My fictional relationships with women

I’ve had three serious but fictional relationships with women in my life.

Each one was more serious than the last.

My first began in elementary school with Annette Funicello. Annette appeared in the beach blanket bingo movies that preceded Creature Double Feature on Chanel 56 on Saturday mornings. I took one look at her and instantly fell in love. When Annette was singing, I believed with all my heart that she was singing to me.

I was eight years old at the time, so what the hell did I know.

Though passionate and sincere, my torrid affair with Annette Funicello came to an end with my discovery of Laura Ingalls Wilder, first through the Little House of the Prairie television series and then through her books. Though I was somewhat aware (though in constant denial) that Laura Ingalls Wilder was both married and dead, the feelings that I had with this woman, thanks to Melissa Gilbert and especially her books, were not to be deterred. While Annette was more of a fling, I had a genuine love affair with Laura Ingalls Wilder that lasted longer than I would care to admit.

It was especially fitting that the last time I saw my mother alive, we watched Little House on the Prairie together. It was like bringing an old friend to her bedside one last time.

After Laura, it was a long time before I engaged in another fictional relationship. This makes sense, of course, because in that time, I grew up and became an adult.

My adulthood also makes it admittedly disturbing that there is one more fictional relationship on my list.  

I was in my early thirties at the time, living on my own following my divorce from my ex-wife. It was an odd time in my life, both pleasantly and tragically absent of companionship, and in this strange space, I fell in love with a woman named Jaye on the tragically short-lived but extraordinary television show Wonderfalls.

Until I met my wife, I had never met a more perfect woman than Jaye Tyler (fictional women tend to be surprisingly perfect), and the Friday evenings that we spent together came to mean a great deal to me. There were nights, in fact, when I told me friends that I could not meet them until after 10:00, because I had a 9:30 date with Jaye.

“Record the damn show,” one of my friends once said.

“I can’t do that to Jaye,” I said, and I meant it. For the briefest moment of time, I became convinced that I could be happy dating this fictional television character every Friday night.

And I was.

Eventually I began dating in real life, probably because Fox began changing the show’s time slot, and I could see that the end was near. Wonderfalls only aired a total of four episodes before being canceled despite outstanding reviews from critics, but I purchased the full season on DVD as soon as it was available and have since shared the show with my wife and several friends.

Everyone who watches Wonderfalls loves the show. They cite its clever, quirky plot and cast of unique and compelling characters, but I suspect that it’s Jaye that they love the most.

For about a month of my life, she was the one who I loved the most as well.

The Simpson’s opening credits in real life

The Simpsons have played an enormous role in my life, beginning with the excitement of the very first episode and extending to the moment that I realized that I had found the girl of my dreams. 

I’ve watched the opening credits to the show hundreds of times, but this might be the best version of the opening credits that I’ve ever seen.

Background TV sucks. It turns out it’s bad for kids, too. But mostly it sucks.

The song “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is about a couple who are struggling to stay together. In hope of salvaging their relationship, the boy reminds his girlfriend that regardless of their differences, they still both kind of liked the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, so at least that’s something.

My wife and I have many things in common. More than most couples, I dare presume. But if our interests, preferences, predilections and political affiliations suddenly shifted away from each other someday, I’d like to think we would still share a complete and total hatred for background TV, and at least that would be something.

There has never been a single moment in our home when the television was on without someone watching.

Not once. Ever.

We find background TV distracting, mind-numbing, wasteful and inane. We cannot understand it and refuse to abide by it. There have been times when we have purposely avoided visiting the homes of friends who have televisions on in the background throughout the day.  

I bring this up because TIME magazine recently reported on the prevalence of background TV in American homes and its apparent detrimental effect on children.

Even if we aren’t actively watching TV, most of us leave the set on in the background. But that may have detrimental effects on children in the home, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.that this week

This was the opening paragraph of the TIME story, which goes on to explain that the average American child is exposed to four hours of background television a day, and the impact from this exposure is not good. While further research is required to confirm the results of the study, the data seems to suggest that children exposed to background television experience higher rates of obesity and have greater difficulties with executive functioning and self-regulation.

None of this is good, but it did not surprise me. Did anyone actually believe that allowing a box to blather away throughout the day, unmonitored and unregulated, would be good for kids?

What surprised me the most about the TIME piece was the first sentence:

Even if we aren’t actively watching TV, most of us leave the set on in the background.

