Island Living

In my opinion, all men are islands. And what's more, now's the time to be one. This is an island age.

A hundred years ago, you had to depend on other people. No one had TV or CDs or DVDs or videos... or home espresso makers. Actually, they didn't have anything cool. Whereas now, you see...you can make yourself a little island paradise. With the right supplies and the right attitude... you can be sun-drenched, tropical, a magnet...for young Swedish tourists. And I like to think that perhaps I am that kind of island. I like to think I'm pretty cool. I like to think I'm Ibiza.

--Nick Hornby, "About A Boy"

This may only be news to me, but, I don't get most of you. That is to say, I don't get you.  I don't get most of the things over which you seem to obsess or invest your emotions. American Idol? That show was on 50 years ago, but it was called the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

You all seem to know every minute, gripping detail of a long list of things that I've barely heard of, much less care about. Its like I went to work one day, and nearly everyone was new and the company was in a totally different business than yesterday.

How did this happen? How does this happen?

Don't ask me. I avoid people wherever possible. Hmm, there you go. Problem solved.

I don't read, I see about three new movies a year, and I only watch about five TV channels not dedicated to sports (one of those is the Cartoon Network). Other than things like computers and four wheel disk brakes, for all I know it could still be 1979 (I SO wish we could get rid of that Jimmy Carter guy). So just because you think Game of Thrones is the most totally boss thing ever, don't look for me to spend a hour listening to you drone about it. "Oh, its so awesome!" Nope.

Time and again, I miss all the cultural guideposts littering the human highway. "Miss" isn't quite right. "Ignore" really best captures the spirit of the thing. They say no man is an island. But as you can see above, they are wrong. Sometimes I get on the bandwagon, but its usually about 10 years after it started. Right around 2005, for example, I really started liking punk rock. I'm a rebel.

But I can tell you a lot of the things I never got. Its a big long list, so this is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe you can tell me what I missed, but please be so kind as to spare me your "dude, you are so wrong about [insert list item here], its totally awesome!" comments. 

Maybe I should I have just listed the things I liked.

Lots of TV. I guess since we're living in a global village, I should start with television. I could reel off a big long list of shows I never watched, understood, or even knew about when most of you were planning your lives around them. Its not that these shows are all horrible; I can acknowledge some of them were quite good. I just never could get sufficiently interested enough to invest the time to watch:

• X Files. Basically the Avengers (not those Avengers, but the real Avengers) with aliens and much less interesting leads. Emma Peel anyone?
• The Sopranos. Yeah, I know, it was brilliant. EVERYONE says so. You must obey!
• Hill Street Blues. Hill Street Bores.
• LA Law (which from all I could tell was basically Hill Street Blues with lawyers).
• Anything with a Kardashian. If you even hesitate in agreeing with me, please stop reading this instant and never come back.
• American Idol/America's Got Talent/So You Think You Can Dance/Dancing With the Stars. These are talent shows for people who lack the talent to be taken advantage of on their own.
• Real World/Amazing Race/Survivor/Jersey Shore. "Reality" shows? I say, lowest common denominator.

Rap. Maybe its a cultural thing. Rap is not much more than "call and response" as practiced in Africa for centuries. Beyond that, there's no melody, except lifting parts of songs written years ago. Overexcessive reliance on a thudding bass beat. Glorification of materialism, violence and misogny. Cash rules everything around me. Other than that, its my favorite.

Line dancing. Any man who line dances, other than the Cotton Eyed Joe at a wedding or after midnight at the Broken Spoke, should just get ballet season tickets.

