Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Growing up as I did in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the Empire State Building and with the World Trade Center visible through my apartment Windows, everything seemed big. Even as an adult, I still hadn’t grazed the surface of what that big city had to offer. My mom would read the entertainment section of the New York Times, but I never got a sense of how much the city had to offer, other than movies, plays, restaurants, street fairs and museums. Eventually I learned about concerts, and of course there were events at our building or at our schools, etc. But I’m sure there were countless other events going on that we just didn’t know about. The thought of having a list of all of these in a pre-web era wasn’t really imaginable, at least to a young kid.When I moved to the Washington DC area, I marveled at all the events that were taking place on a daily basis. While DC is smaller than New York, if you take into account all the outlying areas, which had their own community events, you couldn’t do half of what was out there even if you didn’t work and dedicated all your free time to going to these things around the region every day.

Yet, whenever I had guests come to visit, I would often look in the Washington Post and not really find anything that interesting. Sure, there were museum exhibits and concerts, but after a while, trekking through the same museums gets a bit tiresome, and concerts can get expensive, and the smoke and noise eventually made them not the best venue, especially for older guests.

A couple of years ago we moved out to a suburb of DC called Vienna (Virginia). It’s a cute town that isn’t filled with the big box stores that you find in many other places. It does have some small strip malls, but about the only chains are a few grocery stores, and fast food restaurants, a Michaels, and that’s about it. Most of the stores are small one-shop deals. While it’s not old compared to many New England towns, at over 150, it also isn’t like some of the newer suburbs not far away that are filled with townhouses and McMansions. Among the more unique businesses in Vienna is a place that’s a coffee shop, music store, and concert venue in one, called Jammin’ Java. There are a couple of high-end wine stores that have just opened up this year. There are some great bicycle stores (The W&OD bike path runs right through the center of Vienna), some wonderful bakeries, a surprisingly large collection of ethnic restaurants, and also more high-end gourmet places in addition to the fast food, diners, etc. There are a number of gardens and parks in Vienna, some of which host outdoor concerts or movies, and there two weekly farmers markets. Vienna hosts street fairs, parades, a large variety of classes and events at its community center, town hall, library, and various businesses around the town.

The feel of Vienna to me, at least, is that of a “small” town, but it has a lot of resources, and things to do and see. The charms of this town weren’t lost on Money Magazine, which recently named Vienna it’s 4^th best place to live in the country.

Vienna’s website lists some of the more official events like parades, town meetings, etc., but I always thought there should be some organized list of events that was more comprehensive. Of course, we don’t just stay in Vienna all year, but travel around the region, and to other states, but the idea of having a list of things to do within walking distance or slightly more had some odd appeal to me. Maybe this had to do with growing up in Manhattan and being able to walk to many things. Or maybe it was just the fictionalized places on TV that charmed me – like Sicily, Alaska, or Everwood, Colorado.

Still, even for this small town, compiling such a list would have been a big pain. There have been online calendar systems out there for a while, but when Google launched theirs earlier this year, it impressed me as being easier and more powerful than previous ones. You can create your own calendars for private use, or use with a select group, or have one that’s completely public. You can have as many calendars as you want displayed, or you can “filter” out the ones you want to see at any given moment.

A bunch of people or businesses have started public Google calendars meant to help promote a business or resource and aid clientele. So, I thought, why not create something for Vienna? I searched for something like this but couldn’t find anything. I searched for calendars by Vienna businesses or associations and the only thing I found was one for the large concert arena called Wolftrap, whose address is technically Vienna, but which is still even further from the Vienna town center than the large business and commercial center called Tysons Corner whose postal address is McLean, VA.

So, I decided to start my own Vienna Google Calendar. Luckily some businesses like Jammin’ Java and the local Wholefoods at least have an online calendar, and of course there is the Vienna Virginia website’s calendar. To these I added some other events that I found from the local Michael’s, the Vienna-Tysons Regional Chamber of Commerce, Fairfax County Parks & Recreation, etc. I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but even so, it seems there’s stuff going on just about every day of the week, and usually multiple overlapping things, forcing you to pick and choose. Now I’ll admit that some of these things may not be of interest to many people, but still, it’s nice to know that there are lots of things going on just a few minutes away.

I’m trying to update the calendar as often as time allows, but for one already busy person, it can be a challenge. That’s why I’d like to make a request for some help. If you are a Vienna resident and come across this blog entry and would like to help out with the calendar, I would be grateful!

