Verbisaurus Blogicus

Last December, I whined about missed out on a couple of opportunities to see the new film Hitchcock. This weekend, I finally was able to view it. It’s out on DVD now, so there’s no need to get a baby-sitter and spend a fortune at a “movie” theater where you watch a dozen commercials. 

The film certainly kept my interest. It’s only about an hour-and-a-half long, so I suppose that’s not saying too much. But really, I’m probably biased. Having read several books about Alfred Hitchcock and his films, and having seen every feature film he directed, it stands to reason that I’m gonna be intrigued by any film about the man if, for no other reason, than to see how it sits with what I already know.

Actually, though, the film was too short. The story tries to squeeze too much in: the making of Psycho, Hitchcock’s waning persona, and his faltering marriage. Despite covering a period of only about one year (late 1959-late 1960), I think the film left out too much.

The most obvious omission here is regarding Psycho. The shower scene and the music are given token screen time, leading viewers to suspect these were slapshot efforts that just happened to work, rather than the carefully constructed works of art that they are. Was the shower scene really filmed in ten minutes? From everything I read, it took over a week – several hours, sometimes, just to set up the perfect shot that would last, on screen, for all of about one second.

Also lost in the shuffle is Paramount Pictures’ anger with Hitch. He lost money for them on his most recent films and when they loaned him out to MGM, he created North by Northwest, and managed to make money…for MGM. There was also this pervasive view in the movie industry that Hitch had sold out by directing television shows and could not longer make the quality crafts he once had. This is quite funny since, during the time Hitch was overseeing his TV show, he directed Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds – which might be the greatest succession of four films by any director ever.

The film actually loses steam as it goes – it begins brilliantly. Knowing so much about Hitch, I had several ideas of how the film would begin, but Wisconsin in the early 1950s was not one of them. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents style that then kicks-off (and subsequently concludes) the film is likewise inspired. Hitch’s dark humor, wrangling with the censors and the studio, and his frequent daydreams are all on parade here, and Anthony Hopkins nails the difficult part…which is more than I can say for James D’Arcy, who’s evidently trying to portray Anthony Perkins. Scarlett Johansson and Helen Mirren are quite good in their roles, too.

But once we reach the one-third mark, the movie spins off in too many directions, unsure what to cover next: Alma’s affair? Hitch’s obesity? Tricking the sensors? An irate Vera Miles? In all this, too, the Hitchcocks’ daughter, Patricia, is not even mentioned (all the more surprising since she not only lived near her parents, but was actually in the film Psycho, and should have at least been in the “swearing the oath” scene).

Somehow, though, Psycho gets made, and Hitch finagles his way past the censors, and comes up with another one of his legendary stunts to increase interest in the film. Then, with the time running out on this too-short flick, The Hitchcocks’ marriage woes are tidied up in a nice little bow, and we fade out on Hitchcock narrating to us that he’s not sure what to do for his next film. And in case we haven’t picked up on any of the twenty subtle hints sprinkled throughout the film, inspiration literally swoops in and mugs for the camera. Cute, if too obvious.

My wife said watching this film made her want to see Psycho again. I agree. And maybe that’s the biggest thing this flick has going for it.

Hitchcock: 7/10

Last Thursday, after staying up late to watch a movie, I went upstairs to get ready for bed. A few minutes later, I walked into our bedroom, closed the door, and laid down. After a relaxing 20 seconds, I heard that brief, high-pitched chirp of a smoke alarm. I immediately groaned.

The problem isn’t so much that a smoke alarm needs new batteries; that’s not a big deal at all. The problem, beside the fact that this only happens between 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM, is that it’s extremely difficult to determine which alarm needs the batteries. All the alarms in our house have green lights on them, so I’m not sure why a dying battery can’t be denoted by, say, a light change to red. That would be perfect, actually, because then I would hear the chirp, and then instantly be able to determine which alarm requires maintenance based on the one that has a red light.

But, no. That would be too easy for Kidde (the hilariously-named alarm manufacturer).

So I sat up in bed and stared at the alarm in the bedroom. Another chirp. Did it come from the alarm directly above me? I don’t know. I can’t quite tell. The sound is so foreign and so quick, it’s hard to know for sure.

So I walk out into the hallway and call down to Jennifer (who’s still awake downstairs). “Did you hear that?” I ask her. Yeah, she did, but she has no idea which alarm it is, either. She claims it’s coming from upstairs.

While in the hall, I hear the chirp again. Now I’m really confused, because we have five alarms upstairs: one in each bedroom, on in the bathroom, and one in the hall, and they are all close to each other. It’s true: we don’t have a hallway as much as we have a squareway (some friends of ours used this term to describe their nearly square hallway, and it’s appropriate for our home, too). Each alarm is situated only about two feet into each room, so if I was to position a stool in any of the four doorways, I could probably touch both the squareway’s alarm and any given room’s alarm.

