MonWednesday Comments

Ahhh, and we’re back.  I’ve been working odd shifts again and sleep is elusive.  It’s normally during these little hell-weeks that I’m off-line and away from the keyboard.  I enjoy these little respites from the internet.  Especially during election season.  Oh my are you people insane.  Some of you attach all your hopes and dreams on one man and close your eyes.  You’ll follow him into Hell if that’s where he leads you.  No one is perfect, neither is the system.

There, that’s the extent of my political opinions I’m willing to express in public for now.  If you’re wondering where all my opinions on the current or upcoming politicians are, they’re not here.  Or on FaceBook, or anywhere you’ll read them.  I’m not a political commentator.  I don’t fall in line with either of the major parties.  Little of column A, little of column B, mostly just my own thoughts.  Many of which are not politically viable…  How awesome would it be to run for President on a platform of, “You won’t re-elect me but I’ll do my best in the time I have”?

Maybe that’s just the sleep-dep talking.  It’s a strange thing having worked half the week but coming in for the first “real time” on a Wednesday.  Like the week has only begun but it’s a half week.  Midnight shifts somehow don’t count.

Sometimes I wish for a job where I work in an office, M-F 9-5 and no call-outs.  Weekends off the cell-phone leash, able to visit people/places without wondering if I’ll have to leave early.  Able to make plans without the caveat of “If I don’t have to work”.  This weekend I had rather special plans at 4pm.  At 2pm I got called out… to Albany, GA four hours away!  Luckily the problem resolved itself without a dispatch but this is the kind of constant stress I live in…

Baby steps man, it wasn’t long ago that you just wanted a job, ANY job, that got you off the road.  Take it slow.  It’s sad, office drones fantasize about being important, I fantasize about being an office drone.

Adventure, excitement, a fat-man craves not these things…

I didn’t write down my smart-ass play-by-play notes on HP 4, 5 or 6. I thought my comments were funny, others take this shit way too serious. But a couple of you said you were disappointed that I gave in so I went ahead and took notes for the last two movies. This post is exceptionally long. If you’re the type that loves Harry Potter so much that me poking a little fun at it would bother you, move on, there’s nothing to see here today…

