One of these things is not like the other...

[da]

I'm awake with a head-ache, after a dream where I was lost in an airport. Bleh.

I forgot to blog a funny moment yesterday morning. I went for coffee with three of the four Kinesiology instructors whose offices are in the same suite as mine. We brought back our Tim's, and sat around talking. I'm fairly social with them, and have been working with them for just over a year, and while I've felt different from them for what they're interested in (mostly their families) and what they do (lecture) it was surprising to me to discover all of these in the same conversation:

All of them have two-car garages. All of them have a new HD TV, on which they watched new movies they all agreed were great which I hadn't felt much need to see, like "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Should I be at all surprised that none of them had heard of Pedro Almodovar, and none had ever heard of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown"? One remarked on the title as peculiar- and I spent a minute describing the movie to them, which I think didn't go far toward convincing any of them they needed to see it. I don't know; I was surprised; I expected they might have recalled the title. On the other hand, of the movies they gave thumbs-up to, I thought "The Rock" might be an action movie set in Newfoundland. _{Well, not really.}

I feel vaguely like bats22's sister: "they don't watch Spanish world cinema! How can it be?"

(Though of course if it were her, it would have to be some aspect of normal life that she discovered by reading legal briefs, not by, y'know, sitting around over coffee...)

K, time to go back to bed now.

Comments

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

All of them have two-car garages. All of them have a new HD TV, on which they watched new movies they all agreed were great which I hadn't felt much need to see, like "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Somehow, this fails to surprise me. What does surprise me is the seeming complete lack of awareness of non-North American cinema.

[catbear.livejournal.com]

Do they have SUVs in those garages, or are they so packed with stuff the vehicles must set outside?

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

The husband's SUV is in the garage; the wife's parks in the driveway.

They make sure their sons and daughters get on the right soccer teams by chatting up the right neighbours.

And they have no idea that it's okay to tip at many of the Timmies.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Is it? How do you? There's that lucite box that people throw change into for a charity of some sort, but no tip jar.

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

I say "keep the change" or push a sum of money forward along the counter in an unambiguous "this is for you" gesture. When Grl worked at Coffee Time and before that at the Tim's in St.J, tips were usually given intermittently to staff by the regulars and kept in cups under/behind the counter.

It is my understanding that not all instances of Timmies allow their employees to accept tips.

[psychedelicbike.livejournal.com]

What about a simple "keep the change" reply? Then it's up to them to figure out where to put the money.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

One of three has stuff filling half the garage. They have boys who play hockey, so they probably transport a team in the back-seats.

Probably exactly as dawn_guy says; though I think they actually carpool to work since they're both in the Kin dep't. Maybe- they only have *one car*? Nah.

Hm, maybe I'll ask her.

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

Suburban KW is like those people all the time. Spending time among its denizens generates a strong dissonance field in me.

Revel in your bohemian townie nature.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd feel more dissonant and not just different, but they're fairly friendly.

Revel I do!

[speedyima.livejournal.com]

You've just hit on everything I feared about becoming a parent (Speedy is singing "Kumbaya" in the other room at the top of his lungs...). Most of the women in my new moms group were those guys' wives, and I was terrified to become them. I don't really understand HD, never having experienced it, but the Bourne movies were overstimulating enough on our little laptop screen! Almodovar or netflix-ing Dr. Zhivago (our most recent) is highly preferable.

PS - I think there's something going on with sleep and pain right now. Sorry you had a bad night.

[bats22.livejournal.com]

I feel vaguely like bats22's sister: "they don't watch Spanish world cinema! How can it be?"

Heh... funny. However, my sister would have had no idea at all about the existence of the mainstream movies, I think. I've always been amazed that she can live in NYC, and still be that willfully blind to the media saturation of billboards and bus ads all around her.

Then again, I had a moment like yours too--I was chatting with a work colleague who is pretty well educated (UT Austin/Stanford Master's), but he'd never heard for Fellini. Huh... I didn't think that most people would have heard of him, in passing.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The Rock is not a particularly good movie. okoshun likes it, so I've seen it a number of times. It's not the worst movie of its type, but not something I'd say that you need to check out.

The Bourne Ultimatum wasn't bad, though. The entire Bourne franchise is decent fluff entertainment. If you like action movies, and I suspect that you don't, you could do a lot worse. I wouldn't say that they require that you engage your intellect at all, and they might be better if you don't, but they don't require you to take your brain out in the back, blend it, bury the slurry and then urinate on it, which a good amount of the rest of the genre do. And while they're mostly action, they have a light dash of international thriller thrown in.

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

Ew.