Three very different films

I watched three movies over the course of the last two days. Here is my brief summation of each film: Tron Legacy:  Dumb and fun. Kind of like the girl you are willing to date but never get serious with.

The Social Network: You leave the theater wondering if Zuckerberg has Asperger's Syndrome or is simply a jerk (the last line of the film seems to imply the latter, but it was a stinker of a last line, and I remain unconvinced). You also find yourself wishing that real life dialogue was as bristling and witty as Aaron Sorkin envisions. But that happens with every Sorkin script.

The King’s Speech: The Karate Kid meets speech therapy. I am fairly certain that the real King George VI was not this funny nor this pathetic.

For the record, I thought The Social Network and The King’s Speech were outstanding, and Tron Legacy was a suitable afternoon diversion.

Avoid ambiguity in the demise of a character

I don’t mind endings that make you wonder what might happen to a character had another scene been written or filmed. Both Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo end with the protagonist’s future in doubt. But at least you know that both protagonists will have a future.

What I despise are endings in which the existence of the protagonist in a subsequent scene is in doubt.

This is why the last episode of The Sopranos annoyed me.

Either kill Tony or don’t. Don’t avoid taking a position on the matter by creating some multi-layered scene that might be interpreted as Tony’s eminent death but might not.

This was a mobster show. Whack the guy or don’t.

This is why I didn’t like the ending to The Wrestler.

Yes, it’s very likely that the viewer is meant to assume that Randy dies at the end of the film, but again, his fate is ultimately left to interpretation.

Does he suffer another heart attack as he dives off the top ropes?

Possibly. Probably.

But aren’t there medical personnel on hand?

Didn’t he survive his first heart attack?

Kill him or don’t.

Ambiguity in the possible death of a character is an act of cowardice on the writer’s part.

Need a grocery store? We have plenty.

Slate’s Chris Wilson reports on a 2009 study by the Department of Agriculture found that “2.3 million households do not have access to a car and live more than a mile from a supermarket. Much of the public health debate over rising obesity rates has turned to these ‘food deserts,’ where convenience store fare is more accessible—and more expensive—than healthier options farther away.”  

An interactive map of these food deserts can be found here.

I’m stunned by these findings.

And I’m ready to help.

As I’ve written about before, the area of Connecticut in which I live in inundated with grocery stores, and while their presence alone does not adversely impact me, their sheer number seems to compel consumers to frequent as many of them as possible in a given week, thus clogging my highways and surface streets with people who somehow manage to find the time to shop for meat at one store, fruits and vegetables at another, bulk items at a third, prepared foods at a fourth, and so on and so on.

I wish I had that kind of extra time on my hands.

The lack of efficiency in this model offends me on a personal level.

The amount of fuel being used to shuttle oneself around to these stores is destructive to the environment.

The presence of these multiple-grocery-store-maniacs on the roads slows me down.

Seemingly gone are the days when a family was able to do its food shopping for the week on a single day.

In the land of fast-paced, on-the-move, not-enough-hours-in-the-day lifestyles, the majority of people who I know somehow manage to carve out enough time to shop for food three or four days a week.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

Using Google Maps I was able to determine that within a single mile of my home are a total of eight full-sized grocery stories, including two Stop & Shops and two Asian grocers. Had I stretched the range out to two miles, I would have more than doubled this total.

So what if we ship half of the grocery stores in my area of Connecticut to a place more needy? Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, and parts of Texas could all use one of the Stop & Shops within a mile of my home, or one of the two Asian markets or three Aldis or two Shaws within two miles of my home.

Lift these suckers up and send them someplace else. Reduce the congestion on my roads, replace the vast acreages of parking lots with trees and grass, decrease the amount of fossils fuels burned while driving to these stores, and perhaps encourage consumers to return to a time when families did the bulk of their shopping on a single day at a single store and transform the time spent turning our towns into giant farm stands into something more productive.

Food deserts?

I’m drowning in food over here.

Topless, frigid and amusing

As a season ticket holder, I sit in the same seats at every Patriots game. As a new season ticket holder, those seats are far from the field. My friend, Shep, and I sit on the 45 yard line, four rows from the very top of the stadium.

To be honest, we like the seats a lot. It can get windy up there, but we have a good view of the action at all times, regardless of where on the field the ball may be. It’s actually a view similar to the one I see on television except I can see the entire field at one time.

