CSotD: Dork sightings
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Interesting juxtaposition today, with Rhymes With Orange, the work of Gen-X feminist cartoonist Hilary Price, and …
… "Gray Matters," a self-consciously middle-aged Boomer strip by Stuart Carlson and Jerry Resler.
Now, let me start with the disclaimer that it's been nearly four years since I worked in an office. In my workplace, it's just me and the dog.
He may lift his leg on things I'd rather he hadn't, and he sniffs other dogs' butts, but he's generally well-behaved. And he doesn't lift his leg in the house, and there are no other dogs here with butts to sniff.
So he gets an A+ for workplace demeanor.
But the last large place I worked, a guy made one stupid comment too many and they flew in some people from corporate and we all had to watch a PowerPoint and sign off on it, and then, maybe six weeks later, the dumb sumbitch made another stupid comment to somebody and they handed him a cardboard box and that was the end of him and nobody shed a tear.
Doesn't mean the world is totally reformed, of course. All this stuff may still be out there and I'm just not surrounding myself with it.
Which is one of the joys of freelancing, if you happen to freelance for the right people. In general, though, making a living often means you don't get to choose the people you work with.
I've tried watching "Mad Men" more than once, but I just don't get it. I know it's wonderfully popular, but, from my point of view, there's something kind of "so what?" and also something kind of "as if!" about it.
That is, the parts that seem familiar are unremarkable, and the parts that seem fanciful seem ridiculous, and there's not a lot in the show that doesn't seem to fit into one category or the other.
My first job in advertising was as a freelance copywriter, and I remember getting sucked into a night on the town with a wild-and-crazy client that ended up in a nightclub where he introduced me from the stage as Stanley Myron Handelman, who was mostly known for being on the Dean Martin roasts and occasionally Carson.
I had to sign some autographs and decline some offers to dance with pretty girls with glowering boyfriends and I guess if I thought that sort of thing was funny, I'd have a helluva story to tell and I might have tried to hang out with the clients more often.
As it was, my memory was that I sat there next to the guy who owned the agency and thought, man, putting up with this jackass is why you make the big bucks.
A few years later, I was selling ads for a TV station and that put me much more in the middle of the action. We had one bull goose salesman who went out drinking and whoring and golfing with the major clients, and I guess that was him doing his job. And he booked a lot more business for the station than I ever did.
So I'm not saying "Mad Men" isn't to some extent authentic.
Oddly enough, however, if you actually read the articles in Playboy back then, rather than just looking at the pictures, you'd find that the Playboy Advisor and a great deal of the other editorial commentary was urging you to have a little class, to be considerate of women and, while it certainly assumed that we were all out there to get laid as often and joyfully as possible, it also assumed that the women deserved a share of the fun.
Both foreplay and respect were demanded, if you aspired to the silk smoking jacket.
And one of the most Fundamental Rules was that, while Moneypenny might well guess what you had been up to, "a gentleman does not kiss and tell."
The perhaps strange sort of codicil that attached to that rule was that, while it was perfectly fine to slobber and lust aloud over the women who took off their clothes and posed for the magazine, you didn't talk like that about women you actually knew.
Of course, guys did. But not cool guys.
Cool guys didn't talk about the pinups, either, for that matter, because it was generally held as true that men who talked about two-dimensional naked women had no experience of three-dimensional naked women.
Bottom line: Cool guys didn't talk about women that way.
One night, I was in a bar with my boss and he once more commented on a woman who had just walked in, and I said to him, you know, it's like those old Westerns where the young cavalry officer exclaims to the grizzled old scout, "I think I saw something back there!" and the scout says, "Yep. Cheyenne. Been follering us fer three days."
Yeah, I saw her. Now man up and be cool.
Which I guess means that my take on "Mad Men" is that it's a TV show about dorks, and I already know as much about dorks as I want to, and I've already seen as many dorks as I need to.
A number of years ago, I rented "Diner" for a movie evening, and my GF and I were watching and, at one point (I think the popcorn scene), she got off the couch and walked out of the room.
I assumed she had gone to the bathroom, so I paused the movie, but, when she didn't come back, I went to look and found her standing in the driveway, furious over the adolescent sexist antics of the characters.
"They're not supposed to be admirable," I said. "That's the point of the movie."
"But why would I want to watch it?" she asked.
That was one helluva good question.
But, then, she was one helluva good woman.
I still think "Diner" is an excellent snapshot of the time. But, you know, Ellen Barkin steals the movie as the put-upon wife who begins to realize the extent to which her life is being damaged by the jackasses with whom she has surrounded herself, including the overbearing bully she married.
And if that were Barry Levinson's main point, if he had re-edited the movie to make that the major theme, "Diner" would suck.
The movie isn't about Ellen Barkin's character. She's just the little Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder while you're watching all the madcap antics. Which means she is the reason the movie doesn't suck just the way it is.
And the proper male response to "Diner" is that you want to sweep in and rescue Ellen Barkin, because she's so much more worthwhile than anyone else there.
Which is to say that, if all you saw in the movie were the hilarious madcap antics, well, I think you should know that a party of Cheyenne has been following us for quite a few days now. Maybe a few years.
And Ellen Barkin isn't gonna stand out there in your driveway forever.
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