The word "genius" is thrown around a little too willie-nillie, diminishing any real value behind it. I use the term a bit much myself. Usually in reference to a new Wilco album or Sophia Coppola film when it fact, these pop culture passers-by hardly compare to the life-altering contributions brought to us by Da Vinci, Einstein or Galileo.
But even in my most egregious hyperbole, I don't suck the meaning out of this word quite like the Apple corporation does with their hugely over-promising "Genius Bar."
The over-stylized punk who leans up to you from the Apple store counter, with his smug sense of self-importance, seems to have neither graduated from high school nor realize that before phones and MP3 players, Apple actually made computers. But hey. We're dealing with geniuses here.
Recently I took a 9-month old lap-top in to have the plastic casing replaced since it's been stripping away on the sides. And it's only 9 months old. Which is fucking ridiculous (but that's another issue).
On each of my three visits to the store to get this repair underway (genius), I noticed the work order they wanted me to sign listed an old address of mine from an entirely different city and the corresponding phone number. I alerted the geniuses to this problem on my previous two visits and was assured that they would correct that, no problem.
When it came time for me to actually turn over my $1500 computer for repair, the address and number were still listed incorrectly. I pointed it out to the young, female genius, who took it over to her genius manager. After a few minutes of genius conferencing, she returned to report that this group of geniuses could not make the changes at the store and I would have to call Apple Care to update that information.
I took a moment to look around and reflect.
I was surrounded by at least 30 computers in a retail environment that sells machines designed to create, store and distribute information, all of which were connected to the Internet. And, lest we not forget, three of these computers were manned by self-proclaimed geniuses.
I've never left a sweater at a dry-cleaners without the store proprietor, usually an old Chinese man who doesn't speak a lick of English, taking an accurate address. I've rarely made a dinner reservation without the host taking a current phone number. These aren't computer companies. And they're not staffed with geniuses. Just your average, everyday morons. And somehow, in their charmingly inferior minded way, they developed a system that allows them to take current contact information.
I explained this to the team of Apple geniuses and got an unwelcome, albeit genius, response: "Sorry, dude, that's how our system works - just call Apple Care."
Before I could grab my laptop and shove it down the throat of this pretentious faux-hawked genius before me, an unassuming techie emerged from the back. He heard about the guy in front freaking out about an address correction (me) and was in the back making the necessary adjustments. Seems it was really no problem at all. You just enter the correct information into the computer.
Luckily, Apple makes a pretty good product that you don't have to be a genius to figure out. And even more luckily, I wasn't there to solve any software issues. God help me if anything goes wrong with my OS - I'm pretty sure Apple geniuses think that's an acronym for "Old School."
And while he's no Picasso, I think there's something just a little bit genius, or at least clever and insightful about Mike Judge's take on the degradation of human intellect.
I am a married man with a 2-year-old daughter and a full time job. There are very few moments in my life that are exclusively and unequivocally mine.
Sad as this may be, those moments typically occur behind a stainless steel, institutional type door, sometimes with a half naked man only inches away.Nonetheless, I savor these moments.
When I feel a moment like this coming on, usually about an hour and a half after my first cup of coffee, I prepare some light reading material - the sports guy’s column off of espn.com, or, if I’ve already read it, whatever I can find on Slate. And just so that no one in the office asks why I’m printing online magazines, rather than reading them straight from the screen, I cut and paste the content into a word document so it appears as if I’m simply reviewing my own hard work (any coworkers reading this should know that I use the black and white printer and reduce the font size to 9 pt. so as to keep the whole article under three pages. And I’m a pretty fast reader so we’re only talking 6-7 minutes total). I then sneak said article into my pocket so the receptionist, who I pass with every trip, won’t notice me carrying papers into the can.
This is all very premeditated and has become a natural part of my daily routine. Don’t take that away from me.
But for whatever reason, the building in which I work has hired a female custodian to clean the men’s bathrooms. I like a clean bathroom as much as the next guy, and frankly, I don’t care who cleans it. It seems to me that if a woman is going to be cleaning a men’s room and doesn’t want to be exposed to the inherent maleness that exists in there, they should take care of their custodial duties after hours.
