My Walden

I have no shame. Some people confuse my quiet nature for shyness. But in fact, it’s laziness and indifference. My actions don’t embarrass me. On Wednesday I went to Hooters. Now when I was in high school and my AP Econ teacher invited the class to join him at Hooters, I declined. Somehow, a 50 year old bringing 20 teenagers to Hooters seemed unseemly. Strange. But when my friend’s bachelor party was at Hooters, I decided it was a worthwhile venture. Obviously I went to do a scientific investigation of the Hooters ecosystem. The following are my findings.

1. The customers at Hooters all have one thing in common: they are males. I suspect the XY ratio sometimes drops below 100%, but not while I was there. At one point I saw what I thought to be a female customer, but upon closer inspection she was a Hooters Girl leaving work. The customers, though entirely male, do differ greatly in other respects. There was a wide age range. There was a table of 16 year olds, celebrating a birthday. The bulk of the population was 20-30 year olds, getting their drink on. There were also a significant number of creepy old men. There were a sizable number of bikers, some truckers, and no other medical professionals that I was able to see. I’d estimate that a high proportion of the customers were intoxicated.

2. My table differed significantly from the norm. No drunks. No frat boys. No bikers. Just 6 Mormons. 4 married, 1 engaged, and me. 3 accountants, 2 MBAs and me. Apart from Charley “accidentally” spilling Pepsi on the waitress, no shenanigans occurred. I think it was accidental, but you have to wonder if any spillage of liquid on a tight white t-shirt at Hooters didn’t have some subconscious component. Due to the stifling monogamy of my group, no flirting with Hooters Girls occurred. I briefly flirted with the idea of flirting, but really, I just felt bad about it. Seeing the rest of the customers, I thought I’d give her an oasis of nonharrassment. Plus the 5 money guys around me were talking about pensions and Roths and whatnot, and I don’t know how to work flirting into that conversation. Let alone have that conversation.

3. The food wasn’t very good. Hooters knows that the way to a man’s heart is not his stomach, but his eyes. Admittedly, they had an uphill battle. I don’t really like guy food. Wings, ribs etc are pretty low on the Chris rankings. But it was serviceable. More noteworthy was how much food was wasted. They’d drop of wings we didn’t order, bring new plates when endless plates weren’t finished etc. It was as if they don’t even care about the quality of their food, like the food wasn’t a necessary component of their restaurants success. Strange.

4. And as you’ve all been wondering: what about the Hooter Girls? Turns out they lived up to their reputation. Kind of. The girls were actually very attractive. As previously noted, we didn’t flirt with our waitress, and she made no attempts to flirt with us. The Hooters “uniform” is a ridiculous thing, but, with all the objectivity I can muster, it’s not remotely scandalous. I see attractive girls wearing less at The Oval, on the street, at the gym, even at work. There’s a certain degree of sleaze in that the point of their presence, outfits and behavior is to be provocative, but really, what’s the point of sunbathing in the middle of campus? To be provocative. DJ’s wife warned him not to let anyone in our group get a lap dance. Though they were decked in tight shirts and short shorts, the most provocative act we witnessed was a hula hoop competition. This is PG-13 folks. Even upper PG. I’m not saying going to Hooters is a great idea, just that what you find at Hooters isn’t markedly different than what you find anywhere else. And while it’s pretty unavoidable, it’s also not to be sought out.

So that was Hooters. It was more entertaining than the wedding, though I admit that the wedding was one of the better ones I’ve attended. Congrats Charley. On throwing a good party. Oh, and also on getting married.

The C Word

A common stereotype about men concerns their commitmentphobia. I don’t think this applies very readily to mormon guys. Guys want sex, or the closest approximation their morality will permit (ie making out.) Sure it’s possible to be a “playa” on the Mormon scale, jumping from girl to girl. But generally, and even more so in a smaller fishbowl community, to get the milk they need the cow. Thus they relatively readily enter relationships. To put a more favorable spin on the phenomena, most missionaries are told to find their EC and get married when they leave their mission. So whereas the worldly male population starts thinking marriage in their 30s (which really, I think is an exaggeration itself because a great many of my heathen friends are getting married in their mid20s), mormon guys tend to start thinking marriage at 21. Or 22 if they are a rebel.

