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You know what I don’t expect at Best Buy? Great customer service. You know what I just got at Best Buy? Really great customer service. Great like, they changed it from from “I’ll never buy a computer here again” bad situation to “I’ll always buy my computers here in the future.” Following in “Auros’s”:http://auros.livejournal.com/306423.html “footsteps”:http://auros.livejournal.com/304982.html, the Christmasy things to do seems to be to blog about it.
It all started when Mrs. DJ L’il Bit’s three-year-old Gateway laptop gave up the ghost. It had been getting slower and having troubles, and about 23 days ago she opened it up and the screen was black-and-white. Clearly, time for a replacement. She looked online and found a “great deal on an Acer laptop”:http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Acer+-+Aspire+Laptop+with+AMD+Athlon%26%23153%3B+Single-Core+Processor/9555769.p?id=1218127632130&skuId=9555769&st=acer; we took it home, set it up, and everything was working great.
And two days ago it all went wrong. If you know laptops, you know that the part that’s most likely to break — and most likely to break spectacularly — is the hinge. Every time you open and close the computer, all the force required to move the screen is concentrated in the hinge; when the computer’s open, the weight of the screen is concentrated in the hinge; and all of the cords that hook up the screen and webcam and anything else in the top of the computer are concentrated in the hinge. The hinge is where all the action happens!
So Mrs. DJ L’il Bit was sitting there, three-week-old laptop open on her lap, and the weight of the top just got to be too heavy for the poor hinge. And the hinge exploded. The plastic housing flew off and the top of the laptop came almost entirely free of the bottom. Some tears later, we headed on down to Best Buy to see what they could do.
At first, the thin-black-tie-and-white-shirt-ed Geek Squad guy behind the counter said he couldn’t do much for us: there was a 21-day-return period, and that was it. They’d take the computer back and get it fixed, but that would take two weeks. That was not the right answer — a brand-new computer should be replaced. So Mrs. DJ L’il Bit escalated it to the manager, and the manager fixed it all. He grabbed us a replacement and even had the Geek Squad guy swap the hard drive from the old laptop to the new one so that everything was already set up.
We were so happy, we bought the extended warranty that protects against accidental damage, drops, spills, and even replaces the battery. And you know what, I’ll probably buy my next Mac there; things go wrong, but they made it right, and that’s what counts.
(I will admit that I never thought I’d write an entry like this about Best Buy, but good for them!)

If you say “1980s movie character archetype,” maybe you come up with John Rambo, or Ferris Bueller, or Charlie Sheen in _Wall Street_ — America kicking ass, America growing up, America getting rich — but the ultimate character archetype of the ’80s for me is someone with a lot less hair, a lot more coiled rage, a lot more cool. Let’s face it, the ’80s were all about Louis Gossett Jr. And the ’90s, for every Brad Pitt or tight-lipped Robert Pattinson, there’s the standard: all the cool, none of the rage, it’s George Clooney.
For those of you whose late elementary school hopes and dreams weren’t defined by _Iron Eagle_, here’s how it works: whether in _An Officer and a Gentleman_ or _The Principal_, ol’ Lou was a hard-working, professional guy who’d already given everything, but had to do buck authority and put it all on the line one more time to save his country, plus teach someone to grow up while he did it. None of that Bud Fox crap could’ve happened without some Louis Gossett Jr. in the background making things safe for big shoulders and suitcases of money, physically and existentially.
As for Clooney, in the go-go early part of the century, he played Danny Ocean, the perpetual kid (Danny?!?!) who looked great, lived high, and did it all just by moving one pile of money back and forth between two locations. Now that reality has blown the top off of that whole business model, he’s been re-invented, playing an archetype for the post-AIG era in _The Men Who Stare at Goats_ and _Up in the Air_.
Clooney plays the same archetype — different character, but same archetype — in both movies. In _Goats_, he was in a special psychic army unit in the ’70s, drummed out for doing his job well but falling afoul of the right people; now he’s come back to join Ewan McGregor in a journey through Iraq to reveal the truth. In _Up in the Air_ — which, despite the trailers, seems to feature no music by Iggy Pop at all — he’s a consultant who did his job perfectly and lived his life the way he wanted (alone), but is suddenly confronted with a new, Web-only way to do his job and a new girl who makes him want to settle down. In both, Clooney’s an example of past success in a new world, challenged to change, with the dark question in the background of whether or not there’s anything he can change into that matters in what’s to come.
Other actors in both movies actually outshine Clooney — particularly Jeff Bridges in _Goats_ and Vera Farmiga in _Up in the Air_. But that’s fine, because Clooney is now the everyman who provides the basis for all of society, not some Danny Ocean who provides all the flash. And with his salt-and-pepper hair and deep, basset hound eyes, Clooney’s perfect for the part. He’ll be heading off into the sunset, all Alan Ladd on a horse, in movie after movie now; except there’ll be no little kid running after him; that was the archetype of the ’50s. Our new character heads off into the sunset alone, and society moves in its own direction, and that’s just how it is.
And you should see these movies, that’s just how that is.

