Muttroxia

So, what’s the big deal? A nice enough little movie, but poorly acted, poorly written, and far too long. Didn’t I see this already in My Big Fat Greek Wedding? (Which was well acted, well written, and the right length)

Now that I think about it, this wasn’t even a nice enough little movie.

The soccer was terrible. The few times that the soccer playing wasn’t being edited in, it was atrocious. I suppose that would have been okay if the whole point of the movie wasn’t how these two girls had a shot to get out of their ordinary lives and do something special because they were supposed to be so good at soccer. The only way they could be percieved as talented was because of the teams they played. Even on the climactic shot (‘pon whence the Beckhaminsian bending transpired), the goalie on the opposing team must have suffered a stroke, as she started on the completely wrong side of the goal, took two ponderous steps before a considered diving move which got her nowhere near the ball. Perhaps this team (which was in the final mind you) went by the “put the fat kid in goal” theory.

The acting was terrible. The lead was tolerable. The mother of her friend was tolerable. Hard to find anyone else who was any good. But to be fair, they didn’t have much to work with. Were any characters 3-dimensional? The leads were at least 2-dimensional, anyone else was likely to break 1.

I truly felt sorry for the other players on the soccer team. 9 girls who were not allowed to have personalities of their own, any life events of their own, even any reaction to the two star players in their midst. Whoops, that’s not totally true — one of them was allowed to shake her big breasts for no apparent reason. Normally I like that in a movie, but it just seemed weird in this one.

The sad part was how this movie took many of the worst parts of independent English movie making, and managed to throw in some of the worst parts of American cinema to complete it. To wit, the musical soundtrack. Martin Scorsese is allowed to use whatever music he wants. The man understands rock music, and understands how to use it correctly to enhance a scene. Cameron Crowe is allowed to use whatever music he wants. Wes Anderson is allowed to use whatever music he wants. Gurinder Chadha is not. Every 6 minutes without fail, new music would come blasting out. Not good music, not fitting music, not geared towards the movie, just music.

Maybe you have to be a 14-year old English female soccer player of Indian descent to be inspired. It must be me.

I hate tipping. Like Mr. Pink, I think the whole system is ridiculous. Like Mr. Pink, I bow to societal pressures and do it anyhow.

Growing up, the standard tip was 10%. Nowadays, it is between 15 and 20%. Has service gotten that much better? I think is has. But not that much. There is no connection between the tipping amount and service rendered. In many cases, I’ve seen the exact opposite phenomona. Servers who are so incompetent that they mess everything up, but seem so harried that they get big tips for “having such a tough night”.

One of my frustrations is an ability to use tips to reward or punish. Many meals I think the server does a great job, but the food was terrible. Or the food was great, but the server was terrible. Or both were good people, but the corporate systems they were obviously constrained by ruined the whole experience. There’s no way to designate where your tip money goes.

It is also not connected with how much work the server performs. Last night I ate at a fancy steak house, and the bill was $120. A standard percentage-based tip would be about $20. I have lunch often at a local pizza joint, the bill is just under $5. A standard percentage-based tip would be about $0.80. I do not think the server at the steak joint worked 25 times as hard as the waitress as the pizza joint. In fact, servers at fancy places often do less — they have separate employees to bus tables, get bread, refill drinks, bring your food.
Because of this, I use a sliding scale for tipping. I just don’t see how working at a fancy place entitles you to so much more money. So I give more at the cheap place, less at the expensive one. In fact, I usually give $1.25 at the pizza place (a 26% tip), and I tipped $13 last night (11%). The worker at the steak place still got over 10 times as much as the pizza waitress, mostly for wearing a nice looking suit. (Well, he did have one of those little scrapers to clean the tablecloth at the end of the meal. That’s always worth a couple o’ bucks from me.)

And the eternal question, what situations do you tip in? I remember when Howard Stern was informed you were supposed to tip gas station attendants who filled your tank. “Really? Seriously? Geez, who knew that?” was his take. It turned out everyone did know that except him. Hilarity ensued. In New Jersey, the law is that you can’t pump your own gas. (A truly weird law. How many problems are there with pumping your own gas? Most states seem to get along just fine.) So why would I tip this person, I didn’t even have a choice!
The same kind of incident happened to me recently at a carwash. The last stage involves a bunch of obviously illegal underpaid ethnics hand rubbing the car down. I got a dirty look when I got in my car and drove off. I was later informed that I was supposed to tip them. Why would I tip them, isn’t that what I paid for at the front desk? Why did I tip my moving people, isn’t that what I paid them for in the first place? What is the rule here — if there is any manual labor involved, they get tipped? I should be tipping my Desktop Support people at work, they are the ones who really have to do customer service.

I wish I could just opt-out. But sadly, the tables are rigged. Most of these people count on their tips for much of their wages. To strike a blow against the system is to strike a blow against the very people who are victimized by the system on an hourly basis. Sigh. And of course if anyone at your table has ever worked in the food industry themselves, you’d better tip. You had just better tip, fella! The whole system stinks. But it’s The Social Contract, there’s no way out. Did Rousseau get mad about tipping?

This blog is designed to be pseudo-anonymous. That means that I don’t post anything with my real name, or use the real names of personal acquaintices. However, anyone can figure out who I am in about 2 minutes with a little searching.

Aside from that, all you need to know is that I don’t use spellcheck. Spellcheck is for wusses. So you’ll see words misspelled, words like “acquaintance”. Deal with it.