I'm proud to report that Wriphe.com has picked up a new reader! According to her email (subject line: "I like your blog!"), Hannah has followed me over from Boosterrific.com and has let me know that she has now read every single Wriphe.com post going back to the beginning in 2003. She might be more dedicated to this site than I am.

Obviously, after reading that much drivel, Hannah has questions. Fortunately, most of her questions are about my favorite subject: me.

Let the self aggrandizement begin!

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Back in the day — this was before Facebook and smartphones existed, mind you — I was in art school in Athens, GA, and wanted an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family who lived across the country. I do not enjoy A) talking on the telephone or B) repeating myself. So I built a place where anyone who cared to know could come to get critical updates about whatever it was I was doing at the time. I can't say as it worked, really, as only a couple of my friends (and my mother) have ever visited regularly. I still have to answer "what have you been up to?" too often for my personal tastes.

How do you decide what to post about?

At the core, the point of everything that I do is to keep myself entertained. I am very selfish that way.

I come from the land of Lewis Grizzard. (Google him.) Grizzard made a strong impression on a lot of people; many thought he was a real bastard, but my favorite restaurant still has a menu item named after his favorite dish: brunswick stew on a pulled pork barbecue sandwich served with onion rings, I never met him personally, but my encounters with his writings during my formative years led me to believe that one of the best possible occupations was "humorist newspaper columnist." So I generally approach content at Wriphe.com as my own soapbox and diary with a goal of making it an enjoyable read in the (poorly imitated) vein of curmudgeonly satirists like Grizzard or Dave Barry or television's Stephen Colbert or Andy Rooney. (Google him too.) Quoth the Poppins: "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down."

When it comes to creating individual posts, I start by saying to myself, "Oh, shit! I haven't posted anything at Wriphe.com in the past two days!" I picked an every-other-day schedule because it's just often enough to keep me motivated and just long enough to let me regenerate ideas. I ask myself, "Is there anything on my mind?" Sometimes there is, and I type that. And sometimes there isn't, and I stall (or punt).

And some days people ask me a bunch of questions and I answer them.

How long does it take you to craft a blog post?

I wish I was half as clever as I like to think I am. On average, probably about thirty minutes. Honestly, it's probably longer and I just don't want to admit that publicly. Sometimes it takes a very long time, especially for the five paragraph "college admission" essays in which I want to be sure I've gotten all of my punchlines just right. Grammar matters, but so does rhythm and timing. (The core of comedy is subversion of expectations. And banana peels.)

Hannah had more questions than that, but that's a good start. I have to have something to post later, after all. These posts aren't going to blog themselves.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: hannah walter wriphe.com

95/2261. Teen Witch (1989)
This is a coming-of-age fantasy power movie in the vein of Zapped! but for girls... and much tamer... and made by incompetents. Its misguided confidence is surprisingly charming. Watch for the teen lust hunk unironically shaking up the Coke before he gives it to our heroine!

96/2262. The Murder Man (1935)
Holy cow, Spencer Tracy is always good, even when he's playing a detective reporter who is also.... Aw, but that'd be giving it away!

98/2264. Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
John Ford's take on racism in the American West... and in America in general, I guess. Frankly, the third act feels a bit like a cop out, but I have to accept that Ford was working in an era that demanded happy endings for Hollywood tales about the limits of American exceptionalism. I should probably be satisfied that such a movie (with a such dark subtext) even exists in the period.

99/2265. Blondie (1938)
The first in a series of movies that adapted the long comic strip into a live action situation comedy. This was apparently very popular in its day, but Dagwood is too incompetent to be sympathetic — or coupled with a hottie like Blondie!

100/2266. Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
John Ford directs Henry Fonda struggling with frontier life during American Revolution. What it lacks in realism (which is a great deal), it makes up for in cliches! Which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Cliches get repeated for a reason.

101/2267. Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Another John Ford picture that tries, in its way, to correct the public record on the tragedies of Manifest Destiny in the American West. (Ford was no innocent bystander in this. He sure presented the French-allied Indians in Drums Along the Mohawk to be particularly bloodthirsty rapists and murderers worthy of exterminating.) Sadly, the worst part of this isn't all the unnecessarily dead Cheyenne but the extended "comedy" sequence with Jimmy Stewart playing Wyatt Earp just before intermission. While this may be another of Ford's concessions to contemporary audiences, it's so tonally incongruent with what comes before and after that it robs the rest of the movie of any dignity, making the whole experience feel more exploitative than sympathetic. Yuck.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

My aging computer, which I use 8 or more hours a day, has been showing signs of senility lately, so last Sunday I decided to buy a replacement. Specifically, I decided to buy a Razer, as that's what was available on sale at BestBuy.com with the specs that friend (and boss) James recommended. Before going through a shopping cart, I did a little research and discovered that Razer.com had an even better price on their own product. So I decided to order directly from the manufacturer instead. That proved to be a mistake.