You can view an html version of the Google Calendar by clicking on the following link:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=0819geutosia1q06k831pnokv8%40group.calendar.google.com

But I recommend a more powerful way to view the calendar – create your own Google Calendar account. You can create your own calendar(s) for personal/family/friends, etc. And then you can search for public calendars of some interest and add those as ones you “subscribe to.” In addition to my Google Calendar, I also subscribe to Wolftrap’s, to one for Washington Cultural Events, and one for another eclectic coffee shop in Falls Church, VA. To find the Vienna Google Calendar, just go to Settings/Calendars/, hit the Add Calendars button at the bottom of the page, and then enter “Vienna, VA” in the Search Criteria, and it should be the first one that comes up.

In any case, it is kind of ironic that I’m doing this now, since I have an 11-month-old child that demands most of my free time and the only place she likes to be taken to is the neighborhood park!

Oh, I forgot you can actually embed Google calendar’s in web pages, so here’s an embeded version of the calendar:

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Vienna 4th best place to live in the U.S.!

Money Magazine has come out with its top 100 places to live in the U.S and my town is #4 on the list. I knew there was a reason we moved here! To be fair, though, I’m sure lots of deserving towns were not in this list and many in this list are probably questionable. The problem is that the criteria are all weighted the same, whereas for different people some criteria will by far outweigh others. So while my town might be a great place for me to live, it’s probably not the right place for a whole lot of people. At least money lets you program your own criteria on their site (from a limited list) so that you can produce one that might be more customized to your own needs.

The other odd thing about how they judge towns in this article is that they do it based on the post office address. So while Vienna’s city limits comprise a fairly compact area, it’s official address stretches much further, encompassing some areas that are very different from the main parts that most people associate as Vienna. The same is true of all of these towns, so I’m sure this had a big effect. There could very well be incredible places to live, but their city name also encompasses areas on their outskirts that may have crime problems, or bad schools, or perhaps where the houses are astronomical in price.

Still, I can’t help but to be glad that my town won something like this. The last time I recall there was a big news story that featured Vienna was when Robert Hannsen was caught passing secret documents to the KGB via drop-offs in Vienna parks. Hannsen also lived in Vienna.

For anyone who is already a Vienna resident or who is thinking of moving here, a few weeks ago I set up a Yahoo! Group devoted to things Vienna. It still hasn’t quite gotten off the ground, but maybe this #4 placement will be the start of something?

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The town I live in, Vienna, VA, has lots of things going for it. It has, I think, a small-town feel, but it’s still close to Washington, D.C. and has great services and community events. They have an official website, but there’s really no place to go online to discuss current events, local businesses, etc. When I lived in Adams Morgan there was a great and active Yahoo! Group devoted to discussing things relating to that DC neighborhood. I don’t know where else I would have found out about many of the things that went on there other than through that group. Vienna has a (printed) newsletter that’s sent out and the website, but I’m much more apt to read an email message than a newsletter, and certainly email is much quicker. So with that in mind I decided to create a Yahoo! Group for Vienna.

While many people subscribe to Yahoo! Groups, I thought that there are probably a big chunk who’ve never heard of them but might find this entry via a web search. Yahoo! Groups are mailing lists but you don’t need to access them via email. You can actually read them with a web browser. More recently Yahoo! has added RSS feeds (here’s the one for the group I just created), so you can read them also via your favorite web browser. Whether or not you are a resident (past or present) of Vienna, I would urge you to search Yahoo! Groups for your home town (or if you are in a large city, maybe even your local neighborhood). These days, people are so busy that they rarely have time for being part of an active local community, and I believe that at least having some virtual community might actually fight that trend. You may not get to see all of your “neighbors” face to face when you “meet” but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rely on each other for great information and support with community-related issues. If such a group doesn’t exist for your area, why not go ahead and start one yourself? It’s easy and you might really be able to create a terrific resource for those in your area.

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Brood X, these guys are called. I’m sure you’ve heard of them on the news, if you haven’t actually seen them in person. They come out every 17 years to breed, and thank goodness it isn’t more often. We don’t even have it as bad as some other folks I know. A friend of ours has piles of dead cicadas or their molts on his curb, like fall leaves! Nothing like moving into a new house only to be inundated by huge bugs. At least they don’t bite or destroy your plants, but still! There is also the sound they make. To me it sounds like an old Star Trek phaser. But it is constant. They seem to make this sound only in the mornings and maybe early afternoons, but not at night. It can get a bit much especially if there are a good number fairly close by.

