Last night Jimbo and his girlfriend rented The Forgotten at Blockbuster. I have a brief review of the former and a comment on the latter. My review of The Forgotten is as follows:
Forget it.
And my comment on Blockbuster? I think it is great that they have done away with late fees and you can keep their movies longer without penalty, but I believe they have made a tactical error from an infrastructural standpoint. By that, I am speaking specifically to their supply chain management (something about which Jimbo knows a thing or two). Because some of their customers will keep movies longer without the fear of late fees, the inventory on their shelves needs to be sized to match the longer customer retention times, notably the inventories of popular movies. Either they have underestimated the popularity of their new program or they failed to match their inventory to the demand. In a perfect world there is enough to go around for everyone. In the imperfect world of Blockbuster, or at least the one we go to, there is not. We rented The Forgotten because the more popular movies that were not in stock when we wanted to rent them last week were again not there when we went to rent them this week. Fortunately, last week we were able to find a movie, The Door In The Floor, which I liked a lot and said so on these virtual pages last Sunday. This week, we were not as lucky. As a customer, we should get what we want and as a provider of material or services, Blockbuster should be able to put supply into our demand, and they should fill our demand with supply that we want.
As far as unpopular movies go, it seems that they have those in stock. They have the Britney Spears movie Crossroads, but they don’t have the one with Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca. I have somehow misplaced my VHS copy and I want my girlfriend to see it. I want her to understand who Robert Johnson was before I expose her to The Texas Sessions, music for which some people need to acquire a taste as with fine wine. I have also misplaced the title for my truck. If anyone knows what I did with them, please let me know.
The elimination of late fees was a very good idea; the execution of the promotion has not been so successful.
Hang your head in shame, Blockbuster. Hang your head in shame.
If any of you at Blockbuster need any more advise, please e-mail me.
In Jimbo’s world we are full of it (unsolicited advice, that is).
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
a drug-induced stupor
I read on Yahoo! that the prescription benefit for Medicare recipients that Bush bragged about during the presidential debates and took credit for is going to cost us $724 billion over the next ten years. Bush said there was “an unfunded liability inherent in Medicare” that the administration and congress would have to address, someday. But he doesn’t have time to work on that, now, because he is going to be spending his time screwing up social security more than he already has. It’s hard work.
Back when I was working, the guy that worked for me felt he got screwed over by upper management and quit and I started doing his job, too. I told everyone I was doing the work of two men. The presidency is obviously a much more responsible position that I have ever occupied, so we could say that Bush is doing the work of three men.
Moe, Larry and Curly.
Now, I know many of you are saying, “Jimbo, you tight-ass piece of crap. Your own gray-haired mother, who scrimped and sacrificed so you could be where you are today, is one of the group eligible for the Medicare prescription benefit. How can you be so cheap that you aren’t willing to pay a little extra in taxes so the woman who brought you into this world could save some big money on the medicines that she needs to be able to stay healthy and active?”
A tough question, but fair.
And, my answer is that if I were paying extra taxes so my mother could live better, I would do it without question. Retirees who collect social security and who are covered by Medicare deserve all they receive. They tacitly agreed to a social contract that stipulated if they worked and paid into the system that they would receive a defined benefit when they turned 65. I have also paid into it and I expect a benefit when I retire. My problem with this is that the current administration and congress have blown our money on meaningless crap over the last four years and spent more than we have taken in. It’s kind of like they have taken out one of those thirty year mortgages where you only pay the interest the first fifteen years, and the sixteenth year the payments go way up. And it is like they are paying the minimum payments on our credit cards, charging more and signing up for more new credit cards. We’ve never seen this kind of fiscal irresponsibility. It is our progeny that will pay the bills for all of these excesses. You can’t borrow money forever without bills coming due eventually.
Then, to top it all off, my mother has done the hard math-- she’s crunched the numbers to see how huge the savings on her prescriptions will be. She put on the green eyeshade and ran the calculations to see how large a benefit will be realized from this outlay of $724 billion. I won’t bore you will the figures, although I’m sure many of you would like to see the work-up, but here is the result.
Squat.
How much will my mother benefit?
Zero. Nada. Zilch. Squat.
There. That is an efficient use of my son’s money. Because it will be the next generation that pays for this.
Now, I will grant you, there will be some Medicare recipients, whose prescription costs are outrageous who will benefit from the prescription coverage, because some prescription medicines are so high priced. And the high cost of health care has to be addressed. Twenty years ago it was the primary drain on our economy. It still is and this administration has done nothing about it. As more people lose their healthcare coverage, the more expensive it becomes for everyone else. The more people that have healthcare coverage, the more economical it becomes, because of economies of scale. If we could get everyone covered, the cost would be affordable. And congress and the administration would have to spend their $724 billion on something else. Of course, knowing how our government thinks today, that would probably be a war in Iran or Korea.
You know how politicians are when they’ve got an extra $724 billion burning a hole in their pocket. I guess they just need to come to Jimbo to find out how it should be spent properly.
Because in Jimbo’s world we watch our pennies and nickels and we know the value of a dollar.
Back when I was working, the guy that worked for me felt he got screwed over by upper management and quit and I started doing his job, too. I told everyone I was doing the work of two men. The presidency is obviously a much more responsible position that I have ever occupied, so we could say that Bush is doing the work of three men.
Moe, Larry and Curly.
Now, I know many of you are saying, “Jimbo, you tight-ass piece of crap. Your own gray-haired mother, who scrimped and sacrificed so you could be where you are today, is one of the group eligible for the Medicare prescription benefit. How can you be so cheap that you aren’t willing to pay a little extra in taxes so the woman who brought you into this world could save some big money on the medicines that she needs to be able to stay healthy and active?”
A tough question, but fair.
And, my answer is that if I were paying extra taxes so my mother could live better, I would do it without question. Retirees who collect social security and who are covered by Medicare deserve all they receive. They tacitly agreed to a social contract that stipulated if they worked and paid into the system that they would receive a defined benefit when they turned 65. I have also paid into it and I expect a benefit when I retire. My problem with this is that the current administration and congress have blown our money on meaningless crap over the last four years and spent more than we have taken in. It’s kind of like they have taken out one of those thirty year mortgages where you only pay the interest the first fifteen years, and the sixteenth year the payments go way up. And it is like they are paying the minimum payments on our credit cards, charging more and signing up for more new credit cards. We’ve never seen this kind of fiscal irresponsibility. It is our progeny that will pay the bills for all of these excesses. You can’t borrow money forever without bills coming due eventually.
Then, to top it all off, my mother has done the hard math-- she’s crunched the numbers to see how huge the savings on her prescriptions will be. She put on the green eyeshade and ran the calculations to see how large a benefit will be realized from this outlay of $724 billion. I won’t bore you will the figures, although I’m sure many of you would like to see the work-up, but here is the result.
Squat.
How much will my mother benefit?
Zero. Nada. Zilch. Squat.
There. That is an efficient use of my son’s money. Because it will be the next generation that pays for this.
Now, I will grant you, there will be some Medicare recipients, whose prescription costs are outrageous who will benefit from the prescription coverage, because some prescription medicines are so high priced. And the high cost of health care has to be addressed. Twenty years ago it was the primary drain on our economy. It still is and this administration has done nothing about it. As more people lose their healthcare coverage, the more expensive it becomes for everyone else. The more people that have healthcare coverage, the more economical it becomes, because of economies of scale. If we could get everyone covered, the cost would be affordable. And congress and the administration would have to spend their $724 billion on something else. Of course, knowing how our government thinks today, that would probably be a war in Iran or Korea.
