This week’s listmaker: Michael Rubino. Michael is a freelance writer, contributing editor at Indianapolis Monthly magazine, and journalism instructor at IUPUI. Follow him @MARubino.
We live in a time and place where what we love defines us, and we’re not shy about it, either. The Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks! Sweater weather! My latest meal! This picture of me! Obama! Romney! (I’m just kidding: not even Republicans love that guy.)
Well, I don’t really love any of those things, and, in fact, believe that what you can’t stand is a better indicator of who you are as a person. I, for instance, hate to be alone. But, more than that, I hate to hate alone. So, please join me. Here are just a few of the Indiana-centric things I’m hating this week—ones that I’m hoping you’ll hate, too!
"Nothing is better for thee than me."
1) It takes a special person to find the image of Jesus in burnt toast or Lincoln’s silhouette in a pre-cancerous mole, but let’s give a nice, long slow-clap to whomever looked into the soul of Indiana gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and saw a steaming pile of Quaker Oats. Gregg, a Democrat and former Speaker of the Indiana House, channels ex-hot cereal pitchman Wilford Brimley’s mustache in a series of cloyingly folksy television spots that make Mayberry look like Sodom and Gomorrah. Gregg needs to realize that going down this celebrity lookalike road will not end well given that his Republican opponent, Mike Pence, is a dead ringer for Race Bannon of Jonny Quest fame. As a fellow Democrat, I beg of you, Mr. Gregg, stop these ads. Or, as Brimley would say, it’s the right thing to do. (Also: does Tea Party darling Richard Mourdock look like the dearly departed Leona Helmsley, or is it just me?)
2) Can we stop with the Post-Peyton Depression now? Please? Yes, Manning will go down
"Calm down, people. It's only football."
as one of the greatest to play the game and, in a sense, he put Indy on the map. But I hope Andrew Luck’s performance in the Colts’ 23-20 win over the Vikings on Sunday will help alleviate the knee-jerk Week 1 analysis that Irsay and company jettisoned St. Peyton too soon, and then somehow failed by picking Luck over Heisman winner Robert Griffin III. Look, there’s always going to be a gap between Manning and Luck in some people’s minds, but let’s give it a little time and hope that, in the end, it’s no bigger than the one between RG3’s two front teeth. And, while I’m on the subject, no more Luck puns, headline writers. The only time this will ever be remotely acceptable is when No. 12’s on-field heroics inspire a drag queen revue called “Luck Be A Lady Tonight.”
Two out of three ain't bad.
3) This is why we can’t have nice things, Indianapolis: According to one survey, you are the most sexually satisfied city, but another suggests you are the fattest. One step forward, two steps back—to the buffet at Gray Brothers. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is a sex-with-food deviance. Not Like Water For Chocolate kinky, though. I’m thinking this is more like Seinfeld’s George Costanza noshing on a pastrami hoagie during foreplay. That’s acceptable, I suppose. But not until another survey comes out indicating that Indianapolis also likes to sleep more than any other city will we have nailed the sleep-eat-fuck trifecta and arrived as a true metropolitan community. What happens in Sloth City stays in Sloth City!
4) Indiana University fans who ask Is it basketball season yet? must be forced to watch a recording of its football team’s 41-39 Saturday night home loss to Ball State on endless loop until IU’s regular-season tipoff against North Dakota State. And Ball State fans? Yap it up while you can: you play IU in basketball on Nov. 25.
5) With all due respect to Ken Honeywell and his well-documented distaste for Modern
"People" who live in flyover states are hilarious.
Family, The Middle is the ABC show that truly deserves your hate, Hoosiers. If you haven’t caught it (and, by all means, do yourself a favor and make other plans for the sitcom’s upcoming Sept. 26th premiere), the show chronicles the lowbrow pratfalls of a dowdy but well-meaning family of five set in a fictional town in rural Indiana. Look, if I wanted to laugh at the lower-middle class struggles of folks in America’s Heartland, I would have attended the Republican National Convention. Those guys get it. Yes, The Middle’s plots are horribly sitcom-y, but it’s the show’s portrayal of Midwesterners that drives me nuts. Apparently, we all drive domestic cars from the ’90s, embrace hokey homespun platitudes, and wear lots of bad denim and plaid. Who came up with this? Those guys who did the John Gregg commercials?
1. My distaste for the John Gregg spots is also well documented.
2. I think we should get right on that “Luck Be A Lady” thing. Maybe a whole production of Guys And Dolls with Colts in drag.
3. Our new state motto is, “Indiana: Lowest prices on cigarettes.”
4. As a Butler grad, I have nothing to say.
5. It really is insulting.
1) Facial hair can only take one so far. I hope at least added something to the dogpile. Regarding TV spots, God help me, but I like the new Fox 59 one. A lot.
2) I like this idea. I’m betting this is something Irsay would get into, too.
3) We make a pretty sweet synthetic cannabis too, I hear.
4) Just like Purdue fans. (You haven’t beaten anyone yet, Boilers, but, honestly, I think you’re gonna be the class of your Big Ten division.)
5) No bright spots. None.
PS: I also think Richard Mourdock looks like ALF.
I can see the similarities given that both are puppets with a fist up their ass.
As an Indy native that lives in Los Angeles, I get the same reaction from people out here that you described for The Middle. It also is pretty much the plot of the movie, The 5-Year Engagement. People from the coasts have no concept of what the Midwest is like and they truly do believe that all Midwesterners, city-dwellers or farmers, are perpetually stuck in the musical Footloose. I usually respond by restraining from punching them and then say “No, we really are just like you except we’re less pretentious and self-absorbed. Oh and our mortgages are only about half of the rent you pay on your one bedroom apartment.”
I did some writing for a guy who was originally from Philly. We worked together for about a year.
One day, he asked me what coast I lived on.
“I’m from Indiana,” I said. “You know, the Midwest?”
“Oh,” he said, “the Midwest Coast. Right.”
Face-palm.
I agree that “The Middle” is a hokey show. But, I like it. Because, in a lot of ways, it does remind me of my experiences growing up in a working class, rural Indiana famiy. And, I think it’s refreshing to see a working class family represented on television. We haven’t really seen many since “Roseanne.” (I guess the White family on “Breaking Bad” might be another recent one but… That’s another comment thread, I reckon.)
I think it’s especially interesting to see this show juxtaposed with the affluent, one-income/one-stay-at-home-spouse families on “Modern Family.”
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is… “The Middle” does not represent every Hoosier or every Hoosier’s experience. But, it does represent some. And, while it’s not fair for others to assume that all Hoosiers love plaid and drive hopelessly un-hip domestic cars, it’s also not fair for us to pretend that none of them do. And, it’s also cruel, I think, to mock and reject the Hoosier brothers and sisters who do indulge in the occasional homespun platitude, in order to appear cooler to your coastal cousins. You dig?