Via a post at Booman’s place, here’s my nomination for best recent application of a “Lord of the Rings” quote in a political context:
I’ve been on auto-pilot for the last week and change due to travel and some family-related sadness. Then I had company to look after and entertain over the holiday weekend.
I’ve got a smallish, seedless watermelon in the fridge that somehow went unconsumed, and I’ve got plans for it: gonna make aguas frescas and see how it pairs with vodka. Maybe with a squeeze of lime and mint garnish? Sounds refreshing to me!
Please feel free to discuss whatever.
Denali
Hope things are going better for you now.
Brachiator
“I am no man.” Very cool.
Speaking of no, or very few men, I ran across this little box office tidbit:
Anybody see it?
Gindy51
Oh gee whiz, IN fired their consulting firm you know the one they hired to try and upgrade its image after the religious freedom law debacle. wrbiradio.com/indiana-rebuilds-image-and-cuts-contract-ties-with-pr-firm/
Nice waste of over $350K, Pence, you stupid idiot.
Botsplainer
In Europe, the stupids never rest. I suspect expensive suits and perfumed hair oils suck IQ points.
theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jul/06/greek-referendum-eu-leaders-call-crisis-meeting-as-bailout-re…
The above blurb was in response to this announcement:
scav
@Gindy51:
Comments Off. Might be a teeny bit of a clue, even in the dens of iniquity that are interweb comment threads.
shawn
thats good – and a good use of a painfully cheesy line (from a movie chock full of painfully cheesy lines)
Iowa Old Lady
We just got back from a long weekend at my brother’s house on a lake in Brainerd, MN. All went well until Saturday afternoon when my SIL stepped in a hole on their front lawn and broke one ankle and sprained the other. It was much less relaxing after that.
I heard no political news while I was gone. I suspect catching up will not be relaxing either.
Botsplainer
@Brachiator:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
God was pretty loose with definition of marriage. I have only a nodding acquaintance with the old testament, but I vaguely recall couple of case of bigamy (if not poly-?), concubines and didn’t somebody “set his wife aside” i think is the phrase for being barren? And if God was so hot and bothered about it the institution, does that mean the gospel according to Dan Brown is right and Mary Magdalene was Mrs Christ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@scav: when will the Tea Baggers and all the other cons who are, as they and the media constantly remind us, really only concerned about wasteful spending notice how many state tax dollars are spent on their governors’ larger political delusions. Christie is leaving a broad flank exposed for anybody who wants to point out the ethical problems. Senators Paul and Cruz, he’s been calling you out.
MomSense
Sorry to hear about the family sadness, Betty. Hope you are all ok.
Germy Shoemangler
Here are some tips on how to make your home movies more interesting and exciting. A short MGM film from 1939
youtube.com/watch?v=qaXV4A_jRNI
chopper
lol, if only RBG went full-Éowyn on his ass.
Roger Moore
@Gindy51:
So, which of his buddies profited?
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady:
No bloody wood chipper around back, I hope?
OzarkHillbilly
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: According to the Bible, Mary the mother of Jesus should have been stoned on her wedding night.
Punchy
@Botsplainer: I dont get this joke.
Germy Shoemangler
@Brachiator: We have not seen it. The next two on our list is “Spy” (if it’s still playing) and possibly “Dope”
Has anyone seen these two and care to review?
shawn
@Brachiator: i will – i liked the first one but i chose to go with Terminator Genysis instead. for the whole movie i tried to figure out who the actress playing sarah connor was – it was daenerys (still cant spell that without googling it) – but as a brunette and with an american accent – i gotta say – i usually prefer English women and she is one – but this “American” Emilia Clark was so much better on every level then the one we get of game of thrones – that sounds terrible but there is no accounting for taste – arnold was good as always (like Mel or Tom whatever you think of them, they are great on screen – Arnie can’t act as well as Mel, but he is still just good up there) Courtney Jai still can’t act but he is in yet another movie where he is given terrible lines – hard to lift poop off the page
also watching true detective – this season is no where near the first – also not the actors fault – colin ferrell is doing particularly well – but yeah it’s just not as compelling as the first
ballers is good – like a dramatization of the excellent 30 for 30 “Broke” which should be required viewing for every high schooler – athlete or not
i am almost all the way through house – god bless netflix and cheap binge watching of quality shows – hugh laurie is awesome
didn’t watch the game but good for US
i am happy Lewis Hamilton is winning but F1 needs to get some of the crazy back – idk how to do that without bringing the danger back but it needs something
chopper
@OzarkHillbilly:
given that she later claimed to have been impregnated by god, she may well have been.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In other hollywood news, I just saw a report on MSNBC about the chairman of Disney (I think it was) lamenting that it’s so hard to find women who are both beautiful and funny to make movies with! whatever happened to Goldie Hawn? the anchors, one male and one female, wound up the segment by listing all the actresses they think fit both criteria
dmsilev
That particular bit of Lord of the Rings always annoyed me. Not the part where Eowyn goes all choppy-choppy on the Ringwraith, but that that prophecy was considered at all useful. Gender aside, Middle Earth was crawling with “I am no Man” beings, ranging from Hobbits through Elves and even Gandalf and his mates (depending on one’s definition of ‘Man’; I’m not sure ‘mortal manifestation of angel-like being’ really counts).
Germy Shoemangler
@chopper:
theonion.com/article/researchers-say-virgin-mary-actually-gods-second-c-50778
Researchers Say Virgin Mary Actually God’s Second Choice To Bear Son
OzarkHillbilly
@chopper: Good point. They did like their mushrooms back then.
