On the road again

14 12 2009

The Road: The movie.

Eh.

Yes, our misanthropic cohort couldn’t wait until Christmas for the end of the world, so we trekked to a theatre Friday night and watched the man and the boy dodge cannibals and falling trees.

*Oh, have I mentioned there will be spoilers? Because there will be spoilers.*

There was no real change-up in the ending, although director John Hillcoat did end it a bit short, with the boy meeting the family, and his assent to travel with them.

Ct. was ticked at this. It’s a fucking Hallmark card!

I said, Ct., have you ever actually read a Hallmark card? Because while the movie ended on a less grim note than the book, it was still pretty fucking grim.

But I see her point: in uniting the boy with the family, you’re left with the sense of some possibility. In the book, however, there is none. There is only what is lost:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed mystery.

I know of at least one person who thought the ending of the book was hopeful. Hopeful? I asked. How on earth could it be hopeful when everything is gone and not coming back?

The boy meets the family, she said. And the fish.

The fish are gone. Gone: could not be put back. Not be made right again.

Anyway, back to the movie. I think the problem is that the only folks likely to see the movie are those who’ve read—and liked—the book, so we’re all watching the movie with the trajectory of the book in mind.

And, frankly, not much happens. The movie is juiced up a bit with color-ful flashbacks (intrusive in the gray movie tones in the way they’re not in the book: the color and light really do overwhelm onscreen), but, really, it’s a road movie with only a vague destination and in which the main purpose is merely to remain alive.

Scratch that: It doesn’t really fit the conventions of a road movie, precisely because there is no real destination and the flight of the father and son cannot really be characterized as a ‘meaningful’ journey. They’re on the run (or walk, as it were), staying alive just to keep staying alive.

Yeah, there’s that talk about carrying the fire, and some Christian imagery and words (in both movie and book), but the man stays alive to protect the boy, and the boy stays alive because he’s a boy.

The road is a trope for the road itself, a question of why live, at all?

Well, that’s another post, I guess, and one for which I’ll have to haul out my Camus.

Back to the movie: Because so little happens, but what does happen matters so much, you end up scrutinizing the screen so that this even or that can be checked off. Hillcoat cuts one notable event and substitutes another (pointless) scene in its place, but the rest pretty much unfolds as in the book:

  • Shoot the cannibal? Check.
  • Share meal with old man? Check.
  • Stupidly enters basement? Check. (And not nearly as awful a scene in the movie as it was in the book.)
  • Starve? Check.
  • Find underground cache? Check.

Et cetera.

What would it have been like to have seen the movie without knowing what would happen? Without turning your face sideways as the man enters the basement? Without knowing about the ship and arrow and the family and endless gray?

What would it be like to watch it not knowing how bad things are, and how bad things will remain?

The problem of foreknowledge is always an issue with book-readers who watch book-movies, but because The Road is so much about the stillness and the terror and not much else, the problem is exacerbated. With a book busier in plot, character, and backdrop, there are more pieces to juggle and interpret, more for the viewer to see and miss and absorb.

It’s not that The Road isn’t complex, but it is in many ways ‘merely’ a contemplation of the endless, horrifying, present.

That could work as a movie, but not, I think, if you’ve read the book first.

Especially not this book.


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Sneaky petes

11 12 2009

I love caper flicks.

It’s where the little guy gets over, sneakiness wins over force, and wits—sometimes matched, sometimes overmatched—trump all.

There’s a definitional issue, here (of course): Do caper flicks have to be light? How much heaviness can creep in? Is there such a thing as a heavy caper flick?

I tend toward the lightness (or fleetness) aspect of capers, with just enough heaviness to anchor the thrill of the exploits.

Have you watched Hopscotch? It’s an old film (available thru Netflix streaming), about a CIA man about to be shackled to a desk who decides instead to get out; the trouble begins when he’s prompted (by his KGB counterpart, natch) to write his memoirs—about his spy work. It stars Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson (both delicious), with the perfect Ned Beatty in the role of the Nixonian spy chief, and beautiful and young Sam Waterston as Matthau’s protege and would-be captor.

Complete fluff. Oh, that it’s about the dirty deeds of the CIA and the desire of both the CIA and the KGB to stop him from revealing those deeds serves mainly to underline the glee with which Matthau consistently baits the poobahs, and watches as they respond exactly as predicted. There’s a bit of a bump at the end, but it ends as all caper flicks must, with a win.