The guys who usually sit to my right are police officers, and throughout the season, I have heard them tell one another stories that make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and cause me to wonder about the sanctity of their profession.

I’m quite certain that many of the tactics that they describe are not legal, and they always make me a little nervous.

I already have good reason not to trust all police officers.

The cops were not at the most recent Patriots-Green Bay contest. It was a Sunday night game, so perhaps they were busy conducing illegal searches or smacking around prisoners in handcuffs or racially profiling motorists at stop lights.

All actions described during previous games.

Instead, I found myself sitting beside two Asian men whose enthusiasm for the game was sadly not matched by their understanding of the lexicon of the game. Though supportive of the team, many of the things that they shouted weren’t quite right, and as a result, I laughed throughout much of the night.

A few of their more memorable remarks included:

C’mon defense! Interfere the ball!

Drop them on the bomb, defense!

Crack that punt!

C’mon Pats! Win me a touchdown!

Pass that skin, Brady!

Tackle their legs into a little ball!

Midway through the third quarter, three guys off to my left decided to remove their shirts despite the sub-freezing temperatures. This bizarre ritual typically occurs in inverse proportion the outside temperature:

The colder the temperature, the greater the likelihood that guys will remove their shirts.

I am mystified as to why grown men choose to inflict this kind of suffering upon themselves and then pretend that the freezing temperatures don’t bother them. If asked, they might say that they are expressing support for their team, but I suspect that Tom Brady (who literally wears a scuba suit in cold weather) and his teammates would be less than impressed by this demonstration of stupidity.

Instead, I suspect that these morons require more attention than their clothing-clad bodies can provide. And while I’ll admit that removing your clothing on a 10 degree night will garner you attention, but not the kind of attention that most people desire.

After watching these fools remove their clothing, the Asian man directly to my right decided that he would do the same and began stripping off the layers covering his torso. Eventually he got down to just his tee-shirt, at which point he stood up, gripped the shirt around its bottom, and prepared to lift it over his head. He held it there for about a minute before releasing the shirt and standing with his hands by his side. He remained this way for another two minutes, seeming to ponder his next move, and then finally he began putting his sweatshirts and coat back on.

Smart move.

“There’s hope for you!” I said to him.

He smiled and thanked me as he pulled his hat down over his head.

Equality not always advisable

Sometimes women take equality a little too far. In November, men are encouraged to grow mustaches in order to raise awareness of prostate cancer, thus dubbing the month Movember.

Not to be outdone, December has now been declared "Decembrow" by the feminist-oriented website Feministing. Women are encouraged to grow out their eyebrows to the point where they connect in the middle or to “use an herbal remedy or a pencil to fake it” in order to raise money for a cause of their choice.

There is so many things wrong with this idea.

First, a cause of their choice? The lack of a unified effort in regards to a specific cause gives this the impression of a bunch of women who are desperate to play the same game as their male counterparts but without the actual desire, organization or ability to do so.

Hey! No fair! We want to play, too! 

Feministing actually states that Movember “has heretofore been lacking in opportunities for women who have trouble growing mustaches to get involved.”

Lacking in opportunities?

Trouble growing mustaches?

I always thought that it was trouble for women who grew mustaches. Don’t women who are genetically inclined to facial hair spend countless hours ridding themselves of their unwanted whiskers?

I would hardly consider an inability to grow a mustache as a lack of opportunity or troubling for anyone.

Especially women.

And whether or not you are a fan of the mustache, a man sporting a mustache does not stand out in a crowd. It is hardly considered an eyesore.

Walking around looking like Frida Kahlo, however, is certain to draw some negative attention.

How about this? Rather than raising money by growing a uni-brow, women could instead collect extortion money from men by agreeing not to grow a uni-brow.

The threat of having to spend a month starting at a co-worker’s single eyebrow is probably enough to convince to me to kick $20 for whatever charity she have deemed worthy.

Ladies, it’s sometimes okay to let the boys play their games and not feel excluded when you can’t play as well.

The deception of The Nutcracker

You know what’s the problem with The Nutcracker? It’s still a ballet.

While it’s true that my wife adores The Nutcracker and did so as a child, most children are surprised to realize upon seeing The Nutcracker for the first time that it amounts to little more than a boring dance recital.

You can almost hear their collective bewilderment as they begin to squirm in their seats and wonder why they ever thought a ballet about a kitchen appliance was going to be good:

What the hell?  I thought this was supposed to be fun.  Like a Rudolph claymation special, only in real life?. This is just stupid dancing.

