THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Underemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 29 October 31,1996

 

 

 

Ah, the joys of mortgaging your future...

 - Bart Simpson

 

AND I SAVED ‘EM MONEY, TOO

 

I amaze myself sometimes, I really do. Case in point: last Friday. My back (you know - it fucking hurt like hell) was bothering me something fierce on Thursday, so I made an appointment with a chiropractor for Friday. But not just for any time. No, you have to schedule your appointments optimally. I scheduled mine for 10:00 a.m., going with the following reasoning: 1) It was early enough in the morning where going into the office before the appointment didn’t make much sense. So I got to sleep in until 9:00, and 2) It was late enough in the morning where I could justify missing lunch at the office, which in this case was a department potluck, one of the most feared of the phony “hey, we’re building a real sense of community here” ploys they pull on you in Corporate America. How much do I hate potlucks at work? Let me count the ways: You have to hear people talk of exchanging recipes. When you’re unattached and could give a fuck* about cooking, they expect you to bring enough for twenty people. They have some sign-up sheet, where people always sign up for the desserts before you do, so you can’t bring a couple of dozen cookies from Lund’s. You have to eat off of a paper plate that you balance precariously over your lap and listen to your coworkers talk (and you’ve been listening to them all morning because you sit in a cube where you can hear everything and you can’t bring in a radio to block out the noise) instead of sitting by yourself somewhere at a table and reading the sports page.

 

So by using my chess grandmaster-like foresight, I got out of four hours of week and a stupid potluck. But why quit there? When I got home from the chiropractor, I called work, said my back was still hurting, and took the afternoon off. Actually, my back felt okay, but you’d hate to be at work on a Friday afternoon when a relapse hits. So what do you do with a free Friday afternoon? Matinee movie, my friend.

 

I headed out to Sleepers, which I had planned on seeing ever since seeing the first previews for it a couple of weeks ago on TV. Then on CNN about the time the movie came out, I saw that some organization called the New York Catholic League was protesting the movie because of the way it portrayed a priest. Immediately upon seeing those guys in a huff, I knew I had to see Sleepers as soon as possible. I’d say more, but it would give away too much of the plot. Anyway, the priest in the movie wasn’t the one sexually abusing kids - so what is the NY Catholic League so upset about? It’s like my brother said about the controversy over The Last Temptation of Christ: “You know anytime some religious weirdos get upset over a movie that you owe it to yourself as an American to see it.” Anyway, the movie is pretty good. I didn’t totally buy into the plot, but the acting is great and movies on Friday afternoons are only four bucks.

 

Q: WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEONE FROM POLAND WITH A $500 HAT? A: THE POPE

 

On the same day I went to Sleepers, the headline of the Pioneer Press declared “Evolution not just theory, pope says”. That’s nice - but has the Fallible One decided whether it’s okay for the earth to revolve around the sun yet?

 

FOOTNOTE

 

*The reason I could give a fuck about cooking is simple: I don’t have a clue how to. Besides, when I get home after work the last place I want to be is in the kitchen. The time from 5:30 until 7:00 is quality TV time, with two Simpsons episodes, Seinfeld, and SportsCenter on. So emphasis on supper goes into 1) what’s simple and quick to make, and 2) what’s easy to carry out to the TV tray in front of the tube.

 

Top Five DIY Supper Choices in Wymanworld: 1) Tombstone pizza, 2) Bagel w/ cream cheese and banana or apple, 3) Leggo waffles with multiple bowls of sugar-coated cereal, 4) Peanut butter and jelly sandwich and potato chips, 5) Totino’s pizza rolls. Every once in a while I used to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but that involved too much preparation and time spent at the stove. The last time I made one, I got distracted by the Seinfeld rerun on TV and burned the sandwich. At which point I called Uptown Pizza and got a real meal.

 

CABLE BILL IS DUE 11/18/96

 

Another week, another eighties teen movie on cable on a weekend night. This time it was Back to the Future, the third-best teen movie from the decade. The movie starts in the eighties, where Biff is bullying around George McFly. George’s son, Marty, goes back to the fifties, where Biff was bullying George in high school. Due to Marty’s conniving, George stands up to Biff and pops him one. At the end of the movie, Marty returns to the eighties, where George is successful and happy and Biff is reduced to cleaning George’s car.

 

After eleven years, I’ve figured out the true meaning of the movie. Biff represents communism and George is America. If we would have stood up to the Red Menace back in the fifties and put them in their place, we would have been standing tall in the eighties. So one of my favorite movies turns out to be a Reagan Regime propaganda piece, albeit more slyly and subtlety done than something like Red Dawn. So for a couple of seconds I decided to boycott future viewings of Back to the Future (which went on to do the trilogy thing, just like that other evil empire movie Star Wars), but it’s too damn fun and communism is dead so I guess it really doesn’t matter.

 

WHAT’S A DOOLEY WOMACK?

 

I just finished reading one of my all-time favorite (yes, a top-fiver) books, Ball Four by Jim Bouton. This was my fourth time through it, and it still had me laughing out loud. Ostensibly it’s about baseball, but when you think about the coaches getting on the pitchers for taking too many baseballs to the bullpen, and then substitute “supervisor” or “the accounting department” for “coaches”, you start to see that maybe the book is about your world, too. Ball Four has been a huge influence on The Wyman Weekly. This next paragraph is dedicated to Jim Bouton.

 

You know how at the office when making coffee you throw out the old filter, dump one of those little packets into a new filter, put the filter holder into the coffee machine, and hit the brew button? I think it should be noted that Big Finance has a one-page, laminated memo by the coffee machine (same Bunn-O-Matic that’s in your office too, ‘cept bigger) detailing the fifteen steps you should follow in order to make coffee.

 

REMEMBER

 

to vote (this doesn’t apply to you Englishmen, Canadians, and under-18 girls out there) on November 5. If you don’t vote, don’t bitch. Actually, it’s your constitutional right to bitch whether you vote or not, but you know what I mean.