[ EPU Foyer ] [ Lab and Grill ] [ Bonus Theater!! ] [ Rhetorical Questions ] [ CSRANTronix ] [ GNDN ] [ Subterranean Vault ] [ Discussion Forum ] [ Gun of the Week ]

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Subject: "A shadowy flight, etc."     Previous Topic | Next Topic
Printer-friendly copy    
Conferences Bubblegum Crisis: The Iron Age Topic #86
Reading Topic #86, reply 3
Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Jul-13-16, 10:42 AM (EDT)
Click to EMail Mercutio Click to send private message to Mercutio Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
3. "RE: A shadowy flight, etc."
In response to message #2
 
  
>I'd love a modern-production-values revamp of Airwolf. I'm a
>little puzzled that it hasn't happened, I mean, all that
>sinister-government-agency-is-sinister bullshit they lumbered the
>Knight Rider remake with so uselessly would fit right in
>there. Airwolf was always about a sinister government
>agency that was sinister.

My completely speculative guess would probably be budget. Genre shows, in general, are only surviving these days on cable, and even critically acclaimed ones with wide exposure tend to be very low-rated. People have a higher expectation for a show specifically pitching itself as an action show these days than they did back in the A-Team and Magnum, PI days, and that requires network-level money. And the networks don't much like genre shows. Agents of SHIELD needed the entire weight of the biggest film franchise of the 21st century behind it to even get a shot.

Someone pitching an Airwolf remake would have to have a very, very good answer to this question: "Why should we give you all this effects money when we could just make another drama? People love dramas and things rarely need to blow up in a costly manner."

There might be space for it as an animated show, although people sort of expect those to be comedies or funny in some manner. Archer has had a successful run on F/X as what is, basically, an action show... but Archer is a spoof, not a straight spy show.

>That's true, but not as true now as it used to be. The car I
>just bought (which I suppose I should introduce sometime soon)

I would enjoy this story.

>has a
>DSG gearbox in it, which is a sort of... automatic manual, I guess
>you'd call it... and it's not quite as much fun to drive as a proper
>stick, but it's miles better than the fluid-link slushboxes of old.

Some of my dads friends, who are getting on in years, are eyeing those for comfort reasons; they get wore out constantly wrestling with a clutch pedal.

>That said, I came within a handsbreadth or so of buying one recently;
>about the only reason I didn't (apart from a certain mistrust of
>post-bankruptcy GM's quality control) was because, though I'm
>confident that between my own abilities and those of the newfangled
>cars, I could've kept myself alive commuting to grad school in the
>winter with one, my parents weren't so sanguine. And though they are
>not technically the bosses of 43-year-old me, why make them worry?
>(Besides, I ended up getting such a good deal on the car that I
>bought, it would have been literally stupid to buy any other one.
>More on this later, probably.)

I would really like to know about this, because I need to buy a new car sometime soon and I'm having a devil of a time getting good info. So I'll take whatever I can get from people I trust.

Like... I'm not too worried about getting a decent price, or driving off with a lemon. There are a million and one resources for that nowadays, and it's very hard to buy a new car these days that is truly fucked up as a matter of design. But... hrrm.

My current ride is a 2001 Saturn with 150,000 miles on the clock. It was never, ever a high-performance vehicle, and it has the usual problems and idiosyncrasies you'd expect from a car that old. But for those who don't know, the old Saturns, especially the SL line... man, you CANNOT kill them. Mine has all-original suspension, the transmission has never given me a lick of trouble, etc. I'm only on my second muffler. It's also easy as hell to service yourself, but parts are getting harder to find. I'm not a car guy, but I'm willing to attempt any repair that doesn't involve me needing to actually jack the thing up; the number of things you can service with a set of socket wrenches, a free weekend, and helpful bald gentleman in overalls on Youtube is surprisingly high.

But I've been shopping around for new cars, reading reviews, working Google to the best of my ability... and it is real, real hard for me to find the sort of information that is important to me specifically.

Car and Driver are the worst offenders here. Those guys? Are snobs. It's all about performance, performance, performance, with that metric consistently defined against high-end sportscars. They seem offended by the very idea of an economy car. The folks at Edmonds at least periodically go "hey, we understand that a lot of you are working class. Here's a list of cars that cost fifteen grand or less and will provide value for that money." Whereas Car and Driver, if you present them with a fifteen thousand dollar budget, will steer you towards seven or eight year old cars with close to a hundred thousand miles on the clock because of their performance profiles, and react with polite horror to the very idea of buying a Nissan Versa.

I care, to a certain extent, about performance. I don't want a car I have to wrestle with all the time. But that's most cars these days. No, what I want to know about is reliability. How robust is this model? Does it have a history of developing interestingly expensive transmission diseases about fifty thousand miles? Will it start drinking oil like an alcoholic drinks Popov? Does it have persistent alignment problems that weren't solved in the 2013 redesign? I live in the northeast, which means snow and salt and water; how protected is the undercarriage from that, are vital components exposed in such a way as to render them particular vulnerable to degradation? How easy is it to do basic service; some modern cars require an archeological expedition just to get to the battery and swap it out, or a recessed oil filter you don't have a prayer of getting off without a filter gun.

And that information is hard to suss out in-between all the beating off over track stats. Some of us don't get a new car every three years, you guys. And don't even get me started over the current vogue for low-mileage leases for well-qualified buyers. Some of us have... blemishes... on our credit.

Okay, rant over.

-Merc
Keep Rat


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
 A shadowy flight, etc. [View All] Gryphonadmin Jul-13-16 TOP
   RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Mercutio Jul-13-16 1
      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-13-16 2
         RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Mercutio Jul-13-16 3
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. pjmoyermoderator Jul-13-16 4
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. BobSchroeck Jul-13-16 9
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-13-16 11
                      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. BobSchroeck Jul-14-16 17
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. TheOtherSean Jul-15-16 29
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-13-16 10
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Mercutio Jul-13-16 15
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. JFerio Jul-13-16 12
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Wiregeek Jul-14-16 22
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Pasha Jul-14-16 23
                      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Wiregeek Jul-15-16 26
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-14-16 24
                      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Wiregeek Jul-15-16 27
                          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-15-16 28
   RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Peter Eng Jul-13-16 5
      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Mercutio Jul-13-16 6
          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Peter Eng Jul-13-16 7
          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. JFerio Jul-13-16 13
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. VoidRandom Jul-15-16 25
      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-13-16 8
          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Mercutio Jul-13-16 14
      RE: A shadowy flight, etc. drakensis Jul-14-16 16
          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Gryphonadmin Jul-14-16 18
              RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Meridias Jul-14-16 19
                  RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Lime2K Jul-14-16 20
          RE: A shadowy flight, etc. Peter Eng Jul-14-16 21


Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

[ YUM ] [ BIG ] [ ??!? ] [ RANT ] [ GNDN ] [ STORE ] [ FORUM ] GOTW ] [ VAULT ]

version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Benjamin D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)