Rant

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the newly-empowered critters proclaim “four legs good, two legs bad,” only to later betray their entire belief system with the new wisdom that “four legs good, two legs better.”

I can relate. After extolling the virtues of wearing one contact lens (i.e. [monovision](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/monovision)), I took the bold step of putting the second lens in. Guess what?

One lens good, two lens better.

Sorry, monovision. I am fully committed to binocular vision.

And contact lenses aren’t bad at all. I had tried them a few years ago, and hated them. But the new lenses are comfortable enough that I genuinely forget that I’m wearing them. I’m a person who’s always had bad touching-my-eye squeamishness, but it’s been cake.

So my advice to my glasses-wearing brethren: give contacts a shot, even if you’re convinced you could never handle it.

The only reason I was trying contacts at all was as a trial-run for LASIK monovision. Now I’m just a guy who wears contacts. It’s really good, and doesn’t involve slicing my cornea.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need anything fancy. I don’t use-slash-need many advanced features, like super slo-mo or bookmarking. I just want a DVD player to play whatever disc I put in it, no matter where it’s from, without complaining.

I don’t want a princess. I want a whore.

I’m not even talking about multi-region or unlocked players. I just want one that can consistently play a DVD-RW of dailies burned on some random PA’s computer without bitching. I don’t know if that means a more advanced player, or a lamer one, but I’m officially sick of trying a disc in three different players before finally getting it to work on my MacBook.

I suspect my ideal DVD player is a no-name made in Guangzhou which can play drink coasters. If anyone can point me towards it, thanks in advance.

Let’s face it: there are no bad superpowers. But given the choice of only one, I’d pick flight.

Yes, plain old boring flight, common to so many superheroes that it hardly ranks as special. However, when you look at the so-called alternatives, you find that there’s really no competing with the classic.

**Super-strength**
Great, fine, love it. Stop a train, move a mountain. You’re strong, we get it. But strength is only useful if you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Consider this: You’re the world’s strongest man in the middle of the Sahara desert. Not so fuggin’ helpful, is it?

**Invisibility**
My hunch is that after a few weeks of being pervy, you’d realize that invisibility is pretty much exactly like ordinary life. That is, no one really cares if you’re there or not. True story: I used to work in Oliver Stone’s office. The assistant who previously sat at my desk was a hot young woman. Oliver always ogled her when he walked by. Because I am not a hot young woman, Oliver did not ogle me. (And thank god.) The joke was that I was invisible. If need be, I could walk into his office and just grab something off his desk — he’d merely see it floating away. So don’t think of invisibility as a superpower. It’s more of a trait, like having good abs, or leprosy.

**Super-speed**
Running really fast would be cool. But do you know what would be even cooler? Flying. And it’s hard to run to the moon, hotshot.

**Size control**
The ability to get really big or really small seems great until you realize that the world is pretty much built for normal-sized people. I’ve had the pleasure of working with both a little person (Deep Roy) and a giant (the late Matthew McGrory). Great folks. Wouldn’t trade places with them. And I have a strong suspicion that as you slide further up or down the logarithmic scale, life doesn’t get better.

**Power ring**
Don’t insult me. Green Lantern has no superpowers. He has a prop.

**Teleportation**
Yeah, that would be pretty awesome. But I’ve watched Star Trek. Something always goes wrong, and you end up inside a wall, or a Vulcan. Pass.

**Telepathy**
I can already read minds, and let me tell you, people are so much sicker than you can imagine. It’s like listening to an internet sex chat room through earphones. Plus, I already know that I’m bald. I don’t really need to go around hearing, “Hey, that guy is bald” all day.

**Telekinesis**
It would be handy to move things with one’s mind. But I don’t really need this power, because I have production assistants. Witness: “Linde, would you get me a Diet Coke with Splenda, please?” And it arrives, as if by magic. (As a general rule, any superpower that can be closely approximated by paying someone minimum wage is not really a superpower.)

I’m going to leave out the truly lame superpowers like weather control, because you know the so-called heroes who have these abilities are secretly ashamed. They’re the synchronized swimmers of the superhero Olympics: sure, you get to compete, but don’t pretend it’s the same. You’re embarrassing all of us.

Which leaves flight as the only valid superpower choice. And for the record, I’m not talking flying-with-wings like Angel in X3. I want good old-fashioned two-hands-aimed-at-the-sky.

Call me old school, but to me, that’s the only way to fly.