Independent (or just confused) Personality

He also found that personality traits assigned by the psychiatrists in the initial interviews largely predicted who would become Democrats (descriptions included “sensitive,” “cultural,” and “introspective”) and Republicans (“pragmatic” and “organized”).

That's a small quote from the middle of a long article in last month's Atlantic(1) about a long study that purportedly sheds light on what makes for a happy life.(2) It interests me in a personal way because I have taken seriously my deliberate decision to belong to neither the Democratic nor the Republican party. I've always felt that my political beliefs(3) have never consistently fallen in with either party and that I've been free to agree or disagree with either at any time. This little quote nicely confirms this thought. Read those personality traits again. If I or anyone else extremely close to me had to choose five words to describe me, those might be the first five picked.(4) I have all the dominant traits of Republicans and Democrats.
So I think what this means is that I ought to be on the Supreme Court.

1. I've loved this magazine for a long time, and you really can't go wrong reading anything in it. But I've got a little complaint about how they changed their name from the Atlantic Monthly to just the Atlantic. A little too pretentious, if you ask me.
2. I'm not sure if I'm terribly impressed with this article. It was the cover feature last month so normally you'd be free to just end the debate and start anthologizing it. But it wandered around, never really answered its own hypotheses, and turned into a biography on the study's director, which would be a fine and simple article to write, but not terribly interesting in a broad sense or enlightening in any sense. I still feel the same way about the Atlantic now that I did about PBS a few years ago (enthralled, awed, and completely devoted), I'd just call this article the "Antiques Roadshow" of the Atlantic.(a)
3. My beliefs on social issues are decidedly liberal. I am mature and humble enough not to always assume I'm right about diverse and complex political and economic issues, but not social ones such as gay rights or abortion(b) or the like. There I am no better than a petulant child. The only difference is that instead of being absolutely certain of my own rightness, I'm more sure of my adversary's wrongness.
4. Let's put them in this order: pragmatic, introspective, organized, sensitive, cultural.

a. Hopefully anyone reading this knows enough about me that I don't have to explain how I feel about "Antiques Roadshow." Let's just say that Mondays, and any day they were doing a pledge drive and giving away Broadway-related merchandise, were disappointing evenings for me.
b. Abortion being a very interesting issue. It's got both a strong social component as well as a strong political one. I don't disagree that there are a lot of sensible arguments on both sides of the political abortion issue, but only one on the social side. A woman has a right to choose what she does with her body, no matter what any religious text has to say about it.

Re-Dedication, for real

A little more than a week ago, someone ran away from me in Central Park.
No, I was not wearing my rapist costume, aka my normal wardrobe. Nor was a offering children candy. I was running. And--here is where it becomes noteworthy--so was the other person.

My first year living in the city (2003+), I didn't have much money or many friends, so I didn't have as much to keep me from running more often. Also, I was closer to my competitive days and so naturally a little more plugged into it. Almost always I ran in Central Park. Two things used to constantly impress me: how many people seemed to run in NYC, and how slow they all were. For the latter, I should really say, how no one I ever saw was fast. Of the many many runners I encountered in the park, they were all no better than recreational, even the competitive-looking ones were past their prime (so was I, really). After a few months, I noticed that no one ever passed me in the park, or anywhere else, for that matter. I mean literally, I was never passed in the park. So after I made that observation, I would think about it and occasionally look around wondering if someone would pass me that day. It never happened. I remember one or two instances where I saw someone approaching fast from a tributary path and I upped my pace just slightly, enough to stay ahead of him. The streak continued. There were two other notable instances I remember clearly: one where a guy was certainly running faster than me, only he was going in the opposite direction so I didn't have to count it, and another where a woman was doing some kind of interval work around the reservoir and I popped up onto the loop just after her and she moved on ahead faster than me (I did pass her eventually, after she reached the end of her repeat and stopped to walk).
I can't remember exactly how long it was (at least a year) before someone finally passed me running in NYC, but it happened, though it remains to this day an exceedingly rare event.
But it happened last week. What makes it different is that the guy wasn't running fast and he didn't look fast. He was a gangly almost awkward dude running maybe 6:40 pace. Now, to be fair to myself, he passed me just after my turnaround point, before I had gotten back up to speed, and after he got ahead he didn't continue to make ground on me very much. The fact remains that he did pass me and he was running faster than me, maybe by about 12sec per mile. (Let's also make note that six-plus years ago, the phrase "before I had gotten back up to speed" never applied. I used to jump over three-foot solid barriers at high speed while barely breaking stride, for crying out loud.)