Mike in NC
@Germy Shoemangler: “Spy” was very funny.
trollhattan
Still reveling in the US Women’s new scorched-
earthplastic approach to playing a final. Why had nobody thought of that before. And also, too, I approve of Carli Lloyd’s approach to breakfast.Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: I love that movie!
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Marge was the best.
Tree With Water
I just finished watching some baby woodpeckers testing out their wings in my garden. And even though they’re babies, the bully blue jays steer them a wide berth, too. Which always makes me laugh, because they’re such jerks to every other bird in the neighborhood.
SiubhanDuinne
Or, as Siegfried sings at the top of his Heldentenor voice when he first claps eyes on Brünnhilde (the first female he’s ever seen in his life): “Das ist kein Mann!”
Possibly the only guaranteed laugh-out-loud moment in all of Wagner.
mai naem mobile
I was watching Maria Bartiromo on FBN this w/e. She ends the show asking her panel on what they think will be the most important story the next week. The panel answer with the Greek Crisis. Not Maria herself though, Maria mentions the Puerto Rican crisis.OMG do you how many hedge funds have their money in Puerto Rican bonds? Maria doesn’t give a crap about pension funds with Puerto Rican bonds, just the hedge funds.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
I always took that line to mean that that Ringwraith (the Witch King of Angmar, right?) had magically protected himself so that no male — of Men, Elves, or whatever — could kill him. He didn’t anticipate facing a woman in battle, so he assumed he’d done enough to guard against ever being slain in combat.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
The whole point of prophecies is that you think you understand what they mean, only to be surprised when there’s a twist. The twist is supposed to be obvious only in retrospect.
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler:
You may want to see these soon. They may be pushed aside, or to lesser screens and fewer times as more blockbusters roll out. I still haven’t seen Spy yet, but people I know (lots of varied tastes) have generally liked it.
I saw Dope and really liked it. I note, however, that the middle section of the movie sags, and there are a couple of characters that you would really like to see more of, but who don’t have much screen time. I noted in a comparison of Dope and Jurassic World that Jurassic World is better crafted but artificially spliced together, while Dope has a lot of heart, and the acting of the leads and main supporting players is really good.
I will be really disappointed it the upcoming Minions is just a cynical money grab. Kids are anticipating this one big time. At the movie theater I saw Jurassic World there is a display of Minions with life size models of three of the little critters. Kids were insisting that their parents take pictures of them standing with the creatures. This kind of good will is worth more than all the slick marketing campaigns in the world.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
An off-topic question. What is the distinction between heroic and lyric tenors in opera? I have this vague idea that the former sound like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and the latter like Art Garfunkel, but that’s probably wrong.
catclub
@Germy Shoemangler:
Burn down Atlanta?
mdblanche
@dmsilev: I remember reading somewhere that Tolkien was always annoyed with Shakespeare’s explanation of how MacDuff was not a man of woman born, and thought having a woman doing the choppy-choppy was a better idea. Just like Ents were a better idea than a bunch of soldiers carrying branches.
Warren Terra
I’m sure you realize, this is a lot older than Lord Of The Rings? The obvious antecedent is Macbeth (no man of woman born / from my my mother’s womb untimely ripped), but there’s a whole TV Tropes page that I refuse to look at lest I lose an afternoon.
Poopyman
@chopper: Shakespeare got there first with Macduff, you know.
Gin & Tonic
Too many downbeat stories today. Here’s one (in Russian, sorry) about a Stalin impersonator beating up a Lenin impersonator in downtown Moscow. It says the fight started over “a dispute of a professional nature.”
Poopyman
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure the backstory is in The Silmarilion, but I ain’t gonna be the one to look for it.
Tree With Water
@Roger Moore: I knew you’d say that.
scav
@Poopyman: And Shakespeare is/was notorious for recycling the useful plot devices. Nobody is hurting me!
SatanicPanic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Goldie Hawn is still alive. Maybe Hollywood should rethink it’s policy of trying not to hire any woman older than 30?
Poopyman
@Gin & Tonic: That’s downbeat? Did they say what happened to the Trotsky impersonator?
millekat
That joke has a bit of a history, anyway.
It also turns up in the Narnia books (by Tolkien’s buddy, C.S. Lewis), in which the speaker is the valiant mouse, Reepicheep.
Prince Caspian has refused to land on a mysterious island, explaining that “There are some things no man can face,” and the mouse tops him with “It is then my privilege not to be one.”
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is stupid beyond words.
When did beauty become a requirement? I can’t think of many great male comedians or comic actors who were conventionally handsome.
But even if you want to play that game, look at all the British female actors who win awards doing both comedy and drama on British TV shows, many of whom are damned fine looking. Americans seemed to get pigeon holed as drama or comic types, but this is just lazy casting decisions, and doesn’t have anything to do with talent.
Tea Leoni comes quickly to mind as a woman with sharp comic timing currently doing more dramatic roles on TV. Rose Byrne is hot and was a hoot in Neighbors and the recent Spy. Goldie Hawn’s daughter Kate Hudson has good comic chops.
muddy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He was actually speaking to Hawn at the time! Idiot.
shawn
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: any female on SNL and a whole host of stand up comediannes in the past twenty years has been at least moderately attractive (some are down right smoking hot as terrible as a phrase as that is) – even the big girls have been cute – the biggest name I can think of (and thats really it they have to be a big money making name) kristen wiig is beautiful and funny (when she isnt doign any of her dreadful recurring characters on SNL) – but there are others that escape my mind right now i am sure
Germy Shoemangler
@catclub: You know, I’ve never seen GWTW all the way through. Am I the only person in this country who can say this?