For reasons that ultimately ruin a perfectly good Sunday afternoon, The Nutcracker is consistently portrayed as something better and more exciting than your average trip to the ballet. As a result, children around the world pile into theaters with excitement in their eyes and hopefulness in their hearts.

Ten minutes into the performance, most are wondering what the hell happened to this supposed masterpiece of childhood entertainment.

Nothing happened to it. It’s ballet.

It’s a ballet about a kitchen appliance.

Nutcracker or not, it’s still boring.

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me: Near perfection, but not quite

For years, I argued that I had brought more joy to my wife’s world than she had brought to mine. I have introduced Elysha to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica, two of her favorite television shows of all time.

I tantalized her palette with the sublimity of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs.

I took her to her first NFL and Major League baseball games, as well as her first foray into go-carting.

I had given her the world.

Then it occurred to me the other day that it was Elysha who first convinced me to listen to NPR’s Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me! even after I scoffed at the idea of listening to a game show again and again.

Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me is just as sublime as macaroni and cheese with hot dogs.

It’s almost perfect.

My main complaint about the program (other than Carl Castle’s annoying use of the word outright) is the final “Prediction” segment of the show, when the three celebrity panelists are asked to come up with a joke pertaining to a topic addressed earlier in the show.

Except when listening with Elysha, I never listen to this final segment, because in comparison with the rest of the show, it is consistently the weakest in terms of humor and wit. Yet it serves as the conclusion to the show, leaving listeners on a low note week after week.

Not to mention that the game has already ended, a winner has been declared, and congratulatory applause has been rendered.

This is when games are supposed to end.

At the end.

I realize that the panelists are only playing for pride, but within the architecture and artifice of the show, the declaration of victory should represent the completion of the show. There is no reason for the winner and the two losers to then be required to come up with one more bit of witty humor to end the program.

It was already over.

It’s a flaw, Peter Segal. It needs to be fixed.

Thankfully, I listen to the show in podcast form and simply press the stop button during the winner’s applause.

Jets handle rejection like a spurned teenage snob

Is it wrong for me to take great pleasure in the fact that Keith Fitzhugh, a free-agent safety who has played in the NFL as recently as last year, turned down the New York Jets offer to join the team in order to keep his job as a train conductor? Fitzhugh said that with the precarious state of the economy and his financial responsibility to his disabled parents, he opted for the job security that his current position offered rather than the uncertainty of an NFL roster spot.

It makes sense, and you have to admire the guy for placing his family before his pigskin dreams, but there is something poetic in the fact that he turned down the Jets, a team that I despise.

Making the story even better was the Jets denial that a contract offer had been made to Fitzhugh, even though The Associated Press, The Newark Star-Ledger, ESPN and Fitzhugh himself reported otherwise.

Is the New York Jets organization too proud to admit to being rejected by a Virginia train conductor?

Are they too high and mighty to acknowledge that someone would choose the Norfolk Southern Transit Corporation over them?

This strikes me as similar to Kim Jong-Il’s claim that he scored eleven hole-in-ones the first time he played golf.

Both are too proud to admit that they are not infallible.

As my friend, Shep, points out, the Jets should have countered Fitzhugh’s rejection with the offer of a permanent position in their public relations department when and if he was cut from the team, thus spinning this into a feel-good story for the organization and giving Fitzhugh another shot at the game he loves.

Instead, the Jets end up looking like a bunch of holier-than-thou jackasses and liars, which is what I would have expected from an organization that places someone like Rex Ryan in charge.

Frazzled moms making a bad name for competent mothers everywhere

Am I wrong or did the New York Times just devote 2,000 words to a handful of women who lack time management skills and allow self-imposed guilt to interfere with their daily lives? Seriously. The piece reads like fabricated nonsense, a arbitrary string of anecdotes from a handful of mothers, constructed in order to generate a buzz-worthy headline. As a teacher for more than a decade, I have known hundreds of moms, and many have become my close, personal friends.  None of the women featured in this piece resemble anyone I know in anyway whatsoever.

Frazzled moms? Aren’t most people’s plates a little overfilled today? Must we characterize mothers as the only people struggling to fit everything in?

And isn’t it time we dispense with the phrase frazzled mom altogether?  When do you ever hear the word frazzled attached to anything but the word mom?

