July 06, 2006

Does That Make Me Crazy? Possibly...

It's been a while since I've had a "random thoughts with no real pattern post", so let's do it again.

I love the word schadenfreude. I was thinking the other day how wrong it is that we don't have an English equivalent. How could we not have a word or phrase for taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune? Then I realized we do. It's "reality TV".

Sometimes, when I'm driving and certain songs are playing (currently, I feel this works best with My Posse's on Broadway) , I like to turn the radio up loud so that the bass makes lots of noise and then pull up next to someone else at a stoplight. It's a lot of fun for them to hear the music and look over to see (don't act like you don't look to see who's playing loud music). Once they look over they get all confused and have this look on their faces that seems to say, "who does that fat pasty yuppie looking guy think he's kidding." Then the light changes, we both pull away and I turn the radio back down and probably put it back on NPR.

I take a lot of pot shots at reality television, and the times I do say I want to watch a show, it's because I want to make fun of it. I should be careful about that. I don't want people to get the wrong idea. I do like some reality TV shows. They're called documentaries.

When we were at the movies, I saw a trailer for a new movie called The Guardian. In this film, Ashton Kutcher goes to a Coast Guard rescue training facility where Kevin Costner is a trainer. After the trailer, I described it as Top Gun with helicopters. It really is. There was the bar scene where they picked out a woman to try to pick up, and even a plaque on the wall with names of people who have records. I expected Kutcher to tell us that the plaque for second place was in the ladies' room. If they keep stealing scenes from Top Gun, I just hope that the scene where Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer make out doesn't make it into this one.

I've used our TiVo to record several movies recently. A quick glance at the Now Playing List reveals 4 movies based on comic books, 2 sword and sandal epics, and one zombie movie. What?!?!? Why didn't anyone tell me I was such a geek?

Until later...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! This was awesome.

I saw a news article recently from my hometown of Buffalo, NY, that the (inept) local government may pass a law that makes car stereos added later to a car illegal. Illegal. The Buffalo economy is crumbling, people are moving away in droves, and this is what they focus their energies on. And what? A regular car stereo can't be as 'disturbing' as one you add yourself? Please.

Anonymous said...

"I feel the need... the need to rescue!"

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Come to think of it, if you actually pay attention to the dialogue in Top Gun, you'll notice that it was written by a 5th grader.

Matt said...

I saw this preview today, and my god, you're right. And did you see how Kevin Costner was the sort of mopey, "can't do anything after his big tragedy but teach" character that Maverick was post-Goose's-death, and Ashton Kutcher was the cocky, seat-of-your-pants character that Maver was while Goose was alive? I think they ripped off Top Gun twice.