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Sunday, September 04, 2011

RANDOM THOUGHTS #56

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself.

1. My father would often say "It's papa who pays" when pulling out his wallet for something (family dinner out, family going to movies, family on vacation). As little kids, my brother and I thought this was pretty neat. As teenagers (with a little of our own money) we knew it was the cost of being a grownup. When we each got married, dad said to us "Now, YOU are papa." After I got married, I never asked my parents for money (and actually loaned Leanna's parents the down payment for their new house). From the time I graduated college and got a job as an engineer, I paid rent to my mother. (I didn't want my own place as I didn't want to bother with cooking, cleaning, or laundry. This situation made Leanna nervous when we met, but that's another story.) When I got married, I had my own money (from the sale of the old JP Publications game company) to make the down payment on my house. I paid my own bills, and haven't been in debt since the checks from F&E paid off the mortgage in 1986. I think that too many kids today never figured out that somewhere along the line they had to grow up and become "papa who pays."

2. I watched that recent SyFy movie (Doomsday Prophesy) and found it was "not nearly as bad" as most of their badly written drek. The plot made at least some sense (even if the science was total crap) and I like the girl who used to be on Firefly.

3. On a recent episode of THE PROTECTOR, one of the cops (to prove he and his wife had not committed murder) made a dramatic confession that he had once lied on the stand to send a guy to jail for a crime he might not have committed (said guy having escaped justice for two murders on a technicality). This caused the criminal in question to get upset, kill someone, and try to frame the police officer and his wife. The hero of the show "knew the cop was hiding something" and demanded that he provide "the missing piece of the puzzle." This is a typical (and badly overused) Hollywood plot device. Hollywood loves the idea that cops are self-righteous Nazis who send innocent people to jail because they probably did some other crime. Hollywood never wants to think through that now that this lie has been exposed, everyone ever convicted of anything in which that cop testified gets a (taxpayer-funded) new trial (in which he will probably be found innocent because of lost files or fading memories or dearly departed witnesses). Said "exonerated" criminal then gets a few million taxpayer dollars to compensate him for wrongful conviction (when he was guilty all along). This didn't have to happen. The cop could have just said (much earlier in the episode): "I put that criminal away for X. He was also guilty of Y but escaped on a technicality. He always claimed that I lied and hated me for it."

4. It's not like I let myself go. It's more like I never held on.

5. A recent episode of DEADLIEST WARRIOR matched Hannibal against Genghis Khan. Ok, I get that they have to find a name-recognized warrior and that they already had Alexander the Great on an episode two seasons back, but Alexander would have been a much better opponent. They also should have put all five Mongols on horseback as that was how Mongols fought.

6. Speaking of Deadliest Warrior, I'd like to see Custer vs. Nathan Bedford Forrest. They were contemporaries but never fought personally. One of the flaws of Deadliest Warrior is that if you match people from different centuries the technology, not the general, wins the battle. Worse, all of those intangibles are just guesses and warp the outcome.

7. I watched a very nice movie last weekend. One small element of the tiny plot was a father having learned that his college-student son had dropped out of sports (and out of school) and planned to go to art school to learn to be a professional photographer. The father had to come around by the end of the movie to the point of "I will support whatever my son decides to do." This, of course, is what Hollywood wants. Parents must always bow to the wishes of their children, no matter what it is or what it costs (unless the children want to join the military). What I think would have been much better is for dad to say this:
"Ok, if you think you want to go to school to be a professional photographer, let's discuss that. I've been around for a couple of decades longer than you, and I learned (painfully) that if you don't consider every angle, you could pick the wrong way. First, let's find out if you have a real talent for this. Since I am a big-shot columnist at a newspaper, I'll get you an internship with our photographers. You may find out that you hate that kind of work, and better to find that out now than a few student loans later. Our photographers have been to these schools and can tell you some things neither of us know. Second, I heard you say that you like this school in California, but we live in Maryland. You apparently do not know that there is an equally good school in New York, which is closer to home. (It's just an Amtrak ride away, allowing you to come home for a weekend now and then.) If you show me that you have some talent for this job, which I already know will provide you a decent living, I'll support you getting whatever training or education it takes. But let's consider the possibility that the school in California may not be the only, or the most cost-effective, way for you to reach this goal. You don't want to graduate with a bunch of debt and then find out you went to the wrong school and studied the wrong things, or that you never really liked photography as much as you thought you did."