Jump

My husband is always dragging me to movies. “Dragging” is probably overstating the case, but I’m not much of a movie goer left to my own devices. Furthermore, my tastes in movies when I do go, are solidly middle brow (does anyone say that any more?), whereas his are all over the map. If it weren’t for my husband, I never would have seen Map of the Human Heart or Amelie. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t have seen Bridesmaids or 21 Jump Street, the film.

I wasn’t expecting to like 21 Jump Street when my husband suggested seeing it, but I asked myself, how bad could it be? Why is it I fail to learn that the answer to that question is generally, “Awful. Horrible. Worse than you think”?

Unlike the television drama series on which it is based, 21 Jump Street purports to be a comedy. The movie starts with us meeting two high school classmates, one a jock named Greg Jenko and the other a geek with braces named Morton Schmidt. We see them first on the day in which Schmidt gets rejected while trying to ask his beautiful neighbor to the prom and  Jenko gets told by his guidance counselor that he can’t go to the prom, despite being elected prom king, due to his poor grades. The next time they meet, they are both at the police academy, where Jenko is having trouble with coursework and Schmidt with athletics. They team up to help each other, graduate and are put on park patrol, where their dreams of making a big bust are spoiled by Jenko forgetting the words to the Miranda warning.

For some reason, this error qualifies them to be assigned to an undercover squad working out of an old church on Jump Street. I’ve always been under the impression that undercover work requires a lot of skill and experience, but this is movie world. Not only are they assigned to an undercover job trying to find the distributor of drugs at a local high school, but they are told to live at Schmidt’s parents house (under assumed names) while doing so. If you think that might make it hard to maintain their cover, you're right.

At this point I began to feel like I was taking some of the drugs, what with reality and I having parted ways somewhere around the opening credits. I’ll make a long story short. This is a bad movie. Avoid it. Save your money. Or use it to buy lottery tickets.

The only reason I’m writing about the movie at all is that there was one moment that made me sad for the movie it maybe could have been. When they arrive at the high school, Jenko forgets which brother he is supposed to be and gives the principal the wrong name. As a result, he is assigned to an advanced placement chemistry class while Schmidt is assigned to a drama class just as the role of Peter Pan in the class play is being recast. A series of improbable events leads to Schmidt being accepted by the popular crowd (one of whom is the drug dealer) while Jenko is befriended by the geeks who show him the fun side of science (and help him bug the dealer’s phone). At one point, Jenko looks at Schmidt in surprise that their roles have been reversed, as if he realizes that his being the popular kid in high school was as much a matter of luck as it was of who he is. Channing Tatum, who up to this point in the movie had given no indication of acting talent, managed to convey that in one moment with the expression on his face.

Or maybe I was hallucinating. But it’s a shame, because the audience this movie was intended for (I’m guessing middle school boys) probably could use the message that who you are in high school isn't who you are for the rest of your life. I don’t think the movie would have been improved by trying to hit them over the head with it, but possibly if there had been a half dozen or so fewer car chases, explosions, pratfalls, improbable coincidences and cliches, that one moment would have been a lot more effective.

But there weren’t. So if you are over the age of 13, avoid this movie. Go see something else.

To Snopes or Not to Snopes

Yesterday a friend of mine shared a picture on Facebook. It showed a young man with droopy pants and had the caption, “Did you know that sagging pants originated in jail, and the inmates would purposely sag their pants as a sign that they were ‘available’ to other inmates for sex?” For some reason, I found that hard to credit and searched for “sagging pants” on Snopes.com. Sure enough, Snopes declared the rumor false.

While sagging did gain its start in the U.S. prison system, it was not a clothes wearing style authored by imprisoned homosexuals intent upon advertising their interest in casual flings. Sagging pants became the behind-the-bars thing thanks to ill-fitting prison garb: some of those incarcerated were provided with clothing a few sizes too large. That oversizing, coupled with the lack of belts in the big house, led to a great number of jailbirds whose pants are falling off their arses. (Belts are not permitted in most correctional facilities because all too often the lifeless bodies of their inmate owners have been found hanging from them.)

I thought about posting this information and the link as a comment on my friend’s post, but I know I indulge my tendency to be a know-it-all far too often as is. I’m not sure what made me suspect that the caption on the picture was not quite correct. I think it may have been my impression that the issue of prison sex is far more complicated than the caption suggested.

I found myself wondering just how much of the ill-fitting prison garb is due to budgetary constraints and how much is an attempt to humiliate prisoners. If you don’t have any control over how your clothes fit and aren’t even allowed to own a belt, it can be embarrassing. Of course, there may just be the practical aspect: it’s hard to run if your pants are falling down, making escapes difficult. At any rate, I think it’s admirable in a way if the petty humiliation of badly fitting pants became a fashion trend as a show of understanding. 