I definitely have thought about eating them, because they are likely to be excellent sources of protein, vitamins, and minerals, but even though I can be somewhat adventurous, somehow I can’t see actually bringing these things into the house. Some guy tried some and ended up in the hospital, but unless you have food allergies, the worste you will probably get is nausea or indegestion.

Last night we went out into the back yard and the grass was literally crawling with the things, which were heading toward the nearest tree. It was too dark to take any good shots last night, but I finally got around to taking a few this morning. I’m going to try again tomorrow maybe, since these were taken in a hurry, and are not the best shots. Also, I don’t have the software here at work to get anything other than the imbedded 640×480 jpeg, whereas most of the shots I have available for viewing are 800×600, so once I get the chance I will get these replaced by larger shots.

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This weekend I went with a group of buddies to The Preakness. These guys know I’m a big low-carb follower and tease me about it sometimes in a good-natured way. I have heard stories from others who get lots of flak from their friends or coworkers about eating low-carb, but I suppose this is probably happening less these days with the popularity of such plans.

For the first time I can remember, though, I did get into somewhat of a debate about the efficacy of such plans. I don’t mind debating about this stuff, but I always feel unprepared because I don’t have actual studies that I can pull out to prove a point. What I did get out of this discussion was that there are studies purporting to “prove” or at least indicate a connection between low-carb eating and health benefits as well as low-carb eating and health dangers. Without looking at these studies individually, and reading them carefully and fully, you can’t use them for any kind of ammunition. You can punch holes through studies which on the surface seem fine, but when you dig deeper you find that they don’t account for some important variables, or that they use animal models instead of human models, or that they are flawed in of a million different ways. Unfortunately most studies are funded by a company or even a government institution that could be considered somewhat to obviously biased. These groups have agendas, and whether they are blatant about theirs to the scientists they give money to or not, theirs at least a subconscious understanding that one should bite the hand that feeds you. Look at what’s been revealed in the medical industry with the Neurontin debacle. Cynicism has lead me really to not believe anything I read in the papers reporting the benefits or dangers of any drug or diet. I don’t have the time or energy to read all these studies word for word, so I suppose I will just reserve judgment until I have cause to do so.

Anyway, we went to Philips for lunch on Sunday. Philips is a regional chain of seafood restaurants around here, and like many other chains, they have started to include a section for low-carbers. It was nice that with their low-carb entrees they offered both a veggie and a salad, whereas on other entrées if you wanted to add a salad you had to pay. So, I ordered a broiled salmon and when the waiter came and started handing out our plates and saying what was on them, he said for mine “low-carb salmon.” Ok, well, maybe it’s not that bad, but Salmon is not low carb or high carb, it is NO carb! Ok, so maybe he’s just referring to the plate and not the fish, but I still thought it was funny.

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At our new house we have a quarter acre, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot, and doesn’t even look like a huge amount of land, but let me tell you, when you are obligated to mow a quarter of an acre, even subtracting the areas that have no grass like the house, the driveway, etc., well, it’s a lot!

I spent the first 30 years of my life in either a New York City Apartment or various dorms, townhouses, and such, none of which I had to mow a lawn at. I actually mowed my first lawn when I was maybe 22, when I went to visit my brother and he threatened to make me mow his lawn. Having never done this, of course, I decided it would be fun, and for a 22-year-old kid who had never lived outside of a midtown Manhattan apartment on the 15th floor, it was!

I did live in a house for a couple of years when I was in my early thirties, but somehow managed to mow the lawn only once, perhaps because roommates and our landlord was nice enough to do it before I had the chance (or realized it should be mowed).

Of course both my previous experiences with mowing were from gas-powered self-propelled mowers. We decided that we wanted to be more ecologically friendly and buy an electric, which is not self-propelled. Not only do you have to push the thing continuously, but you have to be constantly on your guard that you are not going to run over the power cord, which has to reach for up to 80 or more feet at points at the far end of our yard! It basically took me the entire day on Sunday. Now, granted this is my first time mowing on this lawn and with this mower and I should become more efficient, but I’m a bit doubtful at doing much better than halving the time, which means I will probably be looking at two or three hourse! I will say that it was great exercise, but on the other hand, I am feeling like I was roughed up by some bodyguards today!

