Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Come on, man.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let there be snark.

There are no moderate Republican – only extremists, and cowards.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Not all heroes wear capes.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

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Medium Cool – Over and Over and Over Again

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – Shown in front, from left: Gregory Peck, Brock Peters

Tonight let’s talk about movies that we are happy to watch over and over and over again.  Whenever they come our way.  They don’t have to be great movies, or box office favorites, or stories about some lofty subject.

Two of mine are To Kill A Mockingbird and Overboard, and they obviously couldn’t be more different!

What are yours?  What is it about them that keeps you coming back?  Do you even know why?

Does the “why” even matter?

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Medium Cool – Time Travel!

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Help me out here – have we ever had a Medium Cool topic of Star Wars vs. Star Trek?  I am considering that as a future topic for Medium Cool, so let me know, please.

Medium Cool – Time Travel!

Tonight let’s talk about Time Travel!

Books, movies, TV shows.  Best?  Worst?  Most interesting?

Don’t just name the show, tell us about it.

Have at it!

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Medium Cool – Ads! Ads?

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Not for the first time, NotMax has suggested that we have a Medium Cool about ads.

Whether they are flashy SuperBowl ads or ads from your childhood that you jut can’t shake – it’s undeniable that ads are a part of popular culture.  Ads used to be all white people – white and straight and conservatively dressed.  Somehow, the ad industry figured out that fucking white people are not the only people who buy products.  So yay for that!

Remember the first ad with gay people?  Mixed races?  Hey, gay people with mixed race children buy laundry detergent, too!  Who could have known?

I have some ads etched into my brain, and I’m not even sure what they were for!

588-6300  EMPIRE!  (I don’t know, maybe furniture or carpeting?)

Sunday Sunday Sunday!  (some kind of horse racing?)

Mikey likes it!  (definitely cereal, though I have no idea which one)

Where’s the BEEF?  (no idea what that was for, were they just advertising beef?)

So… talk about ads you loved or ads you hated or ads that are funny or ads that are horrible or ads that are annoying.  And if we don’t talk about ads that are sexist and racist, I will be seriously disappointed!  Was there ever a Lego ad with girls in it?

This Medium Cool may break a record, though I don’t know if it will be for the most comments or the fewest.  Well, probably not the most – I did have a Medium Cool Longmire post that had more comments than the minimum for a TBogg unit!

I tune out most ads, so I am struggling to think of an ad to use as an image.  Perhaps the *Google will bail me out.

*Nope!  I googled, and every site that had the best classic ads wouldn’t let me open the site – wait for it – yes, because I have an ad-blocker installed.  So I’ll go with something I know.

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Medium Cool – Books That Make You Feel Like You’re There

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Some recent On the Road posts have taken us to New Zealand and Iceland, and other amazingly beautiful places.  And of course I think the Paris series could have gone on forever.

I know there are novels that feel like Boston, and novels that feel like Chicago.  Are there books that capture the feel of living in  New Zealand, or Iceland, or Paris, or Ireland or even a small town like Mendocino?  Books that make you feel like you know what a totally different life would be like?

To Kill A Mockingbird made me feel like I was there.

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Medium Cool – Memories of Jimmy Buffett and Other Musicians

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Medium Cool – Memories of Jimmy Buffett and Other Musicians

Just about a month ago we talked about music as poetry, and I talked about Jimmy Buffett as a poet.  The list of great artists we have lost in just a small number of years in long, and we all have musicians whose loss hits us harder than other.  jimmy Buffet is hitting me hard.

I thought that tonight we might talk about memories of concerts by some of the greats that we have lost, and tell our stories about that time we met Jimmy Buffett in a bar or how we bumped into him on a beach.  (I have done neither.)  I worked with a graphic designer who knew Prince when he was still Prince, but other than seeing Dan Folgelberg in a venue that held maybe a hundred people, that’s as close as I have come to famous musicians.

So if you’re up for it, let’s have a musical celebration of life for some of these folks who have made our lives richer.  And if you’re talking about a particular song or album, link to it if you can.

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The Daughter of Time (with Subaru Dianne)

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Tonight is the final chapter of the series on Josephine Tey, brought to us by Subaru Dianne.  These have been great, and I predict that BJ peeps will have a lot to say about The Daughter of Time, since it appears to be a favorite of so many people here.  I clearly have some reading to do!  Thank you, SD, for these wonderful series.

The Daughter of Time!

by Subaru Dianne

This is almost surely the portrait of King Richard III that so intrigued Inspector Grant in The Daughter of Time. Artist and date unknown, probably British or Flemish, early sixteenth century.

This week we conclude our discussion of the eight Josephine Tey mysteries with a focus on The Daughter of Time, Tey’s most famous and lauded* work by far.

On one level, it is simply a mid-20th-century attempt to unravel one of history’s most compelling true crimes — the fate of the two young “Princes in the Tower” — and to exonerate their accused murderer, their uncle, King Richard III. (This book is responsible for turning many people, myself included, into ardent and partisan Ricardians!)

Sir John Everett Millais’ sentimental and romanticised 1878 portrait of the imprisoned “Princes in the Tower,” heirs to King Edward IV. The younger lad is Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, age 9; his elder brother is King Edward V, age 12. They mysteriously disappeared in 1483.

But on another level, whether you (along with Tey’s Inspector Grant) absolve Richard or prefer to remember him as one of History’s Greatest Monsters, you will be struck, I think, by the contemporary pertinence of the questions raised: How, and why, and by whom do “Big Lies” get started? Why do so many people persist in believing them long after they’ve been discredited, even hundreds of years later?

These are topics the BJ Jackaltariat talks about constantly! I look forward to tonight’s discussion and your always-insightful comments.

*In 1990, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted The Daughter of Time number one in its list of “The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.” Not too dusty!

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Medium Cool – Have You Ever?

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

So, have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting?  Have that challenge or experience that adventure?

I have no sense of what year the movie Witness came out, but I do know that was a very stressful period in my life.  I was really drawn to that movie, and sometimes I wished I could have a simpler life, or could live in a simpler time.  (I feel (fairly) certain dancing in the barn with Harrison Ford had nothing to do with it!)

When I was young, I would hear stories from my uncle and others who had worked on the railroads when they were booming – and it seemed like it would have been exciting to have been a part of something like that.

Perry Mason definitely made me want to become a lawyer.  It can be interesting sometimes to think about the road not taken.

Anyway… how about you guys?  Have you ever read a book, or seen a movie, or heard a story, that made you wish you could live in that time or that place or in that setting?  Did any of those stories change your path?

 

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