When I was running competitively in college, our long slow runs would check in around 6:40 pace. Sometimes a touch slower or faster, but that was the guideline. If, as often happened, I was running on an unmeasured route, I'd just divide the time by 6:40 to get the distance. So 6:40 was about the upper bound on my pace then (I only really got as high as 7:00 either in the dead winter or for the morning portion of a two-a-day). The lower bound for what I could still call a casual, easy pace would have been probably 6:00. 6:00 was a kinda quick pace, even for somewhat shorter runs, and even for my fellow college runners, but my body was pretty well suited for hitting a higher-tempo at a minimum effort, and I only sometimes clipped along at that pace for easy runs. (I gave this advantage back by being both an inconsistent racer and not having quite the distance threshhold of others.) Anyway, you could safely call anything between 6:15 and 6:40 my "effortless" pace.
The curious thing that I noticed in the first couple years post-competitive was that my effortless pace didn't really slow down any. Instead, all of my fitness seemed to be disappearing on the distance side of the equation. In fact, this continuance of ability to hold a quick easy pace stuck with me at least for a few years into my NYC residence. I noticed that after I'd have a little lay-off, or several weeks of very low volume, I would be able to come back and produce a 6ish mile run at my old easy pace of 6:40. I would struggle with slightly longer runs, and my "effortless" pace didn't dip much if at all below 6:40 like the good old days, but I could still roll.
So then as time passed and I continued to run with lots of inconsistency and little volume, my easy pace started to become 6:40-6:50, and then 6:40-7:00, and my ability to crank out 6 milers at that speed started to become inconsistent. Sure I could still do it often enough, but not every time, at least not with minimum effort.
Here we are now then, in 2009, almost exactly eight years since my last track race, and 7.5 years since my last competitive race, period. Now my easy pace is more like 7:00, with the random dip into the 6:40 range. I still have the uncanny ability to produce 6 mile runs in 6:40 pace with almost no effort, but those days are becoming less and less likely. A standard run for me now is 5 miles at just under 7:00 pace with some fatigue hitting after 3.5 miles or so. Half the time I run farther or faster or with less fatigue, half the time not. And every once in a while I get passed by a random guy.

What I'm saying after all that lead-up is that, at 28.5 years old, I think my inconsistent ways have finally started to chip away at all the wonderful foundation I built up through my college years. It's not just running, either. If I work out a little too vigorously, there is a chance I might aggravate a mild shoulder strain. I can't just roll out of bed and workout either; I need a little while to loosen up, especially my back. Most egregiously, though, I can't just take for granted a flat, ab-rippling stomach anymore. I'm not talking about just losing that youthful metabolic level either. I'm talking about paunchiness or spare-tireness. Even when I work out for a good stretch, I find it somewhat hard to make the mini-bulge go away from just above my belt line. I've turned into one of those dime-a-dozen guys from college who look great in a wife beater but only kinda good with a shirt off.
Maybe I'm nitpicking with myself and I should just be fortunate in my natural physical gifts. I can still get back on the workout wagon after some time off, and after just a couple weeks see real results. That's nice. But I've always held myself to pretty high standards, and I always want to continue to do so. I'm getting married in 2.5 months. I know it's almost cliche to get in good shape in the run-up to your wedding, but I want this to be more than that. It's not enough that I was once a pretty nice specimen. Sara never knew that me, so I want to get back as much of that as I can. And while I know I won't ever be able to race as fast as I did in college, I can at least look like I did when I was running like that.
Fitness has always been my goal. I never cared about stupid exercises that were more for vanity than for actual strength. Same with running: I haven't run an interval in years. But, at least until I get back to a great level of being, I'm going to let myself work just as much for appearance as for ability. I think it will take two more months of consistent work. Then, hopefully I can start rampin up the running. It's a little early, but with any luck I could be running genuinely fast again by next spring or even winter. And that gangly son of a bitch will be back to being something for me to toy with.