Friday, 1-20-12 8pm: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

• The new Minister of magic looks familiar. If only Crispin Glover were British.
• Harry looks younger here than he did in the last movie.
• What. The. Fuck. was that intro all about?
• Ya know, maybe if ValDeMorte went to a plastic surgeon for that nose…
• What’s with the wands? Why are they so scared? If Hitler said, “Hey, I’m going out to kill FDR, I need one of your Lugers.” I imagine half the room would offer theirs.
• The flashback to Dumbledore falling just reinforced how much he looks like Gandalf when he fell.
• Will Dumbledore the Grey return as Dumbledore the White during the final battle?
• One sip of Polypotion is enough? I though they had to drink more than that before.
• Having Hagrid as the protector of the “real” Harry is fucking stupid. Why bother with the subterfuge then?
• So, I missed something, why aren’t the bad guys watching the house?  Oh, so we can get a nice air-battle scene. Fighting on the ground would have been too ordinary?
• If you’re going to do the MIB tunnel scene I want an Elvis soundtrack.
• The baddie killed Harry’s owl, smiled, and flew away… Why didn’t he take a second shot AT THE TARGET?
• But you didn’t make the other guy answer an imposter-proof question.
• And the bad guys don’t know where the Weasels live either? Bad record-keeping at that school.
• I put my soul in seven WhoreCrotches once. Most expensive night of my life.
• “He left you his deluminator, may it show you the light in the darkest of times…” Is Galadriel just off-screen playing Cyrano?
• What we need right now is the evil bad guys crashing the wedding party.
• Holy shit, how many new characters are you going to cram in here!?
• Aaaaannnd queue the baddie wedding crash… Have I been surprised once in 7 movies? Once?
• She had the Mary Poppins purse in earlier films dude, why are you so surprised at it?
• The shootout at the diner was pretty damn cool!
• If Obliviate exists, why do they kill? Why not simply have an “executioner” that obliviates the bad guys and lets them start over?
• Ah yes, his full name on the door giving you the initials RAB, where as the other door simply said “Sirius”. No last name, no middle name…
• I know I made a joke about Dobbie and Gollum but this other elf (Creature?) is lunging for the locket and changes his voice, gets angry when he talks about it (precious), talks about himself in 3rd person. He really IS Gollum…
• I thought that bitch got gang-raped by Centaurs.
• “Magic is Might” Sooo 1984 and they wasted John Hurt in a one shot in the 1st movie.
• Right, out of the thousands of employees at the Ministry of Magic, the one I encountered just happens to be the one on the front page of the newspaper that just happens to be on the floor right here…
• Oh my god, I FINALLY understand the bathroom stall graffitti that says “Enter the Ministry of Magic” with an arrow pointing to the bowl. I thought it was some glory-hole jargon…
• We need to do the cartoon trick of knocking people out and impersonating them. So the first people they come across is a group of three. A ginger, a brunette and a woman; just like the three of them. How convenient.
• Just so I know, we ARE going with the “Nazi/Jews” thing with the Muggles and Mudbloods?
• Distracting the Min of Magic with smoke/horn bombs seems kind of like pulling out a water pistol to hold up an NRA meeting.
• I’m not into “Magic the Gathering” but those cards look very collectible…
• The creatures that were vaporous flying demons a second ago are now stopped by a gate that I could get my entire fat arm through?
• They lie on the ground after escaping to the woods… wouldn’t you worry about one of the hundreds of people searching for you taking the same escape route you took? Maybe hide behind a tree for a few minutes until it looks like you’re safe?
• Unless you’re TRYING to go Lord of the Rings, why else would you insist on wearing the precious around your neck? Especially when you are noticing it makes people cranky and irrational (just like the ring did)
• Okay, I’m glad I didn’t see this in a theater. When she said, “Take it off” in that tone of voice, I actually hollered out, “Oh yeah!”
• We’ll take turns wearing the ring (Just like Sam and Frodo)
• Oh my god damn, will you people get the fuck out of the woods already?
• Harry, it’s bros before hoes dude, you can’t work Herminy like that.
• And Ron pops back in just as Harry and Herminy kiss in 3…2..1… … … Ahhh, I was wrong! For once they didn’t go with the obvious… Someone call M. Night Shamaling, alert the press!
• Overhead shot, pan down over the footsteps in the snow and reveal the kids standing there. Make sure you get that lightpost in the frame. There, now we can finally finish our camera work on “Narnia”. Dude, this is Harry Potter. Oh. Shit. Just stick it in anyway, no one but some cynical fat-ass will notice.
• The old buildings, the empty snowy streets, the “fakeness” of the set. I’d pay a dollar to have someone throw open a window and yell, “Boy, do you know the poulterers on the corner, the one with the prize goose?”
• Yeah, we get it Batman, no parents. You’ve told us this at least twice in every movie. Can we move on now…?
• He’s 17. The attack happened 17 years ago. And the burned out husk of a house is still standing? Must be “magic” snow that doesn’t melt into water and seep into the wood rotting the house from the inside out. No sense of prime real-estate in the Potter universe is there? I barely believed it in Forrest Gump, that place was in the middle of nowhere. This place looks rather centrally located.
• When she started shaking and wailing, why is Harry doing anything OTHER than killing that old woman? She gave him a clear five second warning and he just stood there… Herminy didn’t trust her. You live in a world where everyone has magic wands, You’ve been fooled by polypotion on a number of occasions and in fact have over-relied on that same potion to further your own plot… Why would you trust ANYONE in that world?
• Mother fucker! Back in the goddamn woods again!?
• If you insist on sitting in the woods for two hours, I will insist you shut the fuck up when I mention that that’s all they did in “The Two Towers”, you know, that LORD OF THE RINGS MOVIE!?!
• If the sword appears when it is needed, why the search and why under a fucking lake? Why not just appear in his goddamn hand?
• That bitch has got tents, changes of clothes, condoms… everything in that bag. Maybe should have thought of packing some of that gillyweed we saw earlier so Harry could get the sword without almost dying.
• Hey, um, not for nothing Dark Lord and all but what was the point of goading Ron like that? If you had stopped fucking with him about halfway through, maybe threw in a line about killing Harry, maybe we would have gotten what we wanted. But you were having so much fun with your nude Harry/Herminy puppet show that you pissed him off until he struck it with that giant fucking sword he was holding and defeated the actual purpose of getting “in his head”.
• Teresa’s right, in these scenes Herminy looks just like Bella from Twilight.
• “It’s only a 10 inch wand, nothing special” All three of us in unison responded “That’s what she said!” We’re a fucked up family.
• This “Tale of Three Brothers and the Deathly Hallows”… Very cool. I could have watched that all day long. They should make a short film about that, I’d watch it. Unless they tried to split it into eight movies…
• Ron’s showing some brains, don’t be here when the old man gets back. … And Ron was right. Late, but right.
• Dobbie sounds like that creepy pedophile from Family Guy. Also, the CGI looks fucked up. Did they hit the uncanny valley? Because it looked better in the last movie we saw him in. Now he just looks… fake.
• Maybe that sledgehammer to the forehead would have hit me a little stronger if the “Mudblood” on her arm had been a tattoo… In blue ink…
• Seven people just went into a portal, she threw a knife after them. Who’s it going to hit? Well it’s got to be the guy who just made the rousing speech of being free and unafraid.
• Yup.
• Where the fuck did they get a shovel? She packed “the essentials” in the Mary Poppins purse but how does one decide a shovel is “essential”?
• Nice, he’s grave robbing but he has time to role-play from his childhood, “By the power of GreySkull!”