This, by the way, was a problem with Duplicity, with Clive Owen & Julia Roberts. I should have enjoyed it more than I did, since it’s basically a double-/triple-/quadruple-cross about consumer-products business secrets. An opening sequence with Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson trying to beat each other up as their horrified associates look on sets the appropriately absurdist tone.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t maintain that tone, and darkens inappropriately. It’s about consumer products, for chrisssakes! And the ending does not satisfy.

Ocean’s 11 satisfies. A fine ensemble piece, laced with a bit of melancholy (which you know will lift by the end), and with a ludicrous premise with equally ludicrous stakes. The best scene? When Matt Damon racially insults the late, great Bernie Mac in a performance which just possible echoes one of the best scenes in SNL history: when Chevy Chase (I think) psychologically interviews Richard Pryor, using increasingly racially-charged word-association.

No, no one can compete with Richard Pryor, but still: even an echo is great.

Ocean’s 12 was okay (my favorite scene in that? When Matt Damon’s mom, the fabulous Cherry Jones, springs the crew from the police). Haven’t seen Ocean’s 13.

The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan, Denis Leary, and, crap, whatshername, was fine—the scene near the end, with all the men in bowler caps, was terrific—but I’m not a huge fan of the (younger) Brosnan. And I haven’t seen the original, with Steve McQueen, so I don’t know how it compares.

The movie which really cemented my love for capers, however, was Sneakers (great score by Brandon Marsalis, by the way). It features Robert Redford, Mary McConnell, Sidney Poitier, David Straithairn, River Phoenix, with Ben Kingsley and James Earl Jones appearing near the end; the set up is  that of a second-rate security firm, headed by Redford, hired to retrieve a global decryption device. This bit of hardware, in other words, would allow one to penetrate every electronics system in the world—no secrets.

It’s a bit darker than some other caper films—at least one guy is murdered—but the ensemble is a delight, with the frictions and affections between them applying much of the fizz. Great scene? Straithairn’s character, who is blind, drives a truck off-road and down a hill to save the day. He is appropriately terrified and exhilarated.

Would Inside Man count as a caper flick? I think not, as the crime-film aspects overshadows all, but the caperesque aspects of the film are precisely what make it so delightful.

The various Bourne movies are definitely not capers: too dark, too violent, too little humor. Still, the catch-me-if-you-can aspect. . .

. . .Catch Me If You Can. Forgot about that one, probably because I haven’t seen it. A caper, right?

See, I’m stuck because while I love this genre, I can’t think of that many films which fit. The Sting—of course. There has to be more.

There has to be ‘something more’. . . !


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We play that we’re actors on a movie screen

2 12 2009

I have to get rid of my computer.

I’m not going to do that.

The internet, then. Save me some money.

Not going to happen.

No, I will keep my computer and my broadband and I will continue to waste time watching movies and bad t.v. shows and then watching them all again.

Yes, I finally got Netflix, and in the week and a-half I’ve had it I’ve watched 2 DVDs and a lot of streaming movies and t.v. shows.

A lot.

Now, I did learn one thing: I am over Law & Order. I watched an episode of L&O:SVU from their tenth season and just thought Blegggh—really?

And even tho’ I can watch CSI on CBS, my interest lags there, as well. Yes, there are still tw0-ish other shows I still tune in, but, mostly, I’m done with the whole t.v. thing.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there are all these movies which I can watch at the click of the mouse.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, save for my inability to close out the Netflix window after finishing a movie. Nope, time for another.

Pitiful. There’s reading and writing and Oh! Going outside!

Not happening.

This will fade, I know. I’ll get sick of myself doing nothing but sitting in front of my (um, new [it was on sale!], larger, external) monitor watching explosions and tears and drinking and running and people doing all the things I could be doing were not I sitting in front of my new, larger, external monitor.

But in the meantime, what’s that crappy movie I won’t admit to liking even as a guilty pleasure which I’ve seen 18 kajillion times. . . ?

Lord. Pitiful.


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Fly into the sun

18 11 2009

Could you tell my post last night was dashed off?

I was thinking Oh, man, I gotta post something. What? What? Then I did the dishes, which apparently put me in mind of the apocalypse.

As I told C. in the comments (who corrected an author error in the post: Clarke, not Huxley, wrote Childhood’s End), I was so lazy I couldn’t be bothered to tab over and look up various movie titles on IMDB.

Pitiful.

Thus, an elaboration on yesterday’s post, as well as an important qualifier.

