TV Bachelor

I'm watching the new season of The Bachelor which features Brad Womack, a dude who didn't fall in love via game show three years ago. You see this is Brad's second attempt on the show. During season 11, Brad let the last two remaining girls go and he left alone. He says that he went home and became a broken man. He asks, "How could I not have found somebody?" Indeed. How could it be that on a game show designed to surround one guy with 12 or so gorgeous, nearly infallible women, all of whom are automatically in love with him from the start, and he doesn't get to, you know, have one of them? It's a shame.

Brad Womack isn't really a bad guy. I'm sure he does have issues with commitment (as about 99% of American males do). I'm sure he really does want to find someone, to fall in love, and to self-actualize. This show is just another example of reality TV reshaping the entire human landscape that makes up the contestants. I mean, there is a shot where Womack is talking about how his stoicism and manly physique are a facade and the B-Roll cuts to him flexing his pecks while walking shirtless through a park!

Here's another weird thing about reality TV: no one ever acknowledges the fact that they are on a reality TV show, at least not anything overt. When the girls see Brad, they are shocked. One even slaps him. They question if he's really changed, if he's ready to commit. But what none of them ask is, "Why would you let him back on the show? Why did you choose him as the next Bachelor?" And that's a fair question but those 4th wall-breakers are strictly forbidden. No one would ask that because the answer would invariably be horrible.

Ironically, one contestant, a recent divorcee, is discussing her distaste for the dating scene because "everyone plays games". You realize you're going on a game show, yes? The show is manipulating in the best way: it manipulates the audience and the contestants, especially the psychological mindjob on Brad. I mean here's a guy who couldn't decide on true love on a game show, goes to therapy for three years, and then the show gets him back for more. I'm wondering how much they paid off his therapist so he would endorse the decision to return to the show.

The Best Response

At the end of Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, there is a Book Club section that invites readers to come up with the best responses to some embarrassing, illegal, or career-ending crises. So here are my best responses.

The best response to being caught shoplifting

"No, I did not pay for these and I don't plan to. I suppose that makes me a bad person in this modern society that everyone lives in, but I disagree. I mean take a look around, we're living in a completely mediated world that is entirely removed from any type of natural process. Coupled with this fake world is the pressure to buy stuff. Copious amounts of stuff, most of which we don't need. Like what I stole. I mean think about what makes someone successful; it's all material possessions. A house, money, a BMW, sharp suits, watches, jewelry, hard-wood floors, brass cufflinks, 3D HDTVs the size of a wall, ivory elephant tusks, Brinks Home Security, private security, six airbags, first-class tickets, Apple devices, filet mignon, Criterion collection DVDs, and you know stuff like that. It's all bullshit. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of living in this kind of world with these values. So yeah, I took it. But I did it as a form of nonviolent protest against a world that is actively trying to oppress me and I don't think, you know, you should report this."

The best response to forgetting your best friend's birthday

"First off, I understand if you're upset. I'm your best friend; I know you. And it was a pretty crappy thing to do, to forget your day of birth. But I think we have a great opportunity. We have the opportunity to take this unpleasant moment and turn it into a moment of growth. A moment of growth for our relationship. You know, you tie a rope around a tree and, you know, it becomes a part of the tree, er...Okay, I'm not sure if that really applies to this but I think that analogy kind of works. Anyway, listen, you can get mad that I forgot or we can both concede to being human and grow. I think that would be the best thing in the world for both of us right now."

The best response to hidden video footage featuring employees of an independent franchise of your restaurant chain spitting and defiling food for customers. 

"It's appalling. It's a shame. I mean, honestly, this is a perfect example of just one of the pitfalls of capitalism. It's in a kind of a roundabout way but this is what happens when we just try to make as much money as possible. I mean, it's their store, for all intents and purposes, not ours. But because our name's on the front and on the menus, we now have to defend an entire corporation because some knuckleheads want to spit in people's food for kicks. Although, I can't complain because if these kinds of things didn't happen, we wouldn't need a PR department and I'd be out of a job. But again, it's just capitalism gone wrong. Since they are their own enterprise that uses our products and signage, we have to clean up the messes. But we can't monitor them, so we just have to hope that they care as much as we do about the service, the product, and the customers. And by "we" I mean corporate." 