Yankee Stadium Review

Well, I didn't think it was any more likely than you did that I'd be writing a little review of the new Yankee Stadium, especially this soon, but thanks to the fates (who love trying to make me look like a hypocrite), here I am. Good old Mr Dyer sprung a nice field-level seat on me at the last minute this Monday, and I jumped at the opportunity since 1) it was probably a rich a-hole who paid for the ticket, not me; 2) I love watching baseball games; and 3) when would I get another chance to see a game in the new stadium, seeing as how I've boycotted it and all?
First, the stadium itself is mostly reminiscent of the old stadium (the renovated old stadium, I mean, since by all accounts the actual "old" stadium was a far sight different from the renovated version I saw many times firsthand). I say mostly because it carries none of the grandness of the scale of the old stadium, so at no point during your stay in the new one will you ever forget you're not in the old one. It doesn't feel as big, for one thing (which of course it isn't. They fit many extra seats in to offset the capacity difference, but those come at the expense of less foul territory and more outfield seats closer to the field. The simple size of the stadium is quite smaller).
This is a lazy thing to say, but it sorta just seems like a lot of the newer stadiums in the league: nicer than most of the old, and more inviting, but ultimately less distinct. This kind of thing would be a definite plus if replacing a stadium such as Shea, or the Pitt/Philly/Cincy bowls, but not so great when replacing something as iconic as Yankee Stadium.
Now to the positives. The concourses (at least the lower one, that's all I saw) are excellent. It's all very very open with great sightlines, not just from the concourse to the field, but also from the lower seats up into the concourse. This is nice since I could just sit in my sight and scan around the stadium to see exactly where I wanted to go for beer or food or restrooms. It's one of those smallish things you don't notice initially that shows what a lot of thought was put into this stadium (pricing excepted of course, as well as the theorized possibility of a homer-heavy wind draft). There is a large enclosed bar right behind center field, and the windows are tinted jet black so they double as the batter's eye. The seats are nicely cushioned and sized, and the food, while nothing spectacular, was adequately varied so that if you wanted something reasonably healthy or nonstandard, you could get it (I had a pulled pork sandwich that was pretty good). The scoreboard is nice and big as expected (Scotty brought up an odd point, that since the scoreboard is directly in center, and features a huge headshot of the batter, would it be odd for that batter to look right over the pitcher's shoulder and get distracted by his own massive image?) and the score and count seemed to be visible from most angles. There was an electronic K counter, plus count, pitch speed and description, plus a nicely detailed rotating out-of-town score and current pitcher-batter-base-out status. Each batter also got a full six season stat categories: AVG, HR, and RBI, plus R, OBP, and even SLG. Very nicely thorough. Sticking in the outfield, although I didn't get a good look from there, the outfield seats seemed to be vastly improved from the old stadium.
A very nice thing is the friezes ringing the top of the stands. These were the famous image of the old stadium (not so much the renovated), so it's very nice they've got them somewhat prominent. Maybe it's sentimentalism, but they look very good, and somehow not forced.
Now, to a couple random points. There is a vast almost-hall-like area off to the first base side of the stadium, behind the concourse but within the outer wall, that was quite visually impressive and maybe even intimidating. The only problem was that it didn't have much use, being mostly empty except for a selection of your standard stadium vendors: bank/credit card companies, a lemonade stand, couple beer stands, and some souvenir stands. Amidst this out-of-the-way randomness was one detail that amazed and--I'm almost ashamed to say because I know they're shamelessly pandering to someone just like me--impressed me was their "Retro Beers" fridge. This nondescript vending spot was manned by two lonely people, and contained 16oz cans of PBR, Schafer, Schlitz, and even Ballantine. Of course I bought a Ballantine, and of course I was upset they had to pour it into a plastic cup, since everyone knows the only joy in drinking a Ballantine is showing off the can while you do so.
Back to the concourses, and another thing I was impressed with: they seemed to be letting anyone who wanted, for as long as they wanted, to just stand at the edge of the concourse right behind the last row of seats and watch the game. I've always wondered why teams didn't let people use the standing areas of stadiums, and they seem to be doing just that.
Finally, on a personal note, I will turn to our specific seats. They were labled $325, and were located 9 rows up directly behind the visitor's dugout. They were in the fourth row beyond the infamous Legends Suites, but they still were low enough to have the offensive (to me) waiter service that they also practiced in the old stadium. They were very good, providing a perfect side-view perspective of the pitcher-batter matchup, as well as the flight of the ball of the bat (so I always knew if a fly was shallow, medium, deep, or a homer, and didn't do the annoying expectant gasping thing that some people do in stadiums anytime a batter lofts a ball out of the infield.
Scotty told me that his company (who provided the tickets) was actually given two extra seats (they orginally bought four), when the Yankees recently came to their senses and lowered the prices for all the lower-level seats. So the absurd pricing for those seats is slightly less absurd now. They're still a bunch of bastards.
Anyway, to sum, new Yankee Stadium is nice, and they mostly did everything right, both macro and micro. You can't build character, though, and I'm not sure that this one will necessarily ever produce it much on its own. That's where it will likely always lag behind its predecessor.

