Adam Dorsey.com

The Problem with Women

The problem with women is that they’re all so fucking different. You can keep trying to fit them into boxes, and cram them into stereotypes, but in the end it’s fucking hopeless—They’re always going to surprise you. You can take what you learn from one woman and try to apply it to the next, but it rarely works out that way. Instead of finding yourself with just another woman, you find yourself with a whole other woman, and she’s all different, and you’re just at square one again.

You have a couple of choices, even if you don’t really get to choose. A.) You can fall for them all at once, or B.) It can build inside you until it bursts like a dam, and then you can fall, which is maybe easier because then you’re falling into water, but maybe it’s harder because I mean there was like a town down there called “Friendship” and now the water from the dam bursting has washed it all away, and if this doesn’t work out, can that town be rebuilt, you guys? I mean, damn it, maybe the problem was building this dam here in the first place, so close to this other stuff.

And you can let her change you, you can let her make you better. But then what happens if you break up? Then do you just go back to being the lesser version of you? What happens if you don’t break up and you just wake up one day and you love her because you love her, and because you love her you let her change you into her, but now maybe you don’t like you anymore. I don’t know.

You can even begin to feel comfortable in your “type,” in the sort of girl you find yourself attracted to. You can chase the girls that look like the celebrity you were into when you were twelve, you can continue to clamber over the girls who remind you of college seminars and Radiohead listening parties, you can swoon over the girl who reminds you of all your exes, and you can shrug off the girl who’s “just not your type.” You can do all of that, but then in an instant the girl who’s just not your type can flash you a smile in a new way, or tell a joke in a funnier way, or reveal a piece of herself that matches a piece of yourself and it’s like I DON’T EVEN HAVE A TYPE ANYMORE, WHERE AM I, WHY IS THIS GRASS SO TALL, WHERE DID ALL THESE WEEDS COME FROM, ETC, MOTHERFUCKING, SOFTWARE ETC.

Why can’t they—THE WOMEN—why can’t they all be the same? I did this before, I can do this again—I mean, I could do this again if they were all the same. But instead they’re all new puzzles—or worse—they’re not even puzzles, or objects, but actual human beings, with individual experiences and personalities so that they can’t be boiled down in generalities or won over by practicing the rules to a game you read in a book by a douchebag. At the least, they’re a girl version of you—a slightly softer, slightly more fuller-chested version of you—AND FUCK, MAN, you’re just starting to even have the slightest grasp on understanding you. How are you supposed to begin to understand something that’s like you, only slightly more delicate, slightly more complicated, and infinitely better at everything, besides maybe lifting a couch?

In the end, they’re people. Women are people, just like men, only more interesting. And probably you can’t ever really get a real good grasp on them, but maybe that’s the fun part. Or maybe that’s my downfall, I don’t know, it’s still a little too early to tell.

Man on Man (stop snickering)

So I think I’m a man? Like a grown up man? Like I’m confident, and I’m unafraid, and I’m able to solve any problem that is thrown at me, you know, eventually. I’m continually striving to be a better person through experience and learning. I’m trying to share the world with other wonderful people, helping them and allowing them to help me. I’m not letting chances at happiness or interesting experiences pass me by. And women—women are beautiful, and hot, and smart, and delicate, and hilarious—they’re tiny shards of the world that I’m striving to surround myself and occasionally stab myself with. Those are all things a grown up man would do and feel, right? Yeah. So I think I’m like a grown up man.

I remember being a child and looking up to my dad (pictured above) and wondering how he could do the things he did—How he knew how, how he knew what was even happening. He knew everything and had stories about everything and could explain everything. Now I guess I’m old enough to realize that he didn’t know everything, he just knew how to figure everything out. And I guess I can do that now, like I have the confidence to do that now? Because that’s what it is, really, it’s confidence—I mean, maybe it was more than that when my dad became a grown up man, but we have the internet now, so it’s confidence and a good google search.

Maybe it’s confidence and doing the right thing. But doing the right thing is just having confidence in following your own voice, hopefully, and if your own voice makes you do bad things, then you’re an asshole and you probably snickered enough at the homoerotic title of this post to move on anyway. So just be confident, do the right thing, and google everything else.

When I was a child my dad knew everything and he had a story about everything. So now I’ve got that first part down, and I’m out in the tall grass accruing the second part. Wish me luck and stuff.

An Open Letter to LinkedIn

Dear LinkedIn,

Today you sent me an e-mail, the intent of which I believe was to urge me to go to your website and do whatever it is a person does on your website. I have a day job already, and the sort of career that I’m working towards isn’t the sort of career that is helped by LinkedIn, so I understand your concern. You were probably thinking, “Hey, let’s e-mail this guy and maybe he’ll click on this thing and maybe he’ll remember he has an account with us. Hell, maybe he’ll even forget his dreams and his ambition, and maybe he’ll use our service to finally sell out completely.”

