A little something more inspirational from California. I first read about this in Buzzfeed, but this report is from the LA Times:
Jamie-Lynne Knighten wants the world to know the legacy of Matthew Jackson, a man she barely knew.
Their only encounter was brief, about five minutes in a grocery store on Nov. 10. But what happened in those moments, and the tragedy that followed, put the Carlsbad woman on a quest to honor the 28-year-old whose kindness left a deep impression…
The late evening trip to Trader Joe’s in Oceanside had been stressful for Knighten, her fussy 5-month-old in tow as she navigated a market she had not been to before. The trip to the register was worse: A $200 tab, her debit card at home, her credit card declined thanks to an anti-fraud lock, and, of course, a crying baby.
Knighten began fumbling for her phone to call the bank, as a long line stretched behind her, when a young man stepped up and asked if he could cover the cost. She first refused, but he asked again. When she looked into his eyes, Knighten said, she realized that he truly wanted to help.
“It just felt like this huge hug, this great big bear hug,” the married mother of two said.
The man said he wanted nothing in return; he simply wanted her to do the same for someone else.
She agreed, but asked his name and where he worked, thinking that somehow she still wanted to acknowledge his selfless act.
So more than a week later, when she finally had a moment, Knighten called Jackson’s boss at LA Fitness, to say how kind he had been, and perhaps bring him a gift.
The gym manager began crying, Knighten said. Days earlier, Jackson was killed in a car accident — his Ford Fiesta struck a tree along a shopping complex at the end of West Vista Way, not far from the store where Knighten met him. Two passengers in the car were hurt but have since been released from the hospital.
The crash happened less than 24 hours after Jackson had paid Knighten’s grocery bill.
After a sleepless night, Knighten took to Facebook: “I still cannot believe it. I thought for sure I would get the chance to see him again, give him a hug and thank him at least once more in person. Now I won’t get that chance, but more importantly no one else will get the chance to meet him. And that breaks my heart.”…
Knighten, who is from Canada and had recently returned from a lengthy visit home, said she hopes to spread the word of what she calls “Matthew’s legacy.” She has started a Facebook page and Twitter account under just that name: “Matthews legacy.” Here’s a link to the page….
More at the link.
One of the first Bible verses I remember hearing — one of the few I can honor — was “Be not afraid to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.”
Since I was very young, I didn’t quite understand the glorious King James translation, but I can honestly affirm that I’ve always done my best to entertain strangers. And I think that could be a motto for many of us here at Balloon Juice, as well.
***********
Apart from SS/DD, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
The Other Chuck
I’ve been on the internet for more than a little while, so my first reflex was to google “matthew jackson snopes”. Sigh. Turned up nothing, so who knows. I think I’ll go to bed believing in something good for a change.
Ultraviolet Thunder
That block quote has weird sunglasses ads in it for me.
Felanius Kootea
Thank you for sharing this Anne-Laurie. It is a surreal day in SoCal today.
Baud
Yay good people!
Pogonip
King James? I thought you said you grew up Roman Catholic?
FYWP kept kicking me out below. I would like to express my condolences to Adam on his friend’s untimely death.
GoBlue72
The “God could be that homeless guy in the street” was a favorite trope of the pastors at the left wing church in Cambridge I used to attend.
lamh36
Something to smile at, my niece Zoe is 4 months old today.
I have the 5 pic set over at my blog.
NotMax
What do single-sided double density floppy disks have to do with anything?
Confoozled.
Baud
@lamh36:
?
Iowa Old Lady
@lamh36: What a cutie!
schrodinger's cat
Tukaram, the 17th Century Varkari poet from Maharashtra wrote
That one who cares for the needy and the downtrodden as his own
Can be recognized as a saint
And in whose presence you will find the divine/ God.
(Translation is mine)
In the voice of the inimitable Bhimsen Joshi,
Je Ka Ranjale Ganjale, tyasi mhane jo aapuule
NotMax
It ain’t called the Golden Rule because it’s shiny.
Mike J
@NotMax: If you use a hole punch to put a notch in the other edge of the jacket, you can usually flip the, over to use both sides. Just be careful no to hit the actual magnetic medium.
Pogonip
@lamh36: Awww. What a cutie!
Emerald
I live a mile away from the Trader Joe’s in Oceanside. Don’t remember any recent crashes on west Vista, but some have happened. Wonder when this occurred. Quite a story.
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: Same Shit, Different Day.
Or you could replace that second ‘S’…
David Koch
.
raven
Rut Ro “Syeed Farook”.That ain’t good.
PurpleGirl
@NotMax:
SS/DD
Same shit/different day (I think)
NotMax
@Mike J
If recall correctly, thenceforth known as a flippy disk.
Largest floppy I ever had hands-on experience with was for video – almost 3 feet in diameter, no case, used in a specially made gramophone-style machine produced by Sony. Seem the remember that there were only 6 prototype machines ever built. A class was in at grad school managed to wangle use of one for a long-distance interactive telecommunications project.
Emerald
@Emerald: Ah. Nov. 10. Still doesn’t ring bells, but I don’t follow local news.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
And I thought the old 8″ floppies were enormous. I wonder how many kids these days would even recognize an old-fashioned floppy.
Mike J
@raven: Wingnuts already crowing on twitter that Democrats will never win another election.
raven
@Emerald: It’s my and the Marine Corps birthday.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: My son does. Watched WarGames last night.
BruceFromOhio
Word.
Added bonus: being nice to everyone is easier, less stress, and you never know when your mom might be watching.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: When I was a wee lad of 10 or so (mid 1980s), my teacher gave our class a couple of cases of old punched cards that she had salvaged from somewhere or another (we mainly used them to build some awesome card buildings). I think the Kids These Days would have a similar reaction to any of the floppies, even the “modern” 3.5 inch ones.
BruceFromOhio
There is so much power in this, even the most simple things. Help someone; they offer thanks; encourage them to do something for someone else. You never see what comes from the seeds you sow, but it feels good anyway.
Commit random acts of kindness!
NotMax
Sale price was too tempting to pass up, so scrounged up enough in the budget to order my first tablet from the dreaded Amazon.
Package showed up yesterday. Inside?
Wrong brand, wrong size, wrong operating system, wrong software, wrong color. And either a returned or refurbished one, as not set to factory defaults.
Multiple e-mails still ensuing.
The user manual in barely decipherable Chinglish was entertaining though, including multiple instructions to “see the picture.” Not a single picture in the whole booklet.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Punch cards made the best scratch paper. Fit neatly into the breast pocket of the shirt, at the ready.
@Roger Moore
Still have a working zip drive and corresponding disks.
Litlebritdifrnt
Years ago I was behind a Marine wife at Food Lion and she was trying to pay with a check. The cashier told her she couldn’t take the check because she had a bad one outstanding. She was stood there with a couple of kids and maybe $20 bucks worth of mac and cheese and bread and stuff. She started crying and the cashier apologized but said there was nothing she could do. I asked the cashier how much the bill was and she told me. I told her to add it to my bill and I would pay. The girl’s face was priceless, and she was gushing trying to thank me. I told her to do the same for someone else one day. I couldn’t really afford it but it made me feel good.
Karmus
Just in tears.
J R in WV
I saw this. What a good legacy for the poor guy who died – made his good deed, helped out a lady in distress, a really good guy.
I’m sorry he died, don’t get me wrong, but at least he left a legacy of helpfulness and being kind. Quite a contrast to the other horror story of the day.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore: I do! Oh, shit, I just remembered I’m not a kid.