Russians: You Win

I'm still thinking about a PBS World War II special that I was watching last week. It's atypical focus was on the Eastern front, and the Russian experience in particular. It wasn't actually that good of a show, containing those horribly acted re-enactments that you see in historical shows sometimes, but the subject matter I found to be enthralling.
Like a lot of young males, I used to love war documentaries, films, books, anything. My favorite movie ever was Saving Private Ryan, and I was one of the people who actually loved that back in the day all the History Channel ever aired was WWII shows. But even through this exhaustive coverage, you don't often get the full story. According to everything I was ever presented with, D-Day was the biggest thing ever, and the North African and Italian invasions were anything more than diversionary. This is of course false. The Eastern front during WWII was far bloodier and more "important" than anything the U.S. did elsewhere. The Russians basically won the war for us, or put more descriptively, the Russians wore out and defeated the Germans, which allowed the Allies to win the war. I think partially because this side of the story is so often left out of the history that Americans consume, and partially because the actual scale of the Russian/German fighting, is precisely why I am so fascinated by it.
One focus of the PBS special, and the reason I'm still thinking about it a week later, was the Battle of Stalingrad. I urge you now to do a quick search of this battle just to educate yourself. It was immense and horrible and hugely deadly and basically the end of the Third Reich. And the Russians were literally fighting in defense of their country, meaning if they had lost they might not have had a country anymore. This small matter is something that the U.S. has not had to face since at least 1815. Sure we have participated in wars since then, but never really with the fate of the country or its civilians' lives at stake.
The point of this post now is to display my complete awe at the country of Russia (Soviet Union) in general, and specifically the people who participated in the Battle of Stalingrad. Secondarily, I would like to ask any American alive during the Cold War who thought they would like for us to actually go to war against the USSR, just what the hell were you thinking? The Russkies would have completely destroyed us in any ground (non-nuclear, I know the qualifier is non-trivial, but go with it) war, the reason being that they as a people are simply made of tougher stock. It's hard to make these comparisons, but I consider myself to possess relatively strong fortitude, but I can promise you that there is no way I would have held up through Stalingrad. No way.
Scroll back up and take another look at the statue in the picture. That statue was dedicated in 1967 on a hill overlooking Stalingrad where particularly bloody fighting took place. It's 279 feet tall. The sword alone is 108 feet long. It's called "The Motherland Calls." It's hard to see, but look at the face. They showed a close-up of the face during the PBS special, but the point is that the mouth is wide open and the face is straining in horror as if desperately exhorting someone to action. It's terrifying. It would be terrifying if it were only 6 feet tall, but those crazy Russians built it 279 feet tall. The imagery is supposed to call to memory the fact that Russians from all over the country were summoned to Stalingrad to fight and die (fact: at one point during the battle, the life expectancy for a newly arriving Russian solider was less than 24 hours) to defend the Motherland.
I simply can't imagine how the United States would ever have a chance against that kind of national backbone. Even today, weakened and relatively shamed as a world power and failed economic state, I would not want to mess with Russia in a traditional war. We have innumerable technological advances that would likely never let a war devolve into the brutality of Stalingrad, but you still can't hide from the fact that those Russians are some frightening sons of bitches.

