That's a Lousy Rationale for Explotation

I have never understood this argument from the Left - so slave labor (or at least labor conducted under fear of police action) absent a legal wage/benefits/safety protections is GOOD, so long as the price of your avocado or cheese doesn't go up a quarter? THAT'S your version of right and wrong? 

Heavens, in a past life you must have been aghast at the thought of cotton prices rising if slavery were ever abolished.

Unexpected (but great) to Hear!

Well hot dog! Sound of Freedom was the #1 movie in America on the 4th of July! The marketing tactic worked! 

source: BoxOfficeMojo by IMDB Pro

Sound of Freedom

 

On a jam packed Fourth of July, Lisa and I took the time to stop and  go see Sound of Freedom at the theater. 

It's a movie that was filmed five years ago but only now been released, and only because Angel Studios (a faith and donor based studio) secured the rights. Hollywood has certainly rolled out worse films by the score over those five years, and the unspoken accusation as to why it was shelved is that the subject matter - child trafficking - hit too close to home for some people in power in Hollywood.  

It is a dark film, about a young Honduran brother and sister who fall prey to a woman - a literal beauty queen no less - that sells them into slavery. Months later, a Homeland Security agent recovers the boy during an unrelated arrest and learns of his missing sister. The news is the final straw for a career spent arresting child predators while largely ignoring the fate of the victims, and he embarks on a quest to recover the girl and reunite the family. 

 You are warned, going in, that the film is dark and troublesome, and I must admit that these warnings almost had me skip the film. Yet rest assured, there is nothing performative here and no child is shown being harmed; after all, if you cannot fill in the blanks as to the horrors the children experience, then you are new to humanity. 

You can’t say you “enjoyed” a movie like this, because I doubt anyone leaves the theater feeling “just swell.” But yes, it’s a solid film, you do care about the plight of the girl at the center of the search, and I guarantee that if you see a half dozen movies this year, this will NOT be the least entertaining or emotional of the bunch.

 

But if I judge this as a suspense/thriller alone, I rate the movie as average. Rare is the sense that the lead character is in any legitimate danger, even when there is a gun pressed to his head. The script reserves those moments of fear for the scenes that involve only the children. That drives home the anti-slavery message, but it does a disservice to the audience because it leaves you less invested in the main character, who of course has the most screen time.

I should mention that the movie, despite being led by Jim Caviezel, is a predominantly Latin American effort, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, from the producer and screenwriter on down to costume design. I mention this because I can anticipate some critique that the film “unfairly” depicts most of the villains as Latin, a charge that can be dismissed because a) it’s based on a true story and b) they mention that both the US and Europe are heavily involved in this traffic.

 

Let me also stress: there is no political or religious ideology being pushed by the movie. No faith is identified by name, no political party vilified or praised. If the religious background of the releasing studio, or the political beliefs of the actors prevents you from seeing this, just know that you are making a mistake.

BTW, the inra-credit “special message” is powerful, and hit me right in the gut.

 While Sound of Freedom is in theaters, donors are buying tickets and making them available to others, free of charge. Lisa and I paid our way rather than take one of these tickets from someone that needed it. Here’s the link.

If the only way you’ll see this is if you don’t have to spend a dime, then so be it.

 

Just see it.  

My Birds

Well, not mine per se, just some random pictures I've taken this year of the birds that frequent either my yard or the feeder I maintain outside my window at work. 

I'm Huntin' Wabbits

This boi killed two rabbits today in our yard, hours apart. That's three this week.  I'm not sure why they keep risking our yard, but I'm running out of bare soil patches to bury them.  

Not that Huckleberry hasn't done his share of regulating wildlife. He killed a squirrel and a rabbit himself before Sawyer came along last year.  But like Lisa says, Huckleberry is slow: if he can catch you, that's just Darwinism at work.

Alan Arkin

Talented Oscar and Tony winning actor Alan Arkin has died at 89.

RIP

Lunch at Egg & Flour

Yesterday Lisa, the two youngest, and her Mom ate a late lunch/early dinner at Egg & Flour, the restaurant of hometown Hells Kitchen contestant Adam Pawlak.

The food looked great. Carbonera and bolognese, meatballs, bread, salad ... it figures, since I wasn't invited! Lol

The Air Quality is Nasty

For days now, my daily afternoon call to my Mom would include her asking about "the smoke" and telling me how bad it was that morning.  Given that my Mom rarely leaves her apartment and I hadn't noticed any such thing, I chalked it up to the TV news inspiring panic. 

Whoopsie.

My Mom might have jumped the gun by a week, but today proved her right. 