Failure in Household Appliances

The image on the left is a depleted air-freshener I found in my friend's bathroom. It's the kind that you plug in and set to release a puff of fragrance at a regular interval. This model had five frequencies but I found the thing to be really confusing. Had it been full, I might have been able to test it but it was empty and so I was just left with elusive knowledge in the world, as Donald Norman would say.

The image may be a bit difficult to see on some screens but the "interface" of the thing has a right-turning mechanism set with the numbers one through five that I'm assuming is used to set the frequency of release. But above is a 'minus' and 'plus' sign with a gradient symbol that increases in slope as it approaches the plus side. The desired frequency is then placed at the notch above and below the turning mechanism. The confusing part though is that the numbers in the turning mechanism start at five and go down. So you immediately see that the five is above the minus and the four is above the plus. Well that doesn't make any sense. Does that mean that five is the lowest setting? Or does five refer to the time (possibly in minutes?) that the frequency is set? If that's true then this device might make more sense because at one puff every minute is more than one puff every five minutes. Still, it leaves the user with something to think about before using it.

If we removed the turning mechanism (which I'm assuming is disk-shaped) and flattened it out so the numbers didn't wrap around, the numbers descend from five to one but the minus to plus signs don't match up. It just doesn't make sense.

A rendering of the unwrapped turning mechanism.
This device implies that five is less than one.

But maybe this design flaw isn't as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. It's not that it's just an air-freshener. It's not that it only costs maybe $4. It's that (at least when it's full) you have a degree of flexibility in failure. If I misuse the air-freshener, nothing bad will happen, even if I fail to operate it fifty times. Of course it wouldn't take me that long, but there are no consequences to misusing it or it not figuring it out. And I'd probably figure it out within five tries, as it doesn't have a tremendous amount of options. But this safe rate of failure isn't so for everything. Brakes on a car must be easier to understand and use than, say, the radio or air-conditioning/heating. If you misuse the brakes, or can't figure them out, it could spell your death. If you misuse the air-conditioning, you'll just be hot for a while. And chances are, you'll figure it out minutes later. 

In short, some devices might irritate us, but it's not a big deal if they do. Others however, need to make sense the instant you see it, or the consequences could be dire.

Would you rather...

