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i'm Sorry I Said That: 25 Examples of Bad Form in Social Situations

Go Easy on the Drinks

My wife and I were married in Maui. We had 16 guests, mostly immediate family and a few close friends. It was a small, relatively tame event compared to most weddings. 

After we said our vows, we snapped a few photos on the beach and headed to the reception. Our guests were making use of the open bar but no one was touching the 16 bottles of champagne we’d purchased for the event. (Yes, 16 bottles. We didn’t know any better. Don’t judge us.) Knowing that the unfinished bottles would likely be thrown out, we decided to drink as much of the champagne as possible on our own.

Drink. Dance. 

Drink. Chat. 

Drink. Sing. 

Drink. Eat. 

Drink. Dance. 

Drink. Chat. 

Drink. 

Drink. 

Drink. 

The combination of nerves, adrenaline, and champagne made us feel like superheroes. I'm certain our boozy state of euphoria would’ve lasted forever had my mother not whispered a single piece of advice into my ear midway through the reception.

“Eric, you need to go easy on the drinks or else you won’t be able to perform tonight.”

I stared at her in shock and disgust for a good minute before speaking up.

“I'm pretty sure you've just scarred me for the rest of my life."

“That's not true. Besides, I'm just being helpful."

Since I still shiver when thinking about this years later, I was right. She was wrong. Blech.

My wife tells my niece what my mother said in the snapshot above. My niece responded appropriately with a creeped-out frown.

I'm Sorry I Said That: 25 Examples of Bad Form in Social Situations

Last summer, I worked on a show at Sony Studios in Culver City. While the studio and stages were the epitome of small town America, the creepy poorly-lit parking garage was straight out of “Rape Town, USA.” (I don’t believe “Rape Town” is an actual city, by the way. If it was, though, it’d definitely be in Alabama. Definitely. Alabama.)

One particularly late evening I found myself waiting for the elevator with three conservatively-dressed, gray-haired executives. We stood there sighing, pacing, and checking our phones before it finally arrived several minutes later. As we filed on, the oldest of the suits pressed the button for floor six and asked the rest of us for our destinations.

“Four,” said one suit.

“Me too. Four,” said the other.

I said I was on the sixth floor, along with the original suit, and we waited another minute for the doors to close and carry us away.

“If I moved this slowly at work, I’d have been replaced years ago,” Old Man Suit joked as the doors finally closed.

Gratuitous chuckles.

Suit Number Two chimed in with “I could have taken the stairs and made it there already. Jeez.”

More chuckles.

Suit Number Three upped the ante by implementing sarcasm: “Sure it’s slow but that’s the price you pay for such a clean luxurious ride.”

The gratuitous chuckles had somehow become realistic chuckles and I was on the verge of a real zinger when I got cut off by Old Man Suit.

“I’m just glad no one was going to the fifth floor. The button doesn't even light up so who knows what happens when you press it!"

I have no idea why, but the gratuitous laughs were now loud and genuine. The bar was so low it was impossible to screw this up so I stopped brainstorming and just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh, that’s the button you press if you want someone to pee in your mouth. You press that one, lean in, open wide and, boom, piss everywhere!”

Previous gratuitous laughter ceased instantly.

Ding!  Fourth Floor.

The doors opened and Suit Number Two and Suit Number Three bolted and left Old Man Suit and me to stand in silence together for another couple minutes. It was awful. I tried to think of something to say to ease the tension along the way, but everything I came up with seemed like it would only make things worse. So I said nothing.

Ding! Sixth floor.

Old Man Suit nearly leapt through the doors to get away from me. I felt like a leper. I had to make this right and since I didn’t have much time, I decided to just speak from the heart.

“Hey, what I said back there, about peeing in your mouth and all, I just want you to know I didn’t say that because I was gay or hitting on you. You know what I mean?"

The way he turned and glared at me told me he did not, in fact, know what I meant. So I continued, "It just seemed like we were taking turns making jokes and you cut me off, so I just said the first thing that came to mind. Peeing in people's mouths. That's funny, right?"

Again, his glare told me we disagreed.

"Anyway, I just want you to know that I didn't say that because I'm gay or anything. Cause I’m not. It was just a joke that –"

Dismissing my explanation with a look of pure disgust, he snapped, “Please stop. Just stop."

