Good weekend - but it takes a lot to make a weekend bad. Friday did not begin with the shiniest of auspices. Double fail: bad za, bad zzs.
The day, nay, the week ends with the twin promise of pizza and a post-meal nap, which has no alarm clock and hence goes on as long as the body likes. I may wake at eight, then hit the coffee pot, and stay up until three watching movies. Such is the boon at the end of the week. Well. I knocked off work around four, and didn’t have to take Natalie to piano as the usual schedule requires; she was at a Valentine’s day party, assembling compacted wads of sucrose and sheaves of rote protestations of affection.
Note to the boys: girls do not, and will not, dig 3D “Transformers” valentines as you do. Which is the point, I guess.
(enabling obligatory nostalgic reverie . . .loading . . .complete.) It reminded me of my own grade-school valentine experience, how the event really attained Great Significance in 5th grade when I had a full-blown hopeless crush on a skinny girl with long blonde hair: Colleen. (College cured me of blondes, but that’s another story.) The immensity of my affection was not returned, and I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from examining her Valentine card like a Bletchley Park cryptographer poring over an Enigma dispatch. I think the valentine was a cowgirl, expressing a desire to rope me in as a Valentine. Since there was nothing Western in my personality or interests, and nothing remotely Annie-Oakley about her, I had no choice but to conclude the card contained no secret messages.
Naturally, I tortured my child by finding secret messages in the Transformer cards the boys had given to her.
Since we didn’t do piano, we didn’t stop at Davanni’s for the Friday pizza. I ordered from a local place I used to frequent every week, but hadn’t called in several months. They gave me a Grudge Za. You want to come back, do you? Here. Try this. The crust was raw, and the toppings had slid over the edge. The pizza looked like a burn-unit patient. Everyone hated it. Wife, child, me: We almost did a Fantastic Four hands-together pledge to never order from there again.
Which is a pity, since I used to like their pizza, and one of the guys who delivers for them is also the most knowledgeable film-geek at the local video rental joint. The first time he showed up I had a hard time recontextualizing him. If he’s showed up on Friday I would have said “I’m watching Mirnau’s ‘Faust’ tonight, then a Guy Ritchie movie!” And he would have said “cool.” But I got the other guy, the stone-faced fellow who would, in a late-80s / early 90s movie, play the cop you normally wouldn’t trust because he’d been a bad guy in some other movies you’d seen, but seemed okay here, and eventually showed himself to be the sort of guy who backed up the hero when the hero was going off the deep end and losing it, man. You know the character: he wasn’t shot in the second or third act. Sometimes he showed up at the last moment in the third act to save the hero, because he’d “heard the call on the radio” and managed to find the abandoned-yet-dramatically-lit-warehouse-complete-with-rotating-ventilation-fans-and-fog in time to walk in the door, size up the situation in four seconds and shoot someone.
That guy. Anyway, the pizza was horrible.
Then, the nap.
It didn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. I had a racing mind; I tossed, turned – which was utterly antithetical to the POINT of the Friday recharge. So I gave up, I got up, and I went to work. Pounded the coffee. Didn’t watch a movie and work on the website. TO HELL WITH THE WEBSITE. I cranked up old 80s tunes, and . . .
. . . Pretty much sorted all my tax, insurance, banking, and investment stuff. Yes, I CUT LOOSE. Around 11 PM I called my investment company for assistance in setting up the “don’t send me paper crap” option; the website said my account was already registered. Well. She walked me through a few steps, and we came to a series of screens that require me to click I AGREE and proceed. Once such screen had – really – 12 boxes that required me to click I AGREE, concluding with a box that demanded I actually type I AGREE and type my name.
I asked her what this page was about, exactly.
Sir this is (BEEP) something you agree to in order to set up (BEEP) your account
I know that – I’m just wondering what this page is about. What am I agreeing to? It’s the NASDAQ page.
Sir (BEEP) if you click on the boxes that say you agree you will (BEEP) be able to set up your account.
(The company has audible beeps to remind you that the conversation is being recorded; makes you feel as if you’re calling Houston to inform them that you stirred the tanks and half the engines blew off.)
She couldn’t tell me what the documents said, only that I had to sign them. So I concluded the conversation, hoping someone would review the tapes and conclude that it might be wise to bring the phone operators up to speed on the pith and/or gist of the EULAs.
End result of the evening’s work: totally cyber now, dude. The downside: when I call the investment banker company and enter the password, a voice actually tells me my investment balance.
I held the phone away from my ear and hummed the “Ode to Joy” until the recitation of carnage had concluded.
