How to See Someone Else's Point of View

R. Lee Ermey was not originally cast as the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. He was originally brought in as a consultant to help the actor they had cast to play that role. That actor didn’t pan out, Ermey replaced him, and a fine career as a character actor followed.

There’s a story, one that I hope is true, that Stanley Kubrick wasn’t sure that a first time actor would be able to maintain his character and the false reality of a scene while surrounded by all of the distractions that come with filming a major motion picture. To see if he could hack it, Kubrick filmed R. Lee Ermey improvising insults in character and shouting them into the camera as several crew members threw tennis balls at his head.

I would pay good money to watch that footage.

Inside joke from Missy: “We just want to see if you can continue acting after being struck by a falling Spider-man.”

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How to Respond When Someone States and Opinion with Which You Vehemently Disagree

I am going to have to be maddeningly non-specific for a bit here, for obvious reasons.

I had a job, in which I did work at a place, and other people did work at this place as well.

One of these coworkers had strong political and religious convictions, which is fine. Less fine was the fact that he was incapable of not expressing them, constantly, to any coworker who got anywhere near him. There was no wiggle room, no room for disagreement. He believed that he knew what was right and who was worth voting for and anyone who disagreed needed to be argued out of that position, informed why their opinions were wrong, and educated about which talk-radio shows they should listen to.

I told him many times to stop, not just for my sanity but because I knew for a fact that he was permanently damaging his own career, but he would not stop. We reached a point where if I even made eye contact with him he’d smile like he thought he was a naughty boy, say, “Hey, you know that subject we can’t discuss at work?” Then he would talk about it at length over my protests.

Finally, I made up the card below, which I laminated and carried with me at work. (The other side of it was filled with important phone numbers and other information I needed on a daily basis.) The next time he brought up the forbidden subject, which was very early in the very next shift I had with him, I pulled it out and read it aloud.

By the time I finished, coworkers had come over from two rooms away to say that the card went for them as well.

Afterward, he asked me, “You didn’t really make up that card just because of me, did you?”

I said, “Yes, I did.”

He went quiet for a moment, then said, “You know, that was a chance for you to let me off the hook there.”

I said, “I know.”

To this day, I have no idea why he would think I might have any urge to let him off the hook. I made the hook, specifically for him.

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How to Understand Someone Else's View of Reality

Panel three is one of the grimmest things I ever wrote.

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How to Pass a Folk Legend on to a New Generation

Johnny Appleseed was straight up mentally ill, and I told my second-grade teacher that when she tried to hold him up as some sort of role model.

I saw through the legend of Johnny Appleseed because I was from the Yakima Valley, land of the Red Delicious apple, which I have before referred to as “the crappy fruit that’s  name is a lie.” Growing up with that cursed fruit taught me to view anything apple-related with suspicion, as my mother learned the one time she purchased Apple Jacks cereal. Even now I remain highly skeptical as to how much apple that cereal contains.

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How to Differ from Popular Opinion

I forget what book about zombies Missy had read. I’m certain it was not Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

The reason I’m certain of this is that Missy and I have entertained ourselves during this quarantine by binge-watching the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice with Collin Firth, then followed it with the 2005 movie with Kiera Knightly.

Both were enjoyable, but very different, with the miniseries employing a more broadly comic approach and the movie having much higher production values.

The message of Pride and Prejudice seems to be that even a socially awkward, emotionally remote man can find love, as long as he’s very good looking and fabulously wealthy.

Note from Missy: Yeah, it definitely wasn’t P&P&Z, because until we watched the miniseries, I’d never experienced Pride and Prejudice. (Though I did read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter!) For the life of me, I can’t figure out what book this would have been, lo these 7 long years ago.

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How to Fix Something Yourself

When I was a kid, our family had this make and model of vacuum.

I can’t vouch for how good a vacuum it was, but I can tell you that it made a great pretend R2-D2.

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How to Explain Your Personal Feelings

This story about James Doohan is true, except for the part about my relatives thinking he was in Star Wars. They all knew he was on Star Trek, though some either called it “the Star Trek” or “Star Track,” I suspect in a deliberate effort to irritate me.

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How to Share an Innovative Idea

During a fit of boredom I gave the first episode of the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive a chance, ended up binging the whole thing over two weeks, and, heaven help me, I’ve actually recorded a couple of F1 races, despite the fact that F1 racing is generally recognized as a “sport.”

There are three things I find interesting about F1 at the moment.

1.       It’s the most high-tech sport.

2.       It isn’t just one sport. The drivers try to out drive one another, the mechanics try to out-mechanic the other teams mechanics, and the pit crews engage in what could classify as a sport in its own right. My understanding is that the Red Bull racing team currently has a noticeable advantage because their pit crew can perform a full tire change in 2 seconds, instead of the positively glacial 3 seconds the other teams take.

3.       The drivers’ training regimens include exercises that look like clips from a montage in a Will Ferrell movie.

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How to Introduce a Female Version of an Established Male Superhero

I enjoyed the all-female Ghostbusters. I also enjoyed Ocean’s 8.

A lot of guys ask why the teams in those movies had to be all-female. It’s not hard to figure out. When your car is veering left into a ditch you don’t just straighten the wheels out, you steer to the right for a while first to get back on the road. All-female protagonist movies are us course correcting until we can straighten out and center ourselves in our lane (By that I mean, have an even mix of male and female protagonists in movies, the way we should have to begin with). Women are 50% of the population, why shouldn’t they be 50% of our heroes?

The question to ask isn’t why we have all female teams in film reboots now. The question is why the originals had to be all male. The original Ghostbusters had, I think, six speaking roles for women. Aside from Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts, there were the frightened librarian, the student Venkman hit on, the realtor who sold them the firehouse, and Jean Kasem as the tall woman agreeing to dance with Rick Moranis.

It was a different time, and I hate to second-guess Dan Aykroyd, but if dealing with Gozer and Zuul was such an emergency, why not give Janine a pack? You can’t tell me Annie Potts wouldn’t have been funny in an ill-fitting jumpsuit.

I’ve written here more than once about my how much I enjoy Ocean’s Eleven (Clooney, not Sinatra), but why were all eleven men? Again, that movie had five speaking roles for women: two off-camera parole board members, a blackjack dealer who is going on break, a thieving stripper, and Julia Roberts as “The Prize.” (Tess doesn’t split eleven ways!)

There’s no one actor of the team I would single out as needing to be replaced, but almost any of the characters could have been a woman and it wouldn’t have changed the story.

This is only tangentially related, but if they ever do another Ocean’s movie, one where team members from 11, 12, and 13 mix with the cast from 8, I hope that they’ll have Thandie Newton play the wife of Basher (Don Cheadle), and that she will do a terrible American accent.

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How to Not Sell My Wife a Car

This comic was written after a trip to a car dealership. The salesman introduced himself to me and shook my hand. I introduced him to Missy and I told him that she was buying a car for her to drive. Missy also told him this. He asked me what kind of car she was looking for, addressed all of his questions to me, and afterward followed up by contacting me, not her.

We did not buy a car from him.

Note from Missy: I honestly cannot remember which specific experience Scott based this comic on, because it’s happened several times—pretty much every time I’ve shopped for a car, even when I’ve gone alone.  Like when I went to test drive a Smart Car, and they tried to steer me to a 4-door sedan and a minivan instead. Or there was the guy who would listen to my questions while looking at Scott, then direct his answers at Scott as well. (Except when he asked about paint color preferences; he definitely directed that at me.)

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