I watched Draft Day when it came on a sports channel once. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the part where Kevin Costner divines that the black prospect who appeared to be hotheaded and have low impulse control in one incident during a game actually had a good reason for his behavior.

“as the world’s most famous comedian (magnetic but utterly unfunny.”

So, in other words, Lenny Bruce.

“the screenplay and direction (by Ivan Reitman of Ghost Busters fame) is on the nose.”

When you say “on the nose” do you mean “spot-on!” or do you mean “too obvious”? After all, Reitman can do both.

And of course, the greatest sports movie of all time is still “Slap Shot”. With “Semi-Tough” a close second.

Adam Driver (whom I really like — he’s an Indiana kid who enlisted in the Marines after 9/11 and he straddles the border between homely and magnificent)

Right, but you’re also hot for this chick. Your aesthetic sense may need recalibration. That guy looks like the hind end of a farm animal.

Is it because she’s a billionaire, sort of? You figure she’s a soft touch and you can hit her up? You must have some crazy expenses you’re not telling us about.

What about people who couldn’t care less about such stupid movies? In which category are they?

1. I also, at length and very out loud, was a Ryan Leaf proponent. It cured me from any draft prognostication.

2. I like Heathers a lot because Winona Ryder is/was hot and my favorite band, The Replacements, was occultly mentioned in a series of Easter eggs in the movie.

I recently enjoyed Double Team, which is a delightfully stupid movie with an accidentally fascinating aspect, since it stars Dennis Rodman as what we would today call a genderqueer or
a pansexual or a nonbinary or one of those things. At the time it was made it was a pure freakshow.
Heathers is over-celebrated by plebbitards and received a confused adaptation as a series by one of the streaming moneylosers.

The movies Steve describes sound head and shoulders superior to Everyone Has AIDS, Darth Vader Wants To Talk To You About Workplace Sexism, or All White People Should Die.

I hate the anti social jerks who say ‘I couldn’t make it through the trailer’, but l couldn’t make it through the trailer. I felt like Ricky Bobby hearing that voice over…’ I didn’t understand a word you just said’.

as the world’s most famous comedian (magnetic but utterly unfunny. Is there anything more alienating that listening to an audience who howls in laughter at not funny jokes? Why, yes, there is: in the operatic Annette, the packed audiences sings in response) who marries the world’s most famous opera soprano (Marion Cotillard) and then she gives birth to a marionette, but nobody seems to notice that the baby is made out of wood.

Can’t say the description of Draft Day interests me either. But I find this stuff just painfully stupid–hence unpleasant.

I just think it’s lazy. If someone actually has any compelling insight into human complexities, and artistic ambitions, they should be able to write a drama about those human complexities playing out. Last I checked the number of women giving birth to wooden babies is zero.

Talented people with something to say, can say it. Ridiculous nonsense signals useless-people-who-consider-themselves-“artists”.

Heathers is over-celebrated by plebbitards and received a confused adaptation as a series by one of the streaming moneylosers.

I don’t remember much about Heathers except that I thought it was vastly overrated and not actually very good. Then again its biggest proponent among my college friends went on to be president of Joss Whedon’s Mutant Enemy Productions in the early 2000s, so what do I know?

Did you see Miss Ryder in Turks and Caicos? She’s a revelation.

And is your favorite Replacements song “I Will Dare”?

Hard pass on both. My wife and I do watch “Yellowstone”* (with Costner) though. That’s our guilty pleasure along with “The Crown.” My wife just finished “Dark” on my recommendation.

Friday Night Lights

The film or the TV series? I thought the latter was quite good.

*That show needs get rid of the annoying Chinese actress who pretends to be an American Indian.

The last good movie I saw was “Hell or High Water.” Unsurprisingly, it was written by the same guy who created “Yellowstone.”

And patronizing Hollywood, TV, Sportsball, and other mass media isn’t merely a waste. Spending time and dime on this fluff endorses and sustains the degradation and dumbing down of our country — and you.

Of course, many people here think they’re smart enough to nibble around the garbage in the trough. But I would guess they’re still much more likely to have (i) rolled up their sleeves for Big Pharma and (ii) rooted for Raytheon in Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Ukraine, ad nauseum.

Boycott the Establishment’s propaganda.

Don’t beat yourself up over being an idiot over Ryan Leaf.
He did have an edge in physical talent over Peyton. It was evident in the Rose Bowl his last year of college. The guy threw lasers. Peyton always threw wobbly throws etc.

The casual College Football fan cannot know the details of a player’s psyche, or have access to interviews of all his high school coaches or acquntances. Especially in 1998, there was less info on that openly available.

Also back in that era the notion of a player’s exposure to Big League Sports as a child was not contemplated.
Now 24 years later it is pretty evident that guys like Peyton, Eli and countless other 2nd or 3rd generation players benefit from having grown up around a Major League locker room, seeing Dad’s weekly game prep and off-season regimen: Film, workouts, etc.

Another example: I read that Larry Fitzgerald, although not the son of an NFLer, grew up around the Minnesota Viking training camp as a ball boy. Countless time spent observing, absorbing and therefore not intimidated or overwhelmed by the Big Time.

I’m sure Tom Brady’s sons have that edge since the genetics are likey already there.

“who Ryan Leaf was”

Jesus Christ. Just never use “whom” if you don’t know how to use it. Then you won’t sound quite so stupid.

The love of a nerd is very different from that of a square.

This OCEAN is new to me, so I have difficulty relating to the study involving it. Had the study been based on that I/E S/N T/F J/P psychology categorization, I’d have been better able to relate (but just a little). So life goes.

Noah Millman’s review of Holy Motors:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/and-one-man-in-his-time-plays-many-parts/

But all the explaining is just for the target audience’s wives and girlfriends.

And Jennifer Garner’s quip about the macho football players competing for a piece of jewelry. We’re to assume that football executives find such sophomoric takes to be confounding yet fascinating. She has it every way – she’s one of the guys with high status in a male profession, yet she’s got power skirted sexual allure, but she’s also above all the silliness of grown men chasing a ball around a field. Is it possible to make a guy movie for guys without putting this sort of thing in? And not as a throwaway moment in the plot but in the trailer, where it’s supposed to represent something of the essence of the movie.

The voice of reason. How did you get in here?

Another voice of reason. May you prosper and proliferate.

The last good movie I saw was “Hell or High Water.” Unsurprisingly, it was written by the same guy who created “Yellowstone.”

Mine was “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” with the oft-cited-herein Kevin Costner providing the narration as the golden retriever. I also liked the Mel Gibson movie about the pacifist medic who saved all those lives in WWII.

Yellowstone has gotten really good, and Costner has really gotten into his role as patriarch, while the Crown hasn’t matched its explosive 1st season, but still has some good episodes…

Best of the Worst: Cyborg and Arcade (Albert Pyun Double Feature)

Nov 23, 2022

In this episode of Best of the Blurst, the gang pays tribute to b-movie veteran Albert Pyun. He’s made post apocalyptic movies. He’s made cyborg movies. He’s made post apocalyptic cyborg movies. He’s done it all!

World war comedy is underway

Deeply Jewish comedy is having a moment, even as antisemitism rocks pop culture

BY JACKIE HAJDENBERG
NOVEMBER 29, 2022

https://www.jta.org/2022/11/29/culture/deeply-jewish-comedy-is-having-a-moment-even-as-antisemitism-rocks-pop-culture

“I find it ironic that at a time where more Jewish comedians feel comfortable expressing their Judaism (i.e. wearing a yarmulke, making Jewish-oriented content) and not hiding it (by changing their name for example), we also see an up-swelling of outright antisemitism,” said Jacob Scheer, a New York-based comedian. “I don’t think — and hope — those two things are not related, but I find it really interesting and sad.”

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The two phenomena could be related. Antisemitic incidents nationwide reached an all-time high in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents, according to an April 2022 audit from the Anti-Defamation League. Those incidents range from vandalism of buildings to harassment and assault against individuals

.

I repeat my question: Why is Steve Sailer absent from TAki’s yesterday?

Alt-right neckbeards continue to stroke off to her while claiming how ugly she is and how much they hate her. The same way that normie conservatives do to AOC.

The NFL draft is a cultural phenomenon. It is deemed extremely important by everyone involved with the sport and great judgments are given about the draft, and yet nothing is proven until future seasons are played.

In Draft Day 2 the Kevin Costner character is a fired GM because Bo Callahan, the QB draft pick he traded away, proved to be the next Tom Brady and the player Costner did pick fell down the stairs at a post draft party and suffered a career ending brain injury (this happened to a player drafted by the Baltimore Ravens).

So as a movie Draft Day works because in the moment viewers can identify Costner as a gutty football GM and believe his instincts worked.