Yet, every day, just as I reach that critical point of the article, where Dana Stevens explains to me why any guy who bashes Sex in the City, The Movie must be a misogynist wife-beater, or as Bill Simmons waxes poetic on the similarities between Red Sox Nation and the chosen people, in walks the Poo Lady.
Every fucking day. Regardless of the time.
She knocks first. But she enters as she knocks. And the only thing you can blurt out fast enough to avoid through-the-stall confrontation is a castrated sounding “I’m in here!”
She promptly retreats, but the damage is done. You know she’s out there. Just waiting to disinfect the foulness I’m in here creating. And she’s no more happy about it than I am.
No more Dana Stevens. No more sacred moment to myself. It’s just finish up and get out. And if all that weren’t enough, now I have to walk out past this woman and suffer the indignity of giving her my post-crap “all clear in there” thumbs up.
Maybe next time I’ll just let her come in and we’ll both go about our respective businesses.
I received a new friend request this morning (the friend followed all the rules from my previous post and I'm happy to have received it), but as I responded, it all became very clear what's going on here.
Facebook is the GOP's vehicle to take control of our minds and in one fell swoop - or poke as the case may be - program all the facebook friends to vote for John McCain. Yes, yes, I know there's Obama propoganda everywhere you look on the social networking site, but hear me out.
The right wing media moguls (not naming names. Rupert Murdoch.), put out this milk toast site that somehow, no one can resist. We check in daily to find out who's friends with who and watch precocious little bastard children playing guitar on our funwalls. And when we least expect it, say around October 28, a transmission goes out across the network and quietly enters into all of our subconscious.
We don't notice it. We hardly even talk about it. But somehow, come Super Tuesday, John McCain doesn't seem like such a bad option after all. I mean, he's not Bush, right? Bush is from Texas. This guy's from Arizona. And Arizona is cool. They have Sedona. And he's a war hero, so he knows how to kick some ass. Except for that time he was a P.O.W., at which point he probably got his ass kicked pretty bad. But that just shows the guy can take some licks.
I'm not endorsing McCain. Now. I'm just saying, when you're in that polling booth and a swarthy man with white hair, who's rhetoric could single-handily put Lunestra out of business seems like the right choice, but you're not sure why, just remember. Facebook.
Yes, we all hate the phenomenon of Facebook. And no, I don't use the word phenomenon lightly. I know you kids have been hip to this shit for the past 6 years or so, but seriously, what happened 12 months ago that made it a mandatory for anyone under the age of 60 to have a page, much less a widget, fun-wall and all the other crap that comes with social networking 2.0? It's like some Borg that came out of nowhere with its brain-sucking virus and took complete control of all of our remaining dignity. But that's not why we hate it. The real reason we all hate it, is because it no longer belongs to the young, cool kids. It's everyone's now.
And yet, without a facebook page you are a social and professional leper, quickly fading off into obscurity. I went and drank from the FB cooler and like everyone else, I find myself checking up on old friends, in almost compulsive, stalker-like fashion. I realized the other night that this site had transcended critical mass when one of my closest friends, who lives a scant 4 blocks away, told me he had a link he wanted me to check out later, and while I looked over his shoulder, he sent it to me via our facebook's accounts. How that's easier than good old fashioned email, I still can't comprehend, but apparently, this is now the norm.
So here we all are, all of us, linked together by a pretty rudimentary online interface. There's only like 3 degrees of separation between most of us and with enough friend searches, you soon find that we're all part of this big, happy incestuous popularity contest. But with anything of this magnitude, I believe in some ground rules:
#1. When you contact that old bud you haven't seen in over 10 years, remind us who the fuck you are.
I'm not saying I'm so popular I can't keep track of the many friends I've had over the years (I'm up to 185 at the moment), but if you got married and are no longer Betty Maiden Name, chances are, I've not followed your life so closely that I'm privy to you and your husband's shared surname.
