Author: Dennis Phillippi

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Opinion The Last Word

Disconnected: Don’t Make Me Pull This TV Over

CREDIT: Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

It’s hard to pin down exactly when it happened, but at some point my wife and I stopped doing whatever new thing everybody else is doing. We’re in our late fifties — our very late fifties — and maybe there just came a point where we no longer had the energy to learn how to operate new gizmos. We are, after all, in the generation that still uses words like “gizmo.”

It could have been Facebook, at least for me. When Facebook initially showed up, I did participate. Well, about as passively as I could. What I did was accept every single friend request I got. It was fun to see how many people were interested in being my friend. Then I realized that they didn’t want friends, they wanted an audience. People I deliberately didn’t stay in touch with from school suddenly wanted to include me in their lives. If I had at any point been interested in what Kip Miller is up to, I would’ve picked up the phone and asked him. If I had the tiniest bit of interest in my long-lost acquaintances’ grandchildren … You know, I’m not even going to finish that sentence. There was never, ever going to be a point where I was interested in anyone’s grandchildren.

Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

Turn down, tune out

Now I look at Facebook about once a year to see which of my so-called friends could muster up enough enthusiasm about our relationship to bother clicking on the notification that it’s my birthday and go to the smallest amount of effort to write two words. As for other people’s political opinions, it would be almost impossible to calculate how little I want to read those. If you don’t agree with me on the issues of the day, you’re an idiot and I refuse to devote one second of my remaining time on Earth getting worked up about how stupid you are.

We have never streamed. When the topic of conversation winds its way to the latest installment of a show on Netflix, we’re those people — you know, the codgers who can’t figure out where exactly on our television is the access point to streaming services. It could be that our television is older than my friends’ grandchildren I don’t care about. Many of our younger friends have proudly announced that they have cut the cord and dropped cable in favor of this or that streaming service, or they’ve gotten some kind of stick that you plug into your TV. A few months ago I did force myself to spend three minutes looking at our TV to see if I could find the place where a stick would be plugged in, but I got nowhere, other than realizing how badly our entertainment center needed to be dusted. To a guy my age, there is great comfort in flipping around cable, something that streaming services don’t seem to provide. At this point, I’m so calcified in my habits I would rather settle on a rerun of a police procedural I’ve seen seven times than jump through whatever hoops are involved in being able to watch a brand-spanking-new episode of The Mandalorian, whatever that is.

While I have a smartphone, it is, if anything, even more obsolete than our TV. Yes, I have all the apps, at least the ones that came with the phone, but it seems that the social media apps are even more ego-driven than Facebook. Why on Earth would I post pictures of my life online for people to judge? It’s been about a year since people stopped contradicting me when I say I’m losing my hair. The last thing in the world I want to do is document the process for the whole world to see.

Some people may say that I’m being cynical in assuming that people out there would be judging me, but I know the few times I’ve looked at Snapchat all I’ve done is judge people. To be honest, that part was kind of fun. For some reason, a lot of people I know don’t seem to have noticed that they’ve put on a lot of weight since high school.

Maybe it’s a lack of energy, or maybe it’s just a defense mechanism triggered by age. Accepting new things is a young person’s game. Which is exactly why I have to get one of my friends’ stupid grandkids to come by my house and remind me of how to operate my DVD player. Of course, they’ve probably never even seen a DVD player.

Dennis Phillippi is a writer, comedian, actor, and unemployed radio personality.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Well, I thought it was funny.

You know how sometimes you’ll be talking to someone and surprise yourself by saying something funny that you didn’t realize you were going to say, and then you think that maybe the person might be offended by what you said, so you immediately say, “I’m just kidding”? Yeah? Stop doing that. Not the funny-saying thing. The saying you’re just kidding part. Seriously, stop doing that.

Let’s say you’re talking to a guy who just started dating a super-hot girl who is way out of his league, and you say, “What, did she lose some kind of bet?” Or “She’s so pretty for someone who hates herself enough to date you.” Sure, those remarks are a little on the mean side, but they’re funny. If you follow that by instantly saying you’re just messing with the guy, then you’re not even giving him a chance to decide if what you said was funny. You have just kneed your own joke in the groin. Knock it off.

