Not long ago, Graham’s friend Dustin got married.  Before leaving for his honeymoon, Dustin told Graham that if he could get the giant TV out of Dustin’s apartment, he could have it for free.  Dustin’s now-wife had a better, thinner TV, and while Dustin’s TV is something like 50-60 inches or whatever (I do not care, can you tell) and a flatscreen, it’s one of the early models with a projection box.

This motherfucker is huge.  But tell a man he can have a large TV for free and he will get that large TV for free.  The only catch, if you can even call it that, is that Graham is never allowed to sell the TV.  When he no longer wants it, he has to give it away.  I call it the Karma TV now, and when we move in together, I have forbidden it from the living room (not because of karma, but because it’s ugly).

Although Graham has this huge TV and, between he and his roommates, about a hundred gaming systems with all their accompanying cords, there is no cable in the house.  TV shows are watched either on Netflix DVDs or using a digital converter box.  Which mostly sucks because cable companies are evil and made it that way, but there are like 4 PBS channels to watch and Rick Steves is always on.

(Full disclosure: I love Rick Steves.  Not like I want to bone him or even travel with him – he is so insufferably dorky and would probably insist that I wear a money belt – but his corny, touristy shows got me interested in travel.  If I ever get to the Cinqueterra, I’m going to wheeze all over those cliffs and thank the Universe for Rick Steves.)

Earlier tonight, we were flipping through the Pee-Bee-Esses and happened upon what looked to be, at first glance, an extremely sedate version of Jackass.  Young men were hanging around next to a tiny little booth spattered with Sharpie graffiti and magazine posters.  One of them was insulting a woman in an SUV, telling her she was the “craziest lady I’ve dealt with all day” and reminding her “don’t forget to take your medicine tomorrow!” as she drove off.

We ended up watching the whole thing, and now I cannot highly recommend enough that all of you watch The Parking Lot Movie (clips after the jump).  We saw it on PBS World’s Independent Lens, but you can apparently download it from iTunes, too.  Graham loved it because it reminded him of working valet, and I loved it because fuck rich people and their giant cars, man.

I won’t describe the entire thing because a) my blogs are long enough lately and b) seriously, watch it for yourself because you have to it’s so goddamn great, but let me just say that you know how I think people need more manners?  Yeah, well that goes double for rich people.  Yeah, fine, not all rich people are jerkoffs and there are some poor assholes out there, too, but as someone who has worked in the dredges of the service industry for years, I can say with 100% confidence that the overwhelming majority of rude people I have encountered are wealthy.  As if it’s not enough for them to have cars and homes and health insurance, so many of their lives aren’t complete until they can make a poor person feel like shit.

Some woman in a $40,000.00 car wants to bitch about paying $2.00 for parking.  Some dude who spends half of what I make in a year on suits for work wants to be snide about my low-paying job.  A family of assholes accompanying their binge-drinking, date-raping, frat-hazing son to his MBA-track college graduation congratulates themselves on creating such a competent member of society.  Look, here’s proof, his name is in calligraphy!  Again, I’m aware that I’m generalizing here, but I’ve been on the shitty end of this far too many times for it to be total bullshit.  Because I come equipped with a near-bottomless capacity for degradation, I’m personally familiar with that Look.  The Rich Prick Look.  Condescending, morbidly curious, and a little afraid of my Lower Class Germs (which I almost typed as “Germans,” hee!).  It’s as if we all went to law or medical school but most of us were just too stupid to pass.

Parking Lot Guys, I salute you.  I salute you for enforcing the rules, for kicking a few cars, and for repeating to the camera time and time again that all you really wanted during your time in that booth was to be treated like another human being.

(cross-posted to ephemeraetc.blog-city.com)