Scandal Recap

Just like it was with The Game and Grey's Anatomy, I can tell what's popular on TV by checking Facebook statuses. It's kinda like watching a flock of birds. Right before a thunderstorm, there was a surge of statuses about someone named Huck. Close up the shutters because Scandal's on.

One of my friends tried to get me to watch it last year, but after looking at only one commercial I surmised that it was for women. A year went by and twenty seven women tweeted "OMG Fitz" and "Huck was set up" and I felt reassured that it wasn't for me. Then I found myself over the same friend's house about a month ago and, as soon as we walked through the door, she handed me an iPad. "Don't say anything, just watch this."

So the first thing I see is a bunch of people getting out of a limo to go to some gala or something. BAM! Some Asian lady gets shot. (internal dialogue: "Damn.") BAM! Some man gets shot. ("Is that a sniper?") BAM! Some other lady gets shot. "Holy shit! What is this?" I said that part out loud. She told me it was Scandal. If they'd put this in the commercials, I would've started watching it a long time ago.

With all that's happened in recent weeks it's very dangerous to write about my enjoyment of violence on television, particularly gun violence. I like it when it's fake, but not when it's real. (This CYA brought to you by, Ordaleco!) Anyway, the next few scenes involved some talk about rigging an election (Where have I heard that before?) and the main character sleeping with the President. I'm guessing one of those is the scandal. I enjoyed how Kerry Washington's character acknowledged the parallel between Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

I still wasn't certain that it was the show for me. I gave it another episode. Grey's Anatomy tricked me like that once. Somebody blew up inside a hospital and I was on board then the next show was nothing but people staring at each other teary eyed for 42 minutes. The next episode was even colder. I don't have any background on these people, but I'm assuming Huck is like a mentally challenged GI Joe/Jason Bourne type who stalks this random family for a sense of normalcy.

He meets some woman in AA or somewhere and she turns out to be a spy and sets him up for the president's assassination. Then the two of them decide to shack up. He changes his mind and tries to turn her in, so she murders the whole family of people that he likes and leaves a recording of him trying to set her up. <Insert Rick James> "That was coldblooded!" They had a new fan.

Then came yesterday. After being off for a few weeks for Christmas, I was eager to see what they'd blow up or shoot next. Nothing. They tortured Huck, but that's about it. Most of it was Kerry Washington running around. Then there was some nonsense about the First Lady and some other guy lying to the world that the President was awake and ready to retake office. It was like Weekend at Bernie's minus the dancing corpse. I think I've been duped.

Yesterday marked the first time I've watched something on TV since I cut the cord. Without DVR, I was forced to sit through commercials. When I think back, I realize that I never saw a single commercial for a pickup truck. That's the easiest way to determine the target demographic for a show. Don't believe me, think back to Oprah. Ever see a commercial for a Ford F150? Did you see a toilet paper commercial? There you go. Last night's commercials were for Quilted Northern, Tampax and cereal.
I've been duped.

Can't Buy Me Love

You know me, I'm all about giving roses while people can still smell them. I was on a website forum where someone asked readers to submit stories of the nicest thing a friend ever did for them. This is what came to mind:

Freshman year of high school was off to a very rough start. Those first few months are critical, in my opinion. That's where friendships are born and first impressions are made. In my case, nobody knew who the hell I was. I was awkward and by myself half of the time. All of the girls I liked had no interest in me whatsoever. Even my second round picks weren't interested.

So one day when I was having a really, really, REALLY bad day, we went outside and took a huge panoramic school photo. It was while standing outside for this that I caught the attention of this girl in the twelfth grade. As I'd learned earlier in the month, most of the assholes in the upper classes seek to dehumanize the incoming class by referring to them simply as "Hey Freshman!" So of course, when angry little me heard someone yelling from behind him, "Hey freshman, you ain't in Texas!" This voice, that I'd yet to match a face to, was referring to my Dallas Cowboys coat. People in DC see the logo (the star) as a target to throw insults (and sometimes bullets).

