Conquistador Instant Leprosy

The tingling fresh coffee which brings you exciting new cholera, mange, dropsy, the clap, hard pad and athlete's head. From the House of Conquistador.

Chock full of the esoteric and the gratuitous, sort of like my life.

(Formerly known as Pomegranate Rickey.)

Saturday, June 30, 2007

This blog will be released unrated in my opinion.

Online Dating

Dear blog ratings board,

I know I don't have studio backing for this blog or anything, but I'm sure you can agree that this is a bit excessive. For a blog that contains no graphic decapitations or scenes of committed gay couples making love, I don't think an NC-17 is warranted. Especially for such arbitrary reasons. As you yourself point out, the reasoning behind this rating is as follows:

Pain (9x) Hell (7x) Shit (6x) Death (4x) Dead (3x) Sex (2x) Crappy (1x)

I gotta say, the offensiveness of some of these words is new to me. Obviously, we don't want our kids growing up and saying stuff like shit, but to penalize my blog to this extent for "pain" and "death" and even "sex" just tells me what a candyland you're living in. Meanwhile, my occasional tendency to casually use the word "fuck" seems to have gone unnoticed.

Another thing- Do you only rate blogs based on the posts on the main page? Because I'm sure I've posted some more objectionable material in the past. To wit, the rating of my flagship blog, Silly Hats Only:

Online Dating

This making my principal blog my equivalent of THE STRAIGHT STORY, which I can handle. I suppose this would make sense if you only took into account the main page of the blog, which is mostly composed of pictures. All told, you only found 2 uses of the word "dead" and 1 of "hell," although I'm a little surprised you overlooked the word "shitty" about halfway down. And it's obvious that you didn't scan the comments, or else you would have discovered "battered chapped vagina" among the Patton Oswalt comments. But if you didn't notice it, then I needn't inform you about it. Oh, wait.

Finally, if you're curious, here's the rating for my screening blog, where most of my recent short-form commentary is currently housed:

Online Dating

Yeah, I figured this would happen, considering that I write as much there as I do on Leprosy. The reasons for the rating were:

Hell (11x) Dead (7x) Sex (5x) Zombie (4x) Death (3x) Kill (2x) Gay (1x)

I do find it odd that you folks place such importance on the word "zombie" in your rating. I guess I ought to start referring to the rocker-cum-DEVIL'S REJECTS auteur as "Rob Undead" or "Rob Brains Eater" to meet with your approval. But no, I'm guessing this is all about that single use of the word "gay." Isn't it, guys? ISN'T IT???

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Somebody's getting married...

And no, it's not me.

For the last week, my office has been abuzz at a coworker's upcoming wedding. The wedding itself was yesterday, and barring any unforeseen complications they should be on their way to their honeymoon. All in all, it brightened the mood at work, which was nice, since working in a bank the mood could use as much brightening as possible.

However, I found myself in a strange position, as I'm the only permanent employee in my office who has never been married. There are a few who aren't married anymore, but they're in a different boat altogether. So whenever somebody would congratulate my coworker on her upcoming nuptials and I was somewhere nearby, the congratulator would inevitably turn to me and ask, "so, when are you getting married?"

Eventually, I learned to tailor my responses depending on who was asking. My generic answer tended to be "not anytime soon." If it was a guy- especially an older guy- I'd heap on the alpha-male swagger with "you know me, I like my bachelor lifestyle too much for that." And if it was a woman with whom I had a comfortable working relationship, I'd turn it into a self-deprecating joke, something along the lines of "I like women too much to inflict myself upon them."

All the wedding talk got me thinking- many of the people in my life are married. Not just those at work, but family members too, even some younger than I am. To say nothing of my friends, both in my everyday interactions and those I correspond with online. Looking down my blogroll, the majority of the people whose sites and blogs I frequent are married/engaged/in long-term relationships, and a good number of them have kids.

So being single and not in a relationship, I do feel a little out of the loop sometimes. By and large, married people gravitate toward other married people. This makes sense, since they tend to have a good deal in common with each other. But at the same time, having lots of married friends hasn't exactly done wonders for my own social life either. Heaven forbid anyone try to fix me up with their single friends or anything, but more and more I notice a tendency among married people to freeze us unmarried types out of their social circles. Not that I'm asking for them to hook me up with their single friends or anything- I'd just like to be included in the grown-up games now and again, instead of being relegated to the kids' table, figuratively speaking.

