cinema history class: the search for weng weng

Session: Documentaries, Week 1
Movie: The Search for Weng Weng (2013)
Directed by Andrew Leavold 

As I did last year for documentary month, I am temporarily abandoning my usual format.

For those who don't know of him, Weng Weng (real name Ernesto de la Cruz) was diminutive (2'9") Filipino action movie star. We actually watched one of his better movies in class early this year -- I blogged about it here. Andrew Leavold, a video store owner in Australia, was a big fan of Weng Weng's. In 2000 he decided to travel to the Phillipines to make a documentary about the actor. What Leavold didn't know at the time was that Weng Weng had died in 1992.

I'm not a Weng Weng fan, but his backstory is odd enough that there's enough fodder for an interesting story. And the fact that Leavold went in so woefully underpreprepared gave this search a kind of Magical Mystery Tour quality. This quality is strengthened by the coincidental way things happen to fall into place. For example, he went to a bar where film people are known to hang out, hoping to find people who cound help him with Wengformation. But he struck out. Then, in the parking lot he happened to run into the man who edited all of Weng Weng's films. Along the way, Leavold and his crew found themselves invited to Imelda Marcos' 83rd birthday party.

Putting that aside, there are some interesting interviews with industry insiders and Weng Weng's brother and sister-in-law. Some of the conversations touch upon the way Weng Weng was exploited and never really saw the money that he made for others. Also addressed -- albeit briefly -- is the uncomfortable fact that a big part of the appeal of Weng Weng's movies relies on laughing at the disabled man for his disabilities. But there's a big drawback -- and I wouldn't have noticed this if Christina hadn't pointed it out -- ii that we don't really get a good sense of who Weng Weng really was.

This was an interesting documentary, but it left something to be desired.

how to kill customer loyalty in three and a half months

It only took three and a half months, but I finally got a full refund from AT&T*.

My family and I have been loyal to AT&T wireless for...well, I don't actually know how long. But It's definitely over 15 years. At one point we were with Cingular, but came over when they merged with AT&T. And, for the most part, we've been happy.

My trouble started this past summer -- August 8 to be exact -- when I went to their store in Floral Park** to buy a new phone. Sadly, they didn't have the phone I wanted in stock. But, they told me, they could order it. I could upgrade right then and there. They could set up an installment plan on my account*** and  I just had to pay the sales tax right then and there. And when I come in to get the phone they'd help me move all my content from the old to the new.

In retrospect, I was stupid to agree to this. I should have either gone elsewhere or simply come back at a later date when they expected to have the phone in stock. But I was eager, and I agreed. Live and learn.

The sales representative called when they got the phone in, but she was going on vacation the next day. I preferred to have her set up the new phone, so she told me I could wait to pick it up until after her vacation. I came in on her first day back. And the store didn't have the phone. In the intervening week and a half, they were being audited. The manager didn't want to have extra equipment sitting around,*** so he sent it back. The store was now well-stocked with that model, but they couldn't give us one of those. It had to be the specific phone that was ordered for me. And they couldn't just unravel the purchase until AT&T's warehouse acknowledged receipt of the phone. But not to worry -- that'll happen soon enough and we can start again. But it didn't happen. To this day AT&T's warehouse has not received the phone.

So, I had paid $120.75 in sales tax during that first visit. My August bill included a one-time $30 upgrade fee (plus tax). And, starting with that bill, AT&T would be adding installments of $46.67 for the phone as well as $5 (+ tax!) "Next Up"**** charges.

And so began my fight. Initially, I was content to wait it out until the warehouse scanned the phone in. But as time went by without that happening, I got antsy. At this point I don't recall the exact sequence of conversations, and I won't try to give a blow-by-blow account.

But I made repeated calls to customer service. I would dutifully explain what had happened. And each time, I had to go through the same story and answer the same questions. The rep would promise to get it settled, only to be stuck by the fact that AT&T didn't have the phone. Because of that I'd have to take it up with the store. But when I went to the store, they insisted they couldn't help me until the warehouse acknowledged receipt of the phone. Once that happened, the whole upgrade would be unraveled, and they could then refund the sales tax.***** Until that happened, I would have to stick to calling customer service. And so it went -- customer service said I had to deal with the store, and the store said I had to deal with customer service. I was stuck in the middle. A couple times I tried having customer service talk to the store. That briefly gave me some hope, but it amounted to nothing.

