Okay, the times continue to be changing for PDR.
This is the last full week of me doing the job I want to quit. After this it’ll just be two nights a week while I am in school. I am, as I have said before, disappointed in myself for sticking around those two nights a week, since I want to get out of there so badly, but I really, really do need the money*. And. who knows, maybe having something familiar on the weekends will help keep me from losing myself in the all the change? I guess. Is that an upside?
To help me with that I’ve got a new roommate. It’s another case of me taking in someone I don’t know, but I think it’ll work out better than last time. He’s already managed to pay me for the first month, which comes to more money than the previous one gave me at all. I can afford some food today! (I can, but I should probably still save it for food another day…)
Anyway, to sum up, I start school next week. Weird.
*Really.
Hey, it’s that time of year when PDR remembers that he’s in a band. Time for a new Senator Lizard album.
I just reread something I wrote on Twitter a day or two ago and it said “Somebody needs to make me a movie where there werewolf turns out to actually be a chimpanzee, rather than a human, who turns to a world.” Turns into a world? What the chunks does that mean, PDR? Are you high?
Anyway, if we ever end up with a genre of chimps, or even humans, who are cursed to turn into planets, I am taking full credit. Full.
Meanwhile, I’m seeing reports that Neil Armstrong has died. That’s sad. I really wish we’d made more progress as far as space exploration is concerned while he was still alive.
Today I’m doing something different. Today I am reviewing a Heritage Moment that I don’t remember from my youth. I have to assume that this thing was created after I stopped being indoctrinated by television. How will it hold up without the nostalgia factor?
Okay, so we’re over in World War Two. We get all kinds of fast exposition showing that the Canadian Boys are in trouble. They’re surrounded, they don’t have the equipment they need, and they’re also in a war. Basically, it isn’t a fun time. This one guy who is in charge leaves and tells John Osborn he’s in charge. Osborn issues a few orders, then a grenade is thrown into the building. Osborn sacrifices himself by jumping on the grenade to protect the others. That was nice of him.
So, how does it hold up? Without having seen it repeatedly in my formative years, I don’t see anything greatly quotable in here. Would I be saying “They never sent us any bloody jeeps, nevermind artillery” every time I hear artillery mentioned? It’s a possibility, but I can’t be sure. Maybe I’d yell “Grenade! Grenaaaaaaaaaaaaaade!” now and then, but all in all I can’t give this one much of a recommendation based on quotability.
But what about the rest of the piece? We’ve got Osborn’s sacrifice. That’s pretty noble. The sort of thing you want in these. And there’s the fact I learned that “our troops in Hong Kong were the first Canadians to see combat in the Second World War” so it has a little educational value. But the slow motion, man. Like twenty seconds of this minute-long spot are slowmo. That slow motion ruins it for me. I think I could have bought a moment of it, if it cut out after the explosion, but instead it goes on and on to show us the rain of Os-bits in front of his confused men who are still waiting for that order to go. Had it been just that little bit shorter, I still would have found it cheesy and stupid, but a burst of cheesy and stupid is great. 33% of the Moment being that way, is less great.
Up against my reviewing this thing holds up better than Lawson and Hennessy, but I can’t give this thing more than Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. I can never say for certain objectively, but I suspect that even if I had grown up with it, this one would be in the middle-ground at best.