It's pretty simple - when you send a friend request to someone you knew before you changed your name, sex, appearance, etc., drop a short note explaining as much. I'll probably accept your friend request either way, because I'm very shallow and feel the number of friends I have speaks to the kind of person I am. And if I don't accept your friend request, or I tell you I don't recall anyone by the name of Betty Married Name, then all of the sudden I'm the prick who got too big for his britches. If the point is to reconnect, just tell me who you are. Which takes me to ground rule number 2. #2. If we've never met before, and I wouldn't know you even if you did introduce yourself via Facebook, do we really need to be Facebook friends? Yes, I know I said I want as many friends as I can get, but aren't there better ways to introduce ourselves whether for professional or for personal reasons? Otherwise, the future of our relationship will be reduced to something akin to what I have with the other 180 people with whom I have nothing left to say post-"How you been?". #3. Just because someone posted a heartwarming video on your page about a kitten that was rescued from near death, and there's a forward button at the bottom, use some discretion as to where that forward goes. We may be Facebook friends, but I hate kittens and I hate heartwarming stories. I will delete 99% of your silly little videos from my page almost immediately and I don't want to feel like you're checking up on me to see if I still have it proudly displayed.
#4. (And lastly for now) Facebook has this great little tool that tells me when it's one of my friends' birthdays. Keep in mind, this is the same friend I haven't spoken to since 1989 and probably won't speak to again anytime soon. But I feel guilty that they know that I know it's their birthday and I'm not wishing them a good one. So just for the record, unless we've wished each other a happy birthday in the last few years, please do not take the time to wish me one. I'm good.
I'm sure I will have lots to add to this list of Facebook faux pas-s, but for now, please, just tell me who the fuck you are.
Perhaps I deserved it. Maybe it was those bearded ladies who wished this upon me (I never considered the fact that they might be witches, or that they'd even know my lambaste against them existed, but it just goes to show, you can't underestimate the will of a woman who carefully grooms out her facial follicles.)
Then again, it may have just been that I have a 2-year-old who picks up these filthy little diseases in her daily routine of being a 2-year-old, and this particular virus, which only crops up in May and November, can only be spread through feces when there are no visible blisters, and the sweet little angel of mine decided to crap in the tub, something she hasn't done since she was two weeks old, during her most contagious state, unbeknownst to my wife and I because her only symptom was a short-lived fever.
Or it could have been the bearded witches. F- them, anyway.
Whatever the cause, I was stricken last week with hand, foot and mouth disease.
For the uninitiated, there was no livestock involved - this is not hoof and mouth disease. It's totally different. Well, the "mouth" and the "disease" part are the same, but otherwise, totally different.
It all began a good week after my daughter had spent a few hours just slightly off her game. My wife and I both felt like shit on a Thursday night, crawled into bed around 9pm and didn't wake up 'til 10 the next morning. I dragged my flu-feeling ass into work, but complained to anyone who would stand close enough to listen and scooted out early.
The next night, my wife said that swallowing felt like daggers going down her throat. Now I'm no doctor, but I looked at her throat, and unless daggers look like little blistery white sores all over her tongue, these were no daggers.
As my wife is prone to do, she went to the Internet for a diagnosis. The conclusion: tongue cancer. It just so happened that I discovered red sores near my big toe around the same time and I thought I had a bad case of athlete's foot. Neither the tongue cancer nor the athlete's foot seemed too related to our mutual fevers just 24 hours earlier, but the dueling diagnoses seemed right at the moment and we went to sleep.
The next day, a Sunday, I was working at a remote location with about five people from my office and an extra 20-30 people I had never met before. Before my very eyes, about 30 blisters popped up across my hands. With no cell coverage and no Internet access and a bunch of folks who probably didn't want to know that someone in their vicinity had blisters inexplicably popping up all over their hands, I came to the conclusion that I must have the dreaded hand, foot and mouth disease I had only just heard about last November when the toddler circuit spread it last.
The athlete's feet I noticed the night before was now consuming my thoughts, with the feeling spreading across all my toes, but well disguised in both socks and shoes. The only thing that took my mind off them were the blisters that continued to surface on my palms in plain view of anyone looking. As the day concluded, several handshakes were offered up to me, and not wanting to explain my predicament, I simply accepted and silently wished them the best.
That night, my wife and I practiced medicine some more by searching HF&M online. Seems we had a textbook case (all except for the part about not being kids) and we were politely asked by everyone we knew to stay home until all signs passed.
