Hollywood Catches Case of Oscar Blahs

In this The New York Times article, the author, Sharon Waxman, goes to great lengths to try to answer why no one cares about the Oscars. Well, let me take a crack at it. Maybe because a lot of the movies people enjoy are not nominated. I saw the Aviator; I was less than impressed. It was an ok movie, but I did not think it was Oscar material. Also, perhaps Hollywood lost some of creativity this year. We did not really get the huge block buster movie. There was no must see movie. Million Dollar Baby may be a good movie, but Clint Eastwood's last movie (Mystic River) was less than inspiring. With the exception of Unforgiven, I cannot remember an Eastwood directed movie I liked. I guess I am being a stick in the mud, but if a movie critic likes a movie, I try to avoid it like the plague. Hollywood was on a binge of remakes of late, and that hardly makes for Oscar material. It is my humble opinion that folks watch the Oscars to see the outfits rather who won what. Maybe it is not just Hollywood that has the blahs.

Battle Erupted

Well, Monday night was fun. My stay-at-home wife and I were cleaning the house in preparation for the housecleaner. This a whole other topic for a post. Anyway, as I am loading the dishwasher, she notices that I am not rinsing the dishes. Now, I usually rinse the dishes prior to putting them in the dishwasher, but the last time I was doing this she told me not to worry about, since we were going to run the dishwasher that day. In my state of being unaware, she freaks out and asks me why am I not rinsing the dishes. I explained that I was going to run the dishwasher and did not think they needed to be rinsed. She went off. We had an hour long argument about the freakin' dishes. Picture it: I have worked about 10 hours, have been up since 5:30am, it is now approximately 10:00pm, I am tired, I am trying to help my stay-at-home wife clean the damn house because I love her and all I am getting is static. Who needs this shit? Not me. I had a total break down like I had never had before. I told her I could not do it anymore; I would not do it anymore. As I am saying this, she still continues to argue with me. It is like I am not saying anything. I mean I have not been this emotional in the nearly twelve years of marriage.

Finally, at the end she did apologize and promised to be more patient. That is all I have ever asked for. I know I am far from perfect, but she still refuses to accept me for who I am. She asked if I want a divorce. Although the thought has crossed my mind, I do not believe I would be any happier from it, so I said no. Things are better, but the question must be asked: why did I have to have an emotional melt down to get that response? My only answer is she is stubborn and refuses to see my side of the issue.

The saga continues.

Right On!

I invite everyone to read this article at Hog on Ice. It shows a good grasp of one of the major differences between men and women. Women are big on nuance, body language, tonality of voice, etc. in communication. Therefore, when the wife and I have a conversation, I have to be careful, because she has not figured that men, generally, mean what they say. Men can and do BS. No doubt. I can be a terrific BSer. In my communication, the words are what should be focused on...not the hidden meaning. There is no hidden meaning. When men talk with each other, we do not later ask ourselves what he meant by that, or what was the hidden meaning.

Also, do not ask a man what he is thinking. It will either be totally inane and useless, or you may not like hearing it. I remember the wife and I were watching some special on sex in marriage. She asked me what I wanted. I told her to give and receive more oral sex. Although I knew she has a hang-up about cunninglingus, I never expected the outburst I received. One would have thought I had asked for a threesome with a midget. I learned a valuable lesson: she really does not want to know. Asking what you are thinking about is a way to fill the void for lack of conversation.

Look, I am more than happy to accept that men and women are different. Why is this a hard concept? It does not mean one is superior than the other. It simply means we are two halves of the whole. Women need to quit judging men with the same values that women have.

The Weekend

Well, this was one of the better weekends in a long time. The wife and I had a party to attend Saturday night, which was alot of fun. I got drunk became a little incoherent. Note: do not mix whiskey and beer. Anyway, we went home and I had drunk sex. Drunk sex really sucks because one can only remember bits and pieces and one thinks one is better than real life. Yesterday, we laid in bed and watch movies. All in all a great weekend. No blow-ups. Just relaxation. I hope to have more of those.

What the Hell?

Well, another row with the wife yesterday. She was pissed because she says I do not listen to her. I am guilty of this sometimes occurring, but not on the frequency (always) she insists. I apologized and told her I meant no harm. What set her off? I helped her fold clothes the night before. I was folding them wrong, and she was tired of telling me. Since I did not comeback with anything, she assumed I was not listening. My bad. I knew I should have said something, but I was so damned tired I could not. I did hear and listen to her, because I started folding the freakin' clothes the way she wanted. I thought everything was ok. Boy, was I wrong. I walked in the door yesterday morning, and she let me have it. I apologized. She stayed pissed at me the rest of the morning with a wonderful climax right before lunch complete with her yelling at me, pointing her finger and storming off. All I said was I was surprised to be yelled at this morning. She then proceeded to show me what being yelled at is like.

I had told her that I apologized wholeheartedly. This was not good enough, because she felt that I was just saying that to try to get out trouble. Well, no shit! Of course, that is one of the reasons I apologized. However, that was not the reason I apologized. I disagreed and explained that I knew what I had done, and that is why I apologized. Unlike her, I can apologize. On the other hand, we have a half hour fight to get her to apologize. She says that was different. Huh? When I do something wrong, I try to apologize and make up. When she does something wrong, she attacks me and tells me I am being ridiculous.

Ain't marriage grand?

Valentine's Day

Well, the wife and I took the kids to dinner last night to celebrate Valentine's Day. I gave her a bouquet of red tulips, which had just begun to open. She seemed surprised, because I generally don't do that sort of thing.

Maybe it had to with the fight we had earlier that day, which was about a conversation we had after watching the Stepford Wives remake. I really did not like the movie much. I explained that I thought it was full of stereotypes: gay stereotypes, career women stereotypes and, finally, men stereotypes. The plot was basically that men did not want to live in the shadow of their wives. These men preferred a woman, who was kind of June Cleaver and Martha Stewart rolled into one. This, of course, led to an hour long debate as to whether or not anti-male bias exists. She did not believe that any such bias exists. I asked her to look at nearly every sitcom. The father/man is a total idiot, who could not find his ass without the aid of his wife. Look at the several commercials: the Verizon commercial, the Dodge Caravan commercial just to name two in the last 1-2 months. We never really came to any agreement. She basically thought I was reading too much into it. I said maybe, but I think it is a valid hypothesis and should be tested. So I offered to watch TV for the next week and see how much bias there is. This brought our conversation to close or so I thought.

As we were getting ready for bed, the Munsters were on TV. She, sarcastically, pointed out that this show had an anti-ugly bias. Now, I realize this was meant as a joke, but it seemed she had no credence in the point I was making. I told her I thought that was belittling and rather insulting. This led to nice little spat with me going to sleep angry.

So, now it is Valentine's Day and I'm pissed. All she had to do was apologize for her remark and everything is hunky dory. Instead, she tells me to get over it. The comment was a joke. After a lengthy "discussion" she finally admitted that what she said could be construed as an insult. She did apologize, but not before she made admit to reading into her comments. She feels that I was angry because I did not agree with her assessment of me being wrong about anti-male bias.

Since I don't like confrontation nor my wife to be mad at me, I bought her tulips for Valentine's Day. What a puss, huh!

First Post

A new blog is born! So what. The world needs another blog like it needs a kick in the head. As with most bloggers, this is to feed my vanity. Also, I hope to use it as a way to vent from everyday life, especially married life. Anyone is welcome to leave comments or snide remarks. If anyone even reads the blog.