You know how politicians are when they’ve got an extra $724 billion burning a hole in their pocket. I guess they just need to come to Jimbo to find out how it should be spent properly.
Because in Jimbo’s world we watch our pennies and nickels and we know the value of a dollar.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
year of the cock
It is snowing here this afternoon and Jimbo is trying to navigate his girlfriend home through the snow by long distance, so I am cooking a chicken pot pie from scratch and watching the Weather Channel to keep track of the storm. The guy on the Weather Channel just said that in China they are celebrating the New Year, and he said it was the year of the rooster. The placemat at our favorite local Chinese restaurant says that it is the year of the cock. Since the people that run the place, wait on you and clean up after you are all obviously Asian, I am going to make the leap of the imagination that the place is authentic, so I am going with their translation. By the way, the beef with green peppers there is excellent as is the egg drop soup. Jimbo’s girlfriend, however, swears by the hot and sour soup. When you get the hot tea, they serve it in cups about the volume of a shot glass. It make drinking tea seem really exotic, even though it is only a couple of miles from home.
Kung hei fat choi. Xīnián kuàilè.
Those are two traditional Chinese salutations for the New Year. The former means congratulations and be prosperous. The latter means happy New Year. I remember the first time I ever heard of the Chinese New Year was when I was a child and a local radio station was having a promotion based on the occasion. They used the phrase gung ho fat hoi as their New Year’s greeting. You are probably aware that we have modified the way we pronounce Chinese words over the last couple of decades, for example, Peking has become Beijing and we have started putting a lot of the letter X into Chinese words. Therefore, it is not surprising that we have done a better job of translating this expression.
Years ago I was dating a woman and we had our own favorite Chinese restaurant that also had those placemats that have the signs of the Chinese animal zodiac on them. I remember the placemats because it was the year of the rat or the monkey and I always joked that I wished it was the year of the cock. Like those who know me well, she learned to ignore me, so she wasn’t aware that I was a human laugh factory, pushing the humor out the door in assembly line fashion. She asked me the year of my birth and told me I was a tiger. She said I was assertive, I knew what I wanted and I usually got what I wanted. I never gave much thought to the zodiac before, but it had me pegged and so I started thinking there was something to it.
Later it dawned on me that approximately 8 percent of the people on the earth were tigers and that it was probably a statistical fluke that it had me right. On the other hand, a billion Chinese couldn’t be wrong. Well, I guess they could. They are celebrating New Year’s in the middle of February, after all.
I don’t think I’ll make any new resolutions; I’ll just try to find the ones I made six weeks ago and maybe I’ll actually try to keep them.
Xīnián kuàilè.
Kung hei fat choi.
Remember, this year half of the Chinese New Year falls on Fat Tuesday and half falls on Ash Wednesday. What’s the statistical probability of that? I think we should ask the Chinese to change New Years on their calendar so they won’t fall on any of our holidays. That way we will have more reasons to celebrate. Anyway, Happy New Year.
Because in Jimbo’s world we can always use another reason to celebrate.
Kung hei fat choi. Xīnián kuàilè.
Those are two traditional Chinese salutations for the New Year. The former means congratulations and be prosperous. The latter means happy New Year. I remember the first time I ever heard of the Chinese New Year was when I was a child and a local radio station was having a promotion based on the occasion. They used the phrase gung ho fat hoi as their New Year’s greeting. You are probably aware that we have modified the way we pronounce Chinese words over the last couple of decades, for example, Peking has become Beijing and we have started putting a lot of the letter X into Chinese words. Therefore, it is not surprising that we have done a better job of translating this expression.
Years ago I was dating a woman and we had our own favorite Chinese restaurant that also had those placemats that have the signs of the Chinese animal zodiac on them. I remember the placemats because it was the year of the rat or the monkey and I always joked that I wished it was the year of the cock. Like those who know me well, she learned to ignore me, so she wasn’t aware that I was a human laugh factory, pushing the humor out the door in assembly line fashion. She asked me the year of my birth and told me I was a tiger. She said I was assertive, I knew what I wanted and I usually got what I wanted. I never gave much thought to the zodiac before, but it had me pegged and so I started thinking there was something to it.
Later it dawned on me that approximately 8 percent of the people on the earth were tigers and that it was probably a statistical fluke that it had me right. On the other hand, a billion Chinese couldn’t be wrong. Well, I guess they could. They are celebrating New Year’s in the middle of February, after all.
I don’t think I’ll make any new resolutions; I’ll just try to find the ones I made six weeks ago and maybe I’ll actually try to keep them.
Xīnián kuàilè.
Kung hei fat choi.
Remember, this year half of the Chinese New Year falls on Fat Tuesday and half falls on Ash Wednesday. What’s the statistical probability of that? I think we should ask the Chinese to change New Years on their calendar so they won’t fall on any of our holidays. That way we will have more reasons to celebrate. Anyway, Happy New Year.
Because in Jimbo’s world we can always use another reason to celebrate.
a rose by any other name...
I’ll take potent potables for $100 please, Art.
Back when I was a kid and Art James used to host the game show Jeopardy, I remember they used to have the potent potables category where they would describe an alcoholic drink and you would have to identify the drink, in the form of a question.
What is a martini, Art?
The reason I bring this up is that, excepting Art James and Alex Trebek, I’ve known people who have had trouble with the pronunciation of the word potable. The second letter of the word is pronounced with an O sound, and over the years, I’ve mostly heard it pronounced the same way you would pronounce the word pot (like the thing you put on the stove to apply heat to food, or the stuff they roll up in zig-zag papers and...well, never mind). I used to work for a company that made equipment for water treatment and some of our equipment made water drinkable. When I first started working for the company, and we would have meetings about potable water equipment, everyone mispronounced the word, including the Sales Manager who always chaired the meetings, and when it came my turn to talk, I pronounced it correctly. My obvious superior knowledge of the language failed to change anyone’s mind and by the end of my tenure with the company, I remember once articulating the word and using their pronunciation. By the way, the word comes from two Latin words, potare: to drink, akin to bibere: also to drink. But, you probably already knew that. I'm sure there are groups of you right now who are discussing the proper conjugation of these verbs.
I suspect that right now others of you are saying, “Big freaking woop, Jimbo. What does it really matter? Why don’t you get a life?”
Well, yesterday I was at a job interview and having researched the company’s product line on their website and seen the name of a former competitor of the company for which I worked referenced, I used their name several times. I told the guy who was interviewing me how they were a competitor and how we used to do the job and how they did it. About the third time I mentioned their name, he said they were a sister company of his and he advised me the correct pronunciation of their name. Oops! I had gotten my pronunciation from the same sales manager who couldn’t pronounce potable.
The point is that even though my former employer was populated by people who couldn’t correctly pronounce the word, we were able to deliver a quality product that did what it was supposed to do. Even though I couldn’t correctly pronounce the name of my former competitor, I think I convinced the guy that was interviewing me yesterday that I knew my stuff. Sometimes, I guess, it is more important to know what you are talking about than pronouncing the words correctly.
However, in Jimbo’s world, we try to do both, whenever we can.
