When I Understand Computers, I Shall Be The Supreme Being!

 

I don't know about that ... it was five thirty this morning and Martha and Sarah were out delivering the papers on our route. The boys were still in bed and I got a phone call from my wife saying that she'd parked at one of the apartment buildings we deliver the Minot Daily News to and the van just would not start again. Martha and Sarah had a similar issue Sunday and I got a similar call about the same time; the van gave out on the last road of the route. Jeffrey and I got there and I was praying on the way that it would start up again, and it did after we got there and we got it home. Then Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey first took me to work -- I work every other Sunday and every Saturday at Marketplace Foods, a local supermarket -- and later went to Bethany Lutheran Church (surprisingly well attended for summer services) themselves. And when they picked me up from work -- two and a half hours early, as the schedule got changed -- we picked up some groceries and rented some movies from Premiere Video and went home to settle in and start watching! Trust me, I welcomed the break!

Today's title is what the main antagonist (I've seen referred to as "Evil" and "Evil Genius"; anyway, he's the guy played by David Warner) says to his minions when he's asked what he will do once he gets "The Map" -- a MAP that shows you the holes in the universe through which people can travel in time and space. Anyway, the map through most of the 1981 movie Time Bandits is in the hands of six dwarves (this was before "little people" or some other politically correct term became the fashion to describe people ... eh, vertically challenged) who want to get rich and are on the run from the Supreme Being, insert God here. One night they end up in eleven-year-old Kevin's closet (wait, this is set in Great Britain, so it would be his cupboard), and he's a history buff -- dang it, so was I, and no knight ever galloped through my room growing up -- who ends up traveling with them from suburbia to meet and rob Napoleon (only to get liberated of that bundle by Robin Hood) and Agamemnon (only to lose THAT bundle when the Titanic sinks) and then to encounter Evil.

I like a point Jeffrey made when he was trying to garner details about this film which I said I hadn't seen since I was a kid (watched it on VHS at Sean Delaney's house one Saturday ... in '82, I think; the Marvel Comics adaptation added a layer to it on the last page of their adaptation; and I know I saw it once more in Florida, but I only remember from Kevin facing down Evil to the end where The Map is rolled up): when I referred to Randall and his band of time-traveling runaways and my son saw them on screen he said they were like the seven dwarves! And if you think about it -- evidently there were seven dwarves who absconded with The Map before the film begins and one's dead -- Kevin fills the gap. So possibly this could be a ... very jumpy ... retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Or, scruffybear jumps in here with another idea, based on that layer Marvel added that's likely based on the next to last script rewrite as comic adaptations often are, the events of the movie are NOT a dream, because Kevin still has the Polaroids he took in Sherwood Forest.

And a fireman very much resembling Agamemnon winked at him, just like the king did. Not that I didn't like Doogal or Ice Age: Continental Drift or Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (the movies Sarah and Jeffrey wanted to see) but I don't know enough, or maybe don't relate enough, to last decade's movies (2005, and the other two in 2012 respectively) to postulate on them. OR I don't want to keep pounding out this post much longer. On a personal note today would have been my mother's (also known as "Mamaw", which started when grandchild #1 slushed the pronunciation of "Grandma" and we've stuck with it over thirty-seven years now) seventy-eighth birthday. Man, do I have some things I'd like to share with her (she died in December 2012) or even just sit down with her for a few minutes when she was more aware of what's going on around her. She's the one parent of mine Jeffrey got to see when she was alive -- my dad died in October 2006 before he was born, but I have some ideas about that -- and I should live up to be the blessing she was to me. 

Tell me about subscriber trunk dialing, David