Comedy legend. Television icon. More funny packed into 5'6" than you should ever expect to find in one lifetime.
Like Peter, we post the unbelievable "Elephant Sketch", completely ad libbed by Conway just to tear up his co-stars, that cracked up Carol Burnett and Dick Van Dyke cold, and absolutely killed. Until Vicki Lawrence topped him with one line. It still makes our sides hurt to watch:
"One'd sneeze, the other's eyes'd get REAL big..."
And will probably rack up another 24M views this week (which won't count, because we've already been counted by youTube's viewcounter).
But there was more. So much more.
Ensign Parker on McHale's Navy. Sadly wasted as a straight man/Gilligan most of the time. Riding with Don Knotts in all those Apple Dumpling Gang flicks. Sports lessons aplenty as Dorf. Destroying his partner-in-crime Harvey Korman in The Dentist sketch.
After losing at the Emmys to co-star Korman, and standing on stage just behind him as Harvey gave his thanks speech.
And on and on.
We express our heartfelt condolences to his family upon his death, our sorrow only tempered by the fact that his comedy magic will live on, via YouTube, digital discs, and whatever comes next, for another 85 years.
Breaking a promise, but I'm lazy, and after taking the time to lay this out on his site, I'm posting it here. Zero has posted a frightening link to future events in Congo with regard to Ebola.
And the title asks: The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?
If you're looking at me, just like 2014, that answer is a resounding "Hell, NO!"
We have learned nothing from 2014. Nothing whatsoever.
Now a word from Reality:
1) Ebola is spread by coughs and sneezes.
That’s droplet precautions, not contact.
2) Coughed and sneezed particles of virus-laden material travel 25 feet, and are suspended in air up to ten minutes.
3) The minimum number of Ebola viruses sufficient to ensure infection is one.
4) In the current DRC Ebola outbreak, 50% of victims show no sign of fever once infected.
5) The only symptom airport screeners over there and over here look at, to screen out potential Ebola victims from travelling, is (wait for it)…fever.
6) There are 11…ELEVEN…total BL-IV hospital beds to properly care for Ebola victims, in all of North America, and three of those are permanently reserved for military victims near the US chem/bio research labs.
7) In 2014, we had filled 10 of those beds at once with the victims of Ebola we were treating, including the two ICU nurses from Dallas from one case of Ebola in the wild, in the US.
IOW, we were two patients from being Liberia then, or Kivu province now.
8) Once it hits mainstream US hospitals, society here is functionally over, in about a week.
So, you do the math on how well airport screeners (known worldwide for looking the other way for a sawbuck) and possessed of a 6th-grade education on average, and hazy acquaintance with scientific thought or even math above ten without taking their shoes off, will do at protecting the First World from the pestilence of the Turd World.
Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Afterwards, you’ll probably want to review Zero’s posts and links on the local LDS cannery nearest you, and start stocking up on buckets, and water barrels, along with the sort of canned goods that come in square olive drab metal cans.
The question isn’t whether such pestilence is coming here, it’s simply a matter of when.
After that, YOYO.
God help you if you’ve ignored preparations for such an eventuality, at that point.
Nothing else will.
{Where I’m working currently, they’re doing decon drills, which, exactly like the ones the .mil had me do in the 1980s, mainly serve to underline that with chem/bio threats, in any serious outbreak, the first people infected are going to die, quickly, and the most prudent response besides running for the hills and living behind concertina wire for weeks to months (if you can manage that, because you should), will be to bend over, grab your ankles, and kiss your @$$ goodbye.} I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. I don't know how to put this any more plainly. You will see this material again.
On my travels yesterday, I was heading in to work, when the full rumble of proper radial piston engines caught my attention, just in time to see a truly rare sight overhead:
one of the few surviving B-17s passing overhead on its way to John Wayne Airport for a local show. Not looking too shabby for being 74 this year. It started its life in Long Beach in late 1945, coming off the Douglas line at nearby Long Beach, back when California still built airplanes.
It isn't often one sees a B-17 in the pattern anywhere, and I'm happy to note that I stood there watching it pass until it couldn't be seen any longer and the rumble died away on the breeze.
And then, to reward me for stopping to notice, came the pursuit to that opening act, with a sound that cannot be mistaken for anything else:
I'm going to have to move getting a ride on both of those things up on my bucket list, before the chance for such a ride goes away forever.
Spendy? Yeah, a tad. But compared to never getting the chance? I'm game.
Hell, I'd pay a couple of C-notes just to get the chance to thumb through the original logbooks of the real Nine-O-Nine (the current one went into service in 1945, too late to see action, though it was around for a couple of 1950s A-bomb tests, and put out a lot of wildfires after leaving the military), and see what scenic parts of Europe it visited and redecorated circa 1943-44.
