What’s your favorite John Wayne movie?
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Once again, our DSL was very buggy yesterday and continuing into today, hence the lack of posting. But anyway: one of the local sports-talk radio guys here claimed on the air a few weeks ago that he had just that morning eaten his first banana. Ever. In his life. And he’s over 40. White American male, over 40, ate his first-ever banana in 2011. Am I alone in thinking that this is incredibly weird?
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Cal had a post about “hype” the other day, in which he discusses the upcoming wedding of a couple of Royals in the United Kingdom. In the post, he describes some things he’s avoided because of the hype surrounding them:
I am totally consistent in my attitudes when it comes to hype. I hate anyone telling me that I have to see something or read something or listen to something. Nine times out of ten their recommendations are correct and I may get around to them eventually but initially I just want to run screaming in the other direction.
For example:
I have never seen ‘E.T.’ nor will I ever see it. If they show it on a plane I will have to take a parachute and jump.
Now, this strikes me as odd, since the hype over E.T. happened thirty years ago, and now the movie is pretty much a classic. Some hyped things fade away, as you’d expect, but others demonstrate that they can withstand the Test of Time, as it were, so by this point, reacting against E.T. because lots of people like it seems weird. So I said so, and Cal responded:
I just don’t wanna see E.T. because I want to have ONE movie I never see and that seemed like a good one. If I never see ‘Smurfs’ then I am a discriminating movie goer. If I don’t see E.T. then I am just a freak and I can live with that.
Huh. Here again I’m confused; the very nature of time and the fact that I’ll never have enough of it pretty much guarantees that I’ll always have a movie that’s a classic that I never saw. Same thing with books. Same with music. That realization can be a bit liberating, actually; I remember, back when I was an active film music fan, that there was a particular record producer whom I thought was just a giant jerk, so I publicly stated that I wasn’t going to be buying anything from his label, ever. Someone else chimed in to say, “You’re just depriving yourself!” My response was, “I’ll never have time to hear all the music I want to hear anyway.” Which is true. (It also helped that the records the guy makes — re-recordings of campy sci-fi film scores from the 1950s — are of zero interest to me.)
So where am I going with this? Where’s the Random Wednesday Conversation Starter? I’m not trying to pick on Cal here; I was just thrown a bit by the resolute nature of his being against the hype for what is now an old movie. Scary thought: E.T. is older now than Casablanca was when I was born.
Anyway, here’s the question: What highly-regarded movie, or book, or whatever, exists that you’re pretty sure you’re never going to see, read, or hear, for whatever reason? (And thanks, Cal, for the thought-provoking post!)
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
ANOTHER Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Well, it happened: the Conversation Starter I posed this morning is actually a repeat. I had no recollection of the earlier post — it’s May 6, 2009, for those who are curious — and I genuinely thought I was posing a new question. So, here’s the new question: was this an easily-explained goof on my part since I can’t possibly remember every post I’ve ever created here, or is this the first sign in what will be my long slow decline into inevitable dementia as I end up forgetting my own name? Discuss!
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
I asked this question on Facebook and got a total of two replies (probably because FB’s new “Ask a Question” feature is, really, kind of annoying), so here it is. It’s the middle of the night. For some reason you’re staggering through your living room with the lights out…and you step on something. What would you rather step on? A Lego brick that your kid left out, with all of its very sharp corners to dig into the soft flesh of the underside of your foot? Or the wonderful, cold squishiness of three-hour-old cat vomit?
(I literally can’t decide which of these I’d rather have happen less!)