Metropolis and the Tea Party

As a kid, tenth birthdays meant something special in our family- a real sign that you were growing up.  One of our parents would take us out for our own private date night, complete with fancy meal and whatever fun thing you wanted to do.  For reasons obscured to me today, I was dead set on dinner at Italian Gardens in downtown KC (a local spot- the national chain didn't exist yet), followed by watching Metropolis at the Fine Arts theater on Johnson drive.

New Release Poster

Fast forward 26 years later, and I learn Metropolis is showing at the Tivoli with almost 30 additional minutes of lost footage that was found in Buenos Aires in 2008.  And, it is two weeks from my birthday!  Mom and I quickly connect for the re-do:  my tenth birthday landed square in the middle of a nasty flu.  Twenty-six years earlier, I was determined to eat Italian Gardens and see that movie regardless.  I had a respectable 1/4 - slice of lasagna, but my Metropolis viewing consisted largely of puking up the lasagna in a ravaging dizzy spell right after the opening scenes and leaving the theater about 15 minutes later.

Italian Gardens is no more, but Cafe Trio is some excellent eats in town today.  I was feeling great with 6oz of filet mignon digesting away when my wife, Mom, and I sat down to finally see Metropolis all the way through.  Far be it my intent to trample on the thousands of quality hipster college papers that have already analysed this movie over the decades, but I can't let the opportunity pass:  Metropolis is the Tea Party allegory for 2010.  The movie is all over the place anyway, so why not give a modern argument a chance?

This doesn't take long:  Average hard working peeps lose it at the hands of a pseudo industrial-state complex, rallying to break all the "machines" and mistakenly almost kill all their kids in the unintended consequences of their rush-to-judgment.  A few smart folks try to tell them that they actually need the machines to survive, but the mob can't do much with this:  they've already gone off half-cocked trying to burn the wrong person at the stake--literally.

Take from it what you will, but I could stand a few million more American's viewing this movie as we enter the midterms.

Luxury and the City Union Mission

I had an interesting experience yesterday that really highlighted the waste in our society, and my absolute inability to do anything but, sadly, contribute to the problem.

I left the house early in the morning, our Subaru loaded with some older electronics, a lot of never used t-shirts, and a bunch of cardboard and styrofoam destined for recycling (from the replacements for the “older electronics”).

At the City Union Mission, I dropped off the surround-sound 5-disc DVD changer and the t-shirts.  I took a minute to walk around, and really took particular note of the number of old electronics that were just never going to leave that place, happy that what I dropped off probably would.  But the ancient cell phones, the Timex Sinclair 1000 computer, the old Windows 95/98 PCs—those are probably going to be there a bit.

The thing that stuck with me was the disposable nature of what are likely the two most-used and relied-upon-daily technologies (and heading to convergence, frankly):  cell-phones and computers, and the fact that the disposable part is not driven by the product being “used up”, but rather by the rapid pace at which a more capable next-generation is not only available to take its place, but somehow also driven to do so.  Nails are disposable, for example, but you don’t see the construction world generating new versions that require a hammer and tool belt upgrade in addition, (and nearly every 12-24 months), or the suppliers delivering wood that now requires a new generation of nails*.

I left kind of shook-up, the images of boxes of crappy Nokias** and shelves of old PCs stuck in my head.  I dropped off the recycling and chuckled a bit at the irony, and then headed on over to the car dealership.  I’d been looking for the past couple of months and spotted an ad at breakfast which was just what I’d been looking for.

Several hours later, I left with my new car!  It was thrilling and just what I was looking for.  As my wife and I pulled into my parent’s driveway later that evening, I stopped to admire the feel of a new steering wheel in my hands- it was positively great.  I thought about our old car for a second—how there wasn’t really anything wrong with it functionally—we just wanted a new car.

And that was it, massive killjoy.  There’s that same plastic tub full of Nokias, only now it’s massive and full of Subarus, Chevrolets, Fords, Nissans, and Kias.  On a giant nearby shelf, loads of perfectly functional pickup trucks are collecting dust.  And I was part of it, and nobody made me do it.  Dammit!

At least the new car is a Prius.  That’s something, isn’t it?

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* I understand there are hundreds of new resin-type products and fasteners available, that resin and waste pre-fab I-beams are used, etc., but none of this has replaced the basic nail function, need, or design.  Nail guns take nails specially packaged and joined, but they’re still just nails.

** To be clear:  the Nokias released each year are stellar among their peers—these were just really old ones.  It is actually a testament to Nokia that the box of ancient phones which someone thought another person could still use were almost all Nokias—other brands of the same age probably went straight to the trash :)

Mad Men and 2nd Hand Smoke

Following suit with the rest of hypochondriac-soccer-mom America, work recently decided to go “100% smoke-free”.  Never mind that we and the rest of America spend an average of 25 minutes in traffic each way, ingesting hundreds of varied carcinogens in our poorly filtered car air the whole time.  This, balanced against the approximate 3-second exposure that you might receive if you happen to walk by a cloud of smoke on your way in or out of a building heading to work.

Oh, and did I mention that no one I work with ever has a drink either.

Get real, and live a little while you’re at it.

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Pizza Rolls Can be Fixed

What?  You didn’t know there was something wrong with them?  I didn’t either, and then in a flash of brilliance I pulled 7-8 of them out of the oven, and instead of putting them on a plate, I put them in a shallow bowl and sprinkled crappy parmesan cheese all over them.  Crazy, I know, but some of you will make sure you pick up some parmesan cheese next time you’re at the store…

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