Now that I’m retired, I’m more insulated than I used to be from the urban legend du jour. One of my former coworkers has a mother who passes along every internet rumor unvetted, and what my coworker got from her promptly got sent to the rest of us. I started out debunking them, but realized one day as four of my coworkers tried to pop popcorn by dialing a certain number with their cell phones that they didn’t care if the tall tales were true or not. They just found them fun. 

With other friends I found that correcting misinformation just got me removed from email lists, without improving their critical thinking skills at all. Not that being removed from those email lists was a bad thing. I still got the important information. It’s just that it gradually sunk in that nobody loves a smart ass.

So I did not correct my friend on the origin of saggy pants. Who knows? Maybe she’s right and Snopes is wrong.

Ah, Internet

This morning, I called a florist in Connecticut from here in Louisiana to send flowers to my niece in New York.

My poor niece broke a bone in her heel and had to have surgery to put in a plate and pins. To add to the fun, when she first went in for surgery, it turned out the implant had been contaminated and couldn't be used, so she had to wait another week for the surgery. 

My five and a half faithful readers will remember how whiny I was about a less involved broken foot of my own last summer, even though I got to spend some of my recovery time touring the British Isles and the Appalachians, so I understand what she is going through. Hence the flowers. Usually when I send people flowers, I use 1-800-Flowers, and they do a decent job, but I wanted something really special.

That’s where Glimpse of Gaia comes in. At the time of the decision in  Ahlquist vs. Cranston, I became aware of Glimpse of Gaia as the florist willing to deliver a bouquet to Jessica Ahlquist when local florists wouldn’t. They do beautiful work. Since I “liked” their page on Facebook, I followed the conversation in which they revealed that they belong to a network of florists around the country who make similar artistic arrangements. That’s how I wound up calling a florist in Connecticut from here in Louisiana to send flowers to my niece in New York. (The third bouquet under “Deliveries” is what I was aiming for.) It wasn’t cheap, but as I said, I understand how she feels right now.

I even got a call back to tell me that the florist in New York asked if they could delay delivery until tomorrow, when they are getting a fresh shipment of flowers that they can use. Sounds good to me.

It’s hard sometimes for me to look back and remember how life was before the internet. When I was growing up, FTD (Florists Telegraph Delivery, later Florist Transworld Delivery) was considered high tech. (Of course, we didn’t have the phrase “high tech”). To know what your flowers were going to look like, you’d need to look at a catalog at a participating florist’s shop or look at the ads in TV Guide or Parade that preceded major holidays. 

My niece, on the other hand, has had the internet available to her all her adult life, especially as her dad, my older brother, is a techno-geek who always has the first gadget the minute it rolls off the assembly line. This is not the same older brother who worked on the LEM; he, oddly enough, is pretty much a Luddite who has never set up the voicemail on his cell phone. My son got his first modem, a 2400 baud model that nevertheless was his connection to a local computer user group, from his uncle. Neal spent that summer playing a Trivial Pursuit game online, which meant that he spent a lot of time running down the hall to ask me, “How do you spell ______?” I told friends that if I had ordered my son to spend all summer practicing his spelling, he would have reported me to Child Protective Services.

My niece’s daughter, my great niece, has never known a time without high speed internet access. As far as she is concerned, pre-internet days and the time of the dinosaurs are roughly coeval. My great niece got an iPad last Christmas and uses it to take pictures of her and her friends, edit them with various filters, and post them on Facebook. I think she also uses her iPad to practice her spelling, at least I hope so. She needs to as badly as her cousin did.

I hope the flowers cheer my niece up. I suspect she needs it. I hope my great niece takes a picture and posts it, unedited, so I can see how they turned out.

Ah, internet.

Update, 4/7: My niece is thrilled with the bouquet. My brother took a picture of it, and while it is nothing like what I expected, it is lush and unusual. I'm amazed at how well the tulips and roses match.

Dying of Embarrassment

A few weeks back, while recounting the tale of my spectacular typo in an post on misspelling foreign words, I consoled myself, “No one dies of embarrassment.” Yesterday, an incident at a luncheon reminded me that yes, under certain circumstances you actually can.

I was at a UMW lunch, and our speaker had just finished the bulk of her talk and remarked that since she sells Mary Kay cosmetics, the person who had invited her asked that she also talk for a few minutes about skin care. Suddenly there was a minor stampede to the back of the room. The speaker looked a bit chagrined, until it was announced that one of our members was choking. Another member who was a nurse got up to help, and very shortly we got the news that it was okay, the person was speaking and breathing normally.

Later I spoke for a bit with R, the woman who had been choking. She said that she felt very embarrassed by all the fuss and that she had been trying to head quietly to the restroom so as not to cause a scene.

“People die that way!” I told her, as C, our nurse, stood by and nodded. “There is no reason for you to be embarrassed. We’re just happy that you are all right.”

