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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Hollywood spirits


I've been to Hollywood a few times in my life. Mostly as most people go to Hollywood--as a tourist. This time I was in Hollywood on a business trip. I was in town for a few days to shoot some television spots for work. And since the production company's offices were in Hollywood I stayed at a hotel in the heart of tinsel town, the Hollywood Roosevelt.



The Hollywood Roosevelt was built in 1927. It is seeped in old Hollywood history. One of the first Academy Awards ceremony took place there. It is even supposed to be haunted by Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Cliff. Marilyn had one of her first photo shoots as a model in the hotel pool.


I didn't see any ghosts at the Hollywood Roosevelt. But I could understand why they would be there. The place had atmosphere oozing out of it in spades. I could understand why I didn't see any ghosts though. My room was barely big enough for me let alone a ghost.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

You take the high road and I'll take the circuitous road...


I started to write this post about how romanticism begins to wane the older you get and the more experience you've had. That got sidetracked as I meandered down memory lane recalling my own experience. Experience is the operative word here. Because being hopefully optimistic seems to be something that feeds a romanticized view of life. And experience tends to squash both hope and optimism.

Jaded perhaps. But pretty much true.

Pause for lugubrious howl.

Or perhaps experience begins to create self-fulfilling prophecies that squash both hope and optimism. Regardless, I find it difficult to maintain a cheery attitude about things, especially with the current political realities.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Clickbaiters are the new spammers


click·bait 
/ˈklikbāt/
noun informal 

(on the Internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page.
I am struggling to stick to my resolution to not succumb to the siren song of clickbait. This is particularly difficult on Twitter since the primary purpose of most tweets is to get you to click on them. Facebook is not much better. Though I have blocked some of the worst offenders from my news stream. For awhile there I was constantly being pulled into tabloid like headlines reading things like "Mother and toddler discover time machine in Walmart." Turned out to be a mother snaps a photo of a geriatric shopper dressed in the same outfit as her three year old.

Clickbait preys on that aspect of human nature that just can't help but open a container of cottage cheese in the fridge that is several months past it's pull date. It uses the same principal of newspapers like the National Enquirer to lure hapless shoppers to throw it in the cart at the checkout stand because they were dying to read an article about a boy trapped in a refrigerator who eats his own arm.


Monday, January 09, 2017

Repeating myself


I feel like I have told all of my stories. Some of them one too many times. I've even written about repeating myself several times and waxed less than poetically about my theories of why we repeat ourselves so much as we age.  And I find repeating myself terribly annoying.

Yet I do it.

It is disturbing when I catch myself repeating myself. It is even more annoying when someone else brings it to my attention. It happens at work. I'll be pontificating to one of my staff and they'll fill in the ending of what I'm ranting about. Because I've said it to them before.

Then I panic. Because it means I've become one of those people. The ones who are pompous bores that repeat themselves because they don't have anything original to say. It also means I've become unaware. And one thing I've always clung to throughout my life is that I take great pains to be aware of everyone of my faults. I like to beat people to the punch when it comes to pointing out my deficiencies.

I'd like to think that I also tried to correct my faults when I become aware of them. I don't really like to be annoying. And nothing is more annoying than little things like repeating ones self.

Well making grunting sounds for no reason is pretty annoying.  Or sucking your teeth. Muttering to yourself is annoying, too.

Pause for lugubrious howl.


Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Another day, another year


I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the end of 2016, a truly sucky year if there ever was one. I am not even going to rehash (or re-hashtag) the setbacks on the political scene

(Pause for lugubrious howl)

I did manage to post more posts than I have posted since 2011. I think that may have had something to do with the fore mentioned political developments. But I am resolved to ignore all of that for the next four years.

Not that I am much on New Year's resolutions. Though I am going to make as much effort as possible to avoid Internet click-bait. I am also resolved that, once I finish binge watching the sixth and final season of Glee, I will not rewatch it again. Because, although I enjoy the music, I found the writing on season five and six to have sunk to the sub-moronic level. Plus they have run out of gender benders to weave in and out of the weak plots.