What Stoves Cost

My reply to Todd Napolitano's Essay Of Yeech is finally up. Feel free to peruse it and send me comments. Let me just warn you of something Willa said to me after reading it:

Remind me never to piss you off.

Darin and his buds have to work today. That's "have to" as in "must". Required work weekend. This would, of course, happen the weekend that I'm still here, as opposed to next weekend, when I'm gone.

This moment of bile brought to you free of charge and without obligation.

After I dropped Darin off at work I drove by Sears to check out the price of oven/stove/microwave combinations. We have a single unit right now, and the microwave went dead. Do you know what it's like trying to get by in these modern times without a microwave? Anyhow, Darin had a guy come in to look at it and found out it would cost $400 to fix the microwave, because it's part of this single unit stove. I went to see what it would cost to replace the oven/stove/microwave. A great deal more than $400, but then we would have new stuff. And, frankly, it's not that much more.

Another semester at USC vs. new cooking implements...hmmm.

Article in the Metro this week about rabid fans of TV shows going nuts on-line in defense of their favorite show and attacking others. The big war between fans of Babble-On 5 and Deep Sleep Nine was discussed, and given that the head writer for Deep Space Nine was interviewed, two guesses as to the bias of the story.

Mini movie reviews, as I'm just never going to get around to this otherwise:

1. Immortal Beloved: After seeing several of his movies, I am quite sure I never want to be trapped in an elevator with Gary Oldman, but he is so electric. A fairly pedestrian plot made wonderful by locations, Beethoven's music, and Oldman doing his thing. I'm left with a feeling of lushness, though I can't for the life of me remember why.

2. The French Connection: Oy, oy, oy. How cop/action movies have changed (mainly for the better) in 25 years. This flick won best picture, best director, and best actor? Gene Hackman (MST3K: "Hackman...he's just so good") barely had a character to play. The movie was mostly incoherent (Darin and I kept looking at one another and saying, "What was that?"). The story revolved around a very tricky importation of (gasp!) 120 pounds of heroin by some Frenchmen. The mechanics involved in this rinky-dink drug operation are ludicrous, as is the behavior of the cops. There are two good scenes: the famous race against the subway train, and Hackman's tailing of a Frenchman in Grand Central Station. Otherwise, the movie is a creaky relic of a different time. Skip it.

3. Jade: I had the same thought watching Jade as I did watching last year's other masterpiece by scribe Joe Eszterhas: What were they thinking? Did anyone read this script and say, My God, this is great stuff? It's cheesy, exploitative, and (worst of all) badly written. No plot. Lots of naked women performing sex acts. David Caruso looking morose. Survey says: Yuck.