Opinion

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Rollercoaster to the Bottom

We went to RezRez‘s Christmas Party last night. It was awful. Drinks were $6.50 (hip flasks courtesy of Farshad were an easy solution to that problem). But that was only the beginning.

First up, Stan Sprenger, the company’s CEO. Imagine you were the CEO of a company, set to deliver a speech to the 300-plus employees and guests attending the corporate Christmas party. Would you consider the following anecdote appropriate?

I was at the mall today, and I saw a little blond girl get up on Santa’s knee.
“What do you want for Christmas?” Santa asked.
“I want Barbie and GI Joe!” the little girl proclaimed.
Santa looked confused at this request.
“I don’t understand. Doesn’t Barbie come with Ken?” Santa asked.
“No. Barbie comes with GI Joe. She only fakes it with Ken.”

Probably not. I don’t think I know a single self-respecting executive officer who would consider that an appropriate joke for a corporate Christmas function. But it didn’t stop there.

There were the little barbs volleyed by the Chief Operating Officer during her introduction of the CEO. Perhaps they were subtle enough that most people didn’t notice, but I detected the distinct edge of frost in the COO’s delivery of some carefully chosen jokes sent in the CEO’s direction.

About halfway through last night, everyone at the party transformed in my mind into Sims characters. I even saw the body language of those engaged in conversation match those of Sims characters, all exaggerated and overly animated. I felt very alone in that room. It’s not just that I didn’t know a lot of the people there or that I didn’t fit the age demographic of the company (newly graduated high school teens in the call center, mid-thirties burnouts everywhere else). The thing that really struck me was just how much I couldn’t relate to the people I was around.

I mean, yes, it’s a party. People are looking to have fun and be a little silly. But there was something else at work last night. I couldn’t actually imagine myself ever being like one of those people. They were so…unsophisticated. Low brow. Or for lack of a better word, stupid.

I’ve always thought that most people are as smart as I am, at least from the point of view of common sense. Maybe it wasn’t an explicit assumption, but I now realize it’s probably the reason people fail to meet my expectations a lot of the time. I know the people at the party weren’t stupid, just that they had a different set of priorities and values. But I can’t help wondering: why can’t I share those values? Why can’t I just let go, forget about trying to make a difference and just enjoy the rollercoaster ride to the bottom?

in Opinion / Personal 8 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Pave the Earth

This weekend, while channel-surfing in a vain attempt to pretend I’m doing something instead of procrastinating, I came across a program on Stephen Ibbot, a visual artist from Toronto. Wow. What a load of crappy crap crap.

Stephen puts together abstract images on his computer using a simple paint program and transforms the drawing into a painting. Whoopee. The drawings, while interesting for a four year old, can hardly be described as art. Then again, maybe I just don’t “get it”. The works have been described as “visually stimulating”. Oh, they’re stimulating alright. I can feel the back of my throat prepping to be stimulated at the tops of my lungs.

The art reminds me of the book Son of Interflux in which one of the characters, a failure of an art student, decides that his total lack of artistic ability shouldn’t prevent him from being an artist. He finally finds his niche in a branch of art that involves dipping bananas in paint and running them through a fan onto a canvas, or passing high-voltage electricity through pumpkins. Yah! Art!

Even worse is listening to art critics as they attempt to describe this visual drivel in intellectual terms. Are they really buying this stuff, or are they just trying to sound smart? It reminds me of Steve Martin’s comments in LA Story:

Steve Martin: And look at the way he’s holding her, it’s almost…pornographic!

(Camera cuts to a large abstract painting, predominantly red)

When I see this kind of pompous self-indulgence, I can’t help but get mad. Somewhere, someone is dying of malnutrition, of going without, and here we are, lavishing praise on some “artist” who’s managing to sell us some cock-and-bull story. Let’s be honest: this is a con.

While I’d like to protect people against this, the worst kind of hucksterism, I sometimes wonder: why bother? In my mind, this con-artistry (the only kind of art involved here) is no different from that employed by Enron, the tobacco industry, or anyone else that exploits other people’s ignorance. Why don’t I just join the party? Take advantage of the suckers out there and get rich in the process? Pave the Earth for a profit while I’m at it!

But I can’t.

Will this inability to rape and pillage the weak spell doom for my hopes of creating a successful company?

in Culture / Opinion 0 comments