Word: rent
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Philip Drummond (Diff'rent Strokes...
GOING, GOING...RENTED! When priceline.com put airfares and hotel rooms on the cyberblock, online auctions became the deal-seeking traveler's best friend. Now Budget Rent a Car wants a piece of the action: at www.bid.drivebudget.com customers can name their price for, say, four days in a Dodge in Denver--and then hope Budget accepts the offer. Blackout dates apply, so don't expect deals in peak travel periods...
Here is a standard time-travel movie, tarted up with a lot of virtual-reality twaddle. Shuttling back and forth between the present and a distinctly low-rent version of Los Angeles in 1937, a techno-nerd (Craig Bierko) must consider the possibility that he murdered his mentor-boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and doesn't remember doing so. While he creates an agreeably menacing atmosphere, Rusnak never makes us care particularly about anyone. One finds oneself praying for a wowing special-effects sequence. Or anything else that would jolt this movie out of its inconsequence...
...world's smallest countries, but the Monegasque ruling family generates more tabloid fodder per square mile than the Windsors. The saga of Caroline and her younger sister Stephanie is low rent compared with the Brits', but their celebrity and notoriety help attract tourists--as did their father Rainier III's 1956 marriage to the actress Grace Kelly, who died in a 1982 crash. If only brother Albert could find a bride like dear old Mom--and sire an heir. Otherwise, France has the right to gobble up Monaco...
...course, there are those whose intentions were malign but not all that influential, whose perniciousness petered out. Father Coughlin's anti-Semitic rants on the wireless never really amounted to much. Preacher Billy Sunday swore that when Prohibition finally came, "Hell would be rent forever." Fat chance of that happening anytime soon. George Wallace's cry of "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" lasted only a decade before it was relegated to the dustbin of ugly 19th century prejudices. Call this the When Bad People Don't Do All That Much Damage theory of history...