I’ve seen the opening scene; interested because I wanted to see George Reeves in his little role. Aside from that, I have no interest in it whatsoever.
I used to work with a white woman who loved to do a mammy voice “I don’t know nothing ’bout birthin’ no babies!” She thought she was being funny.
I think that alone put me off ever wanting to see it.
Germy Shoemangler
@shawn: I don’t know. There are very few women I don’t think are beautiful.
Phyllis Diller made a career out of being an “ugly” woman, but she was attractive IMO.
There are very few women I find unattractive.
Sarah Palin, for one. Her ugliness radiates outward from deep inside.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Has anything good ever come out of the Aspen Ideas Festival…? I’ve always wanted to get to Aspen in the summer,– or better yet, fall, I haven’t been able to manage it yet, but if I had the money these people do, I wouldn’t feel the need to pretend to be engaging in some kind of overblown graduate seminar (I’m referring to Eisner, and the likes of Brooks and Lindsey Graham and who the hell ever else– I know Goldie Hawn has lived there for decades)
ThresherK (GPad)
@OzarkHillbilly: I gotta leave this here.
i.huffpost.com/gen/1634631/thumbs/o-MOVIES-R-FUN-FARGO-900.jpg?6
Germy Shoemangler
this just in:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ThresherK (GPad): I think my favorite sequence in that movie is the interview between Marge Gunderson and Jerry Lundergard, “Yer darn tootin’!”
Just watched Chris Christie declare on MSNBC (Obama’s about to speak on ISIS) that he would show leadership on ISIS, unlike Obama, by doing exactly what Obama’s doing. I’m sure Joe and Mika got a thrill up their legs.
dmsilev
@Germy Shoemangler: You’re not alone; I’ve never watched it through either. Seen a few of the iconic scenes, but never the whole movie.
I have watched the entirety of the Carol Burnett parody though. Does that count?
shawn
@Brachiator: but isnt it that thing where men are considered attractive because they are talented and women are talented because they are attractive – maybe i am making that up but per my other comment i have wondered since all the girls on SNL are basically hot now and have been for a few casts – has that become a requirement? the old ladies of comedy were anything but attractive, betty white was a dish but wasn’t a household name until she was a golden girl and didnt have to trade on her looks anymore – but they were knock down funny – and they had to be or they wouldnt break in – am i full of S on this?
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
The definition of Heldentenor Is circular: it basically means, a tenor who can sing the great heroic roles in Wagner (and a few other parts, almost all from German opera). Singing these persuasively requires both a big voice and enormous stamina. This is turn implies a singer with a bit of physical presence, as well as age (vocal maturity) and experience — even if he is singing a character who is a teenager, as in the case of Siegfried.
Curiously, Heldentenor is not one of the 25 or so categories in the “Fach” System. The Lyric Tenor voice is described as being soft, warm, and flexible. By inference, a singer taking lyric roles might well be younger, slighter, and less experienced. It wouldn’t be uncommon for a lyric or dramatic tenor to mature into a heroic tenor.
Naturally, there’s a lot of overlap among the various types of voices. The categories aren’t hard and fast, but are helpful for opera managers, agents, coaches, and the like in selecting casts for future seasons, or looking for last-minute replacements in case of a sudden cancellation (this happened two or three seasons ago at the Met, when the original Siegfried had to withdraw just days before the premiere and HD broadcast, and the great Jay Hunter Morris was “discovered” in Texas and brought in to sub. He was brilliant.)
Brachiator
@shawn:
Hey, now. Don’t you go messing with my mother of dragons. She is hot.
I have a hard time seeing another Terminator movie as necessary or even desirable. But I will probably go see it, and appreciate your comments here.
I saw the trailer for the latest Mission Impossible installment, and again, it seems like stuff we already saw in the last one, with some good stunts. Even so, this has been a pretty good year for movies, even allowing for retreads and sequels.
I confess that I never finished watching the first True Detective series. It was good, I just got busy with other stuff. I keep hearing mixed stuff about the new series. Colin Ferrell doesn’t seem to get the right roles. Andy Garcia had this problem as well.
Ballers reminds me that the most unexpected trailer I have seen recently is for the upcoming movie Creed.
youtube.com/watch?v=Uv554B7YHk4
Jim, Foolish Literalist
some british woman just said the situation in Ukraine is a huge embarrassment for the United States. I think it’s deplorable, but I’m not embarrassed. She then said she can’t remember a time when a US president faced such a complicated world. Funny, she looks older than nine.
Gin & Tonic
@Poopyman: No, that was intended to be a counterpoint to all the downbeat stories. I guess I was unclear.
MattF
@mai naem mobile: About Puerto Rico. I believe that the vast majority of Puerto Rican bonds are held by financial non-geniuses– mainly municipal bond investors. The deal with Puerto Rican bonds is pretty much irresistible– interest is completely tax-free, that is, free from both federal and state tax. So, people in high-tax states (e.g., NY, CT, MD) who buy Puerto Rican bonds get the best of both worlds, high rates and no tax. I’ve read that there are Maryland tax-free bond funds that are nearly half Puerto Rican. And municipal bond sales people will tell you that there is no risk.
Well, that was then.
Mary G
@Germy Shoemangler: I’ve sat down to watch it twice, but both times fell asleep and had a nice long nap. The second time during the overture!
wasabi gasp
One man vs. one woman.
sacrablue
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw a brief part of an interview that Goldie Hawn gave to CNBC at Aspen. Apparently, she was there to lead a discussion on teaching mindfulness to children. She seemed to have a genuine grasp of the subject matter and made an strong impression on her interviewer. She certainly wasn’t there in her capacity as a comedic actress.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So many good moments in Fargo.