I’m sure the 80% or so of you out there who grew up around lawns and having intimate experience with mowing are laughing at the poor city slicker all of a sudden realizing what buying a house means! Although I would never call myself a “slicker!” Isn’t there a term for a guy who grew up in a city apartment with all it implies as far as lack of skills in home-related areas, but who never took advantage of all the things that a major city like NYC is famous for, with the exception of restaurants? Of course we went to a museum every once in a while, but many of these trips were via school. We went to tourist attractions like the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, etc. when we had visitors from out of town. We saw a few plays throughout the years, including Death of a Salesman, Fences, Cats, Biloxi Blues, The Wiz, and probably a few others I’m forgetting. But nothing a visitor who came once a year for a weekend couldn’t have experienced. I grew up a nerdy introverted guy and so never even considered going to any of the bountiful clubs in the city. So in a way I feel like I missed out not only on the world that I wasn’t exposed to, but even to the one I was. Oh well, at least this gives me stuff to be excited to learn about later in life and to write about here!

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Well, after lots of cleaning, de-cluttering, picture-taking and calculating, we have finally gotten our condo listed! Here is a link to it on erealty.com, for some reason it doesn’t come up on a search via realtor.com. I’ll try to elaborate a little since you have so little room in the listing for a description:

First of all, it is in a 4-floor building called The Bedford” which is almost exactly in the middle of the block (between 18th and 19th Streets) on California. The Bedford is a pet-friendly building on a surprisingly quiet block for being so close to the excitement of 18th street, the main drag of Adams Morgan, with all its great restaurants, clubs, and stores. It’s also only a 5-10 minute walk from the newly vibrant U-Street Corridor, and the vast array of offerings in Dupont Circle. It’s also just a couple of minutes to Kalorama Park which has lots of dog-walkers, frisbee tossers, and parents and children hanging out in its various sections.

As for the apartment itself, it’s up one flight of steps (or maybe one and a half if you count the few steps up to the front entrance of the building), it is a one-bedroom one-bath unit with high ceilings. Both the kitchen and bath have been renovated (right before my wife bought the place 3 years ago). The bathroom has a stone surface to the sink, brushed aluminum lighting, a kind of water-washed (I’m not sure what else to call it) wood framing to the mirrors, etc. The kitchen has lots of countertop, very nice cabinet with a built-in wine rack, a fridge with an ice-maker, a built-in microwave, and a ceramic/glas flat cooktop, etc. The kitchen also has the working home security alarm in it which conveys with the apartment.

The kitchen is open – you can cook and see/talk to people in the living room which the kitchen looks out onto. Both the living room and the kitchen have exposed brick walls and recessed halogen lighting. The living room has a wood burning fireplace and a little alcove/nook where my wife got a local artisan to custom design a desk to fit in this unique space. This is a way to have an “office” without really having an office!

The foyer is actually a decently-sized area and has these unique curved walls and a brushed aluminium chandelier which add character to the place from as soon as you walk in.

The bedroom is actually quite large with three windows, and gets some good light during most of the day. There’s also a good amount of closet space, although we supplemented by putting a wardrobe in, which I think is going to convey. It has terracota pleated shades which do convey.

In addition to the closents and cabinets, there is also a storage unit down in the basement for extra storage, and also a bike rack.

Finally, here are pictures that I’ve taken over the last couple of days:

The Bedford:

The Foyer:

The Bathroom:

Bathroom again:

Bedroom:

Bedroom again:

Bedroom again:

Kitchen:

Kitchen again:

Kitchen again:

Living Room:

Living Room again:

Alcove with Desk:

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Housing in the DC area has, as anyone in the know will tell you, has gotten completely insane. No, it’s not like New York City where you can’t even FIND a place to rent. It is more just in terms of buying as opposed to renting. I remember back several years ago when some of my coworkers were first starting to buy places. Some of these people were just out of college, and I’d been out of college for five or six years by then and I was not at all ready to delve into the market. Part of that was my love for gadgets and my inability to actually hold to a budget. The people who bought then saw their property take off like the dot com bubble, but unlike that bubble, there’s yet to be any popping in this one, if it can even be called a bubble. First time home owners now find themselves having to either settle for something very small, something very run down, or something pretty far outside of DC. Prices have basically doubled for much of the market over just four or five years. Part of the issue seems to be a decreasing number of houses on the market, or at least houses that are relatively close to downtown DC. The other part is that interest rates are still extremely low, in fact pretty much at the lowest they have been, at least in the last 50 years I think.

