By JAMIE SHANKS of the Weyburn Review
What can you buy for six million bucks? That's in Canadian dollars,
of course.
Let's see.
You could treat yourself to exactly 4,724,409 Super Big Gulps; or about 300,000 copies of the new Foo Fighters CD (give or take a hundred grand, depending on how hard you shop around); or, if you fancy, you could rent Caligula every night for 16,000 years and watch the scene where you get a toilet's-eye-view of a Roman emperor blowing his chow - but only if you spring for the cost of mail-ordering the saucy European version from Penthouse publisher and world-renowned scumbag Bob Guccione, and frankly, even if I had six big ones, I wouldn't bother.
Or you could pay the repair bill for the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Col. Steve Austin, which includes installation charges for a pair of new bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye to replace his old, substandard factory-equipped ones. You may have instantly sunk your sizable wad in one go, it is true, but look at the incredible results of your investment.
You have made him better stronger faster. He can punch a hole in a battleship. He can gallop like the wind. He can use his built-in zoom lens to check out babes on topless beaches from atop the tallest skyscraper. He can also now go on to star in an increasingly cheesy TV action/adventure series in which he will do bionic battle with killer robots, aliens, and even a bionic Sasquatch. Man, what a show. I loved how his boss, Oscar Goldman, would whip off his glasses and look amazed at all that bionic hogwash.
But wait! There appears to be one or two little problems with our cyborg hero. For one thing, if Col. Austin attempted to lift anything superhumanly heavy, his nuclear-powered arm would be ripped clean out of his shoulder socket. That's because, if I'm not mistaken, bionic shoulder reinforcement does not appear anywhere on his parts invoice.
On top of that, the macho colonel happens to be an ex-stud test pilot and a former astronaut - meaning any challenge to fight with one arm tied behind his back is unlikely to be refused lest the boys back at the base hear about it. I, of course, get to pick which arm and have first choice of barstools.
Ahh, but all of this is academic. (I just love writing that.) Yes, alllll of this is academic, my friends. The biggest problem is that a million smackers just doesn't buy what it used to. For instance, back in 1972, which is around when The Six Million Dollar Man premiered, you could pick up a prime rib roast for a mere $1.29 a pound, whereas today that same roast would set you back $5.30 a pound - thanks to roughly 410 per cent of cumulative inflation since then.
Using these numbers and some Grade 10 math, I estimate that a bionic man who cost $6 million to produce 25 years ago would now ding you for about $24,600,000 or, in prime rib terms, about $98,400 a pound. Granted, this entire calculation was based on the price of roast beef in 1972, but nevertheless I stand by my work.
Obviously Steve Austin's original price tag just isn't gonna cut the mustard. So what are they going to call him in the new bionic motion picture that is supposedly being planned? The "Twenty-Four Point Six Million Dollar Man"? Bit of a bionic mouthful if you ask me.
Why don't they remake The Fall Guy instead? Wouldn't cost a
dime.
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