Whether You Care Or Not
I think most people would agree that parents are a good place to go to find answers to life’s problems. They’ve usually had anywhere from two to ten times as much life experience as you, and even though they can sometimes be out of touch with present society, some things just never change. Although I have received quite a bit of help in life from my mom, most of the best advice I’ve received was often imparted to me by my dad.
I can point to many conversations that he and I have had where I have come out of it having some better understanding of myself, other people, and/or the way the world works in general. In fact, there are many times when he will give me his thoughts on something and I will flashback to previous talks we’ve had where he’s pretty much said the same thing in a different way, proving that I constantly need to be reminded. At any rate, we are both very consistent.
The two things that I’ve learned from my dad that have come into play of late are “don’t make a decision until you have all of the information” and “be a nice prick”. The first piece of advice there is pretty self-explanatory, but nonetheless, I have to continue to tell myself to wait for all the bits of information before deciding anything since I always have a tendency to jump the gun and make uninformed decisions. That second piece of advice, though, “be a nice prick”, could easily be taken out of context and misinterpreted, but is really just a succinct way of essentially saying “take care of yourself above all, particularly when dealing with people who don’t really care about you all that much, but still maintain integrity, kindness and human decency.” I hope I’m not butchering this, but I guess it’s kind of a hard concept to describe. However, when my dad said it to me a couple of years ago, it just made sense.
There are a number of people in life who we deal with all the time, day in and day out, who we perceive as “friends”. Very often, however, these people are merely acquaintances whose sole purpose in being nice and giving things to us is driven by their desire to get something from us. I think in general we forget this all the time. We need to make sure that we are looking out for number one – ourselves – and not determining our actions based on anything that these people do or say. In general, only a handful of close friends or family should have that effect.
Anyway, this wisdom imparted to me by my father is something of a motto for me these days. More and more I realize that I just need to “be a nice prick” when I’m dealing with the vast majority of people that I deal with on a daily basis. You should try it too.
The year 2005 is over and it’s time for my yearly ritual of looking back and determining what I learned, what I’d like to change, who I care about, what I care about, and all that “fresh start” stuff. The past couple of years seem to have been balancing acts for me…I’ve lost something significant and gained something significant. In 2004, right at the end of the year, I lost a girlfriend, but gained a best friend. In 2005 I gained a (much better) girlfriend, but right before the year finished, I lost a grandfather. It’s this loss that I will write about here because it’s one of the only remaining things from 2005 that I haven’t truly dealt with yet, I suppose.
Though the past 10 years or so I would not consider my grandpa and I to have been particularly close (he and my grandma lived in Las Vegas and I saw them at the most twice a year), I would say that the impact my grandpa had on me as a child is second only to my parents. While my dad is certainly the male role model in my life, my grandpa was to a large extent as well. Many would say that my love of humor, my love of baseball, and of course my love of food all came from my parents and largely my dad, but any or all of those things could just as easily be attributed to my grandpa too. So anyway, here’s my therapeutic (though not nearly exhaustive) list of things that I’ll never forget about my grandpa:
I’ll never forget how when he’d make a surprise visit to our house, I’d run to greet him and he’d hold out his hand for me to give him “five”; then when I did, he’d pretend like I slapped so hard that I hurt him.
I’ll never forget watching Dodger games with him (and my dad), learning about the intricacies of the game, and yelling at the TV with him before we ate dinner.
I’ll never forget him sitting with me in my car just after I got my license and telling me that if I just get my oil changed every 3,000 miles that I would have my car forever (and I believed him because he had his car forever).
I’ll never forget all the times he answered a waiter’s question of “Can I get you anything?” with “Yeah, a stack of hundred dollar bills,” as he held his thumb and forefinger out to indicate the size of the stack.
I’ll never forget seeing him plow through endless bowls of soup at Vegas buffets (or anywhere else for that matter) and still eating the rest of his meal too.
I’ll never forget driving to Radio Shack with him and picking up a battery for his ancient computer because it wasn’t keeping time.
I’ll never forget seeing him on his way up to light a candle with me at my Bar Mitzvah when he suddenly stopped and danced to “In The Mood” with my grandma for a short couple of seconds.
I’ll never forget the stories he would tell of New York, of his time in the service, of my mom’s youth, of all the past events that occurred long before I was even a thought in anyone’s head.
In the aftermath of all of this, the result is that my grandma and my great aunt are both moving to California to live together no less than ten minutes away from me. My grandma is the only grandparent I have left, and though her moving here will drastically change the lives of my family and myself, I am excited to soak up as many more great memories with her as I can while she’s here with us.
I think I gained more in 2005 than I’m even aware of, and I’m sure I lost even less than I probably feel. So 2006 is here and I’m ready for a new round of gains and losses that I’m sure will result in a net gain, just like 2005 did.
Happy New Year!
I have heard the term “good problem” a few times in the past couple of weeks and I wonder what it really means. I’ve particularly heard it in the context of three situations that have been presented to me as “good problems”:
These all seem to stem from the idea that having too much of something is a “good problem” to have. I guess I don’t see the distinction. A problem is a problem. Sure, having too many products, job offers, or infielders certainly beats not having enough products to make money, being unemployed or only having a second baseman. Still, it seems that what are often considered “good problems” really aren’t “good” at all, but just “better” than some arbitrary alternative. Wouldn’t you rather have just a few really good products that make a ton of money and that you can produce in an efficient manner? Wouldn’t you rather just have a job that you are satisfied with and that pays you enough money? Wouldn’t you rather just have four really good ball players who each play a single infield position well and can hit for average and power? I would think so. If you are spending money to develop products that you can’t make, or wasting it on infielders who you can’t play, or constantly looking for where the grass may be greener, you are probably tackling the wrong “problem”, or at least not going about solving it the right way.