Let’s go back in time a little. I first met my wife in the glorious mid-’80s, when shoulder pads and thin ties ruled the fashion universe. Being a professional comedian, I tended to make a lot of cracks. I was a regular cut-up. My new girlfriend — way out of my league by the way — would always follow my little witticisms by saying, “He’s just kidding.” Oh, it drove me bananas. As a comedian, I am bound to say just about anything funny that comes into my head. If I don’t do that, then I’m not really good for anything. A doctor should volunteer medical advice; an electrician should tell you why your breaker keeps tripping when you turn on that one floor lamp; and a comedian is expected to make fun of people. It may even be a federal law. These people knew I was kidding, but before they could appreciate how funny I was being, my girlfriend would try to protect their feelings. It wasn’t that she didn’t have faith in my humor that bothered me, it was that she was robbing me of my laughs. Depriving a comedian of laughs is like denying a celebritard camera flashes. Lindsay Lohan needs people to take pictures of her underpants. I need laughs.

My point — and believe me, I have one — is that if you negate your own joke by telling everyone it was a joke, then you’re not going to get the laugh. We know you’re joking when you say that our hair looks like it was cut by a guy wearing a blindfold, using a hedge trimmer. We don’t need you to tell us that it was just you joshing around. If we have to listen to you saying that you’re just making fun, we’re not getting the chance to decide if what you said was funny or if you’re just being an asshat.

Not all of this is apologizing for being insulting. Many, many people say “just kidding” no matter what the funny thing they just said was about. If you make a joke about how jockeys must have a little something extra to offer, if you know what I’m saying, because they’re always dating supermodels, don’t immediately start worrying that you may have offended someone nearby who might be related to a jockey and start telling everyone it was a joke. We knew that. The line is almost always accompanied by a touch on the shoulder or forearm that, I guess, is supposed to reinforce how you were just kidding. Stop that, too. I don’t like strangers touching my forearms.

God knows, the world is already operating at a laughter deficit, what with the wars, and the economy, and the constant fear that someone will feel compelled to give Rosie O’Donnell another television show. So the last thing we need is people kicking their own jokes in the cranberries to avoid offending people who might, as hard as it is to imagine, like Rosie.

Maybe you’re not funny, but let us be the judge of that. Seriously.

I’m just kidding.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Because of the necessary delays in the print medium between writing and being read, I know that I am ringing in late on this one, but I hope that I am just adding one more voice to an outraged clamor. Hopefully by the time you read this everyone from Colbert to Poehler have already expressed their dismay at the diminishment of one of the great American symbols, the neutering of an object that said all that needed to be said about this fine country, the shrinking of that which spelled hope. I refer, of course, to the newest incarnation of the Wienermobile.

We have all grudgingly accepted change brought about because of the pocket-padding of the oil companies — downsizing our own vehicles, forgoing that road trip to Destin to ogle the former Ole Miss cheerleaders chasing their toddlers in the sand, and even briefly considering walking somewhere. But when Oscar Mayer announced it would be changing the legendary Wienermobile from one powered by something like the van you traveled across the country in with your terrible band in the ’80s to one propelled by a Mini Cooper, it signaled a final surrender.

Yes, it may be sending the message that even a giant meat company cares about conserving energy, but it also sent another message: We have a smaller wiener. We are no longer the big or the swinging.

Having lived in Midtown for many years, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing the future of conservation, and it isn’t pretty. In order to live in a world where gas goes for five clams a gallon, we will have to adapt like the hippies. First, our cars will shrink. (I don’t own an SUV, but I do have a gigantic hunk of used Bavarian engineering that eats fuel like Tim Sampson downs margaritas.) But one day soon, I’ll have to follow the hippies and get something that putters or, God forbid, just makes an electric hum. This, by the way, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to electric cars for guys. It’s going to be very hard to get most males to accept vehicles that don’t growl like animals and make us feel all manly. You know, like we’ll have trouble accepting the smaller wiener thing.

