How I Learned to Let Go of Oscar
I don’t have a television, because, as I told Bassey, that’s something the employed have. Normally, this is not a problem. And my feelings on the Oscars I have already made plain. I still think inviting diehard Eurotrip fans would fix everything.
And yet. We still wish it could be something, the small, very small part of us that lingers on a Baldwin making a joke about the Baldwins, as the channels go by. Okay, maybe we just love a guaranteed trainwreck, if famous people are going to be in it, even if it happens at approximately three miles an hour.
So, it was in this milieu that I decided, as penance for my recent blogging absence, I would seek out the true spirit of Award Season, wherever it may hide. The results show the darker side of life through Oscar’s eyes.
It might have been a good idea to plan this more than an hour in advance. Needless to say, the two sure-fire TV owners were not home. The Wilson Ave laundromat, my usual TV source, was stuck on Spanish soaps. No matter, the Internet led me to Williamsburg, which you might think would be the place least likely to care about the Oscars. True, it was a lederhosen-only affair, but that only increased my foolish yearning to find entertainment value in this somehow.
Skipping down Lorimer Street to a band that was really cool three years ago in a clearance Gap coat, I brought shame upon the hallowed night I sought, even ten contiguous states of irony away. I ignored the glances from all around that seemed to say, “We have far more important places to skulk to than a Oscar party, but if we were going to one, we would not even slow down going by if we saw you through the window.”
More determined than ever, I tried to remember if I had seen any of these movies besides Up and the 45 minutes of Avatar I saw before, delirious with Sigorney Weaver and 3-D aggravated flu, I sat somewhere quiet and had an acute episode of not vomiting.
Sighing a little in contentment at not needing to even make an effort not to vomit at the moment, I reached Pete’s Candy Store. Yes, that’s a bar.
Groupon!
If you’re anything like the staff of Air & Sea Battle, you probably have sat on a Megabus next to a really cool-seeming graduate student from India, who, it’s true, did 90 percent of the talking and was an army brat, but at the end she totally invited you to stay with her. If, you know, you were ever in India. You exchanged a couple e-mails since then, and the offer still seemed genuine.
Then she sent you a referral link to a shoe discount pyramid scheme.
Social media. Some use it for mild-grade evil, most just for the lulz. Few, if any, use it for anything resembling usefulness.
Today, we take a step in reversing this state of affairs. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the first great online recession-ending tool*, Groupon. It gives people cheap useful stuff, and businesses people.
If you live in a city, join this thing and you get outrageous deals, sometimes even for good things, like concerts in college music halls that will now be packed with cheapsters, instead of being in sad places of emptiness.
*Air & Sea Battle discovered this 20 minutes ago, so it could still suck and just be a pyramid scheme and not do anything of these things. If nothing else, you can say “Groupon” over and over, and you will have free giggles.
Q-Tonic: Premium Tonic Water
If you’re like me you enjoy kicking back with a nice drink at the end of a long day at the office. Every great drink starts with a nice premium liqueur and then adds a mixer. If you’re drinking expensive gin or vodka with tonic water, why settle with the generic supermarket tonic water, the one that has enough sugar to send you into a diabetic coma? You need to make sure that the tonic you use is equal to the liqueur your mixing it into. That’s where Q-TONIC comes in, an all-natural mixer containing no high-fructose corn syrup, and it blows everything else out of the ‘water’. Of course a premium mixer comes with a premium price, but after one taste, nothing else will taste as good. Check the link for availability in your area.
