Verizon Family Values

From the "I don't get why this ad is supposed to make me want to buy your product" department, I bring you the latest ad for Verizon wireless plans. As you're probably aware, Verizon offers a program called "in", which means you can talk free to other people who are also "in" the Verizon network without using any of your plan minutes. Okay, so the commercial in question goes like this (I'm doing this from memory, so these aren't exact quotes):

Father (to approx. middle-school aged kids): Guess what, kids! I got us all cell phones from Verizon's family plan! No we can talk to each other all we want!

(Kids stare blankly).

Mother: It's also got "in," so you can talk to your friends all you want, too!

Kids: Yay!

Father: Yay! Family hug. (Kids grab the phones and run off, all happy-like. Obviously, hugging is not in the cards.)

Father: (pretty much looking out at the cloud of dust left behind by the kids) Uh, well, okay. Uh, call me!

Okay, two things about this commercial that are just weird.

First, what's the difference between a "family plan" and "in"? Isn't the former just a subset of the latter? If everyone who's "in" can just talk to everyone else who's "in," and all your family members are, by definition, also "in," doesn't that render the whole concept of "family plan" redundant? "I can talk to my family all I want... oh, and that also applies to everyone else in the country on the Verizon network too."

Second -- and the real reason I wanted to comment on this commercial -- how sad is the premise? How dysfunctional must this family be, and why then would you want to get a Verizon plan if that's the kind of family that gets them? The kids can't even muster up the energy to feign emotion when Daddy announces the acquisition of phones. "Ooo, we get to talk to Daddy. Woo hoo." But when Mommy puts it in proper context -- "and all your friends, too!" -- suddenly they're all excited. That's just rude and disrespectful.

And then to top it off, the kids don't even thank anyone for the phones. They just run off like greedy little rat bastards, screaming "me me me" and taking what they get and not even acknowledging that they possibly didn't do jack shit to deserve a cell phone.

Finally, the commercial ends with the poor dad, having been royally dissed now, reduced to a pathetic charicature of a man, saying, "Call me." I mean, that's just pitiful. The kids weren't that enthusiastic about talking to you on the phone in the first place, dude. Then they dissed your idea for a frigging hug. Apparently the only way you're ever going to exchange two words with those bratty little kids of yours is if you go over to where one of their friends live and call them from that phone, because that's the only time they'll get excited when the phone rings. They sure won't get excited when the call is from you.

***

Oh yeah, that there's that other commerical. I think it's also from Verizon. Parents dropping off their kids at college, and the father says, "Don't forget to call." "Sure," says prodigal son, "I got your number right here, Dad." (He starts scrolling through all the names in his cell phone's memory, and the parents just stand there, and it soon becomes obvious that the home phone number isn't in there. In fact, (I guess for humorous effect), the kid stops once or twice, as if to say, "Aha! There's the number!", only to find that it's not. He even mutters once, "Oh yeah, gotta call her back...."

Why do you have to have your parents' number stored in your cell phone? Do you not know it from regular memory? If we presume that this kid is a freshman and that he lived with his parents up until he started school, why are you unable to just say, "Sure Dad. I know the number."? Why must you search for it?

The saddest part is -- I actually have a Verizon cell phone. But in my defense, I got it before these commercials came out.

Whither friendship?

I read this in someone else's blog recently and it got me thinking:

I'm lucky to have my friends there too. My real friends, the ones that know me, the ones that let me cry at 3am when they'd rather be sleeping. The ones who would be there through thick and thin. LK, JN, CJ, TB, LT, MP...in no particular order of importance, you make my life possible. I only hope that I've brought to your life what you've brought to mine.

(Source: JPK: You can never have enough water. I stumbled across this blog using the random blog search function from blogspot. I don't know the guy (though he's quite amusing -- when he's not depressed). Heck, you too can go to another randomly-selected blog now by clicking on the "Next Blog >>" icon in the upper right-hand corner. But finish reading this first!)