I would nominate one that doesn’t happen:Marge doesn’t give birth.
That broke one of Roger Ebert’s Movie Glossary entries. And I don’t know if I have seen a pregnant main character in a movie not give birth before the end credits before or since.
It’s like she is a whole human being no matter what goes on in her babymaker or something!
shawn
@Germy Shoemangler: im with you on that – i like lots of different kind of women physically – i mean not phyllis diller, but she was so funny that i didnt even consider her looks 95% of the time (also she was already old when i was starting to get o-rections) as for Sarah Palin as I was never going to vote for her I could just sit back and look at her because she is fully hot, beautiful whatever – it funny you say about the inside because she is a 9.5 to tina fey’s 7 (yes, terrible i know) but tina is the more desierable woman because of how funny she is and how – ugh – Palin is
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
@SiubhanDuinne:
I should add, I am no expert in Fach. As I mentioned, there are some 25 different vocal categories, and each one has a different combination of both measurable and intangible things like vocal range, tessitura, the “weight” and timbre of the voice, physicality, previous experience, and so on. And sometimes, a singer might have all the right attributes to take on a big Wagnerian role, and yet turn it down earlier in a career because it can easily make the voice inappropriate for lighter roles.
shawn
@Brachiator: the queen of dragons has never seemed hot to me – myabe thats re-imagining my own past because she had to have been back when she was giving us the whole “I will look upon your face”, but her story line got soooooooooooooooooooooooooo dragged out – you are free to be my slave plus 10,000 words – and i just lost respect for her as a leader and hated when the show switched to mereen.
Yatsuno
@Botsplainer: Yup. Push them out of the Euro and make the common currency value drop to around peso levels. Then again it never should have gone above the dollar.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is Lupita Nyong’o chopped liver? She’s one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood right now. And from what I understand a delight to work w
Steve in the ATL
@Germy Shoemangler:
If you’d rather read the book, my mother in law has an entire shelf full of first editions.
Sigh.
catclub
@MattF:
Well, they would say that for Chernobyl and Detroit bonds. Believing them is partly a buyer beware problem.
Brachiator
@shawn:
No. I just don’t see it. WC Fields was ugly, had a big nose. But was very graceful, as was Oliver Hardy. Buster Keaton, not a looker. Nor is Jackie Chan, who has actually duplicated some of Keaton’s stunts in his own films. Marx Brothers, not lookers. And the gods of gods, the 3 Stooges were not considered attractive by anyone’s standards. By the way, Curley was actually fairly good looking, but deliberately shaved off his thick red hair in order to look more like a goofball.
Gleason, Art Carney? Uh, no. Not good looking.
Gracie Allen was cute, but she was one of the best verbal comics ever. Joan Blondell, funny and hot. And Oh my Goddess Carole Lombard? Holy hell. Myrna Loy? Maureen O’Hara. Audrey Hepburn, and her sister Kate? But when you consider any comic actor, male or female, talent counts more than anything else. And among male comedians, plain to ugly is more the case than being handsome.
the Conster
So Bernie Sanders has doubled down on his support for gun manufacturers, and Hillary has doubled down on her support for Israel. Can we draft someone else?
jl
I continue to find utterly mystifying all the fuss over trying to find equitable criteria of entering a civil contract in a nation with a secular government.
I am glad that the reactionaries are fighting on three fronts now: reasonable regulation of insurance and health care markets, marriage civil contract, and removing confederate battle flag from state government property. Hope they run themselves to pieces against what are becoming brick walls of defeat.
Origuy
@Poopyman:
That was my first thought.
It’s ironic that it happened at the Okhotny Ryad metro station. That station connects to a very high-end shopping mall just outside Red Square. It’s as much a monument to capitalism as Lenin’s Tomb is to communism.
jl
Also, thanks to some commenter in recent thread (can’t find the comment now) for linking to Simon Wren-Lewis’ blog. Very clear explanations of the Greek crisis. Good commentary of IMF role, and reasons why, in the Greek crisis, that organization has backslid from recent and dramatic progress towards competent analysis, predictions and recommendations for financial and economic crises
Mainly Macro
mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/
Keith G
@Brachiator:
Sister in occupation, but not by DNA.
MattF
@jl: The question is whether there is a ‘sane’ Republican Party out there, somewhere. Jen Rubin thinks so, but she’s not exactly Ms. Reliable. I tend to doubt it.
ETA: One may note that she doesn’t have anything to say about Jeb! or Scott Walker.
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne:
That and Wagner is HARD on the vocal cords. Even older singers are challenged by it. And doing the whole Ring cycle just because some idiot opera director wants to make a splash is stupid. Vocal cords, no matter how well trained, need rest. Even Pavarotti had vocal nodules.
@MattF: Ahh Jen. still auditioning to replace Krauthammer when he either dies or gets fired I see.
Brachiator
@shawn:
I love all the mereen stuff. I came late to Game of Thrones, and I find that I hate most people who watch the show who complain that it is not giving them what they want. There are, for example, people who love the machinations to become king, who never think about what it means to actually govern a kingdom. A lot of these types go “why doesn’t Dany just go on the King’s Landing. That’s where she belongs.”
On the other hand, I note that Martin has not developed the mereen stuff well, and there is some obvious logic gaps here. In real history, a monarch never rules by his or her own power. You have to replace the nobility with your own people.
