A Cautionary Tale brought to you by Progresso

There were two cans of soup -- one beef & potato, one chicken barley.

"Which one do you want?" I said to Chris.

"Whichever one you don't want," he replied.

"No," I said, "have the one you want."

"You have the one you want," he said.

"Pick the soup you want!" I exclaimed. "Pick a soup!"

Chris picked the chicken barley, so I had the beef & potato.

As he was finishing his bowl he said, "You wanted the beef & potato right?"

"No," I said. "Actually I wanted the chicken barley."

"But I thought you liked beef & potato," he said. "I wanted the beef & potato but I didn't take it because I thought you wanted it."

"Well in trying to please the other," I declared, "it seems we pleased no one."

The moral of the story? Take what you want and screw the other guy.

Idolspize

"We all have them, those close friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances or complete strangers whose lives and careers exist -- it seems to us -- solely as a rebuke to our own. We respect them, admire them from afar, maybe even love them -- but with a twinge of . . . what exactly? Jealousy? Envy? White-knuckled rage? They're the people who are constantly reminding us that we'll never quite measure up. They're the valedictorians to our salutatorians, the bestsellers to our mid-listers, the mid-listers to our never-published, the homecoming queens to our also-rans. They seem to have sprung fully formed from our ugliest competitive streaks, our egos at their most fragile, our deepest self-loathing. They are our own squandered potential, fully realized."

A new word has been coined to describe the people we admire but we also hate because we are so envious of them: we idolspize them.

The writer goes on to explain that idolspizing is not the equivalent to 'frenemies' because you can idolspize a stranger. You cannot idolspize celebrities. For someone to be "idolspicable, [they] must be thisclose to your own age, background, educational achievement and career, and they must be of your gender and general situation in life."

There are a couple of people I could call frenemies, but I don't idolspize anyone I'm close to. Maybe I'll idolspize Ben when his book gets published, but other than that, the closest I've come to idolspizing was a few people from my undergraduate experience. The stunningly well-dressed, rich, fashionable hipsters who already had things published, or were just so cool and in-the-know and always surrounded by equally cool people who went to cool happenings around Boston, whose parents were bigwigs in the movie or music industry.

Emerson College was a breeding ground for idolspizing. Everyone hated everyone else for having a successful comedy show, being in a play, getting a gig at a popular bar, making a celebrity networking connection. I'm surprised an Emerson alum didn't create the word.

Featured Blog

I feel mention should be made of Maggie's spin-off blog, Foster Cats. Her photos and anecdotes are cute enough to make me almost view my own cats with less distaste. Almost. Check it out.

Also, enter Tommywood Blvd.'s Oscar contest (you'll find the link in his left sidebar). Tom promises fame and glory to the person who most accurately predicts the 2006 Oscar winners. You can't beat that.

Hababechee babooa, it's 3 o'clock

At work, every day, all day, my boss listens to the college radio station WERS; thus, so do I. It's my college station -- I even appeared on it once -- so it pains me to say that the station completely blows. When I think of college radio, I think of cutting-edge stuff. Aren't hot new bands always discovered on college radio? Not ERS. Most of the morning is nondescript jazz; in the afternoons it's nondescript "world music."

If the tendency of people is to not like things they don't understand, then I really don't like things I don't understand when I hear them at the exact same time every day. I know a lot of radio stations are guilty of not varying their playlists, but the problem is certainly magnified when all you have to go on is how much the shrill singer in the song at 2:37 reminds you of a boiling piglet. I don't even have to wear a watch anymore -- I know that when I hear the song composed entirely of clicking sticks, it's time for lunch.

And I'm not the only one. "This song makes me want to cut my ears off," my fellow editorial assistant discreetly emailed me the other day. On that day, though, and most of last week, I was one step ahead, with earbuds securely in ears. You see, I've discovered podcasts. I'm fickle when it comes to listening to music (it has to suit my mood), but I'm finding that an hour of Meet the Press or Real Time with Bill Maher can really knock the wind out of a slow morning. Still, at 12:56, I pull out my earbuds. I'm a sucker for the song with the sticks.

Say Cheese

I read an article in the New York Times the other day, about the rise of arm's-length self-portraits on the Internet.

In her bedroom in Lubbock, Tex., Ms. Adams, 21, tried out a variety of poses — coy, friendly, sultry, goofy — in the kind of performance young people have engaged in privately for generations before a mirror. But Ms. Adams's mirror was a Web cam, and her journey of self-expression, documented in five digital self-portraits, was soon visible to the 56 million registered users of MySpace.

Coincidentally Josh sent me a link this morning to a short film called MySpace: The Movie, about the embarrassing but universal habits of the typical MySpacer (including the taking of self-portraits), and the pitfalls that come with Internet life. (Check it out -- it's hilarious because it's true.)

I'm sure a more intelligent person could read more into this, this commenting on a medium via the medium itself, this new sense of controllable self (take enough self-portraits and anyone can be hot -- it's "the angles"!), this whatever. Me, I'm just happy we've got something, that my generation has something of our own. I watch Lords of Dogtown and regret that skateboarding has already been done. I read Men of Tomorrow and regret that the comic book has already been invented. I'm sad that I'll never be a hippie. But I think in 30 years kids will look back in awe at the early 2000s, at the rise of MySpace and all the little webcam movies you can find on YouTube and Google Video, the -- I'm speaking on a stage now, in a good suit; the sun is shining -- the rise of the time when anyone with a broadband connection can be a media mogul, when teens and college students and twentysomethings are staking out their own territory no different from the pioneers of the Old West! That's something. And there will be plenty of photos to document this. Ninety percent of them will have arms in them.

Lucas: The Prequel

I was eating calamari and sipping my water when Ben and Josh arrived at Vinny T's and joined me at the table. "Our waiter's cute," I said to Ben as he was sitting down.

"Really?" he asked and started looking around. I immediately started to worry that Ben wouldn't think he was hot. Lucas came over, took Josh and Ben's drink orders and went off again. Ben turned to me: "Oh yeah," he said, in that way that he has, which really means, "was there ever any doubt?" I felt relieved that Ben agreed with me. Josh rolled his eyes.

When Lucas forgot the third special, even after standing in front of us wracking his brain for more than a full minute while I tried not to laugh, Ben was enchanted and Josh was bored. Later, there were whispered exclamations like, "He touched your shoulder!" Then Ben said, "I can't get a read on his sexuality."

"I think he's gay," I said.

"I don't think he's gay," Ben said, "but he's really schmoozing that table of homos next to us." This was true. Lucas had inquired if the only empty seat at the table of six men was for him. We never came to an agreement about his sexuality and he offered no further clues to sway our opinions.

We decided to go back and investigate further.