Yikes! Stay the hell out of New York.
Extreme Makeover
Steve Benen does the best political work on the 'tubes, and the site now looks the part. Check out the redesigned Carpetbagger Report.
"Never a good Idea to attack the dude with the microphone."
Don't crack wise with Kevin Smith, he feeds on the laughter of comic geeks. Video here. Warning: NSFW. Oh, the fan is right—Smith's movies suck.
A Bad Idea
Chrysler's set to offer a lifetime powertrain warranty. As in forever. Something tells me this is going to be another insurmountable legacy cost (aka: another nail in their coffin).
"My name is Ian, and I'm from Minor Threat..."
The David vs. Goliath story of Nike ripping off an old punk album cover to sell stuff. The Legal Satyricon
New Batman Teaser
Unveiled at ComiCon last week. Doesn't show anything, but following on the heels of the excellent "Batman Begins" I have high hopes for "Dark Knight." May suffer from the SM3 problem of too many villains, but so what. Christian Bale is far and away the best Batman yet, and I could listen to Michael Caine read the phone book. Go. UPDATE: That's DC's "viral" Joker site, and it's already something else. Found it on YouTube. Enjoy.
My Path of Destruction
Everywhere I've been long enough to sleep a night or attend an event. Driving through doesn't count. [h/t Fridge]
Visited US States Map from TravelBlog
9 comments:
Re: Kevin Smith - Agree totally. Not nearly as great a director as he is a writer. In fact, he directs like a writer. Words, yay! Visuals, meh! That's why when people have always said he should do a comic book movie, I've always thought, NOOOOOO!!!!!. He should write the script and hand it off to someone else.
Batman looks great and has excellent casting for the villian. But out of Comic-con, I was most interested in the full casting list for The Watchmen, which will be helmed by 300 director Zack Snyder. Couldn't be more excited about it.
Oh, and btw, that is quite the path of destruction. I am jealous of your coverage.
You're both nuts. Kevin Smith makes great movies.
I'm looking forward to the next Batman also. I'm s glad they scrapped the Michael Keaton/Val Kilmer/George Clooney Batman movies when the did Batman Begins. You're right, Christian Bale blows them all away. Having a better script and style didn't hurt either.
Having a better script and style didn't hurt either.
And director. Christopher Nolan hasn't done a bad job on a movie I've seen...
Sorry, we're going to have to agree to disagree on Smith. "Chasing Amy" was fair, I'll confess to never having seen "Clerks" but "Mallrats" was bad, and "Dogma" is one of the worst films I've ever seen. And not because I couldn't handle it, I thought it was terrible in every aspect. Smith even managed to bring out the worst performances in a pretty strong cast.
Brutal.
Re: Chrysler's supposedly bad idea. My son just bought our 96 Chrysler Lxi, which is still running smoothe and strong.
Over the decade we owned it this car had only one notable problem. It involved a bad mounting of the water pump or its jacket. The dealer we bought it from failed to fix it properly twice (may his overpaid, plug 'n' play, so-called mechanics burn in hell). A dealer in a city 90 miles away got it right the first time. That was about eight years ago, and the problem never recurred.
Other than that, it's been an excellent car. Good looking, I think, well-designed and well-made, comfortable, reliable and incredibly economical for its age, size and power.
It's only ever had about four tuneups, but it has had three or four oil and filter changes a year. We've had the radiator flushed three or four times and the transmission drained, flushed and serviced once.
Now, I expect Chrysler's decision makers went over reliability data, service records, got statistical calculations of how many people keep the car for any given number of years, and calculated the risk they're assuming with great care. I expect they then weighed potential costs against potential sales gains from having such a policy.
There's another angle, too. I just saw today where Ford is on the hook for fixing fire-prone power-steering assemblies in a dozen or more models spread over a bunch of years — 3.5 million vehicles, if I recall correctly. This won't be cheap. The way manufacturers have to back their products with these mass recalls, they suffer the cost and invonenience, plus a lot of bad PR.
Maybe Chrysler execs figure since they're liable to have to fix most problems that arise anyway, they might as well get the benefit of good PR and a sales tool from just offering full coverage up front.
Given my Chrysler experience and the things I just mentioned, I think they can make this pay off.
You might be right, S.W. I do notice that this lifetime coverage is for the original owner only—non-transferable. And the number of folks who keep their car beyond a certain period of years is probably small.
Happy to hear that car worked out for you. Did that car have the 7/70 coverage?
Our Chrysler did have that coverage, which was transferable. We bought it from the dealer when it was a year old.
I am jealous of your coverage.
The notable gap is the Pacific Northwest. It's the only place I haven't gone that I'd really like to...
Yes, we're definitely poles apart on Smith. I thought Dogma was his best movie. Chasing Amy was ok.
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