I should acknowledge that, early on, AT&T refunded the $30 upgrade fee. That gave me unjustified hope, though in retrospect I am guessing that they did that because they could see that I wasn't using the new phone. At any rate, that was a small victory.

I was dealing with a seemingly unending series of broken promises. customer service reps would open cases and swear that there would be a resolution. But the cases would be closed because the warehouse hadn't received the phone so they didn't have satisfactory evidence that I never received the phone. Even though the store manager told them repeatedly that that was the case.

Eventually, in early October there was a breakthrough. One of the phone reps was able to break through and, with her manager, get the process started to actually remove the monthly installments from my phone and reimburse me for the installments I had already been charged. I'm not really sure why that call -- or that rep -- was different from the others. I suspect it was simply a matter of her being more dedicated to her job than the others, and my getting her on that call was just a matter of the luck of the draw. She was able and willing to take an extra step that the others weren't. And the transactions that she initiated (which inexplicably took more than a week to complete) did represent the bulk of the charges. And the case notes that she made did help with the resolution of the remaining items. 

The remaining items were the "Next Up" charges and the sales tax. Even though my October bill reflected a refund of the installments I had paid, it still included a $5 "Next Up" charge. I still had to make a couple  more phone calls, and explain the whole story a couple more times******. But eventually I got a rep to refund the "Next Up" charges and remove them from future bills.

But he couldn't help me with the sales tax. For that, he needed me to provide the number of the credit card that I used when I paid the tax*******. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have been a problem. But in the intervening months there had a been a fraudulent charge on that card, so I had closed it and shredded the card. I had nothing with the full account number on it. I called the issuer of the card, but they wouldn't give me the card number over the phone. Or by email. I'd have to wait for them to snailmail me a letter with the full account number. That took another couple of weeks.

I finally got the letter yesterday morning, November 27. Armed with the credit card number, I called customer service. I explained the story. I asked her to read the case notes. And she apologized, but she can't do anything about the tax I had paid because the warehouse still hasn't logged the phone back in. And have I tried going back to the store?

At this point, I was addressing the rep in an odd mix of rage and pleading. "Don't send me back to the store; that won't help. The last person I spoke to promised that if I provide the credit card number he could process a refund." She had me on hold for a long time. She came back and apologized. She was, she explained, trying to figure out what she could do. "You can pay me the money you guys took from me! Either credit my account or send me a check. I don't care which! But it's been more than three and a half months!" At this point I didn't think that I was helping my cause. But I was just so frustrated. It was like I was watching some other person in my body screaming/pleading into the phone.

And, to my surprise, it worked. She added credits to my account -- one credit for $60, and five credits for $12 each. If I'm not mistaken, that means that, technically, she wasn't applying a refund of the tax, but using some limited discretionary ability to apply credits to customer accounts. Which means that she still couldn't refund the tax, but she took mercy on my and did what she could.

The fact is, she gave me a total of $120 in credits. So technically, I'm still out 75 cents********. And, yeah, I have to let go of that, even though it rankles way more than it should. If I were, through sheer clumsiness, to lose a $20 bill to the wind, that would not bother me as much as this 75 cents.