I saw a double feature over the weekend: _The Blind Side_ and _Precious_. Yes, it was a depressing double feature. Yes, I cried. Actually, I cried a lot more for _The Blind Side_; _Precious_ just left me exhausted. And, while the whole wanting-to-go-to-bed-at-3:30pm-on-a-Sunday thing was a bit of a downside for the whole plan, I would definitely recommend seeing the two in a row; they just have some kind of an affinity for each other.
Now, they couldn’t both be much more different, that’s also true. _The Blind Side_ is all in blues and greens; _Precious_ is pinks and yellows and reds and browns. _The Blind Side_ has carefully-lit scenes, mostly with wide shots; _Precious’s_ shots are mostly small and confining, tight on the actors and the action. All the good people in _The Blind Side_ are white and can change the world; while the good people in _Precious_ are multiethnic, they’re all powerless to effect any kind of real change.
That was the main thing about _The Blind Side_ for me: it was the “white man’s burden”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114928/ on a 30-foot screen. I might’ve been offended had it not been a true story, and, even being a true story, I might have found it too pablum-filled. But there was the thing: I didn’t. This movie was done with a much less heavy hand than I had ever hoped. The music was absent or quiet; the scenes of past horror only implied sad events, rather than showing them; almost nobody ever preached, and, when they did, it was awkwardly. Heck, Sandra Bullock didn’t overact. Heck, *Tim McGraw* didn’t overact. And somehow, it all came together perfectly so that I cried at all the right points, even though the music didn’t tell me to, the dramatic delivery didn’t tell me to, the pregnant pauses didn’t tell me to, and the close, shallow-depth-of-field, softened shots didn’t tell me to. It just worked.
If _The Blind Side_ was truly about “taking up the white man’s burden”:http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html and how, in doing so, all of society could change and grow together, then _Precious_ said any such task was futile. Worth dedicating oneself to, certainly, but futile. Precious herself was betrayed by those she should’ve been closest to; how then would she trust Mariah Carey, in the role of the Jewish social worker, to step in and save her? _Precious_ was ultimately a story of self-reliance and empowerment — not that a good outcome would grow out of gaining the tools to manage one’s own life, but that the best possible outcome would spring therefrom. For someone like Precious, or her Downs syndrom daughter, l’il Mongol, that was not much of a good outcome at all.
Yet for the real person, Michael Oher, the true story was that selfless acts of generosity towards others could save the day. (I have never been so happy to hear that someone signed a $14mm rookie NFL contract as I was for Oher after seeing that movie!) Maybe that’s why _The Blind Side_ is a true story, and _Precious_ is a work of fiction: the few who are like Michael Oher stand out enough that you can make a movie about them, but the Preciouses of the world blend in, come from nothing and come to nothing, and so there’s no one real one to hold on to as the center of your movie.
In the end, _The Blind Side_ says: “do the only ‘Christian’:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%206&version=KJV thing — help others, and you will succeed.” _Precious_ says “help others, and you will fail, but the trying itself is worth it.” In the end, both messages match reality, on the right sample size. And, in the end, both of these movies fresh in my mind, boy I could use a hug.

Let’s face it, the Bond franchise had fallen to a pretty low place before _Casino Royale_ — it had become a series of nearly-unwatchable flicks that drew an audience only because of the woman in the bikini or the gadgets on the car. So I was more than a little worried that _Quantum of Solace_ would turn back towards the bad old days. Fortunately, it didn’t; _Quantum of Solace_ is a tight, gritty action flick that highlights Daniel Craig’s sociopathic take on Bond. Sadly, it also has big action montages that make no sense. Most of all, if you like a good movie, and you live in LA, it’s worth going to see _Quantum of Solace_ at the Century City mall just to check out their new parking lot system.
Bond was always about the hot women and the controlled, debonair class, and _Quantum of Solace_ has all of that. Strawberry Fields is a great throw-away Bond girl[1], and Craig’s Bond manages everything on the screen — except for the Tom Ford tux he briefly wears, which, sadly, manages him. Despite that, after seeing this movie, I may be prepared to try out white jeans.
Bond was also always about the gadgetry, and, sadly, that’s absent here. While John Cleese as Q may have been taking it too far, the occasional goodie would be appropriate even in a post-Bourne Bond. The opening chase scene frankly begged for a gadget on Bond’s beleagured car, and the ending escape would have been much sweeter, and much less of a deus ex machina, with a gadget to get our hero and heroine out of their uncomfortable corner.
Bond was also about being big, and that’s the only place where this movie falls down. The two biggest scenes — at a horse race in Siena, Italy, and at a performance of La Tosca in Norway — just don’t make sense. First of all, did you know that Siena had a “famous horse race”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palio_di_Siena? Neither did I. Second, the Siena scene has cuts so rapid that it’s impossible to get any sense of space (only the lucky will follow the action at all). The action during the Tosca performance is interspersed with shots of the performance, with the parallels between the fight and the opera being highlighted. That is, if you’re familiar with “Tosca”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca, which it’s fair to say very few people will be; the rest will just be confused.
Despite all these, _Quantum of Solace_ holds up well. It’s distinctive, and could never be confused for anything but a Bond movie. The locations are gorgeous,[2] the action is exciting,[3] the women are dangerous and alluring.
And, if you go to Century City Plaza, you’ll now find that every parking space has a light over it that turns red if it’s full or green if it’s empty, so you can tell from some distance away where you can find parking.[4] Now that alone makes the movie worth seeing.
fn1. Or maybe I just have a thing for brainy redheads.
fn2. Although what does it say about Haiti and Bolivia that the scenes in these countries were actually filmed in Panama and Chile, respectively?
fn3. Especially if you liked the Parkour scene from _Casino Royale_.
fn4. Where “you” does not include my friend’s boyfriend, who is red-green colorblind.

