All That Meets The Eye

I was never a big fan of the Transformers when I was a kid.  I guess I was a little too old to be interested in them when they came along.

(The blogger, on the eve of his 44th birthday, looks down at the Lego race car on his desk and realizes that his previous sentence may not be entirely accurate.)

Okay, maybe I wasn't too old.  It was more a matter of not having the feeling of intrigue in the whole concept.  On the one hand, I found the idea of the "transforming" quite interesting.  Seeing how you could design a robot to fold up into the shape of a car or plane or something was a fascinating spatial challenge.  Seeing how they did that gave me a joy that I now only get when unpacking Ikea furniture.

It's just after that which I didn't get.  Okay, these cars are now robots.  What do they do? Fight? That's it?  And yes, I know now that they have a big backstory.  But at the time you didn't really get that idea when the commercials just showed kids making up their own flimsy battle scenarios.

Speaking of made up flimsy battle scenarios - the movies.  I haven't seen them either, and once again, there may be a lot more to them, but the ads and the impressions of others seem to indicate that they don't really do anything but fight.  Sure, it's now in excruciating CGI detail instead of eight-year-olds waving their toys at each other, but it still doesn't draw me in.

And this is a bit off-topic, but can we spare a thought for the Go-Bots? The Pepsi to the Transformers' Coke have been ridiculed over the years, and largely left-out of eighties nostalgia. But it's hard to believe that in today's world where they make blockbusters on any pop-culture property, that no studio would take a chance on them.

Anyway, there's yet another Transformers movie coming out. And it looks like it's doubling-down on the concept of fights between giant robots that are inexplicably built out of a lot of really tiny, intricate parts.  That leaves me with a question - again, having not seen the movies - do the Transformers, you know, transform?  All they ever show is them in robot form fighting it out.  And since the battles are epic, destroy-everything-in-sight affairs, there doesn't seem to be much point in hiding.  I'm assuming that if you see a the aftermath of a Transformer battle, with a neighbourhood turned into a huge crater of destruction, and then notice a few undamaged cars in the middle, they aren't fooling anyone.

50-50 Relationships

There's been ads on TV for a dating site aimed at older people, called OurTime.  I was worried at first that I might be old enough for the service. The people on the ad all looked a little older than me, but then I remembered that people always see themselves as younger than they are, so they must be the same age as me.

But no reason to worry: it turns out they aim at 50+.  So I can continue to think of myself as young, while I strike out on mainstream dating sites.

I was also worried about how these people were talking about it:

• It's nice to be on a site where gentlemen are looking for someone my age.  Of course, referring to them as "men" or "guys" might help.
• You're matched with someone with the same likes and values.  Is there really a big cultural gap at age 50? Sure, there's a declining value placed on alcohol, but that happens fairly early in adulthood. On most issues, young people make more sense to me.
• I feel like I'm back in high school.  That was the real headscratcher.  Do they know how few people really liked high school?  Or did it occur to them that being lonely in adulthood may correlate with not doing well socially in high school. They then show a good-looking well-groomed man say that he got a "flirt" within minutes of joining, thus confirming that it is, in fact, just like high school. 

So it's a relief to know that I don't have to worry about the shortcomings of mature dating sites for a few more years, by which time I'm sure they will have fixed everything.

Ack! Knee!

I've heard older people make this complaint before, and now I have to admit I'm experiencing it too. It's the overlap between young-people health problems and old-people health problems.  One would think that there would be some interval in between when your body finally works properly and you can focus your worry on finding jobs and relationships.

But no, it doesn't work that way.  My knee has started hurting. I don't participate in any sports, so unless my St. Louis Rams fandom has caused Sam Bradford sympathy pain, I can only blame it on the suddenly cold and wet weather.  It doesn't get any older than joint pain and weather-predicting pain.

And yet, at the same time I'm experiencing that, I have acne. It still happens from time to time.  Most recently it became notable because of the location: on my nose, approximately one drinking glass width above my lips.  But finally I can say, at least it will distract people from my limp.

Loss Leaders And Dance Numbers

I have a counter to yesterday's post about how I've lost touch with fashion.  It's time for back-to-school sales again.  On the one hand, after more than a decade out of school, I am finally over the spastic twitch I used to experience every year when I got that first reminder that summer was scour to end.

But on the other hand, I'm still somewhat in-tune with youth culture, since I can still tell that stores' attempts to look cool to teenagers are pretty laughable.  In my day it was pretty easy, I guess.  You just put binder-paper on sale at 10¢ for a thousand sheets, and wait for the parents to come in and buy over priced binders and pencil crayons.  Now you're trying to sell electronics - and the parents don't understand them, so you have to appeal directly to the kids.  And that's how we end up watching teens dancing through school with laptops during commercial breaks.