Author Archives: don

Kindle Ads

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kindle00I don’t mind the ads on the Kindle sleep screen.  In fact, I like them so much that I would have opted for them even if the setting was not cheaper than the ad-free.  It is the most unobtrusive advertising conceivable, and potentially very helpful.  However, Amazon has uncharacteristically squandered this opportunity and a little goodwill.

  1. There is zero thought put into targeting this advertisement.  I will swear on a stack of Hustlers there is nothing in my purchasing history that would lead them to recommend this book to me.  This is a non-sequitur of Netflixian levels.
  2. So unobtrusive is this ad, that I can’t even claim that it wastes my time.  At most, it simply prevents me from being exposed to a different book I might actually have a chance in hell of reading.
  3. The worst part is that it appears on my screen where people might get the wrong impression that I am reading this, or the one about the cowboy and MBA, or the single mother and incognito prince.  To avoid this humiliation, I frequently keep the screen turned face down where it can get scratched or damaged.  Hey, wait a minute!  You don’t think . . . well played, Bezos!  Well played!

Tales from the Crypt – Till Death Do We Part (12/08/93)

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tftctilldeath08A black stretch limo drives into the forest.  Frank Stallone lets Kate Vernon and Robert Picardo out of the car.  This is years before Kate could have mocked Picardo for being on Star Trek Voyager while she was on the superior Battlestar Gallactica. Although both probably got a laugh out of Frank.[1]

To be honest, the story kind of bores me.  Also, I’m slumming with some Jack Daniels after recently drinking single malt and Gentleman Jack.  Combine that with the fact that this is the last episode of the season, and that I might not continue with TFTC due to it’s poor reputation in the last two seasons, and I’m calling an audible.[2]

Kate Vernon was downright MILFy in Battlestar Gallactica.  Here, she is merely insanely hot.  While she has had a great career, but I’m baffled why she isn’t a superstar.  C’mon, the Academy couldn’t find room for one more white chick?  It might be the liquor typing, but this is bullshit.  Let’s just close out the season with pictures of Kate Vernon . . .

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Oh, I’m sorry — we could have accepted Till Death Do Us Part or Till Death Us Do Part.  Not funny or ironic, but at least coherent.
  • [1] Frank Stallone gets the last laugh . . . four platinum albums, ten gold, and a slew of TV episodes to his credit.
  • [2] I hope that makes sense.  I find football even less interesting than this episode.
  • Kate Vernon is the daughter of Dean Wormer.

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Tales of Tomorrow – The Miraculous Serum (06/20/52)

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ttmiraculousserum05Dr. Scott barges in on Dr. Bache proclaiming that he has “a whole new approach — the thing all medicine has been waiting on.”  He just needs a warm body to experiment on.  Scott (I didn’t go to college for 7 years to type “Dr”) illustrates his theory by saying that if you cut a worm in two, the worm grows a new front end.

I was prepared to call bullshit on this, but actually learned something.  While it is true that an earthworm can’t grow a new front end, some flatworms do have this ability.  In fact, they can be disgustingly cut into 20 pieces and regenerate into 20 disgusting new flatworms.  Scott calls this adaptation whereas I might just call it regeneration (but then, I can’t even type doctor).  In any case, modern medicine is studying this just as Scott is doing here.

The serum Scott has synthesized was used on tubercular guinea pigs who overcame  their tubercular bacillus to the point where they could live in an ass for days.  Rabid dogs were also cured, as was a cat with a fractured spine.  He further claims it will work on “arthritis, pneumonia, spinal meningitis and toothaches.”  Bache agrees that if he gets a desperate enough patient, they will give it a try.

ttmiraculousserum07He soon finds such a patient.  Because she is fully insured, he must find a way to prolong her life.  He calls for Scott and his serum. Carol Williams has only minutes to live, so agrees to test the serum.

Some time later, back at casa de Bache, he and Scott are waiting on Carol to arrive.  Bache asks Scott if he might have paid more attention to Carol if she had been beautiful. Scott says he isn’t really interested in things like that, which is possibly what prompted his guinea pig research.

Hours later, Carol finally shows up.  She is now a fabulous babe, although she wasn’t exactly hideous when she was in the hospital.  She is so thankful for Scott “giving her the world” that she lays a kiss on him.  She burns her hand lighting Bache’s pipe, but is not harmed.  Bache ignores this super-human feat as he is more interested how Carol afforded her new dress.

She is quite proud of how she lifted a man’s wallet and got away with it.  Bache considers this part of the adaption that cured her.  She needed the money, so she just instinctively took it with no regard to ethics or morality.  She claims it was $5,000 so this must have been a pretty big wallet.  Bache suggests that she go to bed, as I do to all women with no ethics or morality.

ttmiraculousserum10Scott is protective of Carol, but Bache says she has to be “taken care of” like an outbreak of the Black Plague. Scott claims that her adaptability has made her safer than any human being in history.  Bache points out that the rest of the world might not be so safe from her.  They discover that she has fled the house.

The two men are tracking Carol. They discover newspaper reports from Washington of “a 10th cabinet member” [1] further illustrating her descent in lawlessness. She seems to crave power.  Carol unexpectedly shows up in their office.  She is back because now she knows “who I am and what I want.”  She wants Scott to join her in conquering the world.

Bache suggests that they will have to kill her.  He believes her fancy adaptability would not protect her against the laws of physics, “like being run over by a steam-roller”.  Sadly, they forego this option in favor of suffocating her with CO2.  They are only going to knock her out, though, and get her to a hospital to be cured.  Scott lights a candle in her room, and watches from outside to see when it goes out, indicating the room is full of CO2; also to see if she is naked.

ttmiraculousserum14Carol wakes up in the hospital.  She claims to have had a change of heart and realizes that stealing was wrong. We cut to a newspaper headline: Brain Operation Fails to Cure Thief. Just a complete botch, but maybe partially due to the time it was filmed.