Hey Steve- Good morning and happy Friday Eve!

thanks for watching these movies so I don’t have to.

Heathers is one of the more repellent movies produced in recent years starring slitty eyed midget, Christian Slater. Revenge fantasy. Like we need more of those.

A movie where someone gives birth to a marionette sounds atrocious.

Kevin Costner: if you like Kevin Costner, you will like Kevin Costner movies since he is always the same guy: Kevin Costner. If you don’t like Kevin Costner…

We used to have actors: Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, etc: people capable of portraying other humans in a nuanced and intelligent way, with stories that you might want to see and enjoy.

Great movie that very few have seen: The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson. Hell of a good story and Nicholson inhabits his character. Language is very rough so you have to wait til after the kiddies are in bed.

Semi Tough wasn’t even the best movie made from a Dan Jenkins novel. An incredibly disappointing film, the screen adaptation had little to do with the novel. There’s a (((reason))) for that.

Nancy Dowd is like Leigh Brackett. People who don’t know are always shocked to find out Slapshot is written by a woman, and Brackett came up with some of the best set pieces in Empire Strikes Back.

Roger Ebert famously panned Slapshot when it came out, probably out of feigned outrage on behalf of progressive feminists. He later realized it’s a masterpiece.

1. I also, at length and very out loud, was a Ryan Leaf proponent. It cured me from any draft prognostication.

At the time it was proposed that Leaf was a better pick than Manning because he “had a higher ceiling.” Obviously in retrospect he had the much lower floor.

Sometimes I think you have to understand that in a world of 24/7 sports Media, they too need something to talk about incessantly. So they’re going to feed the drama about which would be the better quarterback.

OT: New Ashkenazi ancient DNA study from a bunch of German Jews’ teeth dug up from a relocation of a graveyard.

https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-from-the-teeth-of-14th-century-ashkenazi-jews-in-germany-already-included-genetic-variations-common-in-modern-jews-194780

The biggest news from it in my view is there were two subgroups of AJs in the middle ages: a Western group without Slavic blood and an Eastern group with a lot of Slavic admixture. These two groups eventually interbred to the point of merger. The graveyard was near the boundary of the two distinct groups and they are both present in the graveyard.

Back in August in their official Sparks newsletter, “The Maeling List,” there was this: “Ron and Russell have also revealed in recent interviews that a new movie musical is in the works.”

Ron and Russell are 77 and 74 respectively. It’s hilarious how their film careers are suddenly taking off.

Their 2009 Swedish public radio play The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is something they also tried to make into a movie. I’ve listened to it twice. The first time I thought, Interesting, but I’ll never listen to it again. The second time it started to grow on me. Maybe I’ll have a third listen tomorrow.

And of course, the greatest sports movie of all time is still “Slap Shot”. With “Semi-Tough” a close second.

Nah it’s Meatballs followed by Raging Bull.

The emerging consensus of Steve’s readers is that his cataract surgeon played a cruel practical joke on him and implanted the surgical equivalent of “beer glasses”.

dad writes_ Last I checked the number of women giving birth to wooden babies is zero.

Wait a minute! Are we talking Natural Births or Immaculate Conceptions?

I bet you stopped watching Annette in the middle. Later, the puppet becomes a real girl and it ends with a murder. It is an art-film with a message.

You’re entitled to your subjective opinion, but his looks really do appeal to a certain group in Hollywood. He might be an Indiana farm boy in real life, but as a fictional New York Jewish guy (say, Adam Sackler in Girls) he’s the equivalent of a Greek God.

From my experience in my Strat-o-matic sports leagues is that Kevin Costner is the biggest idiot on the planet. He gives away three first place picks and then gets suspicious. He then investigates the background and finds serious problems. The movie also endorses adultery. Naturally a black player will be the hero of all this. I expected at the end, we would be told that the team finished last and the top draft pick was arrested for a serious crime and never played a down for the team.

My brother and I saw Slapshot one night having never heard of it and without any means of looking it up and loved it.

Friday Night Lights fans are who you want in your foxhole. On the other hand, Heathers fans are probably going to create more interesting art and music. You want to have a culture that can balance both.

Steve often ponders if the Great Awokening was begun in the universities or by the media. I’d suggest that though an awful lots of ground work was laid over 40 years the big spark and proximate cause of the Great Awokening was the advent of social media. It was exactly those girls who watch Heathers who went insane from being able to talk to each other en masse on platforms like Tumblr.

At first it was a shock when social media was used politically in North African countries during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, slogans, hashtags used in this way. Though lost in this was how it could also create echo chambers or create realities essentially controlled by adolescents and young adults who are still essentially adolescents. This was obscured because the demographics in North Africa circa 2011 were so heavily young skewed that it didn’t really represent too much of a conflict.

The first big US election to take place after social media had gotten really big was in 2012 and after that, things began to change I suspect. Virtue signalling and low-information voter style discourse began. Until in 2020 we reach the point where Jamie Lee Curtis is tweeting a picture of a US mail van on a flatbed in August and suggesting Trump is having his vast army of loyal MAGA shirts putting them into storage to throttle the mail-in vote. Steve also thinks that Obama may have amped up ID-Pol after his second term began and that may be the case but I don’t think it was enough to cause this.

I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters. Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/gG765Caldm

— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) August 11, 2020

As stated above, it’s very important to remember that not all demographics use social media as heavily and not all demographics are as susceptible to falling into group think or virtue signalling. The power users of social media are young women and adolescent girls and the power users among them are girls with cluster B personality disorders, people get tired of me saying this but it’s true and it’s an important context to understand what’s happening.

Suddenly we had a cohort who is generally not very politically involved or interested (Having the lowest information level of any cohort on politics let alone geopolitics) becoming arguably the most political cohort.

There has essentially been an electronic Salem Witch Trial going on for 8 or so years now.

What’s crazy is that emotional reaction Trump elicited in those girls and other progressive liberals has been so intense that they have joined forces with the demographic of hardcore Friday Night Lights fans to push us towards a decisive confrontation with Russia. The only thing both those cohorts can agree upon is ‘Slava Ukraini’, the girls because they hate Putin as a proxy for Trump and the Friday Night Lights people because they always side with team America and it’s crazy neocon wars. But the neocon ‘Russiagate’ campaign worked so well the cohort who should be their biggest opponents on this are their biggest supporters. Though it looks like they overreached badly and it seems like the social media rhetoric made this become more of a test of US hegemony than it otherwise would. It also seems to have directly led to the mass attempts by governments and companies to ‘cancel’ Russia leading to the West expending all it’s possible non-military options for escalation in days and giving Russia nothing to lose. Pretty disastrous outcome for all concerned.

How much has the rhetoric on Putin being pushed and pressure put on Biden to act aggressive towards Putin been driven by this new reality of histrionic emotional teenage girls becoming so influential on the internet? Not an irrelevant amount at all.

It’s only been a few years and their influence has brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.

Similar to how generations that grew up just as high sugar foods and lower amounts of physical activities suffered more than later generations that became obsessed with how to stay fit and attractive in this new environment, our civilisation hasn’t yet come to terms with teenage girls playing the world’s biggest online multiplayer game, social media and when to not take them so seriously. (The same people who take them so seriously en masse don’t take their own teenage daughters seriously)

They’ve kind of lost their minds and become the most influential people in the world at the same time.

why is a movie about the Browns drafting players not a comedy. i never heard of this movie before and actually laughed out loud when i read the premise. that trailer is hilarious nonsense that made me chuckle. the Browns office would best be portrayed by a couple of monkeys throwing darts at a fantasy football scouting report they bought at Barnes and Nobles while a dozen chickens run around with their heads cut off and hamsters run on a treadmill in the background.

interesting statistical fact that Steve has never picked up on or written about – over the last 22 years or something along those lines, the Browns are way, way worse than random chance would predict. indeed, even sports books, experts in stats and probability, overrate the Browns chances in their numbers. they are extremely bad in a way that defies probability. they should have accidentally been good by now at some point. considering NFL is deliberately set up for parity whereas MLB is not, it defies all odds. Browns management is aggressively bad. Robert Conquest’s laws apply.

there was a time for several years where the Browns pretty much never made their line or over under sports betting numbers, whereas the Patriots were almost always over their numbers, even given the generous odds offered by books. the Browns always lost by more than the line and the Patriots always won by more. this went on for seasons and i have to assume astute bettors made bank on this when books blithely failed to correct it.

The few moments of “Heathers” that I’ve seen on various deep-cable outlets convince me it’s an anti-shiksa wet dream.

I thought he did a good job in the Baumbach movie about the failed marriage to ScaJo. Especially his “impromptu” version of Being Alive. Also good in Frances Ha and Inside Llewyn Davis. And that Star Wars thing. And BlacKKlansman.

