First Name Basis

Like the late Art Linkletter used to say on his program, "Kids say the darndest things."  It's as true today as it was when his version hit the airwaves in the forties and fifties, the only difference being that today's children are a little more educated.  Or at least, they believe they are.

There's a number of children who ride the school bus that seem to speak a lot about toilets, poop and their "male appendages".  One boy, in particular, I've had to warn a number of times, explaining that it was inappropriate to talk about such content in the presence of little girls.  "A good boy," I said, "Wouldn't do that."

To tell the truth, I'm so out of the loop when it comes to kids, nowadays.  They're a far cry from when I was their age.  I want to say it's bad parenting, but in truth, it's probably something in the water that makes them this way.  When I was a little boy getting on the bus, I'd find a seat and sit quietly until we arrived at school.  Today, the kids are hyper as f*ck, and can barely sit still when the climb aboard.  It's crazy, I tell ya.  Crazy.

For the most part, I ignore it, recalling a helpful reminder a friend told me years ago in reference to circumstances beyond our control.  It is what it is.  Five simple single-syllable words that I've valued in the five-plus years since hearing it.  So much so, that I once almost got it tattooed to the palm of my hand.  That way, I could look at it during stressful situations involving stupidity.  A last reminder before slapping my forehead with frustration.  The craziness displayed by the kids, is the same.  Nothing I say or do, will deter them from acting like wild monkeys.  It's not all of them, thankfully, but just enough to drive a man to drink.  But, there's a paycheck in it for me to endure the insanity.  Less than minimum wage, mind you, but in a job market that has very little to offer, it's what I'm stuck with for now...  It is what it is...

This morning presented a break from the constant chirping, hooting and howling that the boys in the front two seats make.  At first I was thankful.  A few fleeting seconds to regain whatever sanity I had left.  That's when I overheard someone singing a song.  It went with the tune of the Oscar Mayer wiener commercial.  You know the one, "My wiener has a first name. It's O-S-C-A-R..," only this one's lyrics were drastically changed.  I only heard a couple verses before I kiboshed it.

"My penis has a first name, it's P-E-N-I-S.  And it makes me laugh when it wears a funny dress."

While it is catchy enough to tap your toe to, I doubt it's a real song.  However, if this kid thought this up on his own, he may have a future writing dirty limericks.  Still, highly inappropriate for a five year old boy to sing in mixed company.

I don't like to squash the laughter and fun that these kids have.  Some of my fondest memories of school was the ride home on the school bus.  Back then, however, we never spoke of such things.  I don't know what to do with these kids.  Grin and bear it, I suppose.  Treat this job like every other job I've ever had that I grew to resent.  Count the hours until the next weekend or day off.  After all, in those inspirational words of my friend: It is what it is...

The Stupid Shit I See

I've often remarked that it'd be nice to have a GoPro camera mounted on the dash of the school bus I drive.  People doubt some of the amazing shit I've bore witness to.  I've seen a number of Hit & Runs.  Many close calls and near misses.  Too many to assign a number to, in fact.  I've even witnessed a slug-fest between two women on a boulevard, moments after an accident.  The list goes on and on.  Unfortunately, I do not have a GoPro affixed to the dash, meaning no one gets to see any of those incidents, nor do they get to see the cluster-f*ck I saw this morning.

I tried my best to illustrate what occurred on my route, this morning.  Bear in mind that this picture is not to scale.  I'd just picked up a smattering of students and was approaching my next pick up, when I happened upon a car parked perpendicular to the street.  It was blocking both lanes and my mind quickly jumped into problem-solving mode.  A lone male standing by the car, spotted me and ran up to my door.  I'm not supposed to open the door to anyone except students and school officials, but taking a chance, I opened the door to see what was the matter, more so out of curiosity for the strange situation.

"I don't know what happened..," the man explained, "I was just driving along and it ran out of gas!"

"So you parked it across both lanes?" I asked, with an implication of stupidity in my voice.  "Can't you push it out of the way?  I have kids to pick up."  He shook his head no.  Then he suggested I go around.

Omitted from the graphic above, is the stream of parked cars that lined the street.  True, there was a gap large enough to fit a school bus through, but it would require my passing over the lawn, coming dangerously close to the fence that lined the exterior of the apartment building.

People fail to understand, fully, just what is involved with driving a bus.  While it's easy to dart around objects in the road, it's a f*ck of a lot more difficult with a large vehicle like a bus or semi-tractor.  We can't turn on a dime.  We can't fit through tight spaces.  Plus, we have a tail swing which is dangerous for inflicting damage or injury.

I eyed up the space the man was inferring to, then cautiously proceeded, closing the door on the man, mid-sentence.  Using a combination of grace and caution, I crept the behemoth vehicle around the stalled car, followed by a wide turn to the right before engaging in a sharp turn to the left to make it around the corner.

All-in-all, I survived the ordeal, without much hindrance, but I couldn't get that flimsy excuse out of my head.  He ran out of gas?  He passes a gas station to get to and from his residence, everyday.  You can't travel in or around that area of town, without passing that gas station.  Did he assume that the 'E' on the gauge stood for something other than empty? and given that gas has been cheaper in the last few months, than it has been in (literally) decades.

I accept that maybe he did run out of gas.  It happens.  It's happened to me twice, once in front of a gas station.  What eludes me, in this case, is how the car became stopped in the middle of the block, perpendicular to the street?  There was a car parked inches off his front bumper, so he couldn't have been attempting a U-turn.  If his car, indeed, began to sputter and cough, symptoms of running out of fuel, he wouldn't have had enough power to cause the car to slip sideways, like that.  True, it's still winter and there's ice on the roads, but it's rutted in that area, meaning there's tire tracks worn into the thick ice, and sliding sideways, especially under limited power, would be impossible.

