simplerich

I’m going to assume you’ve seen the cartoon. There are four seasons of the cartoon on Nickelodeon: Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. The movie started with a text crawl very much like Star Wars. Then there was a the normal introduction where the silhouettes of people did the karate, tai-chi, kung-fu or whatever moves as the names of the element were spoken aloud. Just like the cartoons that happened. It really settled me in as a fan of the cartoon. It set the tone… it made me think, “Ah yes… it will be loyal to the cartoon!”

The movie wasn’t all four seasons of the cartoon from Nickelodeon. It was just the first season and it was about an hour and a half long. So obviously some story lines were cut out and some side stories were cut. The actors looked like themselves so that was good. The scar on Zuko, the Fire prince’s, face was barely noticeable. That’s the only quibble I could find in the actors. Their acting was… good enough. Aang had a pouty lip. I guess there were two things and they were physical attributes. Seriously, his lip was always pouty looking. He looked like he’d been punched in the bottom of the mouth or maybe stung by bees or something. OK, crap. There were three things. Uncle was skinny and serious and didn’t seem as funny as wise, funny uncle had in the cartoon. That brings me to my biggest difference in the movie vs. the cartoon.

You know how Aang is 12 and an airbender? You know how airbenders are supposed to be pranksters? Fun-loving people who appear to not take things terribly seriously? They’re fun, funny. Couple that with Aang being 12 years old and you have a recipe for funny cartoons. Hiding behind ppl as they look for you, playing jokes on people, hide & seek, that sort of thing. A big part of my enjoying the cartoon was enjoying the youthful enthusiasm of the airbender. There was a lot of laughter and joy. The joy of life and living. That made it fun to watch. It made the character likeable and someone you wanted to see turn out OK. Not just physically, but mentally. You don’t want to see his joy of life hurt. In the movie though. M. Night Shazamalamadan decided one of the things he needed to cut was all the funny, fun, jokes, or joy. There were exactly two scenes that MIGHT have been reminiscent of the sort of fun-loving antics of cartoon Aang that made the show fun to watch.

You know how Katara’s brother, Sokka, and how he’s there primarily for comic relief? Always hungry, tries to eat the Appa The Flying Bison and Momo, the bat-lemur. Falls a lot? Twice he did something funny, and both times it was to fall victim to Katara’s bad water bending. She got him wet once and froze him into a block of ice once. Also, Uncle was never funny. Never did any funny stories or witty things that had a point. Just sort of a physically fit, taller, very thin Yoda. All serious trainer uncle, no funny uncle that liked to drink tea.

The bending effects were only meh. They did LOTS of the movements and motions and then something would happen really quickly and be over with. The effects were cool but too short. They could have been longer, not necessarily more spectacular. The end fight where Aang finally did his thing using the ocean to fight of the entire fire nation army by himself. That was cool. It was also done in the avatar state, also cool, and with a minimum of jumping around and arm waving… which is as it should be. For him to knock back two guys he did like 15 seconds of tai-chi, maybe tai-kwon-do… I think water was Tai-chi… movements, swung his arms around, and did a no-hands somersault just as an example. Lots of build-up, for not enough pay off. If it’d taken that long to bend the elements they should have had their butts handed to them by any relatively quick fighter. They’d be knocked out before they bent anything. (Don’t get me started on how all the earth benders ever did was pull rocks out of the ground.)

I’d give it 7.5 out of 10 stars. I enjoyed it. I liked the actors. I liked the story. I wish it hadn’t been as dry. I wish it’d been funnier. At least some funny. He was tortured. He was sad. He was grief-ridden… he wouldn’t have been any fun to be around. I hope they make more. I hope Aang (whose name isn’t pronounced the same in the movie as in the cartoons for some reason) has lip reduction surgery. Maybe they could put some of his lip fat into Uncle so he’d be fatter. A skinny Uncle was distracting.

Seriously?

The Internet is a great source of information, whether it’s wikipedia (I’d hate to be trying to sell encyclopedias door-to-door these days!) or amazon.com product reviews. The wealth and democratization of information is a huge amazing part of why I love the Internet so much as a consumer of the web and of ‘stuff’ in general.

I can’t remember the last purchase I made that was over fifty dollars that I didn’t do web research first to help me decide. If I couldn’t find specific product information I would use brand information. Consumer Reports is a great source of information as well.

That being said, many reviews or reviewers fall into two categories, the five-star evangelists lobbying FOR a product, and the 1 star haters who got burned by either a bad product, bad company, or bad customer experience. Now, just a star rating isn’t all I go by. I once read a review of a refrigerator that down-graded the fridge, knocking it down 2 stars because the ice-maker didn’t have a light in it. It didn’t say it did. If I buy a car and then complain that it doesn’t have 4 wheel drive that’s my fault, not the car’s. So some reviews are done by people who don’t pay attention to what they’re buying and then get mad when they made assumptions before they made their purchase. Remember all that information out there on the Internet? Use it before you make the purchase, not after.

United really dropped the ball when they dropped this guy’s guitar and then didn’t try and fix it. When I first took over this job with the new area I was fielding at least two calls a month from angry customers upset about something we’d done to them or not done for them. I had a meeting with my managers and explained to them that they were to take as their first rule to make the customer happy. If they had to break a rule to do that then do it but I wanted those angry customer calls to come down. If it meant we had to exchange an item that our policy said we didn’t exchange? Fine, exchange it then throw away the old one. Our profit margin can take one lost product it can’t take all the lost customers we would have when they left angry and told anybody who would listen.

There are customers out there who will take advantage of that situation. I fire them. Yep. You heard it. If they are abusing my good nature I tell them myself that we’re just too bad at our job to help them any more and they deserve better than us and while I’d love to take their money it would keep me up nights to continue to give them the horrible service we’ve done and I’m terribly sorry and wish them the best of luck across the street at Billy-Joe-Bob’s Widget Emporium which according to them has better selection, value, and service and we’ll miss them dearly but please… never come here again, we don’t deserve their money.

Yep. That’s right. I fire the customer who abuses my liberal customer service policies. The thing is… when I break those rules and make the customer happy — THOSE customers come back. THOSE customers don’t try to go higher than me (there isn’t much higher than me so they used to just go to the main office operator and then she’d get me to get in touch with them. I’m pretty high in the food chain ’round these parts.). So, the odds of me getting in trouble for making the customer happy and getting them to come back are almost zero. The upshot is that while the economy and my 401k are not doing so splendidly these stores are continuing to see growth store to store over last year. I attribute it to better customer service than they were used to getting.

Any company that values their policies over their customers had better be able to pay their bills with those policies once the customers get tired of their abuse… unless they’re AT&T and the iphone users are too addicted to leave them. Monopolies don’t need good customer service so if you’re the only game in town… you can ignore this post. United isn’t though… they shouldn’t have told their customer to get over it.

United, as shown in this song… believed their rules were more important than their customer. They were wrong… to the tune of around 180 Million dollars lost to shareholders according to this article.

PS: When it comes to liberal exchange policies though… I think Scott Adams got the best one I’ve heard of in his e-mail box.

The solution to the financial crisis is too late in coming but here you go folks. This is what we should all be doing. Just because some of us have debt doesn’t mean it’s too late to start now! So… Don’t buy stuff you can’t afford!!!