Movies:

• Batman/Spiderman/Iron Man. If I wanted to read a comic book, I'd steal some money from my Dad's top drawer and ride my bike down to the 7-11 and buy the comic book. What am I, 12?
• Most romantic comedies. Having been on about 10,000 dates, I can pretty much tell you the entire plot of most rom coms after the first five minutes. A little originality, please.
• Karate Kid. I was cheering for the Cobra Kai. Hilary Swank played the apprentice in one of the sequels, and she was way tougher than Ralph Macchio. Are you surprised? Wax on, wax off.
• Horror movies. If I want to be scared or grossed out for two hours, I'll go on a date.
• Angsty dramas. Oh my God...just do something already. These movies are like incredibly ridiculous and distilled versions of Hamlet.  That suck. The characters pretty much know their problems and how to solve them throughout the entire movie. But they spend the first 95% of the movie agonizing over the choice that everyone knows they'll make at the end (with five minutes left...its called "dramatic tension, people). By the time they finally do what everyone in the theatre knew they had to do, two hours before, I usually hate them and wish that they would fall into a ditch with a sewer leak. Think Reality Bites.
• Live and let live movies. Not so much chick flicks, but where everyone feels really good at the end because of some life affirming lesson. Except Its A Wonderful Life, which is remarkable.
• Mysteries.

What do I like? Westerns. Comedies. Old musicals.

Skiing. I haven't known anyone older than 16 that went skiing for the first time who didn't break a bone or tear a ligament or tendon. And not like an elbow but one of the important ones. Of course, most of them were probably wasted at the time, but my innate Chevy Chase-like coordination resembles drunkenness. I can't take that risk. You'll find me sitting by the fireplace observing the ski bunnies warming up from the day's runs.

Golf. If I want to walk around in the woods swinging a stick, I'll go for a hike or attend a "live action role play" fest with all the other dorks. For free. And avoid all the country club douchebags ruining the scenery. "I want a hamburger, no a cheeseburger. I want a hot dog. I want a milk shake. I want potato chips...."

Hunting and fishing. Ugh. Look. Most of you don't recognize God's gifts in your midst. Like, the grocery store. Where they sell any kind of meat or fish you could possibly imagine. And, whoa! You don't have to get up at 4 in the morning and freeze to death just to go to the store. True story.

Sailboats. Being especially motion sickness prone, sailboats to me are sort of like the zero-G exercises the astronauts endure. You know, the "Vomit Comet." I basically get nauseous looking at a sailboat.

Wrestling. Its fixed. Get it? If I want to see a bunch of steroided, speedo wearing muscle freaks yell at each other while bleached blonde chicks show off their boob jobs, I'll just hang out at the Tropicana pool.

Jeeps. Grow up. Get a vehicle with air conditioning and seats that won't send you to the chiropractor every two weeks.

Laying out at the beach. Or the pool. Laying (or lying) around hours at a time, frying in the sun among the beached whales, makes me homicidal. You see, I'm like a shark...I have to keep moving. I spend hours at my desk, inert. Why would I want to be just as inert on vacation? Give me a mountain to climb, or a trail to vanquish.

Cards. Not only does this require getting together with the fellas (intolerable), you have to sit for hours on uncomfortable chairs using math and looking deadly serious, while the boys smoke cigars and fart. Or worse, while the married guys boast in as masculine a tone as possible, but who really sound exactly like their wives. Talking about their new house, or little Timmy's soccer skills, or how two-year-old Gretchen is so amazingly gifted. Yeah, the last time I saw her she was spitting up peas. No thanks.

Drinking. You know, people get into their 30s and hang on to their weekend binge drinking like its their last free small-size frozen yogurt coupon. I know all of you are stalwart and never age. But as for me, someone shortly after one drink sends me past the "comfortably numb" stage straight into the "projectile vomiting" stage. Sorry for that image BTW. Drinking ends for me with the "spending the next day comatose on the couch" stage. I don't know all of you do it. Guess you're just manlier or something. Hey I can't even eat fried food anymore without paying for it. Not sure how I would survive an absinthe assault.

Onions. In A Clockwork Orange, the state figures out every person's unique primal, incapacitating fear and uses that to torture them. For some people, its snakes. Heights repel others. Its not that I'm afraid of onions. Its more like they're poison mustard gas from World War I. Or arsenic. Or deadly torture pellets. Different strokes for different folks, and for me, onions are on par with encountering a spitting cobra. Or any meeting at work. I can man up and eat other foods I dislike when I have to, like brussel sprouts or cabbage or pickles. But onions? That's not happening. And why do some people insist on putting them in every damn thing? Like rice? You put onions in rice? Really. What is your problem?

