Where Do You Want To Eat?

Dear Avid Reader,

So we all eat out. And before I get to my post, I need to expel a little guilt.

Here we are, America, arguing over where we are going to eat out, and people are starving elsewhere. I don't want to bring you down before I get to my post, but I want you to know that I struggled with the making of this post. Thank you, guilt expelled.

Something occurred to me while driving around looking for a place to eat with the wife. Now I don't care where we go, or at least I thought I didn't. But as my wife offered up suggestions I kept saying, "Naaaaahhhhh" or "Eh" or "Mmmmmm no". So obviously I DO care. So if I do care, what do I care about?

At first blush, you would think that food is the most important consideration. But as it turns out, that is not the case. You see, I always order the same things: hamburger, fajitas, or steak. I learned long ago that I don't need to try anything else.

Variety Is NOT The Spice Of Life

Every time someone convinces me to try the chicken pasta or the veal, I always eat it and say, "You know, this is alright, but I'd rather be eating a steak." Every time, period. Nothing is better than eating a hamburger, fajitas, or steak. And usually the table next to us has a guy eating a great big steak, with a HUGE smile on his face. And there I sit, eating taco salad or salmon, trying to suppress the urge to kill the man with the steak. My rage rising with each bite and each time the convincer says, "See, isn't this better than the steak?"

No. It's not. Ever.

This practice is a huge frustration to my wife, who could not imagine having the same thing twice in a week. "Here have a bite of this vegetable lasagna. It's great." I look up at her from my hamburger, confused. We've done this before. Why does she continually try to torture me? Why try and sully a palette that is swimming in hamburger?

"No thanks." I reply and return to my feast. But this isn't good enough.

"No really. It's good. Just a little," she insists. It's as if she thinks I've never had vegetable lasagna or seafood linguine or whatever sub-hamburger dish she has ordered. I've had other stuff before, it's how I know hamburgers are what I want. Trust me.

"I'll just have my hamburger, thanks." I say, hands reaching for the manly sandwich, mouth opening, preparing to receive the kingly delight.

"Honestly, how you can have the same thing over and over..." she trails off, lost in disgust.

She may not understand, but I do. And I've taken my eating habits and turned them into a lifestyle.

Mmmmm That Sounds Good...Or Does It?

I won't buy anything unless I know I'll like it. When it comes time to buy vegetable for the house, I won't buy lettuce because salad "sounds good". I know I won't eat it, the whole head will rot in the crisper. So I buy carrots because I know I will eat them because there is no prep time involved. Simple. You can call it "Hamburger Philosophy".

The same goes for furniture or clothes. I get nothing that "sounds good", whatever that means. I wear simple things, I sit in simple chairs, that's how we roll in this joint. Get your own joint if you disagree with the practices of this joint, which I happen to operate.

So now we are dressed and we know what we want, the question again, is where to go. Because I like the simpler fare of hamburgers and most hamburgers are the same, choosing becomes simpler. I mean you really can't surprise someone with super-creativity when it comes to meat and bread. This is of course except for Ruby Tuesday but I couldn't convince my wife to go there every time we go out even if there was one close to where I live.

"Ruby Tuesday again? Honestly how you can want to go the same place over and over..." she would say, falling over a cliff of repulsion.

The Perfect Dining Experience Minus The Dining

So when I can take food out of the equation, where do I want to eat? It comes down to comfort. I like a lots of space, cause I'm a large dude. So when the wife would bring up a place, I would think about the last time I was there and if I felt crowded or uncomfortable, I wouldn't want to go. I wouldn't even think about what I ate there.

Take our local Chinese place that I'll call Chinese Place. The wife LOVES it. It's got curry shrimp and she loves the stuff. But every time I go there, I feel out of place, or in the way. I think it's the lay-out. I know the food is good, even though it doesn't have hamburgers, but when I get there, I just feel like leaving. And here's the test: even if they did serve a steak or hamburger at Chinese Place, I wouldn't want to go.

I tired this test with a friend of mine. I asked him to tell me his favorite food. It was steak (You can see how we would be friends). And I asked him to tell me his least favorite restaurant, which was Restaurant X (I can't for the life of me remember what he said). I then asked him if he would eat a delicious steak in Restaurant X. He thought about it, and then said, "No". Once again, food was secondary to atmosphere.

I think this theory has legs. It really doesn't matter anymore what you serve, so long as the price and quality match up. Usually it does match up and the food is passable. So what matters the most now is the atmosphere. I think people would eat almost anything you got, so long as they're comfortable while doing it. Even if it wasn't a steak.

The Next Post Promises To Be Better,

James

On Greatness and Presentations

Dear Avid Reader,

I was in a class recently. And in this class, I was assigned to participate in a group project. I hate group projects.

No seriously, I HATE them.

