Odyssey

I am starting to see a divide in the YouTube pundits over Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

They either love it or hate it.

I think I spotted the why of it.

It's the same as when Paul Verhoeven did Starship Troopers.

Some people loved it.

Some people hated it.

There's no middle ground.

So I asked the people who loved it, "Why?"

They loved it because it's a funny, sci-fi action movie.

"What about all the changes from the book?"

"Book?  What book?"

And there's your divide.

The people who hated Starship Troopers wanted to see the book, not an unrelated property with character names from the book.

I'm willing to bet that the people who don't like Nolan's Odyssey are in the same camp.

They wanted Homer's epic, verbatim.

PS: John Leguizamo is an epic hypocrite!  John, if you're going to whine about Anglos in Hispanic roles, you shouldn't take on roles where you're not playing an Hispanic character.  Or roles where the character is significantly older than you, what about all the genuinely elderly actors who need the work, John? 

Unwilling Suspension Of Disbelief

Because I'm a gamer and because I have Amazon Prime, I get the animated productions from Critical Role.

The most recent outing, "The Mighty Nein," has messed with my suspension of disbelief with a musical number.

In a burlesque style strip club they played a speakeasy jazz number.

Nothing about the way it's been presented lead me to expect music or technology past the 13th century.

I sometimes wonder if most fantasy worlds can best be explained by the Aladdin theory that it's set after an apocalypse that dimly remembers the world before, but not very accurately.

True Crime

The Lovely Harvey reads true crime stories.

We're watching "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood," which includes a fictionalized version of the Sharon Tate murder.

Fictionalized in the respect that Sharon Tate is not murdered.

Oh, spoiler alert for a seven year old movie, I guess.

She's already spotted that it's not going exactly to the facts in how far along Ms Tate was in her pregnancy.

Wait until she gets to the end!

You're Going To Have To Be More Specific Drew

Drew Carey says Angelenos shouldn't vote for Spencer Pratt because he's a "serial scammer."

He doesn't, however, say how that distinguishes Mr Pratt from the other candidates. 

I guess he tried by saying, "I understand being angry/unsatisfied, but at least get behind someone competent and not some serial scammer without a soul or moral compass."

Again, how is Mr Pratt different from the other candidates? 

Oh That's Why

There's so many creative people I've stopped watching since 2016...  November 2016 come to think of it.

Europeans really don't get us.

The more I see them explain my motives for things without asking me, I also understand why they don't understand.  They don't want to.

They think we're like them and when we, repeatedly, demonstrate different they get petulant.

Scandinavia vs the World is the first place it really hit home for me.

Lazer Pig is the most recent.

He really supports Ukraine.  Everything side tracks to how the US isn't doing our part to support what he wants.

Our part?  Why the fuck is any of this our problem?  And if it's our problem, then you're blaming the wrong president and political party, fucktard.

And if you don't support Ukraine he has a huge video that explains why you're wrong and evil and fell for propaganda...  But if you look hard at what he's saying and how he's saying it, then if you DO support Ukraine then you're wrong, and evil and fell for propaganda but it's OK this time because it's HIS propaganda.  FuzzyGeff was unable to finish the video.

I took a break from him, and History of Everything, about here. 

And he gets around to blaming the wrong president and political party by name in what is supposedly a video about the Challenger II tank.

The asides about Russia getting Trump elected by a supposed historian...  then I realized something.  Lazer Pig is a gay man.

Trump is literally Hitler to the LGBTQSS.

Click.

Got it.

Adventure Action Boredom

I just hit me why the sequels to The Curse of the Black Pearl fell flat for me.

The complicated fight sequence is a pause in the plot.  The longer that runs, the longer I have to wait before the story starts moving again.

Especially since the story doesn't depend on that fight being there.

Especially since it's obvious that the fight with deadly weapons will not result in any bloodshed, let alone a death, because all of the principals are essential to the plot.

A plot on hold while they have their flashy little tiff. 