Google the phrase frazzled mom, for example, and pictures like this are displayed on the first page of results:

And hundreds more can be found in the images section of Google.

Search on the phrase frazzled dad and no such picture exists.

Not one.

Search Google’s news section for the term frazzled mom and you will find 48 current news stories that include the phrase.

There are zero news stories returned for the search terms frazzled dad or frazzled father.

Mothers around the world should reject this two-word combination as a perpetuation of a stereotype that casts their gender in an incompetent and inaccurate light.

Do you know the difference between a frazzled mom and one who is not?

Frazzled moms don’t stop talking about being frazzled. They whine and complain and stick pictures like the ones above onto the blogs that they somehow find the time to write despite the fact that they are frazzled.

Mothers who are not frazzled simply go about their lives without the need for such vocal vociferation, managing their time effectively, balancing work and family as best they can, and spending quality time with their children.

Do they struggle at times with these issues?  Of course they do. Finding the time to meet every need is not a motherly concern. It is a human concern.

But these mothers are not struggling to the point of being frazzled, they do not resemble the stereotypical pictures of a frazzled mom, and you will never see them featured in a New York Times piece that reads more like self-therapy than an actual news story.

This is a case where the exceedingly loud minority dominates the adept and focused-on-better-things majority, and if I was a mother, I’d be mad as hell.

National Geographic photo contest

National Geographic is once again holding their annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30th.

There are about fifty entries so far.  Many of them are remarkable. 

This is my favorite so far, and I’m allergic to bees.

That’s saying something.

You are a stupid person who cannot drive

This evening I was cut off by a woman who clearly did not believe in speed limits, turn signals or the willingness to acknowledge other cars on the road. After managing to position her car in front of mine, I watched as she proceeded to creep forward into the crosswalk of three consecutive intersections while awaiting for a red light to turn green, as if the fifteen feet that she saved by partially blocking traffic would dramatically improve her position on the road or allow her to arrive at her destination any faster.

She was clearly a stupid person, and my inability to tell her as much was quite annoying.

Part of me wanted to follow her until she reached her destination, so that I could exit my car and inform her of how fundamentally stupid she was.

The more reasonable part of me suspected that my wife, who was in the car at the time, would not willingly stalk this woman with me, and it was this part of me that kept me from following her when she failed to turn onto my street.

But I wish there were a way to communicate with stupid people like this on the road. Not those drivers who are victimized by bad luck or an unexpected blind spot.

I’m talking about the kind of people who consistently drive like selfish idiots.

And don’t get me wrong. I have no expectation of improving these anyone’s driving skills. Once an idiot, always an idiot.

I’m just desirous of a little satisfaction through the beauty of unsolicited criticism.

When you are supposed to like it

I listen to Sam Tanenhaus’s New York Times Book Review podcast every week, and as much as you can know a man though a podcast (I also read his biography on Whittaker Chambers about ten years ago when Don Imus was raving about it on his radio show), I like Tanenhaus a lot. But the most recent podcast featured Tanenhaus’s ongoing and seemingly intractable support of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Franzen’s novel was left off the short list of National Book Award nominees, and in a segment that was meant to discuss the winners of this year’s National Book Award, Tanenhaus focused primarily on the reasons why Freedom might have been spurned by the judges.

Two thoughts ran through my mind as Tanenhaus expressed his displeasure over what he perceived to be a snub by the judges:

1.  Hasn’t the New York Times Book Review given Freedom enough attention already?  The paper published two stellar reviews of the book on the day of publication, one written by Tanenhaus himself, and Tanenhaus has discussed his adoration for this book on many previous podcasts.  When does the line between book review editor and Franzen fanboy get crossed?

Because I think Tanenhaus crossed it a long time ago.

2.  I read Freedom, and I didn’t like it.

I didn’t hate the book, but I did not think that it deserved National Book Award attention either.  I thought that the novel lacked immediacy at key moments and opened with a series of events that I found improbable and unbelievable and established a precarious footing for the subsequent action.

So now I find myself in this awkward space in which I feel like I was supposed to like the book, that not liking the book is a failure of sorts on my part, and that admitting that I did not enjoy the book is to spurn all of the literary movers and shakers of the publishing industry, Tanenhaus included, who referred to Freedom as “a masterpiece of American fiction.”

What would Tanenhaus think of me if he knew that I did not like the book that he considered this year’s masterpiece?