Hey Yankees--Go Fuck Yourselves

Post title directed more at the team's ownership and management. The players I'm basically ambivalent about.

Most people know that I am a pretty big baseball fan. Since I've lived in NY, I have zealously attended many games (highlights: 2006 Mets playoffs, 3 Sox-Yankees matchups in 2003-04, including one Pedro start, and a Yankee/Shea stadium same-day double last September) and would reasonably be expected to continue to do so as both the Mets and Yankees open new stadiums this year. For the Mets, this remains true, for the Yankees, not so much.
In fact, I am stating now for the record that I will never attend a game at New Yankee Stadium, unless I'm getting the ticket for free (and I don't mean a friend buying the ticket, I mean free from some corporate kickback). Even then, I will have to think long and hard before ending my boycott.
You see, what the Yankees have done in the last year with ticket prices and ridiculous arrogance is just absurd. Go to their website and check ticket prices. For the first sections (I said "section," not "row") in the outfield that used to be bleachers and cost $12-15, they are now charging $95-150. For the lowest field level, even several sections away from the dugout, they are charging a minimum of $525 per seat. For the best sections behind the plate and dugouts, they are charging $2,625 per seat. Again, that's $2,625.
For comparison's sake, the Cubs (another large-market, popular, recently-successful team) charge $325 for an equivalent seat. The $525 seats at Yankee Stadium are $90 at Wrigley. The $95-150 outfield seats at Yankee Stadium are $50.
For a breath of reality, the Pirates charge $27-35 for their equivalent of the $525+ Yankee tickets (the "Legends Suites").
On top of this, the Yankees have been getting a lot of bad press lately for their brashly condescending attitude toward fans, and especially their refusal to let other people even so much as enter the Legends Suites during batting practice. These overpriced seats have been largely empty most of the year, fyi.
Probably the most egregious example of what's cause me to tell the Yankees to go fuck themselves is their refusal to seat people in these precious Legends Suites during the recent NYU graduation held at the stadium (pic at left). They're not even playing a game and they still won't let even the people taking part in the ceremony that they're hosting to use these overpriced seats? Really? No thanks. I'm sure your new stadium is nice enough, but I'm equally sure I have no interest in finding out.

Trigger

I got sucked into Brokeback Mountain last night, and felt the need to stick with it until the end. It was my first time watching it since seeing it once in the theater, and no I can't blame Sara because she was already asleep.
Three very clear things about the film:
1. It's very good. Heath Ledger is very good. If you know anything about my filmic sensibilities, then you know that I greatly admire the late scene where Ennis goes to Jack's parents' house. So subtle, so natural, so loaded with the unsaid, so good.
2. As sometimes happens with me and good acting performances that contain accents, I wish I could talk like Ennis all the time right now. I believe I have confessed to enjoying a nice Texas accent in the past. Heath's character is from Wyoming, but his accent has the same general western blue collar twang. The newscaster/Ohio/Indiana voice is probably the "voice" of America, but this western proletarian gruffness really hits the right notes for me.
3. That goddamned bloody shirt got me. I remembered it was coming and so my senses were a little primed. When Ennis got to the parents' house it became palpable. Then he went upstairs and I could feel my throat tighten, my face soften. He looked around, opened the window, went into the closet. I felt the strong need to swallow but it didn't help. Then he knelt down and handled the boots and finally he saw it in the back, the bloody blue shirt from their summer together. I fought the good fight as he noticed his own shirt tucked inside Jack's blue one, then my eyes had a mild sting and my vision sharpened as he hugged the shirts and broke down. All in all, I held it together pretty well, not letting much slip until some minutes later, after the film had ended and I finally succumbed to the animal urge in me to embrace Sara's sleeping body.
You see, two years ago I wouldn't have experienced this response to this or any similar film. I would have had a response, and it would have contained emotion, but it would have stopped short because the film was just a film at that point in my life, and not a connective medium to strong emotion that's constantly present in me.
I'm a pretty freaking fortunate man. Ennis's love story is a terribly tragic one; it binds him not to companionship but to loneliness. My experience is far more traditional but that doesn't make it any less magical or personal. Sometimes I can get lost in the fairy tale and take things for granted. That's why I am thankful that sometimes all it can take is a blood-stained blue shirt to make me remember how well I've got it.