Blacklist

I've been watching, and enjoying, the NBC show "The Blacklist."

It's a bit formulaic, but lots of fun.

James Spader is a joy in this role.

Not the smallest matter of fun is his chosen pistol is a Browning Hi-Power.

Glad!

The HP is one of my all-time favorite nine millimeters.

If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up!

The Highwaymen

Way back when the Kevin Costner movie "The Highwaymen" came out, I mentioned that I enjoyed it, but something just stuck that didn't at the time, though Beans mentioned it in the comments.

It's the first Bonnie and Clyde movie where the good guys are portrayed as the protagonists.

The Barrow gang were murdering criminals.  They were not the good guys, no matter how romanticized Hollywood wants them to be.

The realization of how rare it is for Hollywood to let the actual good guys be the heroes of the story really hits home.

It's remarkable and I am remarking on it.

Related is the constant refusal to take their own culture's side when portraying historical events.

That culture is the only reason your commie asses get to be millionaires, you should appreciate it more!

Of course, they're just emulating Herr Marx.  Not producing anything of value while mooching off friends and cheating on their spouses. 

I cannot think of how much better the world would be if McCarthy had owned a helicopter. 

Unami

Watching "Poker Face" and a character offers another some demerara sugar.

He said it added an unami tone to the coffee.

A bag of it is just $5 on Amazon, so we said, "what the Hell?"

I added a tablespoon to my coffee and...  mildly sweet with unami.

Who the Hell knew?

I don't normally take sugar with my coffee either.

This will be the second time we've tried something from a show we watched that worked out great.

Smash burgers from "The Menu" being the first. 

RIP

Crazy man, commentator and cartoonist Scott Adams has succumbed to cancer.

I've been missing Dilbert since the scolds went after him.

Can't Go Too Far Wrong

If you find yourself wondering how you should feel about any given issue, just find out what the dancing monkeys are saying about it.

Do the opposite of what they say to do and you're going to be OK almost all of the time.

How old IS the song that reminded us that we don't need Niel Young around?

53 years.

There you go. 

That's Where We Lost You?

Harvey and I watched "Primitive War" tonight.

The Vietnam War with dinosaurs!

A couple of small things I noticed.

It's set in 1968 and the M203 wasn't fielded until 1969.

An XM177E2 shouldn't have a plastic stock.

A 1968 AKM shouldn't have a groove in the stock.

YOU NEED TO COCK A SINGLE ACTION PISTOL FOR IT TO WORK!

Interestingly, the people making the dinosaurs were using the latest scientific ideas for how they looked.  The CG wasn't awful, but they definitely needed more budget to realize the vision.

Nitpicks aside, the equipment was remarkably accurate for the period.

I wonder how many of the extras were recruited from Vietnam reinactors. 

Meathead In The Fire

Rob Reiner has died.

Considering how often he lectured me about my politics, I will not miss him much.

He made a lot of stuff I enjoyed watching, and if he'd limited himself to letting his art speak for him, I'd prolly be more upset.

Update: It's being investigated as a homicide.

RIP

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has passed to the actors home in the sky.

His career had some surprising turns for me.

Sometimes You're Speaking Gibberish

"I meant what it said.  If I could have said it any differently, I would have."

- Stanley Kubrick

That was Mr Kubrick's response to being asked what he was trying to say with Barry Lyndon.

With that answer in mind, you have to assume that gibbering like a mad man was what Mr Kubrick mostly intended to say with a couple of his films. 

Quantify Your Statement

“I knew it was coming, I have been preaching this stuff for 30 years, everything we’ve said about climate change has come true."

--Harrison Ford

Considering that I've been watching prediction after prediction about global warming and climate change fail for about 40 years, I am wondering what the dancing monkey is talking about.

It's especially irritating to listen to someone with a private jet lecture about anthropogenic climate change.

But he's made a claim, can he quantify it?

Here's a top ten list from 1970 to 2009...

1) In 1970, S. Dillon Ripley, a wildlife conservationist who served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, warned that 75 percent to 80 percent of species would be extinct by 1995. Wrong.