And I wish I could trace the same history for my 5-digit Garand, purchased as ROK hand-me-down, after being manufactured in late 1940, it must certainly have whacked some Commies, at least, before finally being left behind south of the 38th Parallel after 1953.
Because I am.
The epitome of blue-eyed soul, from the blackest white Englishman to ever pick up a mic.
Still can't hear this or any other Joe Cocker classic, without imagining him in full Joe Cocker writhing soul mode, with John Belushi standing right beside him, and doing it better than the original.
If this song can't get you happy, there's something wrong with you.
Mercenaries always know two things, which for them, are the Prime Directives:
You can't collect if you're dead. You can't collect if the client is dead.
The sort of gun control espoused by Fartacus and his minions violates both those core tenets, with rapidity and certainty, which is why the enthusiasm for such horseshit runs at a steady and exact 0%, even in Chicongo, NYFC, Bahstun, Detroitistan, and San Franshitsco, to this very day, and always will, especially amongst the JBTs voted Most Likely To Get Shot In The Face For Trying It.
The life expectancy for anyone enforcing Fartacus’ fever-swamp dreams of ass-raping the Bill of Rights would be measured in seconds after the third or fourth outing.
By Tuesday noon, they’d be out of not only cops, but troops too.
And when the pendulum swings the other way, Madame Guillotine rules for the rest of that month. Then Fartacus would end up hanging on a crossbar just like his cinematic namesake. History and the survivors alike would laugh at the irony.
The thought of 20M Dorners would make runny shit run down half the trouser legs in police HQs from coast to coast.
The other half would likely be on Team Dorner, especially the farther out in the countryside of flyover territory you got from libtard bastions.
Never. Going. To. Happen.
And if ever foolishly started, over in about an hour, due to lack of interest by the survivors.
This nonsense is just red meat for the 60-IQ base.
While Fartacus would like to enact his moronic fantasy slate, there are still enough old pols in the DNC that remember the debacle of 1994, and what caused it, so it’s never going to happen again.
The Uniparty in DC knows promises are for the idiots, never meant to be kept. Keeping them is what happens in Venezuela, and also why it is what it is today.
But even making them should still be grounds for that final tumbrel cart ride for the perpetrators. The only good thing is that they’ve dropped forever all pretense of “we’re not coming for your guns”, and are now enthusiastically stating that’s exacty what they’re about.
Okay, Leftards.
Call that toss in the air.
This is just Fartacus, setting himself on fire politically, to draw some pittance of a crowd, before he's predictably primaryed out, along with 15 other political dwarf lackwits.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan called out this sort of nonsense out way back in 1991 B.C. (Before Clinton), in calling Lying Bill's used-car salesman populism "boob bait for the bubbas". DPM nailed that in one.
Fartacus is polling at what now, 3%?
Less...?
Pffft.
There are only three actual contenders at this point:
Commie Sanders, heir to 100 years of failed state-run communism.
Gropey Joe, eight year heir to HopeyDopey.
Shrillary Not-Running-Yet Cankles, 40-year heir to the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate.
(And one more gin-soaked face plant in public, and she's done forever.)
The rest of the clowns in that Volkswagen are just there to fill out check-boxes on the Diversity Bean Card.
One of the others, maybe two, may make it to the semi-finals.
Stop worrying. It's too early.
Stock up on beverages, chips, and popcorn.
Peter muses over at his blog that the rogue Starbuck's cup seen in one scene must have been a deliberate plant, because Hollywood craftsmanship and duplicity.
I don't watch the series in question, and other than being aware of its mere existence, could care no less for it were it filmed on Mars, and broadcast only on cable access in Farsi and Serbo-Croatian. But I do know a thing or three about The Biz, firsthand.
Keep in mind that "Hollywood craftsmanship" is an oxymoron on a par with "military intelligence", "government help", and "jumbo shrimp".
Allow me to elucidate.
Bear in mind I've only done 20-something years in Hollywood.
You could strafe every movie lot in Hollywood with miniguns, for days, and never, ever hit anyone smart enough to earn a Ph.D.
Then remember the stupidest things these geniuses say and do when they put on their 0-diopter glasses to "look intelligent", and bear in mind this is when they're trying to look bright.
Now imagine them on the set, in hour 14 of a 16-hour day, amidst an 80-hour week, on take 9 of a complicated scene, on a set teeming with extras pulling down minimum wage and a bologna sandwich.
The miracle isn't that there was a Starbuck's cup in a shot; it's that there isn't one in every shot.