Luckily, my wife was one of those people who bought her condo a while back. Not that long ago – only three years – but long enough to see a decent amount of equity built up. Without that equity there would just be no way for us to afford looking for something bigger in an area that was relatively close to the city and in a good neighborhood.

We started looking a couple of weeks ago and immediately saw a house we loved in the Pimmit Hills neighborhood of Falls Church, VA. We put what we thought was a really good bid down of $22K OVER the listing price. Yet, as it turned out, we were only in the “middle” of ten bids on the house! Moreover, seven of those ten bids waived inspection contingency! We actually wanted to do this ourselves but couldn’t bring ourselves to waive this without the ability to do a pre-inspection.

So, when we went looking again last weekend and decided we really liked this one place in Vienna, VA, we wanted to submit a bid that would match the craziness of the market, while of course not being over what we felt we could afford. It ended up being more than 20% over the listing price!

For some reason they would not let us do a pre-inspection of the place. Pre-inspections, for those unfamiliar, are used by some prospective home buyers in this market so that they can be reasonably assured that there aren’t serious things wrong with the house that aren’t visible to the novice. The idea is that if you can get some assurance that there aren’t big problems, this gives you the confidence to waive your inspection contingency, which of course makes your bid much more attractive to the seller than those that have not waived it. An inspection contingency, for those who have yet to go through the home-buying process, is just a clause in the contract that says if problems are found in the house that require repair, the person selling the house is responsible for making those repairs (and paying for them) or else the buyer can walk away. Without a pre-inspection and without an inspection contingency, the buyer has no insurance at all that there might not be $30K, $40K or more in additional hidden costs. Of course the buyer can walk away after making a winnign bid on the house (if their subsequent inspection shows serious, expensive problems with the house), but then they forfeit the “earnest money” or “binder” security deposit that is customarily put down with the bid, and which is usually a considerable amount of money.

Our lack of success the previous week, the disappointment in the face of all this work trying to find a place that met our criteria, actually going out and looking at all these houses, lots of searching online, etc., all of these made us determined that our next bid should have an extremely good chance of winning. Still, the problem was that we didn’t want to fly blind by going in without any pre-inspection or waiving the inspection contingency. Many people, as it turns out, wave this contingency whether they are able to pre-inspect or not, and so we would have immediately made our contract one of the lesser attractive ones by including it. Our agent then came up with an ingenious solution! We submitted an inspection contingency, but it was one that stated that we would take on the first $10K of potential repairs needed. Even with this, the owner and her agent wanted us to remove it, in which case they said the house was ours. We still did not want to eliminate it completely, so we finally upped it to $15K, and this did the trick.

This all took place very quickly! We saw the house on Saturday, met with our agent on Sunday evening, but the contract in on Monday morning, and were told we had won the bid by about 5pm on Monday!

The house, as I mentioned is in Vienna, VA, a place that I actually lived for almost 3 years and then moved out of to live with my now wife in DC. The house is across from a small park and actually not far from the house that I moved from, which is still occupied by friends who are buying it from the other friends who had rented it to us.

On Wednesday we did a home inspection and from that it seems like we are in pretty good shape. There are only a couple of things that really should get attention sooner rather than later, but these should amount to well under $1000 to fix. As it turns out, there are a lot of old appliances that work perfectly well, but they are at the end of their life expectancy, so we will probably be budgeting some replacement appliances in the coming months/year, if we don’t decide to replace some before we actually move. We have about a month between closing and when we will probably move, so this will give us a chance to make some minor or even some major fixes while the house is still empty. We are also considering a few improvements to the house, including finishing the basement, knocking out a kitchen wall and putting new counters/cabinets in the kitchen, etc. Probably most if not all of these will wait for a while and the appliances will be more of a budgeting priority.