Does this make me a hack in Tanenhaus’s eyes?

What is an author to do?  It’s a precarious position.

I want Tanenhaus to like me and someday read my work.

I would love for him to write a glowing review of my next book on the front page of the NYT Book Review (just one review would be fine).

I even want Jonathan Franzen to like my work and would love for him to write a blurb for me someday.

And yet I find myself not liking his masterpiece very much.

I felt the same way in college when I came to the conclusion that I despised the work of Virginia Woolf. I was an English major at a small, liberal arts college, attending several classes on feminist literary criticism, and I found Woolf’s work to be impenetrable and boring.

I felt like a complete failure.

Thankfully, it is highly unlikely that Tanenhaus or Franzen will ever read this little blog, so my opinions will fall on deaf ears.

But I wish that I had loved Freedom. I really do.

It’s not often that I want to follow the crowd, but in this case, it would make things a lot easier.

Definition of insanity is insane

Albert Einstein once said that the definition insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Benjamin Franklin and Rita Mae Brown are often credited for this definition as well.

And while I understand the meaning of the statement and agree that there are times when this general premise is true (particularly in the case of carefully controlled scientific experimentation), I have two thoughts on the subject:

1. This is not the only definition of insanity. In fact, it’s not a definition at all. It’s little more than a small bit of sometimes-applicable wisdom. A proverb, perhaps (in fact the definition is also credited to an ancient Chinese proverb). Yet time and time again I hear this definition quoted as if there is some profound truth behind it.

There isn’t.

It’s merely a way of saying that in some cases, banging your head against the wall again and again is stupid.

2. It’s rarely an accurate statement. Once you leave the laboratory, there are many, many instances in life in which you can do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

I know an author who wrote three novels and failed to sell any of them before launching a successful career with her fourth book. Had she adhered to this definition of insanity, she would still be an advertising executive today.

Were this definition of insanity true, none of my students would ever memorize their multiplication tables or learn the proper use of the words their/they’re/there. There are times when knowledge and skill acquisition require repetition.

Practice your multiplication tables enough and you will eventually memorize them, even if you are doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Were this definition of insanity true, I would’ve quit the game of golf after my very first round. It is only through the hitting of ball after ball after ball that muscle memory begins to kick in and allow you to strike the ball with consistency and effectiveness. It is only through doing the same thing over again and expecting different results that a golfer can become a better player.

These seem like fairly obvious examples of times in which this so-called definition does not apply, yet I continue to hear this definition repeated again and again as justification for a variety of decisions and changes in strategy.

Utilizing a misunderstood definition of insanity over and over again and expecting a different result seems more like insanity to me.

When sex is involved, shouldn’t it always be the lead?

Talk about burying the lead. New York Times columnist John Tierney reports on a Harvard study that found that a focused, attentive mind results in significantly greater happiness than daydreaming.

“Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.”

The title of Tierney’s piece is When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays, and the first three paragraphs of the story address this specific finding.

While the daydreaming aspect of the story is interesting, it isn’t even close to the best part of the study.

Most significant to me was the fourth paragraph, which reported that people were happiest in the midst of sex.

The implications of this are astounding. Obvious, perhaps, but astounding nonetheless.

First, it’s amazing that people were willing to respond to an iPhone prompt during sex or immediately thereafter.

That itself could have been the lead:

Technology in the Bedroom: People Participate in Coital and Post-Coital Study (presumably with their partner’s permission)

It’s a lengthy title, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Tierney’s choice.

Or how about the fact that the sex generates the greatest degree of happiness?  This may sound obvious, but based upon the conversations that I have had with husbands and wives, couples are clearly not taking full advantage of this king-of-all-activities happiness generator.

With that in mind, the title of Tierney’s piece could have been:

Unhappy? Drop the Headache/Long Day and Tired Routine and Take a Roll in the Hay!

Seriously. With a tough economy, limited leisure funds, and a general state of unhappiness plaguing so many people, why not take advantage of this free, calorie-burning, happiness-infusing activity?

And why not make this the lead?

Isn’t it better to lead with the glories of sex than the pitfalls of daydreaming about sex?

Full body whiners

I don’t understand the ranting and raving over the airport’s full body scanners. Yes, they capture remarkably life-like images of your unclothed body, and yes, if you wish to avoid this scanners, an aggressive pat-down by TSA security is required, but have we forgotten how many people around the world are constantly trying to bring down American airplanes and kill American citizens.

