Are You Effing Kidding Me?

I've been on an extended work road trip, travelling the countryside as a Tech slash Auditor for a contract IT firm. Over the course of this trip, "Are You Effing Kidding Me?" has become one of my most 0ft-repeated phrases. Not by choice mind you. The circumstances are generally such that it seems - for lack of a better way to put it - the only appropriate thing to say. And - full disclosure - I don't actually say "Effing" when the phrase escapes my lips.

Such was the case just hours ago when I treated myself to a movie at the local Cinemark, somewhere in the bowels of Ohio, and about an hour outside of Cleveland. The movie I had chosen was called "Drive Angry 3D", yet another in the seemingly endless series of violent, fantastical and gleefully B movies to which Nicolas Cage has seen fit to lend his talents. I recall a movie critic on TV a few year's back fussily bemoaning the waste of Cage's acting skills. "How", he wailed, "could the man who so moved us in 'Leaving For Las Vegas' waste his enormous talent on a bunch of pot boilers?"

The Critic's snippiness reminded me that he was gay, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Gay people need jobs too, and he had amused me on numerous other occasions with the flamboyant hand gestures that accompanied his reviews. Be that as it may, Nicolas Cage has decided in the past ten years to devote himself to B movies, and you've got to respect a man who forges his own path, Critics and other moralists be damned.

Anyway, back to the movie. As I mentioned, Drive Angry was most definitely not a thinking man's movie. In fact, its core demographic is without a doubt male movie-goers between the ages of 18 and 24: Lot's of car crashes, tons of violence, and Nicolas Cage with a seemingly endless supply of ammo to dispatch dozens of bad guys. I went to see it because there was absolutely no chance that my wife would ever want to go see it with me, regardless of how many consecutive Chick Flicks I might have committed to beforehand, and it was time to let the 18-24 year old in me out of the box, however briefly. So, off I went.

When I got to the theatre, a car pulled up next to the door. A man of about 65 was behind the wheel, and next to him a woman of a similar age. In the back seat, however, was a dear old lady who appeared to be in her late 80s. The younger woman tottered around to the rear passenger door and helped the old soul out of the car. I loitered there to hold the door open for them. "thank you, sir", said 65 year old woman; "thank you, Sonny", said the older lady. "No thanks necessary, Ladies", I said, and almost struck up a conversation with them to ask what movie they were going to see, but they were busy getting in out of the cold, so I let it go and went to purchase my ticket.

I was fairly certain of their ages, by the way, because I have the Gift. I can guess anybody's age correctly plus/minus two years most of the time; three years max. I had this skill tested about ten days ago when I was at a hotel bar with some of my cohorts after a job. One of them - flamboyantly and openly gay - announced his intentions to score some action at the local college. "You might be too old for them", said one of the other guys. "How old", said the gay guy "do you think I am?", his hands triumphantly on his hips. I guessed his age at about 30, but jumped in and said "I'm guessing 35".

Gay Guy froze; you could have heard a pin drop. "I'm 30!", he proclaimed, and appeared somewhat hurt. I felt bad later for having gigged him, because questioning a gay man's youthful appearance is the moral equivalent of telling your wife "why yes, Honey, that dress does make your ass look big". Might could be that my 18-24 year old self was on display that night, but there was drinking involved, so I gave myself a Hall Pass, and vowed not to be so cruel in the future.

But I digress.

As I walked into the movie theatre lobby, I did wonder what movie the dear old ladies had in mind to see. Was it perhaps the romantic comedy "Just Go With It", starring Jennifer Anniston and Adam Sandler? Perhaps their choice would be "Gnomeo & Juliet", an animated Disney feature. No, I thought to myself, such folks are most assuredly here to see "The King's Speech", a British drama that would appeal to adults. Such were my thoughts as I bought my popcorn and took my seat.

Back to the dear old ladies in a minute.

I've had a number of "Are you Effing Kidding Me" moments in the past eight months on these road trips, like the four consecutive motel rooms I rented in New Mexico and West Texas over the course of one week during the winter storms three weeks back. None of them had a working heater in them; two of them were in successive rooms at the same hotel. Seems the 15 degree temperatures caught the motel proprietors off guard, maintenance-wise speaking. Another "AYFKM" moment occurred when, having finally scored a room with a working heater, I discovered that it had been so frigging cold for such a long period of time that - I shit you not - the TV refused to turn on.

My favorite and most recent AYFKM was the Harvard professor of economics I saw on TV two nights ago that proclaimed that Republican efforts to reduce federal government spending would kill the economy because "the federal government employs thousands of contracting firms in the private sector". It never would have occurred to this guy in a million years that spending taxpayer dollars to hire private firms to do the government's business is merely public spending by another name. He was happily convinced that the more contracts the government gave out, the better off the economy would be.

AYFKM?

There have been dozens of other AYFKM moments, most of them involving persons of Indian extraction (as in from India), who apparently run most of the motels in America, chastising me when I would call them and complain that this or that appliance didn't work, the heater didn't work, the coffee pot leaks onto the floor, the television doesn't work, there's no hot water coming out of the shower, and my absolute favorite, the exercise room that consisted of one treadmill circa 1974 and even then unusable because there was not a single electrical outlet in the room.

Oh yeah, and there was no heat or working lights in the room either.

Back to the dear old ladies. I settled in to my seat, and who should totter into the theatre to see "Drive Angry 3D" but the two dear old ladies, 3D goggles clutched in their spare hands, as the other hand was in use to pull themselves up the stairs using the handrail.

I did indeed say to myself "AYFKM?", but for once, it was not to rail at the infinite supply of stupidity in the world. They not only brought a smile to my face, but made me feel better about the day. If two women (with a combined age of 153, plus or minus two years) are willing to plunk down good money to occasionally let out their inner 18 to 24 old, all is not lost, and I realized that the Google of Harvard trained professors convinced that all government spending is good were living - professionally, at least - on borrowed time.

I left the theatre with a smile on my face, and it remains there still. Oh yeah, and Nicolas Cage killed all the Bad Guys.