@lamh36 – what a totally cute kiddo your niece is. She will be a looker and a half.
Hey raven – may I shoot you an email with some ?s about my old man’s Navy service? I have your addy and have not gotten his records yet (among my questions).
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike J:
I last used that trick 35 years ago.
Things have changed, but not as much as you’d think.
Apple fanboys were stuck up back then too.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
She is too cute for her hairbow!!
lurker dean
@Mike J: wow, that brings back really old memories, really old!
joel hanes
@GoBlue72:
1 In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord over all of the earth when it was suited to Man.
3 And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good.
4 And Man formed Aqualung of the dust of the ground and a host of others likened unto his kind.
5 And these lesser men Man did cast into the void. And some were burned and some were put apart from their kind.
6 And Man became the God that he had created and with his miracles did rule over all the earth.
7 But as all these things did come to pass, the Spirit that did cause man to create his God lived on within all men: even within Aqualung.
8 And man saw it not.
9 But for Christ’s sake he’d better start looking.
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: You have been posting a long time and that doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s who you are.
Origuy
@NotMax: Forget email. Call Anazon and talk to a person. I’ve had much more success than with email or chat.
lamh36
So are they saying about the Farook name?
Mike J
@NotMax:
Making flippy floppy
NotMax
@Origuy
Phoning to talk in person was the first thing I did. They then sent the initial e-mail to the seller, and I’ve been following up since.
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: If it doesn’t work contact Amazon again, they have refunded me, when the seller was not responsive.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Heads!
Mike J
@NotMax: Ahhhh, you bought it through Amazon, not from Amazon. I’ve never had trouble with Amazon itself, but other companies that sell on their web site aren’t always as good.
jl
@lamh36: Things are very confused so early in an investigation. I read an NBC story that said the Farook person was believed to be a US citizen, and that the Farook name came up only because a house associated with that name (owned, or rented?) was being searched.
No one knows anything for sure yet. So sad for obsessive 24/7 live news coverage that real life is not so neat and tidy, and does not unfold to fit their schedules.
BBA
Banning guns is impossible, so let’s just ban men instead.
Cacti
@jl:
The Daily Beast says that Farook (sp?) is a business tax specialist with the California Board of Equalization and a graduate of local high school, according to his LinkedIn page.
Owns a 2-bedroom house, married, and has a young kid. Sounds like a middle class US citizen.
Tommy
@NotMax: As much as you were a dick to me here that is kind of Karma coming right back at yeah.
lamh36
Shhhiiitttt!!!
Delo_Taylor
***Graphic*** Video shows San Francisco Police shooting a man in front of a bus stop.
Reporters reaching out to the person who posted the video…WTF is happening?
lamh36
justinjm1 9m9 minutes ago
Farook’s sister told us immediately after the attack that the media was jumping to conclusions
ruemara
I want to focus on this bittersweet story of genuine good by someone taken from a world that could use such a kind soul, but I can’t.
The fact that the suspects have the last name Farook makes me sick to my stomach because of the hatred and fear down must this motherfucking election cycle of a few months. Jesus Christ, I’m worried about my friends. We have the dumbest, most reactionary populace at any time, but now?
Fuck the NRA, their sycophants, the complicit media and this trio of murderous terrorists.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cacti: There’s another Farook who was (is?) an Environmental Health Specialist in San Bernardino County.
Which matches pretty well with the professions of the people in the conference room that have talked to the media tonight.
Tommy
@lamh36: That video is hard to watch and it cuts off at a point so hard to tell what happens. But I just have a question to ask, because when you hear the gun fire it gets real, at what point did we teach police to empty their entire gun/clip into somebody? Seems to me, I don’t know, one or two bullets might be enough to stop somebody. Eliminate the threat if there was an actual threat.
debit
@Tommy: Are you serious? You threatened someone here and you actually have the nerve to come back and wave your grudge around? Jesus.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
Now you are being a dick.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: You really have a talent for putting your foot in your mouth.
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
Has there been any news story to match the pictures? My retired journo’s instincts tell me there should be a news story somewhere.
Currants
Thank you for this reminder, AL. ,
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
This isn’t really local to LA except that G met Ferguson (MO) library director Scott Bonner at the CA Library Conference and said he was a really nice guy. Bonner kept the library open while the unrest was going on so people would have a refuge and not be trapped in their homes.
Suzanne
@Litlebritdifrnt: I had something similar happen recently. I went to Costco after work, and I got up to the cash register, and I realized that the dressing container in my veggie tray had opened up and soaked the veggies in ranch. An employee ran to get me another one, but I didn’t want to hold up the line, so I let the man behind me go ahead of me. He was a middle-aged black man, holding one of their $5 rotisserie chickens. He went to pay, and his EBT card didn’t work. And the checkout guy was apologetic, but didn’t give him the chicken. So I stepped in, paid for it, and when he objected, I just said, “It’s my pleasure, sir. Have a wonderful night.” The cashier told me that it was an incredibly nice thing to do, but I was like, “It’s only $5, no big deal, I was in that situation once and I needed help, so it’s a pleasure to be able to help someone else out.” I also ran into a few people eating out of trash cans this summer, so I take them inside and buy them a meal. Mr. Suzanne and I have started carrying packages of peanuts and almonds to give to the people who stand on the overpasses, and any time we have fast food coupons for free food, we give those to them, too.
Today is making me heartsick. Fuck. Just fuck.
Tommy
@ruemara: You can and should focus on this kindness. I saw the story in this daily newsletter I get. The newsletter said it was a kind story but a sad ending and you really ought to stop reading NextDraft and go read about it.
I shed a tear or two reading it but what it reinforced was what I already knew and what I don’t do often enough. Sometimes a random act of kindness, even a little act, can have profound effects. We all ought to practice more random acts of kindness!!!!!!!!!!
lamh36
@Amir Khalid: as I said…some jounos have been trying to gather info, but for obvious reason…jounos focused on bigger story…mass shooting trumps single act of possible police related violence?
Matt
After some debate, I’m going to put this forward, because I know people who have killed themselves without people recogning warning signs, such as acts of unexplained generousity.
Hoping to be wrong . . .
lamh36
So just in time to start off Black History month…FX premiere of The People Vs OJ Simpson in February…
Cacti
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Always lots of bad info immediately following incidents like these.
Also saw somewhere that police identified Farook right away because other employees there identified him as one of the shooters, and that he came to the party first.
I think this story has multiple layers that are going to be peeled back in the coming days.
Tommy
@debit: So when folks were savaging me you were where?
@Amir Khalid: : Honstly, kind of my point. Being a dick.
NotMax
@Tommy
??
If lip smackingly savoring the ill fortune of others gets your rocks off, that’s strictly your business.
Can recall getting a tad snippy in the immediate aftermath of both your high-handed and imperious God mode and “that’s not even subject to discussion” rants, but not before nor since.
But not gonna relitigate that skirmish. Let it go.
Brachiator
I’m trying to catch up on some reading, especially since I want to avoid breaking news and press conferences related to today’s awful events. One thing that added to the downbeat day was watching friends and co-workers checking to see if they had people who might have been in that area of San Bernardino today, and other folk worrying in what neighborhood the suspect SUV might travel through (before the apparent suspects were caught). Is this added anxiety now to be part of the new normal, an unintended consequence of this possible gun madness?
benw
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” – DFW
SiubhanDuinne
Dear god, I wish people on this site at least could stop being dicks to each other. Don’t know about others, but I come here for (among other things) common sense, rationality, intelligence, wit and humor, insights, and of course the usual pet photos, recipes, garden plots, sports picks, and so on.
