Thursday, May 13, 2010

Character Development

I've recently discovered something about myself... well not really discovered but more of found a way to describe something that I've known about myself for years. I have a tendency to like people I shouldn't like, and when I say "like" I mean enjoy on a purely superficial level. I've always had an affinity for curmudgeony people, people who are by their very nature unlikeable, people who are rude to me, or are arrogant jackasses, or are pretentious douchebags. Generally speaking, I like people.

This might be surprising considering I like to call myself a misanthrope, but hypocrisy has always been one of my most defining characteristics (in addition to my remarkable candor, my almost constant self-deprecation and incredible sense of direction). But as I stated earlier, I've figured out why I like people I shouldn't like (and dislike people I shouldn't, to some extent). I view other people a lot like I view characters in TV shows and movies. I don't judge them based on how I feel about them personally or how they relate to me, I judge them based on what they add to the world around them.

So here's a for instance; My boss and I don't really get along. We aren't adversarial to each other, I think we both like each other well enough, but we have nothing in common. We are completely different types of people. If we are alone in a room together we don't talk. We have nothing to talk about. Very little in common except for the fact that we both work in the same 50' by 10' box. However, if Jackson Wal-mart Pharmacy was a TV show, Keith, my boss, would be my favorite character. He has great rapport with pretty much every other person that comes into the pharmacy. He's funny and engaging and very three dimensional. He's a great character.

I've pretty much always viewed my life as a movie, and I've never considered myself to be the hero, which might sound kind of like a passive aggressive attempt for sympathy, but it isn't. The hero is rarely, if ever, the best part of a movie; Han Solo is way cooler than Luke Skywalker, Frodo is the worst part of Lord of the Rings, Sonny and Vito are both cooler than Michael (especially if we're counting all three Godfather movies, which I am) and Chaucer steals every scene form William Thatcher (Knight's Tale reference bitches!) (DOUBLE ASIDE!: RDJ might be the exception to this rule, Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and that dude he plays in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are all pretty much the best parts of their respective movies, also Harrison Ford is pretty good as Indiana Jones... but other than that... and Joe Go Lev, but of the four movies I've seen with him as the lead, he only carried two of them...no, I stand by my original statement. RDJ is the only exception.).

So I guess my big revelation is that I like real people for much the same reason I like fake people, which is why sometimes I like people who are complete douche-bags, and dislike people who are completely fine people (I can't think of anyone like this at the moment but I'm sure there are plenty of people like this that I've met). Not too surprising I guess.

In other news, I still can not figure out how to get songs from my computer onto my I-pod. Fuck you apple, and your proprietary software.

Oh! I just thought of someone I hate that I hate for no reason! Anyone who owns an i-pad. I-pad owners are all douche-bags beyond salvation. That is all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you have against iPads?

Matt Essner said...

Ipads are more of an affectation than a practical computing device. Sure, one can find uses for an ipad, just as one can find a use for cane with a dragon for a head that shoots smoke or replica samurai swords, but that does not make it useful, it makes it useable.

Of course I feel that way about most new technology. I'm somewhat of a luddite and think all early adopters are gadget junkies too stupid to resist the appeal of slick marketing and allure of something new.

However I fully realize that without people like that who buy and figure out how to use such technologies, people like me who wait to the second or third generation to buy them, would have to pay a lot more for a product that has a lot fewer refinements. I would not have made a good pioneer.