So as I was saying, Jason's comment kinda struck me, because I suddenly came to realize that my friendships aren't like what Jason describes. I've never cried to someone at 3 a.m. when they'd rather be sleeping -- and trust me, there have been times I've wanted to. (I end up crying at home alone instead.) I've always felt strange imposing upon my friends for almost anything. Even when I was recovering from surgery I felt really bad for having to ask my friends to come stay the night with me. I've promised each of them a dinner in return for putting them out so much.

But there are those who would argue (and I wouldn't disagree) that stuff like crying at 3 a.m., or incredibly inconvenient favors, are the stuff of which friendships are made. If your friendship can't survive late-night "I'm-depressed-and-just-wanted-to-talk" phone calls, then what do you really have?

Of course, there's a flip side to that argument, which I again can't disagree with. The flip side argues that if you can't respect your friendships enough to realize that your friends have lives too -- lives that don't revolve around you -- and reliving your drama isn't their purpose in life, then you're abusing the friendship. Late-night phone calls are the stuff of sappy movies, this theory claims, and friendships suffering from that in real life don't last long. Besides, it should be pointed out, even in the movies, those late-night calls either don't result in anything helpful, or in fact lead to bad decisions on the part of the comfortee.

I wish I could say I have a theory on this, but I don't. I can only take note of the friendships I have. Although I know I could rely on most of my friends for all kinds of things, they tend to small things -- like dragging my carless ass to parties, or even for a Target run. One once offered that if I needed help with a down payment for a real estate purchase, I should ask her. (Thankfully, I didn't take her up on that -- I don't think substantial debt between friends is ever a good idea.) Although I generally feel like I could crash at friends' houses out of town if I had to, I would feel like I'm at an age and success level by now that it just seems stupid not to find a decent and affordable hotel.

But at the same time that my friends are good for that kind of small stuff, I don't know, really, who I would have to rely on if, say, a member of my family were to die tomorrow, or if some other devastating personal catastrophe hit me. Knowing me -- and the relationships I have with my friends -- I'd probably put on a brave face, say that I was okay and everything will be okay... and mourn alone. In the movies, we see this all the time, but those people usually seem to have a spouse into whose arms they eventually collapse in a mess of tears. I think I'd have a teddy bear. It's the same thing that makes me unlikely to engage in the aforementioned 3 a.m. phone calls.

So is there a clear line to be drawn between leaning on your friends and respecting their right not to be burdened by you? I'm sure there must be. I just haven't found it yet.

On the Waterfront

Spent the weekend at Rehoboth/Dewey Beach this weekend. Jen, a friend of mine from when we worked at the courthouse, has a brother who has a house there, so from time to time we go over and crash his pad. This weekend, he was out of town, so Jen had some of us over. In the end, it was Jen, me, Christine, Linda, and Sue at the house. (For some completely inexplicable reason, I frequently end up being the only male among this group of friends.)

Dewey Beach is a fun place to hang out, although sometimes excrutiatingly heterosexual. I mean, frat scene heterosexual. The crowd tends to be composed of college-age people -- or just-out-of-college age people -- who somehow have nothing better to do with their time or money over the summer than hang out at the beach in sweet crash pads, drinking all night, and recovering all day, only to repeat the process the next day. Surprisingly, there are also a decent number of over-25 people hitting the scent too, but they, too, have nothing better to do with their lives than maintain their (usually vain) attempt to recaputure their youths by drinking excessively and seeking their next bed partner at or around last call.

Because all my friends are straight girls, we go to Dewey when we want to take our own misguided tours of recapturing our youth through excessive bar-hopping. (The gay bars are more in the Rehoboth area. Not wanting to drag my straight friends to a gay bar at the beach, I usually just tag along with them to the Land of Uber-Heterosexuality.) This past weekend proved no exception.

