#28

There was a time when I believed school in general was meant to be a chore.  Actually, depending on what instructors you have, it can give you an incentive to learn more.  But given my circumstances, how was I to know that?

As it is, Mary Deutsch—I just called her Mary because I was told to call her "Miss Mary" and thought that was juvenile—was my instructional assistant for all six years of elementary school.  She thought the best way to have children learn was to drain all pleasure from the experience.

A typical day would consist of me minding my own business, trying to learn and listen to whatever the teacher was saying, and there she was telling me rather meanly to pay attention.  It was no use telling her that I was, 'cause she wanted an excuse to nag me.  One time I kept talking to a girl I liked, and she used that as an excuse that I was copying down someone else's work instead of doing my own.

And the big rule was: Don't get her started on movies.  To her, my biggest pleasure was the greatest obstacle in being able to learn.  My imaginary ADD and the most innocent mistakes she would attribute to my love of movies.  And as you can imagine, verbal abuse made for much of the interaction.

At the beginning of fifth grade, I watched Disney's Belle's Magical World, a direct-to-video spin-off of Beauty and the Beast that had three vignettes on good virtues, for the umpteenth time.  The first vignette involved forgery as a plot point, and even though it depicted forgery in a negative light, I decided to write her a letter of resignation to get her out of the picture.  It did not work.

Many years after this time, it dawned on me that she must have used the works of James Dobson.  Because being the founder and chairman of the ultra-right-wing Christian group Focus on the Family, he was written perhaps dozens of sick parenting books that zealously advocate corporal punishment and making an enemy out of your child (or, in this case, student).

Because of this, I now realize that Mary probably wasn't a bad person, and that she was probably just used by these works, just like George W. Bush was used by the other Republicans.  In fact, she taught me how to add, subtract, and tie my shoe, and looked out for my safety.  I've even run into her a couple times since then, and she said nothing bad about me.  Those things, however, did not make it worth having her.  If you're wondering how this influenced my life, it is because all the repression against my deepest pleasures made me a more boring person.

Top 30: #29

#29: James Horner: Introducer of an Underrated Art

Horner is listed by a user of the website Digital Dream Door as the 11th best film composer.  He, along with John Williams and James Newton Howard, was one of the composers who I wanted to score my first incarnation of my pet project.  Ten years later, he is still my first choice.

However, it wasn't until I started the latest incarnation of this project that I began to understand what it would really mean to have him onboard.  I became with his styles—a resonant horn section, tender use of strings, and a booming female choir—and became only more convinced that he was the composer for this one.

His films in question include:

• BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)
• STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
• STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984)
• COCOON (1985)
• ALIENS (1986)
• WILLOW (1988)
• THE LAND BEFORE TIME (1988)
• GLORY (1989)
• THE ROCKETEER (1991)
• PATRIOT GAMES (1992)
• THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE (1993)
• WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY (1993)
• LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994)
• BRAVEHEART (1995)
• APOLLO 13 (1995)
• RANSOM (1996)
• TITANIC (1997)
• DEEP IMPACT (1998)
• THE MASK OF ZORRO (1998)
• A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001)
• TROY (2004)
• THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS (2008)
• AVATAR (2009)
• THE KARATE KID (2010)
• THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012)

Note that these films vary in mood and excitement level.  The fact is, composers become very versatile from scoring all types of projects, because most filmmakers just use composers get by.  But getting back into Horner's work has deepened my interest in film music in general, and many composers who used to mean no more to me than they do to most people now ring true as geniuses of the incidental music repertory.

John Williams is the only composer whose scores have become recognizable enough to be given places in the pantheon of American popular music.  They include the Star Wars saga; the original Superman; Harry Potter's first three years; and all but one movie directed by Steven Spielberg.

Other composers of note include Jerry Goldsmith (most of the original Star Trek movies), Elmer Bernstein (many a Western), Danny Elfman (Tim Burton's partner in crime), Bernard Herrmann (frequent collaborator with Alfred Hitchcock), Patrick Doyle (Brave), Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso as well as plenty of spaghetti Westerns), Miklós Rósza (Ben-Hur), Max Steiner (the greatest of the olden days), John Barry (Dr. No), Thomas Newman (Meet Joe Black), Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther), and Vangelis (Chariots of Fire).

How about sometime I alter one of my projects to not have incidental music?  It wouldn't be as exciting, but maybe people's reactions would be of note.

Sorry for forgetting to mention BUT…

…the purpose of sharing these 30 people is to provide a brief autobiography.

The 30 Most Influential People in My Life / #30

Telling it like it is!

#30: Robert Greenwald: New Interest Through Misguidance.

I used to like Walmart as much as anyone else.  After all, it serves a good purpose for consumers—to provide a good standard of living for people on a low income—which equals a good purpose overall, right?  Wrong.  Or so I used to think.

Robert Greenwald was the director of a documentary from 2005 called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, detailing the following social issues surrounding it:

• Elimination of competition
• Paying low wages to associates and influencing other companies in the service industry to do the same
• Anti-union practices
• Environmental degradation
• Exportation of U.S. factory jobs to sweatshops lacking in basic human rights
• Corporate greed; and
• Crime in parking lots

—concluding with inspiring stories of how people kept Walmart out of their towns.