Go back and watch Twister sometime: in the opening sweeping shot after the flashback, as the camera zooms across the fields of Oklahoma to Bill Paxton's truck, and notice that right on the front quarter panel, you see a beautiful full reflection of a Bell JetRanger, with the cameraman hanging out the door filming the scene.
In a movie directed by a well-acclaimed former director of photography.
Watch Pretty Woman, in the scene where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are meeting Ralph Bellamy for dinner, and watch the sorbet cups appear, disappear, reappear, magically refill, disappear, then come back again.
And a million other goofs, flubs, and such.
I might even know of an incident where a raccoon tail was shoved up the nostril of a moose head on set, and no one noticed until they'd moved on, and saw it in the background of several shots during dailies the next day, and it was too late to re-shoot the scene, so it's in the final cut, but I ain't saying anything more about it. Maybe the moose snorted a raccoon.
In the silent version of Ben Hur, they ran over an extra with a chariot. Killed him deader than canned tuna.
In Last Of The Mohicans, one of the special-ability extras firing a black powder musket fired a ramrod into another actor. The target actor survived, after they pulled three feet of steel out of his body.
In Twilight Zone: The Movie the entire production staff conspired to set off explosives under a low-hovering helicopter, lied to the parents of the kids in the scene and the fire marshals watching the stunt, then lied their asses off in court, after they'd killed Vic Morrow and two kids.
The producers were on planes to Acapulco within a half an hour, out of subpoena range and unable to be extradited, until the movie wrapped.
And nobody went to prison for three counts of manslaughter.
This is Hollywood, 24/7/365.
Better than your family home movies? Certainly.
Safer than the drunk redneck who says "Hold my beer!"? Most days, but not by much.
Flawless production geniuses?
Stop.
My sides are splitting.
And BTW, nobody gets fired for something like this.
They get thanked at the end of the day, and the next day, their name isn't on the call sheet anymore.
It's called "employment at will".
(If it was talent, their pay gets docked for the cost of the digital removal. And they get a rep with the entire production crew as dumbasses, and they're watched like a hawk watches prey, lest they screw up another shot. Ask me how I know.)
Stars and directors have died during productions, and they worked around that.
No one on set is irreplaceable.
The Starbuck's cup?
Small potatoes.
You have no idea about even 1% of what goes on.
We will say no more at all about something which, to engineer and pull off, would require the complicity, acquiescence, and conspirational silence of about 500 lawyers from both HBO and Starbucks, which is only slightly less probable than Bigfoot, chemtrails, and the faking of the lunar landings.
If that last sentence gored your ox too, your tinfoil hat is wrapped way too tight to comment on my blog. Stifle that urge.
Questions from comments to yesterday's post.
Q.: Have the "authorities" identified the host species (other than humans and I use humans loosely here) yet?
A.: We have no wild idea where or from what species Ebola originally sprung, or how it spreads, other than people once there's an outbreak.
It has been found in rats, bats, monkeys, baboons, and various field hamsters and such, but generally as benign in those species.
We suspect bats improperly prepared as a possible source of the outbreaks, but there's zero empirical evidence of this.
So getting rid of it forever would probably require killing everything in Africa. NTTAWWT.
Humans are a target species, not so much the host species.
We do have the capacity to spread the disease once it's acquired, and thus far, every "survivor" of the disease tests positive for the disease as far out as we've re-checked, AFAIK.
IOW, it never goes away, and re-infection and subsequent outbreaks may be spawned by "survivors" from prior outbreaks.
Cheery thought, huh?
Q.: While total cases have increased the percentage of deaths per total cases have remained the same. What can we make of that?
A.: A couple of things.
1) WHO and Wikipedia can't do math.
The dead are not percentage of dead now vs. total current cases.
because the disease incubates for 2-40+ days, and takes about 21 days, on average, from acquisition to mortality.
If you take the number of cases from 21 days ago, and number of deaths now, you'll get the actual mortality percentage of this disease.
Doing it the way WHO/Wikipedia does makes it look less lethal.
Why do they do this, knowing it's wrong?
2) WHO and Wikipedia are trying to stem panic and put lipstick on the pig.
3) The disease kills a pretty static percentage, between the high sixties and low eighties.*
Roughly, 8 out of 10 people who get it will die outright, and the 2 out of 10 who don't will almost always be lifelong victims of Ebola Virus Syndrome, with blindness and other problems being a virtual certainty over time. And they'll be contagious carriers pretty much for life (blood, semen, breast milk, vaginal secretions, etc.). Good times.
In short, surviving it is only slightly better than dying from it.