I turned around and saw what to this day remains the singular representation of puberty. My pupils dilated, heart raced and jaw dropped. At the time, I'd seen nothing more beautiful in my life. Her insults at that point were irrelevant. She was talking to me!!! (Be still, my heart) She rambled on about the Cowboys sucking (they did and still do) and other upperclassmen joined the fray. The next day, she came to me at breakfast and offered a semi-apology acknowledging that it was probably an embarrassing and potentially emotionally scarring way to start high school. She said that she would make it up to me.

She sat down and ate breakfast with me. At lunch, she came to my table and, in front of all my irrelevant freshman friends, batted her eyes and asked me why I was sitting with "all these guys" and not over at the table with her. We ate lunch together, to the intrigue of a few of my friends. This went on for a few days. Then one day she asked me to walk with her to the subway and we passed a bunch of girls from my class that I liked. Being the haters in training that they were, I heard em cackling amongst themselves, "Watch this. Ordale, is that your boo?"

To my surprise, and most certainly theirs, she turned around and said, "What do you think and why do you care?" Not technically an answer, but it was better than an ego-deflating, "Hell, no this freshman isn't my boyfriend!" My memory gets hazy after that, because I was in heaven at that moment, but I THINK she held my hand and said something along the lines of, "Go get your own man." She said it jokingly, so they didn't get offended. And the way it was presented, they couldn't really tell if she was really with me or not.

As a 30 year old, all of this sounds silly. I know people who had kids by 14, so the fact that I was excited that some 12th grader held my hand just highlights how much of a late bloomer I was. The point is that, when she said she was going to make it up to me, I wonder if that's what she had in mind. In that moment, I became relevant. Now I'm not gonna lie and say that my life became an Axe commercial, but, in keeping with the whole "my second round picks weren't interested" analogy, let's just say that I started to get some letters of intent.

In a way, she endorsed me. It was like a radio promo. "Hey, I'm a 12th grade girl and when I'm not kicking it with guys my age, I listen to Ordale J Allen." Beyond the whole "it helped me get girls" thing, it was nice to have someone help me navigate the social and political mess that is high school. And for that, I'm forever grateful.

Keep the Lottery to Yourself

Are you kidding me!?

I don't know how much you fine folks follow the news, but per CNN.com a nice fellow won a million dollars in the lottery out in Chicago and died a month later. Although initially ruled "natural causes," following the insistence of an anonymous relative, a further investigation deemed it a homicide by cyanide poisoning.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I'm not telling a single soul when I win (AOL KEYWORD: WHEN). I'm not even telling my wife. The first thing she's gonna do is go to work the next day, which in and of itself makes no sense to me. We had this conversation a long time ago when NC finally got a lottery and she said something along the lines of, "I'd still work." Depending on how I feel at that moment, I might be so inclined to at least call and tell them I'm not coming back. But to actually go in and do stuff...please.

Anyway, she'll go to work and then she'll tell someone. She's from The South and still believes in the kindness of strangers, hope for mankind and all of that jazz. I've tried to shake her off that whole "happiness" thing, but it's stuck. She's the kind of person who shows up to work in the morning smiling and singing sans-coffee. Weird. The next thing you know, someone's gonna be holding her for ransom and my little bit of money will be gone. So, she can't know.

I'm signing my ticket, taking a picture with it, putting it in a Zip-loc bag, then putting that bag inside a CD Jewel Case and then putting that inside a fireproof safe. Then I'm gonna stand watch in front of that safe all night with a shotgun. The next day, I'm calling a lawyer and having him go with me to a better lawyer who will set up a blind trust so that we can claim the ticket anonymously.

Days will go by and you'll keep getting the same Broke Phi Broke blog posts that you're used to, but they will ever so slowly diminish in quality. That's because I'm gonna write about a year's worth of them during that night that I'm sitting up with the shotgun standing guard. The next thing you know, there will be a message saying the domain name for this site has expired and you'll just be left to wonder if things got so bad financially that I couldn't scrape together $10 to renew the domain.