The elaboration

C. astutely noted that I included dystopias with my apocalypses. So true. I guess  I tend to think that any dystopia worth its salt was preceded by some kind of apocalypse, but they really ought to be separated.

Had I been engaging anything other than minimal brain power last night, I would have figured this out in my (minor) deliberations over whether to include Brave New World. I did not, because, as I noted in the comments, the shift into Fordism seemed a kind of progression, rather than break, with what came before.

My list was also quite sloppy: I Am Legend popped into my head, then popped right back out. (I saw the Charleton Heston version, and parts of the Will Smith. In either case, definitely apocalyptic.) And I couldn’t remember the name of that damned book with the conch and boys and Piggy, and so left it off. (Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I thought there was mention of an a-bomb at the end, but it’s at the beginning.)

There’s another book, too, listed at the back of the paperback edition of The Gone-Away World: Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. It veers between an occasional (and thoroughly enjoyable) nasty humor and genuine pathos. More light than heavy.

I’d count Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, too, if only because of the threat. But I didn’t include Max Barry’s Jennifer Government because, if I remember correctly, that society arose more like Huxley’s Fordist scheme than through anything apocalyptic.

And I missed the whole field of Christian apocalypse, a.k.a. the Rapture. Now, there is a very good movie called The Rapture (David Duchovny, Mimi Rogers), but that’s a Hollywood film, as opposed to a Soon-To-Be-Coming-To-An-Earth-Near-You True Believer flick. I used to be a regular imbiber of TBN and CBN (wacky evangelistic fare), and they’d regularly show rapture films. Don’t know the name of a single one.

I do know, however, The Omega Code (produced by TBN and starring Kirk Cameron), which is  basic Bible-code Armageddon. And, of course, Jenkins & LaHaye’s Left Behind series. I tried to read it, but couldn’t get through even book one. I have a high tolerance for this stuff, so you know it’s bad. (But if they make a movie of it—have they made a movie of it?—I am so there.)

There are likely many, many more of this subgenre that I’m missing.

I also overlooked the Mad Max movies. I liked the second one, Road Warrior, best, but the first and third aren’t bad. And I have the sense that those crazy Danes probably have a bunch of apocalypses hidden in their Danish libraries. (Don’t know why I have this sense; just do.)

Well, I’m counting on C. to come up with a proper doom list.

Now, the qualifier.

None of these books or movies are based on historical events. Some of these may speculate on a future which could become history (got that?), but in no case are these movies or books based on anything which has actually happened.

No Holocaust. No Hiroshima or Nagasaki. No Native American genocide. No historical genocides, period. No plague, flu, smallpox, etc. No Mt. St. Helen’s or Vesuvius or Tambora or any actual natural disaster. No Chernobyl.

No event in which actual human beings experienced their own version of the apocalypse.

I don’t put these events off-limits, not by any means. A good book or movie is a good book or movie, and I think all of the stuff of our lives and deaths is there for the taking.

But I don’t include these in my apocalypse list.

There is a glee in thinking of how the world might end, how humans might respond—wondering how I would respond—to total disaster, precisely because it is so speculative. Look at all the possibilities of our end!

Possibilities. Not certainties.

In historical ends, there is a certainty, the most significant of which is the certainty of actual human suffering and death.

Again, a worthy topic of fiction. But not of glee.

 


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Burn baby burn

18 11 2009

I fucking LOVE apocalyptic movies!

Death! Disaster! Mayhem! Whoo hoo!

And if they’re religiously themed? Even better.

Now, I define apocalyptic broadly, to encompass existential ends, partial ends (of countries, cities) as well as the mere possibility of world’s end.

Oo, world’s end—let’s see, Childhood’s End, an Aldous Huxley (Arthur C. Clarke—h/t C.) novel about—yep—the end of the world. Read that one (the, uh, first time) in high school.

So let’s extend the love for all things apocalyptic to novels, as well.

It should go without saying that these movies/novels are often awful. Children of Men was a very good movie (and so-so novel), but that, I think, was an exception.

Terminator 2 was pretty good, but really, really, really long.

Terminator? Okay.

Terminator 3? Okay. (I missed Linda Hamilton.)

Terminator 4? Umm, is that on Hulu? Maybe if I ever sign up for Netflix. . . .

Goofy apocalyptic is good, like Independence Day. Or what was that movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche about the volcano in Los Angeles? Goofy is what it was!