It was a long week of feeling perfectly fine, but being so contagious we were quarantined to our own little family of filth. The blisters did not go away gradually and I soon wondered, would these be with me forever. I love my family, but I was worried I wouldn't last alone with them for much longer.
And then they all just disappeared. Except for the two big ones (one pictured above). Those popped and scabbed over, just like the Internet told us they would. So here I am, back at work and feeling perfectly hand, foot and mouth free.
In today’s episode of Northwest style, we head south to Portland, OR and feature bearded ladies.
These are not the women you see at the checkout stand with an excess amount of unwanted facial hair under their chin if they have a couple of those. That's just mean. These are also not the stuck up little waif bitches with fuzz on their cheek bones because they don’t eat enough (by the way, I did check up on that and it is in fact true that women with eating disorders develop facial hair as their bodies revert to some Neanderthal means of protection. So for all you ladies out there thinking about taking up a nasty bulimia habit, this is one guy who prefers his women facial hair free even if that means a little on the chubby side. If you're not really a stuck-up bitch, just an insecure woman with an eating disorder, may I just suggest, cheeseburgers. Super delicious. Extra fattening). Oh, and this is not about pre-op trannies, either. They are clearly tortured souls who have to endure a lot more than my snickers.
No, these ladies have gone to great lengths to develop these sexy facial locks while remaining otherwise true to their estrogen. They are women who appear to have shaved certain parts in an effort to groom out a goatee or perhaps a wispy little fu man chu. Women who seem to feel entitled to experience the male-dominated, yet drone-like morning ritual of having to shave. And at the risk of sounding presumptuous, these are women who always show up alongside other, more feminine looking women – psst, I think they may be lesbians.
Mostly and for no apparent reason, I see these women at the New Seasons on 33rd and Killingsworth. And much like the aforementioned utilikilt, I have never spotted this phenomenon outside the city limits from whence they come. Which is weird, as this trend requires no store of any convenience, other than one that sells razors.
My only real negative run in with the lez-beard happened at synagogue. Now I’m not a religious man, and I sort of dread going to temple all together, but once a year, tremendous guilt takes over and we convince ourselves that we should at least try something Jewish. This particular sect is very progressive (sic. hippies), geared to young families, minimal religious services and just a nice place for young Jewish kids to run around with each other. If these are the faith-based dues I must pay, I can handle that.
We took my mother-in-law with us on our last religious outing, which gave her great nachus (sp? - yiddish for pride). But my mother-in-law comes from a pretty traditional background and we had to prepare her for the hippie schtetle she was about to enter. She’s been to the Northwest before and even had her own run in with a utilikilt so there isn’t much that can put this woman off, but we offered some fair warning nonetheless.
Being the communal congregation that this is, everyone is encouraged to bring a dish to share, and following a short service, a potluck dinner is served. I just need to say here that eating a bunch stranger’s Jewish cuisine gives me great nausea (English for vomit) and I refuse to partake. But I sat with my wife, daughter and mother-in-law who scarfed down the kugle like it was their last supper.
And then the bearded lesbian approached. There was one vacant seat right next to my mother-in-law and of course, hairy-face headed right for it. Her beard was more of a goatee, but a nice thick-ish one and all gray to match her gray head of hair. And she was a friendly sort. So much so that she immediately engaged my mother-in-law in a long, close-talking conversation.
My mother-in-law didn’t flinch. It was incredible. 50-some years of honing her polite allowed this woman to stare in the face of a circus freak and carry on a natural conversation. I watched in wide-eyed wonder as this follicular female ate blintzes and talked, while bits of cheese and batter flew sporadically through her whiskers which, thankfully acted as a mini-barrier. The whole thing was truly horrifying.
I don't so much judge these women for choosing to grow out their beards. They are entitled. But by the same token, the rest of our non-female-bearded society is entitled to stare, point and shout the occasional "oh, my god, look - that woman has a beard." It's only fair.
