Little Orphan Annie

So if you weren't aware, and odds are you weren't, the comic strip Little Orphan Annie finally came to a halt last month. The strip dates back to 1924 and was apparently limping along in fewer than 20 newspapers when it was finally put out of its misery. (20 newspapers? There are personal ads that appear in more than 20 newspapers.) Ordinarily I wouldn't care -- while I'm a fan in general of classic comics like Popeye, Dick Tracy, Peanuts, Pogo, etc., I've never read any of Annie's adventures. But I decided to read the very last installment just for the heck of it, to see how the writer (a newer guy, the creator having died decades ago) went about ending an 86-year-old strip. And the answer is... he didn't. Literally, the strip just stops mid-storyline. From what I can tell, Annie's gotten herself kidnapped by some terrorist who can't decide what to do with her, and Daddy Warbucks' servants are whispering that he's resigned himself to never seeing Annie again. After that, there's a single panel of text telling readers "And this is where we leave our Annie. For now--"

Which, what?! "For now"? You can get away with that crap if there's a decent chance the story actually WILL be continued somewhere. 24 didn't give us any real closure in its series finale, but that's because they were pretty sure they were going to get a movie deal. Veronica Mars did gave us an ending -- not a cheery one, but an ending -- because they knew it wasn't likely they were coming back. But Little Orphan Annie? From what I can tell, there is zero talk of bringing it back as a comic strip anytime soon. Why would there be? -- it's already shown it can't sustain profitability, and it's not like it was a critical darling that had a short but memorable run... this is a strip that ran for the better part of a century and whose best days are long, long behind it. Yes, there's talk of reviving the musical, but that's going to be its own story, its own continuity. If, IF they ever revived the comic strip (which probably wouldn't happen for years), it's pretty unlikely they'd give it back to the guy who -- fair or unfair -- showed he couldn't keep it going the first time around. And if IF they DID ask him to write it again, they'd want him to start fresh with a brand new storyline, not continue an old one that a grand total of 18 people were reading when it ended. (Yes, I know it was in 20 newspapers, but I assume many of those were just used for lining birdcages and making paper mache hats and so on.)

So, seriously -- what the hell, man? Don't tell me he didn't have time to wrap up the story. No. One, when your strip is that unpopular near the end, you have to see the writing on the wall. And two, even if they only gave him a couple of weeks' notice (which I doubt), that's still enough time to wrap up a storyline. Do you have to cut some corners? Sure. Will you get to include everything you wanted? No. Tough shit, it's your job. You're the sole designated writer of a once beloved character who, recent obscurity notwithstanding, has earned a place in the history books. You owe it to the few remaining readers to give the story, and the character, some closure. You want to go traditional, have a deus ex machina rescue and return Annie home just in time to hug Daddy Warbucks and Sandy, look at the readers, and thank them for a wonderful 86 years. Too cheesy? You want to go all St. Elsewhere? Fine- Annie wakes up and realizes her entire 86 years of adventures were all a dream, she's still stuck in an orphanage. Dark, but it's an ending. Y'know what's not an ending? "And this is where we leave our Annie. For now--"

Is this a stupid thing to complain about? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that this guy seriously dropped the ball. Maybe he was just pissed at the strip ending, and this was a last little "eff you" to the people who made the decision to pull the plug. But if so, he drastically missed his target. Those guys, whoever they are, don't care. The only people this hurt were the fans, few though they may number. I'm not one of them, but on their behalf, I'm a little peeved. So screw you, Annie guy. I wouldn't hire you to write Marmaduke. (Maybe Family Circus.) Let's hope you never have to write a will, you'll end it, "I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath all of my worldly possessions to... no one. For now."

And if I'm wrong and there are definitive plans to revive Annie and continue this story in the near future? Well, I'll be astonished, but I'll take it all back. You'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

This and that

I know, it's been less than a month since my last entry... what *am* I thinking? Not much, as usual, just wanted to share two quick tidbits:

1) A couple days before Father's Day, I went to Best Buy to look for the new Lewis Black DVD for my dad. Lewis Black is my dad's reigning favorite comedian, a fact I take no small amount of pride in since I was the one to first introduce him to the curmudgeonly comic. Not finding it on the shelf, I track down a random store monkey and ask if he can check their computer system for it. As we walk, he asks what I'm looking for, so I tell him it's the new Lewis Black DVD. He replies, "Oh, yeah... I don't think he's very funny." At my noncommittal grunt, he goes on to say, "I saw one of his specials on TV once, and yeah, I don't know, just didn't think much of it." To which I didn't say anything but thought, really dude? I know you don't work on commission and thus don't care if I buy anything or not, but still... really? I hadn't told him it was for my father, so for all he knew he was badmouthing something I planned to buy for myself. You don't have to lie and say you love Lewis Black, just don't say anything. I actually walked away glad they didn't have it, even though it meant another trip, because after that I didn't want to buy it there anyway. I'm probably overreacting, but come on, man. There's a reason your immediate supervisor is five years younger than you and eats his own skin.