Back when I was a kid and Art James used to host the game show Jeopardy, I remember they used to have the potent potables category where they would describe an alcoholic drink and you would have to identify the drink, in the form of a question.
What is a martini, Art?
The reason I bring this up is that, excepting Art James and Alex Trebek, I’ve known people who have had trouble with the pronunciation of the word potable. The second letter of the word is pronounced with an O sound, and over the years, I’ve mostly heard it pronounced the same way you would pronounce the word pot (like the thing you put on the stove to apply heat to food, or the stuff they roll up in zig-zag papers and...well, never mind). I used to work for a company that made equipment for water treatment and some of our equipment made water drinkable. When I first started working for the company, and we would have meetings about potable water equipment, everyone mispronounced the word, including the Sales Manager who always chaired the meetings, and when it came my turn to talk, I pronounced it correctly. My obvious superior knowledge of the language failed to change anyone’s mind and by the end of my tenure with the company, I remember once articulating the word and using their pronunciation. By the way, the word comes from two Latin words, potare: to drink, akin to bibere: also to drink. But, you probably already knew that. I'm sure there are groups of you right now who are discussing the proper conjugation of these verbs.
I suspect that right now others of you are saying, “Big freaking woop, Jimbo. What does it really matter? Why don’t you get a life?”
Well, yesterday I was at a job interview and having researched the company’s product line on their website and seen the name of a former competitor of the company for which I worked referenced, I used their name several times. I told the guy who was interviewing me how they were a competitor and how we used to do the job and how they did it. About the third time I mentioned their name, he said they were a sister company of his and he advised me the correct pronunciation of their name. Oops! I had gotten my pronunciation from the same sales manager who couldn’t pronounce potable.
The point is that even though my former employer was populated by people who couldn’t correctly pronounce the word, we were able to deliver a quality product that did what it was supposed to do. Even though I couldn’t correctly pronounce the name of my former competitor, I think I convinced the guy that was interviewing me yesterday that I knew my stuff. Sometimes, I guess, it is more important to know what you are talking about than pronouncing the words correctly.
However, in Jimbo’s world, we try to do both, whenever we can.
Monday, February 07, 2005
the budget: voodoo or hoodoo
Thank God we live in a country in which our leader will cut health care for poor people, aid to farmers and environmental funding to pay for the excesses of the last four years. Okay, I’m just being a jerk. I’ve been reading about President Bush’s budget and I’m not liking what I see. I believe it was the President’s father whom I remember used the phrase voodoo economics, and I think President Bush must have a Jimbo doll and he is pressing pins into it, because I am not feeling comfortable right now.
I was reading in the Business Week online edition that Bush is proposing a five year budget instead of the usual ten year plan and Business Week says there will be huge costs generated by the President’s budget proposal that won’t be realized until 2011 to 2015. In his social security proposals laid out in the State of the Union speech, Bush seemed to be making sure we would provide for the next generation. Most of us boomers had it good when we were growing up, and we have tried to make it even better for our progeny, so that is understandable. But if the goal is to make it better for our kids, how can he justify saddling them with huge budget deficits, that, according to the article in Business Week, will make interest rates higher and the value of the dollar lower? And why is he revealing only the first five years’ effects of his proposal and hiding away the slimy dark underbelly so no one will see it until he is gone.
You know how sometimes you do something and you can’t explain why you did when someone asks you to explain? Do you remember in the movie Forrest Gump that Forrest rescued his girlfriend Jenny from a boyfriend who was hitting her and then she went back to him the next morning? While Forrest was staring him down, he explained that it was that “lyin’ Johnson.” For you younger readers, that was not some vague phallic reference. The Johnson he was talking about was President from 1963 to 1969. Like Bush, he was from Texas and he did some questionable things, but unlike Bush, he did some good. Last night, Jimbo’s girlfriend asked if she had done something to make him mad, because he seemed to be angry at her. I assured her that was not the case and apologized profusely. Then I explained that it was “that lyin’ Bush.”
“There are times in the lives of man,” said W. C. Fields, “that we must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” This is one of those times. The current administration and congress have squandered our legacy over the past four years and there is nothing we can do about going back in time to try to undo their mess. We had our chance to try to correct our mistakes in November, but the voting public was more interested in bashing gays, making sure we’d all say the same prayer and giving Osama Bin Laden even more of a head start in getting away from us than they were in protecting our fiscal future.
Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame.
You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Are you mad Jimbo? Did we do something wrong? Did we do something to make you angry?”
No, it’s not you. I love all of you. It’s that lyin’ Bush.
Because sometimes in Jimbo’s world we just need to let off a little steam.
I was reading in the Business Week online edition that Bush is proposing a five year budget instead of the usual ten year plan and Business Week says there will be huge costs generated by the President’s budget proposal that won’t be realized until 2011 to 2015. In his social security proposals laid out in the State of the Union speech, Bush seemed to be making sure we would provide for the next generation. Most of us boomers had it good when we were growing up, and we have tried to make it even better for our progeny, so that is understandable. But if the goal is to make it better for our kids, how can he justify saddling them with huge budget deficits, that, according to the article in Business Week, will make interest rates higher and the value of the dollar lower? And why is he revealing only the first five years’ effects of his proposal and hiding away the slimy dark underbelly so no one will see it until he is gone.
You know how sometimes you do something and you can’t explain why you did when someone asks you to explain? Do you remember in the movie Forrest Gump that Forrest rescued his girlfriend Jenny from a boyfriend who was hitting her and then she went back to him the next morning? While Forrest was staring him down, he explained that it was that “lyin’ Johnson.” For you younger readers, that was not some vague phallic reference. The Johnson he was talking about was President from 1963 to 1969. Like Bush, he was from Texas and he did some questionable things, but unlike Bush, he did some good. Last night, Jimbo’s girlfriend asked if she had done something to make him mad, because he seemed to be angry at her. I assured her that was not the case and apologized profusely. Then I explained that it was “that lyin’ Bush.”
“There are times in the lives of man,” said W. C. Fields, “that we must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” This is one of those times. The current administration and congress have squandered our legacy over the past four years and there is nothing we can do about going back in time to try to undo their mess. We had our chance to try to correct our mistakes in November, but the voting public was more interested in bashing gays, making sure we’d all say the same prayer and giving Osama Bin Laden even more of a head start in getting away from us than they were in protecting our fiscal future.
Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame.
You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Are you mad Jimbo? Did we do something wrong? Did we do something to make you angry?”
No, it’s not you. I love all of you. It’s that lyin’ Bush.
Because sometimes in Jimbo’s world we just need to let off a little steam.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
behind, er, under the door
Last night Jimbo and his girlfriend rented the DVD The Door in the Floor. I liked it. Jimbo’s girlfriend said it was a movie we wanted to see at the theater, but either it didn’t show in any of our local theaters or it played for too short a time and we missed it. She tells me I’m smart and I can remember things she can’t, but in this case, I was the victim of a moment of seniority, and I just nodded my head and said, “Oh, yeah.”
Anyway, the movie is about a famous writer of children’s stories, played by Jeff Bridges and his wife, played by Kim Basinger, and an aspiring writer, played by Jon Foster, who comes to intern with Bridges during his summer vacation from school. The title comes from a children’s book Bridges has written and illustrated, which we see Bridges read to an audience as slides of the illustrations are shown. The story is about a mother who lives in a cabin that has a door in the floor. Her unborn child is trying to decide whether he wants to be born into a world with a door in the floor. The story tells how some children came by one day and went down through the door, never to be seen again. The mother had looked through the door and heard horrible noises and knew there was a terrible place on the other side of the door. Eventually, the child decides to be born.