Is that true?

My wife and I watch very little television to begin with, and we also watch TV almost exclusively at night, after the children have gone to sleep, so perhaps our opportunities for background television was severely reduced already. But do most Americans leave the television on in the background when not actively watching it?

I find this hard to believe.

Then again, the average American child is exposed to four hour of background television a day, which is more television than I actively watch in a single day. So maybe it’s true. Maybe everyone leaves their televisions on in the background.

If so, what the hell is wrong with you people?

More important, I guess I was right. If Elysha and my interests truly do diverge in some cataclysmic way someday, our continued hatred for background television might serve as our Breakfast at Tiffany’s. With so many people leaving their televisions on throughout the day, we are apparently in the extreme minority.

We’ll have no choice but to stay together or suffer the apparent stupidity of the masses.

Watch. Laugh. And be very afraid.

I thought this was a joke.

I assumed that it was a satirical outlook on the creative hazards of product placement.

As an author who has been accused of product placement in his novels, I couldn’t imagine that this kind of over-the-top advertising in the midst of a storyline could be real.

I was wrong. It’s real.

It’s unbelievable and unimaginable and unconscionable and real. 

Hate reading and hate watching: What a stupid, disingenuous waste of time

In case you aren’t familiar with the terms, hate reading is the idea that a reader can despise a book and everything it stands for but still find pleasure in reading it all the way through. Please note that this is very different from reading a book that you expected to love but did not. Hate reading is actively choosing to read a book that you expect to despise under the premise that you will enjoy hating it.

For example, I've known several people who have told me that they read 50 Shades of Gray for this very reason.

The same concept has been applied to television and film as well. With the start of The Bachelor, I've seen many people on social media explain how they only watch the show because they hate it.

I have been thinking about the concept of hate reading and hate watching and have arrived at a conclusion. Specifically, if you are in the business of hate reading or hate watching, I believe that you probably fall into one of two categories:

1. You are utilizing the concept of hate reading or hate watching to conveniently explain your consumption of content that you genuinely enjoy but consider beneath your typical standards of good taste. It is a dishonest and hypocritical attempt to mitigate any potential embarrassment over the pleasure that one is garnering from what he or she has deemed low brow content.
2. You have far too much free time on your hands. If you have hours to spend reading or watching content that you knowingly despise, you should seriously reconsider the way in which you are utilizing the precious minutes of your life. With all the great literature and film in this world, it strikes me as idiotic to spend even a minute consuming content that you know you will hate.

Despite my position on hate watching, my wife and I  inadvertently hate watched a show this week called America’s Got Talent. Before switching over to Mad Men on the DVR, we caught about 45 seconds of the show, which turned out to be about 35 seconds longer than we should have given this piece of trash. We watched a troop of mimes and a guitarist get booed off the stage by an exceedingly angry audience and immediately felt like we needed to take a shower.

But it left me wondering how anyone could spend even a minute hate watching something with so much great film and television available, especially now that it’s possible to watch almost any television program or film ever produced from the comfort of your couch, and with the touch of a button.

I simply cannot accept that someone would read page after page or watch episode after episode of content that they loathe without also thinking that choice either utterly stupid or a pathetic attempt to mitigate embarrassment over something they love but feel they shouldn’t.

Either admit that you genuinely enjoy The Bachelor and 50 Shades of Gray, or acknowledge that your life is so empty of meaningful pursuits that you have the kind of time on your hands to watch a television show that you genuinely despise.

You have been replaced by an app, sir.

A TV weatherman is visiting my daughter’s preschool tomorrow as part of their week-long study of occupations.

He may be an actual meteorologist and not simply a failed actor who reads the weather, but I cannot confirm this.

Either way, hasn’t this job already been replaced by an app on my phone?

Does anyone under the age of 60 actually watch the local weather on television anymore?

I can’t even imagine siting in front of the television, waiting for the story about the car accident or two-alarm house fire to finish just so that you can watch a person sweep his hands across a green screen in an attempt to demonstrate the movement of this cold front or that high pressure system when all you want to know is if it’s going to rain tomorrow, and if so, when.

My phone provided me with this information in seconds last night while I was brushing my teeth and listening to Rachel Dratch narrate her memoir.

I think it’s perfectly kind of this weatherman to visit my daughter’s preschool this week, but is there a chance in hell that this occupation will still exist by the time Clara is looking for work?