I do not come here to watch people I like and respect being dickish to each other. I don’t want to take sides, and I don’t want to watch old grudges — no matter how “deserved” — being revisited.
Please, everyone, just stop it. The world is untidy enough without Juicers going at each other’s throats.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: Whatever floats your boat, then But don’t be surprised when people call you on it.
debit
@Tommy: I was hanging out at Wonkette because your redesign was shit. And if I had been here, it wasn’t my job to defend you or stick up for you. You’re supposed to be a professional. Act like one.
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
An incident like that, cops standing around a guy in the street and blowing him away, should have been in the news already, without someone having to tweet photos of it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@benw: We lost a genuinely kind soul in 2008. Those are the “other guy’s initials” under my (stylized) semicolon that I got for the semicolon tattoo project.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: Military training, or at least the stuff I got as a silly civilian who had to get weapon’s certified before deploying, was to empty the magazine, then reload. I have done a lot of specialized tactical training (because what the Army was willing to pay for was just enough to allow me to pass the marksmanship test) with a good friend who is a SWAT sniper and law enforcement tactical trainer, and he says they train to drop magazines and reload when they have a chance, so they’re always dumping partially full magazines. That said law enforcement training is not uniform from academy to academy and we have no national standards (because of course we don’t).
This could be a cop with a military background. Or he could have been trained to empty the magazine in his law enforcement training. Or, it could simply be adrenaline and stress. Cop gets stressed, cop starts to shoot. The next thing you know the cop is pulling the trigger and nothing is going back because he’s emptied the magazine. If you asked me to wager I’d go with option 3, then option 1, then option 2.
Pogonip
@BBA: but then who’s going to open the stuck jar lids of the world?
lamh36
@Amir Khalid: One would think so…but ya know alot of the police killing did not make even local news, let alone national…
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I am getting increasingly close to wanting to quit my job and never leave my house. Part of that is due to the fear of being shot, but most honestly, most of that stems from just being so disappointed in my gun-adoring countrymen and -women that I’d just rather never see them again.
Tommy
@Adam L Silverman: Interesting. I don’t know and wondered. My gut is they are trained to empty their clip, which at least to me makes no sense.
redshirt
@Tommy:
Wow. This is kinda out of nowhere. Makes me wonder what is the karma limit for Tommy’s enemy list. Just bad purchases? How about injury? Is that in your Karmic Kalculator?
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Military training does lean that way. Police training should not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: If you never leave your house, how can you ski?
NotMax
@Pogonip
The Russian women’s Olympic shot put team.
:)
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: I can only speak to what I’ve experienced. My initial instructors made it clear you empty the entire magazine before reload. Of course we were preparing for a war zone and while not being sent as shooters, we had to be prepared to defend ourselves and not in a way that put each other, as well as the military personnel we would be with at risk (this is also why I still train. I get asked at least once a year if I’ll go downrange for a bit, and while I wouldn’t be going as a shooter, again, I have to be a professional and be prepared just in case). This is training for a different situation than law enforcement, which, as I’ve indicated, I’ve been taught is to shoot selectively and reload when one has a chance, not when one has to because the magazine is empty. Like I said, my guess is the adrenaline/stress response.
ruemara
@SiubhanDuinne: thank you. That is something I am heartily tired of, especially today.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Le sigh.
I love skiing. I love going to art museums and restaurants and basketball games and concerts and plays and symphonies and festivals and libraries and parks. I love to travel. I love living life. This is why it is so frustrating that I have to be around all these gun-humpers. STAY AWAY FROM ME, GUN-HUMPERS.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: I am generally staying out of this, but is there a reason that you didn’t address this comment at the person who brought the personal into the discussion?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: 100% agree. That said, there are some really bad trainers out there. You’ve got the guy who created his own doctoral specialty from an online college who now has a multi-million dollar police research institute that is the go to locale to justify law enforcement use of force. You’ve got a bunch of retired SOF and other military out there running weekend training courses that law enforcement can take to meet their annual training requirements. And in some cases you’ve just got guys with long and exemplary military backgrounds now on their second careers in law enforcement. You know as well, if not better than I, that when you train this stuff into muscle memory, it is hard to train it out.
Prescott Cactus
Thanks Anne Laurie,
I needed something like this.
Tommy
@Suzanne: Don’t be fearful Suzanne. In my world unless you hunt I don’t see any need for a gun. It hurts my head to ponder why I’d need a ton of guns in my house. But here we are. Seems there are guns everywhere.
lamh36
30 minutes to bedtime for me, then off to bed.
I don’t know bout anyone else, but there seems to still be some confusion about this Farook suspect, but I guess it’s been confirmed?
My question: why haven’t they released the name of the female suspect also?
Anyhoo, gonna wind down now for bed, hopefully in the morning someone will have a nice recap/wrap up of confirmed facts.
Night BJ.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Well. militarized police is one of the biggest problems we have right now. As an artillery officer, if I was put in a situation where I needed to use my personal weapon, shit would have gone bad. My training as to how and when to shoot is not especially germane to police behavior. The idea of equating cops and soldiers is dangerous.
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
A word to the wise: he who values his good name should savour his Schadenfreude in private.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
I remember reading about that man. I’m surprised that he managed to sell his training services to police departments. Don’t vendors like him undergo any kind of vetting?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely. To paraphrase Admiral Adama: when the military becomes law enforcement, the people become the enemy. And that’s not good.
I spent a lot of time with the FA guys and gals because, as you know, they got reworked into planners for OIF. My team was wired into the command group via the brigade planner, though I was wired into the staff as a special staff element. Also, my battle buddy at USAWC was a FAO that liked to say it stood for Former Artillery Officer. In fact we had a couple like that! I did some work in support of FIRES in 2013 and 2014 and the garrison commander out there, as well as the 3, are former students of mine. And you all have a good Commandant – I provided some support to him in his previous assignment.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Indeed. Revenge is a dish best served cold and consumed quietly.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Indeed. Revenge is a dish best served cold and consumed quietly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Like leftover lo mein?
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: No, very little. This is why you had that former FBI special agent get so many contracts before he got himself in trouble back in 2014 in VA. He was basically teaching that all Muslims, everywhere, were always trying to kill non-Muslims. He’s now been banned by the VA state level law enforcement agency from doing any training in the state. The problem here is that no one really knows how to vet credentials, if you know someone who can make something happen it does, and there are no standards. For either training or for the trainers. By standards I mean a national, uniform set of standards that can be tailored for different jurisdictions, while still maintaining overall uniformity. You would be amazed at who has come across my desk asking for input as to whether someone’s legit, or, if their credentials are legit, they’re going to be okay to use.
My friend down here has spent several years trying to get me hooked in to do two different types of lessons. The first is on the terrorism/counter-terrorism component and the second on what the Army now calls Engagement, which is to establish rapport to facilitate communication and understanding to achieve one’s goals. Even when he was running his department’s training program he couldn’t get it to happen.