*(Bear well in mind this is among Africans, with medieval sanitation, room temperature IQs, lousy health and health care - if any at all, and abysmal nutrition, already debilitated with malnutrition, malaria, dengue fever, parasitic and fungal infections, TB, and about 100 other problems last seen as widespread in the West prior to 1850 A.D., i.e prior to vaccinations, germ theory, and Florence Nightingale levels of basic sanitation.To find a representative population here like that, you'd have to sample the homeless. Now, imagine Ebola gets here, and gets to the homeless population...
Welcome to Zimbabwe/Ebolaville U.S.A.)
Q.: What role can the experimental vaccine play in these proceedings?
A.: By all accounts, Merck's invention, rVSV-ZEBOV, has shown a 97.5% effectiveness in this outbreak, i.e. nearly no one who's been vaccinated with it has subsequently gotten Ebola during this outbreak. To date, over 100,000 people in DRC have been vaccinated.
That, and that alone, is the reason this outbreak stands at 1600+ cases, and nearly 1000 deaths, rather than 10-20 times those numbers by this point in time.
Stockpiles will eventually be exhausted, as stupidity in DRC is outpacing ability to produce enough vaccine to contain the spread.
I have no idea what Merck's lead-time is for vaccine, nor how much they could produce and distribute, should Ebola arrive (or when it actually does) in the West (London, Paris, NYFC, etc.).
I suspect that answer would (and will) lead to riots, once it's no longer merely an academic inquiry.
Creating your own defensible Ebola-free quarantine space, OTOH, will be 100% effective.
Concertina wire should be on your shopping list.
And possibly a small supply of wine bottles full of high-octane for emergency field decontamination operations.
Update:
Q.: If it's so communicable, how did the dipshit NYC doctor not infect the entire bowling alley he went to? How did Bellevue [not] have any additional cases? Seems like we shouldn't have been able to dodge this one and the one in Dallas.
A.: The dipshit doctor was asymptomatic when he went on walkabout, and it was only after he developed symptoms that he had any virus to shed and spread. He was immediately placed in full hazmat isolation for his entire stay, very nearly died, and needed 30 doctors and 100 nurses caring for him around the clock to survive. We can't do that for very many people. And we won't.
When they tried the same thing in Dallas, using the strictest CDC protocols in their ICU, Ebola there achieved the exact same r-naught as the virus in the wild in Africa, with zero protection: it exactly doubled in 21 days.
That's pretty effing contagious, and we didn't dodge anything.
Both those nurses will carry the virus for life, as will the NYFC doctor, and they can look forward to the expected sequellae of Ebola Virus Syndrome, including blindness, and being a host reservoir for the virus indefinitely.
Q.: Is the Ebola Virus effected by subfreezing temps?
A.: Yes. It gets frozen in place, and then when things thaw, there it is, right where you left it.
From the MSDS Online relevant section:
SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days. Infectivity is found to be stable at room temperature or at 4°C for several days, and indefinitely stable at -70°C.
IOW, sub-freezing just preserves it until it thaws. Forever. At anything above 39° F, it's still fully infectious. And it thrives at the equator.
You want to make it go away, you want fire.
Two other cheery thoughts from the MSDS on EVD: 1-10 organisms will infect. That's one virus.
Vectors: unknown. Not a clue.
I hope that answers the questions regarding this outbreak adequately.
Short of this thing escaping containment, I'm unlikely to look at it further this side of June.
If you've got further questions, ask it in comments to this post.
Even if I've posted the answer 50 times before, I'll probably cover the ground again.
And remember, just like my drill instructor said, "There are NO stupid questions, there are only stupid people."
Because I grew up a couple of miles from Ventura Highway. Before it became known as Ventura Blvd. Because it was how you got from L.A. to Ventura.
Because I've travelled it a good number of times, and it brings nothing but fantastic memories. (As long as we're not talking about the transit disasterpiece gridlock-stricken abortion known as the Ventura Freeway that runs through L.A. County.)
Because the guitar hook is to die for, and the musicianship exquisite throughout.
Because "I've been hit by purple rain" decades before TAFKAP bootlegged it into a mediocre song and movie.
Because it's the only song not a Roger Corman cinematic nightmare that could get away with "alligator lizards in the air".
Go over to Bayou Renaissance Man, and read Peter's summary of the situation in DRC today. I have nothing to add that would improve on that. Which is a relief, frankly, because I really didn't want to have to go fishing in the cesspool for this update.
This thing is coming around again, TPTB are no smarter, and no better prepared, and the question is not whether, it's when and where. The first city in North America to get one active case will be Dallas 2014 Redux. Set your wayback machine for that episode, refresh your memory, and plan accordingly.
If anyone gets a dozen cases or more, cancel Christmas, and put your affairs in order.