No B.S.

In a haze this morning, and wondering what the weather was up to, naturally I turned on NY1. The All-Canadian Hero, Pat Kiernan, was just finishing up In the Papers and he segue-ed (no idea how to write that and too lazy to check) like the pro that he is to a bit about local schools re-opening after the swine flu scare. He concluded the segment by very calmly remarking that global cases have plateaued, no new cases have been reported in NYC, and that of the confirmed local cases, all were mild, in fact only resembling a simple seasonal flu.
And that was it. Shove it up your ass, national media. Go find somebody else to try to hook with your irresponsible fearmongering with your proclamations of terror and plague. I'll have none of that because I have the calming voice of reason that is Pat Kiernan. I'm not the first nor the thousandth person to extoll his journalistic virtues, but some things ought to be repeated.

Keep It Down

I really don't like loud things. I'm extremely uncomfortable in a loud restaurant. I hate it when the TV is above a certain volume. One of the big reasons I can't stand going to music shows is that it's just a wall of noise.
I get annoyed even by people with loud voices. Everyone hates that loud person walking down the street on the cell phone, though that's probably more a look-at-me thing than just ignorant noise. It also drives me nuts when I listen to someone else talk on the phone and that person raises their voice about five steps too high just because the person on the other end is talking loudly.
I was at dinner last night and there were at least two people at a big table behind me talking extremely loudly. There was one woman's voice in particular that I was later completely amazed belonged to a 30ish woman. The tone, volume, and subject matter of her words more befit a 16year old, though I could just be projecting that opinion based solely on the loudness. What kind of adult talks like that? Do you really need to call attention to yourself that much? Sometimes I feel bad criticizing people for having low self-confidence (because I have effortlessly always had plenty, and I can appreciate how that might be a semi-genetic trait, I try to understand), but for godsakes it drives me nuts. Often.
I experienced a different form of obnoxious loudness on Friday night: the drunken loud. I was about four hours late arriving at a friend's party and evidently I missed quite a bit in those four hours, because I was hit with semi-inappropriate speaking volume from all angles. It's a little abrasive. I won't mention who, but some parties were more guilty of this than others. Generally, when I find myself in a situation where I am less drunk than most everyone else, I will try not to judge and will be liberal in giving the benefit of the doubt, but there are instances when the drunken loud is just shameful. I'm sure everyone has walked mostly sober down the street and come across a group of people who are mostly drunk. The drunk group will not only be loud, they will also be stupid. It's hard to reconcile with the fact that even the most seasoned and responsible drinkers will act far less intelligent when drunk. That might seem like an obvious statement, but look yourself in the mirror and admit that, when drunk, yes indeed, you are at best a fucking moron and at worst a fucking douche. It's hard to accept that you are not special. Long story, but recently I happened to view an old party video I used to tape from college parties we hosted. This was 8-10 years, and many degrees of maturity, ago; but still it was a little surprising to recognize what a dumb douche I was. (I'm naively now going to attribute this solely to the drunkenness, because clearly my 21-year-old-Ohio-State-attending self couldn't possibly have exuded anything close to douchitude when sober. Clearly.)