I’ve done two different law enforcement inservices. One was for a former student who was one of the Deputy SACs in the local ICE office (he was a USAR colonel that I had my first year at USAWC) and the other was in PA for one of my aikido students, who was a retired lieutenant colonel who was an administrator at the local state prison.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
A double-posted comment! Hadn’t seen FYWP do one of those in a while.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Doubly so, apparently.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: FA officers, even at the 2LT level, need to understand what the maneuver guys are doing. The reverse doesn’t happen in much farther in the career progression. OTOH, we produced Tommy Franks – full disclosure: One of my fellow 2LTs in my first unit ended up as Franks’s aide when he was a one star.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I blame a mobile device that isn’t cooperating with me. Or whiskey.
mclaren
America entertains lots of strangers.
We use water, and boards.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tommy: Really? You wanna go there? You might be entirely too thin-skinned to either interact with clients who are site users, or be active on the internet (even if we’re the ones doing it wrong) or both, if you think at any point you were “savaged.” Do you even know what that word means? Or do you just enjoy the role of drama llama after a few cocktails?
Listen to Amir Khalid, Gin & Tonic and enjoy your perceived revenge quietly and in private – much like leftover Lo Mein, as Omnes notes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I’d just blame Tommy. It would complete the circle.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
I thought from your original post that you got the $50 Fire tablet. That looks like a good deal.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, there is. Naming names would automatically align me on one side or the other, and I already said I wasn’t going to do that. Thanks, but not playing that game.
Omnes Omnibus
Over 35 years ago, there was a song about the kind of thing that happened today.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Okay. My thought was that someone like you calling out the specific bad behavior could have an effect.
mclaren
Something has clearly gone wrong with policing in Shithole America over the last 15 years.
Between 199 and 2013, public deaths from law enforcement officer interventions rose by 45%. At the same time, violent crime in America dropped to a record low.
“Variations in mortality from legal intervention in the United States—1999 to 2013,” Joanna Drowos, Charles H. Hennekens, Robert S. Levine, Preventive Medicine, Volume 81, Issue null, Pages 290-293.
mclaren
@SiubhanDuinne:
That would drop the number of comments per article to about five.
mclaren
And speaking of law enforce dementia in garrison state America, where we now exist in an undeclared condition of martial law, this tidbit:
Source: “Mom Lets 4-Year-Old Play Outside, Faces Jail,” Yahoo News, 1 December 2015.
Frankly I’m surprised a SWAT team wasn’t deployed.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Have you ever been to a real police state? I’ll grant you that the US is far , far from perfect, but, in a real police state, someone who talks like you would have already been rounded up. Get a fucking grip.
jl
@mclaren: thanks. I’ll look at that study.
mclaren
There is some very good news from Obama’s presidency. Surprised that this hasn’t been front-page material:
Source: “As DOJ Zeros In On Profit-Driven Policing, Advocates Urge Crackdown,” The Huffington Post, 2 December 2015.
This was all entirely and perfectly predictable the instant that first dismal grossly unconstitutional asset forfeiture law was passed back in the 1980s — the law, incidentally, written by our beloved vice president Biden.
NotMax
Last episode of River is some of the most intense TV have viewed in a long while.
Having to keep pausing it to decompress.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Links?
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Word.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Locked up in moderation…of course. Naturally.
Just pure coincidence.
Of course.
Naturally.
redshirt
@mclaren:
LOL. FYWP has it out for you!
benw
@redshirt: hey, did you see Fury Road’s big win?
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s kind of you to put it like that, but no.
The Ancient Randonneur
God ain’t fixing this
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: So your answer is no. You have never been in a real police state. I just ask you to describe facts on the ground. Have you been put in a camp as a radical leftist? You are brave enough to identify as one in meat space, right? Our fucking politics are so less than perfect, but suggesting that we are a totalitarian police state as of today is stupid and, what is more, it is insulting to people who actually live in police states.
benw
@mclaren:
people tryin’ to put us d-d-down!
TALKIN BOUT MY MODERATION!
just because we post some links,
TALKIN BOUT MY MODERATION!
things they do look awful c-c-cold!
TALKIN BOUT MY MODERATION!
hope I don’t die, before my comment posts,
TALKIN BOUT MY MODERATION!
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Okay. I’ll just say that he opened the door. We can leave it there. No one picked a fight with him.
redshirt
@benw: WITNESS. I hope this sets the table for serious Oscar buzz. I doubt Best Picture, but I’m hoping for Best Director. Also Theron should get a nod for Best Actress, though I doubt she’d win.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Well said, and more restrained than my reply, to no one’s great surprise.
redshirt
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): It was another pretty outrageous statement on Tommy’s part.
As such, I feel free to say how remarkably better the upgrade was/has been handled since Tommy was removed from the task.
mai naem mobile
The Twitter Machine.is saying the second suspects name is musleemy too – Tayyeep bin Ardogan(sp???) This js going to get ugly and scary. I hope the Sikhs and their temples are ready because theres.pretty much a guarantee a Sikh is going to die or have the sheet beaten out of him because he looks musleemy with the turban.
Brachiator
@redshirt: Ah, so you did see the news about Fury Road being named Best Picture by the National Board of Review. This was its only win, however. It would be good to see Miller at least get a nomination for best director down the road. I think that right now, Ridley Scott is almost certain to get a nomination for The Martian. Spielberg probably should get a nomination for Bridge of Spies. Maybe the director of the Pixar film Inside/Out, Pete Docter.
lamh36
@mai naem mobile: actually I think that has since been deleted because it was obviously a fake name based i believe i read on the Turkey PMs name? But don’t quote me on that…
anyway…
my last comment …off to bed now…really…lol
Mike J
@mai naem mobile: The president of Turkey?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: @mclaren: I’m looking at moderation and you’ve got nothing locked up in there. We see you when you’re commenting… We see you when you’re not. Do not adjust the vertical or the horizontal!
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Turkey’s PM’s name is normally spelled Tayip Recap Erdogan. Someone’s playing games to create follow on problems. Its going to take them a good 24 hours to get decent info out. Not that that will stop the usual/unusual suspects.
David Koch
@benw: the NBR list is interesting:
2015: (in alphabetical order, except for 1)
Mad Max: Fury Road
Bridge of Spies
Creed
The Hateful Eight
Inside Out
The Martian
Room
Sicario
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton
But in actuality momentum is largely based on the Golden Globe awards. Those nominations come out next Thursday. In the last 10 years only 1 film has ever won an oscar while not being nominated by the Golden Globes (Crash 1995).
redshirt
@Brachiator: I’d be happy with only Miller getting a win for Director, though I bet the film will get a few of the technical awards.
It was the direction of the film more than anything else that set it apart from all other movies. I didn’t see The Martian – without spoilers, is there anything that unique about it?
Brachiator
The Guardian UK has a story with this depressing headline: “994 mass shootings in 1,004 days: this is what America’s gun crisis looks like”
mai naem mobile
@Mike J: no,thats what I thought but this one is Ardogan not Erdogan and I think its a female. Also they just started tweeting this name. These aren’t the old tweets. One of them is supposedly from the SB PD.
JordanRules
The post about Dothan, AL earlier in the day shook me to the core even though I knew that this type of institutional behavior was likely and supported. Then instant news of another mass shooting and I feel like I can’t really process all of it.
Stressed out at work and staring down 15 hour days for the month. Trying to figure it all out.
Wednesday I guess.
redshirt
For anyone that doesn’t know, Miller worked on Fury Road for 10 years, so much so that the entire movie, nearly shot for shot, was done in story boards before a single camera rolled. And that doesn’t even scratch the efforts required to build the fictional world shown in the movie, prop-wise. They built all those vehicles, for real.