Ain't no one who can handle as many as 12 cases at once in all of North America, short of concertina wire barricades, full medieval quarantines, and martial law. And at that point, "care" is palliative care, i.e. Hospice, for those who are going to die.
Things are still fairly small in the grand scheme, but this thing is inexorably headed for liftoff. I said the same thing in 2014, at about the same time of year. By fall, it wasn't a prediction, it was a prophecy fulfilled. Africa is the birthplace of stupid. You've been seeing that there for several months; soon, you're going to see the consequences elsewhere of that problem. Probably including here.
As Kim DuToit said way back in 2002 (and probably many times before and since), "Africa Wins Again." That's not a good thing.
Run for the hills? Hell, no. Be ready to cope with not just a pandemic, but the second-, third- and fourth-order consequences of a pandemic? Hell, yes. Oh, and FTR, "hoping it doesn't happen" is not a plan. And you aren't going to "treat" anyone in your clan who gets this, unless by "treat" you mean "ensure that everyone else in the family dies a slow, agonizing death too." You either avoid this, or it slays you, and stomps a mudhole in your family. There is no third option.
If random road turds, and bags of fertilizer at big box garden stores within a 50 mi. radius of Command Central suddenly start sporting little versions of this, with Bernie, AOC, or just generically "Democrats" on the banner, I swear I have no idea how that happened. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
I'm sure you'll feel the same way if it happens near you.
You know that FedEx/Kinko's has color copiers, right?
Remember your Alinsky: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
Everyone should have a hobby.
Bonus tip: It's even funnier on and near the local college/university Marxist Reeducation Gulag. But putting them on public toilet bowls and event portajohns would be baaaaaaaad.
Badger (in comments) asked for artwork. Couldn't find any, so I made my own. Knock yourself out:
FYI, the 2016 Bernie original was an Unsavory Agents/Sabo production. Now they're on the internetz, so anyone could have done it.
Imagine a set of tires, running over a face. Forever.
That's the commie darlings beloved of the Lunatard Left in this country, killing protesters in Venezuela yesterday by running them over with armored cars.
Watch it on video:
But once The Man goes Full Retard, and then goes past it all the way to Potato, things become two-way rather quickly.
Lo siento, Fernando, but I don't think the A/C is going to work this time.
Molotov, the drink of dictators since 1917!
I repeat: we shouldn't put one single American boot on the ground there.
But we should be shipping the resistance there all the captured AK-47s and ammunition we've got, 24/7/365, until Maduro is swinging from a light post.
But it's doubtful the Venezuelans left there have the stones to take back their country.
They should try it, though. Payback worked before, and it'll work again. Remember:
If anyone's interested, I finally got my pocket camera and my 'puter to talk to each other, so I added target pics from the last range forays with the PC 9, here and here.
My next adventure will be cracking the code for (scripting and) shooting and (editing and) uploading YouTube videos. (YouTube doofusii, nota bene those two parenthetical steps all y'all keep skipping like they were unimportant. They're not.)
Memes and pics now, and then I'm Warner Brothers.
I look forward to finding a way to get banned from everything on the Internet shortly after that.
Addendum: For those that wondered, here is furball that watches the place, named Isis partly because of the resemblance to a StarTrek TOS character (sadly, not to April Tatro) in the episode entitled Assignment: Earth, but mostly because she's a little terrorist who takes over all space she can absorb.
If I'd left the eyes red, it would have conveyed her attitude better.
Frequent comment AB Prosper offers the following, in comments to Off The Cuff:
To the topic at hand I'd say your latent Civ Nat is out its cage again.
Hollywood for good or ill however disproportionately Jewish at the top and sometimes the cultural differences can be very grating especially when they are unconscious or concealed. The funny thing there , openly Jewish movies like the Princess Bride or TV like the O. C. with a Jewish lawyer as a lead no less can be really great.
I might broadly disagree with more than a few of your points,
A: is just wrong I'm afraid, saying "pass" on movies and TV just means you are just as entertained doing something else, probably cheaper. You lose nothing
B: I can't speak to this and while its true enough for the Marvel movies I did see, I simply don't like them for the most part , caveat Logan and do not wish to watch them. I saw the remake of Death Wish though and it was decent
C:True but there is little good culture in Hollywood
D: I think not, Few people can remember movies from the 60's and 70's and they made a lot of good ones. The medium will also die faster than books and I suspect in a hundred years or so, none of them will be remembered and the medium dead. Books will go on and on though only some will be remembered
E: So? Its a dead nation now and the medium that it created can go with it for all I care.
