Van Halen – "Finish What Ya Started" (1988)

Come on, baby

Finish what you started

I’m incomplete!

A couple of Christmases ago, one of my children gave me a year’s subscription to the Criterion Channel, a streaming service that allows you to watch thousands of classic and contemporary films from around the world.

Those movie offerings are supplemented with trailers, introductions, behind-the-scenes documentaries, interviews, and commentary tracks.

My only problem with the Criterion Channel is that it’s hard for me to choose which of its many films to watch on any given night.  It’s like having access to a great wine cellar – how do you decide which bottle to open when there are so many great ones to choose from?

Like many streaming services, the Criterion Channel allows you to save titles you’re interested in to a list that you can browse through whenever you’re trying to decide what to watch.

That function is a disaster for people like me because I spend more time browsing through the channel’s film library and clicking the “add to my list” button as I do watching movies.

Currently, my Criterion watch list contains no fewer than 407 titles.  The chances of me viewing all those films are infinitesimal.  Nevertheless, I keep adding movies to it.

*     *     *     *     *

If you’re a regular reader of 2 or 3 lines, you know that I’m the poster child for people who don’t actually have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (“OCPD”) but act like they do.

Given my OCPD-ish personality traits – e.g., striving to do things perfectly, devotion to being productive, and preoccupation with details, rules, schedules, organization, and lists – it should have come as no surprise to anyone that when I got interested in Alice Munro’s fiction, I first obtained copies of all 14 of her short story collections from my public library and then read each of 140-plus stories in those books in chronological order.  I also meticulously recorded the titles of each of those stories along with the date that I read it in a notebook – which is how I’ve been keeping track of the books I’ve read for almost 50 years.

Likewise, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I took an equally systematic approach to choosing films to watch on the Criterion Channel.

After viewing a few random classics that I had heard about but had never seen – like Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, and Bergman’s The Seventh Seal – I decided to focus on French films.

My original plan was to start with The 400 Blows – Francois Truffaut’s legendary 1959 movie, which I had seen when I was in college – and work my way through the films of Melville, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, and the other French New Wave (or Nouvelle Vague) directors.  

I went to the library and checked out a comprehensive history of French cinema, which I planned to use to identify the movies I should watch.  But after reading the first few chapters of that book, I decided I needed to start by viewing the French “poetic realism” films of the thirties.

I began by watching Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct, and then worked my way through the movies of Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko) Jacques Feyder (Carnival in Flanders), Jean Renoir (The Rules of the Game – a truly remarkable film), and especially Marcel Carné, whose three-hour-plus Children of Paradise – which I had never heard of – is considered by many critics to be the greatest of all French movies.  (I wouldn’t argue with that judgment – it’s epic, dude!)

It took me a little over a year to work my way from Zero for Conduct to Henri Clouzot’s The Murderer Lives at 21, the 1942 movie that was the subject of a recent 2 or 3 lines post.  Altogether, I viewed about 30 French classics from the thirties and forties.

I didn’t watch old French films exclusively during the last year – I also saw movies by Kurosawa, Scorsese, Peckinpah, DePalma, John Woo, Tarantino, and Richard Linklater (my personal favorite) as well.  

I know all that because I’ve started keeping track of the movies I watch in the same notebook where I record the books I read.

*     *     *     *     * 

Who am I making that list for?  Who do I think is going to read it?  I suppose one or more of my children or grandchildren might flip through my notebook someday.  If they do, they might find it somewhat interesting that I bothered to keep such a comprehensive list of the movies I watched and the books I read – but I seriously doubt that they will spend much time mulling over my viewing and reading choices, much less let the movies and books I listed influence their own choices.

(If my father or grandfather had left behind a notebook listing the movies he had seen and the books he had read, I’d be fascinated by it.  That’s no surprise – someone who would keep such a list would be interested in someone else’s list.)

The fact that I keep such a list is very interesting to me.  But what’s even more interesting is the particular way I’m now choosing the movies I watch and the books I read.

Why?

Why did I read 140-odd Alice Munro stories?  And why am I going to watch roughly a hundred classic French movies over a two- or three-year period? 

No one assigned those tasks to me – I’m not a college student whose professor assigned those stories or movies to his or her students.  

And no one would give a rat’s ass if I stopped reading Munro halfway through her oeuvre, or suddenly switched from old French films to the Fast & Furious franchise.  

Except me, of course.  I would not be happy with myself if I didn’t finish what I started.  

*     *     *     *     *

All this nonsense almost certainly has something to do with the fact that I’m almost 74 years old.  I rarely think about dying, but I’m not stupid – I know what it means to be that age.

And what it means is that I have limited time left.  And what that means is that I feel the need to accomplish more than I’ve accomplished to date.