Lessons learned? Any time I want to upgrade to a new phone in the future, I'll buy elsewhere -- probably from the Samsung Store. And if I have to go to an AT&T store, it won't be the one in Floral Park. I also found a few things that I particularly frustrating. The following is a (probably incomplete) list:

• Several times, after I spent hours on the phone only to get nowhere, the phone rep would close the call by asking me if I was satisfied with the service provided. Invariably, these reps would act surprised and offended when I said no. Excuse me, but your company is ripping me off to the tune of more than $1500, and you are unable to help me. Why should I be satisfied?
• Several times, reps would raise the question of why I took so long to pick up the phone. At least once, someone told me that their policy is to return equipment that's not picked up in 72 hours -- though the sales rep had told me it could wait until after her vacation. A couple times, people noted that equipment has to be picked up within two weeks or it gets returned -- though I had come to pick it up within that two-week time frame. This whole line of discussion was frustrating because it was tempting to debate it with them But that debate obfuscated the central issue. My frustration wasn't about the fact that they had returned the phone to the warehouse; it was about the fact that, having returned it to the warehouse, they seemed to still expect me to pay for it.
• I hated the repeated insincere apologies. Apologies are meaningless if you're not fixing the problem.
• I hated it when the store manager, responding to my complaint about how much time and energy I had to put into getting them to fix their fuck-up, noted that she had just spent an hour on the phone trying to help. Helping customers is part of her job -- especially when the problem was caused by a breakdown in AT&T's procedures. And she was being paid to deal with it. I wasn't. Now, if they were actually planning to pay me for the time I spent trying to track this down, I might have felt different about this aspect.

The big question is whether I will stay with AT&T. I understand that, sometimes, issues arise. But this whole episode takes customer service failure to a whole new level.
___________________________

*Actually, not full. There's still another 75 cents. But I'll eat that and call it a day. More details in the post.

**I don't know how it works with other carriers, since it's been so long since I have been with another carrier. Maybe it's similar. At any rate, with AT&T you can pay for the phone in 30 monthly installments. Essentially, it's an interest-free loan. Of course, the sales tax cannot be figured into the installments. You have to pay the sales tax when you set up the installment plan.

***Seriously. I don't understand why it's so difficult to say "this is a phone that we ordered for a customer who has not yet picked it up.

****I would learn the "Next Up" was a sales feature. If I sign up for it with the installment plan, and pay the charge every month, then (once I have paid for half of the phone) I can upgrade early and AT&T will absorb the cost of the yet-unpaid installments. I did not agree to the "Next Up program, and I would have turned it down had it been explained to me.

*****One element that boggles my mind is that the store manager insisted that I would have to make another trip to the store to get the sales tax refunded. For some reason she could not (or would not) adequately explain, they would not be able to do that by phone.

******If I have to say "No, I didn't return the phone. The store returned it instead of giving it to me" one more time...

*******I have no idea why that should be a requirement. He could see that I had paid the tax -- and he could even give me the last four digits of the card number.

********Which is a spit in the ocean compared to the time and energy I spent on this ordeal, as well as the cost of gas and wear and tear on the car related to the repeated trips to the store in Floral Park.*********

*********And I implore my reader not to patronize that store.

a coincidence and a letter

This evening, purely by coincidence, I came across a letter my great grandfather wrote 57 years ago
today.

The occasions was the death of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson's succession to the presidency. Great grandpa Simon wrote to President Johnson to express his support and well-wishes.

A bit of background is in order. At some point Simon had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. In order to occupy his time, he started writing letters. To family, to famous people. To anyone he could think to write to. He would type two copies of each letter -- one to send and one to save. This was no easy feat since his left arm was paralyzed and he was typing with one hand. But it served its purpose of keeping him busy. He saved his letters along with the responses in books, which he had bound. The one I have is titled Life Begins After a Stroke, Volume Four. I don't know how many volumes there were or what happened to the others. Simon had fantasies of getting them published.*

I am most amused by Simon's comments regarding the form response he got. He noted that he realized it was a form response, but added "I feel very pleased that my letter to him merited an answer."

_______________________________

*Sounds familiar...

home run leaders by presidential administration

One of the Twitterati I follow wished his favorite baseball player a happy birthday. And noted an achievement. Of course, PrezWisdom subsequently noted that Griffey doesn't actually hold the record cited in that tweet. Alex Rodriguez owns the two-term record for most home runs hit during a presidency, with 364 during the administration of George W. Bush. PrezWisdom prefers not to acknowledge Rodriguez because the latter is an admitted steroid user. The wacky-face emojis tell me he has tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Anyway, that got me to thinking...

