I GET SEVERAL NEWSLETTERS a day, and if there is something I think of general interest, I share tit on my Facebook page. When I go to Facebook, it takes me directly to my timeline and there I check out the first dozen or so posts from friends. That is my sole interaction with Facebook.
When I went there earlier today, there was a post concerning the problems with going to a movie theater in 2013, including the price of tickets and concessions, rude viewers, etc. So I chimed in and wrote the following:
“I am 62 years old, so the prices seem too high and few modern movies attract me. I remember going to theaters in Pennsylvania when I was kid; they were old venues, built back in the ’30s. They had class (sorely lacking in the giant plexes) and the seats were more comfortable.
With other things going, so is my hearing. But I have still found myself walking out on movies where the sound—especially in any kind of action movie—is excessively LOUD! Who has not heard movies so loud that they bleed through the walls from the ‘theater’ next door?
Another problem: the movies and directors that I want to support come and go so fast that I often never even know that they are playing. I don’t know what those of you back east think, but if you don’t catch a Woody Allen movie in its first week in most of the country, you just wait for the DVD.
As for ticket prices: some people make the argument that they haven’t gone up when adjusted for real life inflation. Agreed, but that does not take into account the fact that wages for real life workers have NOT followed that line of inflation.
In the early 1970s, I could take a girl to the movies, stop at a bar for a drink or two, and tip the bartender for less than $10. That was five hours of work at minimum wage minus taxes.
Such a date today would cost between $50–60 (and more in some places), or the equivalent of almost eight or nine hours of work at minimum wage minus taxes. So, going out IS more expensive to many if not most blue collar and service industry workers.
What makes it worse is that we LIKE going out—we just don’t. And, here in Redmond, Washington, arsewholes talking loudly or talking on their cells during a movie is so rare as to be a non-issue.”
Berni and I do not have our television hooked up to any cable service or pay channel or even to local stations. That is, we don’t “watch TV.” But we do watch a lot of movies, and I like most genres—including chickflicks—while she can watch most films that are not excessively violent.
We also take recommendations concerning the many excellent series that have appeared on commercial television. We just finished Weeds and need to catch up on The Big Bang Theory and a few others.
We are fortunate here in King County, Washington, to have one of the nation’s best library systems, so we get almost all of pour movies from the library at no cost. Finally, if you want to suggest any series of the past few years (we also loved Firefly and Six Feet Under and Lost and Life On Mars) to us, do so in the Comments section below.
Like I said: me and the wife, hell, we like going out! we just don’t . . .
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
For some reason, I continue to have issues with submitted comments finding their way to the actual Comment section of my posts. Here is one from Mark DeCoursey that he sent to me via email after being unable to get WordPress to post it:
“For really biting, anti-corporate satire, we like the series BETTER OFF TED, still available from your basic Netflix. We are surprised: not only was it produced, but it lasted multiple seasons before being killed off — presumably by the corporate advertisers. Like Stan Freberg and Garrison Keillor, TED does its own commercials, wielding a hatpin just as sharp as the show itself.
You might also enjoy the British mystery series, HERCULE POIROT starring David Suchet. Gloriously produced with period sets, autos, and costumes from the 1930s, flawless actors, stunning locations, and peerless camera work and editing. The latter years of the series are even tastier than the first few years, owing possibly to a snowballing popularity and corresponding budget. A good place to start may be the episode, “Five Little Pigs,” which stands out among those I’ve seen as an evocative drama that bumped me out of my regular groove.
We have also enjoyed JESSE STONE series, the earlier episodes of which have seem to have disappeared from the low-grade Netflix. It stars Tom Selleck, who was also involved in the scripting and production. In that series too, the camera work and editing is absolutely second to none.
When we see a a deft hand like this patch together a conversation between actors from various film shots, we know that great editors are born, not made. Selleck called it a labor of love. If possible, watch the series in sequence from the beginning.”