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A Momentary Lapse… November 11, 2004 · Leave it to Tigg to destroy a perfectly reasonable rant I had a while ago. I was telling her about my problems with handicap parking. (No, I don’t have a problem with handicap parking. Use the link and read the rant in “Random thoughts.”) Basically, our conversation went like this… Me: …and so that’s why “Parking for our senior patrons” is a bad idea. Tigg: Maybe the company was just responding to some complaints. Me: (pause) Umm… What? Tigg: Complaints… maybe they had some complaints. You know… someone wrote a letter, and they complained that there wasn’t enough special parking when they came to visit. They were probably in compliance with any regulations and laws, but didn’t want to seem uncaring. So, they created these ‘senior patrons’ spaces. They really don’t care who parks in them. They’re not going to monitor them because there are no laws that say they have to have them, so they don’t have to be responsible for who uses them. But to the letter writer, now they look like a caring and thoughtful company. Me: (pause… staring at her…) Oh. Well, that might make sense. Tigg: Yes. It would. Me: (Damn! I mean…) I still don’t like it. · Black currant. Tigg and I drive past several farms on the way to work. Most of them are corn fields. But there is this one that for three or four years now, we have been completely unable to figure out. It was a corn field. But then they planted some bushy-looking things. Strawberries? No. Not strawberries. Some other berry? Blueberries or raspberries? No, the bushy-things are too big, last too long, and don’t bloom right to be one of those. So finally, this year, the owners posted a sign. They are “growers of black currant.” I never, ever in my life gave a thought to where black currant… heck, any currant… came from. Apparently, there are farms for such things. And don’t you sit there reading this like you knew that. · By the time I post this, chances are I will have seen The Incredibles (side note... yup, I have, do yourself a favor and go... review up by this weekend). For now though… head over to the Pixar web site. Check out the teaser for Cars, next year’s release from Pixar/Disney. The level of animation is absolutely startling. · You know, with the movie recently released and all, wouldn’t it be great if we could get the original Ken Hutchinson and Dave Starsky… David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser… together again? A Starsky & Hutch reunion. Sigh… but it will never happen. Soul doesn’t live in the United States, and it just doesn’t make sense. Right? I wonder if they’ll bring the car… · Ok… fine… Starsky & Hutch. Very funny Bob. Had to go to the Herald Sun from Australia to find it. You got us with that. But you wouldn’t go to those lengths to tell us some silly story about Sylvester Stallone being crazy enough to revisit Rocky Balboa with another film, would you? Umm… funny you should ask… · Apparently David Beckham will soon be on a soccer field after all… to make a movie. The seldom seen playing his sport, but always in the entertainment section soccer star is currently set to work on a trilogy of soccer-themed movies. Supposedly, Beckham will play himself. I didn’t see anything in the article indicating that there was an adultery-committing character that attended movie premieres and big-name parties, but you never know. · I’ve seen this Associated Press review already in a couple of places. Here’s the link to it on the CNN web site. I made fun of Britney recently, including the announcement that she was planning a greatest hits album. Well, Christy Lemire seems to agree with what I said… Spears isn’t ready for one yet. I love the opening: “‘People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth,’ Britney Spears insists breathily... ‘But the question is,’ she continues, ‘can you handle mine?’ Tough question, especially coming from someone who’s notorious for lip-synching her way through performances, and who utters those words at the start of a song that isn’t even one of her own greatest hits, but a cover of somebody else’s...” · Here’s where television is heading… Several ABC stations across the country are refusing to broadcast an unedited telecast of Saving Private Ryan for fear that they will be fined for the content. In the meantime, CBS is apologizing because they broke into the last few minutes of a show to announce that Yasser Arafat had died. I’m not sure what it exactly is, but add this to the list that includes hour-long shows running sixty-four minutes, fourteen spin-offs of the same series because changing the city helps, and many other wonderful advances in television. Think about it… with all the advances in technology, with all the advancements we’ve made in so many areas, is there any better indication of what is going on than network coverage of the elections? They’re so good at this stuff that every four years it takes them longer and longer to predict a winner. Network television is falling apart, in every single aspect of its production, from news to prime time programming. And none of them seem to have a clue how to fix it because they’re too busy trying not to upset anyone. |