2) My own service-related anecdote: the other day I was speaking with a client, giving him feedback on why he shouldn't hire a candidate for a sales job. When I explained that the guy wouldn't have a lot of follow-through after making an initial pitch, you could practically hear the nod through the phone as he said, "I get ya. You're saying he's the guy who, if his wife says she has a headache, will just shrug his shoulders and give up instead of crackin' open a bottle of wine and trying to get somethin' going anyway."

I tell you, sometimes my customers annoy the piss out of me, but God help me, there are times I really love 'em. ;)

D-Day

I know. I can't believe it's been 2 1/2 months since my last post either. Honest to God, I looked at the date and thought, "No, that's wrong... my last post was at the end of April, not March." I actually kind of still think that (March?), but in the interest of not arguing with a computer program, let's not force the issue. Unfortunately, this isn't going to be much of an entry either. Shh, shh... it's okay. Let it all out. Tissues?

That's a dear. Right, I won't offer any false promises because clearly I cannot be trusted, but I will say that we're officially moved into the new house, I only have ten weeks left of grad school forever, and as soon as I get caught back up at MRFH, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, but hopefully there will be more free time to be had. I know, empty words, but we'll see. But that's not why I've blown the dust off my keyboard to regale you tonight. No, this is actually a serious occasion. You see, today marks the one-year anniversary of the day I was laid off.

I won't go into any great detail, one because that's not what I feel like writing about, and two because thankfully that's all in the past and had a happy ending. I was incredibly lucky enough to be rehired very soon after, being out of work for under a month, so I have far, far less to complain about than many. Without my reemployment we certainly wouldn't have bought this house, so that short period of fear and uncertainty notwithstanding, our family has been very fortunate indeed. No tears or gnashing of teeth needed on my behalf, thanks.

However... that said, it was still something that came completely out of the blue (we were on vacation for God's sake, they actually called my cell on my last day of vacation to tell me the bad news), and for that brief period of time, it was incredibly scary. I'm not bitter and I've never been good at holding grudges, and Lord knows there are many people who were laid off before me and are still out of work now, so this is neither a complaint nor a plea for sympathy. If all I walked away with was a slightly bruised ego, well, that's a hell of a lot better than most, y'know? I guess I just needed someplace to mark the occasion, and since a lot of my coworkers are on Facebook, that wasn't exactly an option. (That'd be a fun entry though, wouldn't it? Status: ...turned off his cell phone all day and is afraid to check his voicemail. Or: ...is doing a lot better than this time last year, thanks for asking!) So instead, I forced you all to sit through an incoherent musing about something that only affected three people, didn't affect them for long, and is entirely in the past. Sorry about that.

Anyway, that's enough for now; back to the books, don't ya know. Because that's the joy of being a former proofreader in a group with one other native-born English speaker, three nice but only marginally fluent in English Chinese exchange students, and one Hungarian transplant- your editing services are always in demand. Hey, maybe that's a fall-back career...

Movin' Out

Yet again, gentle readers, I come before you with hat humbly in hand, begging your forgiveness for the month-long drought between posts. If nothing else, take comfort that for once there's a good reason for my absence, beyond just Resident Evil 5 really needing to get beat or whatever. Ann and I recently had our bid accepted on a house, to which we will be moving at the beginning of next month. It's a source of great excitement for us, as you might imagine, but also more than a little stress due to the need to pack up, you know, every damn thing we own. As you might expect if you know us, we have entirely different styles of going about this packing. It will shock you to learn that I have a tendency to procrastinate on packing -- more than once in college my parents and sister found themselves helping me box stuff up on move-out day because I assumed I'd have enough time to put everything I owned into boxes in the two hours between waking up and when they got there. Not... so much. Fortunately I largely learned my lesson those first two years and have gotten much better about it since.

However, Ann comes down on the opposite end of the spectrum- we're still three weeks away from closing and it'll be even longer than that before we start moving most of the stuff, but she's already stressed that we've fallen behind. (We have not, I'm happy to report.) This has led to some, er, fun exchanges. My favorite is the most recent one, wherein she asked me when I would finish packing the last books from my bookshelves. Now, the shelves were about 98% empty at that time; the only things not packed were those books I thought I might conceivably want to read between now and then. Which I explained to Ann, prompting her to exasperatedly ask, "Can't you just go for three weeks without reading something?"