F: Not our jobs to spread our values and its folly to do so in this age as we can see from the actions of people in charge have spent decades doing just that and fucking everything up. American values as seen in the Constitution and all that barely work for us and won't work for anyone else anyway. They were meant for a very specific people and a very specific time and didn't survive industrialization or the first European immigration wave
G: Too late for the most part I think though its will be tempered by the fact most moves going forward have to be international and get past Chinese and Indian censors as the market there combined is like 8x that of the US . The only way around that is for the Right to build its own infrastructure with things like what Vox Day is doing and for us to support them
I also strikingly doubt Hollywood is promulgating by message of nationalism for all and to each people its own culture traditions and ways . A few movies do promote Americanism but that isn't my ideology at all.
That said your last point about culture is spot on.
Broadly though, its not bad to simply avoid media and find something better to do with you time than watch TV or waste ,money at the movies, YMM as they say very
Once again, we remonstrate, not with AB, but with the unvoiced thousands his response represents:
A. That's just gainsaying. And books vs. movies is a false dilemma. Neither need exclude the other. By not going, you lose the most important, visible, and influential cultural medium, in return for nothing. No one is saying sit in the cinema 24/7/365. But going to the few good flicks every year is as inconsequential as voting. Ask our current president if voting matters. Then ask the criminal shrew he defeated.
B. It's a free country, but the underlying point remains, and actions (as well as inactions) have consequences. See A and H.
C. All the more reason to support the few pearls there are.
D. Last week's box office, for any value from 1925-present, shows that's not so. If you're depending on the apocalypse to wipe out the medium, that becomes a self-fulfilling curse. Plays have been around for 3000 years; but now, we see them digitally for the most part. And the worst-produced TV show you ever saw was better than the best local theatre you'll ever get. It's just the nature of the beast.
E. See D, above. Cultural nihilism is a poor excuse for ennui.
F. Another self-fulfilling curse. It's exactly your job to fertilize the ground, till the soil, and plant the trees, both culturally and actually, for the next generation and beyond, even if you'll never sit in their shade nor eat their fruit. You've let the civilizational poisoners do that for 50+ years; how's your current everyday going now after that monumental error starting probably before you were born? People who won't man the pumps of civilization deserve to be adrift at sea without hope when the boat sinks, but for the millions they'll condemn to a similar fate through laziness and indifference they deserve to die a thousand deaths. And they're going to get both.
G. The market in China and India is a fraction of the US market and always will be; it's about dollars, not bodies. They aren't paying $10-15@ there to see flicks, and in China, they simply steal them outright for nothing. This is why Hollyweird is nailing itself into its own coffin. Americans won't see 95% of their tripe, and the Chinese won't pay for what they make, even the good stuff, but they'll happily bootleg it and laugh about that.
For reference, this Avengers movie was already pirated in China before I saw it, at midday on the day it nominally opened.
You get the culture you build and nurture, and that's what gets you the civilization amidst which you (and generations yet unborn) will live.
TANSTAAFL.
Anyone cheering pulling down the Parthenon and burning Notre Dame is a Visigoth, no matter how they dress it up.
Anyone who can't find $10 once in a blue moon to see a good flick is sure as hell not going to man the barricades and put their own life on the line when a cultural conflagration opens up in earnest. It's like saying I won't pay for a seawall now, but come the day, I'll take a sandbag down to the shore to stop the tsunami.
And not doing the easy things to wait for the hard things instead is, as noted, myopic and self-defeating.
I don't care if no one wants to see this particular pic.
I don't care if you see it via DVD/BD/streaming service, in the comfort of your home theatre lashup. But someone who won't see any flick, ever, is cutting his own throat. And a lot of other peoples'. For no valid reasons, but just a plethora of excuses.
This flick grossed $357M, just here in the US, in 3 days. That means they had an audience of 36M people for 3 hours, sitting there, and absorbing messages willingly, in rapt attention.
And 2-5 times that overseas, not counting the ones who watched it pirated for nothing.
$1.2 billion. $1,200,000,000. And that's only in the first 3 days.
In a week this movie could buy and sell Donald Trump. In a year, you could add Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, George Soros, and dozens of lesser lights.
And half that audience is young, impressionable kids.
There isn't a producer in Hollywood anywhere, movies, TV, or commercials, who wouldn't kill his mother and yours and all their children but himself for a fraction of that audience, since 1900.
There isn't a president or candidate for the office going back to George Washington who's every had that kind of audience turnout. Not one.
Now, anyone, tell me why it's a waste of time and doesn't matter.
Anybody, call that kind of clout - financial, rhetorical, and cultural, combined - "just a comic book movie". (If you do, you're an absolute moron.)
People not getting this obvious common sense without being beaten over the head with a cluebat is why we're where we are right now, and why a cultural war is about to become a civil one, with all the trimmings.
