In between packing for the annual trip to South Carolina tomorrow, I watched the Pelican Brief today. It was always one of those movies that every time it showed up on USA ot TNT or one of those channels, no matter what part of the movie it was, I would just probably watch it. A comfort movie, if you know what I mean.
Watching it today, it seemed from like another universe. It’s hard with everything moving at lightning speed to remember that not only in my lifetime, but as an adult, it didn’t used to be this way. In the movie, two SCOTUS judges are assassinated, and it took weeks and weeks before it was all sorted out. Now, if something happens, if it is not resolved in two days people are screaming for heads.
Just weird. And unhealthy, I think.
Medium Cool – BJ Peeps Who Are Writers, Tell Us About Your Books!
RevRick
Speaking of weird and unhealthy, the Philadelphia Eagles seem to be hellbent on killing off their fans. The last two weeks have been cardiac alerts.
Tim C.
There’s a lot of unhealthy these days. I feel my padding and resilience against the stupid is so so so much thinner than it used to be. The Bush II era for example, all that BS at the time. I was mad, I went to protests, I did all the things, then I went home and slept well. Got drunk the night we invaded Iraq and then just got up and kept doing things.
2004, when W got reelected, same story, felt bad a day or two and then just got over it and kept working for change, sleeping fine.
The last 7 years it’s been a trainwreck of anxiety and what not. Stopped drinking, (partially inspired by your struggle and victory John) but it’s hard to have hope. I wish I could go back to feeling just moderately bad about the world, doing my part, and then having hope someday it will get better.
For now, it’s all about plugging away.
Peace.
Poe Larity
We just need to figure out a way to get the 27% on zoom.
Martin
@RevRick: Given the propensity for Philly fans to want to kill off the players, seems like fair play.
BeautifulPlumage
Speaking of weird, I just learned that Marty Krofft passed. Joe.My.God has a short post that includes videos of the the opening theme songs to many of my childhood TV watching hours.
So much weirdness
eclare
@BeautifulPlumage:
I loved Land of the Lost. Other than that I was a Sherwood Schwartz tv kid.
bbleh
Just weird. And unhealthy, I think.
I think of it as yet another example of a technological advancement — in this case the advent and spread of social media — moving faster than social adaptation to it, which is almost inevitable — how could society even begin to adapt to something that hasn’t been implemented yet? — but sorta seems to catch people by surprise nearly every time.
We’ll get over it. The degree to which The Youngs understand social media and have woven both it and expectations concerning it into their lives actually also surprises me a little.
satby
Yes, it is. Not the least because it takes a while to sort out exactly what happened vs. what people (even eyewitnesses) think happened and then to come up with a coherent workable plan to fix/address what happened. And in the meantime disinformation, stupid takes, and just plain confusion get a head start. So then the competition of different narratives and conspiracy theories takes hold. It’s exhausting, it’s unhealthy, it’s demoralizing. And some of that is on purpose.
Citizen Alan
While I roll my eyes at most of John Grisham’s works, I have a soft spot for The Pelican Brief. This is Grisham and I had the same Con Law Professor (separated by a decade or more). He was my favorite professor in law school, but Grisham apparently wasn’t fond of him–the con law professor whose car gets blown up early in the book/movie was based on him.
pieceofpeace
@Tim C.: Good for you! Be proud of yourself for trying, then trying some more. Hope and clarity are in there.
cain
Speaking of comfort movies, after a long while I saw ‘Sholay’. Considered to be the best Bollywood movie of all time. It’s basically an Indian version of your Clint Eastwood type spaghetti western. Highly recommend! It’s over 50 years old now!
Seeing it again, I realized how much more stuff I missed before.
piratedan
it is kind of strange the juxtaposition between the need to be even faster in combating climate change and yet, we have roughly 40% of our nation going thru some anti-science throes even post pandemic. Then we have the Middle east crisis with Hamas and Israel that has been ongoing for decades and people online keep insisting it gets solved yesterday without understanding that the people with the weapons don’t have a vested interest in doing so. It’s like hot takes are given more credence than studying, gathering data and then acting upon it or gaming out the repercussions that create more discussion.
In short, people have kind of stopped being serious.
Martin
@piratedan: We were never serious. Ok, maybe in WWII we were, but most of our history has been unserious. We knew about climate change _before_ WWII. And we had important people warning Congress 40 years ago.
If there is urgency it’s because we did fuck-all for a long ass time. The country isn’t anti-science, they’re anti-things-that-don’t-comport-with-my-worldview. Sometimes that news is delivered by science, but it doesn’t matter how it’s delivered. It was delivered by Chris Stirewalt on Fox News that Trump lost in 2020, and they responded the same way.
We know how to solve climate change and global hunger, and most of the environmental diseases people suffer from, and we just don’t. We know how to solve the 40,000 automotive fatalities annually, or the 40,000 gun deaths, but we just don’t.
John
Funny – I loaded that up to watch on the plane as I flew coast to coast last week. Great cast (Stanley Tucci as the assassin; Sam Shepherd, John Lithgow…).
The book has a romance between Darby Shaw and Grey Grantham…the movie did not, because Julia Roberts is white and Denzel is not – and Roberts was pretty vocal in her frustration about that plotline being axed.
I did appreciate this moment of reality: Denzel Washington, wearing a hoodie and jeans, is tracking bad guys and tries to catch a cab to follow one and the cab, of course, speeds away…