38 days.

It goes by so fast. One moment, you’re deciding whether to settle on happies around the corner or crossing town for dinner, a decision hinging strictly on whether the dog’s bladder can hold out. The next, a satisfactory evening is met after watching the oldest perform sock puppet theater to the point of exhaustion. Although for the record, the socks went to bed on the feet.

Because I felt it such a wasted opportunity for Ben Quayle to not backdrop his patriotism with the required dose of Brad Fiedel’s thunder.

The trailer for The Expendables fills me with the same giddy expectation that teased my inner ’80s action hero a few years back. I’m thinking specifically of the silly thrill that permeated my art house veneer when the Rambo reboot reared its mulletesque head – meaning I’ll relish the film best as a 3-minute short and never take the time to watch it in its entirety.

A few unsolicited observations:

Stallone’s kryptonite, the “hot missionary in trouble” storyline.

I never noticed how much Statham’s baldness is actually born out of necessity.

The inclusion of Jet Li, a silly ploy designed to eliminate all hackneyed quips about Stallone’s monosyllabic delivery. This will fail, especially in lieu of Stallone’s insistence on penning a scene built around him and Schwarzenegger talking.

As typical in Hollywood, the only no-name featured is the black dude. Someone should shitkick the marketeer who didn’t think the text “and the guy who played President Camacho” wouldn’t have lassoed a key demographic.

Way too little Lundgren.

I mean wow. Just wow.

RELATED: CINEMATICAL WITH THE H/T

Mom’s Italian. 100% And while she could have poured the over-exuberant passion that is the genetic cross my people bear into anything obvious – food, language, Catholicism, music, Sophia Loren – she opted at an early age to funnel my genetic disposition into her love for the cinema.

We’d go every week, right after church, our reward for the pennance that was 10AM mass. And without cable television, without a VCR, my cinematic cravings were only sated on the homefront via the weekly sit-down with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Fortunately, they were accessible via rabbit ears.

As far as my wonder years go, there was nothing on television that proved more influential than Sneak Previews, the duo’s original incarnation of their Siskel & Ebert format which ran through 1982. In retrospect, I’d be hard pressed to not flag it as the best show ever.

I shit you not. I’ll gladly go mano-e-mano with whatever overlauded American masterwork of scripted entertainment you can throw into the ring on this one, cochise. In my humble opinion, no American television program was as consistently intelligent, informative and – perhaps most importantly – flat out entertaining as the twentysome years that these two ruled the balcony; perhaps thousands of half hours that constitute, in retrospect, the greatest film class ever – for me, you, anyone.

If they boxed this shit on DVD, I’d buy it. From the moment I saw them gush enthusiastically over The Empire Strikes Back, I can honestly say that I rarely missed an episode – even with the hurdles set forth by collegiate hangovers, women and Siskel’s untimely death in 1999. I was – and even still am with the current Michael Phillips / A.O. Scott incarnation still am – this show’s bitch.

Was.

This past week, Disney put out the final word:

“After 24 seasons with us in national syndication, the highly regarded movie review show “At the Movies” (formerly known as “Siskel & Ebert” and “Ebert & Roeper”) will air its last original broadcast the weekend of August 14, 2010. This was a very difficult decision, especially considering the program’s rich history and iconic status within the entertainment industry, but from a business perspective it became clear this weekly, half-hour, broadcast syndication series was no longer sustainable. We gratefully acknowledge the outstanding work of the program’s current co-hosts A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips and top-notch production staff, and it is with heartfelt appreciation that we extend very special thanks to the two brilliant, visionary and incomparable critics that started it all, Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel.”

And now, it’s over. In his online journal, Ebert recapped his feelings as eloquently as befits this giant of journalism, but he actually officially closed the balcony two years back, when he wrote:

I was surprised how depressed I felt all day on July 21, when Richard and I announced we were leaving the "Ebert and Roeper" program. To be sure, our departures were voluntary. We hadn’t been fired. And because of my health troubles, I hadn’t appeared on the show for two years. But I advised on co-hosts, suggested movies, stayed in close communication with Don DuPree, our beloved producer-director. The show remained in my life. Now, after 33 years, it was gone – taken in a "new direction." And I was fully realizing what a large empty space it left behind.

Yes, we’re planning to continue the traditional format in a new venue, and taking the thumbs along with us. I’m involved in that, and it will be a great consolation. But somehow I thought the show Gene Siskel and I began would roll on forever. How many other TV formats had survived so long? I sat in my chair and day-dreamed.

I remembered a Saturday afternoon, it must have been the winter of 1975-76, when Gene and I were eating hamburgers in Oxford’s Pub on Lincoln Av. with Thea Flaum, a young woman who would produce the show for WTTW, the Chicago PBS station. You didn’t read her name in the news coverage of our departures, but she was the real "creator" of the show, as TV uses that term.

She told us she would build a balcony for us, and sit us across the aisle from one another. She told us we couldn’t wear suits and ties – no one wore them to the movies. She came up with the idea of Spot the Wonder Dog. The show was monthly at first. On Sunday afternoons before a taping, we would separately sit across her dining room table from her and rehearse our scripts. We had "discussion points" we tried to memorize.

We were bad at that. If one guy dropped a discussion point, the other guy got mad. "We can’t remember these points," Gene said, "but we can talk to each other." During that first season (the show was called "Opening Soon at a Theater Near You"), the final format took shape. In the pub that day, Thea told us, "You boys have no idea how far this show is going to go. One day you’ll be in national syndication. You’ll be making real money. You wait and see."

Her prophecy came true. The day we fully realized it in our guts, I think, was the first time we were invited to appear with Johnny Carson. We were scared out of our minds. We’d been briefed on likely questions by one of the show’s writers, but moments before airtime he popped his head into the dressing room and said, "Johnny may ask you for some of your favorite movies this year."

Gene and I stared at each other in horror. "What was one of your favorite movies this year?" he asked me. "Gone With the Wind," I said. The Doc Severinsen orchestra had started playing the famous "Tonight Show" theme. Neither one of us could think of a single movie. Gene called our office in Chicago. "Tell me some movies we liked this year," he said. This is a true story.

Now the time has come to awake from my daydream. That’s all history – treasured history, but past and gone, all the same. I remember what Gene said to me in that dressing room before the Carson Show: "Roger, we’re a couple of kids from the Midwest. We don’t belong here."

For the sake of it, sit through their review of Cop and a Half.

Two things I love about that clip; Siskel’s reaction, as it often was when either found themselves in complete disagreement, masterful in how universal its bafflement was. Yet on the flip side, their enthusiasm for something they liked almost – almost – always produced a feeling that you simply had to see something that garnered a "Thumbs Up", just to experience the enthusiasm felt. Even Cop and a Half, but perhaps on cable. Basic. With rabbit ears.