First, the headline is very confusing because it is not referring to the operation on Carol. It is referring to a lobotomy which she does not seem to have gotten.  And it refers to an unsuccessful attempt to “fix” a criminal, whereas her operation seems to have been a success.  So, the headline and voice-over are offering a general commentary on scientists “working toward the day when crime will end.”  Maybe another cabinet position will help.

Second, a more modern telling would have not had such a happy resolution.  She would have taken over the world.  Or the doctors would have sacrificed her life to protect humanity.  Or maybe they would have used the steam-roller.

I like the potential of the concept, it just wasn’t well executed.

Post-Post:

  • [1] There were indeed 9 cabinet positions in 1953, after Health and Human Services was added that year.  Now there are 15, thus explaining why things are so much better now.
  • Written by Theodore Sturgeon famous for novels, Star Trek and Tales of Tomorrow.  But mostly novels and Star Trek.

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Night Visions – The Occupant (08/09/01)

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Bloody hell!  This is the other episode that prompted me to rewatch this series 14 years later.  A View through the Window was just as great as I remembered, so I had high hopes for this one.  Unfortunately, like yesterday’s episode, it is silent running due to copyright issues.

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Bridget Fonda is enjoying a quiet night at home with a glass of wine.  She falls asleep watching Ray Bradbury Theater (just an assumption) and finds an empty plate and crumbs on the counter of her meticulously kept kitchen.  So naturally she calls the cops.

After they leave, she goes upstairs and puts on some lipstick to go out to dinner alone.  A guy tries to pick her up in the restaurant.  He maybe thinks she’s a hooker.  Hard to say with out sound.  She goes back home and find a dress has been taken out of her closet, and her make-up tray is in disarray.  So she calls the cops again.

She continues seeing signs of an intruder.

nvoccupant01I can see that if this episode had sound, it would be as I remembered it — just as A View through the Window was — absolutely awesome.  Not only will I not spoil it, I won’t even watch the rest of it.  Someday it will surface with sound and with a decent transfer. It will be worth the wait.

Post-Post:

  • Directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins).

Night Visions – If a Tree Falls . . . (08/09/01)

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OK, this should be interesting.  And by “interesting” I mean not interesting.  Due to copyright issues, I’m watching this episode like a silent movie.  And I mean really silent, not even a peppy piano score.

nvifatree1A car containing a young couple and a 3rd wheel dude in a wacky backward cap is driving along a lakeside road.  The guy driving has an earring, so backward hat guy is in the unusual situation of not being the biggest douche in the group.

The car hits a rock and they do a Thelma & Louise off the bank into the lake.  Luckily no one was Kopechned, so their response is mostly laughing and splashing each other. The horseplay ends, however, when they have a hallucination of the car going down with them still in it.

nvifatree7Walking back along the road, Backward Hat Guy and The Girl dive out of the way of a truck.  Earring Guy just stands in the road and the truck swerves around him.  They pick themselves up and continue walking.  They are apparently discussing the accident since there are a couple of flashbacks of the sinking car.

Then they are walking around a school.  Some priests are lighting candles, and Earring Guy shows up and gives a confession.  We get a visual of the car resting on the bottom of the lake with the three people still in it.  The Girl and Backward Hat Guy are running across the campus when they suddenly vanish.  As each of them disappear, they seem to re-inhabit their bodies in the submerged car.  This is evidenced by a blink rather than them reacting, “Oh shit, I’m going to drown!” and swimming to the surface.  While Earring Guy is still confessing, The Girl and Backward Hat guy reappear on the lawn, puking up water.

Like Ted Kennedy, Earring Guy only returns to the submerged car the next day. Unlike the senator, he dives down and tries to open the door.  The Girl and Backward Hat Guy show up as he is still under water peeling back the convertible top.  He manages to extract his friends’ bodies, but his body remains buckled-in as the car slips down into a crevasse.

nvifatree8He sees his friends on the dock disappear once again.  He screams “It was supposed to be me!”  Hey, I’m a lip reader!

As the paramedics are hauling the bodies away, we get a close-up of an eye which is shedding a tear of blood — nice shot, but I have no idea who it is supposed to be.  We have just seen all six of their eyes, and no blood-tears.  Live Earring Guy is holding a rose, which he drops in the water.  It sinks past Dead Earring Guy still in the car.

So why is Earring Guy still alive?  It might have made sense if he was not also still in the submerged car.  But this perplexes me — Backward Hat Guy and The Girl faded away or re-entered their corpses.  On the other hand, there are now two Earring Guys. What happens when they haul that car up?  Even Candace Hilligoss had the good manners to rendezvous with her dead body.

Granted, I’m working only from the visuals, but I just can’t combine these elements into a plausible story.  It would have made far more sense to have Earring Guy holding the rose, then fade away, and then the rose drops into the water sinking past his bloated corpse.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Just speculation and maybe giving the producers too much credit. Backward Hat Guy and The Girl permanently rejoin with their dead bodies only after their dead bodies are witnessed by a fisherman.  So like the proverbial tree falling in the forest . . . are they really dead if no one sees them?
  • Point For:  Earring Guy does not rejoin his dead body because the fisherman did not see his corpse.
  • Point Against:  If they are dead, why do they seem to have corporeal bodies?  The driver sees them clearly enough to swerve, Earring Guy confesses to the priest, and the other two are dodged by people in the school hallway.
  • Point Break:  What I should have watched instead.