However, I can see Martin here doing a little political history here. It ain’t easy to do nation building. Dubya maybe would have learned something had the Game of Thrones show or novels been available before our Iraq folly.
mdblanche
@MattF: Jen Rubin thinks whatever she’s paid to think. That is, if by “think” you mean “parrot.”
shawn
@Brachiator: but thats kind of the point – would any of those gals been given a chance if they weren’t lookers (im taking your word for the lookers part, i googled some of those gals… maybe im too young… ive been all the way through Shorpy and i find so few women from that era pretty) – i feel like that is doubly true today – what female that is remotely a household name as a comediane isn’t attractive these days?
@Steve in the ATL: ive never seen it either – and ive seen more movies than just about anybody else i know – its one of my weird movie gaps – i need to do a GWTW party
trollhattan
@MattF: @mdblanche:
She’s no doubt still in a holding pattern circling Mitten’s very presidential shoulders awaiting landing clearance for her tiny 737.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yatsuno:
And on the body. Those roles are exhausting. Punishing.
Cacti
@the Conster: @the Conster:
Bernie blew a big old dog whistle yesterday on gun control with Jake Tapper:
Lee Atwater would have been proud.
Brachiator
@Keith G:
geg6
@Brachiator:
Jesus, you don’t have to go any further than SNL alums: Kristin Wiig, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey are all beautiful women. And all have made big box office.
geg6
@shawn:
Ummm, Lucille Ball and Carol Lombard were not ugly women.
Tommy
@Brachiator: I love all the mereen stuff.
As do I. I love fantasy and science fiction shows. But when I watch each I try to suspend some of my critical thinking, because well they are not real :). I tend to really love the Mereen story line because a few of my favorite characters are in it. Oh and Tyrion Lannister and dragons!
Roger Moore
@Poopyman:
Probably not the Silmarilion, which focuses primarily on the first age, with only a cursory bit about events in the second and third ages. There’s actually quite a bit more about the history of Gondor, Arnor, and Angmar in the the appendices to the LOTR./geek
Botsplainer
Jesus fuck, authentic heartland ‘Murkans are shit-all stupid.
Guy who just called me has an infant and a two year old in a rental house. The toddler tested positive for lead exposure after just a few months – 3.5 micrograms per deciliter (5 micrograms is the level where irreversible damage occurs). The house was a 1948 build, and on the health department referral, lead is all through the rental house. Landlord never realized.
The landlord is terminating the lease in order to conduct extensive lead abatement (duh). This fucking moron sees it as retaliatory for the health department report, that the notion of leaving should be up to him “as a parent” to determine what is best for his children.
headslamheadslamheadslam
trollhattan
@Botsplainer:
That poor kid. It would appear dad has a headstart on the lead ingestion.
Chyron HR
@Brachiator:
Says you.
Tommy
Just reading some of the news from earlier today and boy as good as a week as Obama had it seems Palin had the exact opposite. No job at Fox Noise. Quitting her paywall web site. Kid with child again. Wonkette has been doing a weekly report on the content she put up and to say she is both lazy and as bat shit crazy as we all thought would be an understatement. There were weeks at a time she just didn’t put up any content.
Keith G
@Cacti:
So to be clear, you are accusing Sanders of communicating racist ideas?
Southern Beale
A Nashville consignment store owner takes umbrage to a customer’s reference to the “rude, hipster vibe,” says he’s going to call her in to the diversity police because hipsters are the real beleaguered minority. Not making this up.
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: I think as bearer of one of the Nine, the ring was enough. IIRC it was either Elrond or Gandalf who mentioned in LOTR “Not by the hand of man shall he fall, and hidden is his fate from the Wise.” Silmarillion credits Glorfindel with the prophecy (spoken to Earnur, and a fat lot of good that did at the time.) The phrasing was odd, though: the prophecy reads like “no mortal can defeat him” rather than merely “no man can defeat him. The way Tolkien presents the incident, he was felled by non-men in two ways: first, by Merry’s stab with the knife from the Barrow-Downs (made expressly for the undoing of Nazgul in general) and then by Eowyn’s sword-thrust; and Eowyn’s reaction is less the “I’m a woman” gotcha than a sudden delight that she, as “not a man” actually had a chance to destroy him – as if a new potent weapon had been handed to her that she didn’t realize she had until that instant. I’ve been thoroughly POd that Jackson threw away that moment (among many others) with the pacing driving past what should have been a far stronger scene, though I get that the pace of battle needed to be kept up and the seconds that would have taken would have broken the rhythm there.
shawn
@geg6: i didnt say they were – just that those old timey women are not my cup of tea – i can kind of see it with Lombard – Lucille Ball… to each his own
@Brachiator: i hear what you are saying about being more “real” and maybe i am subconciously there but i just went to sleep whenever we hit mereen – really every story line dragged for me this yeah and as i think about it – i was fully ready for Bran to win the GoT – and i think the show will eventually give me some version of what i want – a Stark victory – honestly the show this season was like a bad massage – glad to be getting a massage but from somebody who didn’t know any of the right spots or moves – maybe that analogy is a bit too much but there it is
Brachiator
@shawn:
A workable theory might be that men can be plain to ugly, and women can be plain to pretty. But this has nothing to do with talent, and producers may have a bias here. They will clearly back an absolutely ugly male star, but not an ugly woman (and obviously here I am referring to conventional notions of beauty).
But either way, to assert that you have to look high and low to find a woman who is pretty and funny is not only a lie, but it is a lie based on a standard that is not applied to men.
Tommy
@Brachiator: Look at Amy Schumer. I think she is the funniest person on TV, by a long shot. But there are entire message boards and web sites saying she isn’t pretty enough to be on TV. I think she is an attractive lady but it appears many do not and she isn’t bone skinny.
