bostonman

Commercials for the app "cargurus." (Which is a rotten name because it's really awkward to pronounce - it should, I assume, be "Car Gurus," but it naturally wants to sound like "cargaroos" which means nothing. Sounds like a car crossed with a kangaroo, lol.) The original commercial was cute in its own way, if a bit sexist (but still cute) - the husband has gone through hell to figure out what kind of car to get - the wife comes in, uses the app, finds the right car in seconds. She walks away, proud - he grumbles sarcastically ("I guess we'll do it your way...") - we hear her say from the other room, "I heard that..." As I said, cute. Which isn't bad. Worth a smile. Kinda charming. But now they have this same couple - all this time later - doing a new series of ads. I've seen two of them now in the last few days, and they are terribly boring. And I think that the problem is that neither "character" really has any personality. What made the original ad fun was the situation and the stock "battle of the sexes" joke. The new ads don't seem to have any of that. They fall totally flat. Epic fail.

One of the shocks for me was one of the men - I believe this was Wade on the Oprah follow-up - was saying how he just never saw this as sexual abuse when it was happening. I guess what we tend to think is that boys (and girls, for that matter) who go through this do know exactly what's going on, it's just that they're too afraid, or full of guilt/shame/etc, to be able to take action and tell someone, or otherwise get out of it. Or, even if they're somehow drawn to the sex, to know on some very strong level that it's wrong. Or even to just use the stardom as an excuse for not topping it, etc. But to hear him say that he didn't see it that way at the time - that he didn't understand that it was abuse - that was unexpected. Though now it does make me wonder how often that's the case. How many youths in this situation mistake the abuse for real love, with no idea that anything is wrong about it, except perhaps for the proviso that it all be kept incredibly secret? Scary.

Hell - for me, this one could BE the armpit section all by itself lol. (But, always grateful for the myriad of choices we've collected here!)

Forgive me for the puns - it's that kind of day, I fear... I think I read about paradigm shifts, but I Kant remember where. "Once I built a railroad, now I'm done... Brother, can you paradigm?"

Actually, the use of "ask me" in all such form-filling contexts is rather stupid. The form/survey/etc IS asking you, and you're not giving an answer. The fact is, you don't want to be asked that question, and you don't want to answer it.

Thank you. I realize that this is a truly impossible thing to describe as I felt it - and believe me, if I had felt more comfortable with the guy as I perceived him, I might have tried to keep the conversation going, etc. But in the moment, it felt so bizarre (and truly not safe) that I did the only thing that made sense - to get out of there as gracefully as I could. Who knows what he wanted? Who knows what he thought? I'd love to think this was all some sort of innocent misunderstanding, but all I could think about at the time was "this isn't right." In the meantime, thank you all for your thoughts, pro and con. And the next time I take an uber from that area, I'll find a better spot to wait for it.

Context is everything. I can't say more than "you had to be there." But what I experienced didn't feel like a simple hello nor breaking the ice. I've experienced simple hellos and simply breaking ice. This wasn't that. Nor was this some "meet cute" moment out of Hollywood or a "some enchanted evening" thing. You weren't there, I was. I'm sorry.

I actually did a paper on this phenomenon, for a college linguistics class. The gist is that as humans, we're inherently uncomfortable with silence as we speak, so we tend to "cover" moments by putting in syllables like "um..." - and the habit of prefacing our speech with words like "so" is related to that. (It's a way to start the thought without actually getting there yet.) I think you'll find that it happens many places other than MSNBC.

Problem is, "fun" IS an adjective as well as a noun. What surprises me, as I was looking up dictionary definitions, is to find out that it can also be a verb. Oxford has the example "no need to get sore, I was only funning." Ick.

That's a good question, and I'd have to give it some thought. But I tend to doubt I'd want to deal with him. Travis69 may have a point in that it could have been someone who had noticed me before, and was nervous - but I also don't necessarily think that's true. Yes, the encounter was awkward, but he wasn't like some blushing schoolboy trying to talk to a crush. Something in the way he behaved seemed just a bit too calculated and slick. I'm also not sure I would recognize him again out of that context. Which means he'd have to initiate the whole thing all over again, and I would tend to think that he already got the signal that I wasn't interested. I'd prefer that I don't run into him.

