Thursday, May 15, 2008

Futile Gestures (Cigar Smoke 5-15-08)

I’m discovering that the older I get the more futile my gestures are. Does that make sense? Here’s the deal. When I was younger I would only get teed off, and then sometimes when I was really bent I would get ticked off, but now, as I am fully ensconced in my body-part-non-functioning years, I tend to get pissed off quite easily.

Marge notices it. At the breakfast table she will say something like, “Honey Mate, you tend to get pissed off more easily now that you’re very old and almost dead.” It’s that kind of inspiration that keeps me going.

So what do I mean by “futile gesture?” Well, gesturers and gesturettes, I mean this. I have been a loyal member of the Priority Club, which is the hot-shot premium membership deal of the Holiday Inn. For the last dozen years or so, I have always tried to stay at a Holiday Inn. It’s a pretty good hotel and their beds are fairly decent. But mostly it’s because I love their cinnamon rolls. (As you can see, my standards, like my arches, my chins, and my libido, have fallen over the years.)

Anyway, you get bonus points for staying at the hotel and I’ve accumulated a lot of points and have enjoyed a number of free nights. It just makes me feel good to be a member of something so trifling and petty. So, a few months ago, I took a little trip with my sons, Mike and Casey, down to see an Evander Holyfield fight in El Paso. And I reserved two rooms. One for me. And one for my loin-springers.

Well, when I got back home I looked on my Holiday Inn recap sheet online, and I was only credited with one room. My room. They wouldn’t give me credit for the other room, which I had paid for. I was, of course, what? I was incensed.

So I wrote them a long email and complained and bitched and moaned about not being important to them and how disappointed I was at not being special and I used obscene words, like Hilton and Marriott and Doubletree, to scare them. And what happened? Nothing happened, that’s what. They just ignored me. A loyal guy like me. Ignored me.

So, that is what I mean by a futile gesture. I gestured. It was futile. It was a futile gesture.

Another time a while back I canceled my subscription to Newsweek magazine because of that false story about GIs peeing on the Koran. I told them I couldn’t keep paying them to write bullshit stories, and I knew not receiving my subscription money was going to hurt them drastically. I was pretty sure it was going to force them into bankruptcy and that they would have to beg me to reconsider, and they would tell me about all the fathers and mothers they would have to fire, and let me know how many kids would be thrown on the streets. Never heard from them.

And I used to have trouble with a damn Hewlett-Packard printer back when I was publishing the Weekly, about 10 years ago. That sucky printer would never, ever work. It would always give me an error message, some code with four numbers and a dollar sign and an exclamation point and a little icon of a bomb exploding.

I tried everything to fix it. I re-installed the software. I called the HP help line. I gave the damn printer its own power outlet. I even read the manual. But it would never work. I got so frustrated I threw things at it. I even elbowed its sorry toner-cartridge butt one day. And I hate to admit this, but I think the statute of limitations has run out, so I can tell you. I killed three members of my staff for laughing at how red my face got and giggle-pointing at the spittle on my cheeks. They deserved to die. (By the way, Barack Obama knew about this, but continues to own Hewlett-Packard stock to this day.)

So I gestured up to the plate and wrote old Hewlett-Packard a letter informing them of my less-than-optimum experience, and that I would never ever buy another one of their damn supposed printer pieces of crap even if I was on a desert island and was hit on the head with a coconut. I was that mad. And over the last 10 years two things have happened. I have never bought another Hewlett-Packard product and I’m sure they’ve gone out of business because of that. And the second thing is that I have never heard from them. Gesture this!

But the most painful futile gesture I’ve made is the one I made to Bruce Springsteen. As you might remember, during the last election campaign he came out in support of John Kerry for president. He was going around the country having concerts and bad-mouthing Bush and all that. Now, I don’t want to get too political, but let’s just say I thought it was stupid and disgusting and repulsive and revolting and sickening and simplistic and it had warts and pimples on it.

So I got on Bruce’s Web site and sent him an email. I told him how big a fan of his I was, and that my favorite album of his was “Nebraska,” and how much I loved “Highway Patrolman,” and I told Bruce how I admired how he stood up for the little guy and expressed the longing of the downtrodden. And I even told him I enjoyed misconstruing the meaning of his “Born in the USA” song.

But because of his misguided political stance, I was going to have to discontinue referring to him as The Boss and that now I would be forced to refer to him as Just Another Employee. I also told him I would not ever, as long as I still had single digits to live, not ever buy another one of his albums. And I told him that I knew this would devastate him financially, but that I had to go with my heart and stand up for my ideals. And that I’m sure he would understand.

Well, I never heard from Just Another Employee. I guess he was just too wounded when his last album only sold nine million copies.