POLITICS IS DOWNSTREAM FROM CULTURE.
Write it on the blackboard 10,000 times, until it penetrates your skull.
Andrew Breitbart shouted that from the rooftops, and still people don't get it.
People are setting their own houses on fire, and crapping in their own wells, and wondering why things aren't looking very rosy.
Nothing personal, and that's not aimed just at the original commenter.
But it's inarguably the way it is, and why.
And I'll drive the point home yet again with another flick moment of cultural history:
In case 61M(!) YouTube hits on just this version didn't let you know it, this is the quintessential modern jazz track.
Everything in Jazz can be divided into BT5, and AT5, for before and after this modern classic piece.
One item on my bucket list before I die is to be able to play the drum part of this flawlessly, at least once.
"Piss on Hollywood, all of 'em. Haven't spent a cent on movies in decades, will never again. Money wasted better spent on mags and ammo. Why give your money to people who hate you?"
Good question. How about this answer:
A) Because that's myopic and self-defeating.
B) Because the underlying themes in most of the Marvel flicks have been root conservative themes.
C) Because good culture drives out bad culture.
D) Because one movie will outlast a hundred documentaries, a thousand books and essays, and ten thousand blogposts, penetrate straight to the roots of memory and consciousness, and wear furrows there.
E) Because movies are the uniquely American art form of the last century.
F) Because they penetrate into parts of the world where reading the Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights out loud would get you shot or jailed.
G) Because yielding the medium to the lunatic communists is a recipe for losing it forever, and then the culture, and finally society and civilization itself.
How's doing just that been working for you for the last 50 years?
H) Because (say it with me): politics is downstream from culture.
You give your money to people who hate you because they're distributing your message to the ends of the world, and making it hip and cool.
And because your mags and ammo haven't killed any communists, have they?
Shall I go on, or is that Baby Harp Seal of an isolationist argument dead enough for you already?
None of this should be news to anyone.
Cutting off your own nose to spite your face never kills the giant.
Not a tease. I went to catch a late night premiere, so I could have something up early Friday. No dice. Ten different screenings between 10PM and 12:30AM were completely sold out, except for 2-3 seats in the frontmost row.
Not desiring to spend two hours in back-killing contortions just to look up Ironman's nose, I'll catch an early show tomorrow.
If tonight's audience turn-out is any indication, after a months-long drought of craptastic offerings, this weekend's box office for this flick is going to be yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.
I should have an after-viewing write-up between noon and 1PM PDT Friday, early enough for anyone thinking about it to make a decision for the weekend.
And no, I'm not giving you any spoilers.
--- Friday Afterwards:
So, it turned out the first 10 showings in the morning were sold out as well. I can count sold out shows in the last 10 years on my thumbs. Go long on Disney stock this season. Between this, and StarWarsLand (or whatever they're calling it) opening at Disneyland just before Memorial Day (nice going bozos: you had three years' lead time, and you still couldn't get your crap together for a 5/4/2019 May The Fourth Be With You opening?!?), the Mouse is going to be rolling in acres of cash like Scrooge McDuck by the 4th of July.
First, a couple of tips:
Eat, and take a potty break, before you go. And don't buy the bladder buster-sized drink. This flick is every bit of 3 hours, start to finish.
Second, when the credits roll, split. No, really. There are no teasers, no easter eggs, no nothing. Unless you want to see the crawl of the 4000 people it took to make a $300M movie. Don't worry about those folks; their checks all cleared 6 weeks to 6 months ago, when it was done in post-. When this one is over, it's over. Which is likely true for the franchise as well.
Stan Lee gets in his last cameo. (R.I.P., maestro.) Everyone else is in this. Everyone.
They won't all be back. Which ones? Go see the movie.
If you've never seen one of the Avengers pics, don't start with this one. You're already twelve movies behind the curve. If you have seen them, this one will be vastly more satisfying than the wholesale slaughter of characters at the end of Infinity War, which was nothing but an elaborate set-up for this slam dunk-fest. They had a lot of ground to cover with this one, and they only got caught milking it for pathos a few times. You will enjoy nearly every minute of this one.
So go see it, and enjoy the last good ride you're going to get.
If they make any more, rest assured some of your favorites are outta here permanently. And Stan Lee is dead.
Which portends, if other franchise experiences are anything to judge by, with their usual hamfisted deft touch, the PC warriors at Disney are going to beat you over the head with Diversity! and GurlPower! from here on out. They mercifully kept it to a couple of token shots this time out. The next time around (and Hollyweird will milk a franchise until it's a dry husk, and then double down for half the budget), they will do to this what they did for Star Wars: i.e. destroy every tenet that made it great, and watchable, pee on your head, wipe their backsides with prior scripts, and then tell you it's what you have coming.