2) In 1970, Kenneth Watt, an ecologist and professor at the University of California, Davis, warned that “there won’t be any more crude oil,” that “none of our land will be usable” for agriculture, and the world would be 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. False.

3) In 1970, biologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University warned that by the end of the decade up to 200 million people would die each year from starvation due to overpopulation, life expectancy would plummet to 42 years, and all ocean life would perish. Extremely false.

4) In 1970, Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, predicted that “world population will outrun food supplies” and “the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine” by the year 2000. Didn’t happen.

5) In 1971, Dr. S. I. Rasool, an atmospheric scientist at NASA, predicted the coming of a “new ice age” within 50 years. Incorrect.

6) In 1975, Ehrlich, the Stanford biologist, warned that 90 percent of tropical rainforests and 50 percent of species would disappear within 30 years. Erroneous. 

7) In 1988, Hussein Shihab, environmental affairs director of the Maldives, warned that his island nation would be completely underwater within 30 years, which wouldn’t even matter because experts also predicted the Maldives would run out of drinking water by 1992. False.

8) In 2004, a Pentagon analysis warned of global anarchy due to climate change. Major European cities would be underwater by 2020, at which point Britain would suffer from a “Siberian” climate. Extremely false.

9) In 2008, Bob Woodruff of ABC News hosted a two-hour climate change special warning that New York City could be underwater by 2015, among other apocalyptic predictions. Didn’t happen.

10) In 2009, former vice president and climate activist Al Gore predicted the Arctic Ocean would have no ice by 2014, which is the same thing Greta Thunberg said would happen by 2022. Nope.

I ended a friendship over globull warmering because I got sick of being lectured on shit they were making the fuck up.

The East Anglia scandal should have ended it right there.

The repeated instances of data and methods being destroyed "inadvertently" so that experiments cannot be recreated should also stop the debate.

It stops being science when you cannot replicate the experiment to confirm the results. 

Gunfight At The Vacant Lot Very Near The OK Corral

144 years ago today the inspiration for dozens of movies occurred.

Of them all, I like Tombstone about best.

I will not vouch for any historical accuracy.

88 Years Ago Today

The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.

Something that takes a little digging to find is that Hollywood really WAS infiltrated with Communists by 1947!

The current liberal condemnation isn't that they were being unjustly accused; it was that they were being accused and exposed at all!

Remember.  If you're paying Hollywood; you're paying for Hollywood.

You don't need them.  You will not starve without them, like you would if there were no farmer.  You will not freeze in the dark, like you would without linemen or electricians.  You will not drown in your own waste, like you would without plumbers and sewer technicians.

What happens if the TV remains blank?

The worst that can happen is an awkward silence.  But conversation might happen.

But what happens to the dancing monkeys if we stop paying them to dance?

While I doubt that many would starve, they would not be living lavish lifestyles any longer.  Their political clout would be reduced to that of normal citizens, which they are.

Boycotting dancing monkeys leads to nothing bad.  Encourage it! 

Um

Robert DeNiro (a known dancing monkey) purports to think. 

He says that rural voters support Trump because the media they view isn't telling them the truth?

Does he think that Flyover gets different news sources than Eastasia?

The local affiliates regurgitate the same stuff as the national channels.

The local paper isn't and non local stories are from places like Associated Press.

It's the same news in Iowa as it is in New York, you ignorant dancing monkey.

Maybe back when I was a kid the local news wasn't just repeating what the coastal outlets were putting out, but that day is long gone now that ownership has consolidated into a very small group of people. 

It's Not Really Over

The two affiliates that got Kimmel pulled in the first place, Sinclair and Nexstar, have decided to continue preempting the show.

That's close to 70 stations that aren't carrying the show and a significant number of the total channels that could.

Advertisers are taking note.

Rumor has it that the number of eyes on the streaming service is very low, and advertisers had already noticed.

The show was probably doomed before he got stupid(er).