Anti-Barney rhetoric proves to be effective

My wife and I think Barney and Friends is a dumb television show.

Granted we have never actually watched the program, but we can just tell. 

In an effort to keep the show from ever polluting our television, my wife has poisoned my daughter’s mind by making derisive comments about the program whenever possible.

It worked.

When Sesame Street ended this morning and a preview for Barney and Friends came on, Clara pointed at the television and said, “That purple T-rex is yucky!” and then pretended to spit on the ground. “A-puh! A-puh! A-puh!”

I find myself feeling both exceedingly proud of my daughter’s taste in television and a little dirty at the same time.

Adolescent boys are apparently easily entertained by really stupid (but AWESOME) stuff

I mentioned on Twitter today that my favorite Japanese monster was Gamera, the giant turtle with inexplicable rocket engines for flying.

Unable to remember the story of Gamera, I went online to refresh my memory.

I wish I hadn’t.

I cannot remember reading a more idiotic plotline in all my life.

It’s a sad reminder of how easily an adolescent boy can be entertained by an ill-conceived monster, a few well timed explosions and the destruction of a city.

The film opens with Gamera's awakening from the accidental detonation of an atomic bomb as a result of an aerial assault by American fighters on Soviet bombers caught crossing into North American airspace. Gamera wastes no time in causing a rampage of destruction, first destroying a Japanese research ship, then making its way to Japan to wreak havoc.

In an attempt to stop the giant turtle, Gamera is sedated with a freezing agent on a precipice, and powerful explosives are placed at the base. The explosion knocks the monster on its back, and while it seems as though mankind has scored a victory, this is not the case: Gamera reveals its ability to fly. The monster arrives in Haneda airport and destroys most of Tokyo.

The military attempts to lure it to an island with fire, which it eats, and kill it, but the creature is distracted when a volcano erupts. Gamera goes to eat the lava instead. A new strategy, Plan Z, is devised to stop the monster, this time by baiting it into a space rocket bound for Mars. The plan is successful and the Earth is safe from Gamera.

Gratitude journal: Portlandia

Tonight I am grateful for Portlandia. Elysha and I watched the season finale of the show tonight.

It’s freakin’ hilarious.

Happily, IFC has greenlighted a third season of the show, so there is more gratitude to come.  

Shopping and cooking take too much damn time.

The greatest failing of the modern world is our inability to invent a Jetsons-like push-button food machine.

Three simple, slightly spiteful, steps to happiness

A friend of mine sent this to me: David Letterman to Ricky Gervais: Why did you host Golden Globes a third time?

Well, the first time I did it because it was a huge global audience for a comedian. The second time I did it because I could improve on the first time. The third time I did it because they said I'd never be invited back and I wanted to annoy them.

She suggested that Mr. Gervais and I would likely be fast friends.

I agreed.

If you examine his response, Gervais’ participation in the Golden Globes follows a path that I fully endorse.

1. Do something hard because it will improve your current standing in life.
2. Continue to do it until you've honed your skills and become an expert.
3. Continue to do it in order to spite your enemies and detractors.

It’s that last part that I like the best.

Why my daughter is free to watch Scooby Doo whenever she damn well pleases

Sometimes you run into sheer brilliance in the most unexpected places. On the Comics Alliance blog, Chris Sims writes about Scooby Doo and secular humanism in a piece that I consider a masterpiece.

I know. It sounds crazy. Like baked beans and iron filings. It’s difficult to imagine the two working together.

But Sims pulls it off pulls it off in a big way.

I love it as a parent. I love it as a teacher. I love it as a writer.

It’s ingenious.

There are so many outstanding paragraphs that I could have quoted here, but the one that I think serves as the heart of the piece is the following. Read it, and if you are as impressed as I am, go to the blog and read the full piece. ______________________

Because that's the thing about Scooby-Doo:

The bad guys in every episode aren't monsters, they're liars.

I can't imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough to not excite their kids would've been if they'd stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it's up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn't through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think.

I can't identify a Kardashian because I look away.

I told a friend that I ended 2011 still unable to pick a Kardashian out of a lineup. She didn’t believe me.

In my younger days, I might have tried to convince her that it was true. But I’m older, wiser and more of a jerk these days. Instead I said, “Thankfully, I don’t care if you believe me or not. It does not change the truth.”