But instead of just sending me an e-mail that was straight-forward like that, you sent me an e-mail designed specifically to tug at my nostalgia, an e-mail meant to fit right into the jagged jigsaw of my decaying tower of dreams and detonate it all from the inside. Bravo, what a good job you did. The e-mail began like this:

Hi Adam,

It’s been 8 years since you graduated from The Evergreen State College. See and explore over 200 LinkedIn members in your alumni network.

And you know, what? That’s not a bad way to start, LinkedIn, but don’t think I don’t see the subtext. What you’re really saying is “Hey, Adam. It’s been eight years since you graduated from college. Remember college? Yeah, that’s when you spent those four years studying all of those books and working hard on all of those projects so that you could procure a degree in your chosen field, so that maybe you could parlay that knowledge and experience into a healthy career. LOL! Just wanted to remind you that yeah, it’s been eight years since you graduated, and in that time you’ve—hmmm, let’s check your LinkedIn profile—you’ve worked in a video store, which is kind of close to your major except that it’s not close at all. And then you were a game tester, which is great but c’mon, that’s like a stereotype job for a stereotype guy who’s running away from a stereotype adulthood. And then you—wait, it says here on your LinkedIn profile that you looked at cat pictures for eight hours a day everyday? That’s… That’s a job?”

So yeah, LinkedIn, in the words of my current people, I C WHAT U DID THER. But you know what? That alone would have been fine. I mean, you’re a job website or whatever, I understand that you’re trying to evoke a primal fight or flight or renegotiate-my-stock-options or whatever. That’s fine. The tipping point, though—if you can say a piece of spam e-mail has a tipping point—is when you put a photo collage of my former college classmates together. Oh look, there’s that guy from my film class who always had great things to say about my projects, right on, and there’s that guy who’s some kind of wine review startup entrepreneur person now, right on, and there’s—shit…is that? Oh wow, it is…

Oh man, I had the biggest crush on her. Is that something that it’s okay for dudes to say? That doesn’t make me gay, does it, to say I had a crush on a girl in college? Whatever. She was the first of a string of women with which I pretended to like Radiohead, so as not to put a cramp in the conversation or the late-night consumption of a mixtape. And yeah, years later, I’ve wondered if I ever was attracted to the girl herself or just the haircut of the girl, because yeah, I guess I have been known to just fall in love with a haircut, but now LinkedIn you’re sending me a new picture with a new haircut and goshdernit if she isn’t just as fetching.

But I’m sure we’re different people now, LinkedIn, and that whatever smiles the two of us shared in a hippy seminar or whatever memories I have of being twenty-one and ordering my first beer in a bar with her is just that—just a memory—I’m sure we’re different people now with different lives now, and thanks for the offer, but it’s probably best if we don’t internet stalk each other right now. But now you’ve got me wondering if I am a different person now. Am I, LinkedIn? If I went back there now, Sam Beckett style, and put romantic-creepy-stalker right what once went nervous-college-man-child wrong, would I even do anything differently? Would I lean in and kiss her when I should have? Would I understand what she was saying when she told me in her car that that guy “wasn’t really her boyfriend” or would it still take me months to realize it? Would I continue to second guess everything she said, second guess everything I did, and second guess the very nature of the universe itself so that I would never have to put myself in any sort of position to be hurt?

So look at what you’ve done, LinkedIn. Now I’m having some sort of existential crisis regarding whether I’m the same man I was in college, whether modern-day Adam Dorsey has the same strengths or weaknesses as some former version of Adam Dorsey. You’ve got me realizing that I’m two years away from a ten year college reunion, which means that I’ve got exactly two years left to turn this shit around or face having to tell former classmates, professors, and girls with cute haircuts that YEP GAME TESTING AND CAT PICTURES. LinkedIn, you’re having me realize that Radiohead only became Nick Cave who only became Kanye West, and that the most ridiculous part is that no matter how much I try to like these musicians at the time to impress the girl, it’s only three years later, when my intense affection for a girl becomes a nagging memory that I think “Oh yeah, I see what they were saying about this OK Computer” or “There just is something that is beautifully haunting about the first half of Abattoir Blues” or—I’m sorry Kanye, not yet.

Isn’t the internet fucking great?

So in conclusion Linkedin - UNSUBSCRIBE

—Adam Dorsey.

My Pitch for Die Hard 5

So they’re making Die Hard 5. There haven’t been a lot of story details leaked yet, but it sounds like it’ll widen the scope to a worldwide stage, as we see John McClane and his son wrapped up in some skirmish in Russia.

No. No, thanks. No. I am a big fan of the first Die Hard movie. It is both one of the best action movies and one of the best Christmas movies that has ever been put to film. It turned tv-actor Bruce Willis into movie-star Bruce Willis. The first Die Hard worked because John McClane was not a superhero, he was just a normal guy dealing with marital problems over the holidays, a normal guy who happened to get wrapped up in a terrorist threat at a high-tech tower. And when faced with that adversity, McClane became a hero, he walked barefoot over glass and yipi-kay-yayed all the motherfuckers to save his wife, who didn’t really want anything to do with him anyway.