I'll tell my wife that I applied to a job for her. A few days later she'll get a call from some actor who'll direct her to an office space that I will have rented out and staffed with other actors. She'll accept the job that she gets and have a going away party at work. I'll offer to drive her to her new job for her first day and we'll go straight to the airport. We'll fly away to a beach somewhere and figure out a lie to tell our friends and family, because I don't trust them either. lol

The Expo

My head hurts. I went to a charter school expo at the convention center Saturday which served no purpose whatsoever. Every school said the same thing. "We have a play-through-learning approach. We cater our lessons around the kids' needs. We have an aftercare program." Just once I want someone to be honest and say, "I hate children. I took this job because of the recession. We need your child for the tax dollars."

I started judging the schools based on factors that make no sense whatsoever. One school had a really nice display and handed out fact sheets on bond paper. They were handing out Reese Cups and M&Ms.  The woman I spoke with seemed very proper and well to do, while the other three people just stood behind the desk and let her talk. I scratched them off my list. I know all too well what it's like to put the ace out in front and let them carry the team. Plus, if you have money to print stuff out on bond paper at a public school then something is amiss.

The school next to them had a display that looked like they found out about the expo that morning. It was an old science fair project board that was in the same condition as one of those beat up boxes you get from Costco to carry your stuff out to the car. They had handwritten messages from the kids that I couldn't read because the kids' handwriting looked like Sanskrit. They were handing out that church candy with the wrapper that looks like a strawberry. All of the people ran up to talk to me because I made the mistake of making eye contact with them. They kept asking questions about my daughter and passing me from person to person so that I could meet this person who teaches X and that person who runs the aftercare program. They made my list. They seemed kid-centric and reminded me of teachers I had growing up.

So now that we know which schools made the playoffs, it's time to move on to open houses where I can see some of the teachers in their natural habitat. Of course they'll all say the same thing, so I'll be checking out little things in my own Sherlock Holmes way. I'll take pictures of the chalkboard and have their handwriting sent to the lab for a personality assessment.There are seven open houses that I plan to go to over the next two weeks. Then, we'll move to the conference finals...School Tour during a regular day.

Sadly, none of this will mean much as it all comes down to a lottery. To be continued...

 

McPig

If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were telling me that, in order to make sausage, all they do is just grate up a pig. Actually, now that I think about it, that sounds about right.

Cutting the Cord...Again

You know, I often find myself revisiting the past, 2007-2008 to be specific. That's the era that historians refer to as The Financial Renaissance. It was during this time in a little state called North Carolina that my credit was born. A strapping young lad, it grew quickly because I fed it nothing but disposable income. It would later die a horrible fiery death in a tiny overpriced town called Washington, DC, but let's not dwell on the negative.

I remember a phone call I had back then with the cable company. I can't remember exactly what it was about. Perhaps I forgot to mail off a payment and they were charging me a late fee. Whatever it was, I just remember saying something along the lines of, "It's only $20. I'm not going to get all up in arms about it. I'll know next time though." Back then I could say silly things like that. Fast forward to today and a much poorer me is on the phone with the cable company feeling like Claude McKay:
Like men, we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack
Pressed to the walls, dying.
But fighting back!

I'm ready to go to war over this $23 increase in my cable bill. They just mailed me a new price as if it was okay. No heads up or anything. I opened the bill and there it was: "Hey, your cable is now $23 more. No, they're no new features. You still have to watch commercials. Yeah, the Tivo is still set up so that you have to pass the beginning of your show by like 15 seconds or else it'll snap back into the commercials you're trying to bypass. Huh? Can we cut you a deal? We can cut it off. That's about it."

Back to our history lesson. We were all sad to see the Financial Renaissance come to an end, but it gave birth to a new era, The Age of Discovery. If necessity is the mother of invention then "being broke" is its father. I learned how to cook during the new era, so much so that I actually prefer my own food over the restaurant quality fare that I was trying to replicate. I didn't really know what "open source" was until my computer crashed and I couldn't find the product keys for any of my programs. That's when I became aware of GIMP, OpenOffice, Kompozer, etc. It's also when I discovered Yelp Elite (free food and booze), Film Metro (free movie premieres) and several marketing research firms that pay me $75 to $200 a pop to give my opinion on things.

