Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Let there be snark.

Let’s finish the job.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Thursday Evening Open Thread: The Wisdom of Our Elders

Thursday Evening Open Thread: The Wisdom of Our Elders

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Happy 91st birthday, Michael Caine…



(This is also Cole bait — nothing like a fresh post from me to attract the Blogmaster Bigfoot!)

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Caine has never seen Jaws: The Revenge (which he starred in) but he has seen the house it paid for, and that house was very fine indeed.

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Great story, made all the better by hearing it in Sir Michael’s flawless Cockney!

  5. 5.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    The time zone difference means that John is actually posting a few hours before you did. 😁

  6. 6.

    bbleh

    Does he ever actually AGE …?

    Maybe he could do some appearances with Joe?  Can’t imagine it would hurt ..

  7. 7.

    TeezySkeezy

    Smaug stirring at new sounds from the secret entrance, giger aliens roused from their nest stasis by sounds of a colonial marine joking about dry heat, Cole raising an eyebrow to an alert that Anne posted, and it’s about old time movie greats….there is overlap.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    IIRC, Michael Caine’s main wisdom is “take any role as long as you know their checks will clear”.

  10. 10.

    trollhattan

    This is a thing that happened this week.

    An 18-year-old driver was fleeing from police at over 115 mph when they flipped into a porta-potty in California, authorities said. Officers tried to stop the BMW driver but they refused to pull over, California Highway Patrol’s West Valley posted on X, March 12. A helicopter then chased after the driver, officers said. Eventually, officers spotted the BMW in Malibu, but it raced away from police, the highway patrol said. The driver then crashed into a truck and flipped into a porta-potty, officers said.https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article286707490.html#storylink=cpy

    This is a thing that happened last fall.

    22-year-old driver of a BMW that struck and killed four Pepperdine University students in Malibu was traveling 104 mph seconds before the horrific crash on a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, prosecutors said when they announced charges against him Wednesday.
    Fraser Bohm was charged with four counts of murder and four counts of vehicular manslaughter in the Oct. 17 crash. He made his initial court appearance Wednesday, a day after he was re-arrested in the investigation.
    Bohm had previously been arrested after the crash on a twisting section of the seaside road, but was released a day later while investigators gathered evidence. District Attorney George Gascón said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference that Bohm was driving at more than 100 mph when the crash occurred in the 45 mph speed zone. The digital event recorder in Bohm’s car recorded speeds of 104 mph, between 2.5 and 4.5 seconds before impact, prosecutors said.
    Bohm’s attorney, Michael Kraut, told reporters outside court that his client was being chased following a road rage incident at the time. He said the car’s data recorder was incorrect, and that the car was traveling at 70 mph.
    “This is exceptionally tragic,” he said. “The family grieves equally with each other over what’s going on. I mean, they feel horrible that this has happened. The issue here is whether it’s murder or manslaughter or not a crime. That’s really what we’re here to look at. We have evidence that the sheriff’s department did not want to take that clearly shows that there was a road rage incident.”
    Prosecutors said the defendant said in a post-crash interview with detectives that he might have been texting prior to the crash. He also told detectives that the crash happened when a car pulled into lanes of traffic from the center median, and that he swerved or clipped that car before slamming into parked cars, prosecutors said.
    The college students were walking along the scenic Pacific Coast Highway at 8:30 p.m. in Malibu, only a few miles from the Christian university, when the driver lost control and sideswiped at least three parked vehicles that crashed into them, investigators said. The four women died at the scene and two other people were injured.​

  11. 11.

    Ruckus

    @satby:

    Not only is that hilarious, I can easily imagine it happening.

    And is likely why most men don’t talk to anyone when taking a leak in public.

  17. 17.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Ahhh… I was guessing a suede shoe reference but more modern…lol!

    And fuck John Wayne. He was a real asshole.

  18. 18.

    RaflW

    Even though the movie overall was deeply depressing, I remember liking Caine in Children of Men. Seemed uncharacteristic for him as an actor, maybe.

  22. 22.

    teezyskeezy

    @Jerry: This is funny, but have you considered the ramifications of AI finding this and creating “Caine doing an impersonation of Caine impersonating Caine????”…there is a potential positive feedback loop here that could open a portal to either heaven or hell, not sure which…or, to a place where everyone is incomprehensible but seems to be cheery.

  25. 25.

    teezyskeezy

    @Ken: Or, incomprehensible and *not* cheery, as is the case in *that* movie.

     

    EDIT: But yes, good reference.  Just earlier saw a Shel Silverstein poem that seemed to presage chatGPT (Homework Machine), and now, based on your comment, I think Being John Malkovich presages what the internet will be in 5 years.