I’d think it would be much harder being a female in entertainment then a male. Heck why I like a lot of the BBC shows on Netflix. The lead is often a female way more than American shows and dare I say they are not always “model hot” and sometimes not even young.
jl
@Keith G: I think @Cacti and @the Conster should run. They will find out whose 100 percent progressive/liberal purity test they flunk soon enough.
Steve in the ATL
@Brachiator:
Shit, look at country music….
shawn
@Brachiator: “But either way, to assert that you have to look high and low to find a woman who is pretty and funny is not only a lie, but it is a lie based on a standard that is not applied to men.”
I fully agree with the second half of this sentence. ok i am flashing to OINTB this weseon when I think tasty says black women got hella ways to be beautiful, white women just have to be skinny – producers will back whoever makes money – good looking or not – but “ugly” (yes conventional) people have to really earn it and be crazy talented and profitable – and equality is creeping here because men are starting to have to be good looking above all else too – we didnt raise the bar for women, we lowered it for men – some of the fat guys on SNL have talked about how Lorne wanted them to always be a little skinnier – maybe not get skinny but skinnier – we went from Farley to Sanz to Moinyhan – the fat guy is getting smaller and smaller – but im wandering – bankable is what they care about and as female beauty can be fetishized more than men (i like big boobs, i like small boobs, i like big hips, i like red heads, i like asians, etc…) it is harder to find a wide appeal pretty and funny woman – somebody named Fey, Poehler and Wiig and they are all pretty and funny but they don’t bank like Ferrell or Sandler or Murphy (none of which are especially handsome) – this response was all over the place – im typing fast sorry!
Corner Stone
@Tommy:
She has an ass that makes me furious.
JustRuss
Spent the weekend in a rented beach house with some conservative friends. Sunday morning we turned on the TV to see Ted Cruz lecturing Chuck Todd on something, which led one friend to say he liked some of Cruz’ ideas but he’s too religious to get elected. Then he changed the channel, which is why we’re still friends.
shawn
@Tommy: there the funny part is debateable – youre not wrong, but i dont find Schumer in the neighborhood of funny very often at all – i think she is good looking though – Sarah Silverman is a good example for me of really funny and really cute
jl
@Corner Stone:
” She has an ass that makes me furious. ”
I am not an ‘ass man’ (well, not particularly, I have my preferences just not all that into them specifically) so not sure I understand the finer points of your comment.
You like hers, or it irritates you somehow?
jl
Guns Don’t Deter Crime, Study Finds
“We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime,” said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “Instead, we found the opposite.”
news.yahoo.com/guns-dont-deter-crime-study-finds-180710261.html
Tommy
Wow the things I don’t know. Reading a story on how successful a program has been in CO where they offer free birth control. Less abortions. Average birth age of mother from 21 to 24. Wildly successful by every metrics you can think of. The program is running out of money and of course Republicans hate it and the funding from a Buffet foundation will mostly go away. Then I read:
If was playing the Price is Right I would have been under the total cost by about $700. It is amazing what as a male I don’t know about the lives of women.
Cacti
@Keith G:
Yes.
I’m sorry if it was unclear to you.
Now comes the part where you tell me he participated in the March on Washington 52 years ago.
Tommy
@shawn: Yeah I would say her type of humor, well I guess really all humor, is either something you enjoy or you don’t. I just thought of her because CBS Sunday Morning did a profile on her and they noted what I wrote above and how she takes it directly to skits on her show to mock herself.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne: Very interesting stuff about opera singers. I know nothing about the musical genre, but still find all this very good stuff. It makes sense, the distinctions discussed.
@shawn
Sweet boneless Jebus. Rent “My Man Godfrey” for a good example of the divine Lombard doing good screwball comedy.
By the way, I guess I can understand how some of these stars can seem “old timey.” I am not of the generation of these films, and learned to love them through college film programs and regular retrospectives at the museum, the Los Angeles Directors Guild and other venues and a friend who would drag me to the Silent Movie theater for even older material.
But I have friends who cannot watch a black and white movie, have never seen a movie made before Star Wars, and there are many people who cannot watch a silent movie. And with silent movies, the acting style in many dramas is too stilted for many modern eyes, and this affects how people see the stars of that era.
And I can understand how the Mereen stuff did not work for you, and the problems with this season, especially since the fourth and fifth novels are not that exciting either. I’m not sure that the show runners could have pulled it off, but I would have liked them to give more of a sense of how society was collapsing because of the instability at the top and more clearly given us signs of hope without pointing to any particular person as the deliverer. I did like how they finally gave us a very concrete picture of the power of the White Walkers and their potential for devastation.
Corner Stone
@jl: Ya know, now that you said that I went and googled her and maybe you’re right. I have reasonable chub. Excuse me.
jl
@Corner Stone: Just to be clear, I have zero problems with Amy Schumer’s looks. She is no Carole Lombard, but I think she looks just fine in her own way.
shawn
@Brachiator: re: Lombard, some people think cucumbers taste better pickled
Elie
Hope things are better, Betty. Hang in there…
Brachiator
@Tommy:
Wow is right. You nailed it.
theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/06/colorado-contraception-family-planning-republicans
By any measure, this program has been a success. But the GOP is “abstinence uber alles.” Personal responsibility means “no sex or you get punished with a pregnancy. No abortion. Get married and contemplate your shame.”
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: Okay, let’s stipulate that Sanders is the Exalted Cyclops of the Montpelier KKK. With that out of the way, a question: Is it possible that there are legitimate variations in the “need” for firearms between city and country folks — between, say, a VT dairy farmer and a Manhattan Apple Store manager? Would you have the same reaction to the sight of a white dude walking down a rural highway with a shotgun as you’d have to that same white guy walking down Fifth Ave.?