Seriously.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women around the world who spend their every waking moment plotting and scheming to kill Americans by destroying the planes in which they fly.

Yet as Americans, we cannot deign to submit to a scan that would help to ensure our safety and the safety of our fellow passengers, as well as protecting the airline industry as a whole?

Stupid.

Flying is not a Constitutionally guaranteed. It is a choice that a person makes.  And yes, those scanners are intrusive and perhaps  even embarrassing (though why you would care if a stranger sees your digitally-enhanced naked image amidst a sea of other similarly naked images is beyond me), but they hardly equate to the loss of civil liberties that Americans suffered as a result of the PATRIOT Act.

These scanners are simply a thorough and effective means by which security personnel can verify that no weapons or explosives are being brought on a plane.

Yet people are rising up in opposition to them.

It makes no sense.

I recently learned that there is a Connecticut law that requires all schools to have an AED (automated external defibrillator) on site in case of a heart emergency. But there is also a provision in the law that allows school districts that cannot afford the device ($1,200) to ignore the requirement as long as a plan is in place for purchasing the AED when the financial constraints are alleviated.

What does a plan like this look like?

“When we have enough money, we will go to Amazon.com (yes, Amazon sells them) and buy an AED.”

Is that enough to bypass the requirement?

More important, guess what is going to happen if a student experiences a heart-related emergency and dies in a Connecticut school, and it is later determined that an AED could have saved his life?

That silly a-plan-is-just-as-good-as-an-AED clause will be gone in a flash.

Same thing with the new airport scanners. We can wait for a plane to explode over Detroit or crash into downtown Los Angeles and then accept these scanners as a necessity, or we could just shut up and allow ourselves to be scanned for the safety of our fellow passengers.

CPR sex discrimination

Have you ever noticed that none of the CPR mannequins are female? Don’t you find the flat male chests a little too convenient when it comes to practicing actual CPR? And frankly a little prudish?

Is there really no way for me to practice CPR on an anatomically correct female mannequin?

And does the lack of female CPR mannequins create a disparity in survival rates between men and women receiving this emergency treatment?

Seriously. You think?

Rhetorical blunder

I said it a week ago when I saw this ad for the first time (and foolishly failed to record my prescience here): In the age of the mash-up, there is no room for rhetorical questions in advertising.

You’re just asking for trouble.

Stupid move, Nike.

Great move, Cleveland.

Knitting not allowed (because I'm jealous)

I’m hesitant to say that I’ve discovered a new phenomenon, because perhaps it’s been around for a while and I’m just horribly inattentive. I’ve missed other, fairly obvious cultural changes before, so it’s not uncommon. But this phenomenon is new to me.

I was attending a meeting a few months ago, run by a fairly important person and dealing with fairly important matters, and throughout the entire meeting, two of the attendees were knitting. They had an entire back table set up for themselves, complete with balls of yarn, knitting needles, and even a basket of knitting paraphernalia.

Please don’t get me wrong. The two women in question were certainly paying attention to the proceedings and even participating in the discussion, but they were knitting as well.

Then a few weeks ago I attended a workshop and encountered the same thing. Three women in the back, knitting needles flying, listening attentively.

Last week I attended a children's orchestral concert and encountered the same damn thing. Women sitting in their seats, listening to the music, and knitting.

I’m not sure how to feel about this.

That’s not true. I know exactly how I feel about it, but I’m just not sure if my feelings are justified.

I’m offended by this behavior, and not because I think that these women should not be able to knit while listening to a discussion or music. I am offended because there is nothing in my multi-tasking arsenal that has been deemed socially appropriate that would allow me the flexibility or freedom that these women have.

And it’s just not fair.

Somehow these women have found a way to make knitting an acceptable activity while focusing attention elsewhere. But it’s not as if these women are darning socks for the poor or knitting sweaters for their tragically sweater-less children. These women are knitting because they enjoy it, and it really irritates me.

I don’t knit, and please don’t suggest that I take up knitting in order to solve this problem. I’m happy that people can find joy in this activity. My wife knits, and she loves it. But as long as there are people who are willing to knit so that I can go to the store and purchase a sweater, I have better ways to spend my time.

Even if I wanted to, I doubt that I could learn how to knit. My visual-spatial limitations are astounding.