Ha! I suppose many of us could use that advice, and often, lol.

Thank you for the respect. How would he have even known I was gay? I guess you would have had to have been there to feel how awkward this whole thing was. I’m sorry that you felt the need to say things the way you did.

And you bring up another point. How many times have we all gone into a coffee shop, or a store, etc, to find a very attractive clerk - but how many of us would dare break what I think is a basic protocol to comment on their looks, or to make a pass beyond that? I've certainly known some hot baristas at Starbucks, but I'm not the type to try to ask one out as I order my coffee, lol.

I have to say that a lot of this has gone through my mind. Since he didn't actually try to make any physical move towards me, I don't know that I truly feel "violated," but I suppose I could be, in the way that a woman feels when whistled at out of the blue, etc. For me, the shock of it all was more in the abruptness and randomness of the moment - indeed, had this been at a gay club or resort or other more obvious place it wouldn't have bothered me at all. (I did have an experience in Boston's notorious "Fens" back when I was a college student - there are definitely cruising spots in the city. This wasn't one, lol.) The fact that "you're handsome" happened even before any real sense of smalltalk was not only surprising but disarming - like, what was I supposed to say back to that? Just strange. And, you know, it's a shame - because if he really saw something he liked, and if he had really given me a moment to take him in as a person before going on the attack, maybe he would have caught my interest. I'm sure we've all had something like that happen - you start a friendly polite conversation with a stranger you're sitting with on a train, or in some public setting, and maybe you start wishing you could get to know him better, etc. But, this guy acted like a predator, and I couldn't respond to that in any way except to get out of there. No regrets, no fantasies, no looking back (except to say WTF? lol). But, after having related to a few of my students earlier that evening what a strange day I had been having, this was the ironic capper to it all.

I'm sure you're joking, lol, but I have no students named Paul, and besides, he was definitely an adult male. To be honest, I could barely tell if he was hot - we were both in heavy winter clothes. He seemed to have a nice face, I think. But he couldn't see me all that well either - so again, where the "handsome" comments came from I don't know.

In a day where a number of odd, out of the usual, things happened to me, this one takes the cake, lol, and I just had to share. I'm done with work, and given the cold weather and my desire to get home, I decided to hire an Uber rather than to take the subway. (I indulge in this occasionally lol.) I would have a 5 minute wait for the cab. I waited in a usual "safe spot" nearby - under the lighted marquee/overhang of the college theatre complex I work in. Occasionally, when I wait there, some of my students or faculty colleagues will pass by, along with anyone else passing by on the sidewalk. None of them tonight, but then, a man approached me. He said hi, I said hi back - and I'm already trying to figure out if I know him or not - but I don't think I do. He seemed very friendly, though, as if we did. He said something else to me that I can't remember, but it prompted me to ask, awkwardly, if I knew him. (He was an adult - he could have been a faculty member I had met briefly or something.) He extended his hand, said his name was Paul, and I shook his hand and told him my first name. It was clear that I did not know him - I don't remember anyone named Paul that he reminded me of. I should also mention that it's a cold winter night and we're both bundled up in our coats. And there is light around us, but not all that much, by the theatre doorway. This is also a busy city street, not some secluded area. Then he says, unmistakably, out of the blue, "you're very handsome." :eek: Awkwardly, my instinct had me come up with a "thanks." But this was damn weird. He started asking me where I was from - did I live in Boston, etc. I mumbled something, trying to get out of this - and he then repeated that he thought I was very handsome. At which point, I started walking away and said goodnight. He said goodnight in return (and mentioned my first name as well) and that was the last I saw of him. And it wasn't long before my uber showed up and I was on my way home. So here I am, humbly an average looking guy with too much belly lol, being picked up by some random man in the middle of a busy downtown Boston street on a very cold winter night. WTF?? Of course, all those afterthoughts appeared in my head - what if I had gone along with his flirting and seen where this could have led? Maybe he was a nice guy after all. But no - his approach was so strange that I can't imagine it would have been safe to pursue this with him. DID he know me somehow? From where? Or did he really just try to pick up a stranger in the oddest of places? Was this something he did often, maybe trying to snag some vulnerable college kids? What the hell was all this? I know I made the right decision to get away from him...but the whole thing has left me rather weirded out. Especially given the weather and all that. (Like, what a weird night to be cruising lol.) This was not a place I'd expect to be approached like that - and to be honest, I'm not the kind of guy that naturally does get approached like that. Just...so...fucking...strange...