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Alright, that’s it for Part 1. We took a small break, I got a bowl of cereal and went right on with Part 2.

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• Starts with a clip show. Nice. More Master of the Universe comments.
• Yes I am an unusual wizard, I’m the new world order!
• Ha! I’ve been saying for 6 damn movies that Snape has got to be a good guy! Six damn movies and FINALLY he’s getting some screen time, finally I’m vindicated. Of course, I expected he’d turn out to be Harry’s real father but they keep saying how much he looks like James so… I guess I’ll be wrong on that. But at least Hans Gruber is a good guy!
• Now? Now you bring John Hurt back in? And he’s playing the frail old man straight out of Indy4?
• Okay fuckit, Ron looks pretty damn cool in that henchman getup. (Just after writing this, Teresa says the same thing but uses “hot” instead of “cool”)
• Bank vault ride. Part of the Universal ride? How could it NOT be?
• Barbaric?! How do YOU propose we keep a dragon? PITA bitch, I’ll bet she tries to free the dragon doesn’t she?
• If everything multiplies at the rate those first ones split, that room should have filled up much quicker than that. Especially after they started “swimming” in them.
• Herminy saves the day by opening the garbage chute and telling Han and Chewbacca to get in.
• Teresa and Becca just “awwwed” at setting the dragon free. How do we know this isn’t some rampaging demon of a dragon who was serving time like a prison sentence? Good going Ron, Harry and Herminy; you’ve just set a serial killer free! Hundreds of innocent children will be killed because of your actions. Happy now?
• Bullshit, he looks nothing like Dumbledore. Robes, beard… that’s about it.
• For an educated girl, Herminy’s “She’s your sister?” is about stupid. I stopped giving a shit about keeping track of this jungle of characters five movies back and even I knew it was his sister…
• The pink Centaur git is back at the school and “evil” has taken over but the portraits are still hanging in the halls. They made such a big deal about taking them down last time and they know how they work, why are they still up?
• They fight like idiots. I have this problem in kung-fu movies too. Outside of a tournament, when there is life and death on the line, why do they fight one on one? Why isn’t the ENTIRE student body pulling out their wands?
• Another thing I’ve always wondered; why hasn’t someone shot the bastard yet? Spells, charms, wands… the bad guys are still prone to physical violence. Someone pull a fucking gun already!
• Ha, I’ve been asking why they tolerated the Slithering house all along. ALL the bad guys come from there, why not eliminate the house? Gryphendoor is the Alpha-Betas, Hufflepuff is the stoner house, Ravenclaw never got any screen time for me to know that they do but why do we need a “this is where all the bad guys come from” house? The sorting hat could sense the evil or the midiclorian count or however the hell it works, exclaim “Slithering!” everyone cheers and the kid goes through the door marker “Slithering” and falls in a pit to his death. Problem solved.
• Maybe a stretch but after the underground radio “lightning has struck” scene, the informants turning people over like the Gestapo, you’re still invoking a WW2 mask, and now these pretty awesome stone warriors just look like the Jews summoning golems. Sorry, you’re ruining your own movies here folks. You can’t hand me turd after turd after turd and then ask why I’m not eating the chocolates…
• Nice shield you’ve got surrounding Hogwarts. When you’re done with it make sure you get it back to the Gungans, they’re going to need it.
• Who would have thought the line, “I want to destroy your mother’s precious heirloom” would work?
• And now the countless army of baddies marches on Helm’s Deep. I swear, if Dumbledore returns at the final battle I’ll turn this off. I know I’m 7 and a half movies in to an 8 movie story, I don’t care. If Gandalf the White saves the day, I’m fucking done!
• The Lord of Darkness, the most evil man and powerful wizard alive wants a showdown, in one hour. The outcome of this fight will decide the fate of every wizard in magicland! And where do you want this epic battle to take place dark lord? On a mountain top? On a cliff overlooking a great sea? No, let’s do it in the parking lot behind the high school. Ooookay…
• Two back to back instances of the movie answering us as we comment aloud:
  Teresa asks, “How’d Ron open that door?” As if in answer, Ron immediately says, “Harry talks in his sleep”
  Next scene, Ron and Herminy are splashed in the face with tons of water. I mutter in a bad cockney accent, “Oy, that’s what I’m gonna do to you on our wedding night Herminy.” As if in answer, the two immediately embrace and kiss passionately.
  One of us thinks he’s pretty funny, the other one of us has class.
