Things I’ve Learned from Watching House

A certain friend of mine has been continually reminding me of the fun I’m missing without a cable hook-up. Alas, I got to thinking this evening about some of the “life lessons” I’ve learned from watching the medical drama House:

• People lie. This is true regardless of what kind of life-threatening disease they have that could be easily cured if they would come clean about their drug use, infidelity, prior suicide attempts, or affinity for lesbian hookers.
• The answer to any puzzle usually comes while you’re intensely conversing with a close colleague about a completely unrelated topic.
• If you’re really, really good at your job, ethics can go out the window. As can professional courtesy – you can be a complete jerk towards your boss and colleagues, up to and including making several sexually or racially harassing comments every day, without any threat of disciplinary action whatsoever. Heck, you’re boss might even develop a thing for you.
• In fact, being an old curmudgeon will also give you the opportunity to nail any of your pretty ingenue subordinates (assuming they’re, you know, into dudes).
• It’s not at all weird for coworkers to psychologically analyze each other on a regular basis.
• It’s never lupus. If you’re sick, and your doctor tells you it’s lupus, he or she is an idiot and you should get a second opinion immediately, and consider switching primary care providers.
• It’s almost never sarcoidosis, either.

On the flip side, the show contains many nuggets of wisdom that I think are accurate of real life, such as:

• “People don’t change.”
• “Beautiful women don’t go to medical school [or more broadly, seek academic/professional acheivement] unless they’re as damaged as they are beautiful.”
• “Almost dying changes nothing. Dying changes everything.”
• “It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.”

On the whole, I love the show. I spend a lot of my free time watching and analyzing people, so a character-driven drama with a strong philosophical overtone and a protagonist who upholds reason and science is right up my alley.

Mr. Right or Mr. Good-Enough?

Will supports it; Angela’s not so sure. Both responded this week to this article, published last year in the Atlantic, about “settling” in marriage:

I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my son’s mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.

I think Will’s argument is solid, especially when you consider that settling for women is not quite the same game as it is for men. Women’s prospects decline with age, whereas men almost always have options, if we assume that women are more apt to want to marry than men are (and they seem to be). It’s like Matthew McConaughey’s famed line: “I keep getting older, they stay the same age.”

Like Angela, I’m too young to really contribute to this discussion, and I’m not really sure which way I lean on this topic. I don’t think settling down early is the optimal strategy, and would argue that we’re too young and stupid in our early 20s, and lack the self-knowledge that comes with age and experience to know what makes for a compatible long-term marriage partner (of course, you could use that argument against marrying at any age). Settling early, as the author recommends, is essentially a crap shoot. On the other hand, many people reach their 30s, 40s, or even their deathbeds without ever giving much thought to self-reflection and all that hippie-dippy crap, and those women who never bother with that level of self-discovery are snatching up all the decent men.

Another thing to keep in mind is that we put much delusional emphasis on marriage lasting “forever” in the face of current divorce statistics.  What if we accepted marriage as a medium-to-long term commitment, but not necessarily a permanent one? It might take some pressure off the decision. Would educated women worry as much about this issue of whether to settle then? Perhaps the best advice is to chill out and realize that you’ve got a 50% shot at making it work, either way.

Quoteworthy

I do think certain kinds of music can make you violent. Like, when I listen to Nickelback, it makes me want to kill Nickelback.

-comedian Brian Posehn

This Week’s Netflix: Death Race (2008)

I was going through Statham-withdrawal, so I put this movie at the tip-top of my queue. I don’t enjoy racing/car movies, so I’m not even going to bother with a real review. Let me just say that I had a wide grin on my face for most of this movie. It wasn’t good by any standards (not even the low standards I had for Crank), but dammit, it doesn’t need to be good as long as Statham’s sporting that lean, “prison-ripped” bod. Hawt!

An observation: Jason Statham is this generation’s Jean-Claude Van Damme. Martial arts, bad action movies, and the inability to lose his European accent. Even when playing American roles, his delightful British accent is still there (See: War), causing all of his movies set in the US to include a throw-away comment about how his character “moved to the states” sometime in the past.

Rating: 3/10.

