May 27, 2009

Extra pleasure formula

(I wonder what ads Google will pop up here when its magic scanner thingies read today's headline. And now, on with the show.)

My next blog post after this one will be Number 300, and I was thinking about using my 299th entry to announce some kind of big celebratory SFTC contest in which you, the reader, would have the chance to win fabulous gifts and prizes, but that's as far as it got.

Instead, I want to tell you about a new mathematical equation I'm working on. It's going to be a formula that will calculate the likely amount of enjoyment that can be derived from any given dining or entertainment activity.

I'm using variables such as amount of time waiting in line (let's call it Tw), amount of time enjoying the food or activity in question (Ta), impact of weather on the wait time (W)*, cost of the activity ($), and something that I'm calling the X factor (strangely, this will be represented in the formula as Z), which is really just going to be a way for me to fudge the equation if necessary in order to come up with the result I want.

Now, I haven't actually gotten around to plugging in various numbers to see if it will make any sense**, but in my head, the formula looks something like this:

(Tw - Ta) * W
__________ + (3.14 - Z) = ENJOYMENT FACTOR
$

What brings up this sudden dive into advanced mathematics, you ask? The answer: two activities from the past weekend that ranked at opposite ends of the enjoyment scale - and the realization that I waited in line for 35 minutes to do one of them and for no minutes to do the other.

The activity that was worth a wait of more than half an hour? Eating a pair of $2 tacos. You read me right, mamacita: Tacos.

But not just any $2 tacos. These were a Korean short rib taco and a spicy pork taco, hot off the grill from one of the Kogi barbecue trucks. If you live in L.A., you've probably heard about Kogi, which has two vehicles that stop all around town for three hours at a time (you can follow them on a twitter feed), serving up the aforementioned tacos, plus burritos and other specialities like Kobe beef hot dogs. Oh, and if you don't live in L.A., this actually might be a reason to move here.

Waits at the trucks' late-night stops outside of bars have been rumored to be an hour long or more, but based on what I ate Sunday, those line-waiting drunks are actually making very good decisions.

Unlike, say, the people behind Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which I also, um, experienced this weekend. (Oh, just to tie this back to my Enjoyment formula - no waiting in the ticket line, but 115 minutes of waiting in my seat for it to be over.)

If you haven't heard, the film stars Matthew McConaughey, which I mention only because my favorite movie reviewer, The Regular Guy on WXRT, accurately described his performance this way: He's "the man who has the whitest teeth in the world - my god, they're blinding!"

It wasn't just that GGP is horrifically, abominably awful - which it is. It's how a movie that is nominally a chick flick could be so misogynistic. (All of the "comedy" comes from McConaughey's character learning to use women and his ensuing misadventures - oh and Lacey Chabert's bride-to-be character acting like an insane shrew.) It's like it's a film for women who love men who hate women.

There's something about that formula that doesn't work.

* A long wait could actually work as a positive factor, if it's sunny and 70, which it pretty much always is where I live. I swear I'm not rubbing it in.
** Of course it will make sense.

2 comments:

bugs said...

that was very funny, o witty brother of mine.
i can't believe you paid money to see that movie.
tacos.....yummmmmyyyy....if i wasn't going to sleep w/in 10 minutes (it's approx. 9 p.m. EST) i may have gone to make one...

DGB said...

Thank you for the 411 on that Twitter feed. As soon as I get back to town, I'm stalking me some taco trucks.