The children’s story is sort of an allegory for the movie. Bridges and Basinger had two teenaged sons who were killed in an auto accident during a trip to a ski resort, when their car was rear-ended and pushed into the path of a snowplow that cut the car in half. One of the boys was driving and the other in the front seat. Bridges and Basinger were in the back seat, after spending the day in the bar at the ski resort, too inebriated to drive. The front half of the car was demolished by the snowplow; the back half survived, along with the two back-seat passengers, intoxicated but unhurt. Near the end of the movie, Bridges tells the story of the accident to Foster, and, of course, punctuates the story with the usual “if I would have” things he could have done in advance to prevent the accident.
Bridges and Basinger have a young daughter they conceived after the accident to reprise their family, but even though they lived through it, their marriage has been dealt a fatal blow by the accident, and during the summer of internship of Foster, they are separated and alternate days in their rural house and in an apartment in town. We find that the reason that Foster has been offered his opportunity, is primarily because he reminds Bridges of one of his late sons and because Bridges needs someone to drive him places.
Bridges has a squash court in the upper level of his barn where he never loses and is the admitted master of the domain. There’s a “dead spot” in the floor, and he is apparently the only one that knows how to deal with it. The first few days of the summer, Foster develops an attraction for Basinger and he also becomes “master of his own domain,” until Basinger walks in on him in a moment of autoeroticism. After that uncomfortable incident, Foster and Basinger begin an affair that lasts throughout the summer, while it becomes apparent that Bridges is also having an affair and looking for opportunities for even more.
Basinger becomes almost catatonic at the mere discussion of the accident, but Bridges seems to be detached and doesn’t outwardly dwell on the tragedy, but it becomes obvious that the two simply have different ways of dealing with the situation and that it controls both of their lives. They are both living in a hell from which they will not escape.
I thought the ending of the movie was particularly poignant. Bridges is on his squash court, the place he is most comfortable, practicing by himself. When he is finished he sits down to rest near the “dead spot” and then opens the door to leave the court. The door is in the floor. He leaves the court, through the door in the floor, and back into the terrible place on the other side of the door.
This is a dark movie, with some nudity. It’s not for the kids, but it is definitely worth renting and seeing, if you are not needing some laughs, at that moment.
In Jimbo’s world we like a movie that makes us think a little, and this one fit’s the bill.
Anyway, the movie is about a famous writer of children’s stories, played by Jeff Bridges and his wife, played by Kim Basinger, and an aspiring writer, played by Jon Foster, who comes to intern with Bridges during his summer vacation from school. The title comes from a children’s book Bridges has written and illustrated, which we see Bridges read to an audience as slides of the illustrations are shown. The story is about a mother who lives in a cabin that has a door in the floor. Her unborn child is trying to decide whether he wants to be born into a world with a door in the floor. The story tells how some children came by one day and went down through the door, never to be seen again. The mother had looked through the door and heard horrible noises and knew there was a terrible place on the other side of the door. Eventually, the child decides to be born.
The children’s story is sort of an allegory for the movie. Bridges and Basinger had two teenaged sons who were killed in an auto accident during a trip to a ski resort, when their car was rear-ended and pushed into the path of a snowplow that cut the car in half. One of the boys was driving and the other in the front seat. Bridges and Basinger were in the back seat, after spending the day in the bar at the ski resort, too inebriated to drive. The front half of the car was demolished by the snowplow; the back half survived, along with the two back-seat passengers, intoxicated but unhurt. Near the end of the movie, Bridges tells the story of the accident to Foster, and, of course, punctuates the story with the usual “if I would have” things he could have done in advance to prevent the accident.
Bridges and Basinger have a young daughter they conceived after the accident to reprise their family, but even though they lived through it, their marriage has been dealt a fatal blow by the accident, and during the summer of internship of Foster, they are separated and alternate days in their rural house and in an apartment in town. We find that the reason that Foster has been offered his opportunity, is primarily because he reminds Bridges of one of his late sons and because Bridges needs someone to drive him places.
Bridges has a squash court in the upper level of his barn where he never loses and is the admitted master of the domain. There’s a “dead spot” in the floor, and he is apparently the only one that knows how to deal with it. The first few days of the summer, Foster develops an attraction for Basinger and he also becomes “master of his own domain,” until Basinger walks in on him in a moment of autoeroticism. After that uncomfortable incident, Foster and Basinger begin an affair that lasts throughout the summer, while it becomes apparent that Bridges is also having an affair and looking for opportunities for even more.
Basinger becomes almost catatonic at the mere discussion of the accident, but Bridges seems to be detached and doesn’t outwardly dwell on the tragedy, but it becomes obvious that the two simply have different ways of dealing with the situation and that it controls both of their lives. They are both living in a hell from which they will not escape.
I thought the ending of the movie was particularly poignant. Bridges is on his squash court, the place he is most comfortable, practicing by himself. When he is finished he sits down to rest near the “dead spot” and then opens the door to leave the court. The door is in the floor. He leaves the court, through the door in the floor, and back into the terrible place on the other side of the door.
This is a dark movie, with some nudity. It’s not for the kids, but it is definitely worth renting and seeing, if you are not needing some laughs, at that moment.
In Jimbo’s world we like a movie that makes us think a little, and this one fit’s the bill.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
the long goodbye
Yesterday, I said goodbye to a companion that’s been by my side for the last seven or eight years-- one with which I have spent more time over that period than anyone I know. Well, I sort of said goodbye. I said adieu come the end of the month. Lest you think I’m going to get all mushy, I best explain. It was my internet service provider, and my best summation of the situation is, good riddance. I now have access to DSL and it is the dawn of a beautiful day.
Years ago I moved to a rural community where we had no local internet service provider. My ISP at the time was Prodigy, but they didn’t have a local access dial up number, so I used an 800 number and paid them a dime a minute while I was on line. Needless to say, I got on and off in a hurry. Schwab gave me an 800 number I could use without charge to trade stocks, so for a year or so my internet access was limited. Sometimes my son would give me back his allowance, so he could surf the web for an hour. I know it’s hard for you to imagine living like that, but I’m told back in the old days they lived without central air, so I guess my sacrifice wasn’t unprecedented.
Lo and behold, one day one of my son’s friends told us about a local ISP that had just come into being. It seems one of my neighbors started an ISP and added a local number so he could get on line from home. When rural folk do something, they do it right, and it was a pretty darned good service. It was an epiphany in my coming into the internet age. In the year or so I had been dormant, the internet had changed. It was now a wonderful place where free information was only a mouse click away and where you could purchase almost anything you wanted by tapping on a keyboard and the postman or UPS guy would deliver it right to your door. You could buy a book, a CD, a belt for the lawn mower or a shelf bracket for the door of your refrigerator (how was I supposed to know that it wouldn’t hold six two-liters?). I found, however, there was a seamier side to the new and improved web. There were porn shops, and I confess I may have glanced in through the window once or twice. There were guys who would sneak up behind you and steal your money (via your credit card number) when you weren’t looking. There was also the lowest form of humanity (using the term loosely). Yes, there were the people that sent you the junk mail, who turned the beautiful virgin innocence of the internet into a cesspool. But I am way off subject, here. Let me get back to my story.