I don't know what the case is.  The scene only occupied my mind long enough to jot down this blog.  Now I'm going to file it away with the plethora of other stupid shit I've witnessed in my travels.  I really wish I had a GoPro camera fixed on my dash.  You wouldn't believe the stupid shit I see.

Lacklustre

In 2015, comedian Doug Benson issued himself a mission of watching 365 movies in 365 days.  An avid moviegoer and host of a popular podcast entitled, "Doug Loves Movies", watching so many movies should come easy, but given all of his duties of constantly traveling the continent from one ocean to the other and back, in addition to two or three podcasts, achieving this lofty goal was tough, and he came close to failure, squeaking in the last film on the last day of the year.  For 2016, he's not trying this feat, but challenged his fans to the challenge.  I'm not nearly as busy as Doug, not by a long shot, but I figured I'd give myself a goal of 250 movies to watch in 2016.  I figured I could swing four movies a week, for fifty-two weeks, which totaled 208, which I rounded up to an even 250.  As of this date, I've managed 53 movies, the last being "The Magnificent Seven", the poster pictured above.

The Magnificent Seven was rated FOUR STARS out of four and starred major Hollywood stars of the day, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn, with an additional two nobodies to round out the seven.  Eli Wallach co-starred as the main villain.  The film was produced in 1960 and was an updated old-west remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samarai", which was filmed in Japanese.

In comparison to the films being produced in that era, I do suppose the movie deserved the high ratings, but as I've been watching a wide variety of films in an effort to achieve my own movie challenge in 2015, I've found that many of the movies of the era, which received high praise, really aren't that good.  Quite dreadful, in fact.  "Lawrence of Arabia" is one such movie, receiver of many Oscar nominations and awards, also considered to be a FOUR STAR movie, was really really bad.  At just short of four hours in length, I believe a good hour to an hour-and-a-half could have been shaved off the film, which would make it better.  The movie spent about 45 minutes establishing the back story of why the titular character, British Lieutenant T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O'Toole) was sent to Arabia.  It was quite boring, wasteful and elaborate in it's telling of who he pissed off enough to send him to the desert.  Who gives a shit?!?  The same information could have been translated in a five minute flashback as Lawrence was roasting his ass in the hot desert heat.

Another film that I wasted my time watching, was the original Ocean's Eleven, which starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billy Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr., to name a few.  The film was rated as FOUR STARS but never addressed the big heist until after an hour into the film.  Then the whole caper took less than the remaining sixty minutes.  Absolutely dreadful.  The 2001 remake, which starred the likes of Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts and many more, scored only a measly TWO out of FOUR stars, but was a kick ass movie.

Some of the old classics, really aren't so classic.

As I stated, I watched "The Magnificent Seven" Thursday afternoon and I'm thinking that the word MAGNIFICENT must have had an alternate meaning in 1960, because the movie was anything but magnificent.  It seemed like the first half of the movie was Yul Brynner's character roaming about town looking for six or seven men willing to fend off evil marauders in a small Mexican town for the whopping sum of $20 for six weeks work.  I'm not certain when the film supposedly takes place, but $20 seems a very peckish price for putting one's life on the line for helpless villagers.

There was a remake made in 1998 which starred Ron Pearlman, Eric Close, and Michael Biehn which did so well, nobody remembers it.  There's also another remake scheduled for a September 2016 release, directed by Antoine Fuqua (known for Training Day, Shooter, & most recently Southpaw), and starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Vincent D'Onofrio.  I don't know if it'll be better, but given who's in it and the man in the director's chair, I'd say it has a really good chance of being good.  ...And likely, violent as a motherf*cker.  I've got my fingers crossed that this updated version will earn the title of "magnificent".

DEAD to Rights

I went to DEADPOOL the other night. Had to see the late movie, because (inexplicably) the early show had sold out. I don't know why it was so popular when, in comparison, I barely had to line up to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which I saw twice in it's opening week. I am, furthermore, unclear in understanding why it's being sold out even occurred. Until the buzz was first initiated a year or so ago, I'd never even heard of Deadpool, and comprehend why he's so popular. Thankfully, Tuesday night, I had friends who were flexible enough to trade in their tickets for the later show. Overall, it was an okay movie. It was humorous in places, I'll admit, but feel it never warranted the laugh-out-loud hysteria that surrounded me. I smiled and chuckled in a couple places, but never flew off the handle like my cohorts or the crowd around me, who were laughing insanely. In my opinion, Deadpool is simply a movie where RYAN REYNOLDS is the smart-ass that he always is in every other movie he appears in, the only difference being that there's a lot more fucks in his vocabulary. The cursing, however, is purely for shock value and not intricately placed within the dialogue for emphasis, as any swearologist would do. I'm all for swearing and anyone who either knows me or has read this blog before, knows that I rarely shy away from cursing and swearing, but god damn it, doing it without rhyme or reason, simply because you can do it, isn't a legitimate reason in my book. I believe that if anyone else had starred as Deadpool, other than Reynolds, the movie might have registered stronger in my eyes, but as it stands...  The story was weak. The plot, weaker, and can't understand why anyone with half a clue, would walk out of the movie saying "It was fucking awesome!" because, tt really wasn't. I'm curious as to what established critics are saying about this film. I can't imagine anything good is being reported. Not by anyone respectable, anyway. So if you haven't seen the movie, I'd say don't bother. Save your two hours for something more interesting like clipping your toe nails or something. If you do go see it and I know most will, then that's your fault. Have a nice day! I'm going to go read how this dreadful movie is getting raked over the coals.