Shrimp Products: I couldn't let this slide

Across America with Bob Greene: "The Job Interview"

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS/LOS ANGELES (CNN) — The Elvis impersonator on the flight out here was not in uniform, which was at first confusing.

He was Vegas Elvis– I’d say circa 1970: modified muttonchops, clear eyes, chiseled jaw– and in a white jumpsuit he’d have had some context. But this was a travel day for him, and on United Airlines’ flight 111 from Chicago to Los Angeles he was in street clothes, topped by a mid-length black leather-like coat.
He had an entourage — three people shadowing his steps, conferring quietly with him — and whatever business was bringing him out here, they were taking care of it. Like everyone else boarding the flight at O’Hare yesterday he was getting out of town early, trying to beat the blizzard; by the time we got to baggage claim at LAX I had lost him.

Here's what I expect to read when I load CNN's Political Ticker: how last night's debate went; who's making a big ad buy; who got a key endorsement; who say what about whom. Sometimes I get to see something like this, and the awesome beauty of everything about that video is pretty much the only reason I still visit CNN's Political Ticker in the first place, since most of the stuff on there is the kind of insignificant nonsense that makes me loathe politics, only more boring, since it's basically got the scope of a cable news network without the added pressure of having to be interesting.

But anyway, there was a point. This is what I don't expect to read when I load CNN's Political Ticker: three paragraphs of some guy rambling about an Elvis impersonator.

Also, while the verb "topped" in the phrase "topped by a mid-length black leather-like coat" is not incorrect, exactly, it makes less sense than something like "covered." Unless he was wearing the coat on the top of his head, or the coat was drizzled on top of the clothes like a fine chocolate sauce on a dish of ice cream. And that isn't even the most annoying thing in that sentence, because the guy wrote "leather-like."

The country is wide, and everyone moves through it at his or her own pace, with his or her own aspirations.

Profundity.

There was a time when the idea of having lunch in Illinois a little before noon and strolling the streets of southern California the same day well before the sun has begun to set would have been a concept so bizarre as to qualify as science fiction. Yet we do it now with little more than a yawn– the miles mean nothing.

It still takes like hours to get from Illinois to California. Airplanes are neato and all, but we're not talking matter transportation here. In the meantime, someone explain time zones to Bob Greene, because I think he believes he has just traveled through time.

as to qualify as

AS AS AS.

Yet we do it now with little more than a yawn– the miles mean nothing.

And everything.

This is the point where it went from "this is mildly annoying" to "goddamn it, I'm not going to be able to sleep until I make fun of this on my stupid blog." I am a very small person.

The people I had come to see had crossed the country, too, to be here for a joint job interview.

The people I had come to see had too crossed the country, too, to be here for two people interviewing for a job, too.

One job.

They sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the stage at the Kodak Theatre, facing a personnel department whose faces they could not make out. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were being evaluated by potential employers they would never meet, whose names they would never know.

Oh man what an awful metaphor. "Interviewing for a job" how cute voters sure are important ain't they except usually the interviewee isn't running shit and there aren't millions of interviewers whose say is all diluted by one another STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID.

This, too, inconceivable in a past America not all that distant — the idea of staring into the lenses of machines that will transport your image and your voice instantly to every corner of the nation, every cranny of the globe, and then going to bed having no real idea of what the strangers on the receiving end have thought of you — has by now become simply the customary way of doing presidential campaign business.

This, too, inconceivable in a past America not all that distant -- the idea of punching little buttons with letters in front of a bright white picture, allowing those words to appear on the picture, and then sending those words to fucking CNN and having them printed even though they are gibberish and you could have come up with something more meaningful by punching the buttons like so d,cvmjvxjxvjmbvk,fjmcvjcfjmgvjmcf, and then going to bed having no real idea if the strangers on the receiving end were able to make heads or tails of the pretentious self-consciously garbage you wrote trying to sound lyrical even though you have a tin can for an ear -- has by now HOLY SHIT THIS WAS ON CNN GUYS.

Situations in which it is acceptable to use the word "cranny" without sounding like a jackass:

English muffin commercial.
Even then don't do it because holy shit.

Which makes it no less Jules-Verne-like.

Is there a more awkward manner in which this sentence (fragment) could have been written? No, there is not. And that is generously ignoring the fact that its conclusion is pretty stupid too. How old are you, Ben Greene? Like 90? To the extent that we are still able to be amazed by technology, nobody gives a shit anymore, because it has all been said already, and far more eloquently, by people who have enough sense to avoid making up modifiers like "Jules-Verne-like."

The cameras carried the pleas of the two jobseekers — the candidates for the opening — to the people who will ultimately decide how to fill the position.

I know that was another clunky attempt at metaphor, but the cameras didn't carry anything, they transmitted, and most of that work was done by wires and satellites. Are you so old and infirm that you cannot get out of bed and you had to dictate this to your great-grandson, whom you liked to fondle inappropriately in your younger days? Do you collapse to the pillow with exhaustion and gesture to your great-grandson to hold a glass of water to your chapped, quivering lips every time you gather the strength to say "em dash?"

I also like how his "jobseeker" metaphor is so bad he needs to explain it (between a couple of em dashes, natch) mid-sentence.

The Elvis

You had to know we weren't done with the Elvis.

who had crossed the continent with me earlier in the day might have dreams for himself not quite as lofty as the dreams of the two on the stage, but then, there are said to be thousands of men who try to make their livings asking people to believe they are the King, and fewer than half-a-hundred people, in all our history, who have asked to make their livings as our president, and who have been told: yes.

"might have dreams for himself not quite as lofty"
"there are said to be thousands"
"who try to make their livings"
"fewer than half-a-hundred"
"and who have been told: yes"

So I count five things in that sentence (!) that were phrased so awkwardly that the computer on which this column was typed shut itself down in revolt. Unfortunately, a backup copy was made.

This, by the way, is why he started talking about Elvis. This is the best he could do. The King/President parallel in there is so awful I might throw up. Bob Greene couldn't be trying any harder if he were writing this while being eaten by a shark. (Because one would have to try very hard to write a column while being eaten by a shark, you see!)

To join that group you first have to make it past the hiring committee, many millions strong, that gazes at you through sheets of glass while, with the lights in your eyes, you see mostly disorienting glare.

I'm feeling a little disoriented myself. You know, Bob, it's kind of cheating, what you're doing here--everything sounds foreign and weird when you're so stupid that you describe a TV as "sheets of glass." I mean, "black stains on a razor-thin sliver of wood" sounds kind of weird too, but you don't see many columns talking about the Jules-Verne-likedness of newspaper.

A person can cross the nation in a handful of hours, high above the clouds, and notice nothing on the ground below; right now I’m setting out to see it block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, in a television studio on wheels that rolls at eye level through the country.

It took me three or four seconds to figure out he was talking about a news van. Bob Green is such an awful writer, it took me three or four seconds to figure out he was talking about a fucking news van.

By the way, how many hours fit in a handful? Twelve hours on a watch, I can probably hold two or three watches--36 let's say?