And certainly better than the Pierce Brosnan volcano flick—which, while it had Linda Hamilton, did not have Sarah Connor.

So, too, with Deep Impact Armageddon (Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck comet movie) and the Morgan Freeman/Tea Leoni comet movie (Deep Impact). You’d think the Freeman/Leoni duo would kick Willis & Affleck’s asses, but, no: Deep Impact Armageddon wins by goofiness.

Prophecy, with Virginia Madsen and Christopher Walken—really, you have to ask? Christopher Walken! And bonus with angels and Satan and stuff!

Much better than End of Days, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Too stodgy.

The Ninth Gate? Not really world-ending, but really fucking weird. And Satan and stuff.

Stigmata? Not really at all, but it had visions and angels and stuff. And Gabriel Byrne.

Waterworld? Nuh. Kevin Costner, not in his lovable-crank personna (Bull Durham, Tin Cup), but just annoying crank. But Dennis Hopper was fun.

Day After Tomorrow? Please. (And while I’m certainly willing to watch bad bad-end movies, I’m not willing to pay 12 bucks to do so: 2012 will have to wait.)

War of the Worlds? I have the Tom Cruise version stamped on my brain. Too muted. And Tom Cruise. . . .

Oh, and On the Beach. Odd, but great. The first half is a bit of a caper flick, with Fred Astair and Ava Gardner (man!) and stiff-and-honorable Gregory Peck, but still (SPOILER), no relief: everybody dies.

The Day After played on t.v. in the 1980s, to much hue and cry. I saw it again a year or two ago, and while it was mighty cheesy, still.

Testament was not cheesy. I still (mis?)remember the scene in which Jane Alexander is sitting in next to sun-filled window, sewing, her face determined. It’s only in the voiceover do we learn that this is a shroud for her daughter.

28 Days Later gave me nightmares for a week—then terrified me out of sleep six months later.

Didn’t see 28 Months Later, however—tho’ if it streams on Netflix (if I ever. . .) then, maybe.

I should catch up with all the old George Romero flixs. While I’m not a big horror fan, zombies work.

World War Z, by Max Brooks. Have you read it? A fine bit of reportage. Sparked an unfinished bit of writing from me, on the ethics of zombie-killing and -experimentation.

Margaret Atwood has written a number of apocalyptic novels, although these tend toward collapse-apocalypse as opposed to war/violence-apocalypse. Oryx & Crake was hilarious and cold—just right; her new book elaborates on the O&C theme and is, according to a number of critics, better than the original. Hmpf.

And then, of course, The Handmaid’s Tale—I’m currently using that in one of my pol sci classes. When I polled the class on when/whether they would try to escape the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, most of them were of the I’d-wait-it-out variety. Really? I all-but-yelped. Only one student was with me: as soon as we lost our jobs or our money, if not sooner, we’d be gone.

Turn me into an Unwoman—no suh!

Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway. What? You still haven’t read it? Honestly, what’s your excuse?

There’s more, of course. Fahrenheit 451. Don DeLillo. The Plot Against America. Walker Percy. Peter Hoeg. Jose Saramago. 1984. A couple of Marge Piercy’s. A couple of Mary Doria Russell’s. William Gibson.

Science fiction? Speculative fiction? Whatever. If the earth is in peril/ends, it’s in.

C. was going to start an apocalyptic book club at the bookstore, but a necessary manager bailed. Still, I’d expect that she’d have even more to offer.

And, again, quality is not really the point, here. Even the books or movies I slagged I’d still (re)read or watch (again).

The point is that they are 1) fiction; 2) fun! and/or terrifying!; and 3) the world ends!

Should I mention that a number of us have made plans to see The Road Christmas night?

The director had better not make it ‘inspiring’. . . .


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Whip it good!

16 10 2009

Oh hell yeah I had to use that lyric for this post.

It is, after all, a review of Drew Barrymore’s Whip It—the second (new) movie I’ve seen since moving to New York. (The first was Children of Men: very good, better than the book. And Clive Owen, oh my. . . .)

Okay, back to chicks on skates. It’s a fine movie—not great, but thoroughly entertaining. Bliss Cavender lives in Bodeen Texas with her football-lovin’ dad and pageant-pushing mom (and suck-up little sister); her only friend(s) are those she works with, Pash and Birdman.

Then (cue the lights and music), she sees a flyer for a roller-derby match in Austin, is urged to try out by a derby-ite (derbyan? derbish?), skates quick-fast, makes the team. . . and away we go.