Natalie came into my office while I was working, and for some reason we got off on a YouTube loop about Disneyworld. Ended up watching an amazing couterstrike mod on the Haunted Mansion. I can’t wait to do that ride again. She has forbidden me to turn into Deaddy, the slack-jawed Zombie Dad character I always assume when we enter the Mansion. It really scares me, she says, which is why I do it. Disneyworld is all sugar happy glossy goofy; it needs a dark corner. Of all the moments in the Haunted Mansion, I think my favorite is the corridor of rooms whose doors shudder from the blows of the maddened spirits behind them. You can’t see what’s there; you have to use your imagination. It’s Paul Frees’ relatives, seeking to renegotiate the residuals!
Here’s the vid:
While we watched the video people were actually experiencing the same thing in real time – but that’s the lovely thing about the Disneyverse. It only really exists when you’re there.
Around one I shut down the machines and went downstairs to watch a movie. Watched “Rocka Roller,” a Guy Ritchie film, and was fully prepared to have it wash over me in an enjoyable tide of vague comprehension. A Guy Ritchie film can usually be counted upon to have genial, interesting, decent criminals who are set against criminals with whom you would not want to have a drink. There’s always the vague sense that Clive Owens may show up. If you lose track of the plot, that’s okay; no one on screen seems to be overly concerned with it either, but they’ll get around to it – in the meantime, enjoy the witty performances, crisp direction, mannered but still-effective transitional elements, and the sense that he’s paying homage to a few elements of British culture you don’t quite grasp, but sense nevertheless.
But here’s the thing. There’s one women in the movie. One. It’s Thandie Wilson, extruded through the Posh-Spice template in the Play-Doh Fun Factory of female archetypes; she’s supposed to be the femme fatale, but gor blimey, what a dud: either I’m insufficiently male, and my tongue should unspool on the floor like a Tex Avery wolf because she walks with the heel-to-toe catwalk saunter, or she’s just a compendium of unearned, ineffective feminine “wiles” intended to show how simple tricks – tight suits, hauteur, greed, rote contempt – make the average bloke convert into putty with a priapic anomaly. There’s nothing sexy about her. She has nothing to say; she can’t even be bothered to stir herself to general bitchiness; not a joule of heat rolls off her performance, despite her evident self-regard for her own sexual power, however chilly it may seem. The movie lags whenever she enters the picture, and the characters seem happiest when they can return to the pub and hang with their mates. When the protagonist does eventually submit to cold rote coupling, it’s accomplished with brief swooshy edits and relief when it’s over
This is the final movie the director made while he was married to Madonna.
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24 Responses to Monday, Feb. 16
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When the fourth edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary came out, one of the new words added was “za.” This was a major addition (along with “qi”) because it gave you ways to play a 10 point letter.
The definition it gives for “za” is “short for pizza.”
I had NEVER heard anyone use “za” for pizza. Until now.
You’ve just validated OSPD4 for me.
Nobody in my neck of the woods uses “za,” either. Of course, when we order it, we don’t say “pizza.” We just tell the guy we want a large pie.
That Disney clip made me queasy. Reminds me of why I don’t like video games. You get no peripheral vision. (And who runs with both hands held steady in front of their face?)
Thandie Newton, not Wilson. Yes, lovely build, underpowered circuitry.
I think I remember this line from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the turtles hanging out in their sewer crash pad and Michaelangelo in surfer-dude-speak –”I’m mad hungry for some ‘za”. We used to call pizza za back in the 90s when my kids were into the turtles. And What the heck? I thought contractions were a no no in Scrabble. I object!
Za was a frequently used word when I was in college, in the early 80′s. Perhaps it’s mainly the province of students who need to gnosh on za while pulling all-nighters?
Michael Rooker delivered your pizza?
The Adult Swim show “Tom Goes to the Mayor” has a restaurant called “Pete’s Zah”.
Sue me, I love that show.
Incidentally, I really really hope someone is making those “I Choo-Choo-Choose You” Valentines for real nowadays.
“This is the final movie the director made while he was married to Madonna.”
Best payoff line I’ve heard in a long time. Well done.
Investment Companies – meh.
Why can’t TD Waterhouse (or whatever they’re called after whoever else they merged with this month) make their Tax documents available for import into Turbo Tax? They say they do. In fact for the past FIVE years, they’ve said they do. And yet, for the past FIVE years, I’ve had to enter them by hand. If it weren’t for the for the sad state of those investments (“may not be an indicator of future performance…”)I would consider taking what’s left and making a deposit in the Mattress of the Master Bedroom Trust & Thrift.