And then he turned and continued to walk to his car at the end furthest end of the lot. Coincidentally, he was parked immediately to the left of my own car. All I wanted to do was get in my own car, drive off and forget this even happened but to do that would mean I’d continue creeping out this old man so instead, I turned and walked down the parking ramp to the floor below, holding out my remote, pretending to search for a car that I knew wasn’t there.

Gratuitous creepy parking lot shot.

I Cannot Write 25 Stories Before Christmas

I Cannot Write 25 Stories Before Christmas, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

This is a photo of me realizing that I cannot fulfill my promise of 25 stories a day before Christmas. Fuck. I'll be changing that shit to 12 days of stories or some shit like that puh-ronto.

I'm Sorry I Said That: 25 Examples of Bad Form in Social Situations

My family is spending Christmas with us this year. As preparation for the inevitable tension and awkwardness that occurs whenever we’re near one another for any length of time, I’m revisiting past social mishaps hoping to learn something from them.

“John, Wende, and Jane Magazine”

John Reynolds was my mentor in college. When I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, professors and employers alike told me that I should talk with John Reynolds. “John works on films. John works on TV shows. John makes a living doing cool shit and also happens to be a cool guy. You should talk to John.”

I took their advice and talked to John. He was, indeed, a cool guy who made a living doing cool shit and we quickly became friends. He invited me to his home for dinner. I’d never met his wife but I knew she was pregnant and thought it was fair game to bring it up during our introduction. “Hi, I’m Eric. It’s nice to meet you. John told me you were pregnant and I thought you should know about an article I just read in Jane magazine. Apparently, women can achieve orgasms while breastfeeding if they do it a particular way.”

I am not exaggerating when I write that every creature within a five mile radius stopped to judge me at that moment. I sputtered a series of “um”s and “uh”s but I failed to deliver a proper explanation or even an apology for what I’d just said.

I asked my wife for a second opinion since she witnessed it firsthand as my date that evening.

“I don’t know what to tell you," she said. "Why you thought that was anywhere close to appropriate to bring up at all, much less to someone you’re just meeting for the first time, I mean, My God.”

“So, is there a lesson to be learned from this? This series will be better if I have an overall point."

"Seems like you have several to choose from."

"How about 'don't read women’s magazines'?”

“No, I don’t think that’s-“

“Don’t read women’s magazines if you’re a man. It will backfire and make you look foolish.”

She sighed. “Perfect.”

I have no reason to believe she was being sarcastic.

*Jessica Simpson on the cover of Jane Magazine immediately after breastfeeding a baby.

Squirrels in L.A. are Different than Squirrels in South Carolina

Hipster Squirrel Goes to the Beach, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

The Coop!

I felt terrible for using my wife's car to experiment with night photography before I did so with my Mini Cooper. Sorry, Coop. Here you go. I promise to get you washed properly before our next shoot. Swear.

(Music's from Mouse and the Billionaire, by the way.)

The Shirt Fairy and iPhoto Mishaps

Last week I tried to peruse the pictures I've stored in my iPhoto library. There were 27,485 images. Twenty-seven thousand four hundred and eighty-five. (Read that last line aloud for proper effect. Put a lot of emphasis on the word "thousand." It's ridiculous, right?)

I take a lot of photos but there's no way I've taken twenty-seven thousand four hundred and eighty-five of them and I certainly don't have them stored on the hard drive of my laptop. There had to be duplicates and then there had to be duplicates of those duplicates and duplicates of....you get where I'm going with this, right? My photo library was a mess and I needed to tidy it up.

I bought Duplicate Annihilator and let it run all day and night. It worked well (finding 8800 duplicate files and a number of unnecessary thumbnails) but since I'd been using iPhoto's Flickr export function, it also deleted nearly 180 files from my Flickr account online. Not cool.

There is a bright side, though. While searching for the missing Flickr pics, I'm finding a lot of snapshots from moments I'd simply forgotten about over the years. For instance, the Shirt Fairy and her Magical American Express card:

"Hello, Savages!"

Kids reenact the first Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving from The Franks Family

This trio of pics represented the family dynamic at my friends' house pretty well.

From left to right: wife, husband, husband's mother, and husband's father.

Toy Trains in Switzerland

Tilt-shift timelapse of Swiss trains.

gottardo nord from fb1 visuals on Vimeo.

Mighty Fine Burgers

Remix is a misleading term, but I understand why no one wants to say, "Hey listen to my high-energy, dance-friendly reinterpretation of a burger joint's local commercial." I'm exhausted thinking about the number of edits in this clip.

