The Lost and Stolen Department
November 13, 2006
My internet service is on the fritz, so I pointed my receptors into the quagmire of electromagnetic pollution and found someone else's alien brainwaves to intercept. When I looked at the pull-down menu of available networks, there were a dozen options, and thankfully, only half of them were password-protected. Is it stealing? I'm not really taking anything; I'm just untangling the electrons that bombard my apartment, not to mention my head, all day, every day.
Speaking of bombarding my head with electromagnetic pollution, I lost my cell phone yesterday. Actually, speaking of stealing, I’m convinced it was stolen.
After brunch yesterday, Deborah and I ducked out of the pouring rain to see the number one movie in America, Borat. We got there just in time for the one o'clock showing, climbed to the rear of the crowded theater, and sat in the empty back row. While suffering through a dozen commercials, each more annoying than the last, we dutifully turned off our cell phones.
When the movie was over, we waited for the lights to come on because Deborah's belongings were in a pile on the chair beside her, and she wanted to be sure not to leave anything behind. I noticed her gloves on the floor and picked them up. "Oh," she said. "Good thing we waited."
I stood in the lobby while Deborah used the bathroom, and reached into my pants pocket for my phone to turn it back on. It wasn't there. I checked every pocket twice before Deborah came out of the bathroom, and when she did, I rechecked them all. "I lost my phone," I said, and we rushed up the stairs to Theater 7. A manager saw us and followed, apparently thinking we were trying to sneak in for another show.
"Can I help you?" she asked when she caught up to us at the top of the stairs.
"Yes," I said. "I lost my cell phone."
She turned on her flashlight and gave a cursory sweep of the area. "It's not here, she said.
"There was no one else sitting in our row," I said, but an usher was waiting at the top of the stairs for the movie to end. She might've picked it up. She must have."
"Follow me," the manager said, leading us to the lobby.
She asked a few random people along the way if they'd seen a phone. No one had. She asked the ticket taker, who was overwhelmed by the crowd pushing forward, eager to get in from the rain and find a decent seat, if anyone had turned in a phone. He shook his head.
"No one has it," said the manager. "What do you want to do?"
"Can we try to find the woman usher who was in the back of the theater?"
"A woman?" the manager said, somewhat confused.
"Yes."
"Oh, yes. There is actually one person I missed. Do you want to wait while I look for her?"
"Of course, we want to wait," said Deborah. "It's an expensive phone."
"I understand," said the manager. "But everyone here is very good about turning in everything they find. We've even had ushers find cash, and they always turn it in."
" Always?"
The manager disappeared for a few minutes and returned empty-handed. "No one has it," she said again. "If you give me your phone number, I'll call you if we find it."
I gave her Deborah's phone number, instead, for obvious reasons.
"Oh well," said Deborah, as we stood outside, under the theater awning. " It's not that big a deal if you don't get it back. You never really liked that phone anyway."
She opened her umbrella, and we headed toward the subway.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm not that upset about the phone, really. It's the naked pictures of you I had on it."
"Uh-oh. Yeah. Uh. You'd better get it back."
Later in the evening, I called the theater from home to see if it turned up. The guy who answered put me on hold while he found a manager. "Sir," he said when he returned. "Your phone isn't here. There's no need to call us again. We have your information, and if it turns up, we'll let you know."
In other words, I can kiss that phone, and all its naked pictures, goodbye.
November 15, 2006
It always amazes me how quickly frivolous things can start to feel indispensable. The cell phone I lost cost me next to nothing when I signed up for a two-year contract. The phone companies practically drop mobile phones out of helicopters trying to get new business. But, of course, once you're actually a customer, it's like pulling off Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera mask.
I couldn't afford to replace what I had, so I picked out one of the cheapest ones on the wall, and that was that.
"Does it do this?"
"No."
"Does it do that?"
"No."
"I'll take it."
Sure, the phone I lost did a lot more than the phone I replaced it with, but it was all nonsense. I mean, what am I going to do with a three-second postage-stamp-sized video clip other than stress about who finds it once it's lost?
November 20, 2006
This past weekend was a lot like the previous one. Once again, Deborah and I went to see the number one movie in America. Last week, it was Borat , this time it was Casino Royal .
I didn't say much about Borat because I was so preoccupied with losing my phone at the theater, but what did I think of it? Was it funny? Yes. Was it even funnier than I expected it to be? Yes. Was it as funny as the preview that was shown before Casino Royale for Sylvester Stallone's new Rocky movie? Absolutely not.
Actually, one of the funniest things I saw concerning Borat wasn't the movie itself, but something I read in The Daily News about it. I'd link the article if I could, but The Daily News charges for access to their archives, and it's not worth paying for.
Although Americans are the brunt of the larger joke, the Kazakhs are the ones most offended. The Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry has even threatened legal action against Sacha Baron Cohen for the way he portrays their country and its citizens in such a derogatory way. "(His) behaviour is utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners, which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilised behaviour."
So, a couple of weeks ago, The Daily News decided to take a 21-year-old Kazakh New Yorker named Kerill Volkov to see the movie and get his impressions. "He doesn't even look Kazakh," Volkov was quoted as saying, speaking in Russian. "I've never heard of such a name - Borat. Sagdiyev, maybe. They only got the flag right."
When they asked him about the scene portraying the fake Kazakh tradition called "running of the Jew" — which is meant to be a yearly event in Kazakhstan similar to the running of the bulls — Volkv explained that it was pure fiction. "Running of the Jew? We barely have Jews."
Anyway—
Casino Royal. All I can say is, finally. Why did it take so long to make a decent James Bond movie? And what's the big deal about the new James Bond having blonde hair, anyway?
I did a quick search and found this article on Yahoo! Movies about the "controversy."
The article quotes Tom Julian, a "trend analyst" and Oscar.com's "style expert."
I read aloud from the article as Deborah made coffee and fed the cats. "Get this," I said.
"Redford, he's probably been the only viable blond actor who has affected character, culture, and moved beyond the film industry," Julian says. "People thought Brad Pitt was the next one, but he hasn't really gone that way."
The guy obviously didn't think about that too long or hard.
"What about Steve McQueen?" I said.
"I knew you were going to say that," said Deborah.
