Wednesday OT – What's Wrong With You? Aren't You Too Old To Be Acting Like a Drug-Addled Prat? A Completely Normal OT for Completely Unweird People

Listen. I'm not judging you. We all have our flaws. For instance, I have a well known weakness for the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein. I'm the guy in the aisles yelling for "More! More Gordon MacRae!" (This is a totally normal post and not weird at all ok?)

Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music, d. Robert Wise (1965)

    But if I'm honest, I would have to say my greatest weakness, maybe, is my vanity. I like to look and feel good. The other day at the checkout, I was asked to produce my ID to purchase a charming and expensive bottle of chardonnay. I'm fifty years older than the girl, so this was an obvious (and DOA) attempt at flattery. She asked what's my secret? How have I kept my youthful looks? I carefully answered:

    "I believe in taking care of myself... and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do a thousand now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then mosturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion," I said, asking her to repeat it so I wouldn't have to say it again. As a gentleman, I finished by telling her she didn't look a day over thirty. She told me she was twenty one. My bad.

Edmund Kemper: The Artist and His Legacy, 1972

    Later that evening, while we were watching the evening news in the TV room, the wife tried to change the channel but I stopped her. I wanted to see this.

    “Not Donald Trump again,” she moaned. “Oh god. Is that why you were acting like such a buffoon? This obsession has got to end!” she practically shouted. “That’s why you were acting like such an ass!”

    "They make our criminals look like babies, they make our criminals look like babies. That's the only thing good... Our criminals all of a sudden don't look so tough to us, right? These are the roughest people, and they're the roughest people from all over the world," said the president.

    "How can he just stand there and lie like that? He makes himself out to be a harmless old codger, but inside... inside..." she said.

    But inside doesn't matter.

    I said, "That's a very fine glass of chardonnay you're not drinking. I have a phone call to make."

Hyannis Port Thanksgiving 1974

    

    By the way, I hope you realized by now that the Rodgers & Hammerstein statement was in jest. It may be hip to be square but not even I'm that square. I'm more into eighties pop.

    Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

    Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.

Lawyerface IV: The Quick and the Flensed, 1994, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy. A firm
reminder that some franchises tend to outstay their welcome.

    I made the call. I told the wife. She remained silent.

    There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

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I don't mean to beat a dead brain worm horse, he's irrelevant to the 2024 election outcome. I have a grudge though. Against him and Rolling Stone and Salon dot com. My oldest was born in 2005, the same year RS and Salon published his infamous essay on the supposed connections between the MMR shot and autism. Because of his work, I had to navigate misinformation on top of dealing with a new mom who was already terrified and suffering from postpartum depression. In the end I had to find a pediatrician who was more willing to humor us by spacing out some of the vaccines; spouse wouldn't accept it any other way. Older daughter did eventually get her full complement of MMR shots (each administered separately instead of single dose), but it was a needless risk. Good thing she gave birth in a part of the country that had very low occurrence of those diseases. Eventually she came to her senses, and the kids got fully vaxxed on the prescribed timetable. Fuck RFK, Jr. forever though.

Pretty much the entire post was written by either Bret Easton Ellis or Mary Harron. In both the movie and book, Patrick Bateman worships Donald Trump. He does have Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the TV at one point, before he starts wielding his very own, and that made me think of RFK. According to his daughter's account in 2012, they had bags over their heads the smell was so bad. Here's a picture of her on the drive home:

Black Christmas, also 1974. Maybe my favorite slasher of all time, relatively blood- and gore-less.

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