• Hey, can Herminy use her time travel thingy and cause a do-over if they lose this battle?
• Hey, watch out for those little winged things Harry, they can’t be any good. At least, they weren’t on Geonosis.
• Someone shout “Fireus Alarmus!”
• I get it now, the last three movies is a video game. Each whorecrucks is a level boss and they get progressively more difficult to defeat.
• Am I just noticing or has the music sucked recently? I remember liking it early on but it’s been flat and bland recently.
• “You have your mother’s eyes”  HA! Is this where they reveal Snape as Harry’s real father? I’ve been waiting on this!
• Oh cool they killed a twin without the hokey “I feel the other’s pain” bullshit. Nice!
• I didn’t write anything down during the “Snape memory” sequence, it was too powerful of a scene. But as I remember it, Dumbledore was dying anyway, Snape had to kill him in a very noble Judas Iscariot kind of way.
• I think I had my first “give a shit moment” in the movies. That was pretty sad, depressing and a little pathetic. Watching another man have a child with the woman you love, begging for her life and then having to watch over the bastard spawn for 17 years. So Snape didn’t turn out to be the daddy but he did act like a father figure, protecting from the shadows and in the end, even dying for the kid.
• If I were Snape, I would have played my last card a little differently. He would have taken my tears to the viewer and been assaulted with the thousands of times Snape tossed-off to pictures of Lilly while using his other hand to give the finger to a picture of James. Nothing but repressed sexuality, unrequited love and burning hate for thirty minutes of memories. This may be why I’m not allowed to write children’s novels…
• Harry must die so others can live. Snape is Judas, Harry is the Christ.
• The D&D nerd in me did a flip when Harry said to the snitch, “I’m ready to die” and out popped a D-8. Roll for damage Harry.
• I sill can’t get over “Avracadavra”. No matter how you say it, spell it or allow for historical or linguistic subtleties, it just sounds too close to Abracadabra. Why not have the resurrection spell be “Yapple Dapple!”?
• Gandalf the Grey HAS returned as Gandalf the White. But not during the big Helm’s Deep battle so, yeah, it’s soooo much different than LotR
• Heaven is a train station. A train station where people abandon the bloody fetuses of evil wizards.
• Fuck this, Dumbledore the White just isn’t working for me, bring in Morgan Freeman.
• Is that it? I was told Harry Potter died and came back. It’s one of the few spoilers I knew about in advance. THAT’S his death and resurrection? LAME!!!
• The Lord of all Evil finds out he just killed a child so he celebrates in front of his minions with… a little dance. How cute.
• Draco looks like he’s being forced to hug Aunt Bunny but instead of being freaked out by her mustache, he’s got the whole “burn victim” thing going for him.
• Something is just “off” about this scene. ValDeMorte is popping one liners at Nevil and the crowd of bad guys is laughing. It feels like the out-take credits of a Burt Reynolds movie.
• And fuck this, the Malfoy family is moving to Jamaica.  Smart move.
• Nevil looks like Ed Norton from Fight Club. “I am ValDeMorte’s ruptured spleen.”
• Nice try but Ripley pulled off the “Stay away from my daughter you bitch” line MUCH better in Aliens.
• Would Harry have killed the disarmed ValDeMorte if Val didn’t evaporate? Would it be wrong if he did? Is that why Val evaporated, the writers took that decision out of the hands of a character you are supposed to like?
• Lovegood gets with Longbottom. Seriously, the porn writes itself.
• Why is Riff-Raff pushing a broom? They’ve already shown they can clean up magically like Mary Poppins. I’d figure a broom would be rather difficult to come by in a school of magic.
• Ron: We could be invincible! Harry: Or we could snap it in two and chuck it. Herminy looks like she knows she made the wrong choice in men.
• 19 years later!? No, fuck this, someone promised me a dead Harry. That ten second delirium via concussion doesn’t count! If it does, I’ve died at least three times that I can remember…
• With all the money they spent on these movies, they couldn’t age them any better than this?
• Did I miss a demographic? Is England over-run by red-heads? What the fuck with all the gingers in this series?
• The boy who lived. The boy who saved the world. Now looks like, the boy who will do your taxes.
• None of them teach at Hogwarts? All of them are staying behind on the platform? And after all they’ve been through together, none of them talk or even nod toward each other?  It feels like the morning after an orgy and no one wants to make eye-contact.
• The end. Finally, the kid catches a break. Fight evil for seven years, kick back and relax for the rest of your life.  Not a bad gig.