The point of all of this is that I see RCN's latest price increase as a challenge. My bill was $80 a month two years ago. This new one is $135. A novice would pay it. No, that's not right. A fool would pay it. A novice would try to see what Comcast is offering. I'm a doctoral degree candidate in being broke and for my dissertation I'm canceling my cable, installing MythTV and a TV Tuner on the Mac Mini that's hooked up to the big TV, which will give me my own subscription-free DVR. As for the cable channels, I only watch the Food Network, HGTV and Comedy Central. All of those have PLEX channels, which is already on my computer.

-Dr. Ordale J Allen
Brokeologist

 

Technology Dependent...There's An App For That

A few weeks ago I wrote a very heartwarming piece about giving my wife my iPhone 4 when her's died. It was very nice, people wept and love won. One day someone will write a song about it, I'm sure. At the time, I thought it was no big deal. I'm a child of the 80s after all. I grew up with the modern day equivalent of tin cans and a string. Surely I don't need a smartphone to function in society.

Those were the longest two weeks of my life. Every time I came home I felt like I emerged from a cave or something. I needed a fix, another hit, from the internet. It didn't take long to grovel at the feet of an Apple employee and get a new phone. What happened to me? You have to understand that it took a feat of Hercules to get me to buy a cellphone in the first place. Electronic leashes, I used to call them. I got my first one in 2002 at the behest of my girlfriend at the time. I went to the Sprint store where one of their sea-witches made me sing into a seashell in exchange for a phone and the contract from hell.

Back then you got like 25 daytime minutes and 18000 night minutes. The only thing I hated more than the overage charges was the notion of being readily accessible to everyone. I enjoy my freedom and constantly being asked "Where are you? Can you do ____?" got old real quick. After going over my minutes for the third straight month, I called to cancel. The sad thing is that the termination fee was actually less than my average monthly bill.

Fast forward to today and I don't know what happened. I think it has less to do with the phone functionality and more to do with everything else. My wife and I have shared a 700 minute phone plan for the last eight years and have never gone over. We don't talk much on them. At first I thought the 80s baby thing made me impervious to the need for a high tech gadget. Now I realize that it's because of that era that I cling to it for dear life.

I grew up watching Penny on Inspector Gadget talk to Brain on her prototype iPad-book-thingamajig. Back then five-year-old-me was just happy to play with a solar powered calculator. "I wonder what happens when I put my finger over the solar panel. Oooh, it cuts off!" Minor leaps in technology from Tiger LCD Handheld games to Gameboy were viewed as milestones that wouldn't be exceeded until long after I was gone. The idea that not only would things get better, but they would be merged into one singular device was unfathomable. I mean, yeah it's a $500 phone but it's also a digital camera, a video camera, a calculator, word processor, voice recorder, portable video game console, music player, etc, etc, etc.

Do you understand that I would've sold half of my internal organs as a child for a digital camera? Am I the only person who remembers taking PERFECT pictures at school only to wait a week for "Peoples Drug Store" (CVS) to develop them and find out that the flash was off, my finger was in the way or it just looks bad? I remember when I first saw a digital camera. "You mean you can see the picture before you get it developed!!! How many kidneys does it cost? I probably should keep at least one, but I'll try to make do without them."

I have a lifetime of memories that no one could afford to rent a video camera for me to record. Now there's one on my phone. I can't even remember the last time I held a CD in my hand, let alone wiped one with alcohol and prayed that the laser could read through the braille-like scratches on the bottom. Every song I own is on my phone. My five favorite movies are on my phone. The video of my daughter's first steps is on my phone. It may be sad that we've gotten to a point where we feel we need to carry all of this around with us, but frankly I don't care. I enjoy it and I think I've earned that right.