Highs and Lows

There are lots of different varieties of librarian in the wild. Mostly, they are suited to their surroundings, like most creatures in the animal kingdom. Ones who work in corporate oil company libraries most likely field questions about oil and companies. Ones who work in old South American country archives most likely field questions about politics and militaries and spanish (or something). I work in a university library, where any question is valid. This is because people study or research any kind of topic, and legitimize them by attaching them to very vague aspects of culture or language or society or some other kind of ridiculous means that enables a grown person to spend countless hours looking up information on the colors in children's books. I'm not laying a judgement here, at all. I think that's great.

So, one of the perks of my job is entertaining these people in their efforts to find obscure and random information. We could spend hours on something, unless is gets boring, and then the patron is screwed. The problem is, when do you say when? It's really a personal choice. I suppose the professional stance is after a reasonable amount of sources have been checked and you leave them with at least one follow-up lead. But c'mon.

Today I helped another librarian, because the place was dead, search for an obscure Muppet character. The lady insisted she had seen an early 1960's character on a Late Night-type talk show named "Fundinella Grindersnatch." Well, after a few mintues of solid searching, nothing came up. We found some history of Jim Henson and his first short program called "Sam and Friends" which aired before one of those late night shows. We also found a character named "Taminella Grinderfall." That sounds like the reasonable answer. Right?

Nope. Our patron was sure that she had the name right. Hmmm. Well, let's keep going, I guess. It turns out the character was a witch. So was Taminella. She had a "political pot" which she stirred. So did Taminella. When to say when? The lady had to leave to catch a ride, so I was spared. We tried to find a good biography or history of the muppets for this lady, but it turns out she was just curious, and it didn't really matter. That might have upset a lesser librarian. But I got paid to spend a lot of time researching the Muppets, so what kind of jerk would I be to complain?

You can never prove a negative. We couldn't prove that Fundinella didn't exist. But we had reasonable evidence that this other character was what she wanted. Sometimes our persuasive powers aren't too great. But that's not our job.

If that was a perk, here is a downer. Sometimes, during a lull in desk action, we librarians get to talk to one another. And sometimes I lay down the funny like no one's business. I get a good phrase in my head and I'm racing to deliver it in just the right way. Oh man, I'm a freakin' genius and my colleagues are going to keel over when the find out. They are rapt with attention. Hanging on each delicate word. [Sound of needle scratching a record.] Suddenly a patron comes out of nowhere looking suspiciously like he has a question. Sigh.

By the time we are done professionally servicing this dude, the moment is passed and we are all onto other things. My almost-genius is exactly that. Almost. But do I harbor any ill will towards that random, innocent person?

You bet I do.

If I Were Rich

In these lean times, when the economy isn't feeling so good, I tend to dream a little more often of good times with money that I'll never have. Why now? You'll have to ask a therapist, because I can't break into that vault upstairs and ask around; I'm not allowed anymore.

So, what would I do with tons of money, literally? Suppose I had enough to go a restaurant without prices on the menus? Or maybe enough to spit in people's faces? I wouldn't do that, even if I could. Some strange man did that to me in Spain once, and I didn't care for it. I took a little solace knowing he was crazy and did it to as many people he could.

OK, for starters, I would buy a country mansion, Count of Monte Cristo-style. Just walk right up with a wagon load of gold and force someone to move. But I would need to make it my own. Since I'm rich, I wouldn't care what anyone thought, so I would put in an ornate and extensive library. That would satisfy my need to have many useless and fancy things along with an endless supply of reading material just in case I have to board myself up after the zombie apocalypse.

But this house would need other stuff, too. Lots of underground tunnels. If you ever wonder if you have enough, just remember - you can never have enough. I'm sure there's a formula that civil engineers use to determine the maximum area before the surface starts to cave in. But I'm not an engineer, so that doesn't apply to me. These tunnels will need to go to all kinds of out buildings and caves.

So I would need some out buildings and caves. These could be used for storage of dangerous things, like dynamite. I would need that for all of the old barns I would move onto my property and blow-up. Why do this? Isn't that unnecessary and dangerous and destructive and juvenile? Well, yes. But I'm rich, remember? And if I don't do it, then who will?

A few other things I would add are some ponds with row-boats and pavilions, groves with an array of tree houses, and a gymnasium. The gym is just to have safe place to practice all of the dangerous and ill-advised parkour I would perform over the grounds. I'm sure there are many other things that a well-appointed country estate should have and any real gentleman would not be caught dead without. And of course I would have those too, naturally. I'm not an ogre.