Then again, I like Heathers and Friday Night Lights.

Agree,

There is a genre of fiction out there where a the narrative tells a seemingly straight up narrative then spins fantasies into the telling, bringing the thing back to earth without a blink. No sale on this Magical Realism stuff: If you have a story to tell, and can’t make it compelling without flights of fancy, then you really are just kind of telling a pointless yarn with no funny punchline.

“whom (who) Ryan Leaf was”: Yes, I too caught that. But, I just corrected it in my mind and moved on.
Mr. Sailer was careless; calling him stupid seems over the top.

Unsatisfied

“A movie where someone gives birth to a marionette sounds atrocious.”

Wait until you get a gander at the religion said birth will beget.

“Great movie that very few have seen: The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson.”

Yep, great movie. A realistic depiction of the squalid conditions of base life for a USN enlisted man in the post Vietnam landscape. The Reagan-Bush era of ballooning Pentagon budgets did little to improve those squalid conditions. But all of those golden gumdrops did upscale the lives of cronies in on the development of new weapons systems like SDI. Although, some of that fortune was not all grift-related: a lot of the SDI funding went to fund occultic technology that some have labeled UFOs. The secret space program exists and is controlled by a cabal birthed in the post WW2 era that receives monies from the federal government but is not answerable to it.

+1 on Hell or High Water. Excellent movie.

Can’t imagine Costner having given a wooden performance. Dances with Wolves aged terribly, probably wasn’t very good to begin with and was only given an Oscar for political reasons, pure propaganda. Still Costner did once date Elle Macpherson…

Who’s this homely woman? Judging from the bruises on her knees, I get a clue why she might be popular with some men.

“I repeat my question: Why is Steve Sailer absent from TAki’s yesterday? [two sics?]”

Now that the talented but completely vile Bryan Singer is off the Logan’s Run reboot, Steve has been brought in to reimagine the project. First change is a doozy: the death ritual at Carousel will not be determined by age and applicable to both genders. Steve’s Carousel completely eschews the Last Day concept and limits the test to men: Upon putting on the white ritual robe with the boss fiery flame embroidering the man has to achieve a boner during his lift into the air or he will be fried by the lasers. Second change is a clever marketing ploy mimicking the tag line from the recent and fantastic Dune film — “The Spice is life.” In Steve’s Logan’s Run “The Boner is life.” Which makes a lot more sense biologically because without boners there is no human life. Although reimagineer Steve faces a disposal problem: no death ritual for the ladies means the Dome City will be crowded with shrieky menopause recipients and their barking dog companions.

In answer to your repeated question: Steve has been busy with the boners.

Friday Night Lights fans are who you want in your foxhole. On the other hand, Heathers fans are probably going to create more interesting art and music. You want to have a culture that can balance both.

Don’t we have that with woke superhero and Star Wars movies? Or the US military that is oh-so-tough and so gaaaaaay.

Speaking of foxholes, which side wages the wars that require men to hop into foxholes?

The Heathers gang or the Draft gang?

The main sickness of the US is the very balance of heather and draft in US power structure. We have the balance of the Draft folks and Heather folks. We have neurotics pushing neuroticism, and we have the lame-squares who take orders and implement the GAE agenda.

Better way is not balance but separation. Let the drafters do their thing, let the heathers do their thing. Let draft spaces remain draft, let heathers spaces remain heathery. But the mainstream of draft has been heathered, resulting in a cultural balance between the two.

Ideally, society should be 90% draft and uphold draft values. Heathery types should remain in the margins with their neurotic but sometimes interesting ideas. But the balance of minority heathers and majority drafters has led to disaster.

Foo Fighters “Best of You” (the peak of corporate rock) vs. “Strawberry Fields Forever.“

Strawberry Fields is strange but perfectly appealing to pop fans. For really nutball stuff, there’s Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. WTF

She has it every way – she’s one of the guys with high status in a male profession, yet she’s got power skirted sexual allure, but she’s also above all the silliness of grown men chasing a ball around a field.

She’s probably Gary Bettman’s dream president of an NHL team. Or of all NHL teams. Exotic hue and/or dike-pluggery a plus

Great movie that very few have seen: The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson. Hell of a good story and Nicholson inhabits his character. Language is very rough so you have to wait til after the kiddies are in bed.

Nicholson’s yodeling while the doomed Randy Quaid ascends the stairs with the prostitute was a career highlight.

I’d suggest that though an awful lots of ground work was laid over 40 years the big spark and proximate cause of the Great Awokening was the advent of social media. It was exactly those girls who watch Heathers who went insane from being able to talk to each other en masse on platforms like Tumblr.

But social media sparked alt right as well. So, why did great woke gain over alt right? Because it was favored by the powers-that-be. While big tech increasing silenced alt right, it protected and promoted woke stuff, esp about blacks and homos.

The effective suppression of alt right goes to show that social media alone isn’t the key. It’s the combination of social media and those enabled by the powers-that-be.

What’s crazy is that emotional reaction Trump elicited in those girls and other progressive liberals has been so intense that they have joined forces with the demographic of hardcore Friday Night Lights fans to push us towards a decisive confrontation with Russia.

But why were such people driven to such frenzy? Are they capable of coming up with ideas of their own? No. They spread the talking points and alarmism spread from the top of media and Democratic Party. These people are so feeble of mind that they believe a man is a woman is the powers-that-be tell them. They are truly dumb. They are incited to be eager and willing Karens against MAGA and anti-jabbers, but they also take the knee against blacks who are always right vis-a-vis ‘karens’. They are without agency. Sure, social media amplified their voices, but their voices are not their own. They are NPCs whose strings are pulled by the the big power which is mostly Jewish.

Sailer finds that creature attractive? Is he becoming like one of those pretty shikse chicks who fall for Woody Allen? What a fall from the Kathryn Bigelow fixation.

As for Adam Driver, he’s useful in eccentric and oddball roles, like in Paterson.

But he’s no star material. He looks like John Travolta drawn by Picasso.

He was supposed to be Han Solo’s kid in the new Star Wars. Whom did Solo mate with? Jar Jar Binks?

Friday Night Lights. Sounds like whites cheering for blacks movie. Cuck stuff.

Heathers. Christian Slater, troublemaker as in Pump Up the Volume later.

People might see Heathers differently today. Back when it came out, it was about the popular ‘normal’ kids vs the weirdo. But with the new normal, the ‘popular’ people today are into weirdo globo-homo, tranny nonsense, and BLM. And it’s the ‘conservative’ who is the oddball outcast, or the unspoken id of occam’s razor.

Many on the right today are more likely to identify with Slater(or even the Joker).

OT (1) – Belgium out of World Cup, Morocco through – I imagine the Moroccan rioting in Brussels is already happening.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/330615/brussels-police-adapt-strategy-for-belgium-and-morocco-matches-today

OT (2) – WWT news – Harley Street doctor specialising in “feminisation” of male tranny faces is suspended after inadvertently blinding a patient.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11490635/Transgender-expert-dubbed-Snapchat-Surgeon-licence-suspended-botched-op-blinded-patient.html

Among American raised movie stars still relevant today to some degree the strongest batch would be those born between 1936 and 1943 where you’ll find Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro. The next batch would probably be 1954-1956 with John Travolta, Kevin Costner, Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks.

While in the first group half would probably be considered virtuosos of film acting craft and all of them made movies that were remembered more for their artistic rather than commercial success the second group seems to all be quite generic everymen/stoic leading men in the mold of Harrison Ford and Robert Redford associated mostly with pretty standard mid to big budget Hollywood fare(Travolta is the only one who got a taste of New Hollywood in his early career before fading into obscurity for 10 years). Was it lack of interest in auteur cinema in the 80s? Star Wars/Heaven’s Gate Effect?

The next batch(’62-’63) of movie stars in Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp all look more like glamour models rather than character leading man like Nicholson or even classic leading man like Cary Grant. Only Sean Penn(1960) who came up together with Cruise seemed to be replicating Hoffman and Pacino type of “star of artistic import”. But was he ever as relevant as those previously mentioned?

Who is today’s De Niro? Ryan Gosling? Competent and picks interesting movies(except the last one) but not really that exciting. Similar with Gyllenhaal(he’s amazing performance in Nightcrawler went largely unnoticed). Joaquin Phoenix? Aside from Joker too niche I would say. Adam Driver is too ugly to be a draw. Probably destined to have a Robert Duvall type of career. Most popular actors in their prime today are probably Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. Hemsworth movie today doesn’t have the same ring to it as De Niro movie in 1970s and 80s.

My wife and I watch Yellowstone too. I share some philosophy with John Dutton (Kevin Costner.) My wife calls him my brother. I have the hots for his daughter, Beth (Kelly Reilly.)

