Category Archives: Stupidity

December 27, 2011 · 0:00

Door Number Two!

The thing about dreams is that the crushing, the squelching, the termination of them is so much better in retrospect than when it actually happens.

At 17, I just knew I was going to be an actress.  A stage actress (because, don’t cha know, film work is not true acting. ) And I made that choice even before I realized that the camera brings out the psycho in me.

Now, I was very serious about this dream.  Of course I took my high school’s acting classes.  And, all snark aside, they were really good.  The Players were renown throughout the area for the professional quality of its high school actors.  And the accolades were well deserved.

Me?  Was I the star?  Was I the ingénue lead in all the productions during my high school years?  Was there a reason for my hubris?  Did my classmates look at me, remember my face and say to each other “someday we will remember when the very highly talented Miss Elyse went sledding outside our Algebra class (with that other fab actress, Ray) when she was supposed to be writing her math problems on the blackboard – because now,” sigh, “she’s a STAR.”   Oops, no, I mean they’d think “because now she is a highly successful stage ACTress.”

Uh, no they didn’t.  I was invariably an extra in those acclaimed productions.  At best I got a line or two.

But I had heart.  And in the theatRE, that’s all you need, right?  “There are no small parts, only small actors.”  Well, I was NOT a small actor.  I just got small parts.  And I was short and thin.  So I was small.  Shit.

But I DID get an audition.

Yup!  I had an audition in April of 1974, the spring of my senior year, for the Central School of Speech and Drama, an acting school in London.  Now, I was an hour outside of New York, and that might have been a wee bit easier to manage.  But hey, this was a dream, remember.  And I wanted London:  The Globe, The West End, Masterpiece TheatRE (even if it was done on film, it didn’t seem like it).

I was ready to take the first step in my path.

My audition was held in a building at Yale University.  I performed my comedy bit first, a monologue from a comedy so obscure that I have blotted it totally from my brain.

I sang “Adelaide’s Lament” under the guidance of my friend Sue, who actually played Adelaide in our school’s production of Guys and Dolls.  She was good.  So was I.  Well, not quite as good, but who’d notice?

I delivered my Juliet speech – hey, what do you want, Lady Macbeth?  I was 17!!!  I chose one that is rarely performed, the one where Juliet is about to take the sleeping potion and is seeing her cousin Tybalt’s ghost:

O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point: stay, Tybalt, stay! (I loved that line)
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

I drank the potion, collapsed on the floor in the best Juliet evah.

I thanked the three faculty judges, repeated my name, made sure they had my completed application and my picture (although how could they forget me?)  I turned and walked to the door to leave.  Only there were two doors.

I opened the one on the right, walked through it and closed the door behind me.

It was a broom closet.

What do I do now, I wondered.  There was no script.  No stage directions.  No help of any kind.  I considered staying in the closet, but knew that eventually I had to come out.  After a minute that lasted forever, I re-opened the door and slunk out, saying a line I haven’t heard in too many successful plays:

“Ummm, that’s the broom closet.”

I opened the other door and left the room, closing my dream back in the room with the judges.

I know that if I’d just gone out singing and dancing, well, this chapter would be the opening scene of my life story.

Maybe it still is.  Cause it hasn’t been at all bad.

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My thanks to MJ Monaghan, who posted a great piece today:  A Letter to my Guidance Counsellor.  Naturally I felt compelled to copy it.

Damn those copyright laws.

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December 22, 2011 · 0:00

Public Service Reprise********** Gizmos and Gadgets

It’s not because there is so much yet to do for Christmas that I’m reposting this piece.  Nope.  The elves never arrived so I’m done with Christmas.  Whatever isn’t done, well, you know.

But I thought it really important to re-post this piece from early June (since clearly only one person read it). I believe it is my CIVIC DUTY to inform you that, when you are tearing your hair out over your new gizmos and gadgets,  you are NOT alone.  AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Whatever it is you want to celebrate!

