Q&A

What DVDs do you have?

A list of the most recent purchases.

When is the next Star Trek movie? What is the current Star Trek television series?

You might as well visit the official Star Trek site. Enterprise is canceled and I didn’t watch past its first season. I rely on The Trek Movie Report to keep me informed.

So what do you watch on television?

My routine watching of television broadcasts ended 24 April 2006.

Before that my daily viewing was of Newschannel8, a local cable news program (they’re the official news channel of Potomac Mills Mall), or NBC4 . There remained but one program for which I made a special effort to watch first-run episodes. (I did very little to no time-shifting using my two videocassette recorders. This was one way to reduce the amount of television watching. That Bowling Alone author found that television watching was strongly correlated with lack of community involvement. Make of that what you will.)

  • Saturdays on the Fox network is Cops. I liked it for its relatively unmediated look at the profession. There are no optical zooms, repetitions, wacky sounds. For all the bias that may exist in the selection of department and which footage get included, still a little something slips through. I was especially amused, having already read in detail about the practices of the LAPD (Los Angeles, California), to note that its officers were much more demanding of their suspects (Kneel! Interlace your fingers! Cross your legs!). Then there was the classic scene where the Anglo officer, confronted by a Spanish-speaking suspect, waved his partner over and said, You speak-a da lingo. Oh, the glare on that Hispanic officer’s face! A half-hour to an hour, depending on whether I’d seen the 8:30 episode.
If I were accidentally to stray and find myself channel-surfing, what would halt me?
  • Disney Channel programming: Lizzie McGuire, Kim Possible, Braceface…
  • Shania Twain on the Great American Country cable country music video channel.
  • France 2 on WNVC-56, a local terrestrial broadcast station now going under the moniker of MHz Network.
  • E!, a cable channel of entertainment promotional programming.
  • VH-1 programming: I Love the 80s, I Love the 90s, I Love the 70s, Top 20 Video Countdown…
  • C-SPAN, a service of our local cable providers.

No sports, definitely.

Do you have a digital camera yet?

Yes, I’ve had a few. Some are even still in use.

Do you like the movies you see? It’s hard to tell from your comments.

If you are looking for a thumbs up or thumbs down, or a numerical scale, there are plenty of sources available. I am trying to convey some of my expectations, impressions, and reactions, and to make connections between performances and productions, without duplicating the rendition of the plot and the commentary on every actor found in a full-blown review. (Laurie’s friend is more professional in this regard.) What does it mean to like a movie, anyway? When I saw Full Metal Jacket in the theater for the first time, did I understand then that it was a movie I could watch over and over for the performances, the dialogue, and the earnest attempt to use twenty cars to simulate a busy Saigon street? (No. It was just the latest movie directed by Stanley Kubrick at the time.) Alternatively, I can like a movie such as Starship Troopers for its giddy appropriation of the iconography of self-importance and its despicable characters without meaning to say, you should see this! So, I cannot be relied upon to be your sole source of information for movie selection. Consider also that most critics have a chance to see a movie days, even weeks, ahead of time and have that intervening time to hone their remarks. In general, my commentary appears within a day. For 2001, I tried to be more specific in answering the question of whether I liked a particular movie, but after a year, I still didn’t find the question useful and I have dropped it.

Where are the detailed reports on your daily activities?

Oh, please. Let’s think about what this might be like:

Up at 7:28. It’s been 9 hours. Can’t I get up any earlier? Make bed. Toss sheets in the washing machine. Shower. (8:01) Breakfast. Newschannel8, 17 minutes. Recycling bin out, I forgot to add the City Paper to it. Sun. Looking for weeds, my neighbor in 910 has some. Metro. Blue Line. Work. Read the Post. Colleagues. The supply room is open but desolate, obtain a pack of Form PTO-690Es. Review the work of associates. Prepare allowance. Shopping. B. Dalton #1060, a book just of covers of MAD magazine. Work. Resume analysis of amended application. Write rejection. Stay late about 15 minutes. Walk underground with colleague. Metro. Blue Line, crowded. Check the mail box. A message? Check show times. (6:28) Dinner. Newschannel8, 24 minutes. Load and set dishwasher. Fold sheets. (7:14) Harrison Circle... (I should remember to use Pearson Lane when I head north.) Metro Road, Eisenhower Avenue, Van Dorn Street, I-495, I-95, VA-3000 (7:34) Target Greatland: $4.51 fun expense, six Matchbox miniatures. [The receipt printed at 7:44 p.m.] Prince William Parkway, Worth Avenue, Potomac Mills Circle. (7:52) Potomac Mills Mall. AMC Potomac Mills 15: (use a pass) Nurse Betty (Film). [The receipt printed at 7:57 p.m.] LEGO® Outlet Store: $33.96 fun expense, one LEGO® MindStorms 9748 Droid Developer Kit. [The receipt printed at 7:59 p.m.] Plenty of the Sith Infiltrator and Gungan Sub sets. (The Gungan Sub they price at $54—I am happier and happier with my deal at Kmart). House #7. After 20 minutes, I have to tell a couple two rows behind to Take your conversation outside. They leave a few minutes later, saying, We’re leaving now. They must have talked through the Silence is Golden, We Appreciate Your Cooperation in Supporting a Quiet Moviegoing Experience. A copyright date of 1999. Where is this GmbH money coming from? Germany? Belgium? (10:17) Listening to Loveline on WHFS-FM. Potomac Mills Circle, Biddeford Way, Telegraph Road, Opitz Boulevard, I-95, I-495, Van Dorn Street, Metro Road... Harrison Circle. (10:39) Stall entering the garage. (10:40) Someone left a message? Incomprehensible and *69 cannot help. Open the LEGO® MindStorms 9748 Droid Developer Kit. First: there are only three white beams of the type I need four of to make car seats according to the LEGO® Technic 8448 Super Street Sensation instructions. Second: I have a 2 wide plate in the chassis built of spare parts with the blue body panels from the LEGO® Technic 8444 Air Enforcer set where a 1 wide is called for because the gears do not clear. Third: the hydraulic element in my first LEGO® Technic 8448 Super Street Sensation is busted. Rebuild the pop-up roof, the transmission, and the seats. Look at the clock, it’s past midnight. To bed at 12:13.