Our 7 year old enjoyed a double valentine’s shindig. A party at school, and a party at her Brownie troop meeting. I thought about addressing the concept of exchanging valentines with a pack hens, but my wife re-directed me.
Ah, secret messages. Reminds me of when I was in college, and the thing to do was to send songs to your friends and/or significant others via voice mail. (Small Christian college, middle of nowhere — what else are you gonna do for entertainment?) My freshman roommate received a delivery of “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” from her love interest one day, and played it about 920,756 times trying to figure out exactly what he meant by it, while I refrained (barely) from rolling my eyes, and kept trying to remind her that her boyfriend hadn’t actually WRITTEN the thing. Ain’t love grand?
Za with shrooms and roni: abbreviations that anteceded the txt msg generation.
Of course, it’s Thandie Newton and Clive Owen, not Owens.
I’ve found Ms Newton very fetching from the Aussie film “Flirting” through to today. She’s a very good actress and if you didn’t find her ‘all that and a bag of chips’ in this film, it probably is a brickbat by Mr Ritchie at Mrs Ritchie who apparently cut conjungal rights some years before the divorce.
As for abbr. foods: I’ve heard both Za and Pie and also Sturd for your Dog.
And in Upstate New York, we say Hamburg and Cheeseburg and leave off the ‘er’.
The Simpsons referenced this in a Skinner-Chalmers exchange.
Right now he’s directing a new version of Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson. Supposed to be more Bourne-like. Coming this November.
That would be Ritchie I’m talking about, heh.
I remember as a kid doing the Valentine’s Day party thing, having to go out and buy the box of small cards for the entire class, including the kids I didn’t like. Unlike most boys, who bought Ninja Turtles, Batman, He-Man, Superman, Spiderman, Transformers, or other similar cartoon endorsers, I always got something that was gender-neutral, like Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse, or anything from that genre of cartoons. The girls always bought Barbie, Jem, Lisa Frank, Rainbow Bright, or Popples.
James, I have a suggestion, even though there’s no strib link in this post.
When linking to the star tribune columns, you may want to use this url. It goes to your bio and list of all recent columns: http://www.startribune.com/bios/10645306.html
It’s amazing the things the spell-check doesn’t Ah-OOH-gah, isn’t it. You’re right; singular Owen. In both meanings of the word.
A potential slogan for your deficient pizzeria: “We put the ‘P’ in your za!”
… or not.
“putty with a priapic anomaly” — sharp. Very sharp. It’s always nice to see others use the term from time to time.
And you’re not entirely correct in suggesting all girls won’t appreciate Transformers valentine cards. I discovered this weekend how much of a nerd mine is; she actually used the term d20, correctly, in context.
It’s definitely love.
“Za” only exists today as a sarcastic term for those looking to choose the dumbest words possible. I should use it more.
The anti-corporate types always sing praises for the Mom and Pop restaurant and bemoan the presence of the franchise shops like Papa Johns and Pizza Hut but the dirty secret is that some of the small local places make horrible food.At least you get a constant level of quality from the mega Za providers. If you’ve got a local shop that consistanly makes good pies and won’t take two hours to deliver a screwed up order, then great.
A slender blond exhibiting latent bondage inclinations. By any chance, does Colleen currently reside in Las Vegas?
Thandie Newton has had a very uneven career, and she frequently chooses movies that don’t show her off to her best advantage. (Oprah’s execrable, unwatchable Beloved comes to mind here, and Thandie’s laughable “southern” accent as Sally Hemings in Jefferson in Paris is completely off-putting.) That lets me take your word that she doesn’t succeed as a femme fatale in RocknRolla, which I haven’t seen. But, “there’s nothing sexy about her”? Wrong, wrong, wrong. To name just a few movies in which she’s sexy as any woman can be: 1) in Flirting, her first movie, she’s a teenaged dream girl who’ll steal your heart. 2) In The Truth About Charlie, a not-as-good-as-the-original remake of Charade, she’s as desirable as Audrey Hepburn was in the original. 3) In Gridlock’d, she’s sexy even as a wasted junkie. 4) In Crash, she’s the only thing that makes it worthwhile to see the worst Oscar-winning Best Movie ever. 5) Most of all, in Mission Impossible II, she’s breathtakingly beautiful, and has some the-camera-loves-her close-ups that put her in the same league as classic movie beauties such as Hedy Lamarr and Rita Hayworth.