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GIZMOS AND GADGETS

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it — for a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I’ve just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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December 19, 2011 · 0:00

So these two guys are walking along …

It’s a bit early for this, but today I figured out my New Year’s Resolution.  I’m going to stop eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.

I haven’t quite figured out how to manage it, though.  I could use those smushy waxy earplugs to stop up my ears.  Or “noise cancelling” headphones might do the trick.  Worse comes to worse, I could just be overzealous with the old Q-Tips one morning.

But somehow I have to stop hearing stupid people talking to each other.   It’s not my fault that it happens.  I’m pretty sure it’s genetic.  My father used to say that if there was a “weirdo” in the room, the weirdo would seek Dad out.  That’s true for me too.

Like today.  All I did was walk out the back door of my building to the salad bar next door, when the conversation of two men behind me caught my ear.

“…you only need to tune it every five years.”  Said the first. I’ll call him “Mr. O.”   “It just costs you $500 every five years.  Really holds its value.”

“Whoa!”  I thought.  “A car you can ignore for five years?  This I have to hear.”

But the two guys were not going to the salad bar next door.  They continued on past it.  I really wanted to hear about that car – it’s such a pain getting service around here.  So I kept walking in front of them, coatless, on a pretty nippy December day.  Yes, I’m an idiot.

“When you’re going to invest that much money,” continued Mr. O, “you want to get your money’s worth.  And you get it with an Omega.”

“An Omega?” I thought.  Now John loves to talk cars, and while I don’t really listen, I do get some information by osmosis.  “I’ve never heard of an Omega.”

“I don’t think you can go wrong with a Rolex,” said Mr. R.

“What the F—-!  I’m freezing my butt off to listen in on two rich guys going on about their ridiculous, overpriced watches.  Can you say “conspicuous consumption”?  Now try it with your bloomin’ teeth chattering.

“No, an Omega is the way I’m going,”  Responded Mr. O.  “If I’m going to ask my wife for a $15,000 watch, I want an Omega.”

Now, as I shivered, I tried to imagine who needed a $15K watch.  Were they marine biologists needing a watch that would keep on ticking while the dove 20,000 leagues under the sea?  Were they astronauts, who needed a special watch for some reason I’ll never comprehend?  Were they simply close to Newt Gingrich and therefore got to tap into that Tiffany’s account?

By this point, I still hadn’t seen them.  But I was dying to.  Did Mr. Omega look like this:

Omega Ad with George Clooney (Thanks, Google Images!)

Did Mr. Rolex look like this?

Sly Stallone -- not my type, but still .... (Thanks again Google Images)

Nope.  They looked more like this:

Abbott & Costello, probably wearing Timex (Google, you've done it again!)

Me, I looked at my cheapo watch, and realized that I’d been outside in the cold for 20 minutes.  But hey, saved money today by eavesdropping.  By the time I’d finished listening, I was too nauseous to eat lunch.

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December 17, 2011 · 0:00

Not on my list …

I was in a toy store recently, when the clerk handed a plastic bag containing a toy to the woman in front of me, and said “Thank you, Merry Christmas” to the woman.

To my surprise, she did NOT say “Your Welcome!”  She did not respond “Merry Christmas to you too!”  Nor did she say “Have a good day!” as required in retail nowadays.

Nope, she collapsed onto one knee and said “Thank the Lord.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” I thought.

Her husband glared at me as if to say in a very Christian way:   “You wanna make something out of it?”

I shook my head, and proceeded to pay for the toy I was buying.  I didn’t thank God for it, because I don’t really think that God cares if I bought my new nephew the Spot book or the one with the fuzzy pages.

Nope, I thanked the clerk for helping me and went on to my next errand.

I didn’t fall to my knees to thank God.  I have a bad knee.

But this morning I was wondering what toy was so hard to come by that it resulted in prayer.  So of course, I Googled.  And was I surprised at what I found.

I didn’t find the “Tickle me Elmo” shortage this year.  Nope, nothing of the sort.  Toys all seem to be in good supply.

But I did find that one place of business is offering a different slant on Christmas this year.  It’s in Chicago, so you won’t be finding me there this year.  OR MY HUSBAND.