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Now that it’s all over, some thoughts on the series:

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I think if I was in a conversation with JK Rowling we’d get along just fine. Based on the sheer volume of obvious references in the HP series, it appears we both enjoy the same movies.

But that’s not a fair jab on my part. The failing is my own.

You want to know what cripples me as a writer? You know why I haven’t gone “all-out” and submitted the hundreds of manuscripts I’ve written? Because after I read them back, I see the similarities to other stories I’ve read or movies I’ve watched and I’m embarrassed to call it my own work. Writers do it all the time, it’s natural, nothing is new under the sun. Even when it’s just a slight connection, I file it away and wait for that one original premise. It doesn’t exist dude! So stop using that as an excuse to dislike Rowling’s world. It’s nigh-impossible to write a fantasy novel that DOESN’T invoke some element of Lord of the Rings or King Arthur or any of the other standards. So for me to cast dispersion on the Harry Potter universe for that reason alone would be utterly wrong.

The movies are guilty as sin of suddenly introducing a tool or notion that will become important in the immediate future. No foreshadowing, no planning. It makes it feel cheap and made-up. No world-building just a series of magical dilemmas that we coincidentally happen to be prepared for. I didn’t want to use the term “Deus Ex Machina” because I see it thrown against these books all the time but as far as the movies go, it’s totally appropriate.

I actually liked the core story. I just wish they had pared the entire thing to two or three movies instead of eight. There was WAY too much fluff in there. It was like they couldn’t decide what to cut. If you’re making the movie for fans of the books, you’ve got to include certain iconic scenes I’m sure. But there was SOOOO many unfleshed sub-plots in there. It was like I was being shelled with unnecessary characters, plots, scenes… I found myself just hunkering down and waiting for it to be over.

I think the whole “gay Dumbledore” thing has no bearing on the movies whatsoever. I actually watched for any hints and other than a few “could be” conversations that were really stretching, there was nothing in there. Unless his “less than a year to live” disease was supposed to be Wizard-AIDS. I think his “outing” was an afterthought PR move to cause a stink with some people. If they had the one guy at the wedding pass off the line, “of course I miss him, he and I were lovers for fifty years” or “married” anything like that, it would have fulfilled my rant of wanting to see a gay character in a mainstream movie that wasn’t playing to the stereotype or used as a plot point. As it stands, the character of Dumbledore is not identified as gay. Not in the movie he wasn’t.

I’m glad I watched them. I’m really glad I watched them with Teresa and Becca. But I’ll probably never watch them again. Maybe the last one… That one was alright. But without the exposition of the first seven, it’s pointless. They haven’t inspired me to read the books, they solidified my opinion that this series was not for me. But after watching them, I’m at least willing to admit that I don’t hate them, I just don’t care for them.

I figured something out.  Soon after, I discovered I was wrong.

I’m not dwelling on it, I know some of you don’t want to see me leave Florida.  I will sincerely miss many of you when I go.  But after more than two decades in this heated shit-hole, in spite of my love for you all, I am counting the days (roughly 880 but yeah, I’m not dwelling on it or anything…) until we finally get to plan our escape.  I’m shooting for the Arctic Circle, Teresa wants something just a bit further south.  Anyway, it’s still an open count because if Becca decides on an in-state college, we’ll probably stick around for another few years.

