104/2674. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
It's very accurate to describe this anime as a gender-swapped Groundhog Day (with a little Donnie Darko vibe). I found it quite charming.

105/2675. Chungking Express (1994)
I really didn't know what to expect from this, and I spent most of the film wondering why I was still watching it. Ultimately it's very much like one of Jim Jaramusch stream of consciousness films (Night Train springs to mind) and the influence on Tarantino is obvious. If nothing else, it's a great palate refresher for the typical Hollywood formula.

Production teams: This film has so many Coca-Cola products on screen, you'd think they bankrolled the whole thing.

106/2676. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
This is a ridiculously contrived thriller in which a former newspaper reporter decides to frame himself for a murder because... well, with a setup like that, you can probably guess. The Big Twist Ending makes it all so, so stupid.

Screenwriters: When your detective pumps the strip club bartender for leads, have him order something stiffer than a Coke.

107/2677. Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
A triumph of style over substance! They wanted it so badly, they should have just gone ahead and titled this Lady John Wick. It gets the candy-colored ultra-violence right but rings emotionally hollow. Wick cheated, of course, as a murdered dog guarantees audience buy-in; maybe I just care less about human children.

Set decorators: Coke advertising builds retro vibes, and the red foreshadows bloody violence!

108/2678. Appleseed (1988)
I'd read the manga, but this is the first time I'd seen the anime. As good as Ghost in the Shell is, this is not.

More to come.

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It's nice when house guests finally settle in for the evening.

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I feel like Batman got short shrift this Batman and Football month. Since we're almost out of time, here's a link to the song that R.E.M. wrote in 1992 for Batman Returns:

Winged Mammal Theme

I don't love it, but at just just under three minutes in length, I find it a lot more palatable than the nearly twice as long and much more widely known One Word Wonder Batdance.

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I accompanied my father to his general practitioner appointment today. I had to. I took his car away last week.

If you recall last month's post about Dad's decision to sleep-drive through a mailbox you will understand why I judged it necessary to take away his keys after three days in a row during which he couldn't remember that he wasn't supposed to drive to the pharmacy to pick up pills I had already picked up. Dad didn't take that well and chose to start a physical fight with me, further demonstrating that he wasn't thinking straight. I'm no toughie, but an 80-year-old man who runs out of breath tying his shoes shouldn't even try stealing candy from babies. Dad gave me the silent treatment for two whole days before he forgot that he was supposed to be mad at me.

On the way out of the appointment, the doctor pulled me aside to helpfully suggest that if Dad was resistant to surrendering his keys, maybe I should contact the state to have his driver's license suspended.

"Why would I do that?" I asked.

"Because he can't drive without a license," the doctor said with a totally straight face.

Thanks, doc. Given that the problem is that Dad can't drive now with a license, I think I'll get a second opinion.

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In Metro Atlanta, all cars are required to pass an emission inspection each year in order to renew their tag and stay street legal. In theory, this is a good system to maintain our air quality. In practice, it has some problems.

I own my grandfather's 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue (which he explicitly told my father never to give to me) with only about 104,000 miles on it. For many years, I've spent too much money keeping it running. Right now, it has a broken smog filter system. I'd fix it, but parts are hard to come by, which is no surprise considering that GMC retired the entire Oldsmobile brand in 2004. After consulting with the local GMC dealership, my mechanic found and tested several potential aftermarket replacements, but none worked. Oldsmobile, it seems, didn't do a great job of documenting the parts necessary for a car they were discontinuing.

In their infinite wisdom, Georgia lawmakers foresaw this problem and allowed the Georgia's Clean Air Force (GCAF), which is responsible for oversight of the emissions testing, to give a car a waiver if it can be declared Non-Complying Obsolete. I applied for such a waiver. They denied my request. They spoke to my mechanic who explained the problem, and then they said their much more knowledgeable researchers could find suitable parts online, though they declined to share which parts they found. They suggested I look at Autozone, which I think was their way of politely telling me to go to hell. (I looked. Autozone does not have the part.)

The GCAF offers that I can still apply for a Repair Waiver if I spend a total of $1,176 on repairs. To date this year, I have spent $816 on parts from eBay and mechanics bills before we ran into this availability problem. What's the point of paying a mechanic another $360 to remove and reinsert the old parts over and over? Even if I did, I expect the GCAF would still find another polite way to tell me go to hell.

The "good" news is that there's another way to bypass the emission requirement: cars 25 years old and older are exempt from the requirement. By my math the Oldsmobile will be 25 years old in 2027. Although the tag expires on my birthday, I wrote a letter to my local tax commissioner's office asking if I could simply wait to renew in January. They said no. Apparently the 25-year exemption is somehow tied to my birthday, not the year of renewal. In response to my repeated pleas, they insist that they will not let me renew it with an emissions exemption until next September.

So, my options are

1. Donate to my mechanic $380 for a car that is increasingly not worth repairing and hope the GCAF will issue a waiver;

2. Cancel my insurance and mothball the car in my driveway for a year;

3. Try to sell a car with a permanently on "service engine soon" dashboard light to someone born in January; or

4. Move myself outside the Metro Atlanta area.

That last option is looking increasingly attractive.

I'm frustrated that despite my best efforts, I haven't found a solution that doesn't require me to buy a new house or a new car. But that's why everyone hates government, isn't it?

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