I figure my best bet is to check Owen’s room next. He’s in there, sleeping. As is Isla, who’s sharing a room with her brother while we work on her bedroom. Astoundingly, they’re both sound asleep despite the alarm’s high-pitched cry. I hoist myself onto the foot of Owen’s bed, and remove the alarm from the ceiling.

I walk downstairs and remove the two nine-volt batteries. At this point, I just want to get to bed, especially since I knew I had to get up early in the morning. But the alarm continues to chirp even with the batteries removed. This is annoying, of course, because not only does the alarm have a built-in back-up battery, but it was plugged in to the electrical wiring via the ceiling, so there really is no safety issue whatsoever here.

So then I walk down to the Windsor (that’s the name of our lowest landing), and grab our box of batteries. There are about 20 double-A batteries in there, and just as many triple-A’s. But there are only two nine-volts in there, so I grab them and shove them into the alarm. Then I stand there and stare at the alarm for about a minute until the stupid thing chirps again. Which, since it’s 11:30 PM, it does.

Now I don’t know what to do. I’m not running out to Walgreen’s to buy batteries, and I don’t want to hear the chirping all night. The last time an alarm cried out for batteries in the middle of the night and I had no batteries on hand to satiate it, I took it out to our garage and placed it in the bottom of my toolbox. But that was in our last house. My current residence’s garage is detached, meaning I’d have to go outside in the cold to get to my garage and, worse, I have a guy who rents the adjacent workshop, and I don’t want him to have to hear the chirp, either.

But then I notice the sticker on the alarm indicates it was manufactured in November 2001 and that this alarm should be replaced after ten years. So, at eleven-plus years, I figure it’s had a good run. I head down to the basement, recruiting my crowbar along the way.

I walk into our spare room  and lay the alarm on the concrete floor about midway between the litter box and our spare chairs. I then beat the living shit out of that annoying little device. I hit it again and again; a piece flew up and hit me in the face, and I heard another piece hit the wall, some four feet away. Wires and plastic and a tiny box with americium spun out in every direction. I gotta say, it was an extremely satisfying catharsis. Kind of like taking part in a standing ovation, or coming to the surface after you’ve held your breath under water for a minute, or finally sneezing after your nose has been tickling you. Regardless, I achieved a natural high and felt so alive I wasn’t sure I could fall asleep after all the excitement.

I plan to buy some nine-volts next time I’m at the store. In the meantime, go ahead and chirp, smoke alarms. I dare you.

A few weeks ago, Jennifer and I herded the whole family out the door for a fun-filled trip to Menard’s and Target. As we were leaving, I pulled out the stack of coupons we had sitting in a bin by the door. I asked my wife if we needed to bring any of them, and she said we didn’t need the shampoo coupon because she had just bought that shampoo at Target last week.

“Oh, and you didn’t use the coupon!” I said. She admitted she forgot. No problem. I grabbed the receipt from the week before and brought that, and the $2-off coupon, with us on our trip to Target.

When we got there, I walked over to the returns counter. The women working there pressed some buttons on her register. Then the drawer popped open and she handed me two dollars. That’s it. Just two dollars. Exactly. This was especially baffling since usually the employees just zap the code on the coupon and then on the receipt and the computer tells them how much to give back. If I had returned the bottle of shampoo, I wonder if she would have just given me back the $10 base cost instead of the $10.73 that the receipt showed.

So I said, “What about the tax?”

She said, “Huh?”

I said, “I paid tax on this two dollars, so I need that returned to me, too.”

She said, “No, sir, the coupon is only for two dollars off.”

I said, “Yeah, but look here at the receipt. I paid tax on the shampoo, and since I didn’t have to pay as much for the shampoo now, I don’t have to pay as much tax on it, either.”

She said, “Um…but the coupon only says for two dollars off.” She picked up the coupon and showed me.

So I said, “Whatever.”

Yep. That’s it. I just walked away. I mean, I know I could have stood there and complained, but after our brief exchange yielded no indication that the employee understood basic math, I remembered something from a book I recently read at work about the voice-of-customer: It’s better to complain to the customer service department. I mean, yes, the returns counter at Target is generally touted as the customer service department, but it’s just the first level. And, if it’s staffed by people who think I owe them tax on two dollars I didn’t pay…then my energy is best spent elsewhere.

So, that evening, I sent a brief email to Target. My main purpose wasn’t to demand my fifteen cents (though I did say it was still owed to me), but to tell them they need to train their employees on the nuances of refunds.

Last week, I received a response from Target Guest Relations. The letter read, in part:

We’ve taken these comments very seriously, so thanks for taking the time to let us know about not receiving your tax refund when you cashed in your coupon. Enclosed please find a $3 apology coupon. Thanks for writing. Your feedback helps us improve our service commitment to you.

So there you have it: Complain at the front desk, and I might – might! – have gotten my fifteen cents back. Write to the guest relations department, on the other hand, and I got twenty times the amount I was owed.

Oh, and I just made Target a slightly better place to shop. So, there. You’re welcome.