David Reich's ancient DNA findings from a medieval Jewish cemetery in Germany are that Ashkenazis back then comprised two genetically distinct Jewish populations. But, for a highly literate people, they no longer kept many historical records, so we don't know they were. https://t.co/wTZdVbN5Nz

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 1, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/science/ashkenazi-jews-genetic-history.html
https://archive.ph/ZlEGL

He was by far the best and most compelling character in Girls.

In fact, the meta joke w/ Girls (to me) was that the male characters were infinitely more interesting than the 4 main female characters (except the episode where Alison Williams decided to get *almost* naked).

Annette stars Adam Driver (whom I really like — he’s an Indiana kid who enlisted in the Marines after 9/11 and he straddles the border between homely and magnificent)

Good on you, Steve! Yes, Driver went up significantly in my book when you shared that tidbit in reviewing another movie of his from several years back (WHILE WE ARE YOUNG?). Kinnda like how Gary Sinise looks a bit sinister on the surface until you learn of all the great veterans volunteer work he’s done and then your opinion completely flips.

Driver is the obvious choice to play a young Pete Townsend if they ever get around to a THE WHO music-bio .

Alt-right neckbeards continue to stroke off to her while claiming how ugly she is and how much they hate her.

Which is totally different from how coastal credentialed NPC libtards were once so obsessed with everything that came in and out (and in what temporal order!) of Sarah Palin’s [email protected]

If it’s a puppet baby, then Joe Biden is definitely the father.

Adam Driver is starring in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of White Noise.

There’s a lot of talk about White Noise being this postmodern American magnum opus but frankly I think a lot of people who were actually alive and writing about literature when it was published don’t realize how it was easily eclipsed by Infinite Jest in that category just a decade later.

She might be the most ridiculous and poorly written character on television.

Can you expand on this. I met Liz Phair when I won a trivia contest on WHFS almost 30 years ago. She was my dream girl. I brought her a Hersheys w almond as a sort of joke and she loved it. Didn’t she marry and have kids with a cool white guy?

The trivia question was what movie was referenced in the liner notes of her blockbuster album Exile in Guyville.

It wasn’t that funny although the “I love my dead, gay son!” Was hysterical

Yes, his dad was a sports reporter for some fake African American newspaper that about 9 people read. He did have a press pass though.

except the episode where Alison Williams decided to get *almost* naked

You’re not talking about the scene featuring the prime taste treat, are you? She applied something from the kitchen for that, so the actor wouldn’t get sick, i.e., nauseous.

Leaf was big, strong, and even quite mobile. Peyton on the other hand had to be a genius due to his physical limitations. GMs basically roll the dice when it comes to physical specimens, and indeed Leaf by his own admission partied too much and didn’t study enough. Given the correlation between Superbowl wins and the Wonderlic (in playoff football, defense tends to improve significantly so playoff success as a QB really does depend on good judgement and being able to read a defense both of which are easier with a high IQ), I’d say that being above average in the brains department is more important than anything else when evaluating a QB. College grades would also be a good test of conscientiousness.

“Waitress in the Sky”

And speaking of farces:

Switzerland, Facing an Unprecedented Power Shortage, Contemplates a Partial Ban on the Use of Electric Vehicles
It turns out that you can have battery-powered cars, or you can have renewable energy, but you can’t have both.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/switzerland-facing-an-unprecedented?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=268621&post_id=88017513&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Wes Anderson is as Magical Realist as I care to get. And Paul Thomas Anderson.

I find it’s a minority opinion, but The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is one of my all-time favorite films. It also might be the last film Bill Murray made before succumbing to elderly Tourette’s (or just plain elderly a**hole).

Have the browns been an unusually black team since they were “reborn” in the late 90’s? Asking for a friend.

Right, but you’re also hot for this chick

…… well…..look at her knees …..kinda red don’t you think ……..do I need to spell it out.

The author, “Diablo Cody”, is the literary equivalent of Liz Phair. Both are moderately rebellious girls from the Chicago suburbs. Both later married and settled down, more or less. Liz has one child who turns 25 this month, and Diablo three, the youngest going on five.

I bet I was the first iStever to have encountered Diablo’s work. She attended a show in Minneapolis by the Chocolate Factory, a touring troupe of black male strippers, and wrote it up in the City Pages. I assumed she was also black, but that turned out not to be the case. She blogged about stripping herself. She was alone among her colleagues in not taking the job out of need, but curiosity. She had a college degree, caring (if unaware) parents, and no substance issues.

She discusses affordable family formation here:

More important, Cody thinks, is to represent the experience so many new mothers have of feeling completely overwhelmed — and, often, unable to articulate that they’re in the surreal depths of postpartum depression.

“When you’re in it, it’s impossible to see the end of it,” she says. “It feels permanent.” For Marlo, salvation comes in the form of the enigmatic and vaguely mystical Tully, who enables her to get a good night’s sleep and begin to feel like herself again.

In the real world, this is a solution only available to those who can afford to throw money at this problem — a tale of two parenthoods starkly outlined in the film.

“Marlo’s brother is rich, and everything at their house is hunky-dory,” Cody says. “If they have a dinner party, they can just send their kids into another room with a nanny.”

Cody has seen this firsthand living among the well-to-do in LA.

“There are a lot of very happy mothers here, because they’re very well rested,” she says. “They have a lot of help. And it’s very easy to say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have a fourth child,’ when you’re not struggling financially. When you can leave anytime to go to SoulCycle. That’s very different than the experience I witnessed growing up in Illinois, around working-class people, when you have two working parents and it’s tough to make ends meet.”

https://nypost.com/2018/05/03/diablo-codys-kids-have-no-idea-shes-famous/

Thanks for the paywall bypass link!

This surprised me:

“ Scientists had previously calculated that the bottleneck event of the Ashkenazi Jewish population occurred roughly 600 to 800 years ago. “

WTF? 1222 – 1422 makes no sense whatsoever as the AJ population bottleneck, they were all over the place by then.

A founder population bottleneck circa 700-900AD makes a lot more sense.

Heathers was way ahead of its time in mocking pro-gay virtue signaling.

Agreed. And Steve might be getting a lot of mockery on this, but women (even the shiksas) seem to find him super sexy. Maybe because he’s a mashup of Gaston & The Beast.

Thanks for posting this. Has been years since I have watched Slap Shot, so will watch again tonight.

Had Lindsay Crouse in it.

Man, she was a nice looking woman:

He played an uber-Jew in all of those movies. Except, perhaps, the one about spacemen.

But today, gays are the establishment, so they don’t get the joke.

Jewish comedians feel comfortable expressing their Judaism

Wait, there are Jewish comedians who don’t beat us over the head with their Jewishness?

Costner’a not much of an actor: he doesn’t turn into anyone. He is just himself in every role.

However, he has made some very entertaining movies:

-Bull Durham is always fun to watch. That’s actually a very good sports movie.

-The Untouchables is pretty good as well (though I think Sean Connery really is the heart and soul of the movie, not Costner).

I met Liz Phair when I won a trivia contest on WHFS almost 30 years ago. She was my dream girl.

Maybe she had some in-person magnetism, but her music (lyrics and sound) and performance persona is cringe. Any guy praising her as an artist is doing it for silly simp reasons: She’s hot and she’s raunchy and she plays guitar! Whoa!

https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-decline-of-capitalization/#comment-5351988 (#7)

Do guys who aren’t really into (new/good) music who go gaga for Lana Del Rey, Emily Haines (Metric), Grimes, and going back a bit, Liz Phair (zing!) appreciate more the actual music, or more the image and attitude of said dames? I think it’s the latter …

> Sometimes I think you have to understand that in a world of 24/7 sports Media, they too need something to talk about incessantly.

The most accurate sports talk would be “I think team X has roughly a 60% chance of winning, and my observations are about 55% accurate.”

Friday Night Lights. Sounds like whites cheering for blacks movie. Cuck stuff.

Anyone know there actually IS a movie named “Cuck”? I found it by accident but it was like someone was reading various sites, maybe even this one, and decided to make a Big Statement Movie. It came out (had a showing in Cleveland) in 2019. Then pfffft. According to wiki it is not divulging how much money it made, which probably means it’s underwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuck_(film)

“and my favorite band, The Replacements, was occultly mentioned in a series of Easter eggs in the movie.”

Which is one step removed from the way Alex Chilton was mentioned by The Replacements. And Alex is uber good.

Big Carax fan here. His work, however, is best categorized as fantastique, the Frenchiest of genres, which encompasses surreal fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique).

I enjoyed Annette and thought it was pretty ballsy for an Amazon release—dig its comic treatment of #MeToo.