But in each Die Hard sequel, we got farther and farther away from what made Die Hard good in the first place. As action set-pieces grew more over the top, CGI effects dominated the story, and John McClane was no longer an ordinary guy forced to be a hero, he was an action movie star and all of this was just more of the same for him. Coincidentally, each sequel was just more of the same for us too. Yawn.

To fix the Die Hard franchise, we don’t need to make the explosions bigger and put McClane in a foreign setting. To fix Die Hard, we have to make John McClane human again. No jumping off of skyscrapers. No hitching rides on the backs of fighter jets. John McClane needs to be a regular middle-aged dude.

So here is my pitch for Die Hard 5: John McClane is 56 years old. He’s got a gut. He doesn’t have a slick-shaved Patrick Stewart dome like in those posters for Die Hard 4—he’s balding. He’s only got a few hairs left, but he spends an hour every morning combing them over so it looks they’re more. He’s retired from the force. He never worked things out with his wife, but he still makes a drunken phone call every time he’s had too many beers in his lonely, one-bedroom, shit-hole apartment. “We can still make this work!” he yells onto her voicemail. His kids hate him, because he was never really there for them. He’s constantly telling everyone about that time he killed that German guy and saved that tower, but everyone’s already heard that story a million times.

The first ten minutes of this movie is John McClane spending Christmas 2012 alone.

Because Die Hard 5 is about John McClane turning his life around. For New Years Eve, he goes on a blind date. He doesn’t want to, but his loved ones make him because they’re sick of dealing with him—just like the audience is after the first fifteen minutes of the movie. And you know what, the date is going really well, despite his best socially-awkward efforts to self-destruct it, this woman really likes John. They have a lot in common, and barring any disaster, it’s easy to imagine a second date.

So he’s at this fancy restaurant in this brand new fancy hotel, and he has no idea how he’s going to afford this meal on his pension, but like I said, the date’s going really well. Of course, he doesn’t think it’s going well, he thinks he’s messing it up—in fact, he’s wishing for some kind of terrorist attack to happen just so he can show this woman what kind of action star he really is and—THE POWER GOES OUT.

Doors lock. Armed men surround all the tables. Everyone in the restaurant is taken hostage. Everyone in the hotel is locked in their rooms with the fancy new high-tech locks of this fancy new Los Angeles hotel. John gets his wish, there’s a terrorist attack. And it’s not Germans or Russians or hackers or whatever—The bad guys are militant Americans. Led by a Timothy McVeigh-like mad man who looks like he just stepped out of his bomb-shack, these are real bad guys. They aren’t silly action stereotypes, they’re something new, something we haven’t seen on film before. It’s raw, like if Heath Ledger’s Joker had no make-up and spoke in exaggerated Fox News talking points. They feel like a real threat. They ARE going to blow up this building, this brand new 5-star-hotel in downtown L.A., but first they’re going to get their faces all over TV. They’re gonna get their message across, they’re going to change this country, bring it back to its “original values.” But first they have to do something so that the government—THE WORLD—takes them seriously.

John McClane has to stop them. He has to stop this 9-11 level event from happening, but it’s even more complicated than 9-11, because these are Americans. Die Hard has always been about America, but to contemporize it, we need to show the current rift in American politics. John McClane has to save America—ALL SIDES OF AMERICA—and bring us all together.

But this isn’t the John McClane we remember. It’s been years, you guys. He’s scared. Whenever he tries to do something heroic, he starts shaking horribly. He has overwhelming panic attacks. The first time he fires a gun in Die Hard 5, he misses the guy he’s aiming at, and then he vomits uncontrollably. But over the course of the film, we get to see John McClane take baby steps on his journey to once again become the hero we know he can be. And not the crazy CGI action superstar—by the end of Die Hard 5 John McClane becomes the ordinary guy who, when backed into a corner, will do anything to protect his fellow man. And by the end of this terrible night, a night where the action doesn’t spread to an airport or Russia or Kevin Smith’s basement, but instead dramatically tears apart a five-star hotel floor by floor—while at the same time tearing apart John McClane’s insecurities and inadequacies—we get to see the forging—before our eyes—-of the modest hero we once knew. By the time the credits roll, a bruised, cut, bleeding, overweight, balding John McClane might look older, but he’s again the John McClane we remember. And wow, does his new love interest have one hell of a first date story.

Anyway, that’s my pitch. If this current Die Hard movie gets caught up in development hell or if you’re looking for something new for Die Hard 6, give me a call, Hollywood. Die Hard can be great again, let’s not all settle for another mediocre entry in the greatest action franchise in the world.

He’s like my Gatsby.

“In a minute, this is all going to come crashing down around us.”

“I know.”

“Are you ready for that? The implications of that?”

“It’s what I signed up for.”

“Okay, Ted Danson.”

“Okay, Adam Dorsey.”

“Cheers.”

HUGE MICHAEL BAY EXPLOSION

EVERYONE WILL KNOW YOUR NAME -  SUMMER 2013