WereBear
@Brachiator: And they say they are fiscally responsible.
/extreme sarcasm
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Tappable, definitely.
Of course, I’m probably confirming everything bad about men that was ever uttered by a “Take Back the Night” Antioch College feminist womyns’ activist…
Brachiator
@shawn:
Will Ferrrell is becoming worn out. Sandler is no longer guaranteed box office, and Murphy hasn’t made a good or profitable movie, or hell, a remotely watchable movie in years, and is responsible for some of the worse cinematic turds ever to drop.
Fey and Poehler are hot, not just as actors, but also as writers and producers. Wiig is also hot, and may score again as one of the new Ghostbusters team.
Oh yeah, Ferrell and Sandler, butt ugly.
The fat guy getting smaller thing you write about is interesting. Who’s the Mall cop guy? Kevin James? Smallish fat guy.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
Disregarding the reductio ad absurdum that you open with…
If candidate Sanders is running for President of the United States, why would he compare guns laws in his whitest state in the union to those of two US cities with large minority populations, as opposed to say, other US states. And also two cities that just happen to be favorite targets for right wing bigots.
Vermont actually has a higher rate of gun deaths per 100,000 than either Illinois or California. In which case, it sounds like the Vermont farmers need more range time. It’s possible that Bernie doesn’t know the above stats. It’s also possible that he hasn’t noticed that right wingers like to single out major cities in blue states with large minority populations.
So, I suppose it’s possible that he really is kind of a naif from living in Vermont for so long.
ETA: I’d be more inclined to give Sen. Sanders the benefit of the doubt if hadn’t been so studiously avoiding discussion of minority issues in his campaign to date.
the Conster
@Cacti:
One of the activists I follow on Twitter said take away all the jobs and flood it with drugs, and he could turn Beverly Hills into a violent ghetto in 2 years. Something Sanders probably agrees with btw.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
No. And again, the problem may be that Sanders is just tone deaf to how his remarks play. I am never going to paint him as a grand dragon, and I don’t know how he is polling, but he is coming across as the darling to no one but old white lefties. At worst, he doesn’t understand the difference between running for president of Vermont and president of the United States.
Is he saying that the good white people in Vermont know how to use firearms responsibly and need no regulation, while people in Chicago need to be restrained because, well, why exactly?
ETA: Sorry to hear about the stuff you’ve had to deal with recently.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
President Obama has made a distinction similar to the one Sanders made:
shawn
@Brachiator: and james is getting smaller too – the guys all have to lose weight – seth rogen – jonah hill (though he is more bankable as a dramatic actor lately)
Sandler makes a TON of money still – but he is as hot cold as he has ever been Grown Up 2 killed, Cobbler died a horrible death – he either seems to bomb or absolutely crush – but comedies are also kind of slowly dying maybe – idk what i think about that though and im about to leave for the day – good talking – see ya
WereBear
When you are in your remote cabin and a rabid animal is trying to get at you, and it’s a danger to anything else it encounters, and help is an hour away… what do you suggest?
jl
@Brachiator: maybe you are just overly picky re men?
jl
@Linnaeus: Obama blows the Atwater dogwhistle!
Also, Cacti, listen to Sander’s recent speeches, he is not studiously avoiding race. Your hobby horse is riding you into troll territory.
Brachiator
@the Conster:
I guess jobs must make the difference since Beverly Hills is flooded with drugs and alcohol.
scav
@Botsplainer: Well, the dismissal of any concern for judging women based on metrics other than your personal baseline preferences for their use in sexual activity as mere over-educated fringe claptrap that is rightly dismissed by the reasonable might raise a few of those overly sensitive types’ eyebrows, but that is why you pointedly mentioned it, no?
the Conster
@Brachiator:
Yes, that’s his point. Drugs and guns aren’t going anywhere, but take away livelihoods and communities devolve quickly.
Brachiator
@jl:
Not possible.
@WereBear
This happens a lot in Vermont?
@Linnaeus:
Good point. But the other political reality is that not all messengers are equal, even if they are delivering similar messages. And Obama also has to assuage the morons who believe he is out to relieve him of their weapons and to deliberately leave them defenseless in the coming race war.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
That’s true – I do think that Sanders has to tread more carefully than the president does. I just thought that the charge that Sanders was being Lee Atwater-esque (not one that you made, I know) was excessive, in light of the fact that the rural/urban comparison has been made by a number of people at various points on the gun-control policy spectrum.
ETA: Of course, the aforementioned comparison can be used to send racially coded messages as has been pointed out on this thread. I just don’t think Sanders was doing that.
WereBear
Rabies has a high rate in the bat population; we drop bait to help the raccoons get immunized, and my husband’s grandmother once fired a gun into the air to drive off a healthy, but persistent, bear prowling the porch of the summer cabin.
And yes, I’m sure there’s jerks everywhere, but in rural areas, you are far more likely to see the guns locked up. Every adult I’ve talked to about the issue tends to reminisce about how their grandpa or dad taught them gun safety.
There aren’t news stories around here about a kid finding a gun and hurting themselves or someone else. I’ve lived here fifteen years.
So yes. It’s different.
wasabi gasp
The Hillfan fear is heartening. Thanks. Liver-spotted is the new black.
jl
@Brachiator:
” But the other political reality is that not all messengers are equal, even if they are delivering similar messages. And Obama also has to assuage the morons who believe he is out to relieve him of their weapons and to deliberately leave them defenseless in the coming race war. ”
I am willing to keep an open mind and entertain that point of view. But I think some people have already made up their minds and are on a purity witch hunt, and chasing phantoms to justify their firm beliefs. Note that the comment that kicked this off included accusations about HRC and Israel policy and request for new candidates.