But it’s true. Unless you put a Kardashian in the lineup with a bunch of construction workers, I would be hard pressed to accurately point one out.

Here’s why:

I don’t watch very much television.

95% of my television viewing is time-shifted, so I see almost no commercials.

I do not read magazines like People or US.

Actually, I don’t read magazines at all. I read articles originally published in magazines on the Internet, but I can’t remember the last time I read from a physical magazine.

I also rarely see magazines like People or US. Most of my purchases are made at BJ’s (no magazine racks) or in self-checkout lines at Stop & Shop (also no magazine racks).

When I find myself facing one of these magazine racks, I am typically occupied by something else. A Twitter stream on my phone, an audiobook in my ear, or both.

I actually know very little about the Kardashians. From what I have gleaned through osmosis, their father was the attorney in the OJ Simpson trial and their step-father may or may not be former Olympian Bruce Jenner, who once graced the box of Wheaties that I ate as a child.

I also know that one of the Kardashians married and then divorced a second-tier NBA player on the New Jersey Nets.

I know this thanks to the brilliant Andy Borowitz, who made fun of the Kardashian repeatedly on Twitter.

I am happy that I cannot pick out one of these girls (are there two of them?) from a lineup. It is a source of pride for me. I hear so many people complain about their inexplicable popularity while simultaneously knowing so much about them.

If you don’t want to have the Kardashians in your life, simply look away. Stop reading magazines that earn a profit from celebrity baby photos, paparazzi pictures, and Kardashian wedding rumors.

Stop tuning into programs like the Today Show, which seem to report almost exclusively on celebrity marriages, the British royalty, the latest YouTube phenomenon, and the disappearance of upper-middle class, blond female twenty-somethings.

Just look in another direction. There are people in this world who are genuinely worthy of our attention, and these people are constantly overshadowed by people like the Kardashians.

Pay attention to people like Arielle and Austin Metzger instead.

At least stop complaining about the popularity of the Kardashians while simultaneously watching their television shows, reading about them in People magazine and watching them on the red carpet (if that is something they do).

But even better, let’s just give our attention to people more deserving. If we all just look away from people like the Kardashians, they will eventually go away.

They already have for me.

Non-starter

Elysha and I were watching Mad Men last night and saw Trudy wearing this unique piece of maternity lingerie. I immediately offered to purchase it for Elysha. I’d scour the Earth until I found it, I assured her. Flea markets, second-hand stores, costume departments… I’d leave no stone unturned in my relentless pursuit to find this artifact of the 1960s.

She declined. Vehemently.

Bronies: Another sign of the impending apocalypse

I like to evaluate absurdity using this standard: If I included the potential absurdity in a manuscript, would my agent or editor scoff at its absurdity and declare it too improbable even for fiction?

I believe that bronies meet this absurdity standard, and yet they are real.

Bronies is the name assigned to the growing audience of young men who have developed a cult-like following for the remake of the 1980s animated TV show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Seriously. Dudes are watching My Little Pony and liking it.

And not in some ironic, hipster way. They genuinely like the show.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Some bronies say they got hooked on the high-quality animation. Others felt they identified with the four-legged stars that flaunt luxurious, pony-tail like manes. "The characters aren't one-dimensional," said 15-year-old Christian Leisner, a brony in the Berkeley group. "They have flaws, they have backgrounds they're ashamed of."

Bronies—a mash-up of "bro" and "ponies"—established a quarterly New York convention, called BroNYCon, this year. They've spawned at least two Pony-themed websites and enjoy a thriving subculture of artists whose creations include Pony-inspired music and their own writings about Twilight Sparkle and the gang.

I realize that some people might say, “Give these guys a break, Matt. Who are you to judge what brings them happiness?  These guys have found something they love and enjoy, and they’re not hurting anyone. Let them be.”

Yeah, that sounds nice, but they’re watching My Little Pony.  I have to draw the line somewhere on polite, detached acceptance, and the brony subculture is it.

I don’t care how happy it makes them. It’s insane.

People are actually buying this. I checked.

For just $499.99 you can own the complete series of Law & Order on DVD.

Twenty seasons of the show.

Why would anyone ever want to own this?

Isn’t that show on all the time anyway?

It’s easy to be self-righteous and stupid when you’ve never known hunger

Sesame Street decides to portray poverty in an attempt to raise awareness and allow the impoverished and hungry children of America to feel recognized and validated and Fox News decides to attack? Shame on these people.