Well, now I'm back to reality. Back to my dingy apartment with that leak in the shower and only condiments in the fridge. I suppose I could make a goal of earning lots of money over many years and making these day dreams come true. I could, but I would probably just spend it on plane tickets and film scores, which is fine by me.

The Thin Man

Several years ago I stumbled across an old movie, The Thin Man, during an extended bout of thirties film watching. The fantastic thing about that decade is the abundance of wit. Dialogue cracks like a dried forest floor under foot. Characters are sharp and it's fun to try and keep up. Many of the screwball comedies of that day are still funnier than anything you are likely to see today. The Thin Man is a comedy, but of the more urbane kind. It is also a classy murder mystery.

But it has something else going for it - chemistry. The two leads, William Powell and Myrna Loy, were born into this earth to play those characters together. I haven't seen any other incarnations of Nick and Nora, but I can be almost positive that comparatively they are like oil and water. Powell and Loy, as Nick and Nora, are one of cinema's dearest treasures. Not like a baby your grandma coos after, but more like a big bucket full of diamonds and bars of gold.

This brings me to my other discovery, which is that a lot of people don't know about this movie, or the many that followed. They produced five sequels, in rapid succession, over a period of eleven years, all almost as good as the one before. I haven't done the research, but I wager they were pretty popular at the time. But now they are largely forgotten.

I say largely, because I'm comparing this stuff to It's a Wonderful Life, Gone With The Wind, or Casablanca. Sure, these are all different kinds of movies, but I believe they all belong in the same category of "well worth your time, anytime." But I'm not concerned with why they fell out of the limelight.

What impresses me is the few who have heard about them and love them to pieces. I find more and more people all the time. Like any unpopular but totally awesome thing, it's like you belong to a secret society. Sure, mostly it is older people, but sometimes it's people my age. Usually we are all surprised about the discovery. Like we all went to the same out of the way bar that only sells Orange Whips three at a time.

Anyway, if you haven't seen this movie, do your self a favor and check it out.

And wear formal attire when you do.


Nora Charles: You know, that sounds like an interesting case. Why don't you take it?
Nick Charles: I haven't the time. I'm much too busy seeing that you don't lose any of the money I married you for.

Quantum of Awesome

How to make money: sell something that people desperately want, but have no idea how to do or make themselves.

I would like to have an adventure. But I have no idea how to do that. Let's define what an adventure is. I think of it as a progression of time in which an individual or individuals are put to a stressful test of which they do not know the outcome or steps, but know they must move forward.

Perhaps there are people out there who know how to do this for me. Perhaps they are called spies. This is such a profession, at least perpetuated in movies and books, where the spy has to know all kinds of things I wish I knew in order to have adventures. Like speaking many languages, practicing dangerous martial arts, getting girls in the sack, ordering the right drink at the right time, knowing who to punch in the face, flying planes, riding motorcycles, driving British and European cars, parachuting, looking good without your shirt, wearing nice suits, communicating with absolute security, and last but not least - doing it all without getting any kind of sick.

What's the price to pay for this kind of awesome post-graduate fellowship? Moral ambiguity. Loneliness. Accepting death at any time. Not being as cool as everyone thinks you are. No one you can care about. Contempt for almost everyone.

That sounds like quite a bargain, to me.

Two thoughts on the new James Bond movie:
1. Casino Royale was better.
2. So what, it was still cool as hell.

I Was Not Prepared

Yesterday I ran in a half-marathon race, like I have many times before. Unlike previous visits to this runners' moderate consolation of the great marathon prize, I was ill-prepared to run. And now I sit here paying the price with doses of pain to which I am unaccustomed. On many accounts I did not think of the consequences of my inactions.

I did not apply sunblock, and was seriously sunburned while wandering around post-race for a couple of hours in the blinding, yellow sunshine. It was only sixty degrees outside, so I guess I felt safe from those rays.

Also, I hadn't run in almost four weeks prior to this massive contest. It is pretty obvious to anyone, let alone someone who has exerted himself thus previously, that you might want to simulate, through gradual increases, the type of punishment striding over thirteen miles will deliver to your muslces, joints and bones. But not me. I thought, what the hell, I'm young and can do anything I want. I was wrong. I won't get into the chafing problem, but let's just say that it was the first and last time I wore those shorts. That, in some respects, is the most painful lesson of all, even if I couldn't have predicted it.

Preparation for events in life, although very unexciting and unglamorous, is pretty essential. This isn't news to anyone, but it doesn't stop a lot of us from being unprepared many times. Ask a musician or a student, they will tell you that they have a much better time in life when they have practiced or studied.

