Am I ordinary?

• I tickle adults
• I wear underwear to bed
• I look in people’s windows
• I save leftover salad
• I believe the tabloids
• I’ve called a number written on a bathroom wall
• I believe my horoscope
• My longest relationship is six months
• I break up over email
• I take my dog to restaurants
• I feed my dog human food
• I’m writing a screenplay
• I tell people what my therapist says
• I watch game shows
• I think my life would make a really great movie
  

am I ordinary?

The Beverly Center – for a life less ordinary

If you live in Los Angeles, you’ve probably seen these ads. They are for the Beverly Center and they are ubiquitous.

First off, the answer is most likely "yes, you are ordinary" and you don’t need a hip ad campaign to tell you. The other answer is most likely, "no, you aren’t ordinary" and you don’t need a hip ad campaign to tell you that either.

I think one of the most ordinary fears is to fear being ordinary. If we weren’t somehow ordinary we would be the crazy person on Hollywood Blvd. with the tinfoil helmet blocking cranial satellite interference. Or we could be Bill Clinton, but really, you don’t think Bill does a few ordinary things throughout his day?

I know that not one of us is like anyone else and the endeavor to take my own special place in this world is one of my driving forces. I want people to recognize me for being unique. I want to believe that I have something to offer in this world that only I can offer, even if that is just a perspective. I want to believe that the way my life has been shaped, through joy and trauma and even ordinary days, has made me a distinctive individual.

Unfortunately, the "creative marketing agency" that the Beverly Center has hired is capitalizing on our need to have someone notice our extraordinariness in order to get us to shop at Louis Vuitton. I’m not a fan of the Beverly Center.

As it says in their ads, "separate and distinct from the wallpaper of faded fads and mass-merchandised looks, and counter to the social norms that guide the everyday behavior of the rank and file, is beverly center.
the lack of sameness is evident the moment you walk in. style and singularity hang from every rack, live under every glass counter and adorn every mannequin. and for that matter, it’s evident in beverly center’s trendsetting customers, who often transform the mall into an eight-story catwalk."

Of course 5 of those eight stories is a parking lot, but who am I to judge?

(p.s. Really want to do something out of the ordinary - become a long-term volunteer for a charity organization or, vote.)