You see, The Admiral Theatre, a strip club, is offering a free lap dance for anyone bringing in a new, unwrapped gift to be donated to charity.

Do you think all the girls wear Santa hats beards? More importantly, are they fat and jolly?

I bet there is a man or two who would get down on his knees to pray for that.

 

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December 6, 2011 · 0:00

A Different Toy Story

Nobody suspects I would have done anything of the sort.  I’ve fooled them all.  Well, at least I’ve fooled the folks I work with.  And that will do.

You see, we have a terrific Christmas tradition at my office.  We have a party, yes, and it’s actually fun because we like each other.  And the highlight of the party is a gift exchange.   About two weeks prior to the party, we choose the name of a co-worker, and bring a gift for that person as if he or she were 7 years old.  We open the gifts and have a great time guessing who gave it to us.  Then the toys are collected and given to a local charity.

We have a blast, it’s for a good cause, and everybody tells their funny childhood remembrances of what we would have done with a toy like they got.

But it was awkward for me this year, because I got a doll.

She was a beautiful, blue-eyed doll with rosy cheeks and curly blond hair just like mine.  Any girl would love her and gently care for her.  Any girl would treasure that pretty doll.  Any girl would have given that beautiful doll to her own daughter to love, too.

Any girl but me.  Because for the most part, I hated dolls.  And for most of my childhood did anything to avoid playing with them.  Except when I was about 7.

Well, I guess I answered honestly when I said that, uhhh, yeah, I would have played with the delicate dolly.   And, yeah, I would have played with it when I was about 7 years old.  So yeah, the gift, umm, fit me.  I didn’t elaborate, though.

I didn’t, for example, tell anyone that the dolly would not have been happy with the situation.

I blame my parents, they bought that particular house.  I blame my brother. Me, I was innocent.  I was led astray.  I was forced to do it.  The fact that it was hilarious and became one of my favorite memories is completely irrelevant.

You see, the house I grew up with was next to the railroad tracks.  And naturally, because it was strictly forbidden, my brother Fred and I used to spend lots of time playing on the tracks.  We’d put our ears to the rail to listen for trains, and, once we were sure none were coming, we’d run across the tracks.

That was fun for part of the first summer we lived there, but hey we were 6 and 9.  We needed growth opportunities.

We flattened pennies until we had enough to lay track from New York to New Haven made entirely of smushed Lincoln faces.  For a while we would wait for a train to come and then hop across the tracks, trying not to trip and die.  Fortunately we both succeeded and outgrew our interest in that particular challenge.  We tried to flip the track switch so that the train would jump the track and go down our driveway instead of on towards New Haven.  But for some reason, someone had locked the switch, and no matter what we did, we could not get the train to go down our driveway.  It was probably just as well.

One day, I got home from a friend’s house to find that my favorite stuffed animal, an orange poodle won for me by my dad, was missing.  Naturally, I accused my brother of hiding it.

“I didn’t hide it, Lease,” he said.  “I played with it.  It was just sitting on your bed,” he said in that brotherly tone that indicates I was stupid for questioning him.

He walked into my room, grabbed another stuffed toy, my stuffed Pebbles doll with the plastic head, and said. “Come on.  This is really neat.”

Out we went, down to the tracks.  We waited and waited, putting an occasional ear to the rail.  Finally, Fred placed Pebbles on the tracks.  Like Pauline, Pebbles looked skyward.  Like Pauline, as the train approached, her feet wiggled.  Unlike Pauline, however, there was no rescue.

The train whizzed by sending the most delightful plume of stuffing up and out, way over the top of the train.  It was a hit.  We rushed back for additional victims.  All my stuffed toys and each and every doll met a sorry end.

We would have let Pauline go, though. Really.

As it turned out, today at the party, my boss had picked my name, and the doll was from her.  “Would you have played with a doll like her?” she asked, no doubt envisioning me dressing her up and playing with her like other girls.

“Absolutely,” I said, weighing the doll and imagining just how high up this particular doll’s stuffing would go.

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