But when I need to practice or study or whathaveyuou, I'd rather do something that is passively entertaining - where I don't have to do anything to enjoy myself. This is my lazy man's burden. Procrastination is my rationale. I fully intended to prepare for that race, but things just kept coming up, by which I mean opportunities to goof off and watch a movie.

The easiest course of action would have been to not run at all. I would have saved myself the pain and frustration and embarassment of running a bad time, suffering days long soreness and tenderness of muscles and skin, and knowing that it was pretty much my fault for not preparing properly. But I didn't, and I'm glad. I experienced a small wake-up call that says you are procrastinating too much.

Would I like to keep running races? Yes, I think I would. So, if that is important to me, then I should learn from my mistakes and sally boldly forth with a plan to avoid them in the future. I feel like I've stumbled upon an important life lesson, but any eight year old could have wisely predicted my fate. Stupid little kids.

This is approximately what I felt like.

Quality Matters

I go to the movies a lot, and I'm disappointed by them a lot. Sure, I rarely say really nasty things about them, but I usually have some great expectations for a movie (otherwise I wouldn't go) and usually they are not met. I try to empathize with a movie and how it is made, arguing in my head that the things that went wrong did so the way we all go wrong in life, and not because of a certain callous lack of creativity or horrible stupidity.

But one thing that I will not abide or make excuses for is the exhibition of a movie. We live in an age of amazing advances in technology. Most of the stuff we hear about is about digital technology in computers and their programs. They make such cool stuff. But we've also advanced with mechanical and optical technology, too. There should be no excuse to sit in a movie theater and not be awed by the show. I don't care if the movie stinks like yesterday's garbage, it should be shown with amazing regard for the exhibition.

What do I mean by this? Sight and Sound. Can you see it clearly and well? Can you hear and feel the sound it makes? Do both of them excite you? If not, then the theater is not doing it's job. Given the right equipment, I'm sure you could make even the HUAC hearings exciting to watch, if only for five minutes. Movies today are made with huge levels of difference in budget and skill. But so many are made with so many skillful people. The sound design team of even a mid-level budgeted movie consists of a dozen people or more. What about the camera? The post-production work? The visual intent of the director? These are all important things to be mindful of when showing a film. If I made a movie and I was attending the screening of it, I would be damn sure to talk to the projectionist and go over the equipment in the theater first, just to make sure it looked and sounded like I originally made it.

So, what's my beef? It's these poor-quality theaters. They are run like businesses, like candy stores. I understand they need to make profits to stay innovative and successful, but they aren't doing that. They are maintaining a stranglehold, and nothing else. They like the lack of competition in their markets. They don't innovate unless they think it will sell more sodas or popcorn. They think that their product is given to them and so the only thing they can focus on is the ancillaries. That is wrong.

Almost every theater I go to is staffed with teenagers who want a fun job, but who then realize that working at a movie theater is depressing and the equivalent of working at a swimming pool. I haven't met or seen any evidence of an employee who is enamored with the cinema, who loves the history of movies, who finds it a duty to make sure that people have a great experience to go with their memories of a movie. What if the projection is poorly lit? What if the some of the speakers don't work? What if the chairs are broken and the floor is sticky? Oh well, if enough people complain, then we might go in and fix it.

I'm not just harping about customer service, either. I'm pissed that the quality of the exhibition experience is so lacking. I live in one of the ten-biggest cities in the country. I haven't been to a theater here yet that has satisfied my desire to have a clean, classy, artistic, loud, capable experience designed to do the one thing we purchase tickets for - see a movie on the big screen. The owners and management need to focus on the main things, and then tighten the experience up with some well designed supplements. Did you know that selling popcorn and candy was just an enticement to get people to go during the depression? They had to do something because people were so poor that the prospect of seeing a film just wasn't enough. They needed cheap popcorn and cheap soda to liven it up. Now those things aren't cheap (to us, anyway).

Why do we put up with this? I'm, by far, the worst of anyone I know. I'll repeatedly grumble but still plunk down my debit card and be charged outrageous ticket prices for a mediocre experience. I have no other choice. I can't switch to a competitor, because they are all C-students. I could complain, but I don't have the heart. I need that heart. I need the muse to send letters telling them that I want, desperately, to pay them money for a wonderful experience. But I don't have the wherewithall to withhold my money when they don't measure up. What's to become of us when we don't get what we want in the marketplace? It's like the big companies keep buying up the little companies and get together to cooperate in giving us lousy service. Some industries aren't a monopoly, but they are close. For example, I have three choices for an internet provider. All three are lousy with service. What to do?