I think our society today lives in a culture where having options is a good thing. We make our own choices in this day and age, so the more options we have, the better off we feel. But when does having too many options become a real “bad” problem? I mean, we have so many choices of restaurants to eat at, stores to shop at, brands to buy, and channels to watch that we just take them all for granted. That’s what capitalism is really all about, right? A series of “good problems” to have? I think “good problem” is an oxymoron. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Ever notice how some people never change? I mean some people go through life and mature and grow and learn. Others just sort of don’t. I’d like to believe that I fall in the former category rather than the latter, but it seems like I’m coming across more and more people who are pretty much the same as they were one, two, three, five, or ten years ago. Why?
The way I see it, there are four possibilities to explain this phenomenon:
Okay, here comes some fuzzy logic based on these four completely arbitrary answers to my question of why.
I just can’t believe that it’s number one because some people, I think, do change significantly over time. I don’t think it’s number four because old adages usually turn out to be true. So I would say that it is some combination of numbers two and three.
This is why I actually love this forum for myself. I can write whatever the hell I want, back it up, make weak arguments, and come out believing myself. It’s genius.
So, finally, my conclusion to this whole mess.
I look at people that I’ve known in my past lives as a high school student, a college student, a working professional, and a boyfriend, a friend, or an acquaintance (and these are the people I’m talking about since people you see all the time rarely seem to change anyway because you see them gradually change if they do at all) and I wonder many things. How could I have ever been associated with this person? Why did these people exit my life? What did I get out of them at the time? What did they get out of me? Do I seem the same to them like they seem the same to me? I never have answers to these questions. I’m sure I never will. Still, I’m eternally puzzled by the present lives of past friends.
What the fuck is going on with television these days? Has TV always sucked this much and I was just never old enough to understand? I mean, sure, “reality” (read: “non-scripted-but-producer-manipulated”) shows have taken over during the past few years, and we all know how mind-numbingly stupid every single one of them is. Yes, I do mean every single one. This includes The Apprentice, Survivor, and even American Idol. I’d say these stupid shows account for just over half of what’s on TV these days, particularly in prime time. However, these are not the only shows to blame for the demise of quality television. Formulaic crappy shows like Freddie, Stacked, Hope and Faith, According to Jim, and even “dramas” like The O.C., Everwood, and Las Vegas all get to stick around on our airwaves while quality programming like Arrested Development, Family Guy (for a short time) and Sports Night (from a little while ago) all get the axe. Look, I’m guilty of some of this too. One of my favorite shows is Law and Order, and it hasn’t exactly stayed very original lately. Everything on each of those L & O shows is totally formulaic and recycled. I watch Joey with some hope that it will maybe start to one day appear like the Friends I knew of old (or at least the first three or four seasons when Friends was really at the peak of greatness). However, I watch these because there really aren’t any other good shows on any more.
Unfortunately I know all too well why TV is like it is. It’s really easy to blame the networks, but it’s really not their fault. To me, it’s like blaming the gun companies for making guns or the tobacco companies for making cigarettes. You can’t fault the networks for producing shitty television. The networks are merely giving their consumers what they want. If enough people were smart enough to watch Arrested Development because they understand how clever and cool and comical it is, it WOULD NOT have gotten cancelled. If people stopped watching Freddie because they realized how unoriginal, unfunny, and unbelievably stupid is, it WOULD have gotten cancelled. Unfortunately, PEOPLE ARE STUPID. Even worse, people are getting stupider by the day because they continue to watch this shit on television.
Maybe TV really has always sucked. I mean I watch shows like Full House, Family Matters and Saved By The Bell now and wonder what the heck I liked about those shows. (Saved By The Bell is still a nostalgic guilty pleasure of mine however.) But it seems even with all the shit that was out there, the classic shows from my youth like The Wonder Years, The Cosby Show were such higher quality than anything that exists and can survive today. All the critically acclaimed shows of today like Lost and Desperate Housewives are mildly entertaining and may fall slightly above the rest of the pack. However, it seems like they hold no water when compared to some of the classic television shows of all time.
I’m all for mindless television at times. Stick that stuff on VH1 and MTV and FX and E!. There is nothing better than those stupid countdown shows like The Top 100 Pop Culture Icons or The 50 Cutest Child Stars or those dumb dating shows like Blind Date and Elimidate when you are looking for brainless TV at 11:00 at night. Just put them all on separate channels and put quality prime time programming on the major networks. Unfortunately this means that the networks would lose all advertising revenue to these separate channels because everyone would be watching them instead. So sad.
I’ve pondered cancelling my cable subscription so many times in the past month. What am I paying for 500 channels when at any given moment, MAYBE two of them have something worth watching on. If they do it is usually a Seinfeld re-run or another movie that I already own on DVD. I know a lot of people say “HBO has good stuff”, and I guess it does, but in this age of technology where you can download commercial-free shows from the Internet or buy them and put them on your iPod, why have cable? Just watch only what you want to watch when you want to watch it. It’s even better than this DVR mentality of “what you want, when you want”. It’s now “ONLY what you want, when you want, AND NEVER ANY OTHER CRAPPY SHOWS”.
Television sucks.
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