Who holds the record for one term presidencies? For partial-term presidencies. Aw, heck...who hit the most home runs in each presidential administration since the advent of Major league Baseball? Is there a way to look that up? This sounds like a job for stoopidstats!

The full table is below. But first a few comments.

For the purposes of this task, it's fortunate that the normal succession date of January 20 is during the offseason. Even before it was moved to January, it was in early March which was during the offseason. Thus, for the most part the task is easy. With a downloadable database (I use Sean Lahman's), it's mostly a matter of simply pivoting on sets of years (e.g., for Wilson, see player totals for the years 1913-1920). The complications come in on the few occasions where presidential succession occurred during a season. As necessary for those seasons, I used the game logs available on Baseball Reference to determine who hit how many home runs during whose presidencies. Fortunately, I never ran across a situation where a contender for a lead actually hit a home run on the day that the presidency changed hands. I'd have hated trying to research times of day to see if I could figure out things like "did he hit that homer before or after President Whosiwhats died.

Even so, I couldn't get full information. Baseball Reference doesn't seem to have game logs from the 19th century. So I was left high and dry trying to parse who hit how many homers when during the 1881 season. President Garfield died during that season. Garfield's presidency was the second-shortest, running from his inauguration on March 4, 1881 until his death on September 19, 1881. 41 players hit homers in 1881, led by Dan Brouthers, who hit 8. But without a game log I can't say definitively who hit the most while Garfield was president.

Similarly, the lack of game logs for 1881 means that I don't have full information for President Arthur. Ned Williamson hit 32 home runs in 1882-1884. He also hit one homer in 1881. No one else hit more than 31 during 1881-1884, so Williamson has the most. But I don't know if his total is 32 or 33.

A few other fun facts before I show the full list. Please note that, in these fun facts, I am sadly leaving out whoever it was who had the most homers during Garfield's presidency:

• The only tie came during Grover Cleveland's first presidency. Yes, I treated his two nonconsecutive terms as separate presidencies. Dan Brothers and Roger Connor each hit 39 homers during the Cleveland I administration.
• Babe Ruth and Mike Schmidt are the only two players who led in homers during more than one administration. And they each did it for three.
• Even though Franklin Roosevelt served more than three terms, Jimmie Foxx's administration-leading total of 353 home runs falls short of Alex Rodriguez' 364 home runs during George W. Bush' presidency. In fairness, Roosevelt died so early during his fourth term that no baseball had been played. So, for these purposes, it's the same as if he had only served three terms.
• Maybe PrezWisdom can take comfort in the knowledge that Griffey's home run total during the Clinton administration might have topped Rodriguez' total during the Bush administration if not for that strike in 1994-1995. Or maybe that makes it worse.

a) insufficient information available to determine. Dan Brouthers hit 8 home runs in 1881, but it is unclear how many he hit during the Garfield presidency.

b) Ned Williamson hit one home run in 1881. It is unclear whether that was before or after Arthur assumed the presidency.

c) Includes all 12 of the home runs Freeman hit in 1901. All 12 were hit before McKinley's death.

d) Does not include any of the 8 home runs Davis hit in 1901. All 8 were hit before McKinley's death.

e) Includes the 25 home runs Ruth hit in 1923 before Harding died. Does not include the 16 home runs he hit in 1923 after Harding died.

f) Includes the 16 home runs Ruth hit in 1923 after Harding died. Does not include the 25 home runs he hit in 1923 before Harding died.

g) Includes the 15 home runs Aaron hit in 1974 before Nixon resigned. Does not include the 5 home runs he hit in 1974 after Nixon resigned.

h) Includes the 11 home runs Schmidt hit in 1974 after Nixon resigned. Does not include the 25 home runs he hit in 1974 before Nixon resigned.

stir crazy in new york

 Yeah...I think some New Yorkers are going stir crazy...

tunesday: "yuve yuve yu" by the hu

I first heard of The Hu about a week ago. I walked into the office and Blair was playing some music the likes of which I had never heard. The vocals were as much growling as singing, and the sound was primal and hypnotic. I stood there transfixed, and Blair said something like "I guess it's not for you."

