But HOW is it going?!?

Friends,

It's getting old, how I keep taking a few months off from blogging only to come crawling back to you begging for your forgiveness, comments, and blog ideas. And so instead of groveling and pleading for those three things (but mainly the last two, if you wanted to know), I'm just going to forge ahead. 

And forging ahead, at the moment, is looking pretty exciting. I've accumulated some potential blog topics, and I'm ready to get back to more frequent Tangential adventures. And I should have plenty to write about, as I'm currently planning my wedding (which is, of course, a nicer-sounding way of saying that my fiancee is planning my wedding). I'll keep you posted soon on whether we plan to commit any of the cardinal sins of lame weddings: parts one two three.

But after such a long break, I think I need to ease back into the blogosphere. So I hope you'll join me as I inspect one of the least helpful phrases ever spoken by human beings since the dawn of verbal communication.


Answer my question!!!
With information that wasn't already implied by the existence of my question, punk

We often speak in pleasantries. "Small talk". I've gone on record that I don't really like this practice to begin with. But let's lay that argument aside. Small talk is a part of life. And occasionally, it's an annoying and baffling part of that life.

One of the most common questions when getting into small talk gear is, "How's it going?" While in this pure form the question is undeniably vapid (sorry, I forgot I was getting off that soapbox), the phrasing is often used for very real moments of inquiry:

How's the new job going?
How's it going living with your in-laws?
How's the crusade against "How's it going?" going?

These are real questions meant to initiate segments of conversation. But one common phrase, somehow only becoming more popular by the minute, stops these blossoming conversations dead in their tracks. In case you haven't Sherlocked it yet, I'm talking about

"Oh, it's going..."

Yeah, I know it's going. That's why I asked how it's going. Like, when you know there's something, but you want to know more about that thing, so you ask a question about it... that's not some secret way of asking if the thing exists.

How was the movie last night?
Oh, it was a movie...

What do you think of DiCarlo's pizza?
Oh, DiCarlo's has pizza...

What time is the baseball game?
Oh, the baseball game occurs at a time...

This is a total non-answer. Yeah yeah, I'll make a few concessions:

• Usually there's a widening of the eyes and a sad nod of the head accompanying this verbal waste of time. This, I think, is meant to imply that the thing in question is progressing in an intense or cumbersome way. But I'm not a mind-reader, people.
• Sometimes people do follow it up with real information. "Oh, it's going... my mother-in-law keeps making pointless small talk with me, so I try to spend a lot of time at the new job or eating DiCarlo's pizza during baseball games." But sometimes people don't even do this; they seriously just say that it's going. And even when they do elaborate, it makes the opening phrase pointless. It becomes just an annoying filler akin to "It is what it is" or "Can I ask you a question?"

"Tell me how you really feel."

Not sure if I stressed this enough: comments and blog ideas

Have you committed the grave error of saying "Oh, it's going..."?

Which everyday phrases bother you?

From an ESL website: "People who ask this phrase are usually trying to start a conversation."

The Curse of the Doppelganger

Friends,

[Disclaimer: it will be important for you to know that I'm totally fine with the way I look. I'm confident in who I am. Any stories I tell and jokes I make are in good humor and meant to entertain. But still, learn what you can, people.]

We all like to think that the little storylines in our lives are epic. That our crises are the stuff of legends. That our banter with our best friends is Gilmorian. One day the laughable words come out of our mouths: "They should make a movie of my life."

This, of course, gets the wheels turning about who would play us (and all the other key players in our legendary lives) in our movie. This celebrity looks like me, but this one has my personality, etc. We brainstorm about the best actors to portray our friends, enemies, and frenemies. And that's fine; don't get me wrong, those conversations are fun. Just one thing...

Don't put me in your movie.

You should be played by Poop-Face!
As far as I know, there's no celebrity named Poop-Face; but if there is, someone has likened him to me.

It's always fun that first moment when someone says, "You look JUST LIKE so-and-so!!" But I've found that in my experience, these words echo off the mountains of self-image and trigger an avalanche of despair.

It started in high school, when a girl told me I looked just like one of her friends. She even had a yearbook picture of the dude to prove to me the uncanny resemblance. I of course don't have an actual photo of the guy, but if my memory serves (and I think you'll see it does), he looked something like this:

But he was voted most likely to succeed!

Then I got to college. My Psych 101 TA was obsessed with the idea that I looked like a guy on a reality TV show. I didn't watch the show and didn't know what the guy looked like, but I had learned my lesson in high school-- just smile, say, "Ok, cool," and walk away. 

But alas, this TA was both a bad teacher of and a bad example of psychology, and she insisted that the similarity was so remarkable that it warranted a picture to be brought up on the projector screen. The celebrity was Mikey from American Choppers and this (left) is more or less what he looked like in 2003.

Now, ironically, as I've gotten bigger and beardier and he's gotten smaller and beardier over the years, we now do look pretty similar. But during my freshmen year, when I was going through my (awesome [don't argue with me]) phase of growing out my hair, our long blonde hair was the only resemblance.

I'll spare you the details of the many other times people have cut me to the core with their confidence that they'd found my doppelgangers. But I'll give you the most recent one, because it's what reminded me to blog about this and is probably the most horrendous cruelty of all. A guy recently asked me if I'd ever been told I look like fantasy author George R.R. Martin. "No," I said, "probably because no one knows what that guy looks like."

But the guy talking to me had the last laugh, because moments later I looked up the novelist on Wikipedia to find this:

Oh yeah! Back to imaginary movie-casting. Here's the challenge of trying to cast me-- I'm big, burly, bearded, bear-like, betc., and there just aren't really any actors who get famous looking like that. So it's hard to find a well-known actor who looks anything like me. This usually creates a funny moment, though, when people are rattling off look-alikes for others in machine gun style then get to me and furrow their brow. Maybe they've taken a break from the game to ponder the implications of time travel.

There are only two guys ever suggested for me: Zach Galifianakis and Kevin James. The former because he has a full beard and the latter, I think, because he's the largest famous actor since Chris Farley. I don't take offense to either one, but given how dissimilar I actually look to Kevin James, it does sort of smack of "you're both fat."

Both of those guys are hilarious, though, so it could be worse.

Okay, fine, let's play
But again, I insist we leave out Poop-Face


Who would you want to play YOU in a movie?

Jon