The Case for Apathy

Meh. What's the point?

A Toast for the Flash Mobs

My favorite feminist web site is Jezebel.com.   It has introduced me to concepts such as “body snarking”, “slut shaming”, and “thighlights”.  It also frequently features celebrity news, kitten videos, and red carpet slideshows so it really has something for all different kinds of feminists.

I bring this up not because I want to discuss the fight against mansplaining or Photoshop controversies.  It is because I was perusing the site recently and saw this video of a flash mob on an airplane (I’ll pause while you watch the video):

You may remember flash mobs from the previous decade.  They are when a bunch of people with too much free time get together and dance around in a public place.  They seemed kind of fun back in 2006 or so but since then they have been commercialized, televised, and Glee-ized.  The ubiquity of flash mobs is a sure sign of a society that is on the way down.  Rome never recovered after the rise of mico vulgi in the late 470s.

“Wait”, you may be thinking, “isn’t the existence of this blog evidence that you, too, have too much free time?” Probably, but there is a key difference between a flash mob participant and myself: I am not an attention whore.  That reminds me, please tell your friends to check out my blog. But I digress.

Back to the point of this post: Please keep your flash mob off my airplane.  When I’m on a plane all I want to do is browse the SkyMall catalog, eat the $4 bag of Skittles I bought in the airport, and pray that the person next to me has showered within the last 24 hours and is a mute.  Flying sucks enough without additional distractions. Plus, it isn’t even an original idea.

The last thing I want to do is to have to deal with while being held captive at 34,000 feet is a bunch of conventionally attractive people waving their arms around and blocking the aisles.   Well, I guess it is better than conventionally ugly people doing the same thing.  By the way, “conventionally attractive” is a term I also learned on Jezebel.com.  It is kind of relevant in this case, though.  Do you think the reaction from the rest of the passengers would have been the same if the flash mob was performed by a bunch of men wearing keffiyehs?  I can sum it up in one word: diverted flight.

Did you happen to notice that poor guy trying to get back to his seat for the first 1:30 of the video?  All he wants to do is go back to his seat and reflect after a nice in-flight poop.  Instead he is forced to stand there like a boob and wait.  I suppose he should be thankful that he wasn’t on his way to the bathroom instead.  Would it have killed those dancers to pause from their self-indulgence to let him by?  Possibly.

One thing I really want to know is if they were playing the music in the cabin.  In case you didn’t recognize it, the mellifluous voice you hear on the track is that of Kanye West singing his song “Runaway”.  I actually like Kanye’s music, but I’m not sure about this particular song and whether it was the appropriate choice.  It features the chorus:

Let’s have a toast for the douche bags

Let’s have a toast for the assholes

Let’s have a toast for the scumbags

Every one of them that I know

On second thought, in this case it seems kind of fitting.

Doctor, Doctor

Doctor: Tell me a little bit about yourself

Patient: My name is Mr. Patient. Not because I have an overabundance of the capacity to wait, but because I am your patient and the author of this blog didn’t feel like coming up with a creative fake name.

Doctor: Why are you here?

Patient: Well that is a question that humankind has been contemplating for eons and I am frankly surprised you would expect me to have the answer.

Doctor: No, dummy, why are you visiting with me today?

Patient: Oh. That certainly seems like something more reasonable to ask.

Doctor: Well?

Patient: I’m glad you asked. Something has been bothering me lately. It hit me during the prime time Olympic coverage on NBC.

Doctor: I know what you mean. I’ve had a lot of patients bothered by the tape-delayed coverage, even on weekends, and the endless fluff pieces. That 20-minute segment on the 1992 Dream Team really pushed a lot of folks to the brink.

Patient: No, no, no. That wasn’t it. It was the all the sitcom promos.

Doctor: Oh. My. God.  Tell me about it. The New Normal looks really terrible.  Plus they showed it so much it made me really sick of that fun. song they used.

Patient: Oy.  Would you please let me finish?  That wasn’t the promo I was talking about.  It was the one for that Matthew Perry show, Go On.

Doctor: I know what you mean.  It is kind of sad that he can’t seem to find the same level of success he had on Friends. He was the best one don’t you think?  Really though, they were all great.

Patient: I don’t really care about Chanandler Bong or his career.  I am just upset that there will be yet another show where therapy is a primary component.  I hate watching therapy sessions.  Other than movies starring a horse, therapy is my least favorite trope in entertainment.

Doctor: Is it really that pervasive?

Patient: Right off the top of my head with no help from Google I can think of Go On, In Treatment, Web Therapy, Dr. Katz, and the Bob Newhart Show.  And those are just the shows about therapy.  There are countless examples of shows that feature a therapy component.  This week’s episode of The Newsroom had one and Dr. Melfi was of course a prime component of The Sopranos. So much so that not only did we see her sessions with Tony, we also had to watch Dr. Melfi’s sessions with her therapist.

Doctor: Why do you hate therapists?

Patient: I am beginning to hate you, but I don’t hate therapists.  Some of my best friends are therapists.  The can be very helpful.  I just don’t want to watch them on TV.

Doctor: Yes, it can be pretty boring.

Patient: Now you’re catching on. When I am watching TV I need some shit to be happening on the screen. I’m already sitting on a couch doing nothing. If I wanted to see someone else sitting on a couch I would just turn my head slightly to the left and look at my wife.  I usually try to avoid that though, because I can see the combination of disgust and sadness in her eyes when she returns my gaze.   But seriously, if I wanted to see two people sitting around having a conversation I would watch my DVD of My Dinner with Andre, the most talked about art house hit of 1981.

Doctor: I see your point.  Tell me more.

Patient: It is also often a sign of lazy writing.  Can’t figure out an entertaining way to have a character express her feelings?  Have her tell the therapist.  It is exposition for dummies.  At least in Inception, Christopher Nolan had the decency to have Ellen Page do all the dirty work instead of putting Leo in a therapy session.  It also lets the lazy writer put stand-up material into the script.  Have a funny joke that doesn’t fit in? Wedge it in a therapy session. It is the screenwriter’s equivalent to just putting funny YouTube clips in a blog instead of coming with something original. That’s gold, Jerry!

Doctor: Your opinion has merit, but sometimes a therapy session is a legitimate means of advancing the plot or fleshing out a character, don’t you agree?

Patient: I suppose you’re right.  They aren’t always bad.  I just wish writers wouldn’t revert to it as an easy way to fill up pages.

Doctor: I couldn’t agree more.