Now, perhaps you are not like me, friends. Perhaps that seems like a reasonable request to you. Perhaps right now you're thinking, "Yeah, Drew, geez... three weeks, big deal. You owe her that much. Slacker." If so, we are very different people. I'm a voracious reader (and trust me, that's as much a liability as a point of pride), and the thought of going three days without having something to read is enough to instill a sense of nigh panic in me. Three weeks? Is she serious? It turns out she was, at which point I formulated the compromise of packing my last few books in an open box and not taping it closed, that I might access them at will in the days to come. I think that solution met with Ann's approval -- the shelves are clear, after all -- but seriously, three weeks? You people only know me through the internet and you knew that wasn't going to fly. It's like she forgets who she married sometimes.

As one final addendum to my last post, allow me to offer that my quandary is over: from now on it's just a $2 tip, no guilt felt. Why, you may ask? For the simple reason that the Hair Cuttery raised their rates yet again, only a couple of years after the last time I recall them doing so. Cuts are now $15, and if you think I'm paying $18 just for someone to run a set of clippers over my head, you are crap-your-pants crazy, my friend. I do feel bad for the actual hair cutters -- I know it's not their fault their employer decided to up the price, and I sincerely hope at least some of that money is reflected in their salaries -- but if the price is going up by two bucks, my tip is not increasing to match it. Sorry, them's the breaks.

Gimme a head with hair

If I can take a step back from the weighty topics we usually cover here at Save the Empire, there's a completely minor issue that nonetheless has been niggling at me for the better part of a decade. It's a question, really: how much should I tip the person who cuts my hair?

Perhaps some background is in order. Through grade school, middle school, and early high school I wore my hair in the style classically known as "dork short." Being who I am, naturally I had short hair in the one stage of life where you can really get away with long hair. Nonetheless, sophomore year came and for reasons I can't remember, I decided to grow it longer. Even that wasn't especially long, being what most people would probably consider normal, at least until senior year. But oh, senior year I let it get even longer, and then in the summer before college I committed the cardinal sin of continuing to let it grow.

Now, I know some people look good with long hair. Some people look great with long hair. I am not one of those people. My hair is blond and thin, and the back always seems to grow faster than the front so I invariably wind up with a mullet. Which is exactly what I rocked for three of my four years in college: a mini-mullet. It wasn't a full, Billy Ray Cyrus-esque rat tail in all its glory, but still... it didn't look good. I thought it did, of course, because I was in my introspective, soul-searching phase where I was spending entirely too many walks to class mulling over my place in the universe. I think my naive belief was that girls would subconsciously pick up on the tragic, romantic soul hidden behind my deep blue eyes and want to reach out to the long-haired loner they sensed within. And maybe that kind of Twilight crap works for philosophy majors reading poetry in coffee shops all day, but what I idiotically failed to consider was that I was an athlete, and I hung around with my fellow athletes almost exclusively. Now, this was a swim team, not a football team, and these were among the most intelligent, non-meathead athletes you've ever met -- very much not the insensitive jock stereotype -- but they still were about as far removed from the introspective loner mentality as it was possible to be. Who had time to hang out in coffee shops when you had practice in an hour? Despite all that, I kept my hair long until senior year, when I finally shaved my head for a major swim meet. Purely coincidentally, I'm sure, the second half of senior year was also when I started dating my only real college girlfriend and kicked off my longest sustained dating streak (defined for our purposes as not going longer than a month or two without a date/girlfriend) until meeting Ann.

But it was also early senior year when a friend asked me how much I tipped the person who had just cut my hair, and when I answered two dollars, he replied "Ah, you cheaped out." That gave me pause, and in retrospect he was right- I should've given three, since that was a time when cutting my hair still required some effort. But pretty much ever since the end of senior year, I've kept my hair short. Ann prefers it that way and it's easier for me, and I finally made the hockey haircut/you look unappealing connection, so it's just best for everyone. However, it's also led me to give serious thought to the tipping issue again, for the simple reason that my hair is now the easiest thing in the world to cut. They just use the electric clippers, setting "3" on the top and back of my head and "2" on the sides. I don't have them wash my hair, so they just run the clippers over my dome a few times, trim up the sideburns, and that's it. I have literally had haircuts that took less than five minutes, and going much over ten is a rare occurrence. (Except for that one woman who insisted on trimming my eyebrows, but she was weird.) In most ways this is good for everyone: I don't have to waste much time or make idle small talk for very long, and the haircutter certainly doesn't have to work very hard. But I go to the Hair Cuttery, whose price is $13 a cut. That makes it really tempting for me to just fork over $15, say "Keep the change," and go on my merry way. And I guess technically, that is a pretty crappy tip... $2 out of $13 is, I think, less than 15%. But on the other hand, am I really obligated to tip extravagantly on the easiest haircut they've ever given? When I go out to a fancy restaurant, I tip and tip well, but I don't give a little something extra to the guy who hands me my food at Wendy's, y'know?