Postscript: As fascinating as I find this cultural trend, there is a real dearth of information online about it. The only photo and discussion I could find on topic came from the lady pictured above, Jennifer Miller and she is a professor at Indiana University, which totally debunks my whole Portland-centric thesis. She seems to have been afflicted by unwanted facial hair and chose to embrace the situation, rather than cultivate it as some kind of alternative style. Horrible example all around. Oh, and if any bearded women stumble onto this blog and decide to go back to your silky smooth, feminine face, I encourage you to do so and even included this link for your convenience.
An oxymoron, you say? Those Capilene-clad jam-band groupies wouldn’t know style if it bit ‘em in their Birkenstocks.
Having lived all over the Pacific Northwest for the last 14 years and being very proud of that fact, I should take umbrage with this preconception.
But you’re dead fuckin’ on.
It’s as if someone decreed Portland, Seattle the “why bother” fashion capital of the world.
Huge rubber toed shoes that look clownish and uncomfortable – a Northwest staple. Hair that hasn’t been washed in far too long and exists in places it shouldn’t – right next to me, right now at the coffee shop.
For the most part, I’m ok with this. I’m no Pierre Cardin myself, and I appreciate the lack of pressure in that regard.
But there are a couple things going on out here that just aren’t right. They are desperate attempts at creating a style that’s not stylish. They are completely isolated to their city of origin, failing even to catch on in the other major cities of the Northwest. And they irritate me so much, I’ve had to cut ties as a result.
Today we’ll start with Seattle and the utilikilt.
A heavily pleated, durable fabric skirt with pockets, the utilikilt is worn primarily by men – I have spotted women wearing these atrocities, but that is not what we’re talking about. The men who wear utilikilts are not exclusively gay – I have spotted gay men in them, too but they’re only part of what I’m talking about.
The real demographic of note is the burly, usually quite stocky, and always thickly bearded, straight Seattle man who wears them as some kind of Northwest badge of honor.
This is not some miniscule segment of Seattle society. This shit is rampant. You see them all over town, but more frequently performing manual labor like when there’s heavy lifting to do or sawing wood. They can be worn to go out on the town, but this is not their common habitat. They’re most often accompanied by a sturdy pair of work boots. And they’re not cheap. They start at about $150 and go up to the mid-$600 range, if you're one of those dudes who likes your pleated skirts to come in leather. And they are so popular in Seattle that they necessitate not one, but two retail outlets (please click this link for the user-generated Utilikilt mock-umercials - they are fantastic) devoted exclusively to the waist-to-knee eyesore. After your third or fourth sighting, you start to get desensitized.
In 2004, we moved to the Fremont neighborhood, a veritable bastion of dreadlocks and patchouli - seemingly a very different subculture than the utilikilt lover but you still see 'em everywhere. The former owner of our house was putting some finishing touches on the place. In his utilikilt. And let me just say, this guy could totally kick my ass.
Despite this introduction to Fremont and the neighbors with their chicken coops, I loved living there. There was a park two blocks away where I walked my dog daily and chatted it up with neighbors who did the same - a few of us hung out pretty much every night shooting the shit while our dogs took some laps.
One guy was particularly nice, a middle school teacher who rented a room in a house across the street from the park and often invited me to sit on his front porch for beers. We talked about all kinds of things in life and I probably told him more about my day-to-day issues than most members of my family. My wife and I went out with him a few times socially and for a while, felt like he was one of our better friends in town. He had a big bushy beard.
And then the weather warmed up. I show up to the park one fine May evening for my regular session only to find this dude all skirted up. I was duped. He wasn’t the type and he never let on that he wore that shit. He could have told me months earlier that he was a skirt wearer and it never would have gotten this far. After that, it got awkward. He was somebody else in that pleated skirt and I couldn’t shake it.
I didn’t write the guy off completely. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just experimenting. Not turning totally skirt or anything. Just taking this $150 garment out for a spin. But the nice weather got nicer, the skirt got more play and I got more uncomfortable. It totally ruined the whole nightly hang for me and I had to start taking my dog to other parks. Eventually he moved and we never saw or heard from his skirt again.
Postscript: Apparently, there are utilikilts now residing outside of Seattle. This guy from San Francisco loves 'em. But I've never had a sighting beyond the 2-0-6. Please let me know if you see one so I can issue a retraction of my Seattle-centric critique. The city does have two big stores, though.