The air is acrid, like you just walked past the a burn pit, and the odor lingers in your nostrils.  The sky is overcast and grim, and a gray haze rests over everything like a vast fog.  It is legitimately more difficult to breathe. These pictures were taken at the height of the afternoon:

What's going on you ask, Future Reader?

Smoke from wildfires in Canada are enveloping the Midwestern US. A week or so ago they did the same to the East coast.

Smoke is better than being in the midst of dense wildfires, no argument there, and I hope for the safety of the people directly affected up there.

 But man, how rude of our northern neighbor ;)

No Hard Feelings

On Sunday, after a day spent thrift shopping, delivering books to Little Libraries,

 getting ice cream at Tastee-Twist, napping, and having dinner at Classic Slice, Lisa and I went to see No Hard Feelings at the Ridge Cinema. YaYa and her boyfriend joined us both for dinner and the flick.

No Hard Feelings is a comedy about an Uber driver, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who loses her car just as she is facing foreclosure for back property taxes. To get back on the road, and save her home, she answers a personal ad from a rich couple who want her to “date” their son, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, in exchange for a free car. That’s “date” in quotes, as in take his virginity. Unfortunately for her the socially awkward 18-year-old is no easy catch, and time is running out.

I liked the film, and there were parts where I laughed my butt off. But when you release multiple trailers (just a cursory Google search showed me 5 minutes of “official” material) you’re showing your audience 10% of your final 90 minute  product, and presumably some of the best of it. There were parts of the film that would have been hysterical, had I not seen it six or seven times before.

That’s not the film’s fault, but it definitely impacts your viewing.

A negative that was the fault of the filmmakers, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, because it’s so counterintuitive: the characters were too 3-dimensional.

This was a raunchy , laugh out loud, don’t-worry-about-the plot-holes kind of flick and what did they do? They developed rich, emotional backstories and complex motivations for the two lead characters. That’s super swell as an assignment in a screenwriting class, but was it needed here, with this material?  I think this a case where keeping the characters firmly in their lane would have better served the comedy.

Don’t mind me though, I’m a grouch. I still rate this a solid B. Go see it.

John Drilling

 

John Drilling, a legendary television anchor/reporter at WITI 6 (first a CBS, then Fox affiliate), has passed away. He was 86. 

For 30 years Drilling was a staple on the Milwaukee airwaves, anchoring the noon news for WITI from 1975 until his retirement in 1998. A man with the reputation of a no-nonsense, just the facts reporter, he did this city proud.

RIP sir. 

Renfield

In the original novel by Bram Stoker, Renfield was an institutionalized madman who happened to be Dracula's Familiar - the assistant who helps the vampire find his prey.  The version of Renfield in this film treats him a little kinder, with the only nod to psychiatry being his habitual attendance at support group meetings. 

The plot of the movie is simple: Renfield is filled with misgivings about the life he's chosen, given that he's got the blood of tens of thousands on his hands, and after intervening to save a female cop on the outs with the mob, he seeks to break with his Master. Alas, dear Dracula doesn't do breakups very well, and launches a plan to not only punish his errant Familiar, but achieve world domination too.

I had no intention of seeing this movie, as I thought the trailer seems ridiculous, but once I saw it was streaming for free on Peacock I gave it a go. The verdict?

I humbly retract my former stance. It is a fun, entertaining popcorn flick worthy of watching. There's little worth remembering here, as it is For Entertainment Purposes Only, but it does that well. And Nicholas Cage plays a wickedly good (bad?) version of the world's most popular vampire. 

It's worth a watch if you have Peacock. If you need to pay to stream it . . eh. There's probably better ways to spend your money. 

 

A Father's Day Gift

This beautiful bird bath is not the only gift I received for a Father's Day that ranks as one of the top 30 days of my life, but it *does* happen to be a belated gift from Junie that was given to me two days ago.  Thus, it came up front and center when I opened my phone gallery lol

On the Titan 5 Tragedy

 Look, I know I'm coming off as rather obsessed with the story of Titan, the submersible lost at sea, but remember, I knew of it before the accident. I followed Oceangate on social media, I watched their YouTube videos, I marveled at the pioneering 8k footage they took of the wreck of the Titanic.  This was, from a distance, personal. 

By now of course you know how it turned out. The craft was found 1600 feet from the bow of Titanic, the victim of an implosion that took the lives of all five men. 

May they rest in peace, and may perpetual light shine upon them. 

What sticks in my mind is a quote from the CEO, who died in the accident. To paraphrase, when speaking of the glass in the porthole, he told the reporter it would crack and spiderweb long before failure. If that glass was the cause of the implosion, did they have that warning? Did they notice? And because of it, did they die after minutes of panic and terror?