  26. 26.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Since Thin Black Duke thread seems to be dead — the one thread I really wanted to participant in today, I wanted to repost here, albeit that’ll probably guarantee Cole bigfoots this post…

    I could, and need to, write a whole post about the Republican trans genocide efforts here in the states — tl;dr in Florida and West Virginia things seem to be subsiding, roughly 20 bills in each state died in session, and but in many other states it’s getting even more horrible.

    But tonight, I wanted to look at the UK which has been a bellwether of strident things can get. The latest is the Wizard Lady engaging in Holocaust denial, pushing the claim that trans people weren’t targeted. When she was quickly schooled, she then doubled down, and now is threatening to sue those who called her out (thanks to the UK’s shitty libel laws).

    That famous photo of the first Nazi book burning was the Nazi students burning the library of Berlin Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which was an institute focused on LGB, and especially T, rights. The Nazis also send numerous trans people to their deaths in the camps.

    I’d urge you read a good summary of it: The persecution of trans people by the Nazis was devastating – and it still echoes down the ages, and more about the history of the institute: The Forgotten History of the World’s First Trans Clinic.

    So if you wonder why, I’ve been warning so often about the Republican trans genocide efforts here, this is why. The British TERFs have long been in league with the reactionary Right, and of late a number of high profile ones have been openly supporting actual neo-Nazis.

  27. 27.

    eclare

    I really liked Michael Caine in Deathtrap, which also starred Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon.  It’s a funny murder mystery with lots of twists.

  33. 33.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @eclare:

    For a great double feature, pair Deathtrap with Sleuth, starring a young Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. Similar kind of twists and turns.

  34. 34.

    brantl

    nothing like a fresh post from me to attract the Blogmaster Bigfoot!)

     

    That’s serious shade there, AL…..

  35. 35.

    Anne Laurie

    @brantl: That’s serious shade there, AL…..

    Nah.  To paraphrase the immortal R.A. Lafferty, that’s “tongue so firmly in cheek as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice.”

    A/k/a, a Bronx cheer!

  39. 39.

    Just Some Lurker

    @Villago Delenda Est:  I’ve heard/read an interview somewhere, in which Sir Michael admitted that the very fine house in question was a gift to his mother… and then went on to tell a funny story about how difficult it was to persuade her that she could retire now, on his earnings. She had raised him as a single parent, working as an office janitor in London, and cash was always tight; well, old habits die hard and — according to Sir Michael — his mum promptly went around to all her new neighbors, to offer her services as housekeeper! IIRC, he finally had to scare her into retiring, by asking her to imagine what the tabloids would say if they found her still working for a living.

  42. 42.

    Quadrillipede

    @TeezySkeezy: Smaug

    I’m actually embarrassed to admit that it took me almost 45 years to finally figure out that there are some very striking parallels between Smaug and any modern chrimatocrat†.

    † I think I just invented chrimatocrat by trying to shoehorn χρηματοδοτώ (financier) onto the  -κράτ part of δημοκράτης (democrat), and “Englishing” it to make it sound all fancy like. It’s supposed to mean something like aristocrat but without the implication of inherited wealth. Several current billionaires seem to come from well-off-but-not-royalty-wealthy families (from the richest 5%-10% maybe, but nowhere near the 1%)…

  43. 43.

    Citizen Alan

    @Frankensteinbeck: I guaran-damn-tee you that before this decade is out, JK Rowling will loudly become a Tory, convert to Catholicism, and denounce her own Harry Potter work as Satanic. She is an example of why I favor confiscatory tax rates–because I believe as a matter of religious faith that wealth above a certain point causes people to go insane and turn evil.

  44. 44.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    I still have fond memories of Michael Caine’s Scrooge. Yes, the rest of the cast was full of Muppets, but he acted like he was performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. (Which isn’t too far off the mark, when you come down to it: Henson puppeteers are the peak of the profession, much like the RSC or the Bolshoi Ballet.) It amuses me that he took the consummate professional approach for that movie, while Tim Curry went the other way while playing Long John Silver and acted like he was a Muppet, and both of them cite those movies as among the favorites of their careers.

    (Side note: apparently The Muppet Christmas Carol was how Caine discovered that he could actually sing.)

  45. 45.

    Tony Jay

    Caine blotted his copybook a long time ago with his Tory supporting ways, and after playing the ‘Elderly White Millionaire Touting Brexit Benefits From His American Mansion’  card to the hilt back in the day, well, he can shove it where only an Oscar fits.

    That said, great actor. Effortlessly convincing, much wider range than you’d think. Made everything he was in better for his presence.

  47. 47.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sister Golden Bear: Yes, I’m not sure that anyone LBGTQ + should be thinking about emigrating to England now…post-BREXIT England seems to this observer to be going completely off the rails.  :(

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