Adam L Silverman
@mai naem mobile: I just checked the LA Times ongoing coverage. They’ve not released the name of the man and woman shot in the SUV. The only confirmed name is that of Syed Farouk. His brother in law held a press conference and extended his condolences to the victims and indicated that he doesn’t know why his brother in law was involved or what he was doing.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-bernardino-shooting-live-updates-htmlstory.html
benw
@redshirt: if Fury Road wins some of the technical awards without getting even a nom for Director or Actor (and I’d be more than fine with Miller and Theron getting noms), it’ll be following in the footsteps of an all-time great: T2.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
FWIW, my boyfriend right out of high school was trying to become a deputy sheriff in southeastern Wisconsin and I remember him telling me that he was told to always empty his clip. This was late 1980s-early 1990s. So it’s been going on for quite a long time.
Adam L Silverman
@JordanRules: This is just my take, and not meant to be an attempt to pacify you, but things are never as bad as the funhouse mirror of the 24/7 media makes it out to be. The Dothan PD mess is abhorrent and so bad that travesty of justice doesn’t even cut it as a description. But even as bad as it was there where good cops, many of them white, that were doing everything they could to put a stop to it, get real justice for the victims – as in getting their sentences reversed/overturned and get the dirty cops and the corrupt prosecutor arrested, charged, and prosecuted. It took them over 10 years, some of them lost their jobs, and they still didn’t give up. That says something too. We all want to see huge, dramatic, positive change, but sometimes it takes lots of small, repeated efforts to move things forward.
Tommy
If we are going to have some new gun laws passed it seems now is the time. I can’t believe I am going to use Facebook as an example of why I say this, but I am going to do just that. I assume most Facebook feeds are like mine. Pretty diverse group of people. I mean I still have more than a fair number of people using the Confederate Flag as a profile pic. Not just like-minded liberals in an echo chamber for me.
I often see what I would call “fake outrage” on my feed. I am not sure what the Gladwell tipping point is and/or was, but it seems the San Bernardino shootings might have been it. Even the far right on my feed can’t come in a say much of anything.
More than a few that would have said in the past said this is terrible, terrible, but I love my guns are slient or even saying, OK this is FUBAR.
Now would seem like the time to pass a few laws, but I am of course not holding my breath.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: I think it would be helpful for a great many people to simply turn of TV news. Read the news, read different sources, but get rid of the non-stop repetition of horrible images. It’s scarring a good percentage of the population.
GregB
Whom the Gods will destroy, they first drive mad.
This nation is ready for the collective nuthouse.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I asked the question because honestly I didn’t know. My gut, and it seems to be confirmed from all the comments, it is standard practice to fire until you can’t fire anymore.
Of course this seems strange to me. If an officer needs to fire their gun it would seem to me, once the person is down, you stop. The threat is no more.
redshirt
@benw: Yeah, the trends are against it – action movies never fare well in the Oscars. But Fury Road has a critical buzz most action films don’t have and you could kinda label it as an independent, artsy movie if you wanted to.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I assumed you were going for the classic, I don’t care who started it, I want both of you to knock it off right now!
Tommy
@redshirt: Agreed 110% and then some.
The best thing I ever did for my sanity was get rid of cable TV. I used to have MSNBC on for like 12+ hours a day as background noise as I worked. I now don’t get any 24/7 cable news channels. Just as easy to stream music instead.
Well I do get CNN via Sling and turn it on like once in a blue moon and frankly am stunned by how terrible the coverage is. When I tune in I find myself saying, WTF turn it off.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: It won’t happen. And there’s several reasons for it and most of them are institutional/process issues.
There are simply too many veto points to get anything through both chambers of Congress: has to get brought up in committee, be voted out of committee, come through the Rules Committee in the House/Majority Leader in the Senate to be scheduled for debate and a floor vote. In the House it then has to pass on the floor and in the Senate it has to survive a cloture vote, even if it has 51 votes in favor. Then, if it has to be reconciled, you have to go through the conference process and another floor vote in at least one chamber before it even gets to the President. And then its going to have to survive a Federal Court challenge under the recent Heller ruling that there is an explicit right to keep and bear arms, specifically handguns, for self defense.
This doesn’t even get into that, and I’m working from memory here as its 12:45 AM where I’m at, 23 states have the exact same wording in their state constitutions as in the 2nd Amendment, and another dozen or so have even more extensive language regarding the right to keep and bear arms. So should something make it all the way through the 8 or 9 veto points at the Federal level, there will then be state level challenges seeking to reconcile those under one of the concepts of Federalism or even the 14th Amendment equal protection clause. And some of those state level constitutions, and there versions of the second amendment, are as old, and a couple may be older, than the US Bill of Rights.
And this all has to be done when the US basically is operating, for all intents and purposes, as if the Confederate States of America’s Constitution was the US Constitution.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: Without a doubt. If its not a cartoon or based on a comic book or an NCIS, a documentary, a show with some of Cole’s neighbors looking for Bigfoot (or the guys from BFRO or Alaska), or looking for treasure on Oak Island (I read that same reader’s digest story when I was in grade school in the 70s), or a hockey game, I’m not watching it.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nice use of #10 from “The Troll’s Guide to Internet Disruption.”
Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the evidence for actual black sites being used by police in America, today, right now, where dissenters or suspected subversives or others deemed by the military-police-prison-torture-surveillance complex to be “suspicious” get taken without access to a lawyer and without civil rights:
Source: “The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’,” The Guardian, 24 February 2014.
Remarkably, the torture techniques used overseas by the U.S. military appear to have been exported from America by former police who joined the military:
Source: “Bad lieutenant: American police brutality, exported from Chicago to Guantánamo,” The Guardian, 19 February 2015.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled astroturfing by our resident paid member of the military-industrial complex intended to discredit anyone points out that America is sliding into fascism and already exhibits many of the traits of a police state.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: Same. Do you watch Agents of Shield? Agent Carter? Jessica Jones? Any and all Marvel products?
NotMax
For no particular reason, an editorial cartoon.
It may not be fresh, but it is still current.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Honestly, I think it’s fair to say that black people in America live in at least an authoritarian police state. Consider what a large fraction of them are actually in prison, and how the cops relate to them as an occupying army rather than as civil servants, and situations like the one in Dothan or in Ferguson, MO. They probably won’t be rounded up and jailed for protesting the situation on the Internet or in the media, but in person, that’s a different story.
White people, no, they don’t live in a police state.
JordanRules
@Adam L Silverman: I appreciate that response immensely Adam.
I am the ultimate proponent for the ‘arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice’ outlook as it were. It’s not necessary for me to even figure out whether it’s true or if it’s proven or whatnot. It is as good a guide as any to help me cope and find hope for everybody. Some days I just lose the will to keep on leaning so hard and pressing forward – that bend towards justice needs help after all. It is not a passive guide in my perspective.
Then another day comes and I’m reminded of why it makes sense to keep on pushin’.
Brachiator
@redshirt:
The Martian is well-crafted and satisfying. I don’t know that it is unique, or has to be. But it shows what Scott can do when he has a good screenplay to work with, and Drew Goddard (also an award winner) did a great job in adapting the source novel.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: I never made it through Agents because it started off so bleech. I understand that it got better and I need to go back and pick it back up on demand. I was never a huge Marvel reader outside of the X/mutant books, I think they’ve done a great job with the movies, and even the cartoons on Disney/DisneyXD, but haven’t watched Daredevil or Jessica Jones. Never read the actual source material, so…
I’ve been impressed with Arrow and Flash. I think the Supergirl series is being well done. And I was very disappointed when Fox pulled the plug on Constantine. I tried Gotham and it did zip for me, despite always being a Batman fan. I’m looking forward to Legends of Tomorrow largely because I was always a Hawkman/Hawkgirl fan. I was a bit worried when I saw some of the stills, but after watching the Flash/Arrow crossover, it looks like they’ve done a good job with the costumes and effects.
mclaren
@redshirt:
The Martian was nothing more or less than an extremely realistic depiction of a guy trapped on Mars trying to survive, and rescuers trying to figure out a way to get him back.