We spent our evenings at a bar called the Starboard. It's a fun place. I'm amazed at some of the really hot guys there taking their pick of cute women. Sometimes you hear that the gay community has claimed every goodlooking guy. I'm here to tell you that's not true. There are tons of hot guys looking for women at these hookup joints.

Jen met a cool guy named Mark. They were talking at the bar for a while. I had no idea how drunk Jen was while this was going on, but apparently, she was. Before the night was over Jen would be leaving her lunch in a corner outside the bar and we would be escorting her home in a cab. And by "we," I somehow have to include Mark, for he made his way into the cab with us.

Don't get me wrong, Mark came across as a completely nice guy. I was just a little taken aback by the fact that Jen would actually invite a strang new guy home after meeting him in a bar, especially with four guests also staying in the house. Unfortunately for both of them, however, Jen was not done re-living her dinner when she returned home, and, apparently out of some embarassment, she locked Mark out of the bathroom while she went about her business.

At some point Mark came back downstairs (where I was staying) and started putting on his shoes. Unsure of whether Jen intended for him to leave or not, I asked him what was up. "She has locked me out of the bathroom," he said. "I thought I'd be staying here, but that doesn't look like it's gonna happen."

I genuinely did feel bad for the guy. It's not often that a guy is willing to come home with a chick who's puking up her guts. And who's still quite nice. But, I didn't know if Jen still wanted to see this guy around the house when she woke up in the morning. I was prepared to offer to let him crash on the couch that night, but I was having some trouble deciding what Jen would have thought about that. So, basically, I left the matter in his court. "What do you want to do now?" I asked. Eventually, after much (rambling) "discussion" (I used that term advisedly, since it was rather nonsensical banter), he decided he would catch a cab back to his hotel. I did tell him to leave his cell number, though, so that Jen could get in touch with him. I sensed she liked him.

The next night, Jen did actually call him again, but she failed to leave her number. She had assumed that it would show up on his called ID, until I pointed out that my phone doesn't give the ID if the phone is turned off. However, not wanting to seem desperate, she didn't call him again that night. I told him to call her on Sunday sometime. I hope she does.

***

Sue was referred to -- twice -- as resembling a "librarian" type. While I can see what the guys are getting at, it's so untrue. Every librarian I've ever known has been a short, rotund, dowdy old woman. Sue is a tall, thin, rather hot chick (albeit with a kinda plain face). No accounting for taste. On Saturday night, she managed to spend the night talking to some guy whose name I forget, but who was clearly a player on the scene. At 47, recapturing youth was clearly a top priority for him. I admit he looked good (and I don't just mean "for his age"), but there's gotta be better ways meet women than finding them at bars in a beach town. Thankfully, Sue wasn't planning on hooking up with him.

***

Linda found herself a man, too. His name is Evan and he actually lives in the DC area. He seemed like a nice guy and they danced most of the night and even shared a few kisses. (This was the first time I've ever seen Linda kissing a man. It was interesting, in a kinda jarry way.)

I hope it works out for them. Evan seems like a nice guy. Linda left him her number. We'll see if he calls.

***

And my recap of the weekend would not complete without my recitation of my near-death experience.

We (Linda, Sue, Christine and I -- Jen was still recovering from the night before) were on the beach on Saturday afternoon when we decided we were going to take a walk up the beach for a little bit. So we did, walking perhaps half a mile along the shoreline.

I suppose we should have noticed much earlier that something was amiss when lightning strikes began appearing over the horizon, but we honestly believed that we had a lot of time to make it back to our stuff. Oh, how wrong we were.

When we finally turned around to look at the sky, it was dark. As we started jogging (instead of walking) back to our stuff, the sky opened up and we started getting pelted with large droplets of rain. I mean, these things were large. And combined with the rather strong winds whipping these droplets of rain at us, it was hurting.

