Look, it's Rodney Dangerfield fixing the pipes all by himself
Yesterday
was Canada Day, my first as a loyal Canadian citizen. We are still full
of the good food served at the big family barbeque, so for a lazy
Sunday afternoon, we watched "The Honeymooners", the remake of the classic American sitcom
of the same name. I once watched the original show for about ten
minutes on TV on some channel that plays old shows, and it was quite
enough. They sure seemed to live poorly and miserably in the old times.
For some mysterious reason, the cast of this modern remake is all
black. There is also no domestic violence aspect, implied or explicit,
and Alice being taken "to the moon" is used only as a romantic line in
the beginning of the movie that shows us how the two lovebirds found
each other.
While I was watching this movie, my single biggest confusion must have been the odd way that real estate deals seem to be done in the New York City. The waitress wives of Fred and Barney, or whatever heck the names of the two main characters were, want to move out of their rental apartments by purchasing a duplex of an old lady who is selling hers. She apparently wants to sell the house to these two women so desperately that she doesn't even bother to list her house in the MLS, or get a realtor to find more buyers. (And then they say that the New Yorkers are hard, selfish and cynical.)
Furthermore, to secure the property, the main characters (who clearly live paycheck to paycheck) don't even have to apply for a mortgage, but it is enough to bring the old lady a cheque of $20K before the deadline. Otherwise the evil corporate white guy, played by the Eric Stoltz being slimy to the max, who also wants to buy this property so that he can raze it and build better housing in its place, will get it. Which is somehow bad, even though I can't really see why. To acquire the twenty grand that they need, our blue-collar heroes have to engage in a series of wacky money-making schemes, and humorous mayhem ensues. After the evitable big failure and the resulting crises of both friendship and marriage, the deus ex machina lands to bring twenty grand to Ralph, and all things turn out happily in the end after he learns to swallow his pride and trust his best friend.
As I discussed in my old post "Drink specials at Winners", setting a TV show or a movie in the modern New York City requires certain discretion about the prices of pretty much anything. As soon as the topic came up, I knew that this movie wouldn't explicitly mention the full price of the duplex, since whatever figure the writers might come up with, viewers in New York would laugh it off as being absurdly low, while the viewers everwhere else could not comprehend how absurdly high it was and how a supposedly everyday guy like Ralph that they are supposed to sympathize with would be able to afford it. Even if he happens to have a cushy union job as a New York City bus driver, with the salary in the order of something like $40 an hour.
While I was watching this movie, my single biggest confusion must have been the odd way that real estate deals seem to be done in the New York City. The waitress wives of Fred and Barney, or whatever heck the names of the two main characters were, want to move out of their rental apartments by purchasing a duplex of an old lady who is selling hers. She apparently wants to sell the house to these two women so desperately that she doesn't even bother to list her house in the MLS, or get a realtor to find more buyers. (And then they say that the New Yorkers are hard, selfish and cynical.)
Furthermore, to secure the property, the main characters (who clearly live paycheck to paycheck) don't even have to apply for a mortgage, but it is enough to bring the old lady a cheque of $20K before the deadline. Otherwise the evil corporate white guy, played by the Eric Stoltz being slimy to the max, who also wants to buy this property so that he can raze it and build better housing in its place, will get it. Which is somehow bad, even though I can't really see why. To acquire the twenty grand that they need, our blue-collar heroes have to engage in a series of wacky money-making schemes, and humorous mayhem ensues. After the evitable big failure and the resulting crises of both friendship and marriage, the deus ex machina lands to bring twenty grand to Ralph, and all things turn out happily in the end after he learns to swallow his pride and trust his best friend.
As I discussed in my old post "Drink specials at Winners", setting a TV show or a movie in the modern New York City requires certain discretion about the prices of pretty much anything. As soon as the topic came up, I knew that this movie wouldn't explicitly mention the full price of the duplex, since whatever figure the writers might come up with, viewers in New York would laugh it off as being absurdly low, while the viewers everwhere else could not comprehend how absurdly high it was and how a supposedly everyday guy like Ralph that they are supposed to sympathize with would be able to afford it. Even if he happens to have a cushy union job as a New York City bus driver, with the salary in the order of something like $40 an hour.
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