ SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU’LL ENJOY. I can’t begin to tell you how long it took me to slog through One Hundred Years of Solitude. I guess I’m glad I read it, but I could have read a dozen other books that I might have enjoyed during that time. About two years ago, I got the book Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle. Now, T.C. Boyle is one of my very favorite authors ever, but there was something about this book that made it feel like I was reading it underwater. I didn’t enjoy it, the book felt like lead in my hands. But I felt guilty that I wasn’t reading it and liking it, so I read NOTHING rather than that doorstop. Finally, I got the guts to abandon it and move on, and now I’m currently reading like a madman (I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it!)
But, take a look at those books that I’ve recently read. Are they substantial enough? Do you think Art Garfunkel would approve?
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