One day last week I was walking down the street when a van with blacked-out windows pulled up to the curb. Three masked men jumped out and before I knew it they were bundling me into the back of the vehicle. They chloroformed me and for a while I was out.
When I came to, the van was pulling up to a building, a brand-new skyscraper with a Japanese name on the front that I didn’t catch. They hustled me into the building, which seemed deserted, and on to an elevator. We rode the elevator to the top floor.
I still had no idea what was going on, but when they headed for a flight of stairs that led to the roof, I realized that they intended to push me off. So I broke free and ran into a ventilator shaft. Miraculously, there was a semiautomatic pistol in the shaft, and I used it to dispatch the three ruffians.
Dazed, I rode back down the elevator and left the building, looking around for a likely spot to call an Uber. Suddenly the front doors to the building burst open and the leader of the gang stumbled out, firearm in hand. This time I took no chances and finished him off.
It was not until I got back to civilization that I realized what had happened. The purpose of my kidnapping was to enable Steve Hayward to stage a coup. While I was occupied, he seized control of Power Line’s back end and posted an unauthorized Week In Pictures. Why? To promote the heretical theory that Die Hard is a Christmas movie!
I have tried to set Steve straight on this in the past. Sure, the action takes place on Christmas Eve. But that is coincidental: the party could just as well have been celebrating Valentine’s Day. And the action of the film—which is largely horrifying, by the way—has nothing to do with Christmas themes of peace and joy.
All kinds of films happen to be set around the end of the year. Has anyone ever claimed that Rambo is a Christmas movie? Of course not! And yet:
The Duke of Wellington observed acidly that being born in Ireland does not make one an Irishman. Likewise, being set around year-end does not make a film a Christmas movie.
But enough argument: let’s go to the ultimate authority, John McClane himself (language alert):
I rest, as someone once said, my case. I trust we will see no more heresy here at Power Line. So here goes with an orthodox Week In Pictures:
Headlines of the week:
And finally…