Detailed enough for you? Notice any time spent on the computer that day?

How come you don’t see so many movies anymore?

Can’t we just agree that most first-run commercial features in America are bad and let it go at that? Here are some reasons which are more or less valid:

  1. I no longer live an elevator’s ride away from an 8-plex.
  2. The Biograph and the Key have closed and I no longer visit Loew’s Cineplex (much).
  3. It’s tougher to get up in the morning early enough to go to the cheaper shows in the afternoon.
  4. I know too much about how movies are made, both deal-wise and production-wise, and it’s hard to lose myself in one.
  5. I am having increasing difficulty comprehending the dialogue in the soundtrack.
  6. The tickets cost so much more nowadays.

To the extent that I can determine, the pre-collegiate era consisted mostly of the occasional Mel Brooks and Pink Panther movie. While I was in college, there was Star Trek The Motion Picture which I recall seeing a lot--at least in the high teens. Other than repertory, however, it was at most five to six different movies a year. Movie attendance increased slightly in the post-collegiate era (1983=13, 1984=10, 1985=15). Then I moved into my first apartment along Columbia Pike in Arlington (1986=5, 1987=5, 1988=10). The next apartment, also in Arlington, put me two Metro subway stations and a little walk from Georgetown. I read about something playing at the Biograph called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. This now-suppressed film told the story of the anorexic singer with 11-½ inch fashion dolls adapted and mutilated in various ways.

I trace my increased attendance to the lure of this movie and not specifically to the construction of the AMC Courthouse Plaza 8. I did not even visit the theater built around the corner from that second apartment until a month after it opened. The statistics started to build, however (1989=19, 1990=22, 1991=27, 1992=32). And it occurred to me that I could make it a goal to see at least one movie a week. I managed that (1993=53) and thought for next year, I could see two a week. As recipients of the original holiday message learned, I managed much more than that (1994=171). A goal no longer mattered, and I stuck to what was interesting (1995=168, 1996=125). But the Biograph closed in 1996, I experimented with regular feeding times and bought a house, and then the Key closed (1997=85).

So I no longer attended in the triple digits (1998=95, 1999=90) and made a point of not watching every movie that made more than one hundred millions dollars in gross ticket receipts. Plus, I was really disgusted with the experiences at deteriorating Cineplex Odeon venues (now called Loew’s Cineplex) and decided to avoid them. For 2000, I saw 88 and that hardly qualifies as seeing nothing! Did anyone notice? I saw exactly 100 different movies in theaters in 2001. The AMC Hoffman Center 22 is open (I kept track of its construction), and I hope the Cinema Arts in Fairfax continues to book interesting titles. But more and more, the most interesting titles are at Landmark’s Bethesda Row (in Bethesda, Maryland) and Landmark’s E Street Cinema (in Washington, D.C.), which are not that convenient to visit.

AMC used to have a Twi-Lite price that offered, at one point, a ticket price of $2.95. The Twi-lite price is no longer, a Matinee ticket is $7.50 (more than an evening ticket’s price way back when), and the current price of an evening’s adult ticket at the AMC Hoffman Center 22 with its congenial stadium seating is $9.50.

Why don’t you sell some of the stuff in the garage on eBay or something?

I am (decidedly over) 40 years old. I have some authority to look back on my life and say what I am and what I am not. I am not a seller. The Hannaher you are thinking of on this side of the family that sells stuff on eBay to strangers is this one. Some other Hannahers are sellers, too.

Why don’t you have any photographs on your site? I thought you took a lot of pictures!

There are now photographs available at this web space. Let me know if there is something specific you would like to see. A few years ago, I was going through a roll of Fuji Fujicolor Super G Plus 800 36-exposure in the Minolta Maxxum 7000i every 2 months or so. I placed that particular camera on permanent loan to a mature relative, but now it and all other film cameras in the house are retired, well, the Minolta Maxxum 7 is semi-retired as there is a roll of film and batteries in it, but it’s not getting any use. I replaced my transparency scanner with a 4000dpi model and have proceeded through the hundreds of rolls at my disposal methodically on the basis of every roll, every frame and have been sharing the results in the Dispatches and on Flickr and Picasa. You can view some of my photographs of police cars at the Police Car Web Site. I contributed the images of the Defense Protective Services, Lancaster Pennsylvania (not as many as credited, though), and Alexandria Virginia jurisdictions. I have established my account at Brickshelf and a few old images of my LEGO® constructions are available for viewing.

Text is so boring! Where are the GIFs and JPEGs and background images and background music?

If I added all that stuff you are asking for, how would people viewing my web space on a net-enabled telephone like accessing it? Now that I have a cable modem connection, I do not even have the excuse of slow dial-up speeds. But by now, it’s traditional. So load up your own web space with all the content-free, information-obscuring gimmickry you like, and add a guestbook while you’re at it. I (think I) have international visitors. Furthermore, I started adding images to the Dispatches pages on 23 April 2002 and started adding photographs to the Dispatches pages on 25 October 2003.

Last updated on: 13-Aug-2008