At this point I came to once again realize that I am in exceedingly poor physical shape. The rain was blinding me; the cold was taking my breath away (my asthma didn't help matters either); and the incredibly soft sand meant that each step required ten times the effort it would have on a normal sunny beach day. I honestly thought I might die. And it would have been a drowning. In the rain. That's how hard it was raining.

Linda and Sue somehow managed to move their way along the sand and eventually got ordered onto the boardwalk by the cops. They then managed to locate our stuff. We had happened to set up camp in a dent in the beach, so there was literally a torrent of water completely flooding our stuff. Not funny. I was not there to witness it, but it was amusing to imagine. Thankfully, nothing in my bag was completely irreplaceable, so hey.

Meanwhile, I was with Christine, having been separated from Linda and Sue by the storm. (Low visibility, you see.) (No pun intended.) I don't know why we were so far from the water, but it was definitely difficult to move in the sand. Eventually I gave up and told Christine it made more sense to head up to the street and walk from there. The rain was continuing to beat down on us and there was no way I was going to be able to make any substantial headway on the sand.

So I basically ordered Christine to follow me as we headed up away from the sand. We hit a bridge and walked up, only to realize that the bridge led not straight to a street, but to a private patio area at a housing complex. While I was somewhat concerned that we were trespassing, I also was relieved to be out of the driving rain. Thankfully, my trespassing fears were allayed when almost immediately after we set foot on the balcony a woman came out to greet us with towels, inviting us in to sit down and get the heck out of that crazy rain. We sat there for about 10 minutes while the rain passed and eventually -- while profusely thanking the random family that had taken us in -- we left, a few new towels in hand, to find Linda and Sue again.

I know this story doesn't sound that bad now, but I seriously felt like I was going to die on that beach. Just a quick reminder about the awesome power and majesty of Mother Nature.

But otherwise, the weekend was a lot of fun! No, seriously.

A Pound of Flesh

Some friends and I were having brunch at Eastern Market the other day, so we decided to do a little bit of flea market shopping when we were done. We walked around for a bit (I was going to buy a nice framed set of old-style Chinese coins, but the frame was terribly nicked), then happened to wander past a real estate office.

They had copied and put out a list of all the open houses taking place that day. On a lark, we decided we would go check out the ones close to the neighborhood.

I've been hankering to buy a new place for a while now. My current place feels so tiny. And, I am a master at accumulating junk. I want something bigger. I want something more "adult." I want a house house.

The first house we checked out was decent. It was a two-story townhouse, 3 bedrooms upstairs, living room, and kitchen. There was even a basement apartment complete with certificate of occupancy and separate entrance... mortgage offset! The upstairs was rather poorly laid out, though, for two of the three bedrooms were ridiculously small, and really usable only for children.

The basement apartment was occupied by a man named Jake. Undoubtedly, he was a Hill intern. He had framed pictures on the walls of him with various Republican bigwigs. It was sick. (Kidding!) The apartment was really well laid out... cute, not too cramped. And he had one of those microshavers (you know, the kind for "sensitive" areas that you can use on a balloon and still not pop it). My friend Elizabeth dragged us out of there when she realized that we were learning more about the occupant than about the apartment.

Not that any of us were really terribly serious about buying anyway.

The second place we saw was another two-story with basement. The basement contained a washer/dryer and what was charmingly described as an "in-law suite" or "au pair suite." (Yes, that's right, I'm planning on hiring an au pair when I move to a new place. You know, to take care of my nonexistent kids.) The backyard was expansive and great for entertaining! Hibachi heaven! The living room was large and included a fireplace, there was a separate dining room, and a rather large kitchen (lots of counter space!) with a dine-in area there as well! All this for only $640,000.

Man, I need to make more money, or move to a cheaper city.

So, my pound of flesh. In the bedroom on the second floor, there was one of those crawl spaces you get to by pulling down a ladder otherwise recessed into the ceiling. Unable to resist, I pulled the string down to reveal the ladder, and the rather completely uninspiring crawl space above. I didn't feel like crawling up the ladder, so I figured I'd push the ladder back up. Woah, strong springs! The ladder proceeded to retract back into the ceiling with alarming force, and with my fingers still captured in the string, well....