It wasn’t even close to Miller’s Fury Road in terms of wild visual imagination, extreme stunts, incredible situations, amazing set design and props, and astounding use of sound fx/CGI/stunts/props to create a brainfying movie experience.
On the other hand, plotwise and in terms of character…there just isn’t that much there in Fury Road. Bridge of Spies beats Miller’s movie hands down for characterization and moral impact. Let’s face it: Miller’s Fury Road is about a guy with a wild tricked-out car who rescues some supermodels. It’s visually amazing, but deep, it is not.
The joker in this pack is probably Tarentino’s Hateful Eight. Samuel jackson’s performance is supposed to be Oscar-worthy according to early reports, and Kurt Russell is being mentioned for a supporting actor nomination. Trouble is, the film doesn’t even open until 6 days before the end of this year.
Bridge of Spies was written by the Coen Brothers, by the way. Do go see it if you haven’t already.
I’m bugged that Pixar’s animated film Inside Out hasn’t been mentioned as a possible best picture contender, since it’s by far the best film this year (so far). But then the ignorant incompetent academy of motion picture farts and silences always had a bug up its collective ass about animated films.
Tommy
@Adam L Silverman: You are correct. I know it won’t happen. You laid out exactly why we’ll never see it happen in exact detail. Just a pipe dream of mine it could. And it should.
Where I have some hope at a state level. My state was the last to have a conceal carry permit, decided because we fought it, by the SCOTUS.
It is at this point I note that almost everybody I know has more guns than you can shake a stick at. Not allowing them to carry one into the local CVS or Walmart didn’t hinder their gun ownership. You can have sane gun laws and still let people own as many guns as they want. The things are not related IMHO
Anne Laurie
New post up top, for what it’s worth…
mclaren
@Adam L Silverman:
I hear you.
Truth to tell, Agents of SHIELD (aside from a great pilot episode) was pure crap for the first 2 years. Starting in the third season, however, it has been on fire, and so far it’s been pure dynamite.
Permit me to suggest watching the pilot episode and skipping the first two seasons entirely and starting out at episode 1 of season 3.
Adam L Silverman
@JordanRules: You’re welcome, glad I could be of a little help. I’m always reminded of the line from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when the young Home Office official is trying to get Connery as Quartermaine to come back to London by describing how grim things are. Quartermaine’s reply is, I think, often very apt: “…the empire is always in peril.”
There are places that are a mess, some of them are right here at home in the US. And, unfortunately, there are communities here that are in as much jeopardy as any ethnic or sectarian minority in some of the hot spots. But things are never as bad as we fear and never quite as good as we remember.
JordanRules
@redshirt: FWIW, I don’t do the news, haven’t for a while. When I’m mostly in lurker mode here these days catching glimpses between work and more work, one of the biggest benefit is the updates you all provide without me having to wade into the cesspool.
I agree with that sentiment so much though. Shit is still happening out there and bound to cause us days of unbelievable grief and all sorts of messed up feelings but not adding consumption of the now perverted 4th estate to that can be one of the small victories for many of us (especially that kind of consumption as a knee-jerk daily routine).
But damnet, I appreciate the folks that digest it and make kind of a firewall for me.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
@Brachiator:
I liked it — it was basically a science-based puzzle. If you liked Apollo 13, you would like The Martian.
The one thing that bugged me was Ridley Scott’s weird problem with casting non-white women. The male actors were nicely diverse, but the only non-white woman was a Chinese government official. It especially stood out to me because the character of Mindy Park was played by a blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian, which to me was kind of like casting a white woman as a character named, say, Brigitte Washington. It’s possible, but pretty unlikely.
redshirt
@Brachiator:
This is what I’ve heard, and it’s all good. It’s just that Miller is being compared to silent film directors, to 20’s Keaton, and I don’t hear anything so gripping about the other possible directors.
One of the techniques Miller used that reminds one of silent films is a near constant center framing. When you watch for this it’s quite amazing. So by his classic yet now unique directing behind a decades old vision, I’d say Miller at least deserves a nomination.
But the Oscars are rather staid and conservative, so who knows.
mclaren
@JordanRules:
Nowadays, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards Nixon.
redshirt
@mclaren:
Skipping ahead is a good idea if you were initially turned off, but I’d say the jumping back in part is in later Season 1. Once Ward turns heal and Hydra is revealed after Winter Solider, the show has been consistently entertaining. Not necessarily saying “good”. But watching Bill Paxton chew scenery was entertaining for me.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: I hear you. What makes it a wicked problem is not because it isn’t possible to engineer several practical solutions that would have minimum impact on most folks, but because it is impossible to sell them. One side will yell too far and the other not far enough no matter what is proposed. It doesn’t help that there was a concerted effort beginning in the late 60s/early 70s to change the jurisprudence, as well as the popular understanding, of the 2nd Amendment to what it is today. Despite what the absolutists that scream “what part of shall not be infringed don’t you understand?”, the two clauses have always been interpreted to be in connection with each other. That’s why even in Heller, Associate Justice Scalia made it clear that reasonable regulation could still be implemented at the municipal, state, and local level. Part of the real problem is no one, on either side, trusts the courts or Congress to handle this in an appropriate manner. Things that one, even one who enjoys shooting sports, would consider reasonable, would be considered unreasonable by others – as either too much or too little. I highly recommend Adam Winkler’s Gunfight, it is well worth the read.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mclaren:
The Academy gave animated features their own category so they wouldn’t be nominated for Best Picture again. I’m pretty sure that a film can’t be nominated in two “best” categories (so, for example, a single film could not be nominated for both Best Documentary — Feature and Best Picture AFAIK), but someone would have to read the Academy’s fine print.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
The big elephant in the room for this year’s oscars is the fact that Ridley Scott didn’t win for some of the most influential films of the last 30 years, particularly Bladerunner. Astoundingly, Scott has never won for Best Director. That’s about on the level of Beethoven never winning a grammy. It’s unbelievable.
So there’s a sense that (since Scott is getting on in years and might not last too much longer) the academy may want to finally give him the best director prize because, dammit, he’s about due.
Adam L Silverman
@mclaren: well I’ve got the pilot under my belt, so I’m most of the way there on your recommendation.
Adam L Silverman
@mclaren: perhaps a posthumous lifetime achievement award for Beethoven?
redshirt
@JordanRules: I, too, used to power watch the cable news, even Fox for oppo research. It’s about 90% FEAR. Seriously, even the commercials – identity theft, gold, Texas Superfood. FEAR for 3 easy payments of $19.99
And so much blood and tragedy and horror, why? Why would you want to watch that, over and over again especially? Turn it off, brothers and sisters. Free your minds from fear.
Not to say you should make yourself uninformed of course. Read! There’s a whole interweb out there.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
George Miller is part of old guard Hollywood and has been nominated before (for Best Picture and for screenwriting), so he probably will be nominated again.