A couple of years ago my neighbor was bought out by a larger company and the service began to deteriorate. Oh, heck, let’s put it in the proper perspective: the service turned to defecation. You may recall an earlier blog, customer disservice, where I lamented problems I had with them. As a faithful reader, I’m sure you remember it vividly and you probably made some annotations in the margins on the copy in your computer. Some of you probably memorized it verbatim. In the off chance you are a new reader who hasn’t gotten back to that one, yet, here is the address:
http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/customer-disservice.html
My ISP bills my credit card at the first of the month, so during the last week of last month, I sent them an e-mail, using their web mail site, asking them to cancel my subscription. I didn’t hear from them. The final day of the month, I e-mailed them again. Again, I got no response. The day before yesterday, I e-mailed them again. This time, they responded with an e-mail saying they would not accept e-mail cancellations and that I had to call their phone number between 9 and 4 during the day. They also said that partial month cancellations were not accepted so I couldn’t cancel the service until the end of this month. I hurriedly composed a reply in which I began by saying:
That’s a bunch of shit.
I went on to remind them I had sent previous e-mails and that I would be glad to be rid of them. You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Jimbo, you are kind of a prick.”
Yes. Yes I am.
You are probably also thinking that I was dealing with a customer service person who was simply doing as they were instructed and following the company line, and the decision to sleaze an extra month’s charges from their customer was probably a corporate mantra directed by an upper management sleaze ball. Incidentally, I was sort of ticked off about having to call them and sit on hold, being told how much they appreciate my business, for ten minutes before I was able to talk to a human and cancel the service, but I remained cordial when I told them what they could do with their service.
The way I look at it is this. I have a fiscal and moral obligation as a dues-paying member of a capitalist society to withdraw my support of companies that don’t deliver quality in the product they sell. This is economic social Darwinism at its basic. My current service provider does a better job and we are willing to pay them a few dollars more a month to do it. My former provider (at least I can say that next month) didn’t deliver the goods and I will stop my contribution of funding for them. If they treated all their customers as they treated me, eventually everyone will switch to someone better, and their species will disappear from the face of the earth, and they will only be a paragraph in an economic history book. And, if you don’t mind my borrowing a couple of titles from Raymond Chandler, they can sleep The Big Sleep and say The Long Goodbye, and no one will miss them.
Because in Jimbo’s would, when some big company does us wrong, we don’t just get mad, we get even.
Years ago I moved to a rural community where we had no local internet service provider. My ISP at the time was Prodigy, but they didn’t have a local access dial up number, so I used an 800 number and paid them a dime a minute while I was on line. Needless to say, I got on and off in a hurry. Schwab gave me an 800 number I could use without charge to trade stocks, so for a year or so my internet access was limited. Sometimes my son would give me back his allowance, so he could surf the web for an hour. I know it’s hard for you to imagine living like that, but I’m told back in the old days they lived without central air, so I guess my sacrifice wasn’t unprecedented.
Lo and behold, one day one of my son’s friends told us about a local ISP that had just come into being. It seems one of my neighbors started an ISP and added a local number so he could get on line from home. When rural folk do something, they do it right, and it was a pretty darned good service. It was an epiphany in my coming into the internet age. In the year or so I had been dormant, the internet had changed. It was now a wonderful place where free information was only a mouse click away and where you could purchase almost anything you wanted by tapping on a keyboard and the postman or UPS guy would deliver it right to your door. You could buy a book, a CD, a belt for the lawn mower or a shelf bracket for the door of your refrigerator (how was I supposed to know that it wouldn’t hold six two-liters?). I found, however, there was a seamier side to the new and improved web. There were porn shops, and I confess I may have glanced in through the window once or twice. There were guys who would sneak up behind you and steal your money (via your credit card number) when you weren’t looking. There was also the lowest form of humanity (using the term loosely). Yes, there were the people that sent you the junk mail, who turned the beautiful virgin innocence of the internet into a cesspool. But I am way off subject, here. Let me get back to my story.
A couple of years ago my neighbor was bought out by a larger company and the service began to deteriorate. Oh, heck, let’s put it in the proper perspective: the service turned to defecation. You may recall an earlier blog, customer disservice, where I lamented problems I had with them. As a faithful reader, I’m sure you remember it vividly and you probably made some annotations in the margins on the copy in your computer. Some of you probably memorized it verbatim. In the off chance you are a new reader who hasn’t gotten back to that one, yet, here is the address:
http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/customer-disservice.html
My ISP bills my credit card at the first of the month, so during the last week of last month, I sent them an e-mail, using their web mail site, asking them to cancel my subscription. I didn’t hear from them. The final day of the month, I e-mailed them again. Again, I got no response. The day before yesterday, I e-mailed them again. This time, they responded with an e-mail saying they would not accept e-mail cancellations and that I had to call their phone number between 9 and 4 during the day. They also said that partial month cancellations were not accepted so I couldn’t cancel the service until the end of this month. I hurriedly composed a reply in which I began by saying:
That’s a bunch of shit.
I went on to remind them I had sent previous e-mails and that I would be glad to be rid of them. You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Jimbo, you are kind of a prick.”
Yes. Yes I am.
You are probably also thinking that I was dealing with a customer service person who was simply doing as they were instructed and following the company line, and the decision to sleaze an extra month’s charges from their customer was probably a corporate mantra directed by an upper management sleaze ball. Incidentally, I was sort of ticked off about having to call them and sit on hold, being told how much they appreciate my business, for ten minutes before I was able to talk to a human and cancel the service, but I remained cordial when I told them what they could do with their service.
The way I look at it is this. I have a fiscal and moral obligation as a dues-paying member of a capitalist society to withdraw my support of companies that don’t deliver quality in the product they sell. This is economic social Darwinism at its basic. My current service provider does a better job and we are willing to pay them a few dollars more a month to do it. My former provider (at least I can say that next month) didn’t deliver the goods and I will stop my contribution of funding for them. If they treated all their customers as they treated me, eventually everyone will switch to someone better, and their species will disappear from the face of the earth, and they will only be a paragraph in an economic history book. And, if you don’t mind my borrowing a couple of titles from Raymond Chandler, they can sleep The Big Sleep and say The Long Goodbye, and no one will miss them.
Because in Jimbo’s would, when some big company does us wrong, we don’t just get mad, we get even.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
thank you for being an american legend
I am not a fan of political candidates, as a rule. I supported John Kerry in the last election, but if the entire population of the United States stood before me and I had to pick someone out of the group to run for President, John Kerry probably would not have been my choice. When it became a choice between him and the current President, however, he was definitely the best man for the job, in my humble opinion. Today, I found out there was someone running for public office whom I would have no trouble supporting, but, as fate would have it, I will not be able to vote for him.
Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas. I am not a Texan, so I will not be voting for Kinky. Kinky is not a professional politician. His website quotes him as saying “The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.” Granted, Kinky is somewhat of a nut, but I can think of another nut who was elected Governor of Texas. I have been a fan of Kinky for decades. The story begins when I was just a mere child…
One Friday evening, a friend of mine named Charles and I went to our local convenience store and I purchased a copy of Playboy magazine. When I was a young man, I enjoyed the publication, especially the articles. It was in Playboy magazine I was first introduced to the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, my personal idol and the man I want to be like when I grow up. But, I digress. That particular evening, I was reading the music reviews and I was intrigued by the review of the Kinky Friedman album, “Sold American.” I went to my local mall the next day, bought the record and played it all day. That evening, Charles and I were listening to the radio and it was announced that Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys (a play on the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) were going to be in concert in about two hours at a local college. Charles had been with me when I played the album and he enjoyed it, too, so we jumped into his car and we booked it (that was a popular phrase of the day meaning to go someplace). When we arrived at the small college, we found that the concert was going to be in a small chapel on campus. We bought our tickets and went inside. There were a couple of hippy-types in the front pew, so we sat down in the second row, on the aisle. By the time the concert started, there were only a hundred or so people there. The Jewboys came out and took up their instruments and an announcer came out and said something like:
“Ladies and gentlemen, from deep in the heart of Texas, the original wolly-bully from Austin, Mr. Kinky Friedman.”
Kinky strolled out on stage and said, “Thank you for being an American. It‘s a financial pleasure.”
I remember he did a number of his songs from “Sold American,” including the title song and “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in bed,” “Western Union wire,” and “Silver Eagle express.” I particularly liked the following lines from the latter.
And I ride the Silver Eagle to the last town on the line
Railroad ties are not, my friend, the only ties that bind.
I remember, when they sang the song, "High on Jesus," the hippies in the front row were up on their feet and dancing around. At the time I wore my coiffure somewhat longer than I do today. Actually, my hair was almost down to my shoulders, as was the style at the time. The hippies had sort of hopped down to the end of their pew and I was about ten feet from Kinky and we had a direct line of sight. I remember he looked right at me as he sang:
A long-haired youth said, c’mon man,
The spirit of America has died.
Now I don’t get my kicks
Startin’ fires and throwin’ bricks…
To this day, I tell people that Kinky was singing directly to me. He probably wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter, as long as I think he was.
It’s kind of funny how one’s mind sort of anticipates something happening. I started thinking about Kinky last week because my girlfriend has Saturday Night Live set up on the TiVo season pass, which means every time it is on it is recorded. A couple of stations, Comedy Central and a local station show old Saturday Night Live programs, so we record it about ten times a week. We delete most of them without watching, but I have been previewing all of them to see if they show the episode where Kinky performs the song “Dear Abby.” My recollection was that Abigail Van Buren sued Kinky over the song, but it is actually a song about someone wondering whatever happened to the 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman.
I also recall that Kinky never had any top forty hits and he sort of faded from the public scene for a number of years only to show up later as a mystery writer. I’m a big fan of his novels. I’m sure that literary critics would disagree, but he’s one of my three favorite mystery writers, the other two being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler. Wait a minute. I was once a literary critic, so I just contradicted myself. Whereas Doyle’s detective was Sherlock Holmes and Chandler’s was Phillip Marlowe, Kinky’s detective is himself. Friedman’s quirky detective has a desk with twin telephones, a bust of William Shakespeare and an Imus in the morning coffee mug. He has a wooden puppet head with a parachute and a key to the door that sits on his refrigerator. When guests arrive and announce themselves, Kinky throws the puppet head out the window and it glides down with the key to the street below.
Now you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how does being a nut and a songwriter qualify one to be a southern governor? Where is the precedent?”
Well, Jimmie Davis, former governor of Louisiana co-wrote “You are my sunshine,” along with many other songs. Huey P. Long, also governor of Louisiana wrote “Every man a king.”
So, unless the Texas voters reach back into the archives to Kinky Friedman’s song “We reserve the right to refuse service to you,“ and echo the following lines, we may be entertained by Mr. Friedman for the next year or so.
Our quota’s filled up this year for singing Texas Jews
We reserve the right to refuse service to you.
Well, hell, they voted Bush into the governorship. We’ll just have to see what happens.
In Jimbo’s world sometimes we like just to sit back and watch.
Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas. I am not a Texan, so I will not be voting for Kinky. Kinky is not a professional politician. His website quotes him as saying “The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.” Granted, Kinky is somewhat of a nut, but I can think of another nut who was elected Governor of Texas. I have been a fan of Kinky for decades. The story begins when I was just a mere child…
One Friday evening, a friend of mine named Charles and I went to our local convenience store and I purchased a copy of Playboy magazine. When I was a young man, I enjoyed the publication, especially the articles. It was in Playboy magazine I was first introduced to the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, my personal idol and the man I want to be like when I grow up. But, I digress. That particular evening, I was reading the music reviews and I was intrigued by the review of the Kinky Friedman album, “Sold American.” I went to my local mall the next day, bought the record and played it all day. That evening, Charles and I were listening to the radio and it was announced that Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys (a play on the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) were going to be in concert in about two hours at a local college. Charles had been with me when I played the album and he enjoyed it, too, so we jumped into his car and we booked it (that was a popular phrase of the day meaning to go someplace). When we arrived at the small college, we found that the concert was going to be in a small chapel on campus. We bought our tickets and went inside. There were a couple of hippy-types in the front pew, so we sat down in the second row, on the aisle. By the time the concert started, there were only a hundred or so people there. The Jewboys came out and took up their instruments and an announcer came out and said something like:
“Ladies and gentlemen, from deep in the heart of Texas, the original wolly-bully from Austin, Mr. Kinky Friedman.”
Kinky strolled out on stage and said, “Thank you for being an American. It‘s a financial pleasure.”
I remember he did a number of his songs from “Sold American,” including the title song and “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in bed,” “Western Union wire,” and “Silver Eagle express.” I particularly liked the following lines from the latter.
And I ride the Silver Eagle to the last town on the line
Railroad ties are not, my friend, the only ties that bind.
I remember, when they sang the song, "High on Jesus," the hippies in the front row were up on their feet and dancing around. At the time I wore my coiffure somewhat longer than I do today. Actually, my hair was almost down to my shoulders, as was the style at the time. The hippies had sort of hopped down to the end of their pew and I was about ten feet from Kinky and we had a direct line of sight. I remember he looked right at me as he sang:
A long-haired youth said, c’mon man,
The spirit of America has died.
Now I don’t get my kicks
Startin’ fires and throwin’ bricks…
To this day, I tell people that Kinky was singing directly to me. He probably wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter, as long as I think he was.
It’s kind of funny how one’s mind sort of anticipates something happening. I started thinking about Kinky last week because my girlfriend has Saturday Night Live set up on the TiVo season pass, which means every time it is on it is recorded. A couple of stations, Comedy Central and a local station show old Saturday Night Live programs, so we record it about ten times a week. We delete most of them without watching, but I have been previewing all of them to see if they show the episode where Kinky performs the song “Dear Abby.” My recollection was that Abigail Van Buren sued Kinky over the song, but it is actually a song about someone wondering whatever happened to the 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman.
I also recall that Kinky never had any top forty hits and he sort of faded from the public scene for a number of years only to show up later as a mystery writer. I’m a big fan of his novels. I’m sure that literary critics would disagree, but he’s one of my three favorite mystery writers, the other two being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler. Wait a minute. I was once a literary critic, so I just contradicted myself. Whereas Doyle’s detective was Sherlock Holmes and Chandler’s was Phillip Marlowe, Kinky’s detective is himself. Friedman’s quirky detective has a desk with twin telephones, a bust of William Shakespeare and an Imus in the morning coffee mug. He has a wooden puppet head with a parachute and a key to the door that sits on his refrigerator. When guests arrive and announce themselves, Kinky throws the puppet head out the window and it glides down with the key to the street below.