Last summer, I wrote about finding a file on an old hard drive where I listed stuff I want to do and things I’d like to do. The eighth item on the list (excluding items I crossed out) was “Have a letter published in a magazine or newspaper.” And here’s what I said about it in that blog post:

I sent a letter to The Monticello Times, and a reporter called back and asked to interview me. Plus, I’ve had entire articles published in newsletters, magazines, and books, so even though I don’t think I’ve accomplished this task per se, I’ve kind of trumped it.

Well, now I have accomplished it. When I was paging through the February 20th issue of The Villager, I happened upon this letter…

I wrote a response letter a few days later. It didn’t appear in the next issue (06 March), so I figured they just weren’t going to publish my letter. That’s okay…it’s happened before. In fact, about four years ago, I wrote a letter to the Pioneer Press and one of their staff members even called me a few days later asking about shortening my letter in a certain spot, and I said that was fine. Alas, they didn’t publish it.

But then the March 20th issue arrived on our doorstep (in fact, three copies arrived…not sure if that was just a weird paperboy mistake, or if it was intentional). And, when I got to page 11, here’s what I found…

Continued on the next column…

I gotta thank the local megaplex, AMC Showplace in Inver Grove Heights, for reminding me why I hate going to the movie theater. Don’t get me wrong, the movie itself was just fine (I saw Oz the Great and Powerful with my wife, son, brother-in-law and niece). Despite AMC’s attempts to wreck the experience.

We bought a beverage at the concessions stand. I think we got a Sprite. That’s all there is: cola and slushies. So, if you’re looking for something to drink that doesn’t taste shitty, I guess you’ll need to sneak in your own drink. I would have, but my pockets were already full. The Sprite was five dollars, which is a complete ripoff. Not even the “Great” Minnesota Get Together can top that.

So then we walk into the theater room. Now, when I walked into a movie theater as a kid, the screen would just be showing some prototypical screensaver, like a close-up on a lava lamp or moving bars of color. At some point in my teens, megaplexes changed to showing slide-shows of advertisements. That wasn’t as cool as the trippy screensavers, but I understood the theater was probably making some money off selling the space to advertisers, so no harm done, I suppose.

But this past Saturday, when I walked in, I was assaulted with LOUD commercials. So loud it was hard to talk to each other. As someone who mutes the TV at home when a commercial is on, changes the channel on the radio in the car when a commerical is on, and skips past all the bullshit on DVDs, this was truly assaulting to me. I would have covered my ears, except that I’ve kind of figured out that if someone in their 30s does this, people think you’re mentally challenged.

So after ten minutes of this full-on audio bombardment, the lights dim slightly and I am tortured with a video recapping the commercials I just watched. The voice-over said things like, “You were wowed by Justin Bieber’s concert ad, and fell in love with Coke all over again.” Do I even need to comment on how obnoxious that was? If my Sprite hadn’t cost its weight in gold, I might have just launched it at the screen at that point.

Then a commercial for the theater begins. This is akin to a restaurant forcing you watch a commercial about that restaurant before you can eat your meal. It was redundant, too, since the pre-showtime commercials contained an AMC commercial, as well.

So then the previews, right? Wrong. First there were two or three commercials about shit that had nothing to do with movies. Then, finally, a preview. Okay, I’m read-up enough on the world of cinema to know what’s coming down the theatrical pipeline without having to sit through trailers, but I’m willing to give them a pass. At least they’re relevant to my interest (I did come to see a movie, after all), and sometimes, they’re entertaining.

Usually, though, the trailers match the feature presentation, right? I mean, last summer, when Jennifer and I took the kids to see Brave, the trailers were all for animated – or at least kid-friendly – films. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the trailers are good predictors of the feature film you’re about to watch. That is, if the trailers are interesting, or enjoyable, then so will be the movie that’s starting in a few minutes.

But AMC apparently doesn’t subscribe to this policy. There were at least six previews, and three of them dealt with a post-apocalyptic Earth and looking insanely boring. One starred Tom Cruise, so that’s a must-miss right there. There was also a preview for a cinematic adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which looked just as bloated and lousy as the shitty novel I had to pretend to read back in 11th grade. (Disclaimer: I did read about 75% of it, but gave up when I realized I had better things to do with my time. Like stare out the classroom window.)

Okay, then another commercial for AMC. And then…are you ready for this? Another commercial for AMC. These are completely counterproductive, of course, because every minute they delay the film to talk about this very theater just increases the likelihood that I’ll never want to return.

Finally, at 1:36, our 1:15 showing began. This absurd delay made my son anxious (“When is it starting?”) and ensured we were late in returning to our babysitter, who was getting paid by the hour to watch Isla.

I suppose my only other option is to watch a movie for about $1.00 (via Netflix or Redbox), whip up a batch of non-soggy popcorn, pour myself some real tea or craft beer, sit in a comfortable couch, skip past the ads, and watch the movie in the comfort of my own house. I guess I’ll try to make due.