It’s a bit sketchy, insofar as there are thin bits where there could be full moments, and miss Bliss rather too easily transforms into Babe Ruthless, but what the hell, it’s already two hours long, and it’s not as if the backstories are truly necessary.

Ellen Page is endearing rather than annoying, Kristin Wiig is fab, as is the fabulous (natch) Marcia Gay Harden, and Daniel Stern looks like he’s having a good time. Oh, and Jimmy Fallon does a fine impression of a skanky announcer—so much so that I, uh, don’t think he really had to act all that hard.

And Juliette Lewis is there, too. It’s not as if I’m a big Juliette Lewis fan, but I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for a woman who’s done her own thing for a long time and gotten shit for it—and who apparently doesn’t care.  And her character works.

Oh, there’s a boy, too. Man, I guess; boyish man. In too many ways. Bliss knows just what to do with him.

So a good time was had by all (well, the three of us attending the early matinee), and I will certainly enjoy watching this again when it hits Netflix. (Which I should sign up for.)

Still, I felt a bit melancholy when I left. No! Wait! I didn’t mean that! No sad faces! So, okay, maybe restless is the better term. Yes. Restless.

Why? Well, there’s a scene in the middle where all the skaters and some of the fans hit a party, and it’s all anarchic joy. The band is playin’, the roof is swayin’, and nobody is worrying about anything. Oh, and Bliss gets tossed in the hot tub. (Of course there’s a hot tub.)

And I thought, hey, I remember that. Not the hot tub and skates, but the fuck-it glee of a great unwind, of being a part of something you never thought could exist, and the. . . dammit! bliss of freedom and the sense that there’s more out than you could ever breathe in. That you could toss yourself off the cliff and land. . . in the hot tub.

I’m so dull now. So, so dull. I like control and observation and not making an ass of myself, keeping an eye on the door and my wallet and how much I’ve had to drink. Do you know how many years it’s been since I’ve danced on a table- or bar top? Bounced with friends and strangers to the jangle-pop of a somebody’s brother’s garage band? Jumped in instead of standing back?

This isn’t a call back to my teenage or college years—well, a little bit to my college years. But even if I don’t want to be sixteen or even twenty again, I do want some of that anarchic joy, the sweaty-dancing-laughing-singing-to-the-stars joy.

I’m only halfway through life, so why am I acting as if I’m already nearing the end?

Something more, remember?


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The sweetness follows

29 09 2009

Sweet.

That’s what I thought as I closed Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees. Yes. That was sweet.

Reminded me of Bagdad Cafe. Also sweet. A small movie with CCH Pounder and Marianne Sagebrecht, set in a (surprise!) cafe in (suprise!) Bagdad, Arizona. Sagebrecht’s character (and a suitcase) is dumped on the side of the road by her husband, so, being the good stoic German woman she is, she grabs the suitcase and tromps her way to CCH Pounder’s motel-and-truck stop.

There are gentle laughs at the expense of ethnic stereotypes (angry black woman, hyper-organized German, lazy Indian), and not much happens, beyond the blossoming of friendship and the unfolding of life. Much like in The Bean Trees. Immigration looms around the edges, and there are spikes in each story, but even the desert, the flowers win.

Slight, I guess. I mean, how seriously can one take a piece of art that doesn’t involve blood and misery?

Consider Maira Kalman. She posts a words-and-pictures column monthly at the New York Times (scroll all the way down the link provided, below, for previous installments), and while the columns often take up serious matters (slavery, war), there is a gentleness in her touch.

Whimsical. Yes.

Consider her latest post, For Goodness’ Sake; she offers photos from a sanitation plant in Greenpoint, and notes that After dark, the plant looks like something out of ‘The Arabian Nights,’ thanks to lighting designed by L’Observatoire International.

Makes me want to trek to Greenpoint (the G line!) to see a. . . sanitation plant!

She can’t be serious. Can she?

Small. Slight. Sweet. Whimsical.

That’s not art, is it? If it makes you feel—mm, what’s the word?— good, it can’t be deep. Hardly worthy of attention, right?

Right?


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In my room

1 08 2009

So bad. So, so bad.

The Room.

Have you seen it? Does it not make you want to gouge out your eyes, puncture your eardrums, and spend the rest of your life repenting of whatever sins led you to this movie?

Or, you know, buy a box of spoons and maybe some confetti and gather with friends in the balcony of an old theatre and watch it again? (Only this time, remember to bring beer—the bigger, the cheaper, the better.)