The Good and the Bad of HGTV

Sara watches pretty much just two channels: TLC and HGTV. Sometimes she wanders over to Discovery Health, but that's about it. And since I spend lots of time watching MLBTV on weeknights, I try to give her some space. Basically, I can't stand anything that I've ever seen on TLC (The Learning Channel, btw. Good luck "learning" anything while watching numbing reality crap about little people or prodigiously fertile familes), and most of the junk on HGTV is hardly better.
BUT--I've got to say that the block of homebuying/renting shows that air most weeknights from 8-11pm or so have got me a little bit hooked. Most of it is the timeliness of my own relatively recent decision to purchase a condo next summer upon our expected move to Chicago. Watching people look at houses (they even have one called "Property Virgins," which is what it sounds like and naturally a good fit for me), and seeing the way they approach the lending process, is quite informative. One big complaint I have is that, in an attempt to keep engaged a larger audience, they don't do a very good job of reminding viewers where their Virgins or Hunters are lookng. It's great for me to see that the house they are touring costs $195,000, but it makes a giant difference if that house is in Arkansas or Connecticut. You more or less have to take their $$ with a grain of salt.
Outside of the actual informative value of these shows, it's fun, and sometimes maddening, to watch the prospective buyers. For one thing, I love to see the idiots hone in on totally inconsequential things like the paint color or the carpet, or to be excited about the furniture. You're making a $200k+ investment so please don't focus on $500 worth of paint or multi-thousand dollars worth of furniture that doesn't actually come with the house. Unbelievable. There was one couple that was looking in the $500K range in suburban Atlanta that was completely and totally consumed with a "formal dining room." It was the first thing they asked for and the first thing they commented on in each house. If a single--and let's face it, stupid--issue is that important to you, you're probably not qualified to be signing away half a million dollars that you don't have. Which leads me to my next troubling observation: no one understands how mortgages work as they relate to down payments. No one. Even the most seemingly intelligent, prepared, and thoughtful people on these shows will never put more than about 12% down on their purchases. I've seen numerous people buy places for over $200k with zero down payment. It's particularly troubling/amusing to know that most of those shows were filmed in early 2008 or before, and that all these idiots and the banks that loaned to them were partially responsible for the collapse of the US economy. Thanks, folks.

So anyway (poor segue), what I started off intending to talk about was design shows that HGTV sometimes sneaks into their evening homebuyers lineup. Last night I was treated to one of these. Correction: I was subjected to one of these.
Right up front I should say to all of those people out there who actually subsist as "designers:" congratulations. I'm going to say wholly disrespectful things about your profession, but at the same time I can totally respect a good con artist. So, bravo.
I've long been mystified by the whole field of design. No, not the whole field of design but more the idea of re-design that manages to sell many magazines and fill many TV hours. (People who actually initially make something functional from abstract ideas, or who figure out how best to put something together I admire greatly. Whoever was responsible for making a fan's blades in just the right shape and tilt scores big points from me. Same for the person who came up with the famous London subway map.) What drives me nuts are the personal or home "designers." They are full of shit, basically.

Last night, some relatively attractive woman (that's her to the left) who is no doubt full of herself and her "talent" was charged with redecorating another woman's bedroom. Basically what she did was spend some money to buy new things and also add a few pretentious flourishes, most onerous was the creation of a "sitting area" where previously the owner had a dresser and a TV. The "designer" was extremely proud of herself with this change, but she never really mentioned what she did with the dresser or the TV. I guess the owner will just have to find some other place to keep her clothes, but hey, at least she has a nice place to formally sit down and read the paper--in her bedroom. Also, I guess she won't be watching HGTV's design shows from the comfort of her bed anymore.
The "designer" also described the room before as a style-less "mishmash" of "hand-me-down" items. After she had finished working her magic, she described the room as an "eclectic" combination of pieces that she had "re-used" (this last bit was to brag about how she saved money).
Let's take the SATs -- ECLECTIC:MISHMASH::RE-USED:___________.
Give up yet? How about "HAND-ME-DOWN"? Yeah I think that would work well there. Hey designer lady: go fuck yourself. You're full of shit. Apparently all it takes to become a "designer" is a thesaurus. I don't know why this stuff bothers me, but it does.