I pulled the better part of my left pinky nail off.

I didn't realize that the pain I felt was actually more than just pain until we got outside. I discreetly asked for a tissue or something to cover my bleeding finger. Of course, I tried to be discreet, but my friends noticed. I had to eventually make my way to a Starbucks and ask for a cup of ice to numb my finger.

My finger's not hurting as much now. It only hurts when I accidentally directly touch the area that was erstwhile covered by the nail. But I will note that it's an absolute bitch to type when you can't type "a", "q" "z" or the capital letters of anything on your right hand without moving your left hand off the home keys.

Don't Dance When You're Hung

As a way to get out of the house and have some fun, I've lately taken to taking dance lessons at Remington's, a country bar on Capitol Hill. It's a decent way to meet people, seeing as the crowd tends to be ("tends to be," but not "is uniformly") fairly friendly, and I get a few hours of fun out of it. And, sad though it is, it's somewhat aerobic. I take two-stepping lessons on Monday night, and line dancing lessons on Wednesday nights. Line dancing in a poorly-climate-controlled venue can work up quite the nasty sweat.

Some quick background on the line dancing lessons in particular: There are frequent twists and turns in the process of the dance; one ends up facing a different direction from start rather quickly. To keep us on track, we practice segments of the dance facing each wall, usually just by staying at the wall we've just turned toward. So, for example, if after the first 8 beats of the music you're supposed to have completed a 1/4 turn right, we'll stop, and start again, but this time facing the new wall so that the next 1/4 right takes you to yet another wall. (I do so hope that made some sense.)

Last night we did a dance called the "Booty Call." Okay, I should have known just by the name alone that this dance was not for me. But hey, I was gonna give it a shot, because it's all about the fun, right? Well, let me tell ya.

The Booty Call is a remarkably simple dance, requiring very little practice, so I'm not complaining about that. I got it, and I'm not likely to forget it, so next time I hear the song I could dance it if I wanted to. If I wanted to.

My trepidation with actually doing the Booty Call comes from the fact that the dance requires some TEN BEATS worth of butt-wiggling. Or pelvis-thrusting. Or whatever. I suppose it's meant to be a kind of flirty dance that way, but from the moment we got to that point in the lesson, I found myself thinking, "I gotta say, I can't see myself doing that." (As a punctuation to this thought, I burst out laughing when this move was introduced to us. I think some people thought that I thought our instructor looked stupid shaking his thang. In reality, I was laughing because I really just knew that I would be the one looking silly.)

Sure enough, during the practice run where the entire room ended up facing me (I was facing the wall with the entire class behind me), I performed the beats... but did NO wiggling whatsoever. The instructor even called me out on it: "You're supposed to wiggle, not just stand there!" I laughed it off, because, well, I was not about to announce before the entire class, like some southern primadonna, "Sir, Ah do NAWAT 'wiggle'!" (I was saved by a heckler from the bar who pointed out that the instructor himself actually didn't do that much wiggling himself, so I quietly let the subject drop and I found myself off the hook -- though still without a wiggle. Heck, I think a worm on a hook would in fact wiggle better than I.)

The saddest part of this story is what I found myself thinking when the wiggling was supposed to take place and why I felt that I couldn't do it. The fact is, as an Asian man, I couldn't help visualizing how stupid I'd look shaking my booty because I couldn't help thinking of William Hung, the tragic hero of American Idol infamy, the Johnny-come-lately of horrific vocal ability. Watching William Hung shake his hips during "She Bangs" made me cringe. (Or maybe it was the actual singing. I couldn't tell. The entire scene was cringe-inducing.) The thought that I could end up looking like him due to my comparable lack of groove thang paralyzes me. And so I must politely decline to wiggle during the "Booty Call."