Also, did anyone else catch the veiled references to Wyndham Lewis (“The Ape of God”) and Houellebecq’s “femicide” joke from Submission?

Steve,

Have you seen Merde?

Can’t find Steve’s original Declaration of Love just now but it likely precedes these mentions:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/shoplifting-costs-target-600-million-more-this-year/#comment-5662852

https://www.unz.com/isteve/ftx/#comment-5666959

https://www.unz.com/isteve/ftx/#comment-5663662

Found the original now. Quite a number of guys here like her! Oh well.. She must have something going for her, but it sure ain’t looks.

https://www.unz.com/isteve/caroline-ellisons-tumblr/

As a yute,I listened to a weird over nite radio show on my trusty FM radio around 1970. Hosted by a great Chicago personality named Wayne Julen.
He played a lot of Bruce bits and I was fascinated.
Bruce,a WW2 vet who claimed he got out of the Navy by pretending to be a “fag”,😉was a man of the 50s; by the time the 60s began to happen,he was through.
I didn’t find him very funny because,for one,I didn’t get many of his references.
Sophie Tucker? Charles Laughton?
But the audiences on his records were screaming. I just found him weird and amazing. An astonishing little man,who created bizarre worlds,like that of Father Flotsky the Jewish priest.It was a world that operated at nite,with jazz,drugs and hot willing chicks.
I am a goyim,but one of those who finds Jewish ” shtick” to be often irrestible.
I have a little more understanding of him today,obviously. But when I was a teenage shmuck I loved him.
Hope I didn’t bore you too much,ya muffdiver!

Always worth remembering, the ADL counts as genuine hate hoaxes perpetrated by jews upon jewish targets “to raise awareness” etc.

Perhaps most importantly, boycotts diminish their money and power.

If they have a hard time making money off a movie without at least one positive white male character…well, some of them will cave.

They map pretty well actually.

E/I= high and low extroversion (duh).
N/S = high and low Openness
F/T = high and low Agreeableness
J/P = high and low Conscientiousness

Nothing maps to Neuroticism because, well, Myers Briggs is sunshine and rainbows.

Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out, b/w “I.O.U.”

She might be the most ridiculous and poorly written character on television.

My kind of girl.

All seriousness aside, the whole show is over the top. Melancholy to the max every episode, it is unreal, but that is entertainment. I call it my soap opera. It takes place in a Mountain West setting that looks very much like the place where I came of age and feel bonded to. My home town.

And I get a kick out of Beth’s character and the way she says and does things without censoring herself — and gets away with it.

Oh, come on. It’s modern Hollywood. The penis is evil!

(Long as we’re talking cheesy Seventies movies…)

Meanwhile Chicago Politicians continue the vital work of ensuring that Sailer never runs out of topics.

One hundred motor vehicle thefts a day.

That’s the recent daily count in Chicago in October as motor vehicle thefts spiked dramatically in the last three months. Compare that to the first half of the year when Chicago was averaging “just” 35 thefts a day.

It’s just one part of the Great Unraveling of Chicago’s justice system that stems from emboldened criminals, a demoralized police force and a leadership class obsessed with soft-on-crime legislation like the SAFE-T Act.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/100-day-chicago-vehicle-thefts-explodes-safe-t-act-changes-debated

I’m sure they’ll accept donations from Steve to their re-election funds.

My kind of girl.

I like her character a lot too. But, in real life, women like that are trainwrecks. You wouldn’t want Beth in your life.

I call it my soap opera.

Yup. That’s why I called it my wife’s and my “guilty pleasure.”

We own farms in both Appalachia and the Midwest. We are also quite familiar with real ranching via her kin. Ranching (and farming for that matter) is not romantic or glamorous like on TV – it’s a lot of dirty, grimy work, frequently dealing with shifty characters (I’m looking at you, seed dealers, auctioneers, and meat processors), lots of variables that are totally not under your control (like weather), with very little pecuniary rewards. More often than not, you have to have day jobs or other businesses that underwrite the maintenance of the farms and ranches.

But for the strong attachment people have to the land they inherited, it can be pretty shitty overall.

1. “Left of the Dial;
2. Color Me Impressed;
3. Bastards of Young;
4. I Will Dare;
5. Shiftless When Idle.”

Honorable mention: “Kids Don’t Follow,” “Johnny’s Gonna Die.”

(You can’t have only one favorite ‘Mats song. You just can’t.)

Best ‘Mats cover of another band:
Three-way tie among “Temptation Eyes” (the Grass Roots), “20th Century Boy” (T. Rex) and “Another Girl, Another Planet” (the Only Ones).

OK, I’ll revise: “Semi-Tough” is the best sports movie for people like me who don’t like sports.

Does “Black Swan” count as a sports movie? Is ballet a sport? It’s certainly more physically demanding than football. And you can’t object that you can’t call it a sport because there’s no competitive aspect. Trust me, backstage there is more competition than five Super Bowls combined.

OT:

Gavin Newsom’s reparations committee will recommend handing out $223,200 per person to all descendants of slaves in California for ‘housing discrimination’ at a cost of $559BN – in nation’s biggest restitution effort ever.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11491263/California-reparations-committee-recommend-handing-223-200-descendant-slaves.html

In unrelated news, BMW stock soared today. Financial analysts are unable to explain the reason.

Dirty Harry.

I can trace the moment we fell for Yellowstone to the time when my wife noticed that Costner’s character drinks his whiskey from the same glasses I do: Ralph Lauren glen plaid crystal. The exact same, and we have never seen them anywhere else.

Add that to his character’s outlook, which we share, and we were hooked. BTW we find that outlook nicely symbolic of what we feel as Americans in a big, beautiful country under invasion. This despite Coster’s long-proven AmerIndian’o’Philic tendencies, which are carried forward here from Dances with Wolves.

Side note: When I first met my wife’s brother in Romania, he asked me which Indian tribes had lived in my home state of Colorado. He then explained that he loved Costner’s movie.

“(You can’t have only one favorite ‘Mats song. You just can’t.)”

In this spirit, my actual favorite Mats song is/was their blistering live cover of “Gimme Shelter” (much much better than the Stones, natch) at the Beacon Theater, NYC circa 1987.

True story: at that concert I had a paperback copy of Dostoievski’s “The Idiot” in my back pocket, which I lost due to all the jumping around.

The next afternoon, I went by the Beacon box office and asked, “I lost a copy of The Idiot here last night. Did anybody find one?”

The lost and found guy went to check, came back and said, “Take your pick.”

There were nine.

That’s the point, though. The problem nerd guys have (and this would probably include Steve, for all the ways he transcends the stereotype–come on, who has a favorite scientific paper?) is that we spend a lot of our time in our heads, and with the modern companionate idea of marriage, you’re expected to share interests with your wife. But there just aren’t that many women with those interests, and the ones there are tend to lean left.

The situation goes back as far as Abelard and Heloise (and remember what happened to him?), and the Merlin and Nimue legend may allude to it, but it was much more expected before the rise of feminism that men would socialize with other men who shared their interests. But that’s off-limits and sexist now.

So a libertarian-leaning nerd chick can write her own ticket. (The conservative ones just get married off.) Besides, she’s apparently an HBD-interested nerd chick, which is even rarer.

It’s not impossible–Milton and Rose Friedman apparently happily studied economics together, Patricia and Paul Churchland worked together on neurophilosophy, and I don’t know what Geoffrey Miller and Diana Fleischman are doing with their weird poly stuff but they’re together for the moment–but the odds are against it.

As for the bruised knees–well, she probably was smart enough to use what she had to her advantage.

As far as I’m concerned, ‘whom’ is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. – Calvin Trillin

“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?”

You gotta love “Heathers”.

Yes.

The show gets into some of that grit, and it certainly worships the cowboy work with its wonderful cinematography. It is a bit surprising how well it balances that heritage with the woke stuff and Indian stuff. Surprising in our time that it tries at all without simply demonizing the Duttons and all the other core, White Americans in Montana.

All-in-all, it seems rather fair — while very often presenting simple, cartoon-like images of every representative of every cohort in that menagerie.

Thank you for sharing your situation re farming and ranching. That is very relevant, and I deeply respect it. I have been close friends with farmers for the past 42 years now, and, of course you know, I grew up mostly around old ranches in Colorado. My parents built our house on land that had been part of a ranch, and part of that family was still there. I buried my father’s ashes 10 yards away from the grave of the last settler of that valley — who was still alive and living in a log house when we arrived in 1972.

This is the view of our valley from the mountain in front of our house:

I first climbed here when I was 13 with two friends during summer after we finished 7th grade. We slept there, and I returned many times over the years until I sold the house in the valley below.

It’s not impossible–Milton and Rose Friedman apparently happily studied economics together, Patricia and Paul Churchland worked together on neurophilosophy…

Will and Ariel Durant. The Curies.

