Chariots of Fire
I took my car in for its 105,000 mile checkup (or tune-up, or whatever it's called). Recall that my car is 11 years old and you'll understand why I bother with the "small" tune-ups.
Actually, the engine seems to be in great shape. Other than my engine overhaul a few years ago (caused because some seals blew and oil got into the system, and the only way to get it all out was to take it apart, clean it, and put it together again), I've never had any major engine work done. So that's good.
On the other hand, it doesn't take engine work to sink a bunch of money into a car. Hondas do not as a rule have great brake systems, and I've put several hundred bucks into my brakes over the last four years. I got some minor work done on my rear brakes this time. Moreover, it's about time for me to get new tires - it's been a number of years since I've had any of them replaced. However, that was about the worst of it, so I figure I can go another year or two without taking it in again, unless something comes up.
I don't have a good feel for what I should spend on tires. My friend Charlie says he'd expect to pay between $30 and $80 per tire, depending on the quality you get. He says his are aquatreads, which were on the high end of the scale. On the other hand, he has a much newer and spiffier car than I do, and it's also a lot heavier than mine, since it's substantially larger than my little Civic. So he figures I can get away with fairly cheap all-weather tires, especially since this set of tires may actually outlast my car, at this point! So I will call around and see what I can get. I have spent just about my whole November budget on my cats, my car, and my Christmas vacation, and it's not even November yet! Well, November always seems to be a crummy month for my budget, just out of sheer coincidence. I think my car insurance comes due next month, too. Sigh!
Charlie drove me over to pick up my car at the end of the day, and I commented that I drive about 7,000 miles a year, and probably less this year with all the biking I did this summer. He said, "You're the typical little-old-lady driver!" Charlie is legally disabled, and drives a lot. Actually, he's averaging about 12,000 miles a year, so I observed, "You're the average driver." Then I added, "I'm half the driver you are, Charlie." Charlie noted, "I because an average driver around the time I became an above-average airline passenger." (Charlie spends a lot of time on business trips.)
Earlier this week I was at a used bookstore and came across a copy of The Art of John Byrne for three bucks. Byrne is a comics artist who is best-known for drawing X-Men in the late 70s, Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight in the 80s, and "rebooting" Superman in the late 80s. This book was published around 1980, and has a terrific "sketchbook" section, as well as a fascinating interview with Byrne, detailing a number of plans (e.g., for the X-Men) which never actually came to fruition, and some that were developed in a rather different manner than he described them. This sort of thing is always more interesting in retrospect, when that period of a person's career can be evaluated with hindsight and some detachment.
Anyway, as a result of this I ended up buying an old Byrne comic featuring The Thing, which is pretty entertaining, and my comic shop guy sold me a magazine similar to The Art of John Byrne which was published about four years later. I haven't read it yet, although it doesn't look quite as fascinating.
I haven't been too fond of Byrne's 90s work (other than Next Men), but his 70s and early 80s stuff was terrific.
It was a remarkably sparse movie in terms of set design; many of the sets seemed just rather empty, and I wonder if that was deliberate or a result of budgetary constraints. And the script is very low-key, usually relying on the actors' ability to show what their running means to them through their facial expressions and body language. Overall I find it a satisfying film, only slow in a few places. I'd say it's the best of the films I've seen at this film festival so far.
This is the episode that I feel contradict's Joe Straczynski's assertion that even though we know there the story is going, the fact that we don't know how it's going to get there is exciting enough in its own right. We know what Londo is going to go through to become Emperor, and there's little surprising about what transpires; even the sense of tragedy is lessened by the fact that we've known all this for years. G'kar's forgiveness of Londo is also not as powerful as it could have been, although there are open questions yet there, such as "How and why does G'kar return to Centauri Prime later?"
On the other hand, I was glad that after Lennier stated his love for Delenn when it seemed they were about to be killed, that we didn't get yet another "Nothing happened, let's forget about it" cliche, that Delenn did confront the issue, well, almost head-on. (I mean, c'mon; how often do intelligent, conscientious people like Delenn and Lennier really ignore something like this when it's brought out in the open like that? I would pretty much lose my respect for them if they had taken that tack.)
But basically this was an episode of closure, wrapping up some plot lines that had been in the works for a while, and whose resolution was revealed a long time ago. So it was a necessary episode, but not a particularly exciting one.
From the teaser, next week's episode looks considerably livelier...
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