Five Things No One Cares About

March 29, 2011: I was toying with the idea of putting this Blah-ugh! on hiatus, given my utter revulsion with having to update it so frequently. But then I thought of all the people I'd be disappointing -- all the working stiffs and sad singles and miserable married and restless young and smelly old ... I just couldn't bring myself to let any of you down. I just hope you're all satisfied now that you've ruined yet another evening I could have better spent eating hazelnut gelato and watching adult films.

And what to talk about? I keep thinking about Mel Brooks for some reason, but that's not a topic. (I had the opportunity to meet him once in L.A. at a Hanukkah celebration, of all things, at a synagogue; I found it a unique thrill to hear him scream out "dreidel" when the rabbi was trying to goad the many kids in the room to answer the question.)

I'm also ruminating rather anxiously on the sad state of technological affairs, wherein people drive down the road typing messages in their phones, leave their lanes and accelerate in irritating fits and starts, and demented parents play DVDs in the backs of their minivans to keep their kids medicated and still, and half the people I know can't be present for a conversation without keeping one eye on their portable email device while they're feigning attention, and on and on ...

But besides myself (and possibly the one known only as Mordant Glee) no one even cares. No one sees how demented it all is, how we're robbing a whole new generation of creative thought and silence, and slowly steaming the brains of this generation, which no longer values silence or solitude, but just constantly craves distraction through a thousand forms of trivia. Like drug addicts, they're scared to sit still and feel a feeling. It's depressing and pathetic, but mostly maddening because nobody seems to see how wrong it is ... And so I won't talk about that.

Instead, I'll mention I finally watched the new Wall Street movie, and it was pretty good, and Michael Douglas didn't look at all as bad as I thought he would (which I feared would be kind of like an Aztec mummy, and instead he just looked like this mummy they had on a Twilight Zone episode, which wasn't quite as shocking). As I said, it was a pretty good movie, though I couldn't understand most of what they were talking about -- all this weird business/money-speak, which is as foreign to me as an automobile engine. But I recognized the romance and excitement, in part because the music cued me to do so.

And speaking of the Twilight Zone, I was ecstatic to find my local library recently purchased the entire catalogue, and with shameless relish, I've begun introducing my children to the most brilliant episodes, starting with "The Masks" and "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." Rod Serling was a rare genius, not unlike Charles Dickens or myself.

Now why is this different, you ask, then the parent who stifles their brats in the backseat with automotive video, my forcing my poor dumb children to ingest great quantities of vintage sci-fi brilliance? Well ... it just is, so leave me alone.

Which reminds me, I hear the kids watching the Brady Bunch downstairs -- the one where Jim Bachus buys the Bradys a pool table -- so I've got to run ...