She looks like she could be the sister of YouTube’s Half-Asleep Chris, who himself has a thing for tapirs. (An innocent thing– he’s had a steady girlfriend for several years now.)

He played a megalomaniac with mommie issues and a fetish for dominant women issues, with some boilerplate neuroticism thrown in. His character may as well have been named Darth Freud.

The kind of guy whom Draft Day is aimed at knows exactly whom Ryan Leaf was.

Whom, at the end of the day is Ryan Leaf?

Reminds me of that great Whom song, Whom Are You.

Fredo Sailer trying to show the world that “I’m smaht!”

Liz Phair had one really catchy song, IMO (“Why Can’t I “).

Lana Del Rey has a lot of good songs, and created a cool, Americana aesthetic. Not the greatest live performer though.

Metric has dozens of good songs, and Emily Haines is a phenomenal live performer.

Dances with Wolves aged terribly, probably wasn’t very good to begin with and was only given an Oscar for political reasons, pure propaganda

Goodfellas should have won, of course. Despite Scorsese directing, the Oscar itself would have gone to its producer, Irwin Winkler (who won for Rocky).

There’s very little overlap between the men women find attractive and the men other men find worthy.

Exhibits A & B: women love Matthew McConnaughey and Hugh Grant.

Guys are known for thinking with their dicks.

Marge, trying to drop the hint about John Waters: “He prefers the company of other men!”

Homer, not getting the hint of course: “Well who doesn’t?!”

The remaining Gentlemen’s Clubs in St.James’s and Pall Mall are either now open to women and/or living on borrowed time. More’s the pity.

Costner seems to be trying to single-handedly revive the old male movie star trope of turning to Westerns in middle age in order to maintain status.

Most middle aged male movie stars these days do the whole “old man kicking ass” action stuff like Liam Neeson (Taken), Keeanu Reeves (John Wick), Denzel Washington (Man on Fire), and Bruce Willis (before his retirement due to aphasia this year, he was always doing old man action (Red, the Death Wish remake). Charles Bronson really is the guy who made this genre a thing (Death Wish), although obviously there were always examples before that.

Even Costner does old man kicking ass movies ( the hilariously awful but thoroughly watchable 3 Days to Kill). But really, Costner has gone to Westerns in his middle age, which was the old male movie star direction. Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, etc… all did Westerns, and got revivals in fame and box office power in middle aged westerns rather than as young western stars.

The FTX guy found an ugly girl who was nonetheless young, not fat, and, most importantly, worshipful of him, willing to do anything to be with him. She probably got a huge fat crush on him from the time they first met and, being the manipulative psycho he is, made her his little gopher/right hand woman, made her do drugs, made her let him have sex with other women, and had her doing a lot of lying to cover for him and had her manipulating others for him.

And she went along with it because he was the best she could ever hope to even partially have (I mean, look at her) and he was a super manipulative dude who could play her like a fiddle.

It’s probably a lot like Ghislaine Maxwell (what a retarded first name) and Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine was of course good looking (unlike this broad), but her obvious daddy issues and Epstein’s Hannibal Lecter-meets-a-porn-producer charm made her putty in Epstein’s hands, willing to kidnap teenage girls to be his sex slaves and pimp them out to other men and women at Jeffrey’s command.

Both of these rich, powerful, sociopathic criminals were personally magnetic enough to charm desperate, lonely, daddy-issue broads into being their dogsbodies. This is Jim Jones level of manipulative, 99% of us (including me) will never meet someone like this, but if we did, it would be a nightmare.

You’re being sarcastic right? Costner was nothing but wooden throughout the 90’s. Dances, Wyatt Earp, Waterworld, etc. He was dull and stiff.

Maybe cocaine was what made him interesting in the 80’s?

Grimes is clearly brilliant and important. Musical genius nerd Billy Corgan compared her impact to generational talents like Bob Marley and Kurt Cobain.

Lana del Rey is very good but for women especially she’s an incredibly influential artist

Slap Shot

Costner did “Silverado” in 1985.

Jack demonstrating semaphore in his boxer shorts and flat hat is pretty good.

Bull Durham

Costner was fantastic in it. The whole “his arm” speech was excellent. Susan Sarandon almost ruined the movie with overacting.

My favorite Costner film of all time is probably “No Way Out.”

Back during my Boulder Bachelor Daze, Kevin Costner was The Man. I mean every chick I dated loved him. That was then.

You mean OJ and his four kids will be getting over a million dollars from taxpayers? Oh, wait… this is meant for specific families who were screwed over by the progressives of a century ago. Only fitting that the progressives of today are to be taxed to pay for it. Still, how many can prove they qualify?

Also, the Daily Mail says all “descendants of slaves”. Shouldn’t it be just the descendants of affected property owners? And if one family has twice as many as another, wouldn’t they be entitled to only half as much per capita?

In happier news, the young royals understand the concept of setting an example:

Prince William Duke Prince & Kate Middleton Duchess of Cambridge Princess of Wales Are Reportedly ‘Going with the Flow’ for Baby #4

“What about LaLoosh?”

“He’s got a million dollar arm and a 5 cent head.”

Hahahaha. Great movie.

We’re talking about great movies and nobody has mentioned Crank and Crank 2. smdh.

This sounds silly but isn’t terribly different than the anti-white racist system in Hawaii.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21383435

On Boston Common, they are having a snowy cookout.

Quaid signals:

“Bravo-Yankee-Echo/Bravo-Yankee-Echo.”

Buddusky: “That sonauvabitch is making a run for it!”

What I love about Nicholson in that role is that he sounds pitch perfect as a senior non-com who is committed to the Navy and doing his duty…and hating to have to drag Quaid to Portsmouth.

Life is like that.
—————————————————————————-

Side note: the movie was released Dec ‘73. I would have just turned six years old and a lot of the scenery looks like the America I remember as a little kid, so there is a definite sense of nostalgia.

I remember my parents going to see it and liking the movie. My dad said: “you can’t see it. The language is way too rough.”

While you’re at it, why not stop perpetuating the stereotype that Richard Pryor was ever funny

Thanks Twinkie. No Way Out is a pretty good movie.

I think the cast is just really great with Gene Hackman, Will Patton, Sean Young (I know she is a flake, but God she was a great looking woman) and Kevin Costner.

My wife and I happened to catch it last spring and I hadn’t seen it in years and my wife had never seen it. Pretty taut story all the way through.

I see the contrast between the two songs, but confess I don’t understand why “Best” is peak corporate. Oh well, I’m still listening to Jackie DeShannon.

Going into the 1998 NFL Draft it became fashionable to sat Ryan Leaf had more physical talent and “upside” than Peyton Manning. Some of the “Draft experts” had talked themselves into believing Leaf would be a better pro QB than Manning.

Peyton Manning, of course, went on to a long and productive career. Manning was as close to a sure thing as you could get.

I haven’t seen any of the movies referred to in this post except Ghostbusters, and I have no desire to ever see any of them.

I repeat my question: Why is Steve Sailer absent from TAki’s yesterday?

Just the other day, the Z-Man announced that he was quitting Taki’s for good. It was one of those rare divorces that increase the respectability of both parties.

If Sailer also leaves Taki’s, we might have a perfect circle of mutual denouncements.

Going into the 1998 NFL Draft it became fashionable to sat Ryan Leaf had more physical talent and “upside” than Peyton Manning.

So he was the Gary Beban of his era?

Mrs Beban is still alive, in case you were wondering. One of the directories I looked them up on maintains that Steve is 105 years old. I think they’re confusing him with his dad.

[MORE]

I’m gonna go with the Cuban missile crisis movie, where KC actually attempted an accent. Understated movie, but good. I’m not a scholar of the event; for anybody who knows both the movie and the history — was it portrayed accurately, or spun?

the woke stuff and Indian stuff

The show tried that a bit in the first couple of seasons, but I feel like it retreated from that a bit since.

Surprising in our time that it tries at all without simply demonizing the Duttons and all the other core, White Americans in Montana.

Agree. One thing I don’t get, though, is that Montana actually has a big extractive economy. The introductory sequence hints at some conflict involving that, but the show has nothing about it (yet). I haven’t seen any of the new season, so perhaps that’s in there, finally.

Thanks for sharing that photo. If I had grown up somewhere like that, I’d never have left. Then again, if my old man lived there, I would have still. 😉

You must have some crazy expenses you’re not telling us about.

It’s Lambo. She’ll only eat artisanal kibble hand rolled by Master Jae , grandson of the Master of Hounds to his Majesty Sunjong Yi , King of Joseon and Emperor of Korea. It is flown into LAX twice a week at exorbitant expense

It’s hard to judge comedy from a distance of decades, since a lot of it is topical, and even attitudes about then-famous figures shift over time.