@mclaren:
Meh. Scott is a great stylist, but he’s not a very good director. He can make a great film from a great screenplay, but he can’t fix a bad story the way Scorsese or Spielberg can. He’ll probably get a Lifetime Achievement Award in 15 years.
Brachiator
@mclaren:
I know. Mozart, on the other hand, won 10 grammys, and 2 Tonys.
mclaren
@Adam L Silverman:
Suggesting that we pass gun laws to take care of America’s mass shooting problem is a typically American technocratic solution. If we just get the fine print right, our deluded thinking goes, we can fix our social problems.
No, the real problem is that America is a hyperviolent society. Take a look at U.S. police. All the German police in 2011 (in the entire nation) fired 85 bullets. American police fire several hundred bullets in a single encounter. There’s something deeply messed up in the American psyche. The typical American solution to a social problem is a Wild-West-style ultraviolent kill-em-all-and-let-God-sort-’em-out response. Other nations don’t react that way.
There’s a deep and ugly sadism in the American character that started with genocidally slaughtering the native American indians, moved on to brutalizing and lynching blacks and Chinese immigrants, and went on a rampage against the Philippine insurectos, where U.S. troops used waterboarding and mass executions in 1901.
There’s a distinct lack of mercy in the American soul. I don’t know how we fix that. I do know that delectating in others peoples’ pain and suffering, and eagerly killing anything that moves as a solution to our social problems, is a longstanding American trait, and it’s sick and evil, and that seems to be the source of America’s diseased plague of ultraviolence rather than the simple availability of guns. Consider: every Swizz citizen is required to own and keep in operating condition an army-issued gun (in case of invasion).
if gun availability were the root of the problem, wouldn’t Sweden have a worse mass shooting problem than America?
Source: “Merciless,” Charles Stross’ blog, 23 August 2009.
redshirt
@mclaren: Despite the truth of most of this, I’d still say America has been the “softest” empire this world has ever seen. Compared to all the other truly terrible ones.
Tell me Rome is a kinder empire than America – doubt it.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
This in itself is a significant achievement.
Hmm. I’m not too sure what bad stories either director has fixed. “New York, New York,” (Scorsese) and “Hook” or “AI” (Spielberg) couldn’t be rescued by anyone. Then again, Scott’s “Prometheus” was also a godawful mess.
redshirt
@Brachiator: Egads I wanted to like Prometheus so much but that crew.
What? An exo-biologist that doesn’t have any idea how to respond to exo-biology?
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Good to know. Now I think he’s a lock to win, unless someone can convince me of a better candidate (doubt it).
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Permit me to demur. Alien was a crummy barely adequate screenplay miraculously salvaged from the grade Z sci-fi gutter by Ridley Scott’s amazing direction. Bladerunner’s script was not a gem, and the single most memorable line in it was improvised by Rutger Hauer (“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”). Once again, salvaged by Ridley Scott’s incredible direction. Legend had a piss-poor screenplay and the first half of that film was pretty poor, but then it caught fire in the second half — once again, due to Scott’s incredible direction.
Someone To Watch Over Me had a great script and dynamite performances, and is one of the best films of the last 25 years. Utterly ignored, of course.
If Ridley Scott isn’t a great director, then there is no such thing as great director today. Spielberg is a pissant no-talent manipulative heart-string-puller who churned out kiddy films and saturday morning cartoons, with a handful of exceptions — Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, and now Bridge of Spies. But Spielberg is as heavy-handed as they come. Scott deserves the best director 10,000 times more than Spielberg.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mclaren:
Name a great Ridley Scott film past 1995. Gladiator?
If you hated Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can and Munich, then you need to turn in your film buff card. Spielberg is a far better director and more mature storyteller today than he was in the 1980s. You’d have to say the opposite for Scott, whose glory days have been behind him for at least a decade.
redshirt
@mclaren: Is The Martian worth the Oscar director win on its own, or because of Scott’s previous work as well?
Gin & Tonic
@mclaren: Bridge of Spies is typical Spielbergian crap.
mclaren
@redshirt:
This is the old straw man objection. “America’s not as bad as East Germany!” “America isn’t as bad as the Roman empire!”
That’s not the issue here. The issue is that all over the world, first-world industrial democracies don’t experience the kinds of self-inflicted savagery America does. Moreover, it’s not just mass shootings. I would contend that America’s refusal to extend basic decent health care to its own citizens is part and parcel of the same kind of self-inflicted savagery.
Just today I saw an article in the New York Times:
Source: “Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless ,” The New York Times, 14 November 2014.
This is the same kind of merciless savagery we see when Wal-Mart managers tell their employees that if they aren’t making enough money to put food on their childrens’ plates, then the employees should go on food stamps.
There’s just a deep cruelty in the American character that’s twisted and vicious and profoundly wrong. And I don’t give a damn if America is slightly better than Rome or whatever. That’s not the issue. The issue is that these are human beings, dammit, and we as Americans should not treat our fellow citizens this way.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
We’ll have to see what else comes out between now and the end of the year. Miller probably won’t win, but I think that both he and the film will be nominated. It may be a split like it was between 12 Years A Slave and Gravity, where 12 Years deservedly won Best Picture but Cuaron won Best Director because Gravity was an amazing technical achievement and an entertaining movie.
It would be cool if Pete Docter was nominated for Best Director, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a DGA member so he may not qualify.
Brachiator
@redshirt:
The crew of the ship in Alient were plausibly blue collar. There was great tension in the idea of ordinary people stumbling upon an extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, situation. The crew of the ship in Prometheus are all supposed to be polished experts, but they all act like morons.
As an aside, I am a big champion of Creed, another surprisingly satisfying film. And I think it demonstrates what “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” needs to do to avoid being a fan-wanking nostalgia fest. Sylvester Stallone gives a very strong supporting performance in the movie. He doesn’t overdo it or get too hammy. In the world of the film, other characters know who Rocky Balboa is and acknowledge him, but the film does not try in any way to pretend that time has not moved on or try to freeze Rocky as the once and future champion. Similarly, the new Star Wars movie has to honor the old characters, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, but not indulge in wink and nod fan service or “getting the band back together” crap (which Abrams did to ill effect in the second Star Trek movie).
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): What did you think of Fury Road?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
I think Creed is a major dark horse for the nominations this year. The director and star are already in the awards club thanks to Fruitvale Station, and getting a good supporting performance out of an old warhorse like Stallone is the kind of thing the Academy loves to reward.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Then I need to turn in my film buff card, because Catch Me In you Can was pure crap. What’s infuriating is that the source material, the original book, contained a wealth of wonderful scenes that Spielberg never bothered to put into the screenplay. Catch Me If You Can was even more badly butchered than the misbegotten 1964 movie Fate Is the Hunter. The original book by Ernest K. Gann had a fantastic cornucopia of great vignettes and wonderful scenes, all thrown out when the director made the film. Any minimally competent director would have rewritten that screenplay immediately, rescuing all the great parts of the book and ditching the unnecessary junk.
Munich is a perfect example of why Spielberg is such an inferior director. Compare that crappy film with the inifinitely superior TV movie Sword of Gideon. The 1986 TV movie outshines Spielberg’s crummy film in every possible — better direction, better acting, better screenplay, better everything.
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was a damn fine film. The Martian is not a great movie: it’s a hard sci-fi procedural. Ridley Scott’s direction is great, but he didn’t have a great character-driven script to work from, he had a great hard science fiction script to work from.
Spielberg has consistently gone downhill. I expect him to direct Gremlins 3 some day soon. That’s about his level now.