In my MBA career I have been a part of three group projects. In my final class, I will participate in my fourth. Each of these group projects have a presentation element to them, in that there is a company or large idea that must be presented to the rest of the class. I love presentations.

Seriously, I LOVE them.

So Which One Of The Two Will You Talk About First?

I want to talk about presentations first. I wasn't aware of my love of presentations until late in my undergraduate career. I should have noticed my ability and love during my Directing class. In this class, we had to present to the class the emotional feeling of a play. This was to help us with being able to convey our directorial vision to actors and staff. I choose I Hate Hamlet, and for my presentation, I chose to play some awesome They Might Be Giants songs. And it worked, my presentation was a success.

But it wasn't until later that I was assigned a full-on, official presentation. Looking back, it was striking that I didn't have more presentations. But I was a theatre major and I guess there is little need for formal presentation skills when you are in the theatre.

But my first presentation was assigned in my last semester as an undergrad in my Contemporary Drama class. Everyone was to choose either a significant theatre movement or person and present that topic for twenty minutes, as well as turn in a paper. I choose Antoin Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty. My presentation was awesome. I used video, my thoughts were complete, I conveyed them well, everything went way better than I thought it would.

Afterward, I thought about how much I had learned from doing this and how sad it was that I was not able to do something like this in all of my previous classes. But as I graduated I was more thankful that I would never have to be in class again.

But Alas, It Was Not My Last Class

When I arrived at my first post-graduate class, I was intimidated. I mean, here I was, a guy with a useless B.A. in Theatre of all things, in a room full of accountants and business majors. I kept thinking, "Don't make a fool of yourself. Just keep quiet and maybe they'll let you slide on by and pass".

It was there in that Economics classroom where I received my first assignment. Pick a any economic topic and present it to the class for 15 minutes and write an eight page paper.

I was terrified.

Long had I forgotten about the triumph in my theatre class. I just wanted to finish in the middle of the pack. So I prepared...diligently.

I made a PowerPoint slide show. It was my first attempt to make a PowerPoint, ever. But I quickly became an expert. I began fooling with the animations. I added a lot of graphics. I just did things that made sense to me. I became a powerpoint ninja on that day.

When I arrived at class, the teacher picked me to go first. I was so freaked out. But, when it came time to give the presentation, I approached the presentation as if it were a show and I fell back on my theatre experience. That last sentence sounds corny, but it's true, for real true. I thought of the class as an audience and I remembered that I needed to project and plant my feet. I spoke slowly and clearly. I was engergized.

After the presentation, I sat down and prayed that I didn't look like an idiot. But as it turned out, I had the best stuff in the class. Everyone else just sort of tried to cross the finish line. I was stunned, and excited.

There was a second presentation that was assigned for this class, twenty minutes and tweleve pages. And this one was truly great. I mean after the presentiaton, the professor said "I've never thought of it like that before". That high stinkin' praise right there and you know it is! And for the second one, I tried out more stuff. I tried to use the animation functions in new ways. I had classmates coming up to me and asking where I learned all this stuff. This was only the second power point I had done EVER.

It Ain't Braggin' If It's True

Ever since then, I've looked forward to the presentation in each of my classes. And I have always tried to do a GREAT job. But all of my classmates always try for adequate. They want just enough to finish. Which works out great when it's individual projects, but this is also why I hate group projects.

You see, I am trying for greatness. I want everyone to say, "Wow. That was awesome. That James really can put on a show. I must remember to hire him when he applies for a job". And I cannot for the life of me get anyone else to try for that. They just want the grade and the degree. This undermines my entire plan for greatness.

In my latest group project, I pushed for there to be deadlines and a continuity to the presentation. I tried to take the reigns of leadership because I simply cannot wait for consensus. It is much to frustrating. I learned this early on in my other projects.

But they all blew off the deadlines and turned in their stuff late. They didn't care to work hard on it at all. They knew that all we had to do was talk collectively for 20 minutes and we'd basically be home free. If it was boring, fine. If it was rambling, suits them. If thoughts didn't flow neatly into one another, whatever.

And I realized something, I was the only one pushing for rehearsals and deadlines. I think they'd would've been fine with waiting until the week before it was due and then slapping it all together, which wasn't a far cry from what happened in my opinion. Once I realized this I realized I could never force them to want greatness. And that to me was the truly sad part.

If they didn't want to make the best possible project, no matter what deadlines I created or rehearsals we had, we would never make the great project that I envisioned. So we didn't. The project was mediocre. I still got an A, but it rang hollow because I couldn't lead my group to greatness. I could get them to see my vision.

Am I alone in this? Am I the only one that cares about getting further than the finish line? I look around my program at my fellow Master's canidates and I wonder about these things. How will I get these people to want greatness? These are going to be my fellow co-workers, bosses, subordinates. Am I able to spur them on to more than the finish line?

Is anyone?

The Next Post Promises To Be Better,

James