Now you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how does being a nut and a songwriter qualify one to be a southern governor? Where is the precedent?”
Well, Jimmie Davis, former governor of Louisiana co-wrote “You are my sunshine,” along with many other songs. Huey P. Long, also governor of Louisiana wrote “Every man a king.”
So, unless the Texas voters reach back into the archives to Kinky Friedman’s song “We reserve the right to refuse service to you,“ and echo the following lines, we may be entertained by Mr. Friedman for the next year or so.
Our quota’s filled up this year for singing Texas Jews
We reserve the right to refuse service to you.
Well, hell, they voted Bush into the governorship. We’ll just have to see what happens.
In Jimbo’s world sometimes we like just to sit back and watch.
deus ex machina for "his" machine
Everywhere I’ve worked since the advent of the personal computer, the IS or IT guy or gal has always had a one-word answer to any initial call to them about computer malfunctions. Your computer freezes up and you call them on the phone and they say:
“Reboot.”
You reboot your computer and everything is all right. Then a week later, you can’t get Excel to work right, or everything in Word is bold and you can’t change it back. You call IS and they give you a one word answer.
“Reboot.”
And, it works. From then on, anytime the computer freezes up, you know to reboot and you don’t even have to call them. That is, until a few weeks later when you realize something spiritual is going on with your computer, and you quickly figure out what is wrong and you call the IS guy.
“My computer is possessed by the devil.”
“Reboot.”
Again, it works. The next month, you are working along when blood begins to gush from your computer. You call IS and, this time, the guy comes over in person. He takes one look, gets on the phone, and the next thing you know all his staff is there.
“This reminds me of that one in Marketing last year,” says some Poindexter junior IS guy.
“Dammit, that was pus,” says the IS manager.
“Yeah, but it was liquid,” says Poindexter, pushing his horned rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Have you tried rebooting?” asks the IS Manager.
All of this brings me to what I was telling you yesterday about our TiVo going on the blink. When Jimbo is making supper, he likes to turn on the television and listen to the news and sort of watch it out of the corner of his eye, but last night the television was frozen and I couldn’t watch anything. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home from work, late, after a long day, Jimbo had used up all of his ideas, like turning it on and off and changing channels. Nothing seemed to work. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home, Jimbo was kind of in that same state of mind that the marine played by Bill Paxton in the movie Aliens was in after he realized the aliens were more formidable than he thought.
“Aw, Jesus, man, we’re screwed now!”
Jimbo’s girlfriend had a suggestion that we click our way to the “troubleshoot” menu and reset the TiVo, which we did. After about five minutes of the messages on the screen telling us the TiVo was doing things and searching for the satellite signal, the picture came back, along with the sound and the ability to record.
All we had to do was reboot.
Hallelujah! Life is beautiful again. I just hope it stays fixed. We are right with the world and “God’s machine.” Coincidentally, this morning the sun is shining and the weather is supposed to be unseasonably warm. As for me, I have a hallway and a bathroom to paint and an entire house of carpeting I need to shampoo. There’s no way I’ll get it all done today, but I will see how far I can get. With the weight of the TiVo problem off my shoulders, I’m optimistic it’ll be a good day. I hope it’s a good day for you, too.
Because in Jimbo’s world, and I’m sure your world, too, you can’t have too many good days.
“Reboot.”
You reboot your computer and everything is all right. Then a week later, you can’t get Excel to work right, or everything in Word is bold and you can’t change it back. You call IS and they give you a one word answer.
“Reboot.”
And, it works. From then on, anytime the computer freezes up, you know to reboot and you don’t even have to call them. That is, until a few weeks later when you realize something spiritual is going on with your computer, and you quickly figure out what is wrong and you call the IS guy.
“My computer is possessed by the devil.”
“Reboot.”
Again, it works. The next month, you are working along when blood begins to gush from your computer. You call IS and, this time, the guy comes over in person. He takes one look, gets on the phone, and the next thing you know all his staff is there.
“This reminds me of that one in Marketing last year,” says some Poindexter junior IS guy.
“Dammit, that was pus,” says the IS manager.
“Yeah, but it was liquid,” says Poindexter, pushing his horned rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Have you tried rebooting?” asks the IS Manager.
All of this brings me to what I was telling you yesterday about our TiVo going on the blink. When Jimbo is making supper, he likes to turn on the television and listen to the news and sort of watch it out of the corner of his eye, but last night the television was frozen and I couldn’t watch anything. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home from work, late, after a long day, Jimbo had used up all of his ideas, like turning it on and off and changing channels. Nothing seemed to work. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home, Jimbo was kind of in that same state of mind that the marine played by Bill Paxton in the movie Aliens was in after he realized the aliens were more formidable than he thought.
“Aw, Jesus, man, we’re screwed now!”
Jimbo’s girlfriend had a suggestion that we click our way to the “troubleshoot” menu and reset the TiVo, which we did. After about five minutes of the messages on the screen telling us the TiVo was doing things and searching for the satellite signal, the picture came back, along with the sound and the ability to record.
All we had to do was reboot.
Hallelujah! Life is beautiful again. I just hope it stays fixed. We are right with the world and “God’s machine.” Coincidentally, this morning the sun is shining and the weather is supposed to be unseasonably warm. As for me, I have a hallway and a bathroom to paint and an entire house of carpeting I need to shampoo. There’s no way I’ll get it all done today, but I will see how far I can get. With the weight of the TiVo problem off my shoulders, I’m optimistic it’ll be a good day. I hope it’s a good day for you, too.
Because in Jimbo’s world, and I’m sure your world, too, you can’t have too many good days.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
laughing into the wind
“God’s machine” has turned atheist on us here at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. You may recall that FCC Chairman Michael Powell once referred to TiVo as “God’s machine,” and in a blog I wrote back in November I said I agreed with his characterization entirely. Unfortunately, the TiVo in the living room-- the one that is connected to the big screen television-- is going bad on us. It records only sporadically and, because it doubles as the receiver for the satellite, sometimes it freezes and messes up live television, too.
O tempora. O mores.
If you don’t mind my borrowing a phrase that Cicero used in describing the Catilinarian conspiracy.
I know you are thinking, “Now, Jimbo, don’t be so dramatic. You’ve lived most of your adult life without TiVo. You can get by without it now.”
My answer is, but I don’t want to.
Anyway, we were watching live television last night, and fortunately it was working, and A Mighty Wind was playing on HBO. We got in in the middle, but we watched the last half of the movie. This morning I turned on the guide and found it was playing again. Normally I would have recorded it, but knowing TiVo was probably not going to record it right, I made a note of the time and did something I rarely do during the day, I watched something other than CNBC. I rarely turn on the TV during the day, and usually I only watch CNBC for a few minutes, when I get bored. Today, I watched an entire movie.
I’ve seen the movie This Is Spinal Tap a dozen times. I believe it was my son who bought me the DVD, but I watched it on VHS a lot over the last fifteen years. It’s one of those movies you can watch twenty times and see and hear new things each time you watch it. A number of the actors from This Is Spinal Tap also appear in A Mighty Wind. Both movies are fictional documentaries about fictional musical groups, the former about a rock group and the later about folk groups. In both movies, the story is told in the form of interviews with the various musicians, publicists, agents and peripheral characters interspersed throughout the film. You learn what is going on in bits and pieces in what is known as an unreliable narration. That means the people in the movie don’t always know what is going on, but you are able to figure it out. It was like in the movie Forrest Gump. You were able to know from his story what was going on, even though he didn’t know, himself.