Have they lost their goddamn minds?

I grew up on the free lunch and breakfast program, which required me to raise my hand in order for my teachers tallied the number of free and reduced meals were required for the students in my classroom.

It was embarrassing, isolating and saddening.

It made me wonder why my parents couldn’t feed me while so many other parents could.

It made me feel like something was wrong with me and my family.

Thankfully, I was not hungry very often when I was a child. These programs served me well.

But there were days when I was hungry. Plenty of them.

And I would have loved to have seen someone in the media representing my plight.

I suspect that these idiot pundits on Fox wouldn’t know the first thing about being hungry.  I suspect that they talk about the free and reduced lunch program but have never eaten a meal courtesy of the program.

I suspect that their children have never been required to self-identify themselves in front of their peers as coming from an impoverished family.

This is not Democrat versus Republican.  This is not liberal versus conservative.

This is sanity versus insanity.  Understanding versus ignorance.  Good intentions versus the desire for a sound bite.

If you don’t want to watch the interview, I have pasted a couple of their most inflammatory remarks below:

Fox News anchor Eric Bolling:

I get it, and boy, take this in the right way here, but are we singling out a poverty stricken little girl? Does my son need to see that?  My little boy need to see that’s going on. You don’t single out other groups. You don’t single out the little gay Muppet, or the little black Muppet, or the little Hispanic Muppet do you?  No, they’re are intertwined in the ensemble.

Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus:

Look, it is up to the parents to explain some of the more difficult aspects of life to their children when they feel the time is appropriate, and one of things we do as taxpayer to make sure we don’t have children who go hungry is we have the school lunch program, the school breakfast program, and in some cases the after school snack that we do. We have a lot of programs, so that while it’s not always a great situation we do have some protections in place, and I think it’s not appropriate for PBS and Sesame Street to take it upon themselves to give these more difficult lessons of life to little children.”

Whoopi Goldberg apparently just learned yesterday that the N-word is considered offensive to some people. She’s also apparently an idiot.

This exchange on The View is stupid in many ways, but I found Whoopi Goldberg’s opening comment especially moronic.

In discussing Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain’s recent use of the N-word, she said:

When the candidate Herman Cain talked about it, how radically insensitive it was, he didn’t use the term N-word, which I guess is what we’re supposed to be saying now.  It’s so hard to know what to be saying now, so I just use the word.

Really, Whoopi?

You didn’t get the memo on the N-word? 

We’ve only been avoiding its use for the last fifty years.

Sure, I have an older friend who will occasionally use the word Oriental instead of Asian, but this is an honest mistake made by a woman born more than sixty years ago, and the word Oriental is still used today to describe items like carpets and teas, so it’s not as though the word has gone completely out of fashion. 

Not to mention Oriental is not nearly as racially charged. 

But the N-word? 

Seriously, Whoopi?

Is it really so hard to know what to be saying now? 

I understand that some people continue to use the N-word word, including African Americans who purposefully use the word as a means of stripping it of it’s power, but am I supposed to believe that Whoopi Goldberg is not aware of the history and nuance involved with the use of the N-word and its general avoidance in most of popular culture today?

Naked donut run or embarrassing tattoo on your bottom?

Which is worse?

A man forced to run around the parking lot naked in front of his coworkers with a donut affixed to a uniquely suited appendage…

…or a man forced to tattoo an image of his coworkers’ choice onto his butt?

This was a plot point in this week’s episode of The Office, and I contend that the naked donut run was the decidedly worse option (though it was portrayed on the show of the lesser of the two evils).

My wife disagrees, claiming that the permanence of the tattoo overshadows the momentary embarrassment of the parking lot streaking.

I argue that the discreet nature of the location of the tattoo creates a problem in only the most intimate circumstances, whereas the outlandish and embarrassing imagery associated with the run would be just as permanent in the minds of the coworkers as any tattoo. 

Thoughts?

Elmo

I would’ve never given this film or its trailer a moment of my time prior to the birth of my daughter. After witnessing the insanity of the Tickle Me Elmo craze, I had nothing but negative feelings for the stupid orange puppet. But now that I’ve seen him in action, I love the little guy. I want to be his friend. He makes me wish that I could live on Sesame Street.

There’s something so innocent and kind and joyous about Elmo that I am forced to stop and watch every time he is on the screen.

I can’t wait to see this film.