I’m sure mormon girls will say I’m completely off base. They’ll tally up their solo Friday nights, or those of their friends they’ve left behind in the single dust, and say that mormon guys are avoiding relationships. I just don’t think that’s the case. I think if you polled all the EQs in the YSA wards in the world, you’d find that most guys want to be in a relationship. Maybe as I initially asserted they don’t want to be in one for the right reasons, but they want to be in one. The indoctrination has been successful. And I’m not implying that the indoctrination is incorrect. It’s right, we should be getting married, and this is more often than not conveyed in an appropriate manner. But the general nature of singles is not my point today. I just want to talk about commitment.

My question is this: am I commitmentphobe?

These last several years I really don’t have any dating information to analyze to investigate this question. Some would take this as evidence that I am in fact a commitmentphobe. I’d argue that this dearth of data has occurred for other reasons. So let’s turn to a staple of my world view: television.

As mentioned in my Whedon post, I recently finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This was a show from 1997, which I started watching in 2008. Why the holdup? A cult hit from a creator I like about vampires starring attractive people? How could I ignore such a show, for an entire decade? Commitment. I knew it was going to be 12 seasons (including Angel) and I knew that this would be a big time commitment. So I held off for a long time. But eventually, I manned up and watched Buffy.

Last month I made an even bigger commitment: Doctor Who. I’ve yet to meet a British show I didn’t like. Throw in Brits engaging in whacky time traveling adventures, and it was clearly a show I’d be interested in. But again, we’ve got more than 12 seasons here. More like 80 jillion. Seriously, this show has been on since the dawn of time and/or television. But I’m not a crazy person, I’m starting with the 9th Doctor and will work back as needed. That will make sense to the hyper-nerds among you.



So my point here, is that I think my television watching indicates commitment traits. Because obviously being in a relationship is just like watching tv. They’re not the same thing, but I think it shows a tendency of mine. I am willing to start long term projects. I do feel the need to continue projects once I’ve started them. But I am willing to cut the cord/apron strings/losses when I need to. Heroes no longer occupies a spot on my Tivo. My Tivo in fact, is no longer occupies a spot on my shelves. I’m also not one to stay in a relationship (nor start one) when it’s clearly not for me.

On the opposition side: church callings. I served as the Activities Coordinator for my ward for a little over a year. And because my partners kept getting married off (side note: the Activities Coordinator Blessing lives on: all coordinators after me have left due to marriage) it was a pretty time intensive calling. My bishop told me ahead of time that he wanted me in the calling for a year, so when he offered me an out at 13 months, I took it. And I don’t feel remotely guilty about that. But, would a commitmentphile have stayed? I enjoyed the calling, and feel I was good at it, but decided I wanted a change. And this is fairly typical of me. And generally speaking, a desire for change doesn’t bode well for commitment.

I’ve been Sunday School President for about 18 months now, and I think I’m starting to get some wanderlust. Again, I like teaching and I think I’m good at it, but I think sometimes that after 18 months I’m getting diminishing returns. It’s not that my lessons are perfect, but I’m not sure if I’m improving. And from a self-centered view, after I’ve learned all I’m going to learn, I should move on. From a service view I should stick around because I’ve finally been trained. The bigger question is what would I do next? If I had my eye on another calling that would be one thing, but really I’m just starting to question the value of this one, without an actual goal elsewhere.

Again, this really isn’t commitmentphilic activity. You’re not supposed to be in a calling forever so it’s not the same thing as a relationship, but I’m extrapolating. It’s probably not good that I tire of things that I like. It’s probably even worse that I’m tiring of something I like, without another option luring me away. My only consolation would be that I think I’m pretty awesome at all callings, so extrapolating back, should be awesome in any relationship.