BUT after years of living here, today I finally found the one thing (other than people) that I will miss when I leave Florida.  The smell of fresh-cut grass on the cold winter air.  Oh it was amazing!  I had to leave the dungeon today and when I came topside I found that they had just mowed the grass.  The air was cold and the smell just lit me up from the inside.  It was incredible!  I thought to myself, THIS is something I could miss.  You don’t cut the lawn with three feet of snow.  In all the years I’ve lived in this state I’ve never found one thing (other than people) I will miss when I leave it all behind.  Then this scent, this feeling crept into me and suddenly I can count ONE thing…

After about three seconds of intoxicating bliss, I came crashing back down to reality.  Hey dumbass, that’s the ordinary smell of cutting the lawn in September/October or April/May in the latitudes you long for.  The reason you feel so exhilarated is because it’s a fond memory of childhood, not because it’s a newly discovered yearning.  It’s not a reason to stay in Florida, it’s just one more reason to leave!

Ohh I wish I could have bottled that feeling though.  I’ve burned the Yankee Candle’s “Fresh-Cut Grass” and it was nice but when you put it on that frigid air…  Seriously, it was like getting high…  I’m going home and mow the lawn tonight…

I had no idea just how influenced I am by proper spelling and grammar. It turns out I’m more upset by typos than I thought.  However, it wholly depends on the format.

If it’s a text, I expect bad spelling. Small keyboards, touch-screens, auto-correct… When I get a text that says, “I garfled your Mothra, meat szygne at the cuxrths” I don’t fear that I’ve received a text from the Great Old Ones, I don’t rage about bad spelling, I just remember that I’ve sent plenty of those kinds of texts too. I’ll probably just text you back, “Whst tnhe heeeell wws tht text supooposed to mesan?”

If it’s a comment on-line, I forgive it. Same rules apply, many people are using their phones to respond. Touch screens, small keyboards… I can’t get too upset. But, I can insist that I’m able to understand the comment or you must delete it and try again. If I can’t decipher what you meant, then what is the point of having it online? Get rid of it.

I read a lot of amateur blogs, there are many typos. I tolerate it or at the very least, I get over it. The amateurs are passionate about something but they aren’t the world’s greatest typists. They get excited, type fast and hit “Post” before hitting “Spellcheck”. It’s a mistake but we’re just amateurs, I’m alright with it. I got a bit huffy with one person’s blog. I was just about to give up on reading it when I discovered English wasn’t their first language. Oops, my fault… I mean, if I had to write a blog post in French you’d see a lot more than a few errors.

But then there are the professional bloggers. People who write for a living. I hold these people to a much higher standard. When you make your living being a wordsmith, you’d better know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. I can totally overlook a stray word that snuck past spellcheck by masquerading as a different word. Typos happen and if you’re on a deadline, you rely on spellcheck. “On” looks alright to the spellcheck even though you really meant “in”. But when you misuse “it’s” and “its”… I have to slap your knuckles with a steel ruler. Also, have a proofreader. I’ve been guilty of editing my thoughts and restructuring sentences. When you read your own work you read right past those errors when you read your own work…

Somewhere in between the amateur bloggers and the professional writers are the small businesses. When I go to your website and I see typos, I get worried about your services. Yes, you may just be a plumber or you may just be a party DJ, neither job requires proper diction… But if you couldn’t be bothered to check your work while advertising, how can I be sure you’re worth the money I’m looking to spend. Small, local businesses can afford one, possibly two errors if I’m feeling generous. If I see multiple errors on your website, I take my business elsewhere.

Anything that invokes an air of authority must be absolutely correct. When I read physics papers and medical journals, I don’t see any mistakes. I think this is because they know that if I spot a glaring typo, it will damage the impact of their paper. They take the time to check their work because it is important to them. A text; not so much. When someone asks me to take part on an “official survey” and the question has a typo in it, just how “official” am I expected to believe this thing is? Here at work we have an automated ticketing system. When a problem comes up at a remote site, it gathers data from several spreadsheets and spits it out in a form letter. One of the entries is “Drivining Directions”. It’s been there for four years…

And finally, we get the mix of amateur and authority (and the spark that set off this “misspelling” fire). Nothing screams “dumbass” more than a website claiming to be the encyclopedia of all musical knowledge and referring to “Jimmy Hendricks”… If you don’t know what’s wrong with that, you’re probably not a “music” person and that’s okay. I probably wouldn’t even correct you if we were writing back and forth and you made that mistake. But if you’re a music person, even just a casual fan, you’re probably just coming back into orbit after realizing they got BOTH names wrong…  If you’re running a website that (even just humorously) claims to be the final judge of all music and you can’t spell the name of one of the elder gods of guitar… Wow… just wow.