Coffee. No real story here. I just never got it. Always tasted like ditch water. Or milk-flavored ditch water. I love coffee smell, of course. But I like the smell of vanilla too and I'm not sucking that down either. Happily, my coffee aversion saved me thousands of dollars through the years, which otherwise would have found its way to the Evil Empire from Seattle.

Garage sales. All you losers who wake up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays and spend the morning picking over people's garbage spread out over their front yard really need to get another hobby. First of all, its not a "garage sale" when they put most of the crap on their front yard or driveway. Ok? Secondly, you don't have any idea where these people and their stuff have been. Who knows what kind of flesh eating bacteria lurks in their 30 year old copy of the Physician's Desk Reference or their Falstaff Beer coasters?

Parties. Parties mean talking to other people, many of whom you don't know, and eating fatty food. So, obviously, that's never going to work. "Oh, look at the time, I have to be up super early tomorrow. See ya!"

Man-hugging. Leaving aside the whole gay thing (no judgments here guys!), there's three, and only three, times when men may touch one another. When one of them has lost a relative within one degree of consanguinity, when one of them is administering CPR to the other, or when their team has just won the championship. I guess I could add when they've both been prisoners of war and were just released. Possibly. But those are the only acceptable times. Nor should man-hugging ever be obligatory. A hearty handshake will do in every situation. Why? Because men are not women, or at least they shouldn't act like women. Women hug one another because they haven't seen each other for six hours. In a row. Women hug because Joanie in accounting said that one of their blouses was tacky and didn't match her complexion. Women hug when one of them had prematurely chipped nails. And that's all fine. But despite the last 30 years' trends, men are not women. So we should at least try, sometimes, not to act like we are. I know this runs counter to contemporary beliefs (hence its appearance in this list). You can all do whatever you want, of course (just like you always do). I simply ask that you please stop pawing me. "No" means "no"!

Tattoos. It used to be that only dirty people got tattoos. Sailors, prisoners, Andy Warhol. Then it was legal secretaries who needed a dolphin or star to match their ankle bracelet. Then it was everyone in the NBA. Then it was everyone. Sorry, I just think the human body as God made it is more beautiful than any tattoo could make it. I realize that's especially cranky old man, even for me, but its just a personal preference. Plus, I dread the day, not too long in coming, when there's gonna be a bunch of grandmas tripping over their sagging tramp stamps. Shudder....

Cats. Allergic. Plus, they suck. They have a totally selfish attitude, provide nothing in return for your affections, and snarl at you when you try to help them. Whatever cat. How about you open your own Little Friskies from now on, hmm?

Video games. I know all the rest of you spent hour upon hour playing Ms. Pac Man, or Frogger, or Galaga. Or later, you waste your lives on xbox or nintendo or or wii or whatever. How you can sit in one spot for so long, moving your joystick and staring at the screen as drool trickles out of the corner of your mouth over the Cheez-its residue is beyond me. Hey, read a book. Go ride your bike. Walk to the park. Kiss a girl. Do something with yourself beyond spending your weekend with that glazed over look in front of a Mr. Gatti's pizza box collection and swilling Mountain Dew.

Sudoko. Remember this craze from a few years ago? Everyone running around with their puzzles? I mainly saw these people in airports. I could admire that it required at least some thought, but it just seemed like crossword puzzles but with numbers.

MMA. Its human cockfighting. The point of the cage is, what, again? Exactly. These guys aren't skilled enough to excel at a real sport. All that's left is pounding on one another like two guys fighting over a Waffle House waitress in a Pasadena parking lot at 4:00 in the morning.


High fives and fist bumps. Again, I am not 12. High fives scream "over-intense softball guy." Or "softball guy."

Next-What Mad Men teaches us about the last 50 years. A very topical subject. Only about five years behind the times.