The Wikipedia summation of the film doesn’t really do it justice, insofar as it attempts to make sense of the six-million-dollar travesty. So here’s what you should know (WARNING: I give away the ending!):

Johnny, with his greasy long hair and muscular-yet-horrifying body, lives with Lisa, a nondescript blond who is nonetheless repeatedly referred to as beautiful. Lisa is variously described as a princess, a sociopath, and a tramp, all of which make her sound more interesting than she is. Lisa has boring sex with Johnny, then seduces Johnny’s best friend Mark (again, we know this because apparently Mark can’t say ‘Johnny’ without also saying ‘best friend’) with more boring sex. Lisa’s mom Claudette visits to say things such as ‘talk to me’, ‘I have breast cancer’, and ‘all men are assholes,’ then leave. At one point, Lisa’s friend Michelle and her boyfriend Mike come over to have boring sex with chocolate on the couch. At another point, Johnny invites his psychologist friend Peter over to the house to offer his professional insights, then complains that Peter psychologizes everything. (At one point Peter gets ‘cheeped’ by the boys, as in You Are A Chicken.) Oh, and then there’s Denny, the half-wit half-adopted drug-using neighbor boy-man who ‘likes to watch’ and gets in trouble with a drug dealer. Oh, and don’t forget the football, which is often carried, seldom tossed, but trotted out in alleys, on rooftops, in a park, and on the street. At the end, Lisa throws Johnny a birthday party, gets caught by Peter/Steve (don’t ask) trying to initiate boring sex with Mark, and instead initiates a boring fight between Mark and Johnny in which the phrase ‘motherfucker’ gets tossed about—the highlight of the film. Then Johnny shoots himself. The end.

Note that this makes the movie sound better than it actually is. Tommy Wiseau, the actor/director/producer/demon-from-hell, reportedly spent $6 million on this thing. I shudder to think what would have happened had he had $16 or $60 mil.

So why spend $12.50 on this? Because it’s a thing: one friend mentions to another that the movie runs once a month at midnight at a theater in the East Village, with the audience providing the entertainment the movie itself lacks.

Because I’d been feeling like a bum and a punk (tho’ not an old slut on junk) and in a bit of a funk, and needed a night out.

Because I keep telling myself to push myself more into my life and to take advantage of what New York has to offer (even when what it offers is so, so bad), and here was a chance to do that.

Because I haven’t been saying ‘what the hell’ nearly enough. (Although, after subjecting myself to this flick, I think I have, in fact, discovered something about hell.)

Besides, who wants to be a chicken?

*cheep*  *cheep*


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Do the right thing

14 02 2009

Cable companies suck.

I’ve been piggybacking on a coupla’ unsecured local wireless accounts, but know this has to end. One, I’m freeloading, and two, it’s not all that reliable. (And for the record, the first matters more than the second. Really.)

So I went to the local CableConglomerate website to find out how much a cable/wireless connection would cost. I dinked around on their site, checked out various packages, and, in the end, decided that all I want is a cable modem and service.

I have no idea how much it’ll cost.

Oh, I could do the Triple-Play and get Phone! Cable! and Internet! for the low low price of just $29.95* per month per service!

Do not want. I kicked the regular t.v. habit while living in my last apartment. It wasn’t totally voluntary—I didn’t have a t.v. in my room, and my roommate didn’t want me to put my t.v. in the common living space—but I don’t really miss it. Yeah, it was nice to veg out and watch the umpteenth episode of Law & Order or CSI (either the original or CSI:New York, but not Miami. Miami sucked.), or take in the glories of bad movies like Independence Day, but, christ, amidst my various jobs I got no damned time to watch t.v.**

So, just the intertubes, please.  That’s it. No super basic (i.e., all the regular channels you’d get if your antenna were worth a damn) for 16 bucks a month, no HDTV, DVR, HBO or M-O-U-S-E. Just the fucking cable modem.

No price. I guess I find out when one of their circling predators salespeople contacts me to strongarm me into a cable package let me know the details.

Bastards.

*Not including all the other shit they charge you for. Like $0.24/month for the remote. Did you know they charge you a monthly rental for the remote? I did not, before today.

**I am seriously considering getting a super basic Netflix package and the hundred-buck Roku box, which would allow me to stream mediocre t.v. programs and movies—and some good stuff!—for about 10 bucks a month direct to me t.v. Stigmata on demand. Awesome.


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