The AIG and I are big “Battlestar Galactica”:http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ fans. Don’t laugh; I’ve been saying for years that it’s incredibly well-written, and, given that she’s a professional TV writer, I’d say there’s some evidence I’m right. Anyway, I’ve been catching her up thanks to my DVD collection, but Season 3 isn’t on DVD and Season 4 starts in just 3 months. Getting all the episodes in is hard work. That’s where “Amazon Unbox”:http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=16261631 comes in.
I have a few of the season-ending episodes on my Tivo, and the AIG was on-the-ball enough to Tivo a lot of other episodes from a marathon that SciFi was having. But we missed a few others, and what good is a partial season of a show with ongoing plotlines?
Since Unbox can download to Tivo, we decided to try that out.[1] Initial setup was trivial for my Tivo Series 2, but Amazon incorrectly told us that the AIG’s Tivo Series 2 was incompatible. Turns out that she had never set it up on the Tivo Web site to Allow Transfers and Video Downloads. (If only the error message had pointed this out! I had to deduce this cause on my own.) Once I checked those two boxes, completing setup was simple.
Unbox movies can only be bought with One-Click, which is reasonable given that there’s no physical item to be delivered and the price is so low (just $2 for the BSG episode). Download of one episode took about 25 minutes, but another took several hours. It’s not obvious why this time difference existed. I also had to initiate a connection to the Tivo servers to start the download; I guess there’s no way to push a download to a Tivo, since the box is used to getting its instructions by dialing in. Unbox is no replacement for true Video on Demand, at least yet.[2]
The episodes were clear and ad-free. While they auto-set to delete 24 hours after being watched, I was able to manually reset the delete date and kept one episode for a week before deciding to delete it to free up space. Save to VCR did not appear to be disabled, which makes it easy to keep the episode (this is only fair since I bought it, if you ask me).
Would I buy more TV from Unbox? In a second. The AIG — not, by any stretch of the imagination, a geeky woman — actually suggested canceling her Netflix subscription, stating that we rarely watched movies[3] and “we could get something off Unbox if we really wanted to see it.” The download wait is at worst shorter than the turnaround for a new movie from Netflix, and I don’t know anybody who still goes into a (non-specialty) movie rental place anymore.
So I’m an Unbox convert. Setup out of the way, it’s user-friendly. I might try putting “It’s a Wonderful Life”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/003601.html on my laptop next Christmas to make sure I catch it!
fn1. Surprisingly enough, Battlestar is not on iTunes — just the kind of geeky tool that the show’s demo would probably use. Anyway, Unbox downloads to the Tivo, which is already hooked up to the TV, rather than my laptop, which I’d have to figure out how to do. Score one for Amazon and Tivo (and here’s one good guess why Apple wants us to buy the Apple TV).
fn2. Although I wouldn’t put it past Time Warner to somehow sniff out Unbox packets and slow them down.
fn3. True

I think I’ve said before that, if you aren’t watching Battlestar Galactica, “you’re wasting your television”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002169.html. I would like to revise that statement at this time; if you’re not watching Battlestar Galactica, you’re wasting the entire concept of visual entertainment. Buy it off iTunes. Find a torrent of it. Buy the British version on DVD, probably already out by now. Just see it. I mean, not only is it well-plotted, -written, -directed, and -shot, but now they’ve moved up to showing off — despite having telegraphed everything that was going to be in the season finale, every moment of it left you saying “oh shit!” That, folks, is skill. Don’t be a hata, watch BSG.