So enjoy what's probably going to be the last great ride in the Marvel-verse in forever, before Kathleeen Kennedy and the Disney tone-deaf SJWs get their moldy little fangs into this franchise, rip the guts out of it, and make it sound like a script brainstorming session between Ellen, Oprah, and TheSpew, because they can.
We just looked up and noticed the blog bodycount means someone yesterday was our 4,000,000 visitor. That's 6 months since #3M.
For that one, and the other 3,999,999 visitors, linkers, and commenters who continue to show an interest in things here since we started, sincere and humble thanks.
It has come as a rudely unpleasant shock to WA state senator and walking braindead jackhole MaureenMoron Walsh [R - Retardia] that nurses do not, in fact, "play cards for a considerable amount of the day". Only someone who's never performed worthwhile labor in their adult life, and/or has a resting IQ in the low teens, somewhere just north of fungus, could managed to get both feet thusly inserted in their own gaping mouths, with their empty head simultaneously shoved so far up their own hindquarters so as to choke off the passage of light or oxygen. But it always cheers my heart when some elected functional moron's political turkey timer pops up to let us know they're done.
Someone on the Twaddleverse helpfully added her WA office number:
(360) 786-7630.
Have fun.
I will personally pledge to contribute to every opponent she faces in her next primary, and every other party's candidate from opposing parties in the general election, the next time this sorry sack of sh*t is up for a vote. She needs to be kicked RTF out of the state house for being that egregiously stupid in public, and based on her speech, we're guessing this is one of her brighter and more coherent stupid utterances. The rest certainly have to sound like she's having a stroke, every time she squawks and squeals.If she has the good grace to quit now, quickly, I'll contribute a like amount to Alzheimer's research and money to care for actual retarded people.
Were I in WA state, I would be gathering signatures for her immediate recall, as being too stupid to suck air and a waste of skin has to be a disqualifying factor in holding office, even in a community like Walla Walla.
But in true form, the memes and Twittterlanche on her head have been properly brutal.
“Nurses … probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day” is in the running for most inane, indefensible, disgraceful thing said by a legislator this year (even though the competition is really fierce). — Ajai Dandekar (@ajai_dandekar) April 20, 2019
When world-class retards tell you you're retarded, YOU'RE REALLY RETARDED. - A.
(And yes, I made that, but Kathy absolutely tweeted it.) More here.
I'm also pretty sure Joy Behar ( "Why is she wearing a doctor's stethoscope?") could send along a few tips on coping with being the biggest jackass in America today to state senator Walsh.
I'll be dog-goned if I'm not piling on to this monumental level of stupidity.
And a personal benediction to Sen. Moron Walsh:
Don't worry, Sh*t-For-Brains. No nurse would ever treat you like you just treated a few millions of us. Or...would they? Sleep tight. Take your vitamins. And may God have mercy on you when (not if) you end up in a hospital needing care. No one else will. You might want to think about getting some gold-plated Costa Rican medical policy. For the rest of your life. And for pity's sake, do the world a favor: Change parties. You're already overqualified to be a Democrat socialist, so by all means, run down and sign up today. You'll increase the IQ of both Republicans and Democrats in WA state the minute you do that.
But walk tall, sweetheart. Earning Assclown of The Year honors in April has to be some sort of record, even for a politician who's overmatched by celery bunches at the grocery store in a contest of wits.
You might have thought someone who'd had a heart attack and gotten two cardiac stents a couple of years back would have been a wee bit more circumspect, but remember, this is a politician we're talking about, not someone with a functional brain, let alone one connected to their mouth.
Jesus rose from the dead today. But, you, Bright Light, should invest in a shroud and a cemetery plot. Hey...is that a fork sticking out of your back? Yeah, you're done.
Even if you're familiar with the later pure instrumental works of Celtic synth musician Jeff Johnson, you might not know that when he was but a youngster starting out, he regularly rocked a simple piano keyboard or an Ovation acoustic/electric up and down the West Coast.
With a theme apropos of the day, enjoy.
For something in a similar vein, something from a small family group from just down the street from where I grew up, another one you may have heard somewhere or other before.
If, perchance, you find yourself in a more secular frame of mind, try something else a bit more in keeping with your proclivities, but nonetheless appropriate fare today:
If you don't own this one, rectify that oversight, and collect one of the classic performances of American cinema, by a master of the craft.
And for those who think Hollywood is garbage, and there's nothing worth watching, and who have forgotten that film is the quintessential American art form, three movies on which you cannot lose today:
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