Au contraire...

Looking them up on Youtube, I watched a few videos (my favorite was "Yuve Yuve Yu," which is the one Blair was listening to), and decided that I had to have their album, The Gereg, which came out a little over a year ago. I also posted one of the videos on Facebook, under the mistaken belief that I was introducing all my FB fiends to this wonderful new exotic thing. And I was stunned by the response. All these people I know on social media were already aware of the group, and loved them. Go figure...

One last thought... Am I the only one who reads the lyrics (the English translation, of course) and thinks they flow like Jewish liturgical prayer poems?

cinema history class: alice, sweet alice

Session: And Then There Were None, Week 4
Movie: Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)
Directed by Alfred Sole 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL. This trailer is for "Holy Terror," which is the same movie as "Alice Sweet Alice." It had been released under more than one name.

Plot:
Alice, a troubled teen in need of psychiatric help seems to have turned her anger up a murderous notch. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

My reaction to Eyes of a Stranger, which we saw a week earlier, was that it was more than just a slasher film. I feel the same way about Alice, Sweet Alice, only more so. It's interesting that this was made in 1975 (and first released in 1976), which was years before slashers really became a thing, and yet it has the slasher genre down. But it has more. There's complexity to the stabbings, and the plot that you don't see in fare such as Halloween or Friday XIII. In many ways Alice feels more like a giallo than a straight slasher film, though it doesn't really fully capture the whole giallo vibe either.

The cast does a really good job, which was a pleasant surprise given that there aren't really any huge stars. The trailer hypes Brooke Shields but this was her first theatrical role, and (trailer notwithstanding) it's actually a pretty minor one.

Alice, Sweet Alice passes the Bechdel test.

Ratings:

Me: 9.1

Christina: 9.5

Ethan: 9

Sean 2 out of 4

cinema history class: eyes of a stranger

Session: And Then There Were None, Week 3
Movie: Eyes of a Stranger (1981)
Directed by Ken Weiderhorn

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A serial killer is terrorizing the women in the Miami area. A TV reporter with a special interest is on the case. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Eyes is, unmistakably a slasher movie, but it's different. There's no real; mystery here. We know pretty much from the beginning who the killer is, so a good bit of the plot is a chess game between the reporter and the killer. Though it was predictable, the intensity does hold up well and it's fun to watch.

I have to admit that part of my enjoyment of the film was in seeing Lauren Tewes playing a role other than The Love Boat's Julie. I'd never really thought much about it, but until this came along, I couldn't have named any other role she played. And the pairing of her with Jennifer Jason Leigh made the movie a fun watch. And Leigh did a a good job with a particularly challenging part. It was interesting watching her struggling as a blind and deaf teenager with a killer taunting her.

The cript could have used some tweaking to close a few of the more glaring plot holes, and there are some situations that, despite their tension, seem impausible.

Eyes of a Stranger passes the Bechdel test.

Ratings:

Me: 9

Christina: 8

Ethan: 7

Sean 3 out of 4

happy tunesday: whatever became of hubert?

 

Welcome to this Election Day edition of Tunesday.

I wanted something appropriate to the election that's not too partisan. So, since one of the candidates* is a former Vice President, here's a song about another former Vice President.

___________________________________

*Which one? I leave that to the reader.

a political reminder

With just a couple days to go before Election Day, and in the middle of the most contentious Presidential race in my lifetime, I'm going to reiterate a point I made a while back.

If you're posting a lot of political stuff on social media, and you're trying to influence my opinion, I have a couple tips for you.

• Don't make fun of names. If, in your argument, you bastardize the name of the candidate or party that you don't like, then I'm less likely to take you seriously. Referring to "tRump" or "the Demorats" doesn't do anything to convince me.
• Curate. If your Facebook feed is a long stream of questionable memes and links -- lies that have been debunked, or fatally flawed comparisons, then I am unlikely to take any of your memes seriously.

But, as I have said before, if you're posting to vent your spleen and have no real wish to sway me, then enjoy. But don't wonder why I didn't change my opinion.