I’m not sure why I felt the need to read all of Alice Munro’s stories and watch all the great French films the Criterion Channel has to offer before my time runs out.  

What I am sure of is that if it hadn’t been Alice Munro, it would have been someone else – Marcel Proust, perhaps.  (I’ve been planning to read all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time for years.  Better late than never!)

And if it hadn’t been classic French films, it would have been Japanese films or finally getting around to watching all five seasons  of The Wire (which I’ve been saving like a squirrel saves nuts).

*     *     *     *     *

The problem is that it doesn’t matter how many of these self-assigned labors I complete – there are infinitely more books to read and movies to watch than I have time for.  

Nonetheless, something is driving me to accomplish as many of these tasks as I can.  

At the same time, something is making me waste a lot of time every day – by lying in bed scrolling on my phone . . . or worse.

I keep hoping that writing about this stuff on 2 or 3 lines will help me figure things out.  But I think that what ends up happening is that I just dig the hole deeper and deeper.

*     *     *     *     *

“Finish What Ya Started” was released on Van Halen’s 1988 album, OU812.  That was the band’s second album to feature singer Sammy Hagar instead of David Lee Roth.  

(Having trouble figuring out what the album’s title means?  Think about it, people.)

Click here to listen to “Finish What Ya Started,” which has nothing to do with Alice Munro stories or French films.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Little Big Town – "Boondocks" (2005)

You can take it or leave it

This is me

This is who I am!

I have good news and bad news for you today.

2 or 3 lines has always been self-absorbed as all get out.  But last month, I produced a series of posts that represent a personal best when it comes to narcissistic navel-gazing.

But it’s a new month – “Narcissistic November” is over!  Today’s post will bring an end to what probably seemed like an endless series of posts discussing obsessive-compulsive personality disorder . . . and then we’ll be ready to move on.  

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that I’m not going to do another audio advent calendar this year.  I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the decision is final.  (Doing 24 posts in 24 days last December left me plumb tuckered out, and a wise man learns from his mistakes.)

*     *     *     *     *

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – or “DSM-5” for short – an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder diagnosis requires the presence of four or more of the following behaviors:

1.  Preoccupation with details, rules, schedules, organization, and lists

2.  A striving to do something perfectly that interferes with completion of the task

3.  Excessive devotion to work and productivity (not due to financial necessity), resulting in neglect of leisure activities and friends

4.  Excessive conscientiousness, fastidiousness, and inflexibility regarding ethical and moral issues and values

5.  Unwillingness to throw out worn-out or worthless objects, even those with no sentimental value

6.  Reluctance to delegate or work with other people unless those people agree to do things exactly as you want

7.  A miserly approach to spending for themselves and others because they see money as something to be saved for future disasters

8. Rigidity and stubbornness

I plead guilty as charged to #1, #2, #3, #5, and #6.  And I wouldn’t deny that #4 and #8 probably apply to me as well.

That leaves #7.  I don’t think that I’m miserly, but I am frugal.  (I hate to spend more money on things than I have to – even when the amount in question is insignificant.)

But whether #7 applies or not, there’s little question that I exhibit more than enough of the behaviors listed in the DSM-5 to justify an OCPD diagnosis.

*     *     *     *     *

Just before I started writing this post, I stumbled across a Free Press article titled “Nobody Has a Personality Anymore.”

“Today, every personality trait is seen as a problem to be solved,” according to the author, Freya India.  “Therapy-speak has taken over our language.”

She continues:

[W]e are being taught that our personalities are a disorder. . . . Now you are always late to things, not because you are lovably forgetful, not because you are scattered and interesting, but because of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  You are shy and stare at your feet when people talk to you, not because you are your mother’s child, not because you are gentle and sweet and blush the same way she does – nope, it’s autism.  

You are the way you are not because you have a soul, but because of your symptoms and diagnoses; you are not an amalgam of your ancestors or a curious constellation of traits but the clinical result of a timeline of childhood events.

Exactly!

*     *     *     *     *

Here’s something else very interesting that I learned from that article.

Survey data on self-reported mental health diagnoses shows that liberals in general, and white liberal women in particular, are more likely than other groups to say that they suffered from a mental health condition (e.g., depression).

However, mental distress is more strongly linked to one’s generation than it is to one’s gender or political orientation.  

Each American generation since the baby boomers is progressively more depressed than the generation that came before.

A 2024 survey of over 3,000 Americans found that 67% of Gen Z men and 72% of Gen Z women believe that  “mental health challenges are an important part of my identity.”   But only 27% of baby boomer men and 34% of baby boomer women said that mental health challenges represented an important part of their identity.

*     *     *     *     *

I’m a boomer male, so it should come as no surprise that I have chosen to reject an OCPD self-diagnosis.