No sooner had I completed their checkout process than Razer promptly sent me an email to notify me that the transaction had been "unsuccessful" and urged me to get in touch with their customer service, which I did immediately via chat. The representative told me they would "forward a support ticket to the relevant team" to verify me as a legitimate buyer so that my purchase would be processed by their system "automatically." Except it didn't.

On Monday, I got another email, telling me that the whole problem was my credit card processor. They said I needed a payment authorization code to clear up the problem, so I called my bank. Turns out the bank's AI was naturally suspicious of such a large purchase of nearly $3,000 — don't judge me — and killed the transaction. Fine. It happens. In fact, I appreciate the caution. Except they could not give me an authorization code because no payment had actually ever been authorized. They said I'd need the merchant to run the transaction again.

I told Razer this, and they said they couldn't run a charge against the original order; I would have to just place a whole new order. One small catch: between Sunday night and Monday morning, Razer raised the price of the machine by more than 13%. Since I was only shopping from them because they had been cheaper than Best Buy, I asked their customer service to honor Sunday's price. They declined. I explained that in that case, there was no longer any incentive for me to buy from Razer.com... and they followed up by politely suggesting that I "explore authorized Razer resellers, where you might find attractive deals and promotions."

In hindsight, perhaps I should have expected that. The Sunday representative ended our chat by telling me that "right after you end the chat, you might receive a survey for you to provide us with feedback. The survey is all about ME as your assistance buddy as how I tried my best to assist you today, and not with Razer services" (emphasis mine). Hint, hint, Walter.

Anyway. This is all just a longwinded way of explaining why I will not be buying a Razer computer from any Razer reseller, authorized or otherwise. If they don't want me to buy their product, I'm more than happy to oblige.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: friends james. computer walter work

Last year, my Lucy painting had rocks thrown at her head. This year I gave her some protection.

If this doesn't work, I might have to get her an offensive line.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: art charlie brown diy football

The 18th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month got off to an inauspicious start last night when my cable provider Spectrum unexpectedly dropped ESPN from its lineup without warning just as Florida was preparing to kick off the season against Utah.

Apparently Disney wants Spectrum to pay a boatload for the privilege of sharing the same content you can get directly through a subscription to Disney+, and negotiations have stalemated as Spectrum rightly fears trying to pass that charge along to their subscribers like me, who are already paying $110 a month for a package that somehow no longer includes ESPN or ESPN2 or the SEC Network (or Disney or FX or nearly a score of others I can't say as I watch much).

I assume this tactic is intended to make me call Spectrum and demand they raise my rates to get ESPN back. Given that Disney and the other Hollywood producers don't seem very interested in paying writers or actors to create other content — today marks day 122 of the WGA strike and day 49 of the SAG strike — they rightly recognize that live sports is currently (and perhaps for perpetuity in the age of AI) their most valuable commodity.

While I respect Disney's right to try to negotiate for Spectrum's 15 million subscribers, I'm not particularly happy about becoming a pawn in these hardline tactics or the timing of all of this coming at the dawn of football season, especially since for the foreseeable future, it looks like I'll have to leave my house if I want to watch Monday Night Football or a wide selection of college games. It sure seems like Hollywood doesn't really care who they inconvenience in their quest for the biggest possible buck, and that just plain sucks. I won't forget this. As my father always says, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.

And Gators... Gators lose 11-24, according to my local evening news. So it's not all bad. The University of Florida football team losing is a good start to any season.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: batman dad disney espn family football morals television

72/2238. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Complaint 1: This movie was made explicitly for fans of Indiana Jones, with all the excessive fan service and nostalgic callbacks that entails. (No surprise to see Kathleen Kennedy's name in the credits.) Complaint 2: It's too long by an hour. Other than that, it was fine, the third best Indiana Jones movie. Far better than Crystal Skull, which I just rewatched last week to find that it is even worse than I remember.

73/2239. El cochecito (1960)
The theme of this satirical Spanish movie is that the elderly and invalids are just as fucked up and deserving of respect as everyone else. It's almost cute, until you get to the shocking ending.

A man steals a wheelchair... and a Coke!

74/2240. The Crippled Masters (1979)
TCM ran this and El cochecito back to back on a theme night. In this martial arts cripple exploitation film, the theme is also that the physically handicapped can be just as deadly as normally abled martial artists. Other than the gimmick of a pair of martial artists without the use of their arms or legs, it's really pretty dull.

75/2241. Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Something New (2023)
If you're not up to date on your behind-the-scenes of the ongoing Hallmark Channel vs Great American Media catfight, you might be surprised that the title character in these was recast and the timeline rolled backwards to her college years. (My biggest complaint is actually the recasting of Aurora's friends, but this series has always been about the supporting cast for me. I don't like Aurora herself.) But the script is still written by Teena Booth who is a consistent workhorse at delivering a very satisfying formula of mild-mannered murder mystery.

