Actually, unlike Henry, I did see one superhero film that was in the Avengers series because I was curious as to what all the fuss was about. It did not persuade me to see any more. I also watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy because so many people I know loved the books so I watched the films to see if I might want to read them. The answer is no.
In the May 11, 2020 issue of the New Yorker, in an article titled How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump, Evan Osnos profiles the wealthy country-club Republicans who live in this enclave in Greenwich, Connecticut, home of the elitist Bush family and their friends, who originally thought of Donald Trump as nouveau riche and utterly gauche and beneath them. They have now been completely converted to him because of how much wealthier he has made them and because he says the racist and misogynist and xenophobic things that they always thought but felt that they could not say out loud because it would reveal to others that their publicly professed socially enlightened values were all a sham.
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The fascinating Netflix series Dirty Money explores the world of high-level corruption. I discussed in an earlier post an episode of season 2 of the show about how Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is a slumlord who preys on poor and vulnerable people. The show also examines how drug cartels launder their money. When it comes to laundering drug money the problem is always how to convert large amounts of cash in small currency bills collected on the streets into deposits in bank accounts without the authorities being alerted, where the money can be more easily transferred around the globe.
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Netflix has a lot of specials featuring stand-up comics that usually last an hour or so. Comedies are my favorite form of entertainment but I find that when I watch these specials, I get restless after about 15 minutes or so. It seems like I reach some kind of joke saturation and then need some time to detox. This is true even for comedians that I find really funny, like Eddie Izzard whose riffs can go off in unexpected directions so that you do not quite know what to expect. This is why I usually tend to watch and enjoy short clips of comedians dealing with one particular topic or just a few.
Comedy films and TV shows spread the funny bits out more over time and this works better for me.
I know that these specials are popular and the comedians draw large live audiences as well to their performances, so clearly many people do not get tired they way that I do.
I was just curious if there are many others who are like me in this regard.
A horrifying video has emerged of a black man George Floyd who died in Minneapolis after a police officer pinned him to the ground with his knee on the man’s neck for five minutes, even though the man was saying that he could not breathe and bystanders who recorded the incident said that the man had started bleeding from his nose.
That excellent radio program This American Life just recently won the first-ever Pulitzer prize for excellence in journalism awarded to a radio program. It is well deserved because it is a truly outstanding program. The show they won the prize for dealt with the terrible plight of the migrants who have been turned away at the US-Mexico border because of the cruelty of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. They rebroadcast that program last week after winning the prize and you can listen to it here. Back in 2005, I wrote to the program offering to nominate them for a prize for their coverage of the terrible treatment meted out to poor people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. You can listen to that program here.
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I know, I know, that parties seem to have become extinct but let us assume that at some point we will again begin to have gatherings of more than just the people in our own households. When that happens, here is a fun exercise you can do. Define as mutual acquaintances as any two people who have met at least once before this occasion, and mutual strangers as any two people who have just met for the first time. It actually does not have to be done at parties but with any group of six or more people.
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Regular readers of this blog will know that I have never been a fan of former senator, vice-president, and now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. I strongly favored Bernie Sanders and Biden was way down the list of the many people who sought the nomination. Biden has always seemed to me to be shallow, lacking a central core of convictions, and thus easily swayed by pressure groups, lobbyists, and those whom he considers more powerful than him. He has been, like the Democratic party establishment, a loyal servant of the business class, especially those in the financial sector. His home state of Delaware is the choice of tax-evading and money-laundering companies because of its very loose regulatory structure.
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Get Fuzzy is a funny cartoon strip that takes place in an apartment occupied by a loner Rob, his lovable but dimwitted and gullible dog Satchel, and a sociopathic cat Bucky who loves to torment and exploit Satchel and who often has his weird cat friends over.
I have not seen either the stage production or the film version of the musical Cats but know enough to decide that it is not to my taste and also appreciate the humor of this recent strip.
Here is an actual performance of the song from the 1998 stage production.
My ignoring of the Trump campaign emails has resulted in them steadily increasing the inducements offered to me and my recent prediction that this would occur again did in fact happen. It was not the offer of a private lunch with Trump that I had anticipated but even better, as you can see from the text of the email I received.
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