Then, inevitably, along will come the bicycles. Don’t start sending those e-mails, bike people. I already have a collection. Bike people love them some bikes, and they hate it when someone like me points out that, while, yes, they do have the same legal rights as cars, they are also giving away about 2,000 pounds in that debate. You have the right; I have the fender. But maybe we’ll all strap on those mushroom-cap helmets and snug little shorts and commute via peddle power. If that’s the future, I’m going to look into the cryogenic thing to see if I can maybe wait and catch the next one.

The sad thing in all of this is that we have to do anything. I come from a generation where the government was expected to take charge in these matters. Do I want an electric car? Good God, no. But, if the federal government made it a rule, then we’d all go get one. I don’t like wearing a seat belt, but they made it a rule, so I do. I don’t like having fast-food wrappers pile up in my car instead of throwing them out the window, but I live with it because it’s a rule. I also want to set forest fires, smoke in church, carry a 12-pack into the movies, and keep a llama, but alas, the government stepped in and made rules.

I know what you’re asking: Are you advocating that the government mandate conservation? Well, yeah. You know why? Because I’m lazy, indolent, and short-sighted and have absolutely no self-control. Seriously, I own the Perfect Push-up and a topsy-turvy tomato garden on a stick because they were sold on TV when I was drinking. And you know what? You’re the same way. We’re not going to lower our thermostat, water our yard less, or drive something from the Ed Begley collection unless someone tells us to do so.

But I beg you, my leaders, my government, my betters, keep your tin snips off my wiener … mobile.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Now that Mayor Herenton has finally quit, or announced plans to do so in the not-too-distant future, all anyone seems to be able to do is bitch about the guy even more. For the last 16 years, those of us who don’t care about such things have had to endure endless diatribes about what a despot the mayor is (although the people in question probably didn’t know the word “despot”) and the relentless usage of the term “King Willie.” He couldn’t get a handle on crime. He spent too much of the city’s money on fancy things we don’t need, like that FedExForum, his spacious-enough-to-land-a-helicopter-in offices, and his suits, which have to be special-ordered from the Big, Tall, and Egomaniacal store.

Now that he’s leaving — if he does actually leave — all we hear is how he’s being paid too much to go away; how he wants to be superintendent of schools — a job he didn’t exactly ace the first time around; and how he won’t leave until he has had ample time to pilfer office supplies and alienate the last few people in positions of power he hasn’t gotten around to yet.

Here’s a memo from the people who don’t care: We don’t care. If you can’t think of anything to talk about other than what a gigantic tool you think Herenton is, please — we beg you — watch ESPN every once in a while.

Last week, I was button-holed by a guy who couldn’t get past the fact that Herenton told the press that he had to run for mayor this term, even though he had no intention of serving all of it, to “protect” the city from the other two candidates. Setting aside what a laughable and offensive thing that is to say, why do people feel like this is appropriate bar conversation? Personally, I like Carol Chumney, whom I wouldn’t choose as a drinking companion but who would make a fine mayor, and I like Herman Morris, who wouldn’t choose me as a drinking partner but who would also make a fine mayor. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my point. My point is this: Stop complaining about local politics, and the mayor specifically, in bars. It’s unsavory and, frankly, a buzz-kill. Do you want to be a buzz-kill? Of course you don’t.

In fact, let’s stop all of the bitching as casual conversation. No one — and I mean no one — cares if it bothers you that gasoline is so expensive. You sitting there while the rest of us are trying to watch a game, kvetching that it cost you $60 to fill the gas tank of your massive truck, isn’t helping. It’s making the world worse, not better. Do you think if you bend enough near strangers’ ears about how the Arab world and the oil industry have all us little people by the cranberries you’ll eventually stumble onto someone from OPEC who will make a few calls?

While we’re at it, let’s also knock off the whining about your personal life. Yes, it sucks to be you. It sucks to be all of us. That doesn’t mean you have a license to drain the life out of me talking about how your kid is lashing out at his stepdad and your boss is a drunken sadist who expects you to do every aspect of your job properly. No one cares. In order to write this column, every once in a while I have to manicure Bruce VanWyngarden’s lawn and spend a Sunday visiting the elderly with Tim Sampson. Think that’s fun? Of course not, but you don’t see me spilling my guts to some guy I just met while he’s trying to enjoy a little NBA action, do you? No.