Rediscovering Music

Up until recently, my music collection was stuck in the past. I felt like a dinosaur. It was as if I’d stopped acquiring new music around 1999 or so. After receiving a gentle push from a couple of music-savvy friends over the summer, I began exploring music once again, have brought my library up-to-date, and I’ve started to get my groove back. What I’ve been listening to lately:

• Radiohead – In Rainbows, OK Computer, and The Bends: I guess I missed the memo about Radiohead in the 90s.
• Bob Dylan – Modern Times: It’s almost a requirement for citizenship in the state of Minnesota to like Bob Dylan.
• Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine: I have no excuse for not snatching this up when it came out, I’ve been a longtime Fiona fan. I must have been in a serious musical rut all these years.
• Black Keys – Rubber Factory: modern 70s-style rock makes me glad I didn’t grow up in the 80s.
• Black Crowes – Shake Your Money Maker:  I apparently also missed the memo about the Black Crowes.
• Sarah McLachlan – Mirrorball: seriously, WHERE WAS I in the 90s??
• Jason Mraz – We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things: I hated that “Remedy” song when it came out. I still hate it. But I’m absolutely in love with this album and with Jason Mraz. What a doll.
• Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting, Concrete Blonde, and Group Therapy. Concrete Blonde just rocks my socks off. Johnette Napolitano’s voice is awesome.
• Eric Clapton – Unplugged: my parents listened to this when I was five or so, so I always thought it was “old people” music. Not the case.
• Other artists: Duffy, Sting, STP, White Stripes, Jonny Lang (pre-conversion to Gospel), Taking Back Sunday, and Thievery Corporation have all received a lot of playback on my iPod.

Also, my brother gave me what turned out to be the MOST AWESOME musical x-mas gift ever: the Cities 97 Acoustic Sampler, vol 20 (cities 97 is one of the biggest radio stations in the twin cities). It’s been on repeat playback for the last several days.

Really, where have I been all these years? I feel like I’ve just been waiting for Nine Inch Nails to make a good album once again (something they haven’t done since 1999).

This Week’s Netflix: Kinsey (2004)

Starring Liam Neeson in the title role, Kinsey is a biopic of controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, whose research in the 1940s and 1950s into human sexuality shed light on the wide discrepancy between what people were presumed to do behind closed doors, and what they actually did. The film chronicles his life, beginning with his strict Methodist upbringing, through his academic career and mission to bring real sex education, rather than conservative moral instruction disguised as science, to the public.

The Good: Liam Neeson is always excellent, and the depiction of his relationship with his wife (Laura Linney) was touching. John Lithgow reprises his role as the crotchety old religious fanatic from Footloose. Also, the movie surprisingly avoids pushing any kind of social agenda; Kinsey’s unconventional private lifestyle is shown as a workable agreement between consenting adults, as well as capable of creating marital tumult, and ultimately leaves the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

The Bad: Peter Sarsgaard must be a “grower” rather than a shower.

Bottom Line: It’s good, and while you may blush while watching it, it’s not as cringe-inducing as Talk Sex With Sue Johansen.  Interesting wiki-fact – Kinsey was the first film that Japan allowed to show uncensored images of human genetalia.

Final Rating: 8/10.

This Week’s Netflix: Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Requiem for a Dream has been recommended by enough friends that I finally decided to give it a whirl. Not being a huge fan of the “drug movie” genre, I figured I wouldn’t enjoy this film going into it. Other than a few stylized shots and sequences that turn stale by their third or fourth use, Requiem doesn’t have much going for it. Well-rounded characters? Nope. A rich plot? Not so much. According to director Darron Aronofsky, it’s “a punk movie where the audience is a mosh pit of emotion.” Whoa – deep.

The Good: Jared Leto’s pretty face was the only thing that kept me interested in this film (it wasn’t his acting, anyway). Also, the foreboding string quartet score was a high point, though the version used for The Two Towers trailer is far superior.

The Bad: Actually, the movie isn’t that terrible, I just feel it gets an undeserved amount of praise. 100 minutes of intensity and style ought not be confused with great cinema.

Bottom Line: Less than Zero, re-envisioned by a film student.

Final Rating: 5/10

The Perfect Valentine’s Gift for the Plushophile

I came across a sightly confused piece of Valentine’s Day advertising for Vermont Teddy Bears this morning. The graphic features an attractive, demure woman clad in a slinky red dress, clutching an adorable, fluffy teddy bear.

I’m not sure if it’s the rose petals deliberately placed on the pillow, or the model’s come-hither bedroom eyes, but something about associating a stuffed animal with romance and sex just doesn’t do it for me. Sure, stuffed animals and rose petals are a pretty reliable way into a woman’s heart (and by extension, her pants), but this photo makes me think that it’s the bear who’s going to get lucky, rather than the, um, bearer of the bear (I guess). And while I consider myself pretty open-minded, fetishes involving so-called “furry fandom” confound me.

Pleasant-sounding words

Attribute it to my long-standing fangirl crush on Patrick Stewart, but for some odd reason, I’ve always really enjoyed hearing Captain Jean-Luc Picard say the phrase “Prepare for emergency saucer separation.”

The Sci-Fi channel has added 3 hours of Star Trek:TNG to its monday night programming schedule. Ooh, commercial break’s over…gotta go!