An ex-girlfriend recently said on Facebook that she “loves” this four-month-old ASL Grease video by Paul and Tina Sirimarco. I watched it…okay, cool, I get it. Paul and Tina seem like nice, kindly, up-attitude people, and they seem more happy than most couples I know. But who listens to “You’re The One That I Want” while driving? I’ll tell you who. People who go to see stage revivals of Grease and Chicago when they visit New York City once every five or ten years, that’s who. People who are unfailingly kind and sensitive and polite, and who wouldn’t mind being a little famous and maybe trading in on that and (who knows?) moving into a bigger, roomier home one day, and maybe vacationing in Cancun or Monte Carlo or Orlando Disney World if fortune permits. People who might have seen Gone Girl but focused only on the plot (as opposed to the actual substance of that David Fincher film) and were kind of bummed by the downbeat ending. People who would probably look at me blankly if I asked them what they thought of Birdman, Citizen Four, Boyhood, A Most Wanted Man, The Babadook, Locke, Nightcrawler, The Drop, etc.

Paul and Tina are clearly “good” people, and if I owned a house in some leafy suburb I’d be happy to have them as my neighbors. But they’re mellow, middle-region Americans, and on some level this kind of thing keeps me at arm’s length. They’re “good” people but they’re Grease people, and that’s a bit of a problem. They probably go out to dinner with other couples (I’m imagining a group of six or eight) and sit down at a large table and start laughing really loudly after they’ve all had a couple of glasses of wine. I’m the guy sitting two tables over who flinches and grimaces slightly when they start in with those hideous gales of laughter, and who right after signals the waitress and asks for the check.