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt: The presentation of violence on TV news totally distorts the reality of violence in society. It is causing more people to wallow in fear. “It bleeds, it leads” is the watchword of local TV news, and that’s all they care about. When the UCC shootings happened here in Oregon, it was dwelled on incessantly for a week on local TV news. It was the only thing happening as far as local news was concerned.
My own personal story on this…when I was stationed in Korea in 1987, there was a lot of TV coverage back in the states of the student protests in Seoul, which often became violent. My parents were very concerned for my safety, as I was stationed in Seoul itself, at Yongsan. The clashes were happening about a mile north of the base, in the downtown Seoul area. The thing is, the demonstrations would be happening in downtown, and a block away it was life as usual, except for the occasional whiff of pepper gas. I told my parents not to take the TV coverage too seriously, as the demonstrations were basically staged, on both sides, for the TV cameras. The students and the riot cops would wait for the camera crews to get set up, and then it was lights, camera, action. Totally bogus and unauthentic, but the casual viewer could not know that, especially with the breathless voice overs of the news clowns back in the studio in New York or Atlanta.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
I had a summer full of family disasters to deal with, so I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. I’ve been a George Miller fan since The Road Warrior, so I’m expecting to like it. I think the only movie I actually went to the theater and paid to see this year was Inside Out.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, American Gangster. And 1995 is a bit unfair, because you force a cut off of Thelma and Louise.
Granted, Scott has produced a bunch of stinkers, but The Martian is a solid achievement. And when you look at total body of work, The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner are just plain marvelous.
Robin Hood, on the other hand, sucks hard.
mclaren
@redshirt:
The Martian does not deserve the oscar for best picture this year on its own. Just speaking for myself. YMMV.
We have yet to see Inarritu’s The Revenant or Tarentino’s The Hateful Eight. Apparently the entire first hour and forty five minutes of the Tarentino film takes place entirely in a stagecoach, as a conversational closet drama. That suggests some really intense emotional fireworks. I’m bringin to mind Twelve Angry Men here as a possible comparison.
So these two could be the films to beat.
Fury Road looked and sounded and moved like an incredible experience, but at the end of the day, it’s supermodels in funny cars. There just isn’t much there there.
redshirt
@Brachiator:
Precisely. In Alien, the crew are space merchant marines, highly skilled yet blue collar as you say. Except of course for the creepy android. Who had prior knowledge of the Alien, right? And thus their mission.
In Prometheus, it’s basically the exact same plot, except for the space jesus opening, which was intriguing. Except, these are all supposed experts who instead all seem like con artists looking to jack the ship’s safe once everyone is in hypersleep. Unless there is some subtle secret to these characterizations, the movie is a failure. Though visually interesting.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@mclaren:
Sorry, but if you were completely indifferent as Frank stared through the picture window at his mother’s new family while police lights started flashing in the glass, then it’s time to turn in your movie buff card. You have lost all ability to be emotionally moved by a film and respond only to special effects.
And with that, gentlemen, I have to head off to bed so I can be perky at work tomorrow. Good night.
mclaren
@Villago Delenda Est:
This times a 1000. The reality is that violent crime in all categories in America has plummeted over the last 25 years to record lows — yet surveys show that Americans incorrectly believe violent crime is way up.
It’s worth noting that American video games have be edited when exported to Europe to remove violence, just as European TV programs have to be edited when exported to America to remove sexual content.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Indie success is good. Mainstream success is better.
Stallone wrote and directed Rocky and probably has a right to feel protective of the character. I was surprised to see the degree to which he surrendered authority to director Ryan Coogler and how generous he was with Michael B Jordan. It can be tough for someone used to being the star to really share the screen with another actor, and to be a supporting player. Stallone’s performance is much more than Oscar bait, thankfully. If Stallone had not underplayed the role, it would have sunk the film.
mclaren
@redshirt:
Someone To Watch Over Me carried Ridley Scott’s concern with the culture clash twixt blue collar and white collar workers through to its logical conclusion. These kinds of subtle subtexts I think explain (in addition to his superlative visual imagination) why Ridley Scott is such a great director.
By contrast, all Spielberg knows how to do is tug people’s heartstrings as manipulatively as possible. That scene Mnemosyne refers to felt forced and staged. Spielberg tries to milk his material too hard. A better director, like Ridley Scott, lets the material grab us through subtle touches in the background, like the mysterious gusts of air that move those papers at the start of Alien, or Deckard sitting desolate after he murders the snake-dancing replicant by shooting her in the back at the halfway point of Bladerunner, or that blackhawk helicopter’s blades spinning and snapping off like a wounded creature clawing itself to death in the crash scene in Blackhawk Down.
redshirt
@mclaren:
Yeah, nothing but a distillation of patriarchal society laid bare and than flayed to tatters, with monster trucks. And not a scintilla of SJW aroma wafting in the apocalyptic smoke.
Who killed the world, mclaren?
Brachiator
@redshirt: Gotta run, but here’s a little something, a new Batman v Superman trailer, with a touch of Wonder Woman.
redshirt
@Brachiator: I saw it. Gave away the entire movie. Terrible. DC sucks.
Make mine Marvel.
Mnemosyne
Okay, last thought that occurred to me while brushing my teeth: name another director post-9/11 who was willing to make a film that said not only that trying to get revenge on terrorists is morally wrong and only drags you down into a nonstop cycle of violence, but also pointed out that Israel made their own problems worse by doing it.
I will always take substance — even flawed substance — over empty style, no matter how pretty.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Here are 5 (count ’em, five):
Restrepo (2010).
Children of Men (2006)
Syriana (2006)
Carlos (2010)
The Hurt Locker (2010)
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: That must be a threat of violence, because the window for influencing an election is during the summer. Previous year? Nope.
Another Holocene Human
@Matt: I’m going to go out on a limb and suppose you are talking about out of character acts of generosity. Because all my life I’ve known people who made it a habit. If they shut down, it would be a sign that something was very, very wrong.
Another Holocene Human
@debit:
lolololol
Riiiiight.
The processor-burner with a million adverpix is easier on the eyes than BJ.
Wonkette just fixed a couple of things, oh, a day or so ago. Well after the server barfs over here stopped happening. And the server barfs weren’t Tommy’s fault. And Wonkette is still on the dreaded Disqus.
And I don’t recognize your usernym from any site I frequent, including this one.
Another Holocene Human
@benw: brilliant.
Another Holocene Human
@Adam L Silverman: Meh. I work in government. Sometimes things are EXACTLY as shitty as they seem. Especially in Southland.
At least in NJ/NY you have to grease palms heavily to get this sort of malfeasance. These asshats are volunteers!
debit
@Another Holocene Human: Let’s see. First point: I use Firefox loaded with noscript, adblock, monkeygrease scripts, etc, so Wonkette runs just fine for me. I also appreciate the simple (adblocked) aesthetic, whereas Tommy’s design was was as ugly as his I am in God Mode attitude.
Second point: You can ask Anne Laurie to fax you my credenzas*. I used to participate regularly, but life became rather busy for me. I read, don’t always comment now. But, also, too, I imagine a lot of people lurk and don’t comment. Are their opinions worthless because of that?
*search for the helicopters are not laughing if you don’t get it.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Its both sides do it, Balloon Juice style. FWIW, I agree with your interpretation and was taken aback when I read the comment you refer to.
debit
@debit: And Greasemonkey, not monkeygrease. This is what happens when I don’t have coffee before attempting to communicate.