1. Would you rather marry someone who is truly selfish or truly insane (i.e. they have diagnosed psychological/cognitive disorder like schizophrenia, psychosis, etc).
2. Imagine you have two choices for a pet and you have to make a choice. Both pets have the ability to speak and understand English. One is a sarcastic and depressed cat and the other is a fun-loving and compassionate dog. If you choose the cat, you will be paid $200/week. If you choose the dog, you will have to pay $200/week. The cat will most likely complain about everything and be a burden on your professional and social life. The cat is also prone to violent outbursts. The dog on the other hand, will not only be energetic, witty, and smart but will also provide you a warm friendship. Once you make the choice, you have to keep the pet for a minimum of one year.
3. You visit a strange travel agency that has in its possession advanced technology. You have two choices for your vacation: (1) A trip back in time or (2) a memory implant of anywhere, ever (i.e. anywhere in the galaxy). Both options cost the same. The trip back in time allows you to visit any time period and location on Earth (except for when the Earth was first forming as it is too unstable). However, to protect the space-time continuum, you can not move from a specified travel area, which is a circle with a 250-foot radius. If you leave this travel area, you will be killed. The trip lasts one hour. The memory implant allows you to "remember" vividly a trip that you hypothetically took. This trip is completely made-up and did not happen. But it will feel like it did. You will remember tiny details and sensory input. It's the same thing in Total Recall. This trip lasts (or feels like it lasted) two days. And you can go anywhere. You can orbit Saturn. You can chill in a cabana in Maui. But it never really happened. Which do you choose?
4. You are about to die. When suddenly, a mysterious stranger appears and gives you two options, both of which will save your life. The first option is to imbue you will magic powers. The magic option will save you from whatever is about to kill you and return you (if you're old) to a youthful age and grant you a multitude of powers. The second option converts your consciousness into a digital format and uploads it to the Internet. But there are some side effects to both options. With the magic option, in order to survive, you have to use magic (i.e. throw fireballs, teleport, turn invisible, etc) which ages you; the more magic you use, the older you become. In the second option, you lose your physical body and can never return to it. While in a digital format, you gain all the benefits of other digital files (speed, duplication, storage, communication, etc). You can visit friends and family (as long as they have a computer or smart phone). You can even upload yourself to games and live in the world of the game. The digital self option renders you nearly immortal. The magic option, depending on how addicted you become to the power of the magic, could kill you quicker than you think. Which do you choose?
5. You are a journalist who has just uncovered a terrible secret about American society: for the past twenty years, aliens have been living amongst us. They plan to overthrow the government and name of their own as the leader. You don't know how many aliens are impersonating humans but you estimate it at around 400,000. The aliens have powerful technology that they are saving for the overthrow. You also know that certain members of the government (at the local, state, and federal levels) are aliens, but you don't know exactly who. Also, there are others like you, who know about the impending invasion. Knowing all this, do you (a) spread the word publicly with verifiable proof or (b) build a secret underground resistance made of people who know the truth?

Revisiting I Am Legend

I find I Am Legend to be a fascinating film. Its really broken up into two sections: the first 80 mins and the last 20 or so. The first 80 minutes are brilliant, intense, and heartbreaking. Robert Neville is living a lonely existence in a ruined New York City. Much of this section is about his day-to-day; scavenging, hunting, eating, bathing his dog, while also searching for a cure for KV, the virus that ended civilization. This might sound banal but its got this quiet intellectualism to it. He acts strange but in the context his behavior makes perfect sense and Will Smith performance is elegant and minimal.

There is a great scene in the beginning where Neville is hunting deer through a verdant Times Square. He comes across one in a cross street and just as he takes aim to bring it down, a lioness pounces on the deer and drags it to her mate and their cub. Neville just looks on, continuing to aim, as this family eats, I'm assuming, their first meal in quite some time. At this point, it becomes clear that Neville is no longer human, but simply a living thing trying to survive. He lets the lions have their prize and he returns home.

Then, to cement this idea of Neville dehumanized, after he captures a female dark seeker to experiment on, a male exposes himself to sunlight in anger. Neville comments on this behavior in a video log. He describes it as irrational and notes how the infected have lost any semblance of humanity. Its clear that Neville is actually the lost one; he doesn't even see that the female is the dark seeker's mate, which is fairly obvious.

Neville's only friend in the world is his dog, who he has to kill when it turns into a vamp. This is a bit manipulative but whatever I like being manipulated sometimes. Neville speaks to mannequins, hoping for one to talk back and when he realizes there is no hope, he tries to kill himself.

However, his suicide attempt is thwarted by Ana, another survivor who rescues him just before he is eaten by a dark seeker. They drive off together and Neville wakes up in his flat with Ana and Ethan eating breakfast. Neville tries to adjust to normalcy and finds difficultly with it. And rightfully so, he hasn't spoken to another human in over three years.

After a short adjustment period, he explains the philosophy of Bob Marley to Ana. This marks the end of the first section and beginning of the second. This second section sucks. I really do not like it. I get the impression that production stopped for a week or so, the director Francis Lawrence was fired or left, was replaced, and they decided to make a completely different movie. The second section finds Robert Neville a nearly different person when he describes Marley and how mankind should "light up the darkness". Then dark seekers attack his pad and he sacrifices himself so Ana and Ethan can escape with the cure. The tone changed drastically from this intimate and dark character study to a bombastic actioner with a messianic hero and happy ending. I just don't buy it.