Yet what Greenwald and his film failed to realize can be summed up in the description on the back of the DVD case: "a film that will change the way you shop."  In today's America, shopping at Walmart is like having a weight problem: some people choose to do it, but others simply have to because they can't afford to shop at more expensive stores.  In fact, now that I have a bank account, I am myself on a low income and found myself in the latter situation.  So if I had to shop there, I would without a problem.

Nevertheless, I used to, like a lot of other people, throw the term "evil" around, applying it to many things, from Walmart to my seventh-grade history teacher.  But when I was 14, while browsing the Web after I got wrapped up in my own bias, I requested a book called The Most Evil Men and Women in History, which changed all that.  It got me interested in the topic of evil, and our family's receiving the Internet starting in January 2007 assisted me in my quest to write my own take.

Miranda Twiss, author of the original, included sixteen people spanning from Ancient Rome to the Amin regime in Uganda in the 1970s.  My take, which I've been working on since March 20, 2008, was originally of 100 people, but I shortened it to 50 after realizing that most of the misdeeds of the people in the latter half were taken from pure propaganda.  I am still working on it to some extent, but I plan to counteract it with 100 people who were actually "good."

Why we need accommodations

As I mentioned, I cancelled both my eHarmony and Match.com accounts.  I created a second email account (at Yahoo!) in the hopes that someday I would be ready to try eHarmony again.

Unfortunately, that may never be.

As I mentioned before, neither dating service cares in the slightest if height is important to you.  A great question, therefore, would be "Then why does eHarmony ask?"  The answer: "Because they pander to the most average people imaginable."

eHarmony has many different divisions that are specific to race—African-American, Asian, Jewish—as well as ones for homosexuals and the elderly.  Why, then, can't it provide such for tall and short dating?  Both kinds of services exist in different places on the Internet; for every TallFriends.com there is a ShortPassions.com.

Arianne Cohen, columnist and the author of The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life from on High, is 6' 3".  Her partner (as of then, anyway) is 7' 2".  Who among men of average height would ever want to go out with a woman over 6'?  And if you are legally a giant, how comfortable would you be marrying, say, a diminutive Asian woman?  They clearly need each other.

As it happens, I did register for TallFriends.com, but they weren't as thorough in finding good matches as eHarmony.  And just like the other dating websites, they required a subscription to do mostly anything.  I "paid" for a $999.95 subscription - more than I had in checking at the time, and more than I will for possibly years - because they reset it to that option every time I hit my browser's "back" button.

Visa Fraud Prevention Services put a hold on my card, leading to its cancellation for the second time in 3 months.  And my mom not only made me cancel my account, she made me blacklist myself.

Now I can never re-register on the leading site for tall singles.

Since I began work on this blog, I've become very afraid that I'll live my life alone.  I'm also a born loser when it comes to blogging—only one of my dozen or so blogs has any followers (and even then just one)—but I NEED all you people reading this to take me seriously.  Maybe by the time I find someone, eHarmony will, indeed, offer dating specific to both ends of the height spectrum.  And it starts with YOU!

For what I'm looking for in a woman, my search is narrowed significantly by height alone.  It will get even more narrow as I explain more about myself and my compatabilities.  If anyone out here cares, keep reading and you'll see what I mean.

Match.com: One of the Internet's biggest jokes

Despite my earlier comments about eHarmony, it's very different to what you want compared to its nearest competitor, Match.con (pun intended).

In fact, from my experience on it, the latter does not care at all.

When I signed up for Match.con, it didn't have nearly as many options to help you narrow your search.  Not as much room to write answers; no pages for favorites (just a date idea contest); no most-influential-person question.  As a matter of fact, I would rather date a born-again Christian woman than just about any of my Match.con matches.

It gets worse.  Where eHarmony only gave me one or two matches a day and otherwise respected my privacy, Match.con gave me about two dozen.  Despite its comments, I am unmatchable on eHarmony, so how could its competitor possibly find as many women who were really right for me?  To boot, here's an actual email I got once:

"You have 22 new matches: eat_dessert_first from (so-and-so), CA…see more"

Emphasis added.  If you think a lonely 6' 8" young man wants to date an immature eater who is probably obese, go see your psychiatrist.

By the way, I entered in their contest for date ideas, and (as you might imagine) I had to be pretty shallow due to insufficient room.

Eventually, I had enough of both websites, so I cancelled both accounts.  You'd seener see the resurrection of Romeo and Juliet than me re-registering for Match.com; and to see a good reason why I won't try eHarmony again (even with a new email address), read my next post.

Why eHarmony didn't work out for me

On a Tuesday night last July, I felt very depressed and lonely—as I had for over two years—because the Sacramento Tall Club did not accept persons under 21 years old.  I finally said I'd had enough, so the next night I signed up for eHarmony.

I did well enough on the beginning survey, and they didn't say I was unmatchable.

Especially not because of my answer to this question:

"Other than your parents, who has been the most influential person in your life and why?"

I was foolish enough to say God—not because he influenced my philosophy or anything, but from a philosophical standpoint.  But they took advantage of my naïveté by putting me with only Christian women.

They all wanted kids, even though I hated children and did not want any at that time.

In order for them to take any changes into account from my profile, I would have had to paid what I consider a pricey monthly fee.  Because I live on Social Supplemental Income (SSI), it wasn't an option for me.