The bottom line is this: Complaining to me, or to anyone else, for that matter, is a waste of time and will net you zero positive results. Maybe you’ll feel better to have gotten it off your chest and onto ours, but that means we’re going to have to return the favor and bellyache about our power bill and our frustration that Americans seem to enjoy watching desperate, former celebrities dancing badly.

So, from here on out we’re going to do what our parents and generations before them found perfectly acceptable: We’re going to internalize our unhappiness until it sends us to an early grave. Got it?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Here’s the thing about our friend Tim Sampson, who fills this space most weeks: He knows what he’s talking about. He reads all about the politicians, forms detailed opinions, then writes his columns secure in the knowledge that he is well informed. You’d think that’s a good thing, but the problem is so many of the rest of us are completely uninformed and therefore don’t fully understand what he’s talking about. Although I have figured out that he stays pretty pissed off.

Yes, I am one of the deliberately unaware. There may have been a time when the whole politics thing seemed groovy to me and I kept up to date, but those days ended sometime around President Clinton’s Hummer-Gate. All of those old white guys getting squeamish while trying to make political hay made me find other ways to keep entertained. I’ve been very busy deciphering the instructions to my new cappuccino-maker. Hours of my life have been filled laboring to teach my cats tricks. This is important work, people.

Still, I try to read Tim’s column because he’s an old friend. In fact, the dissolute misanthrope was once my boss. (Wrap your head around what that was like.) Now, I open the Flyer and wade my way through his screed, often baffled at who the players are and what their agenda may be. Tim knows his local politics, and there, I’ve got nothing. There are a whole lot of Fords, and they seem to get folks awfully riled up, but I don’t like getting riled up. We’ve had the same mayor for a really long time, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing isn’t for me to say.

On the national front, as far as I can determine, the Republicans are apparently going to run Fred Thompson, Rudolph Giuliani, or the Mormon guy who doesn’t want to always be referred to as the Mormon guy. I understand his wishes on this, but the only name I have for him is the Mormon guy. I will give him this: He has majestic hair. If we elected presidents solely on their sartorial splendor, he’d already be measuring for drapes. Or one of his wives would be. (It’s a joke, son.)

Giuliani seems pretty cool to me. What I love is that at one point while he was mayor of New York City, he was living in the mayor’s residence with both his soon-to-be ex-wife and his mistress. That’s not bad for a squirrelly guy with a bad comb-over.

I’ve met Fred Thompson, and he was very actorly. When you meet someone who is actorly, you know it. They’re very well spoken, have a practiced conspiratorial wink, and know how to wear makeup. Unfortunately, I can’t shake the fact that I know lot of actors and they’re, um, not that smart. They can memorize words really, really well, but you don’t want one doing your taxes.

On the Democrat side, they seem destined to run Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Barack Obama. There’s also that crazy little elf, Dennis Kucinich, but this country will never elect a President Dennis. Damn it.

John Edwards seems like a genuinely nice guy, but it’s hard to get past the whole fighting for the poor while having a house the size of an airport thing. Obama is a very charismatic guy. The few times I’ve seen him on TV, he’s come across as totally prepared to be president. You know who also seems totally prepared to be president? Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Yeah, that’s not going to happen either.

Hillary. If you noticed that I saved her for last, it’s mainly because I’m afraid of her. We can quibble about whether her eight years of icily smiling at her husband while she was first lady qualifies as “experience” or whether it even makes sense that she’s a senator from a state she had never lived in before, but the truth is, most every American is scared of the woman. I don’t mean that we fear that she’ll do something crazy as president. I mean we’re afraid that if she got angry at one of us, she would personally kick our ass.

Between now and whenever we’re supposed to vote — which I think is probably sometime next fall — I’ll do some actual research. Or I’ll just keep reading Tim’s column. And do the exact opposite of whatever that lunatic advises. Like I said, I know the guy.

Dennis Phillippi is a Memphis writer, comedian, and radio host.