I've read that the special effects takes over toward the end of the film. This is true as the attack on Neville's house features digital dark seekers and copious amounts of gunplay. But this switch is minute to how Neville's character changes. Granted that characters are supposed to change during the course of a film, but Neville's change appears to be arbitrary. He goes from a dehumanized calculated survivor to an optimist of a childish degree with little more than the movie Shrek to piece it all together.

Rewiring Brains

I heard a story about this great ballet dancer from the early 20th century. As a child, she wouldn't sit still and performed very poorly in school. Distraught and not knowing what to do, her mother took her to see a doctor. The doctor tried various remedies at the time, including just strapping her down in a chair, none of which worked. The mother took her to see another doctor and he recommended putting her in dance classes as a way to "get it out of her system". Well it turns out that dancing was just the medicine. Dancing was just what this young girl needed. She didn't know how to communicate before she began dance. And she turned out to be this incredible dancer.

I just read this story in NYTimes about technology rewiring the brains of young people and how it is creating a population of easily distracted kids. Nothing we haven't heard before.

The main subject of the story was a high school student who is known around his school as one of the brightest, yet his grades beg to differ. He's received Ds and Fs in most of his classes except for his film classes. Sure enough, this kid loves nothing more than to make and discuss videos with his friends. He uses Facebook and YouTube religiously. I'd assume that he wants to be a filmmaker or some kind of multimedia producer.

Now the story uses this kid as an example of someone obsessed and distracted by technology, which is hindering his learning. It also posits that the brains of children are being rewired by technology and that they will literally think differently when using technology. I've actually read literature about this regarding cell phone use and the research is fascinating and convincing.

But I don't honestly see a problem with this kid. I mean, his story sounds a lot like the ballet dancer. His brain is probably being rewired, but is that a bad thing? He's obviously got a lot of passion about filmmaking and passion usually makes people not care about anything else. But it also makes people really good at the things that they are passionate about. If I were an educator, I would cultivate that passion, instead of strapping him down and forcing him to read Cat's Cradle (although that is a fabulous book, which he should probably read).

Moreover, why are the brain patterns of adults better? With all the problems in the world, you'd think someone would want to rewire the human brain. I say, make films Vashal Singh!

Andy Rooney's Tweets

I'm not sure if Andy Rooney keeps the @Andy_Rooney handle on Twitter. It sounds like him but in a stripped-down almost satirical way. Basically, if it came to light that it was actually a young person who was making fun of him, it wouldn't come as a shock.

Here are some of my favorites that I've read:

"Why do ice cream manufacturers insist on such fancy flavors? Strawberry? Pistachio? What's wrong with chocolate and vanilla?"
I agree. Nothing illustrates the decadence of modern society like strawberry ice cream.

"People are using entirely too much foul language. You're free to say whatever you want, but "turd" just makes you sound uneducated and low"
Those whippersnappers!

"They're amazing, walls. They hold up the roof, but they're also handy for hanging pictures. I like that."
Poetry.


"There are too many brands of popcorn. Orville Redenbacher, Jolly Time, Jiffy Pop, Pop Weaver, Pop Secret, and Newman's Own are just a few."
DEAR GOD INFORMATION OVERLOAD WITH THE POPCORN


"I'm not a "dog person," I'm just a person who prefers dogs to cats. They say the Persians worshipped cats. I don't care for them, either."
Wait, you don't care for Persians...or cats?


"My favorite photograph of Mike Wallace: c:\users\arooney\my_documents\mikesnewtrousers.jpg"
Great. Now all I have to do is break into your house, log onto your computer, and look at the photo. You really know how to harness the power of the Internet.
 
Well in his defense, Twitter doesn't exactly lend itself to intelligent commentary.