Little Villains

Do you think the parents of Hans Gruber knew that they were raising perhaps the greatest movie villain of all time?

I don't mean Alan Rickman's parents. I'm sure that somewhere along the line those Brits realized that they had a pretty good actor on their hands. No, I'm talking about the fictional Teutonic two-some that gave life to young Hans. At what point did their sweet little boy turn evil?

If you're not one of us that pulls out "Die Hard" to watch every Christmas (yes, it is a Christmas movie, but that's an argument for another day), then here's a reminder of the brilliant Mr. Gruber:

Here's why I'm asking...I think that there's a possibility that I'm raising a pair of budding super-villains in Marty and Casey. In particular, the youngest of my progeny seems to be cultivating an evil genius persona. I tried to tell him that one of the pre-requisites to being an evil genius is that you have to actually be a genius. I mean, it's right there in the title.

He rebutted with all of the stupid things that evil geniuses do that get them caught, so obviously the title "evil genius" is an honorary one.

Last year around this time, Casey actively recruited a henchman. He picked out the biggest kid in his grade and involved him in his schemes. This was through no fault of the other child, who is in reality a big sweetheart. No, Casey seemed to be doing it without the other child knowing.

The biggest indicator of this came when Casey convinced two different teachers and a bus driver that his henchman was to come home with him. The other boy was led to believe that he was going along to a birthday party...which is the same deception that Casey used on the adults. It wasn't until he showed up at the daycare with his henchman in tow that my son's plot was thwarted. Of course, the grown-ups had to figure out where the extra kid was really supposed to be.

Last night, as brothers do, the two of them were fighting. Recently, when these arguments have arisen Casey has taken to cribbing lines from the old Bill Bixby-Lou Ferrigno TV version of "The Incredible Hulk." Only he's ammended the famous line of, "You shouldn't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Casey keeps saying, "You keep pushing me right to the edge, and you do not want me to go over. You don't know what I'm capable of...nobody does!"

Typically, that leads to Marty accusing Casey of being overdramatic, which is a personal afront to the acting ability of the younger one. "NO...I'M...NOT!" is usually the reply.

Since Thursday of this week, they've been arguing over a library book. Yes, I said a library book. Casey took out a book that Marty wants to read, and now won't let him read it until he's finished with it. Just for fun, Casey is reading the book at the rate of about one page a day. There are 216 pages. He quickly brushed aside the idea of just letting his brother read the book first because...well, I guess it's because that isn't what an evil genius would do.

Things came to a head last night and suddenly my home became the set of a really bad Sylvester Stallone action movie. (Do you say "really bad Sylvester Stallone action movie" or is the "really bad" just implied from the rest of the statement?)

I walked into the kitchen and Casey was standing in the middle. When I entered, he slowly turned and looked at me. "You say that payback is not the answer, but I say that it is. I'm about to get my revenge on. For eight years, I've had to put up with that brat and now it's time to get even. Oh, Marty! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Luckily, Casey only weighs about 40 lbs. so it wasn't that hard to grab him as he tried to run past, ready to get his "revenge on."

Now, I'm sure that from this it sounds like I've only got one super-villain walking around...but in my opening I included Marty. He's just a little less committed to the role. Sure, he likes the idea of world domination as much as the next guy, but he's a little more squeamish about getting there.

However, after Casey had repeatedly kept pushing buttons after his grand speech, Marty had finally had enough. He suddenly lunged at Casey and hissed through clenched teeth, "You think you know discipline? You don't know anything. I'll teach you discipline."

I managed to stop him before he tied up his brother and started reenacting the torture scene from either "Lethal Weapon" or "Casino Royale."

The funny thing is that neither of them ever actually watches movies like that. The closest they ever come are the Marvel superhero films...which have some of that stuff, but they're not quite in line with the Stallone-Schwarzenegger-Willis school of bang-bang, boom-boom filmmaking. Joss Whedon can write a lot of quippy lines, but he's never quite gotten to the level of "I'll be back" or "You're the disease, and I'm the cure" or even, "Yippe-kay-yay motherf***er." (And, yes, action geeks, I'm aware that only one of those lines was uttered by a villain.)

Casey even dresses the part. For two of his last three school pictures, he's worn a black tie on a black button-down shirt. He's asked repeatedly to be allowed to buy a suit. It's only a matter of time before he makes the transition to the tailored European fare sported by Hans Gruber and his ilk. If Casey is going to be an evil genius, he plans on being one of the nattily attired ones.

Thankfully, having known Marty and Casey all of their lives, it seems much more likely that they are preparing for a career making movies about bad guys that give cheesy speeches before their doom than to actually be one. Both hate any kind of pain and they both hate getting into trouble...and while they like to argue with each other, neither is particularly enamored with fighting.

Considering, however, that I've heard them argue over which would be better at taking over the world, I'm sure there will always be a flicker in the back of their minds of the path (hopefully) untaken.

Unemployment

I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise, but make no bones about it...being unemployed sucks.

Wait...I take that back...being unemployed doesn't necessarily suck. There's plenty of free time. I recently discovered that a local channel shows old shows from my childhood in the afternoon, like "Emergency!" and "Dragnet" -- not the black & white one but the color version with Harry Morgan where Joe Friday keeps saying that all the kids are hopped up on drugs. Were I a stoner, I would be in total nirvanna.

Plus, it's almost fall. The weather is really nice and I can take advantage of the kids being in school to take long walks in the woods and find myself. I'm the catch and release sort, so when I do occassionally find myself, I just look for a minute and then let me go free.

Not having a standing income and having to try to find work is what sucks.

I hate looking for work. Part of the reason that I've spent my adult life working a series of jobs I didn't particularly like is because I hate looking for work.

Being a writer as well as a business professional gives me the chance to apply for both working stiff office jobs and freelance writing work at the same time. Basically, I have double the amount of people that can judge me and reject me.

Luckily, thanks to my early days as a writer I'm so used to being rejected that it almost doesn't register. I can tell from the first sentence that I'm looking at a rejection e-mail or letter and I stop reading at that point. A friend recently said, "But what if they tell you what you did wrong."

What I learned a long time ago is that if someone thinks that you suck or that your work sucks, they aren't going to tell you anything that you don't already know. The reason that they think you suck is based on their own perception. Either it was just their opinion or your work really did suck...and I know that I'm self aware enough to have probably already known that when I submitted. Reading the letter where they reaffirm it for me doesn't do any good.
There are times where they say that you suck and your tempted to say, "What the hell are you talking about? That was at least better than average!" or "My qualifications were exactly what you said that you were looking for!" The problem is that your opinion really doesn't matter. I've hired people before and I know that the opinions of the people that I didn't hire were pretty inconsequential to me. No sense railing at someone that couldn't care less about what you're upset about.

Originally, I wasn't planning on including a chapter in my forthcoming book "My Boss is an Idiot...Now What?" on searching for work but this is making me rethink that. After all, that idiot that you interview with today could be your idiot boss tomorrow. I'm fairly certain that my own idiocy as a boss started right from that first phone interview.

I'm going to add that to my chapter outline right after I get done checking Indeed.com and Media Bistro for the fourth time in the last hour.

After all, it's been a full 12 hours since the last time that anyone has told me that I suck.