Wanted: A Universal Remote
I watched Click last night with my sister and a bunch of people from church: the Gorilla, Mrs. Gorilla, D-Kun, Claus, and a couple others I forgot the codenames for. It's a pretty interesting show, lots of good laughs (but dirty ones! Don't bring your kids there), and a few tearjerker scenes near the end.
Basically, it's about some American guy with a horrible boss and a great family. Typically, he's a workaholic because he thinks work = money = happiness, which means he keeps on ditching family events to work on office stuff. Plus his neighbours are this super-rich family with a rotten kid who likes coming over and dissing everything he and his kids own.
The kid, by the way, has a face that seems to be made up entirely of pimples although the voice is definitely pre-pubescent. Don't ask me how. It's called dramatic license, I think: the same law that says ugly = evil.
So one day, he's driven mad when his remotes get mixed up (the American family apparently owns remotes for the TV, garage, a variety of toy cars, a variety of helicopters that can fly, ceiling fans, ceiling lamps, and goodness knows what else) and he goes to buy a universal remote. You know, one of those things that apparently controls everything at one push of a button.
And of course, he winds up in a secret part of the departmental store (a la Bruce Almighty and Narnia) where he gets a remote that controls his entire life. You know, fast-forwarding time, rewinding to past events, muting, volume controls, subtitles and stuff.
And if you want the rest of the plot, go watch the movie or something. This isn't a movie review blog, y'know. I'm just giving the background so you (and I) will understand the rest of this post.
Basically, I thought his uses of the remote were singularly unimpressive. Quite unimaginative, actually: the most interesting things he did were picture-within-picture and audio tweaking stuff. The rest of it was centred around the fast-forward button. And besides, it was perfectly dumb of him to fast-forward through all the unpleasantness. Very escapist of him.
The idiot went and hit the fast-forward every time something unpleasant occurred... including massaging his wife as a form of foreplay. Hello? Knock, knock, anybody home? If he could find that unpleasant, it's no wonder he wanted to fast-forward through the cold shower. And the dog who wanted to pee at night. And traffic jams. And his boss's lecture. And... his life. Because, at its basic level, life is unpleasant. That's the only way you can properly appreciate the little bits of pleasantry dotted here and there, it's by comparing them to the unpleasant bits.
I'd rather have used the slow-motion button. Much better, y'know? On the way to work, I'd just hit the slow-motion and go through traffic as fast as I wanted. Or I could even press pause and cycle to work (and, to the real world, appear to have gotten there in seconds on a bike). So many other, better options.
But no, he went and glued his finger to the fast-forward.
Now, if only I had that remote...
1. I'd get a lot more than 7 hours of sleep a day. Simple. When tired, all I'd need to do would be to hit pause and take a power nap wherever I happened to be.
2. I'd never need to worry about travel time, because I could (theoretically) cycle or walk anywhere I wanted to and still appear to have taken no time getting there. So I could, theoretically, wake up at 7.59 and get to school by 8.00 am.
3. I'd never need to worry about saying the wrong thing again! I could just use the pause button and meditate on the best thing to say under the circumstances.
4. I'd get perfect scores on exams. Because I could rewind at will to the times when lecturers were explaining the stuff and just copy everything down. Better still, I could open a picture-within-picture and write the answers down in perfect textbook form.
5. Free TV!
6. *cough* I am so not telling you what I could do to anybody who happened to offend me.
7. *cough* I am also not telling you what I could do if I ever wanted to put anybody in a particularly embarassing situation.
But it'd be cool, if I remembered not to ever press the fast-forward button. Now, if only I could actually HAVE one of those remotes...
Basically, it's about some American guy with a horrible boss and a great family. Typically, he's a workaholic because he thinks work = money = happiness, which means he keeps on ditching family events to work on office stuff. Plus his neighbours are this super-rich family with a rotten kid who likes coming over and dissing everything he and his kids own.
The kid, by the way, has a face that seems to be made up entirely of pimples although the voice is definitely pre-pubescent. Don't ask me how. It's called dramatic license, I think: the same law that says ugly = evil.
So one day, he's driven mad when his remotes get mixed up (the American family apparently owns remotes for the TV, garage, a variety of toy cars, a variety of helicopters that can fly, ceiling fans, ceiling lamps, and goodness knows what else) and he goes to buy a universal remote. You know, one of those things that apparently controls everything at one push of a button.
And of course, he winds up in a secret part of the departmental store (a la Bruce Almighty and Narnia) where he gets a remote that controls his entire life. You know, fast-forwarding time, rewinding to past events, muting, volume controls, subtitles and stuff.
And if you want the rest of the plot, go watch the movie or something. This isn't a movie review blog, y'know. I'm just giving the background so you (and I) will understand the rest of this post.
Basically, I thought his uses of the remote were singularly unimpressive. Quite unimaginative, actually: the most interesting things he did were picture-within-picture and audio tweaking stuff. The rest of it was centred around the fast-forward button. And besides, it was perfectly dumb of him to fast-forward through all the unpleasantness. Very escapist of him.
The idiot went and hit the fast-forward every time something unpleasant occurred... including massaging his wife as a form of foreplay. Hello? Knock, knock, anybody home? If he could find that unpleasant, it's no wonder he wanted to fast-forward through the cold shower. And the dog who wanted to pee at night. And traffic jams. And his boss's lecture. And... his life. Because, at its basic level, life is unpleasant. That's the only way you can properly appreciate the little bits of pleasantry dotted here and there, it's by comparing them to the unpleasant bits.
I'd rather have used the slow-motion button. Much better, y'know? On the way to work, I'd just hit the slow-motion and go through traffic as fast as I wanted. Or I could even press pause and cycle to work (and, to the real world, appear to have gotten there in seconds on a bike). So many other, better options.
But no, he went and glued his finger to the fast-forward.
Now, if only I had that remote...
1. I'd get a lot more than 7 hours of sleep a day. Simple. When tired, all I'd need to do would be to hit pause and take a power nap wherever I happened to be.
2. I'd never need to worry about travel time, because I could (theoretically) cycle or walk anywhere I wanted to and still appear to have taken no time getting there. So I could, theoretically, wake up at 7.59 and get to school by 8.00 am.
3. I'd never need to worry about saying the wrong thing again! I could just use the pause button and meditate on the best thing to say under the circumstances.
4. I'd get perfect scores on exams. Because I could rewind at will to the times when lecturers were explaining the stuff and just copy everything down. Better still, I could open a picture-within-picture and write the answers down in perfect textbook form.
5. Free TV!
6. *cough* I am so not telling you what I could do to anybody who happened to offend me.
7. *cough* I am also not telling you what I could do if I ever wanted to put anybody in a particularly embarassing situation.
But it'd be cool, if I remembered not to ever press the fast-forward button. Now, if only I could actually HAVE one of those remotes...
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