This just points out that we are ripe for wanting excellence. If someone would just give it to us, then we would eat it up like the Japanese at a hot dog-eating contest. Could that someone be me? No, I don't think so. I'm too busy complaining.

This is some guy's home theater based on the Nautilus in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. C'mon!

Waiting for the inevitable

In the second of a stunning series of posts that include the word waiting in the title, this time I'm talking about Death (not the election). My job as a librarian forces me to help people with their information problems. A strategy we have to combat these problems is to use communication techniques, like asking questions and giving fact-based answers. One of our tactics involved in this strategy is to approach people whose body language appears to be saying, I don't know what I'm doing and I need help or I'll start crying. Since they are too proud to come to us, we'll magnanimously go to them and ask, "Is there anything I can help you with?" Aside from ending a sentence in a preposition, which never starts off a conversation well, we are assuming they have a problem. I know I hate it when salespeople do this to me in a store. It's like they want me to have a quick, hassle-free experience with personalized attention. Don't they know I'm just wasting time looking at khakis I'm not going to buy while my girlfriend/sister/mom looks at purses or shoes for what seems like forever? [To be fair, they have to do the same thing when I'm looking at books or movie scores.]

Well, despite my internal conflict with roaming the library asking people if they are OK, I do get to observe people who don't normally approach me at the reference desk. When we roam around, trying to see if someone has a problem with printing, a computer, finding a book in the stacks, or where their classroom is(n't), sometimes we see things we aren't supposed to. Contraband prevails in the upper floors. Drinks, chips, cookies, people talking on their cellphones, fun of any kind. Cellphone conversations aren't banned outright, but only when they are the inane ones where someone is bored and can't stand the thought of passing the next ten minutes without talking to someone, anyone, who cares to listen about why they're pissed at their boyfriend/girlfriend.

Aside from the naughty things people do in the library, which I mostly let ride cause I'm cool like that, I get to see how people spend their hours in the library. Many of them study dilligently, many sleep dilligently. Many stare at their book or laptop, hoping and praying that a light will come on. It's sort of like looking at your refrigerator and expecting it to stop that horrible humming sound all by itself. You might have to do something or call someone. Desire won't get it done by itself - I've tried that. Besides all of the typical students sitting in our nooks and crannies, I saw an older woman who I recognized as an employee from downstairs in one of the university admin offices. What was she doing?

Waiting for death, it would seem. She goes upstairs in the library everyday for, let's say, probably 4 to 6 hours, hoping he will come by. There are several reasons I suspect this: she sits alone at an empty table, never a carrel; she always has a magazine open in front of her, but never looks at it; she doesn't write or talk or draw or do anything but sit; her glasses are usually off and laying on the table. It's possible that she could be really bored with her job and uses many excuses to say she is doing work that no one will ever check on and instead wastes her day in the library. But the way she does it is so heartbreakingly sad.

It's one thing to play hookey and do something fun, like get some Starbucks, buy and axe from the hardware store, and see what happens. But it's another to sit all alone with nothing to do but wait out this life, hoping for the end. Some compassionate person might think it prudent for me to carefully approach her and ask if she needs some help - of the emotional kind. Librarians have learned from painful experience not to get involved in that arena. When someone wants to talk it over, and they find a unsuspecting dogooder who has no escape, then they will latch on like a tick on a dog. So, I'm not about to say mum to this lady.

I could, however, find some books on the topic of "what to do with your boring life when all you have left to do is think about why you have arrived at your current situation and aren't having fun like those other people on TV" and lay them ever so casually on her table and then forget to pick them up again. She usually has that thousand-yard stare, so I might have to cough or trip or something to break her laser-like gaze into the fourth dimension. It's like she can see her future where she is sitting in the same seat at the same table and finally has that coronary her doctor has been promising for a while now.

I realize this seems very sarcastic and negative, which it is, but I do want to end on a positive note. If you ever find yourself in this situation, please try to break out of it. Life is for living, because we don't really know what else to do on the planet while we're here. Libraries aren't a bad place to be in a glum situation. They have vessels of knowledge from all parts of human discovery. Many times, if you can still use your imagination, a person can derive ideas and thoughts that could turn into fun and productive ways to spend your precious little time on earth. If you sit there waiting for something to happen in a library, it probably won't. They're really boring and will just make it worse. And death isn't allowed in - we have a permanent tresspass warning because he is always talking loudly on his cellpone to his broker.