As we did the inspection, I felt like I was learning a lot. I grew up in an apartment a few blocks down from the Empire State Building in New York City, stayed in dorm buildings in college and grad school, and even after coming to DC, the majority of my time has been spent in condos, garden apartments, and townhomes. Maybe a total of 3-4 years of my life has been spent in a single-family house, and those were generally group houses where we had landlords that did most of the work in the house. So, although I’m excited, and at the same time I’m a bit terrified about delving into this very demanding endeavor of home-owning! As it is I often feel like I don’t have enough time in the day, and now I have a whole new set of things to learn, and then actually do! So, fixing things, renovating stuff, etc. Then there’s the back yard. It’s pretty big and it’s been nicely maintained by the current owner, but I need to get knowledgeable about this stuff quick or I feel like it’s all going to go to pot! And that doesn’t even take into consideration the ambition I have of setting up an organic garden. I’ve gone looking on Amazon.com for books on gardening and home repair and thankfully there looks like there are some very good ones out there, but as a slow reader, I feel like I need to start reading now, and keep reading every spare second I can get before we actually take possession of the house!

We actually take possession on May 1. However, we probably won’t actually move in until June. The reason for this is because we want to sell our current place first, but we can’t sell it at the moment, partly due to some painting and cleaning, and partly because our building had a fire in one of the basement units which is being restored currently. The unit is in the front and is still boarded up, though, and the soot from the fire still coats part of the façade, so we are afraid with this first impression, many people may just write the place off before giving it a fair shot. We think, hope, this external work will be more or less complete by the end of April, so we hope to sell the condo in early May, then we will have a few weeks to pack and to get some stuff done at the new place. We may get the hardwood floors refinished, put some carpeting in the basement; get some new appliances, etc. But of course a lot of this is dependent on how much our condo sells for, because that’s where the money will be coming from! We do not want to go into additional debt for stuff that doesn’t have to be renovated or replaced…

So, that has been my beginning in the whacky world of home-owning. Here are some pictures that we took when we were doing the house inspection. You can click on them to get a larger image:

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Me and my wife decided to take a quick stroll around the neighborhood today since it is an unseasonably warm 65 degrees on this leapyear day. There’s a small park in our neighborhood which we go to far too seldomly, and this proved a nice place to relax and take a few pictures. I thought I’d post a few here:

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Last night we went to see The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly at the new AFI Theater in Silver Spring, MD. This was only the second time I’ve been to this place, but I have a feeling (or at least a hope) that I will be coming here a lot more often in the future. It is just to great a resource to have in one’s backyard. The first time we were in one of the smaller theaters, but this time it was what I’m guessing to be their main one and it was quite large. Of course the fact that they brew real espresso for you and have beer on tap doesn’t hurt, but the selection of movies, the print quality and their bringing in people involved in the making of the movie to field questions from the audience makes it a unique resource.

Eli Wallach (no relation, unfortunately) was actually at this screening. He talked and answered questions from the audience before the movie. For a man of 88, he sure was amazing! He could rattle off details about the making of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in addition to many other movies. A couple of interesting notes – he said one of his favorite movies he was in was his first, Baby Doll. He also mentioned a bunch of movies that he loves which he wasn’t in, but I can’t recall them unfortunately. He is a big fan of French cinema, and used to watch it when he was a young, struggling actor. He is actually writing an autobiography, so hopefully we will see that out next year some time – he has a lot of ground to cover and it sounded like he was only half or a little more through it!

This screening of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, was actually the premier screening of the new extended English language version. As Wallach told us, Sergio Leoni, in addition to many Italian directors at the time, would film the entire movie with a certain time of soundtrack (can’t recall what he called it now) which recorded sounds, but probably not all that well, and would catch all kinds of background noise as well. Then in the editing phase all the actors would come in and lip-synch their parts. This is what Wallach and Clint Eastwood did. He said he spent 7 months doing this after the movie was filmed! Anyway, apparently some of the scenes they shot were tossed aside and never recorded in post-production. I guess eventually these shots were reincorporated into an extended version that was made available in a language or languages other than English – or maybe even these were kept in the original non-English version of the film. But for whatever reason, a longer English version was not made until now. The makers of this version actually got Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood back in the recording studio to dub in their voices again for the new scenes. It was fairly obvious which scenes they were, partly because I’ve seen the movie a few times and so didn’t recognize the new scenes as ones I’d seen before. But also, you could tell a difference in the characters’ voices over the 36 years since it was initially filmed! Eli Wallach’s voice had become a bit higher in tone and Clint Eastwood’s a bit lower. The lip-synching seemed more noticeable in these scenes as well, although some of them were seamless enough that they could have been recorded 36 years ago and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if I was seeing the movie for the first time. Actually, for anyone seeing the film for the first time, I wonder whether they will be able to distinguish these new scenes from the old at all!

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