And yet, I'm not all that impatient to be married. I'm genuinely happy for my married friends, and I'd be a shitty friend if I begrudged them that happiness. Likewise, I don't dismiss the idea of marriage as a serious possibility for myself in the future. All I'm saying is that I'm not sweating it. This hasn't always been the case. As many of you may recall, I used to despair that I'd end up alone and unloved, like the overweight best friend in a bad chick flick. But the more I see of myself, the more I think that I simply may not be ready for marriage quite yet. And you know what? I'm cool with that. I can wait to get married, if waiting means I find someone cool instead of someone whose standards are relaxed enough to marry me. Sure, if I wait I might never end up being in a 66-year marriage like my paternal grandparents, but oh well. I've got a lot of living, and I dare say no small amount of growing up, to do before I commit to marriage. I can't be sure, but I believe it'll happen someday, and for now that's good enough for me.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Reflections on a cinema

Ever since I started going to movies down here in Columbus, I've had a soft spot for the Drexel Grandview Theatre. This theatre, about a twenty minute walk from my apartment, is your basic old-school neighborhood movie house. Whereas other theatres in the area offer everything from sandwiches and alcohol to stadium seating and IMAX, the Grandview is a no-frills operation, serving just your basic concession items- popcorn, candy, soda, and your requisite snacks- and more often than not is staffed by two or three people, one to sell tickets and run the projector, the others to sell concessions and clean up. Hell, they don't even have their own parking lot. But all these things are part of the charm. At a time when multiplexes tend to resemble Vegas casinos or alien ships, there's something comforting to visit a theatre with a tiled lobby and upholstered walls. They still use the old roll-style ticket stock, and they don't accept credit cards, but it's a small price to pay for a relaxing setting in which to watch a movie.

And yet the relaxation I get from the surroundings is twinged with more than a little sadness, as the place has more than its share of problems along with its comforts. One of the sadder ones is the seats. Now, I love the seats at the Grandview- the old-fashioned padded, folding theatre seats that have just enough padding in the butt cushion and just enough give in the back to be really comfortable. But it's a good thing I habitually arrive early and sit in my same seat, otherwise I might have a hard time find a seat that (a) has both of its armrests, and (b) doesn't have torn upholstery. To cite one example, the seat next to my regular seat has been torn for years. I'm not sure if nobody has noticed, or nobody has cared to fix it. I'd wager it's the ladder.

In addition, there are some pretty glaring presentation problems to reckon with. The sound system is pretty old and probably hasn't been fine-tuned in years (one reason why I sit in front). But even worse is the picture quality. The masking around the screen doesn't adjust, which wouldn't be a big deal except that the projector's aperture plate is visibly dirty, which isn't a problem on flat movies but is really distracting on 'scope. In addition, some of the masking is torn, and on a flat movie it hangs down into the image.

However, the biggest problem I have is a design flaw that probably dates back to the theatre's construction. The projection booth is almost directly above the box office, and so the image is projected out of the booth's port glass, through the high-ceilinged concession lobby, through a second window, and then over the audience onto the screen. Not ideal, but not terrible, except that the directly under the second window sits the theatre's popcorn popper, which when it's turned on expels steam from its exhaust vent, which then travels directly through the path of the projected image. When this happens, it's plainly visible onscreen, and is highly distracting. Imagine watching a movie in a sauna and you have the idea.

The Drexel Grandview shows mostly arthouse-oriented movies, and because of the prevalence of DV-shot indies and documentaries in the arthouse market the visual quality of some movies suffers more than others. But honestly, it shouldn't matter. If the owners of the theatre really cared about their visual presentation, they would try to formulate a solution to this issue in order to improve their projection standards- perhaps a duct from the top of the popper that could carry the exhaust around the image path instead of through it.

Unfortunately, judging by this and other necessary repairs that have yet to be undertaken, this probably won't happen anytime soon. At a time when more people are waiting for DVD to watch movies, arthouse movies are especially vulnerable to dips in attendance. People outside the major markets have no other option available, and people in the big markets figure they don't need the big-screen experience in the same way as, say, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. So while the multiplexes try to hold onto the crowds with expanded concession offerings and state-of-the-art performance gizmos like digital projection, small theatres like the Grandview get left in the dust.

From a business standpoint, I have no doubt that it's something of a white elephant, a money pit. But if one really cares about cinema and the experience of watching movies, it can also be a labor of love. One of my dreams has always been that if I had enough money, I'd buy, restore, and operate an old movie house. If I was given a chance to do so with the Grandview, I'd jump at it. Something about watching a movie in a place like that feels right in a way that it doesn't at the snazzier, more modern theatres, and I only hope that its owners will finally fix its big problems while keeping what makes it special. After all, I'm not sure I like the idea of a future with nothing but prefab multiplexes.