Tag: human weakness

The Theory of the Leisure Suit Class

Living in Newport Beach has always been strange, and has always been getting stranger. Satire fails us, as daily life teems with situations and images that are so outrageously perfect, they seem to have been dreamed up by a particularly unsubtle socialist film maker to hammer in some point. Welcome to Michael Moore’s Real World Newport Beach. Some recent examples:

  • Driving past one of the local high-class night clubs, I see that among the stretch Hummer limos and AMG Mercedes, someone has backed out his $250,000 Lamborghini and is revving and clutch-popping hopelessly, trying to get his thoroughbred Italian supercar to go into first gear. I stop and watch as our hero wrestles with his prancing bull. Finally he achieves traction and hurtles out onto the boulevard in a cloud of tire smoke.
  • At a street corner, a cop is handcuffing a middle-aged Mexican man whose bicycle lies on the ground next to him. Behind them, another middle-aged Mexican man is holding up a sign that says INDULGE YOURSELF LUXURY APTS with an arrow on it, and waving the sign at passing cars.
  • At the local shopping mall, it is Tuesday at 3 pm, and the place is full of young marrieds without employment buying everything that glitters. One thirtyish man in a $2000 suit, sculpted hair and spray-on tan, is saying loudly into his cellphone “Yes. It has to be on a yacht, that’s where we’re making the sale. The presentation is on a yacht, and I don’t know the dress code yet, but you are going to be there.”
  • At Target. A small, nervous man dressed in a $200 Aloha shirt, cargo shorts, and a very shiny pair of Timberland hiking boots is gazing at a barbecue that is eight feet long and costs as much as a used car. His wife comes up behind him and says “Do the utensils match?” and he says “Of course! OF COURSE!”

My mom is sick. It’s just some digestive bug but when someone is 76 it makes me nervous, plus she never gets these. There’s something about the illness or weakness of parents that’s still very psychologically undermining even in adulthood; it shouldn’t happen.

Not all the world’s a stage

I don’t like the word “drama”. I hear it a lot. Friends and coworkers use it and it’s everywhere online.

What does “drama” mean? A big argument, an unpleasant revelation, a crappy public relationship breakup, a confrontation, raised voices. Any kind of emotional blowup that isn’t hidden is called “drama”.

What does it really mean? That someone is being neurotic or manipulative and creating a theatrical scene, that trivial items are being puffed up to great size, that someone is a “drama queen” who needs to create public messes for his or her own reasons. Okay, that happens and it’s annoying as hell. We all know a few people who do their best to turn everyday life into a soap opera.

But the word “drama” gets applied to anything emotional and public. Whether it’s someone who gets in a shouting match with his ex-girlfriend at a party or someone who hits the end of the rope and guzzles a fifth of vodka and a handful of pills and has to go to the ICU, it’s “drama”. Basically “drama” is anything that makes you have to notice that other people are in bad trouble and can’t help communicating it. It’s an inconvenience to you, and it makes you stop having fun, and you want to trivialize it. So here’s your label for that purpose!

Not everyone who loses their shit in public is clamoring for attention. Occasionally it’s a tragedy and not a soap opera, and not to be dismissed.