Anyway, I particularly liked the performance of Mitch Cohen, played by Eugene Levy, a burned out musician, half of a folk duet called Mitch and Mickey, even though he reminds me too much of my ex-wife‘s seventh ex-husband, a gentleman with whom I am also estranged. Note to my son: if you ever see the movie, tell me if you agree.
As John Prine sang in his song Donald and Lydia, “There were spaces between” Mitch “and whatever he said.” Mitch and Mickey reunite after thirty or forty years to do a memorial concert for the late Irving Steinbloom, a folk music promoter who has recently passed on. The “Ode to Irving” concert around which this movie gravitates, will feature three groups formerly promoted by Steinbloom. In addition to Mitch and Mickey, a trio called the Folksmen, made up of Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guess (yes, the three principles of the band Spinal Tap) and The New Main Street Singers will perform. The New Main Street Singers are a re-incarnation of a group from the 1960s called the Main Street Singers, with one elderly original member and eight fresh faced youngsters.
The concert is being organized by Steinbloom’s family, his two sons and his wife, who appears to be the same age or younger than the progeny. In an interview, the family tells us they are not close and it appears that is also understated.
A married couple, the Bohners, in The New Main Street Singers tell us how they met and then they describe their faith to us. When the original Main Street Singers broke up, one of the founders started a pornography store. Mrs. Bohner worked for him and made movies, doing things “the other girls wouldn’t do.” Through this career she met Mr. Bohner who is sort of the front man for The New Main Street Singers. Their religion is based on color. “Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the forty-ninth vibration,” they tell us.
I think this movie would be a lot like This Is Spinal Tap in that the third or fourth time it is viewed it is the funniest, and when the words to the songs start to sink in, it becomes the most humorous part of the movie. Therefore I probably won’t have the full appreciation of A Mighty Wind until I see it a few more times. Damn that TiVo.
At one point The Folksmen are singing a song called Old Joe’s Place about a diner with a burned out neon sign, and one of the lines they sing is:
“I often think about a place I’ve never seen.”
That struck me funny, in a twisted sort of way.
There are a number of peripheral characters in this movie who add a lot in just a few sparse lines. Larry Miller as a public relations person for the concert says he doesn’t really like folk music, but “It doesn’t matter what we think, it’s what we make you think.” And Fred Willard as Agent Mike LaFontaine tells us about how thirty years ago he starred in a television series for one season and popularized the phrase “Wha’ Happened?” And we conclude his fifteen minutes ended there.
This is a movie that doesn’t have you rolling on the floor, but the dry, cerebral wit makes it worthwhile to watch. And, although I’ve only seen it once, in toto, I’d recommend seeing it several times, at the risk of sounding like The Folksmen and thinking about a place I’ve never seen.
Because in Jimbo’s world we like to see a good movie, especially in the comfort of our own living room.
O tempora. O mores.
If you don’t mind my borrowing a phrase that Cicero used in describing the Catilinarian conspiracy.
I know you are thinking, “Now, Jimbo, don’t be so dramatic. You’ve lived most of your adult life without TiVo. You can get by without it now.”
My answer is, but I don’t want to.
Anyway, we were watching live television last night, and fortunately it was working, and A Mighty Wind was playing on HBO. We got in in the middle, but we watched the last half of the movie. This morning I turned on the guide and found it was playing again. Normally I would have recorded it, but knowing TiVo was probably not going to record it right, I made a note of the time and did something I rarely do during the day, I watched something other than CNBC. I rarely turn on the TV during the day, and usually I only watch CNBC for a few minutes, when I get bored. Today, I watched an entire movie.
I’ve seen the movie This Is Spinal Tap a dozen times. I believe it was my son who bought me the DVD, but I watched it on VHS a lot over the last fifteen years. It’s one of those movies you can watch twenty times and see and hear new things each time you watch it. A number of the actors from This Is Spinal Tap also appear in A Mighty Wind. Both movies are fictional documentaries about fictional musical groups, the former about a rock group and the later about folk groups. In both movies, the story is told in the form of interviews with the various musicians, publicists, agents and peripheral characters interspersed throughout the film. You learn what is going on in bits and pieces in what is known as an unreliable narration. That means the people in the movie don’t always know what is going on, but you are able to figure it out. It was like in the movie Forrest Gump. You were able to know from his story what was going on, even though he didn’t know, himself.
Anyway, I particularly liked the performance of Mitch Cohen, played by Eugene Levy, a burned out musician, half of a folk duet called Mitch and Mickey, even though he reminds me too much of my ex-wife‘s seventh ex-husband, a gentleman with whom I am also estranged. Note to my son: if you ever see the movie, tell me if you agree.
As John Prine sang in his song Donald and Lydia, “There were spaces between” Mitch “and whatever he said.” Mitch and Mickey reunite after thirty or forty years to do a memorial concert for the late Irving Steinbloom, a folk music promoter who has recently passed on. The “Ode to Irving” concert around which this movie gravitates, will feature three groups formerly promoted by Steinbloom. In addition to Mitch and Mickey, a trio called the Folksmen, made up of Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guess (yes, the three principles of the band Spinal Tap) and The New Main Street Singers will perform. The New Main Street Singers are a re-incarnation of a group from the 1960s called the Main Street Singers, with one elderly original member and eight fresh faced youngsters.
The concert is being organized by Steinbloom’s family, his two sons and his wife, who appears to be the same age or younger than the progeny. In an interview, the family tells us they are not close and it appears that is also understated.
A married couple, the Bohners, in The New Main Street Singers tell us how they met and then they describe their faith to us. When the original Main Street Singers broke up, one of the founders started a pornography store. Mrs. Bohner worked for him and made movies, doing things “the other girls wouldn’t do.” Through this career she met Mr. Bohner who is sort of the front man for The New Main Street Singers. Their religion is based on color. “Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the forty-ninth vibration,” they tell us.
I think this movie would be a lot like This Is Spinal Tap in that the third or fourth time it is viewed it is the funniest, and when the words to the songs start to sink in, it becomes the most humorous part of the movie. Therefore I probably won’t have the full appreciation of A Mighty Wind until I see it a few more times. Damn that TiVo.
At one point The Folksmen are singing a song called Old Joe’s Place about a diner with a burned out neon sign, and one of the lines they sing is:
“I often think about a place I’ve never seen.”
That struck me funny, in a twisted sort of way.
There are a number of peripheral characters in this movie who add a lot in just a few sparse lines. Larry Miller as a public relations person for the concert says he doesn’t really like folk music, but “It doesn’t matter what we think, it’s what we make you think.” And Fred Willard as Agent Mike LaFontaine tells us about how thirty years ago he starred in a television series for one season and popularized the phrase “Wha’ Happened?” And we conclude his fifteen minutes ended there.
This is a movie that doesn’t have you rolling on the floor, but the dry, cerebral wit makes it worthwhile to watch. And, although I’ve only seen it once, in toto, I’d recommend seeing it several times, at the risk of sounding like The Folksmen and thinking about a place I’ve never seen.
Because in Jimbo’s world we like to see a good movie, especially in the comfort of our own living room.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)