Feeling Old, in so many ways

wow... When did I become an old man?

Yesterday was a good day. Went to mental health court (crazies there!) had lunch with Kenzie, and got to help try and cause a stir about a gay couple that was kicked out of not one, but two Blue and White cabs over the last weekend for kissing in the cabs (not making out even: kissing). See the story here. So I contacted WCCO, which had run a story about the same sort of incident with the same cab company back in December (here) and they are likely to run another story. While I was on an office errand, I also stopped by the Civil Rights Office of the City of Minneapolis and talked to a complaint investigator who is interested in pursuing the matter. Then I found out that the anonymous poster on the blog that started all of this is a friend of mine from my building! Small gay world! Anyway, it felt good to actually DO something for once.

After work I went uptown to try and find some new pants with the Express gift card I have. Except the Express up there is only for women. Oops. So I stopped by another random store, Kuhlman's, where they were having a buy-one-get-one-free sale on everything, and all the shirts were marked down to $9 or $19. Sweet! I got 8 dress shirts there and two pairs of cufflinks for $71. Then went to American Eagle, where I got HOOKED UP by a new friend and got four more shirts and a free movie ticket (for trying on a pair of jeans) for $28. What a great shopping day! I didnt end up with any pants, but I managed to get 12 shirts for under $100. Pretty sweet!

Went home and planned on getting some work done, but decided to use my free movie pass to go see Pirates of the Caribbean II. This is where the "feeling old" part starts to kick in.

Pirates is PG-13. Within 5 minutes of starting, we see someone's eye pecked out by a bird, and some time later a character is whipped viciously ala The Passion. I know I dont have kids yet. I know it will be awhile before I have to start making movie judgments for a teenager, but I have a very hard time thinking that I would be okay with my 13-year-old seeing this movie. My roommate commented, "Come on, by 13, they have played so many slasher video games and so much Grand Theft Auto, this stuff wont even phase them." Not my kids damnit! If I know one thing about the way that my sister and I were raised, not watching endless television and not playing hours and hours of video games made us into ambitious, top-of-the-class kids better prepared for social interactions through, well, having them. That is not even about violence, it is about having control over what sort of media, and how much of it, your child consumes... (I joked last night during the pre-previews at the THREE ads for football videogames: "If you're too lazy to get off the couch, too anti-social to join a team, and too fat to do the exercise, EA Games." Its fake football for Christ-sakes! Shouldnt we as a society be promoting kids to go play REAL football?!?)

Anyway, I am kinda unnerved that Disney can no longer be trusted not to push gruesome content onto kids just cause they can get away with it. The rating system has long been a joke, but a blockbuster movie made by Disney should have some sort of social responsibilty to it. Looking at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Office of Film and Broadcasting (where they do "family values" ratings), this movie is still rated appropriate for adolescents... maybe this means I am just a krumudgen. I have moved right past the Catholics. Shit. (Maybe I'd feel more comfortable in communist China: see why)

The other thing was that the movie kept me up past my bedtime. I didnt get in until about 12:30. Gasp! Today I am feeling physically old: sore from tennis, tired from the movie, and I cant see well cause my glasses are still being fixed. When did it become difficult to get up sober after 6 hours of sleep and function like a human being?

I did enjoy the movie though, at least the parts I didnt cover my eyes for...