Toddlers

At the one minute mark, this man says, "Get up, suckas!"

New Moon

New Moon, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

Unsuccessful night of shooting on the lot. This was the best of the evening. Ugh. (insert something hilarious here)

"This horse is here because he is fast, not because he is gay."

First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

This is, like, maddening

Thanks to Kevin for pointing me to this awesome awfulness.

Ronin

Holy Shit, Ronin's on Hulu as well as a ton of other movies and tv shows! All for free. Goodbye productivity.

Land Rover Stop Motion Awesomeness

Land Rover's latest spot for the Freelander borrows heavily from the Wolf/Pig clip (see below) that made the rounds on youtube long ago. Sweet results, regardless.


UPDATE: My snobby art-school friend just emailed me about this post with "yeah, but i think that is ripping off people who did it long before, plus probably were inspired by david hockney, no?" 


And then she provided this link.





Original Inspiration:

Evian Babies

Evian's dancing babies spot just broke a world record for being the most viewed online advertisement in history. Crazypants. It also broke the streak of animated baby commercials/shows/films creeping me the fuck out, but that's less important to everyone but me, I'm sure.

On a related note: There's a cool behind-the-scenes clip below. Also, I'm posting shit way past the time it is relevant. 

Making of:

I Didn't Know It Was Bein' Thrown

If you're like me and believe that Paula Deen symbolizes everything awful about the South, please enjoy this video of her being hit in the face with a giant ham.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Fuck You, Kindle

As a South Carolina Public School System alumni, I can't actually read a book without the help of my wife and/or a text to audio software program. I can appreciate a good short animated film that makes use of books as tangible objects, though. Dig it.

My Mom is on Facebook

My Mother tried to friend me on Facebook recently. I didn't accept her request for an electronic friendship. Instead I sent her a link to the video below. I have not heard from her since then.

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

How Did This Make it to Production (part 2)?

I actually think the Ladies' version of this product might be worse.

How Did This Make it to Production?

Kara turned me on to this awesome commercial for this awful site.

Flowers Galore

flower11, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

I'm happier with these macro shots of flowers than I am with the wider Griffith pics in the previous post. I can't help but think there's a connection between my ability and interest in macro pics over epic wides to other aspects of my life. I have trouble staying focused on bigger, important projects but I do just fine on the smaller stuff. Maybe these photos are a metaphor now that I've posted them sequentially? Maybe I'm thinking about this too much and I just need a new lens. Yeah. That's what it is.

Griffith Observatory

Griffith Observatory, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

I took a stab at some night pics at the Griffith Observatory this week. Buildings and blurred peeps turned out alright, but I have no idea how to get these giant wide shots of the city in focus. Might be a lens issue. Thoughts?

Somewhere on earth

Somewhere on earth, originally uploaded by gbatistini.

gbatistini is no slouch on the Flickr Photostream front, either.

Interlude

Interlude, originally uploaded by powerpig.

Powerpig takes cool pics.

The Spitting Contest

I witnessed a spitting contest at work today. Apologies for the poor video quality. My Blackberry fails at providing quality motion pictures.

Google Chrome

I'm an Apple fan but Google's logic-based re-imagining of an Operating System combined with their clean and quirky web videos makes me think about switching that shit up.

No Special Effects

Irritatingly catchy fake song from Jason Segel and The Swell Season.

Sailormouth History Lesson

Andy Castor, editor extraordinaire and all-around quality guy, recorded himself teaching feudalism (or something) as a young boy. He lost his shit a couple minutes into the recording. Thankfully, his mother found the cassette 20 years later and his cousin animated his story and uploaded it to youtube.

The magic begins around the 2 minute mark. Give it time. It's worth it. Swear.

Busy Day at the WB

TESLA!, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

TRIKE!, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

GT!, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

Wait. This is Real?

Signs of Good Things to Come

The first few things I saw on the interwebs this morning were:

1.) Friend providing answers to lingering questions about his childhood friend's sexuality.

2.) Documentation of a day in the life of my friend, Ed. (His sons are in their late teens, by the way):

3.) Proof that another friend's great-grandparents make inappropriate wardrobe choices for newborn babies.

It is going to be a good day.

Feed Me

I kind of love this clip:

Cursed!

Cursed!, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

Just came across this on the WB lot. I don't know whose bike is actually parked here. I hope it's the stolen one in question and that the curse actually worked. Bike thieves are assholes.