If you are choking, the last thing that should be on your mind is embarrassment. I mean that in the sense of you shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea that you can be embarrassed by a medical emergency. I don’t mean that the last thought you ever have before you pass out quietly where no one can see you and help should be “It would be so embarrassing to make a fuss.” People aren’t going to care if you create a stir by needing to have the Heimlich maneuver performed on you, but they are going to care if you die. So, yeah, make a fuss. Attract attention. Then put both hands to your throat in the universal signal of choking. Better yet, learn to perform the Heimlich maneuver on yourself (and others).

Don’t die of embarrassment.

(There's a history of the Heimlich maneuver here.)

Or Maybe Not

A recipe for hard “boiled” eggs, which are actually baked in the oven, is making the rounds of Pinterest these days. With Easter coming up, it sounds like a great way to cook a large batch of eggs for dyeing without the struggle to keep them from cracking in the pan. I decided to try it, using only two eggs before committing myself to more.

I preheated the oven to 325º, as the recipe suggested (although it does say you can go as high as 350) and baked the eggs for the recommended 30 minutes. I then put them in a bowl of ice water for ten minutes, again, strictly following the recipe.

My results were disappointing. The eggs were not completely cooked, with a small section of the white of each being runny and a small part of the yolk not being completely firm. The brown spots that appeared on the shells did not completely disappear when the eggs were cooled, although the recipe said they would. There were also some brown spots on the egg whites themselves, although those parts tasted okay. Finally, the eggs were not easy to peel, as promised.

I could try again, either raising the temperature or increasing the baking time, but I suspect that while the eggs would be firmer, the brown spots would be more extensive. I don’t see the benefit of using this method over my regular method of boiling eggs. I’m sure people have had success with this recipe (maybe my old oven is just wonky), but if you plan to cook your Easter eggs this way, I’d make a small trial run first, especially if you plan to dye them. The brown spots could be a problem for dyed eggs.

Handy Man

John is up in the attic adding more insulation. I may have mentioned this before, but before my husband got his degree in civil engineering, he got one in construction. He can do simple electrical work and plumbing in addition to rough carpentry, painting, and other household repairs. He can also cook and sew, but those skills are self taught.

So as he prepared to take off to the big box hardware store this morning to buy the insulation, a song popped into my mind. Sure enough, it was on You Tube, because everything is on You Tube.

And for you youngsters who only know the James Taylor version, this is the original version. What can I say? I’m sorry my generation hogged all the good music.

On second thought, no I’m not.

ETA: The song Amaryllis linked to in the comment below is so perfect I wanted to see if I could embed the video here (lyrics may not be safe for work):

And while we're at it, here's another song on the same theme, although this man is a little more specialized:

Loudmouth

This morning was the first chance I had to make my trip to the Y, since we were out of town earlier in the week. John is outside painting the eaves, so I went by myself. The only remaining exercise bike of the type I like was right near a woman who was talking on her cell phone.

I had brought my Kindle to read while I pedaled, so I completely understood needing something else to do while on the bike. What disturbed me is that the woman next to me had apparently never been taught the concept of “inside voice”. Not only could I hear her side of the conversation clearly, but I suspect most people in the large, open gym could.

Not that she was discussing her hot affair with stud muffin Jorge or ways to hide money in offshore accounts. She was discussing problems with her child’s teacher and mentioned the teacher by name. I wasn’t exactly getting a helicopter mom vibe, but no one is going to say “No wonder the kid has problems. Those parents just don’t care”, either.

I could not think of a polite way of asking the woman to speak more quietly. For one thing, I would have had to interrupt her, and judging from the timing of her comments, her conversational partner was having difficulty getting a word in edgewise, let alone anyone else.

Besides, what I was reading was a frivolous mystery novel, not anything that required all my concentration. If I had wanted to, I could simply have pretended to read and gotten a complete education in the politics of our local school district’s gifted and talented program, a subject of interest to me in the past when my son was in the program, and that would have whiled away my time just as well. As it was, as hard as I tried not to eavesdrop, it was just about impossible not to hear.

What went through my mind, however, was how this conversation could come back to haunt Mom on the Phone. One of the first things they taught to us as baby speech pathologists was not to discuss clients in public places, even just by first names,  because you never know who is listening. MotP had mentioned Miss Dove (not her real name) by name, and since she was no doubt exercising near home, it is not unlikely that someone who knows Miss Dove could have heard her and passed the comments along, especially if MotP makes a habit of holding conversations like this in public places. I’ve been in the position of having people confront me over comments they heard about second hand, and it does not go well*. It’s hard to resolve a conflict when you have wrong footed yourself that way.

And the interesting thing about MotP is that she was a thoroughly nice woman. One of her concerns was the need for fund raising to help students who might not be able to afford an upcoming school event. She discussed the problems of finding time for self care among the overworked teachers or volunteers, I’m not sure which, and toward the end of the conversation offered some supportive words for the friend on the phone. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was just loud. I would just as soon have stayed out of her business, given the option, but I suspect if I actually knew her, I’d like her.

Lesson learned, at least, regarding my own public conversations. I really need to use my inside voice.

*Yeah, I know, if MotP reads this, it could get interesting.