In Draft Day, Costner is slightly wooden himself as the football executive

This bizarre YouTube channel announced his death today:

Other recent obits are for Helen Mirren and Russell Crowe, both of whom are still alive. In fact, all of these are– creepy:

https://www.youtube.com/@tragicnews5916/videos

In happier news, this is for Tiny/Ebony:

Scale not given. Ducks Unlimited estimates 34 million breeding ducks in the US, and the USDA says there are about five million on farms.

It’s true that most of the artists I mentioned have some merit. I like Grimes, and get the appeal, especially to women, of LDR’s (studiously affected) vibe/voice/theatrics (see my full linked May comment).

As for Haines/Metric, there might be a couple of okay songs, but the band is not great, IMO: The music (and lyrics) relies too much on her scratchy-throated tough-girl bouncy ‘swagger’—the music is evolved AOR for game, wanton chicks who grew up listening to Spice Girls-tier or more recent cheese and who are now adults and have been through a few rough relationships. NTTAWWT 🙂

When Dave says Haines is a phenomenal live performer, I get what he’s saying—he likes her energy and her impressive legs. In an alternate timeline, they could be doing deadlifts together.

Cameron’s Avatar is nothing more than a sci-fi remake of Dances with Wolves.

“I haven’t seen any of the movies referred to in this post except Ghostbusters, and I have no desire to ever see any of them.”

Trust me, they don’t want to see you either.

Eh, whaddya gonna do. A girl named after one of these is pretty much bound to have expensive taste.

PS. I couldn’t even get in the door of one of those. I tried.

On the plus side, Costner does represent dignified stoic masculinity even though his career took off in an era when such a thing has become increasingly unfashionable. And yes, Costner is a classic example of an actor being himself in every role but he largely knows what he’s doing and doesn’t stray too far outside his range. In his interviews he’s very likeable and good natured. Whereas a lot of male actors who’s careers took off after circa-1970 seem grumpy or narcissistic.

‘No Way Out’ is a good film, Costner has presence, you just need to surround him with really good actors and not ask too much of him.

Sorry, but let me cure you of your Yellowstone admiration:

Driver is the obvious choice to play a young Pete Townsend if they ever get around to a THE WHO music-bio .

Sorry, but the time for this has been long past. Adam Driver is 37. Pete Townshend was 37 in 1983, one year after the Who put out It’s Hard, which would be their last album for 20 years. Both blokes do sprout prominent proboscises though, I’ll give you that.

I doubt he was supposed to be Jewish in Inside Llewyn Davis. Al Cody was his character. Although you may just be referring to type and not the actual religion of the character. Although that’s getting a bit meta, I guess. And he was being directed by Jewish men in a couple of those. Not sure about the Spike Lee movie.

Ok damn, you may be into something. His name is Zimmerman in Klansman and Shapiro in Frances Ha. But he’s Charlie Barber in Frances Ha.

Whoops, too late to edit. He’s Charlie Barber in Marriage Story.

“I’m listening to the fucking song!”

Those two movies and “Open Range.” “Field of Dreams,” too.

Strange. I like Friday Night Lights and Heathers. I first watched them both when I was about 18. It was the Friday Night Lights tv show that prompted me to watch the movie, though.

It’s because one doesn’t need any game to hit that, just alcohol for one’s self.

Damn you. Now I have to clean my barf off the floor.

> I’d suggest that although an awful lot of ground work was laid over 40 years, the big spark and proximate cause of the Great Awokening was the advent of social media.

Jon Haidt agrees. Here is Razib Khan’s October 2022 hourlong interview of him.

Haidt urges mandatory implementation of parental controls on smartphone-oriented social media. He believes that access to platforms like Tumblr, Tiktok, and Instagram is unhealthy for under-16s.

Trust me, they don’t want to see you either.

See, now that’s where you’re wrong, wiseass. They definitely want to see me and my money, and I’m not giving it to them.

I see! I know who she is! She’s part of what Charlie Robinson dubs “The Crypto Manson Family”. A seriously disturbed and polyamorous chick of the FTX crew.

https://rokfin.com/post/109980

https://rokfin.com/post/110100

https://rokfin.com/post/109818

( I’m posting three links because I don’t know which one(s) non- members can access).

As a young liberal pussy, I very much admired the films of Hal Ashby. He made some good movies for a hippy degenerate tyrant auteur. The Landlord, about a Park Slope gentrifier(!), Last Detail, Shampoo, Harold & Maude, Being There, etc, all flawed movies but with some great moments. He made a sports movie, too, The Slugger’s Wife, which was not so good.

I recently streamed “Apocalypto.” It’s riveting, a glimpse of what a Hollywood built around artistic vision might have looked like. Extreme violence is core to a straightforward storyline of hunter-gatherers’ collision with an advanced civilization. The plot also includes some heavy-handed elements to make the movie more commercially viable, IMO excusable compromises, if that’s what it took to get the film made and marketed. Many or most people won’t like it, and its stuff-of-nightmares should make it off-limits for adolescents. But an amazing achievement by Mel Gibson.

The Browns had their shot!
https://imgs.search.brave.com/4fTbI3s3ZSlMWIGpaKGifytssGMuGjGib9a9I3ezL30/rs:fit:1200:1200:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu/dHJiaW1nLmNvbS9p/bWctNWE2ZTA3ODIv/dHVyYmluZS9jdC1w/YXRyaW90cy1iaWxs/LWJlbGljaGljay1i/cm93bnMtMjAxODAx/Mjg

Costner’s Open Range was a great Western. His work with Robert Duvall in that film was excellent.

Ghislaine’s rather plain, and was when she was younger. Not sure what ‘daddy issues’ could mean in re Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell.

I don’t know about that. She was a pretty nice looking girl.

Don’t forget, big hooters too. Always makes a girl look better:

https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/b67848cec02b3f3dbcded1c5c78229f7?width=1024

Any usage that can distill Soviet Communism into two short words differing in only one letter is something to treasure not denigrate.

Who, Whom.

“But the Friday Night Lights vs. Heathers contrast is piddling compared to Draft Day vs. Annette, which is like the Foo Fighters “Best of You” (the peak of corporate rock) vs. “Strawberry Fields Forever.“

At the time of its release in Feb. ’67, Strawberry Fields Forever, the band that released it, was the pinnacle of corporate rock. The Beatles, Alist Superstars in the world of rock that they were, were so oversaturated and overmarketed by that time. Irony is that the song was the “B” side, to Penny Lane (which went #1 on the US charts). Technically both songs were part of a double A side, but Penny Lane charter higher and usually is considered the true “A” side of the record.

Still not exactly sure why Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane weren’t included on Sgt. Pepper album.

Costner was good with Diane Lane in Let Him Go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Him_Go

When I’m stuck in a day
That’s gray and lonely
I just stick out my chin
And grin and say

The sun’ll come out, tomorrow
So you gotta hang on ’til tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow
You’re always a day away

I found Apocalypto to be the most gripping and appalling movie I’ve ever seen.
As you say, an amazing achievement.

“he straddles the border between homely and magnificent”

Agreed. From some angles, his face on the big screen almost resembles Keanu Reeves — but with irregularities, as if Keanu’s wax figure from Madame Tussaud’s (if there is still a Madame Tussaud’s and Keanu is there) got left out in the sun. Yet Driver has a tremendous presence and his near-ugliness is riveting.

Thirteen Days (2000) was not “portrayed accurately. To say it was “spun” is an understatement. It was based on Bobby Kennedy’s posthumous book of the same title.

Sheldon Stern has shown in his books the declassification of the White House Cuban missile crisis tapes has revealed RFK’s book to be inaccurate and misleading. He began writing it for JFK’s 1964 reelection campaign, but after the assassination changed the focus to advance his own political career.

RFK claimed in Thirteen Days that he and JFK formed a united front for restraint against the military hawks. The tapes show RFK to have been one of the most hawkish in the room. Stern (who worked for RFK’s 1968 campaign) wrote:

“RFK’s stance diring the ExComm meetings, which can only be fully understood in the context of his role in Operation Mongoose, turns out to be very different than the idealized and sanitized view he consciously crafted for Thirteen Days.”

For a recent book, see “The Soviets’ Greatest Gambit: The Cuban Missile Crisis,” by Alan J. Levine.

I hate to disappoint you, but George Lucas threw Leigh Brackett’s script in the garbage. She never planned to have Darth Vader as Luke’s father. This was because George Lucas was starting a Stalinist purge to take over the franchise and purge out the memory of anyone responsible for the success of the first movie. The first movie was Gary Kurtz’s dream. He wanted a lighthearted adventure. Instead we get a Jack Kirby melodrama.
I have seen Brackett’s scrpit and would have preferred that they had followed that.