But with a lifetime of endless meetings, workshops, classes, and concerts ahead of me, I’d like to be able to find something as acceptable and productive to keep me busy as knitting, but I have yet to find anything to fill this space.

For example, when I find myself in a wireless environment, I could certainly be playing poker online while listening. In fact, I’m playing poker as I type. Since I fold six out of every seven hands that are dealt to me, this has proven to be a very simple and enjoyable task that I can handle while doing most other things. I’ve made $23 in the last 40 minutes that I’ve been sitting at my desk, reading and writing this post. But to open up this software and start betting in a meeting would be socially unacceptable, and depending upon the setting, occupational suicide, even though I would argue that poker requires less sustained mental energy from me than knitting does for these women who literally set up shop in the back of rooms.

And how about reading? While certainly not conducive to meetings, what’s wrong with doing a little reading while listening to a concert? People read in coffee shops while a soloist is performing.

Hell, the band played on while people piled into lifeboats aboard the Titanic. Why not allow the audience at a classical music performance to read while listening?

I recently attended a social media conference in Boston. Over the course of two days, I attended about eight different workshops, and in each one, attendees were encouraged to be actively engaged on their laptops while listening and participating. We relayed content throughout the conference via Twitter, blogged about the content on their own personal websites, and conducted research on the topics begin presented and shared this research during the workshop. As the speakers presented, people pecked on their keyboards and no took offense.  For this small, geeky segment of the population, the understanding that one can be listening to a speaker while engaged on a laptop was understood and embraced, and as a result, many ideas were shred between the workshops.

But other than an event centering on social media, populated by a bunch of geeks, I do not see this opportunity coming in my near future.

So I oppose knitting in meetings, concerts and similar circumstance. It's a selfish, petulant position born from envy and frustration, but I don't care. I'm formed opinions on a lot less.

Hearts in Atlantis: A fine name for an entirely different film

Have you seen the movie Hearts in Atlantis starring Anthony Hopkins? It’s a movie about a man with a mysterious power who is being hunted by “low men.” It’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel by the same name, and though I am a huge fan of King’s work, I hadn’t gotten around to read the book until recently.

Turns out that Hearts in Atlantis (the book) is actually a collection of five short stories centered in the 1960’s, and the title of the book is also the title of the second story in the book.

But this is not the story from which the movie was adapted.

The story upon which the movie is based is titled “Low Men in Yellow Coats.” "Hearts in Atlantis" is the short story of some college boys who fall in love with and become addicted to the card game hearts (and is a tremendous short story).  there is nothing about hearts or card games or college boys in the film whatsoever.

I can understand renaming a movie that is based upon a book, as producers did when they adapted Stephen King’s short story "The Body" into the film Stand By Me or when they adapted his short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and renamed it Shawshank Redemption.

But to name the movie after the wrong short story seems pretty stupid.

It’s a six hour holiday. NOT A SEASON.

Yesterday I worked at a Halloween-themed wedding.  Masks were worn by the bride and groom and many of their guests, centerpieces consisted of ceramic jack-o-lanterns filled with candy, and guests danced to The Monster Mash.

It was one of the finest Halloween-themed wedding I have ever seen.  Just the right amount of Halloween paraphernalia to bring home the theme without taking away from the wedding.   

I have only one complaint:  It wasn’t Halloween.

The wedding was held on October 30th, one day before Halloween, and contrary to what seems to be becoming popular opinion, Halloween is not a seasonal holiday. 

It is a single day.

In fact, it’s not even a day.  It’s more like a six hour period from about 4:00-10:00 on Halloween night.  Masks are donned, children trick-or-treat, eggs are thrown, and that’s it. 

At least that’s how it should be. 

But for reasons that escape me, Halloween seems to be stretching itself across the October calendar, filling days around the holiday as if it were a blob of spreading goo. 

Yesterday thousands of college football fans filled stadiums, dressed in all manner of Halloween costume. 

But it wasn’t Halloween.

Yesterday thousands of citizens gathered on The National Mall to rally with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for reason and sanity, and many of them also donned masks and capes and costumes.

But it wasn’t Halloween.  

And on Monday night, when the Houston Texans and Indianapolis Colts face off, there is a good chance that we will see spectators dressed in Halloween masks, even though at that point, Halloween will be 364 days away.    

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are a part of the holiday season.   

Baseball is played over the course of a season.

Autumn is a season.

Halloween is not.