I hope not. 

Meanwhile, the jerks of the world continue to barrage the internet with jokes, mockery, and derision. Of the men themselves, as fools or as rich, which to the jealous is synonymous with "worthy of death," or of the craft itself. 

Let's get some things straight. Getting in that craft and descending two miles to the ocean floor, even when you are fully confident of success, is an act of bravery and fortitude that not many people are capable of pulling off. Period. They were certainly braver than the keyboard warriors who mock their deaths. 

And like I told one jerk online that hid behind the claim that "humor is a coping mechanism: it's a coping mechanism if you're actually *coping* with trauma. If you're using jokes merely to mock suffering,  then you're just an asshole. 

Of the craft itself: it was a product of innovation and imagination, not hubris, and designed by a Princeton educated engineer (Stockton Rush, the CEO who died aboard her.)  It wasn't a craft built for billionaires to use on vacation, it was funded and built by their ticket fees and a necessary evil. 

When he said, on camera, that he "broke a few rules" to build it, he wasn't saying the equivalent of "I skimped on putting brakes and seatbelts on the car I built" He was saying that he broke a few cliches of submersible design, by designing a craft capable of holding up to 5 people, and building it with carbon fiber. 

Was he wrong, in retrospect? Maybe. Unless some unknown damaged the Titan and doomed her mid-trip, the engineering failed. 

Yet it's important to note that the Titan had made up to 50 previous dives to varying depths, including successful dives to the Titanic. It would seem that material fatigue, not an overt design blunder, would be the immediate causation for the tragedy. 

[btw, there's been a million jokes about the video game controller that steered the craft. It wouldn't have been my choice, but it IS the choice, from what I've read, of the US Navy when it comes to operating periscopes on our subs. So, much ado about nothing.]

Yet, problems had arisen on prior dives, and the hodge-podge nature of the construction had raised concerns. Should every available minute between dive seasons have been spent reviewing and updating the craft? Yes, a thousand times yes. But God bless the independence, courage, and independence that spawned it in the first place. 

Would I have got on the Titan? Had I the money, yes I would have gone, although I am no daredevil.  A chance to see the Titanic, to be that close to history, how could you pass it up? 

Again, to the Titan 5: Rest in Peace

Thank Goodness for Those Experts

: shakes my head:

It's not a US newspaper,  it's British. But I assume oxygen works the same way across the pond. 

Humans Suck

People suck.

Not that you needed reminding of that. 

But I'm sick of folks- even people I follow on social media - cracking jokes about the missing submersible. 5 people are dead or are facing death in the dark 2 miles beneath the sea, and you think it's funny? You think reposting shit meme about it makes you edgy and cool?

Then sir/madam, you ARE the asshole.

Oh, I forgot.  Most of the missing are rich,  so you'll try and disguise your jealousy by framing this as some "victory" of class warfare.

Meanwhile, you'll repost, without irony,  an article about Kendall Jenners dog wearing a cast.

Next you'll complain about all the resources involved in the rescue, as if we as a society don't go all-in whenever there's a rescue operation.  Hell, we send a fire truck and two paramedics just to pick up an old man that falls.  Isn't that what we're SUPPOSED to do, do our best to help people in danger?

[Not to mention the practical experience these situations give both the people and technology involved,  making the next rescue more likely to be successful]

And then the kicker: the fact that even this unique scenario,  with a fact pattern that precludes it ever happening to all but the tiniest sliver of humanity . . . well, by golly,  it wouldn't be right for this to pass without the "me" generation doing their best to make it about themselves and their self induced "trauma."

Serenity now.  Serenity now. 

Here's where I have to keep my thoughts: with the five missing men and the people who love them. 

The jerks online? F em.

Disaster at the Titanic Site

Titan, a five person submersible carrying tourists to the wreck of the Titanic, has gone missing. Both the Canadian and US Coast Guard is involved in the rescue attempt, but the odds . . . well. Let us hope and pray for the best. 

This hits hard because of two reasons: I follow OceanGate, the private company that runs the tours, on social media and have greatly enjoyed their informative YouTube videos of the wreck. Had I the quarter million dollars to spare, I would happily have signed on to a trip about the Titan myself.

The second reason is the unintelligent comments already surfacing  online: the Titanic claims more lives, it serves them right for dishonoring a "gravesite," people need to leave well enough alone, etc. 

The older I get, the more mellow I have become, but the more I am also nauseated by the predictable narrative of your average person. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. 

Anyhow, this isn't about *them* or my personal axe to grind. This is about the five souls that are currently missing two miles beneath the sea. 

May they be found soon, alive and well. 

For Free

 description in pics - LuLu

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