{"id":104,"date":"2004-03-18T23:08:13","date_gmt":"2004-03-19T06:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/18\/choices.html"},"modified":"2004-03-18T23:08:13","modified_gmt":"2004-03-19T06:08:13","slug":"choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/18\/choices.html","title":{"rendered":"Choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sat next to a woman on my flight from Boston to Seattle who rented a digEplayer<\/A>, Alaska Air’s new<\/A> branded in-flight entertainment system<\/A>. It’s essentially a hard drive with a six inch-wide screen, and featured movies, tv shows, and music – as well as “promotional material,” apparently, which was touted by the stewardess but went unviewed, as far as I could tell. <\/p>\n

She started with the unorthodox choice of Big Momma’s House<\/I>, which I had confused, to the degree that I had thought about it at all, with The Klumps<\/I>, if that’s even a movie. I guess they both feature a comedian dressing up as a fat woman, but I was taken aback when I saw Martin Lawrence’s wig come off in the film. Apparently it was ok for us to find out that it was actually a man under that fat suit, whereas in Eddie Murphy’s case, it would have broken the illusion, or the third wall, or whatever it is he was trying to do there. <\/p>\n

Anyway, this choice seemed a little strange – she seemed like a Master and Commander<\/I>-type, but oh well. She followed it up quickly with Joe Somebody<\/I>, which is apparently a movie, and one starring that albatross around the neck of American comedy, Tim Allen. I was thinking it was Joe Dirt<\/I> that I’d catch glimpses of over her shoulder; instead, it was a movie about a corporate single-dad loser and his overweight loser friend played by Jim Belushi, stealing his late brother’s samurai look from that “Saturday Night Live” sketch. <\/p>\n

Stuck on You<\/I> seemed like the best of the choices, working within the narrow confines of “in-flight movies,” and this was my neighbor’s third choice. But after about ten minutes of that, she went straight to an episode of “Reba,” apparently turned off by the sight of conjoined men doing pull-ups. Why am I watching all this? Because I can’t sleep, and I’ve already read most of my issue of “The Believer<\/A>” that I brought with me, and it’s impossible not to see what’s going on, especially when it’s a “digEplayer”! With the time that remained, my neighbor fast-forwarded through Dr. Dolittle<\/I>, apparently looking for “the funny parts.” And not once during the six-hour flight did she crack a smile. <\/p>\n

My favorite note on the digEplayer can be found in the Alaska Air magazine. An ad lists the movies available at this time, and the list is as follows: <\/p>\n

Current Films: Master and Commander, Stuck on You, Cheaper by the Dozen <\/p>\n

[ok].<\/p>\n

Popular Films: Joe Somebody, Dr. Dolittle, Big Momma’s House<\/p>\n

[“Popular” is pushing it]<\/p>\n

Classic Films: DIGIMON: THE MOVIE [caps theirs], Planet of the Apes, Like Mike <\/p>\n

[ok, now, what the hell are they thinking? In what way are a Pok?mon-type cartoon, a disastrous remake of a campily-classic sci-fi film, and Jonathan Lipnicki’s attempt to keep his career alive classics<\/B>? I feel like writing Alaska Air and asking who categorizes their films]<\/p>\n

I’m trying to stay less than a year behind on my subscription to “The Believer,” which, as the magazine is now one year old, seems like a manageable goal. I’ve managed to finish off issues one and two, and I hope to get to three and four while I’m home. It’s an incredibly dense magazine, if one can even call it that, a good quarter of an inch thick on nice, heavy paper. It’s full of interesting stories – the issue I’m in right now has the best article I’ve ever read on “Reality TV,” which manages to segue into a discussion of Hilter and the Nazi regime – but “The New Yorker” keeps me busy as I struggle to keep my head above water all week long, so I never seem to have time to Believe. I shall carry on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sat next to a woman on my flight from Boston to Seattle who rented a digEplayer, Alaska Air’s new branded in-flight entertainment system. It’s essentially a hard drive with a six inch-wide screen, and featured movies, tv shows, and music – as well as “promotional material,” apparently, which was touted by the stewardess but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-noted","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}