So that's my situation. Some visits I tip $2, sometimes $3 if I danced the night before and have singles to spare, but I've never really come to a consensus. If anyone wants to weigh in on this admittedly pathetic dilemma, phone lines are open, call now.

Chocotastic

Molly had her 15-month checkup at the pediatrician today. Aside from the usual (tensing up as soon as she got in the exam room, crying hysterically when she got her shots, forgetting it all when she saw the funhouse mirror at the front desk), we expressed concern to the doctor that she's the same weight she was at 12 months even though she's grown half an inch. The doctor wasn't overly concerned but suggested that we try sneaking extra calories into all of her meals in any way possible; meaning, in essence, we have to do the exact opposite for Molly of what we try to do with all of our own meals. To accomplish this, the doc advised us to "get creative." Naturally, like all good-hearted people, I immediately thought of the immortal words of Dr. Nick:

Dr. Nick: "Now there are many options available for dangerously underweighted individuals like yourself. I recommend a slow, steady gorging process combined with assal horizontology."
Homer: "Of course."
Nick: "You'll want to focus on the neglected food groups such as the whipped group, the congealed group and the chocotastic!"
Homer: "What can I do to speed the whole thing up, Doctor?"
Nick: "Well, be creative. Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use pop tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon."
Bart: "You could brush your teeth with milkshakes!"
Nick: "Hey, did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College too? And remember, if you're not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, it's your window to weight gain!"

Bye, everybody!

Tradition

So instead of me making some longwinded apology, can we just taken it as given that I meant to post a lot sooner, got caught up in a video game, and would still in fact be playing if my Xbox 360 hadn't broken? Yes? Good.

With that out of the way, I have to tell you all (both?) about perhaps the most cherished Christmas tradition in our family. It's relatively new... in fact, it's only been going on for two years, but I have every confidence that it will grow into the hallowed observance it deserves to be. Every year Ann and I wake up, get Molly up and fed, exchange our gifts, then drive over to my parents' house, where we open gifts with them and my sister. Afterward we have brunch, and then in our pancake-induced food comas, we lounge around on couches the rest of the day, watching whatever movies people got for Christmas. Now that my sister and I are older, our parents no longer feel obligated to buy us only G- and PG-rated movies, and thus every year you can count on either my sister or my father to receive at least one of the Farrelly/Apatow/Frat Pack gross-out comedies from the preceding year. All well and good, but where any normal family would have the good sense to save those films to watch when they're alone or with friends, my family does not possess this capacity for self-regulation. So it came to pass that last year, my darling sister suggested we all watch her new DVD Forgetting Sarah Marshall; and when Ann and I, neither of whom had seen it (see: new parents) quietly asked whether it would be awkward to watch with Mom and Dad, were assured that no, it really wasn't that bad. And thus we were treated to Jason Segal's penis, Mila Kunis' bewbs (not complaining, but hard to properly appreciate in front of Mom), lots of sex moaning, and a pretty darn realistic simulation of a BJ. I think Ann got off a little easier, since at least they were just her in-laws rather than her actual parents, but oh, how reminiscent it was of an episode of The Office.

Naturally, this year Ann and I were on red alert, not least because in addition to my parents and sister, we also had my grandfather and great-uncle visiting for the holidays. So when BOTH my sister and Dad opened copies of The Hangover, my heart sank. This time even my sister seemed hesitant, but Dad was committed to watching it (with his dad sitting in the room... go figure), so my sis assured us that as long as we stopped right before the end credits, it would be okay. And that's how we saw Heather Graham's bewb (singular), bare-ass male buttcheeks, and arguably even more swearing and sex talk than last year. I know I'm not in grade school anymore, but if you think you'd be comfortable sitting in a living room with your Grandpa, a great-grandfather, and hearing about how someone's girlfriend got fucked by a waiter on a cruise ship but it's okay because he didn't come inside her, well... you have less shame than I, my friend.

So that's apparently our new family tradition! I'm super stoked, as you might expect. I literally can't wait until next year, when I can only imagine someone will get a copy of 9 1/2 Weeks or Zack and Miri Make A Porno or something, assuming Jenna Jameson hasn't come out with anything new. If I'm really lucky, maybe someone will leak a sex tape of Lindsay Lohan or the like in the next eleven months and we can gather around the fire to watch that as a family. Some folks carol, others attend services... we watch really inappropriate, awkward movies together. It's the spirit of the season!