Frankly, it's not a fair assessment for me to make. In all honesty, during several of the other practice turns (when I faced the rest of the class, for example), I can't help noticing that a bunch of the white boys on the stage (and yes, they were mostly white boys) also could not shake their booties to save their lives either. One guy, John, while a cute guy, couldn't really shake very well at all. Even Richard, whom I have an on-again-off-again crush on, doesn't do the whole wiggling thing with much aplomb (as much as aplomb is needed in a gay country line dance). But he does it with confidence and without self-consciousness. Which is what I should be striving toward.

And yet William Hung appears to have scarred me for life.

But She Was Pregnant!

So a friend of mine told me a story last night that was comical, in an "okay, you know that's really not funny, right?" sort of way that I thought I'd share:

My friend Katie was walking home with a friend of hers from being out with some friends one night. It was late (well past the witching hour), and suddenly she noticed her friend (a tiny little woman; some 5'3 and 109 lbs) was accelerating her pace. Katie keeps up, wondering all the while, "This is odd...."

As they reach the front door of Katie's Foggy Bottom apartment, Katie is literally clubbed. Not hard enough to knock her out or even really give her serious bodily injury mind you, but yes, someone raised a hard object and brought it down with some force at her head. Katie turned, shocked, to find... a short, stocky, very pregnant woman, surrounded by three other vigilantes (presumably the pregnant woman's "crew").

Of course, before Katie can compose herself, Pregnant Vigilante moves again, this time whacking Katie's arm in an attempt to get her to drop her purse. When that didn't work (Katie's purse was looped over her head and across her chest), P.V. simply yanked the purse and walked off with it. I say "walked," of course, because, being very pregnant, this woman was not about to run off with the purse.

Now having had some time to come to grips with what was happening, Katie suddenly decides, "This isn't right," and decides to launch an attempt to get her purse back. She follows P.V. and her crew down the street, keeping a semi-safe distance, but saying, "Hey, give me my purse back! It's my purse! Give it back!" To which P.V.A.H.C. are actually responding, to wit, they are saying "No." Katie alternately is also on a cell phone with another of her friends, Maria, describing this entire situation ("Yeah, I was just robbed outside my apartment. I'm following them now. P.V. is kinda waddling, so it's not that difficult to keep up....")

(I'm not sure what Katie's friend is doing this entire time. I think she's gone into her apartment and started calling the cops, but then again, I can't figure out where Katie's cell phone would have come from.)

In any event, at some later point I guess Katie gets separated from her attackers and meets with the police. Miraculously enough, when given the description of the attackers, the police are actually able to round up a very pregnant woman and her buddies. (Shocking, given the sheer number of pregnant women with posses who roam the streets of Foggy Bottom in the middle of the night.) One would think the story ends there, but it doesn't.

Having now somewhat identified the women as her attackers, the Police don't believe Katie. "You can't prove that they did this to you," they tell her. "Uh," stammers Katie, "I just said they did. What more do you need?" "You're not sure of the ID. This case won't ever get prosecuted," she is told. Despite Katie's protestations that, having walked behind the waddling crew for some 10 minutes, she took good stock of their backsides, and sure enough, these women had the asses she saw (complete with funky pants with a strategic tear in them), it apparently wasn't good enough.

The cops never took the attackers into custody.

Asked why Katie didn't fight back, Katie could only respond with, "I was just thinking, 'But she's pregnant!'" When she told this story, the friends we were with and I were much less sympathetic. We would have kicked P.V.'s pregnant ass. (Or so we said. Who knows what cowardly stripe would have been painted down my back had I actually been faced with that situation.)

Katie eventually found her purse, discarded. "Well, at least I get the purse back," she thought. Missing were some makeup, a cell phone, and a pack of gum. P.V.A.H.C. never thought to unzip the pocket in the lining of the purse, where they would have found about $100 in cash, some credit cards, and an ID.