76/2242. The Goodbye Girl (1977)
Romantic comedies in the movies came of age as screwball comedies of the 1930s which transitioned to the sex comedies of the 50s. Here in the 70s, we can see the genre becoming what we now recognize as a modern example with a healthy dose of New Hollywood's unique interpretation of "realism." It's pretty good, in no small part because it knows exactly what it is and what it wants to be doing.

There were so many shots of Coca-Cola product placement, it was hard to choose just one.

77/2243. The Second Time Around (1961)
Perhaps this is best described as an adventure picture, Debbie Reynolds Goes West. But it leans heavy on broad comedy and romance (choosing between Andy Griffith at his most cornpone and Steve Forrest at his most oily). I think I'll call it an interesting artifact of its time and leave it at that.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

This is the 3,606th post at Wriphe.com. Well, actually, there were somewhat more than that; the earliest posts were uploaded via a flat file to be rendered in (now-defunct) shockwave format, and I periodically overwrote the file with updated content for the first 6 months or so. I'm sure that those lost posts weren't particularly noteworthy, and it's important for me to remember that what I am typing right now is just as pointless and ephemeral.

They say that the Internet is forever, but that's far from true. Digital doesn't outlast paper, and even stone eventually turns to sand. One day, my lease of this domain will lapse and/or my web host will stop serving this content. Then all of these 3,606 posts (plus however many else I get around to before then) will disappear. Presumably, when that happens, I won't be in any state to care.

I have never believed that everything (or even most) that I post is deep or insightful. Or interesting to anyone but me. The world should not mourn the loss of my drivel.

It's encouraging to hope that something I've posted will leave a lasting impression on someone somewhere, if only for a little while. But I don't think that really matters. Wriphe should be enjoyed each moment as it is encountered, without regard for the future or past.

So if you think this post sucks, just forget about it. Come back in a few days, and I'll have something new. That's just how Wriphe works.

Comments (5) | Leave a Comment | Tags: walter wriphe.com

It seems that every news outlet today is reporting that Flamingo (a time management app) reported that the most common Sick Day in America (according to their data) is August 24.

First of all, congratulations to Flamingo for getting their product's name in everyone's mouth. I see what you did there. I didn't previously know what a "paid time off" app was, and I do now. Good job, guys. Someone was working hard on August 24th.

Secondly, I believe it. (Judging from the amount of coverage this "news" got, so do most other people.) Late August is too blisteringly hot, humid, and uncomfortable to work outside, and school just got back in, introducing everyone to strains of disease that had been developing in secluded households over the summer. It's a perfect storm!

Personally, I'm still doing work today, even though I don't want to. Frankly, I'm a bit depressed, which may be a result of working too hard and getting too little sleep for the past few days/weeks. I could probably use a day off.

If only there was an app that could help me schedule something....

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: internet news walter work

66/2232. Something's Gonna Live (2009)
This documentary follows Robert Boyle and his friends reminiscing about the highs and lows of their Hollywood careers. There's a lot of grumpy-old-men complaining about how things have changed since their heydays in the 1950s through 70s (such as working for Hitchcock), but there's also a lot of open admission that the "good" old days weren't always so good (especially for minorities and the disenfranchised). A good documentary for cinephiles.

67/2233. The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango (2023)
Not so many years ago, Lacey Chabert was Hallmark's crossword-puzzle writing mystery solver. Now she's an undercover American agent on Interpol assignment in the ballroom of a corporate murderer. The crossword-writer was more believable. It's all very contrived, but I'll take what I can get after The Pandemic reduced the flow of new made-for-tv mystery movies to a trickle.

68/2234. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
Much has been said in reviews about the third act's bad CGI and extended Skittles product placement, but the real problem with this sequel is Shazam himself. Zachary Levi plays the Big Red Cheese like a complete moron. What can I say other than he's not MY Captain Marvel.

69/2235. Deep Valley (1947)
This movie made so little impression on me that I just had to look it up on IMDB to remind myself what it was: poor little Ida Lupino is a socially deprived mountain girl who falls for an escaped criminal good-for-nothing. Spoiler alert: It doesn't work out.

70/2236. Inside Moves (1980)
For a movie that begins with a very graphic suicide attempt, this movie about a cast of characters struggling through physical disabilities that put them on the margins of society is surprisingly uplifting. Directed by Richard Donner, there's even a running sight gag of a Superman: The Movie pinball machine inside the local hangout at the center of the film. It's all very good.

A cripple walks into a bar... and orders a Coke!

71/2237. Thief (1981)
James Caan really inhabits the role of an ex-con who gets squeezed by some very stupid, stupid men. Like most Michael Mann films, I didn't love it, but I respect it.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

It's Little League World Series time again, hooray!

Now if only I could figure out how to work the remote control without a thumb....

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: illness walter