I don’t care how many of the DSM-5’s criteria for OCPD apply to me.  I don’t have a personality disorder – I just have a personality!

*     *     *     *     * 

I’ve featured Little Big Town’s “Boondocks” before, and I’ll probably feature it again.  

I love “Boondocks” despite finding it somewhat lacking in authenticity.  (You might feel the same way about 2 or 3 lines.)

Click here to listen to “Boondocks,” which was a top ten country hit in 2005.

Click here to buy “Boondocks” from Amazon.

Gavin DeGraw – "I Don't Want to Be" (2004)

All I have to do is think of me

And I have peace of mind

(Ur funny!)

*     *     *     *     *

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – or “DSM-5” – one of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is “excessive devotion to work and productivity.”

At first blush, that doesn’t seem to apply to me.  I retired from my job several years ago, and I was far from being a workaholic during my working years.  

But the word “work” doesn’t just refer to a job you’re paid to do.  It can also be used to describe any mental or physical effort that is performed to in order to achieve a goal – whether you’re paid a salary for that effort or not.

*     *     *     *     *

Think about the leisure activities that I’ve talked about in the previous posts – e.g., watching TV and movies, reading, collecting coins and sports cards, and playing bar trivia.  

According to one source, those with OCPD “choose hobbies that are organized and structured, and they approach them as a serious task requiring work to perfect.”  

That description certainly applies to hobbies like coin and sports card collecting, which require considerable organization and sustained effort.  But does it apply to watching TV and movies?

It does when you watch TV the way I do.  Before I watch a new streaming series, I read reviews – and when I’m done, I add the series to my list of watched shows.

I also read reviews before choosing a movie, and keep a list of the movies I watch.  But I often follow up one movie with other films by the same director, or from the same historical era – my movie-watching choices are organized and structured.

For example, earlier this year I watched about a dozen examples of French “poetic realism” films from the 1930s and 1940s – movies like The Rules of the Game, Hôtel du Nord, and Children of Paradise.  And I watched them in chronological order.

*     *     *     *     *

My approach to reading is equally systematic.  

I currently have 34 library books in my apartment.  If you don’t believe me, check out this photo:

(Actually, that number is an understatement.  There’s a library book on my bedroom nightstand and another one on my coffee table that I forgot to include in that photo.  Plus I have half a dozen library books on my Kindle.  So the actual count is more like 42 books.)

Those library books were not chosen willy-nilly.  For example, I’m sitting on several collections of short stories by the late Nobel Prize-winning author, Alice Munro.

    

Earlier this year, I read a long New Yorker article about Munro, who chose to stay with her second husband even after she learned that he had sexually abused one of her daughters from her first marriage.  (The abuse began when the daughter was only nine, and continued for several years.)

That article cited a number of Munro’s short stories that featured women who were desperately in love with emotionally unavailable or abusive men.  Like some of her characters, Munro was apparently in thrall to her second husband – despite the extremely disturbing nature of his behavior, she chose to stay with him. 

I was fascinated by that New Yorker article, and decided that I needed to read not only the dozen or so stories it mentioned, but all 163 of Munro’s short stories.  Once I managed to obtain all 14 of her story collections from my library, I started reading them.

Why did I need to have all 14 of Munro’s books before sitting down to read the first one?  Surely you wouldn’t expect me to start reading her first book until I had all of them in my possession.  

What if I got through her first five books and wasn’t able to find her sixth one?  I needed to read them in chronological order – skipping from the fifth story collection to the seventh without reading the sixth one first was not have an option!

*     *     *     *     *

But when it comes to making the case that I have an “excessive devotion to work and productivity,” the most persuasive piece of evidence that I could offer is this wildly successful little blog itself.

I’ve published almost 2200 posts since I gave birth to 2 or 3 lines in November 2009.  (Maybe I should have named it 2 or 3 posts a week because that’s what I’ve averaged over the past 16 years.)

Those 2200 posts contain over two million words!  That’s the equivalent of 20 to 25 average-length books.

So if I had started writing books in 2009 instead of spending all my time on this stupid blog, I could have cranked out two dozen or so books by now?  

I’m not sure if I have OCPD.  But I’m pretty sure I have depression.

*     *     *     *     *

Gavin DeGraw’s 2004 hit, “I Don’t Want to Be,” was used as the theme song for the WB’s teen drama series, One Tree Hill – a show I’ve never watched.

When I watched the official music video for “I Don’t Want to Be,” I was pretty sure that I recognized the actress who portrayed the angsty teenager.  After a little research, I figured out that actress was Shiri Appleby, who was one of the stars of UnREAL, a brilliant series about a Bachelor-type reality show that I watched on Hulu earlier this year.

Shiri Appleby in UnREAL

Click here to watch that official music video.

Click here to buy “I Don’t Want to Be” from Amazon.