Up in the Air

When Up in the Air came out last year, no one could believe that I wasn’t rushing out to see it. Because:


1. “You dig Clooney, don’t you?”

2. “You travel all the time..you’ll get all the Frequent Flyer jokes!”

3. “You work in HR..and Clooney fires people!”

Yeah. Let’s talk about that. I work in HR. So I want to watch a movie about firing people?  I barely dragged myself out to see Star Trek.

Besides that..it offends me down to my core that someone from outside the organization would be hired to end someone else’s employment. I don’t care how big a company is or how...never mind.

Just add that someone thought it would be a good idea to do it via web conference. Why would I want to see a movie about that?

Then the Oscar nominations came out. Fine. I will look at it.

The travel stuff was funny. Clooney explaining the Frequent Flyer tricks for the airport was awesome. That security line part? I can’t say that I would “get in line behind the Asian guys”, but one certainly knows about the families with small children and those totally new to the security rules. Not six months ago I was stuck behind a lady that could not believe her makeup was being confiscated, and all I could feel was ticked off that she was holding up the rest of us.

Clooney made this movie. Nothing about the plot was particularly surprising, but there were some good pieces. The part that resonated – as it was designed to – was the scene with the lady, extremely calm as she heard the news that she downsized. Then she said that she was going to jump off a bridge. There was also the illustration of the disconnect between the Real World and the On the Road world. That someone would choose to live On the Road all the time was totally alien to me.

However. I did learn something – faux/homey = foamy. Is that a real thing?