Sunday Night Light Painting Attempt

How Do I Raise the Armrests of a Herman Miller Aeron Chair?

This morning, my office chair snapped in half when I leaned back in it. Snapped...in...half.

Since I spend a lot of time at my desk, I decided to put a little more thought (and money) into the office chair's replacement.

Frederico from Craigslist sold me a barely used Herman Miller Aeron Chair for a very reasonable price and now I'm happy as one can be while sitting at a desk working on a never-ending side project.

The new chair is very comfortable, but I'm not sure how to raise or lower the armrests so I searched online. After spending a few minutes wondering why Google's autofill function would suggest either of the two highlighted phrases below...

...I found a wealth of information about the many benefits of the Aeron chair via the official Herman Miller site and multiple forums about hip, comfy office furniture.

I learned that these chairs support your back, help your posture, and allow you to pass gas without worrying that a fart cloud will be trapped in the fabric (see below).

But I did not learn how to raise or lower the armrests on this sleek, mesh, posture-helping son of a bitch. Farting freely is great and all, but I really just want to get the armrests adjusted on this thing. Anyone know how this works? Seriously, help me out.

Toy Cars Blowed Up in Slo-Mo

Casio makes a digital camera that records HD in slo-mo. Apparently some kid owns one and put it to good use.

Spiderman Poops on my Mom, Gets Arrested...Eventually

When I saw this article about the Hollywood Blvd. Spiderman being arrested, I couldn't help but wonder if it was the same Spiderman that took my parents' money to pose for photos as if he was shitting on my mom's head last year. My guess is "yes."
Check out other fun photos from the trip here.
My personal favorites are:
My Mom posing for a picture with the indie hip-hop artist that sold us a blank CD for $10 (instead of the groundbreaking debut he promised us).




And any of the series of photos where my wife pretends to not know us. For example:

Gun Range Pride and Shame

Pride:

Shame:

The World's Most Evil Squirrel

The World's Most Evil Squirrel, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

The World's Most Evil Squirrel lives in a tree in our backyard.

Suburban Noise Festival

If you've ever wondered what it would sound like if you plugged your Kawai keyboard into your Vox guitar amp and used the volume on the piano as a wah-wah pedal, wonder no more. It sounds like a shit ton of noise. Awesome. Hendrix-y. Noise.

Neighbors will be calling the police at any moment. Swear.

DDR is a Game for Classy Ladies

DDR is a Game for Classy Ladies, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

There's a young girl standing behind Terami and Amy. She was coaching them. I asked her how they were doing and she pointed to Terami, saying "she's alright, but this one," and then pointed to my wife, Amy, "this one's really bad."

Bee-you-tee-full

Incredible timelapse below. HD doesn't seem to be working with this embed option, though, so check out his collection directly at Vimeo if you get a chance. Really amazing work. Not sure how he got that dolly shot under the tree without blurring the stars and lights. Anyone?

Timescapes Timelapse: Mountain Light from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Something Rumbled Near his Bottom!

No idea what happened just before this picture was snapped, but I want this image to be displayed poster-size at my funeral.

Something Rumbled Near his Bottom!, originally uploaded by Eric B. Shanks.

Bat Fight

I forgot how much I enjoyed the first minute or so of "Bat Fight." After that, Jesus Christ, does it go on forever. But the first minute or so...awesomeness.

BAT FIGHT with Will Ferrell from Will Ferrell

I see what you did...I see what you did.

Jayson Belt posted about how Kermit the Frog's ruined him as a banjo player and it reminded me of one of my favorite holiday commercials: Kermit vs. Brad Paisley.

Brad Paisley has John-Mayer-syndrome, where you're an insanely good guitar player but your songs are shrug-inducing. Kermit the Frog, on the other hand, has Kermit-the-Frog syndrome, where you're an insanely good banjo player, your songs are phenomenal, but you are a frog who's chosen to date a very bossy pig. It's an even match-up is what I'm saying.

Duel with Kermit | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com

Your Car Looks like a Blind Person Designed It

I saw on Mashable's Twitter feed that Volvo hired a blind artist to draw/mold/paint renderings of the new S60 and posted a charming series of mini-docs about it on their Facebook page.

It's a cool concept but, no surprise here, the artist's painting looks like a blind person made it.

(Cut to: the new S60 being revealed to look identical to the painting)