As with nearly all introspective posts, I have no real conclusion. It’s interesting to analyze my television watching and lesson teaching, but this doesn’t really tell me much about my commitment capacity. Because I like girls much more than teaching, and slightly more than television, so I’m kind of comparing applecrisp and oranges.

It's all good

I’m kind of a rubbish movie critic. I can’t really think of the last movie that I saw that I DIDN’T like. Admittedly I pre-filter a lot. When my friends say “Hey, everyone you know is going to see Night at the Museum 6 tonight” I don’t go. It’s one of the great benefits of being primarily introverted: peer pressure doesn’t work. So I read about movies ahead of time, and am not swayed to see ones that I know not to be appealing to my own tastes.

In any case, I’ve seen 2 movies recently, both of which I greatly enjoyed, both of which many people will hate.

GI Joe was chock full of sweetness. I have a great nostalgic connection to Transformers, so there is no question that I’ll see those movies. I never watched GI Joe, so I was kind of ambivalent about the film initially. But as the contradicting reviews stacked up, I was curious. Was it a train wreck? Was it a train wreck I’d enjoy rubbernecking? Turns out kind of yes and definitely yes. The movie is not good, I think that goes without saying. Every single “twist” is telegraphed from page one. I didn’t really like most of the heroes. But the villains were great. I’d much rather see a Cobra movie, but really this was pretty close to a Cobra movie. Most of the criticisms are pretty valid. For some reason half the effects are good and half are bad. Acting was obviously not a priority. And the plot was simplistic and did have some holes, though not as many holes as some indicated (it’s a pet peeve of mine when people say a film is stupid for having plot holes, when in fact they’re stupid for not catching the explanations in the dialogue. Pay attention or don’t complain.)

Anyway, GI Joe was entertaining. Maybe it would’ve dropped into the unenjoyable range if it didn’t have Sienna Miller, but I still think I would’ve liked watching a Zartan, Destro, Stormshadow movie. With Mr. Eko (who was the only Joe I liked.) Also enjoyable if you’ve missed it: The Ballad of GI Joe. Sienna Miller is replaced by Olivia Wilde, which is even better. Playing a clarinet. Yes, it’s pretty awesome.



Like I said, I’m a pretty rubbish reviewer. I just gave GI Joe a gold star. But I’ll try to balance it by giving Ponyo a gold star as well. Joe was packed full of sweetness, and Ponyo was packed full of sweet. We ended up with about a dozen of us attending the film this week, and the reviews were probably 1/3 positive, 1/3 negative, 1/3 neutral. I was in the positive camp. As predicted, it was nowhere near my favorite Miyazaki movie. But it was a good movie. The visuals are great. The twists on The Little Mermaid are interesting. It was relatively funny. Not hilarious, but family friendly funny. The story doesn’t really hold water, but as with GI Joe I feel like that’s inconsequential. Every movie requires its own grading criteria, and this one succeeded on the criteria that I gave it. For me, neither GI Joe nor Ponyo required an intellectual response to be a success. Joe needed shallow stimulation, and it had it. Ponyo needed wonder and beauty, and it had it. And Betty White. If these are the things you’re looking for tonight, you’ll go home pleased.



GI Joe : 75%
Ponyo: 90%

Mind = Blown

I had a hard time going to class after experiencing this video this morning.

Admittedly, it becomes less mindblowing as you watch the previous episodes "building" the "story."

Speak now . . .

or you won't get a vote.

It's that time again; another opportunity to contribute to my wardrobe. Of course you'd love to say "wear fewer t-shirts." But that's not an option. I found the following t-shirt and must buy it:



because
1. I love Kierkegaard (not really)
2. I need more t-shirts (not really)
3. We have the same hair!




That must be Danish genius hair.

Anyway, to justify shipping costs I need to buy another t-shirt. Vote on one of the following:








All shirts provided by Amorphia Apparel.

Sale ends 8/21, so all votes must be received by that point or be rendered irrelevant.