(via)
…Here’s an exchange we had earlier this week:
Emma: I want to be something scary for Halloween. What scares grownups?
Me: Taxes, unemployment, cancer…
Emma: [blinks]
Me: Hard to make a costume for those, I know.
Sensing a trend? I covered The Last Man on Earth a couple of weeks ago, the first movie adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, and now I’ve reviews The Omega Man (1971), the second adaptation of said novel. No, you win nothing for guessing that Will Smith might soon make his first ever Cold Fusion appearance.
When our house was built in 1954 as part of a development, Sunset City was obligated to provide the main line to the sewer system. This was quite the expense for a small city, so they went cut-rate with it: instead of a metal sewer pipe, each main line to the city’s sewer was made out of half-inch tarpaper, which is rated for about fifty years.
I’ll just wait here until you do the math in your head. Ready?
The city was (is?) obligated to provide the main sewer line for each house on new construction, but replacement when that main line wears out is entirely the homeowner’s obligation. Some of our neighbors have had their main line collapse and had to replace it under emergency situations; others have preemptively had it replaced or repaired; the most economical technique is one that slides a thin PVC sleeve inside the tarpaper, which costs about $4000. And others have, like us, crossed their fingers and hoped that if they ignore the problem it’ll go away.
But you can never really ignore it completely. So when the main line backs up and refuses to drain, as it has a couple of times in the dozen years we’ve had the house and as it did this morning, you can’t ignore the possibility that this time might be the time. We still don’t know; I wasn’t willing to pay the 50% overtime surcharge to get a rooter-wielding plumber out on a holiday, so we’re doing no laundry or dishes (and organizing trips out to Wal-Mart to use the pottie) until tomorrow morning to find out if the line can be rooted one more time.
You’ll know if it can’t, because I’ll be launching the mother of all blegs. Stay tuned.
Finally got around to The Expendables today. (Actually, I’ve been so busy this summer that it’s the only theatrical release I’ve gotten to this summer, and that only because Alex insisted I go see it.) My reaction to it wasn’t as rapturous as, say, this one, but mainly because I knew exactly what I’d get going in (due in part to rapturous reviews like Larry’s): manly manhood expressed largely with tattoos and tobacco products, and things blowing up darned good.
This is the kind of theatrical B-movie that’s almost impossible to release these days. In fact, the same movie could have been made several million dollars cheaper (just cut out a bunch of unnecessary flying footage and some of the explosions in the finale — the audience would have been compensated by cutting back on the shaky-cam so we could see the fights more clearly), but then it would have been dumped to video by nervous distributors who think that expensive excess is the only path to theatrical profitability for “guy” flicks.
I enjoyed it as a throwback to the “good ol’ violence” days of the ’80s; my only complaint is that none of the merc team got killed in the climax, so there’s no room for Jean-Claude Van Damme to be recruited for the sequel.
(I’m probably the only person around who took note of Gary Daniels’ name in the opening credits, and kept imagining his reaction to the production: “I thought I’d be relegated to cheaper and cheaper DTV features for the rest of my career, and here I am duking it out with Sly Stallone AND Jet Li!”)
What can I say? Robert J. Lippert kept bankrolling mediocre genre programmers to fill out double bills, and VCI Entertainment keeps releasing them on DVD and sending them to me, so I keep reviewing them. Tonight’s fare: Renegade Girl (1946).
Qwest finally fixed the problem that was denying service to me and several other households in the neighborhood. After four days, I now have my landline phone and DSL again. They are also crediting us for the four days without service. Counseling for pain and suffering is not included.
I suppose that opens me up for the neo-luddite accusations (or just from my mom) that I’m too dependent on technology for my day-to-day living. Here’s how I think of it: any technology that you can take or leave isn’t really useful to you; it’s just a novelty. For it to be truly useful, it has to be integrated into your life, and that means that its removal causes causes hardship and/or major adjustment. That’s the hazard that you have to live with if you want to take full advantage of the benefits of any technology: cars, telephones, TiVos, Google Calendar.