I disagree. If anything, this telecast showed that there's absolutely no real need for a host. And notice that the whole thing STILL ran late. As always, there were high points and low points, lol. The overall pacing felt slow a lot of the time. I don't think this broadcast was appreciably better or worse than any other year, IMO. @Smurof - one of the oddest moments to me was when composer/pianist Marc Shaiman was at the piano while Bette Midler sang the "Mary Poppins Returns" song. A nice performance to be sure - but what was he doing there? I'm only aware of a little bit of very simple piano playing at the top of the song - but never one moment in the song where he was actually featured. It was like he was only there for the visuals - which makes no sense to me. If you're going to have a piano onstage (played by the composer of the song in question, to boot), why not give the guy a moment to shine? (Contrast that with the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper performance, for example - which for many reasons was a true highlight of the evening.)

I saw the Boston incarnation of the London production last season. With the exception of the actor playing the central character (Frank), I thought it was a terrific cast, and though I didn't agree with some of Maria Friedman's directing choices, I thought on the whole the show worked quite well. The main problem was the set, which featured this huge distracting vacuous white wall in the middle of the playing space - one of the worst, most boring set designs I've ever seen. A colleague of mine in the know told me that the design was never actually finished (no joke) - and what they were left with was that awful white wall.

I'm not a major tat guy, but sometimes I do find them hot. I could definitely see myself wanting to trace that "86" with my tongue when it wasn't buried in his pit hair lol.

I'm not sure why the so-called original cast recording was brought up either - but it is an interesting example of contractual stupidity. Merman should have been able to join her castmates and do a proper OCR - certainly recording artists are granted such permissions all the time. The powers that be at Decca were being assholes, IMO. I believe it was a similar issue that caused Teresa Stratas to not appear on the cast recording of Rags, though in that case, they got Julia Migenes, who was very similar in operatic "fach" to Stratas, and is a wonderful replacement. I can't really say the same for Dinah Shore subbing in for Merman - their approaches are so very different, even if Shore certainly tries her professional best.

If the Times is right, it's a shame - Encores has rarely encored one of its own productions, and it makes me wonder why they chose to do this with an inferior cast/production. (I agree that the recording of the Tyne Daly production is quite good.)

I had forgotten that Richard LaGravenese (not "LaGravanese" as in the article) was writing the screenplay for the Streisand version. I taught his daughter in college (class of 2013). Do we really need another Gypsy film?

Have the congressional pages gone up that much?? :eek:

They most certainly did use the song. In the storm scene where Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote it to be. (For the film, "My Favorite Things" went to the storm scene - not nearly as effective - and "Goatherd" got relegated to that shoehorned marionette show moment - a place in the film I always find myself tuning out because it has no relevance to anything. The original point of "Goatherd" in the storm scene was that Maria was playing a game with the kids that if they sang LOUD enough, they could beat the storm's noise. Cues for the sounds of thunderclaps are actually written into the music.) My problem with that production wasn't so much Carrie Underwood by herself (frankly, I thought she sang well enough) - it was the overall awkward stiffness that affected almost every member of the cast, perhaps save Audra McDonald. It had to have been the most boring and cardboard version of The Sound Of Music ever done. Absolutely joyless.

This is why I don't tend to hire visiting escorts all that often, especially if they're only in town for a few days. I figure that with a local escort, even if they also have busy schedules, we can try to find a time when he won't be necessarily running from one appointment to the next. With a visitor on a tight schedule, I would not only assume but expect that he'll be seeing a lot of people, and I'm just one more. And at this stage of the game, I'm willing to go for 250, but 300 still makes me hesitate. I do dream of the day when the ultra-conservative wave we're in relaxes enough that sites will feel comfortable allowing rates back in the ads again. (Yes, I know Friendboy does that.) Seeing the rates used to be a tremendous guide in selecting the guys I'd want.