those who live in the united states (wachovia land inclusive) and occasionally flip through pbs on their way to a sitcom stopping point have no doubt noticed the best art our tax dollars are paying for: errol morris' "stay curious" commercials. i dare you to find a piece of pbs programming that is fuller with joie de vivre than these less-than-one-minute shorts that morris has directed. no, not red green or antiques roadshow or (ugh) any of their nature documentaries. (i'm assuming they've never shown microcosmos.) maybe as time goes by but probably not, and certainly no other britcom. during especially long breaks between programs, richmond's pbs station will sometimes show richard kim's five-minute "kung pao chicken"; that's the only adjacent competition that occurs to me.
morris' commercials are endlessly inventive, sure -- i still marvel at the operatic flipbook, and i've seen that one probably 100 times -- but they're inventive and blissful. all the protagonists in the ads are pleased with their discoveries and contagiously so. after watching the commercial, don't you want to put a video camera in your dishwasher? i certainly do. acting out on curiosity doesn't just look fun; it looks like the only possible fun.
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on the pbs slant: would someone at our national television station please explain to me (via a better ad campaign) what makes american family different than any other drama on network television besides the characters being latinos? and if the hispanic angle is the only difference, can we agree that's not enough for our monetary support? then again, compared to much of what pbs shows...
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
commercials, part one:
those who live in wachovia land (virginia on down the eastern seaboard, i believe) have been pummeled with advertisements touting the bank's possible merger with first union. since most potential readers of prinsiana are midwesterners, allow me to describe:
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[a few guys are sitting in a coffeehouse making small talk.]
NON-WACHOVIA DUDE: hey, what's happening with that wachovia merger with first union?
WACHOVIA DUDE: [beat, then looks toward waitress] hey, ethel? when you expanded this place, did you change the recipe for your apple pie?
ETHEL: no. why would i?
[WACHOVIA DUDE looks pleased. all return to small talk.]
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i like this ad for one and only one reason: what doesn't transpire after ethel's comment. i was taken aback the first time i saw this commercial, because this is what i was expecting:
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WACHOVIA DUDE: when you expanded this place, did you change the recipe for your apple pie?
ETHEL: no. why would i?
WACHOVIA DUDE: [turns to other dudes.] you see, this coffeehouse's expansion is just like wachovia's merger with first union. the coffeehouse expansion is a metaphor for our merger. we're just like the coffeehouse after it expanded. the expansion of the coffeehouse: it's just like us and first union when we merge.
[other DUDEs look extraordinarily interested.]
WACHOVIA DUDE: we're getting bigger, but that doesn't mean that we're going to stop serving people. our customer service is our recipe for success, and just like ethel's recipe for apple pie, it's never going to change.
an argument: very few people ever change substantially after puberty. i am thinking about myself, and i am imagining an unbiased observer who is listing my five greatest strengths and weaknesses as a person. (to help look at the "real me," this observer has a mind-reading device. and yes, she's using the sony model, not the samsung.) i am 24, and she comes up with a list. she compares it to the list she wrote down ten years prior. what is the same about the lists? likely everything.
i've only seen 28 up in the seven up film series. (in the series, the filmmakers look at the same 10 to 15 brits every seven years.) 28 up had some problems -- the questions asked to the participants were generally banal -- but it's remarkable that all but one of the participants seemed virtually the same in the clips from 14 up, 21 up, and 28 up. that similarity is reassuring to a degree; i'm likely to keep the positive traits i have, and the chance of picking up a new negative trait -- murdering, drug use, stupidity -- is low.
but it's even more discouraging. i'm acutely aware of my shortfalls as a person, and to think that these weaknesses are incurable and with me forever is, well, sad. yes, people stop smoking and drinking and shooting up, but how many don't? many more, i'd guess. relating to me: will there ever be a time in my life where i don't procrastinate on something i don't wish to do? i doubt it. that's stuck with me, and it will almost certainly never change.
as it is with my other flaws. alas.
from jimmy dell: "people aren't that complicated, joe. good people, bad people, they generally look like what they are."
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
let us discuss the first letter of myers-briggs types with regards to friendship. (those unfamiliar with m-b will catch on quickly; i'm swimming in shallow waters.) the general consensus about extroverts (or, "e's") v. introverts (or, "i's") in friendships is fairly simple:
1) extroverts have many friends, but their friendships are more cursory.
2) introverts have few friends, but their friendships are more, oh, in-depth. (a better word escapes me.)
let me propose a different theory, however:
1) extroverts have many friends, and while many of those friendships are superficial, many of them are quite, um, high-level. (perhaps an even worse word than "in-depth," and please do not interpret "high-level" how I know you want to.)
2) introverts have few friends, and they don't even necessarily have more “friendly” relationships (oh dear; now we're sounding more than vaguely sexual) than extroverts, because:
a) if an introvert has one best friend, that friend often consumes all the friendship time that our introvert wishes to allow to the outside world; our introvert doesn’t even really want another high-level friend. (marriage could easily be that one relationship for some.)
b) since they start with fewer friends, there’s less opportunity for introverts’ friends to “move up,” shall we say.
c) many introverts find themselves more interesting than the entrants in the potential high-level friend pool. (this is probably even more true for the intelligent/creative introvert, who can be quite picky regarding friends because of this reason; why spend time with someone duller than yourself?)
does the introvert care about the lack of high-level friends? (yes, i’ve decided on my hyphenated adjective.) it depends, i suppose, on which letters he or she uses as an explanation. agreeing with “b” or “c,” could go either way, but agreeing with “a” probably means our introvert has reached his or her “high-level friend limit.”
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
hello, men and women. we shall see how often this is updated, shall we not?
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
this is comment, one.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