On the subject of movies…

The British Film Institute’s magazine Sight & Sound holds a ten-yearly poll of film critics to determine the best movies ever made. In 2012, just before the Great Awokening, Vertigo topped the list, displacing Citizen Kane for the first time. This year the number of critics invited to participate doubled from 800-something to over 1,600, presumably with the aim of redressing the female/male divide. And… they ended up with three hour and twenty-one minute Belgian feminist movie from 1975 called “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” at the top of the list. (It was #35 in 2012.) Godfather Part II, Lawrence of Arabia and Chinatown fell out of the top 100. So what are the odds that the sisterhood got together and exploited ranked-choice voting to pick their winner? (There were a further three movies directed by women in the top twenty.) “Get Out” was ranked at #95.

I am a goyim

No such thing as “a” goyim. This is not like “elohim” well documented as a plural form of a singular noun, like “panties”. Buy a dictionary and USE it.

More often than not, you have to have day jobs or other businesses that underwrite the maintenance of the farms and ranches.

That’s called “paying someone else to do the work” just like the boss at your day job is doing. Sounds like your farm or ranch (two very different animals) is operating at a loss and is therefore a hobby.
All overalls, no corn.

Similarly I had to take a day job when I wanted to hire a maid.

In other news, re: Girls Lena Dunham can suck it. One of the most disagreeable people on the planet.

It’s probably a lot like Ghislaine Maxwell (what a retarded first name) and Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine was of course good looking (unlike this broad), but her obvious daddy issues and Epstein’s Hannibal Lecter-meets-a-porn-producer charm made her putty in Epstein’s hands, willing to kidnap teenage girls to be his sex slaves and pimp them out to other men and women at Jeffrey’s command.

It’s a standard issue French name. Get over yourself. With that done, name one girl she kidnapped. Just one. Can’t, can you? More likely she was his M0ssad handler. Do the “Who’s still alive?” math after Epstein got his Tel Aviv Shoeshine.

That was a great moment – when the main character finally finds the refuge and starts speaking…

If I only watched movies or TV shows made by actors and directors who share my politics, I’d be watching Triumph des Willens and Olympia all day.

I kid, of course.

I don’t have a problem eating Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and I’ll watch Kevin Costner in Yellowstone even if he supports politically that old maid shrew of an elitist Liz Cheney.

I recently streamed “Apocalypto.”

That’s a criminally underrated film. I enjoyed it immensely.

I agree with you no evidence of coercion has surfaced.

A woman used to luxury is doing a long stretch in an American prison. I don’t think she was the higher up in this case. I’d be interested to know what she was doing in New England when there were at least two other countries where she had permanent residency status and could put up a fight to avoid being turned over to the sketchy characters who work in the US Attorney’s offices.

She came up with the snow battle and the asteroid field chase, the cloud city, some of the most memorable bits in Empire.

“More likely she was his M0ssad handler.”

Absolutely.

Just watched Netflix Ghislaine Maxwell story and it seemed a limited hangout as I understand the term. Jewish Maxwell and Epstein are pursued by Jewish lawyer Bois (to avoid pursuit by untrustworthy gentiles?) to ensure that focus of story and prosecution is limited to purported sex crimes as opposed to honeypot operation. Netflix plays role of useful fool.

Maybe her primary concern was avoiding assassination like her father. Maybe she wants to be in the one place Mossad can’t reach her (assuming that’s achievable at an American maximum security prison) or hidden in NH.

David- Thanks for the book recommendation, going to have to pick it up.

RFK was a very aggressive guy, so no surprise there was a huge variance between private advice and public statements, especially given political ambitions and his swing to the left post JFK’s murder.

Somebody needs to make a follow up to Draft Day about how the Browns managed to draft Baker Mayfield over Josh Allen in the 2018 draft

Or Demolition Man, which seems to become a more accurate depiction of the future every day now, even though it was released in 93.

As for Haines/Metric, there might be a couple of okay songs, but the band is not great, IMO: The music (and lyrics) relies too much on her scratchy-throated tough-girl bouncy ‘swagger’—the music is evolved AOR for game, wanton chicks who grew up listening to Spice Girls-tier or more recent cheese and who are now adults and have been through a few rough relationships.

It’s impressive to be wrong this many times in one paragraph. Metric’s co-founder, guitarist Jimmy Shaw, was classically trained at Julliard; a lot of their songs don’t rely on “swagger”; their lead single from their current album is 10 minutes long–clearly not evolved for album-oriented radio (does that even still exist?); and Emily’s lyrics are hardly ever about romantic relationships. The one exception to that that comes to mind, Metric’s ballad “Eclipse” for the Twilight Eclipse soundtrack (silly movie, but great soundtrack), is also an example of Emily not employing any “scratchy-throated tough-girl bouncy ‘swagger’”:

When Dave says Haines is a phenomenal live performer, I get what he’s saying—he likes her energy and her impressive legs. In an alternate timeline, they could be doing deadlifts together.

Of the singers you mentioned, the only one I’m aware of that deadlifts is Lana Del Rey. Emily Haines moves more like a boxer.

You’re making 18 year old me feel
Like a real jerk.

Metric’s co-founder, guitarist Jimmy Shaw, was classically trained at Julliard

Nice, but irrelevant to criticism of the band’s output.

clearly not evolved for album-oriented radio (does that even still exist?)

To clarify, by AOR I meant “Adult-Oriented Rock” which, I concede, can have different meanings. In Metric’s case, I mean alt/pop rock that is geared to listeners who are no longer teenagers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult-oriented_rock

A different name for it is AAA (adult album alternative):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_album_alternative

The format has a broader, more diverse playlist than most other formats. Musical selection tends to be on the fringe of mainstream pop and rock.

Metric makes the list here:

List of adult alternative artists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adult_alternative_artists#M

Emily’s lyrics are hardly ever about romantic relationships

I’m describing the attitude, not the content.

Emily Haines moves more like a boxer.

Sure, but that doesn’t contradict my assessment of her appeal to some (beyond music). I’m not even saying that in itself is wrong; I ain’t gonna police someone for being hornt on the timeline. 🙂

Well, tastes come and go, and everything is subjective, but to me this just all sounds like banal club music.

As to “moves like a boxer,” try this on for size….

Like Marceline the Vampire Queen once said, Everything stays.

Noooo! I don’t mean to ruin your nice memories. You were an 18-year-old dude; your celebrity crush was totally natural.

Sure, but that doesn’t contradict my assessment of her appeal to some (beyond music). I’m not even saying that in itself is wrong; I ain’t gonna police someone for being hornt on the timeline. 🙂

All four of the women you mentioned are attractive, and all but Phair are younger than the 48-year-old Haines, but Haines has much better stage presence. Check out the Brooklyn crowd’s reaction to her at the beginning of the band’s acoustic interlude at their October 26th show.

It’s not just about looks. One handicap Phair has is her guitar—you can’t move around much holding one. Emily only played guitar on one song in their set, and Shaw and Winstead (the bassist) stepped in on keyboards while she sang and danced. It’s just a lot more interesting to watch than four people standing still on stage.

That’s called “paying someone else to do the work” just like the boss at your day job is doing. Sounds like your farm or ranch (two very different animals) is operating at a loss and is therefore a hobby.
All overalls, no corn.

I was referring to other people’s family farms, not mine. My Midwest farmland is highly profitable (and professionally managed by trusts my wife and I established) while the farmland in Appalachia is too marginal for cash crops and is mostly used for horses and hunting.

Godfather Part II, Lawrence of Arabia and Chinatown fell out of the top 100.

Oh yeah. Get Out is clearly better than those stupid flicks. These guys are really on top of their game now.

The number of people who can even grasp what movies like The Rules of the Game or Wild Strawberries are about is diminishing rapidly. Very rapidly.

And needless to add, this goes for all the other great achievements of European-descended culture as well. Into the dustbin with all of it.

ensure that focus of story and prosecution is limited to purported sex crimes as opposed to honeypot operation.

Partly like the emphasis on the salacious aspects of Hunter’s laptop revelations in the MSM, to keep everyone distracted from the high-level corruption also included.

I generally find I need to listen to something 3 or 4 times before I can form an opinion on it, so I won’t summarily dismiss the first PJ Harvey song in that 40+ minute concert video you posted, but no, she’s not moving as well as Emily Haines. To be fair, though, she has two handicaps: a microphone with a cord, and ridiculous spiked heel boots. Then in the second song she adds a third handicap, a guitar.

That’s the first concert video of PJ Harvey I’ve seen, btw. I recall this song of hers wasn’t bad though.

It’s the only one of hers I can think of.