I suggest the purity partiers run for President themselves so we can test their purity against everyone else’s opinions, suspicions and dogmas.
Ajabu
@Brachiator:
And Ella Fitzgerald accompanied on piano by her brother, Barry.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator: If Bernie Sanders had had a gun put to his head and told to open a combination lock safe or he’d be killed- as happened to a friend of mine in a San Francisco supermarket many years ago- I bet he’d sing a different tune about gun control. Cities = more nuts with guns.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I don’t agree with Sanders on guns 100% (I think the NRA gives him a “D” rating, whereas my ideal candidate would get an “F-” from those psychos). But I do think reasonable people can disagree on urban vs rural gun policy without it being all down to race.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
Yeah, cause us Nigras in the Urban Areas just don’t know nothing about dealing with guns responsibly.
Phuck you, Bernie.
The Other Chuck
@WereBear:
If a Republican says “good morning” to you, look up and count the stars.
Omnes Omnibus
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, they are. People with seasonable jobs shoot a deer in the fall so their family has meat to eat all winter.
Where I differ with them is I don’t see a problem with banning AK-47s and the like. They don’t own one anyway. But the NRA has some of them ridiculously paranoid.
satby
@Ajabu: LOL
satby
Betty, late to the thread, but sorry to hear there’s been some family sadness to deal with.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: I know that. I was just juxtaposing the Obama quote with the one from Sanders that caused rikyrah to drop the “ph”-bomb.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: Both Obama and I are former Chicagoans, and there is a difference, not just in the usage, but type of guns. I live in a big area for hunting now; I may hate it but there’s damn few good paying jobs and people hunt for food here. And they mostly use shotguns and 22s, not handguns, because handguns are for killing people. And people are too tough and tasteless unless braised a long time in the slow cooker.
TMI?
Edited to add: I knew why you were quoting that.
WereBear
@satby: LOL!
Cacti
@rikyrah:
But Betty Cracker and jl say that Bernie isn’t dog whistling or ignoring minority issues.
So there.
Cacti
Even omitting the dog whistle aspect, Bernie’s position that guns are less dangerous in rural populations isn’t borne out by data.
California has fewer gun deaths per 100,000 (7.7) than the very rural states of Alaska (19.59), Wyoming (17.51), Montana (16.94), West Virginia (14.56), Idaho (14.08), Maine (11.89), Delaware (10.8),
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti:
Is that really his position? Because it doesn’t seem to be the words he used.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
If Bernie is unclear about what he means by “guns are different in Vermont” isn’t it up to him to clarify how they’re different?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Most people seem to have understood what he meant, just as they understood when Obama made very similar remarks. I get that you think he is unaware of or uninterested in social justice issues, but there is no reason to gin up outrage out of spun sugar.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Most people seem to have understood what he meant”.
Well, rikyrah, one of African American posters seems to have a different conclusion than you.
She must just be misunderstanding, because….reasons. ;-)
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: I await her comments on the Obama quote.
jl
@Cacti: Thank you for noticing. But we don’t disagree on that point. You think Sanders is not ignoring them either, but is consciously issuing GOP and Webb style racist dog whistles to appeal to bigoted whites. You have no evidence of that at all.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: That was addressed by some commenter above: different people can say different things. I don’t think that was an adequate response.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank goodness she has good folk like you, Betty Cracker, and jl here to explain what is or isn’t a dog whistle.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: I’ve said in other threads I think Sanders needs to work on how he addresses social justice issues — his hobby horse is economics, and he tends to focus on that to the exclusion of everything else, which won’t do for a presidential campaign.
But you accuse him of deliberately appealing to racists with the comments on guns. I don’t think that’s fair or accurate.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Fine, I would also say that, absent some evidence of racism or previous dog whstleing on Sanders part, there is no reason to presume that he meant anything different than Obama did nor anything different than all the people in this thread who have talked about the difference between the two.
Cacti
@jl:
I think Sanders avoidance of non-white communities is quite calculated.
Tonight on his tour of wonder bread-ville USA: Maine, 94.4% non-hispanic white.
Cervantes
@rikyrah:
Well, there are a number of theoretical possibilities:
1. Guns are used in the same way everywhere.
2. Guns are used differently but the difference is immaterial.
3. Guns are used differently but no need to talk about the difference.
4. We should talk about it but not in the way that Sanders does.
5. Sanders should not talk about it but others should.
Is he making other mistakes than these?
dsc
absolutely yum
a fire cracker — you need a good watermelon
creative-culinary.com/the-firecracker-watermelon-lime-and-cucumber-cocktail/
SFAW
@boatboy_srq:
You and me both. The preceding line(s) in the book, where Tolkien wrote of the “strangest sound,” was one of the best parts/scenes. That Peter “Let me make RotK into one long battle scene” Jackson chose to play it only as Eowyn-as-badass always annoyed the crap out of me.
And, although I hadn’t thought about that scene in a while, now I’m PO’d all over again.
Thanks, Obama!
SFAW
@geg6:
Nor was Judy Holliday.
dww44
@Tree With Water: Which sort of woodpeckers?. If the blue jays are steering clear it’s gotta be the misnamed (IMO) Red bellied woodpecker. Without a debt the dominant bird at my feeders, and I’ve been feeding birds for almost 15 years. Yep and when he’s not around the blue jays take over. But, my crows are by far the most entertaining. They’re truly a team.